When I lost my job, it felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me.

There was no warning. No time to prepare. I logged into work that morning expecting a normal Monday, and a short time later I was told the company was restructuring and my position was being eliminated.

Just like that, the career and income I had counted on were gone.

My computer access was removed. My work phone was shut off. I didn’t even get the opportunity to say goodbye to people I had worked with and built relationships with for years.

When the call ended, I just sat there for a minute in shock.

And then came the thought:

Oh my gosh. What now? What am I going to do?

If you’ve recently lost your job, maybe you’re asking yourself the same thing.

Maybe you’re worried about money. Maybe you’re already wondering how long your savings will last. Maybe you’re thinking about your age and wondering who is going to hire you now. Or maybe you’re still trying to process how something that was such a big part of your life could end so quickly.

I know how scary that feels.

But before you start convincing yourself that you need to have your entire future figured out by tomorrow, I want you to hear this:

You don’t.

Right now, you only need to figure out what comes next.

Not next year.

Not the rest of your career.

Just next.

Give yourself a minute to process what just happened

One of the first things I thought about after losing my job was our income.

I had to call my husband and tell him that the income we’d been counting on was suddenly gone. I was panicking.

He reassured me that we were going to be okay and that we would figure it out together.

And when I hung up the phone, I cried.

I cried because I was scared.

I cried because of the way everything had ended.

I cried because I hadn’t been able to say goodbye to people who had been part of my life for years.

And I cried because I didn’t know what was going to happen next.

That’s something I think we sometimes overlook when we talk about job loss. It isn’t only financial.

When you’ve spent years building a career, your job becomes woven into your life. There are relationships, routines, responsibilities and a certain amount of security in knowing what tomorrow is supposed to look like.

And suddenly, you don’t know.

So if that rug has just been pulled out from underneath you, give yourself permission to feel what you’re feeling.

You can be scared.

You can be angry.

You can be disappointed.

You can grieve what you’ve lost.

You don’t have to turn this into something positive on day one.

Process what happened. Just don’t let what happened convince you that this is where your story ends.

It isn’t.

Take care of what needs your attention first

You may not need to decide what you’re doing with the rest of your career this week.

But there probably are a few things that can’t wait.

One of the first practical things I did was file for unemployment. I knew it could take time for everything to get started, so I didn’t put it off.

My husband and I had also been intentional about putting money into savings every week, and I was very grateful we had that cushion. But losing my income still meant we needed to make changes.

And my timing couldn’t have been much worse.

I lost my job shortly before Thanksgiving.

We were heading into the holidays, a time when we normally spent more money, and suddenly we were watching every dollar. That Christmas looked very different for us.

Your circumstances may not look anything like mine, but the principle is the same.

Look at what needs your attention now.

File for unemployment if you’re eligible. Look at your health insurance. Review what’s in savings. Look at the bills coming up. Decide what expenses can be reduced for a while.

And if you have someone you trust, talk to them.

That phone call with my husband didn’t solve the problem. But hearing him say, We’ll figure this out, reminded me that I wasn’t carrying it by myself.

You don’t need to solve everything today.

Sometimes making a few practical decisions is enough to make the situation feel a little less out of control.

Don’t let panic make all of your decisions for you

Because my job ended right before the holidays, I knew from my own recruiting experience that November and December could be a difficult time to judge what the job market was going to look like.

I didn’t completely stop looking. I looked at opportunities, put feelers out and updated my résumé.

But I didn’t begin seriously applying until January.

And once I did, I treated finding a job like a job.

I wasn’t only looking for another territory manager position like the one I’d had. I looked at different types of positions that fit my skills and experience and were within the income range I needed.

I applied for remote positions. I applied for local positions. I even applied for jobs that were below the level I’d previously held.

I spent hours finding positions, tailoring my résumé and filling out applications.

And then came the rejections.

Sometimes I didn’t hear anything at all.

After a while, it started wearing on me.

I was almost 59 years old with approximately 20 years of corporate experience, and I started wondering whether my age was working against me.

I couldn’t prove that age was why I wasn’t getting hired. But when you’ve built a career for twenty years and suddenly can’t seem to get someone to give you a chance, your mind starts going places.

Mine certainly did.

I started questioning myself.

I wondered what I was doing wrong.

And there were moments when I was genuinely afraid I wasn’t going to find anything that would come close to replacing the income I’d lost.

If you’re somewhere in that process right now, I want you to know that I understand how discouraging it can become.

Please don’t let a season of rejection make you forget what you know about yourself.

A company deciding not to hire you doesn’t erase the years you spent learning, leading, solving problems and gaining experience.

I couldn’t see that very clearly when I was in the middle of it.

Someone else had to remind me.

You may be starting again, but you are not starting from nothing

About two months into my serious job search, I was talking to my daughter on a day when I was feeling particularly defeated.

She had been in the virtual-assistant world for years.

And she said:

“Mom, all of your skills are transferable. Why don’t you start your own VA business?”

