I never planned on starting over at 59.

November 13, 2023. I logged into my computer at 8am like it was any other Monday. The first thing I saw was a meeting invite, one hour from then, mandatory, and it showed exactly who was on it. I remember staring at that list of names for a second, trying to figure out what it could be about. It wasn’t on my calendar. Nobody had mentioned it. That alone should have told me something.

By the time the call ended, my job of eight years was gone. Not a two-week notice. Not even a day. The company was restructuring, and my position, along with the positions of the whole management team, had been eliminated, effective immediately. Before I even hung up the phone, my computer access was cut off. My work phone went dark. I couldn’t reach the team I had led for eight years to tell them goodbye, or thank you, or anything at all. One minute I had a career. The next minute I didn’t, and there was no ceremony to it, just silence where eight years used to be.

I want to stay in that moment for a second, because I don’t think we talk enough about what it actually feels like. It wasn’t just about the money, although that hit fast too. It was the disorientation of it. You build relationships with people over years, you know their kids’ names, you’ve celebrated their wins, you’ve walked through hard seasons together, and then it’s just gone. No closure. No goodbye. Like a door closing so fast you don’t even see it swing shut.

And underneath all of that was a quieter, harder question: I’m almost 59. What do I do now?

I want to be honest about what came next, because I think the honest version is the one that actually helps someone. I didn’t bounce back with a plan. I went through the motions of the holidays that year, it happened the week before Thanksgiving, and I decided to wait until January to start applying for jobs, since hiring tends to slow down at the end of the year anyway. So I waited. And when January came, I applied. And applied. And applied again.

And I kept hearing no.

I remember sitting with that rejection, wondering what twenty years in corporate had actually earned me. I had the experience. I had the skills. And still, nothing. It’s a strange kind of grief, getting turned down over and over after building a whole career. It doesn’t just wear on your bank account. It wears on how you see yourself. I started wondering if there was something wrong with me. I started wondering if my age was the real reason behind every “no.” Losing a job you thought you’d retire from, and then hearing rejection after rejection, has a way of making you question everything you thought you knew about yourself.

Then one day, my daughter, who was already working as a Virtual Assistant, looked at me and said something I hadn’t let myself consider yet.

“Mom, you have all the skills. They’re transferable. Start a business. Become a VA.”

I remember that moment clearly, because it was the first time in months someone had looked at everything I’d lost and seen something I still had. Not a resume gap. Not an age problem. Skills. Twenty years of them. She had a course that walked people through exactly how to build a VA business, and I decided that if no one was going to hire me, I’d hire myself.

I wish I could tell you it was smooth from there. It wasn’t.

The hard part was never the actual VA work, pricing, contracts, invoicing, new software, finding clients. I could learn all of that. The hard part was learning to believe in myself again. Somewhere around that time, I started praying specific prayers. Not just “please send me a client,” but very specific ones, for a client who would pay me on retainer instead of tracking every hour, someone who would trust my work instead of micromanaging it, enough flexibility that I could keep building toward the future I felt I was being led toward. After losing my job the way I did, I was determined I would never again let my whole future depend on one paycheck.

It took almost a year for that prayer to be answered.

That year changed me. I had a few smaller clients along the way, but looking back now, I can see I didn’t always show up with the confidence those opportunities deserved. I still didn’t fully believe I had much to offer, and I think, without even realizing it, I got in my own way more than once. There were days I genuinely thought I might have to settle, take whatever job would pay the bills, even if it meant walking away from the thing I actually wanted to build. But somewhere underneath the doubt, I knew I didn’t just want another job. I wanted to build something that would replace, and eventually exceed, what I’d lost.

The only reason I didn’t quit was my faith. Hebrews 11:1 became something I leaned on more than I ever had before:

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

There were plenty of days I couldn’t see a single piece of evidence that anything was changing. I just had to keep believing it was, even when I couldn’t prove it yet.

And then, almost a year to the day after I started, it happened. I landed a long-term client, the exact kind I had been praying for. I remember the feeling more than I remember the details of that conversation: in the space of one phone call, I went from wondering if any of this would ever work to having income again. But even bigger than the income was the quiet thought that followed it: I did this. After a year of rejection and self-doubt, someone had believed in me, and that first “yes” meant so much more than a paycheck. It told me maybe I really could build something of my own.

Today, two years later, I work full-time as a Virtual Assistant supporting businesses behind the scenes. I create digital products. I earn affiliate income from tools I actually use and believe in. I’m also building a travel membership income stream I believe in, one more piece of the same goal: never depending on just one paycheck again. None of it happened overnight, and none of it happened alone, but I’ve built something that gives me options I didn’t have before. I never want one company, one client, or one paycheck to hold that much control over my future again.

But here’s what surprises me most when I look back: the biggest change in me was never really about the business.

I’m 61 now, and I’ve learned more about myself in the last two years than I did in the fifty-nine before them. Losing my job forced me to slow down and ask questions I had never let myself ask. I started understanding myself in ways I hadn’t before. I stopped seeing my age as something working against me and started seeing it as experience I get to build from. I stopped waiting for someone else to decide what my future would look like, and started realizing I was capable of creating my own opportunities instead of waiting for one to be handed to me.

I thought I was rebuilding a career. What I was really rebuilding was myself.

If you’re in a season you never expected to be in, if you’ve lost something you thought you’d have forever, or you’re staring down a future that looks nothing like the one you planned, I hope you hear this clearly: it is not too late. Not for a new career, not for a new season, not for becoming the person you were always meant to be.

I started this space because I wanted somewhere for women in that exact spot to land, not to be sold to, but to be understood. If that’s you right now, I’d love for you to stay close.