I had known about virtual assistance for years because of her, but I’d never considered becoming a VA myself.

I had a corporate career.

Why would I?

But now I didn’t.

And what my daughter could see that I couldn’t see yet was that losing my position hadn’t taken away everything I had learned while I was in it.

I still knew how to manage people.

I knew how to recruit.

I knew how to communicate with clients and employees.

I knew how to solve problems.

I knew how to learn new systems.

I knew how to organize, lead, research and figure things out.

I had been doing those things for so long that I didn’t necessarily think of them as something I could take somewhere else.

They were just part of my job.

Except they weren’t.

They were mine.

And the same is true for you.

If you’ve spent 10, 20 or 30 years working, you have accumulated knowledge and skills that belong to you, not to the company that employed you.

You may not know yet how those skills translate into something new.

That’s okay.

I didn’t either.

But please don’t look at an empty résumé line where your job used to be and decide you’re back at square one.

You’re not starting from nothing. You’re bringing everything you’ve learned with you.

Give yourself permission to consider a path you didn’t plan

When I first lost my job, I wasn’t dreaming about starting a business.

I wanted to replace my income.

That’s it.

But after that conversation with my daughter, something changed.

I hung up the phone and thought about everything she had said. I thought about all of the applications I’d submitted and all of the rejections.

And eventually, my discouragement turned into a little bit of anger.

I remember thinking:

If no one’s going to hire me, I’ll hire myself.

That was my lightbulb moment.

I decided I was going to start a VA business.

I bought my daughter’s VA course, even though she told me I didn’t need to pay for it, because I wanted to go through the same process everyone else did.

And then I started learning.

Now, I want to make something very clear.

I’m not telling you that losing your job means you should become a virtual assistant or start a business.

Your next step may be another job.

It may be a different career.

It may eventually be something of your own.

You may not have the slightest idea yet.

But don’t assume the only successful outcome is recreating exactly what you had before.

There may be possibilities you’ve never considered because, until now, you never had a reason to consider them.

I certainly didn’t.

If faith is part of your life, take all of this to God

This was a huge part of my journey.

I’ve always spent time with God in the morning. My devotion time wasn’t something I started because I lost my job. That relationship was already there.

But when my life suddenly felt uncertain, I leaned into my faith more than ever.

I talked to God about everything.

I told Him I was scared.

I prayed about our finances.

I prayed about the jobs I was applying for.

I prayed about what I wanted.

And I asked Him to lead me according to His will, even when I couldn’t see where He was leading me.

Romans 8:28 became especially important to me during that time because I believed what it says about God working things together for good.

That didn’t mean I believed God caused me to lose my job.

I didn’t.

It meant I believed that something bad could happen to me and God could still bring good out of it.

I couldn’t see the good yet.

All I could see was what I’d lost.

But I knew God’s character. And I knew this wasn’t the end of my story.

So I kept praying.

I kept trusting.

And I kept moving.

Looking back now, I can see things God brought into my life because I was forced onto a path I never would have chosen for myself.

At the time, though?

I couldn’t see any of that.

And maybe you can’t see it yet either.

That’s okay.

You don’t have to see what God is doing yet to trust that He is still working.

What if “What now?” isn’t the end of the story?

The first time I asked What now?, I was sitting there after losing my job.

It came from fear.

Oh my gosh. What now?

But somewhere along the way, that question started changing.

Instead of:

What am I going to do?

It became:

Okay, what could I do?

What skills do I already have?

What haven’t I considered?

What could this next season look like?

What if my life doesn’t have to go back to exactly what it was before?

I didn’t choose to lose my job.

I didn’t choose to have the rug pulled out from underneath a career I’d spent years building.

But I could choose what I did next.

And so can you.

Maybe today isn’t the day you figure that out.

Maybe today is the day you cry.

Maybe tomorrow is the day you file for unemployment.

Maybe next week is when you update your résumé.

And maybe somewhere down the road, you’ll discover an opportunity that isn’t even on your radar today.

You do not have to know yet.

If I could sit across the table from the woman who has just lost the job she thought she’d have for years, that’s probably what I would want her to hear most.

This is painful.

This is scary.

And yes, your life may look different from what you thought it would.

But different doesn’t mean over.

You still have your experience.

You still have your skills.

You still have choices.

And if you’re a woman of faith, you still have a God who can take something you never wanted to happen and bring good from it.

So process what you’ve lost.

Take care of what needs taking care of.

Then, when you’re ready, start looking forward instead of only looking back.

You may have been forced onto a new path.

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t something good waiting for you along the way.

And you don’t have to see the whole path to take the first step.

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Want to know what happened next?

I didn’t go from losing my career to confidently building something new overnight.

There were months of rejection, a lot of self-doubt, limiting beliefs I didn’t even realize I had, plenty of prayer, and eventually one decision that changed everything:

If no one’s going to hire me, I’ll hire myself.

→ Read my story: It’s Never Too Late to Rebuild