Career Grief & the Art of Reinvention
Big Girl Panties Diaries: The Unfiltered Edition. Real talk on life, leadership, and change — with calmfident truth bombs.
“You don’t just lose a job. You lose a rhythm, a routine, and a version of yourself you built your whole life around.”
🩲 A New Chapter — and a Bigger Conversation
Lately, as I’ve been rebuilding, I’ve had more coffee chats than I can count — reconnecting with people across my network. And what I’m hearing is strikingly similar: Stories of loss, reinvention, exhaustion… and resilience.
People keep saying, “Thank you for putting into words what I was feeling but couldn’t say.” That’s when I realized — this isn’t just my story anymore.
So this next evolution of Big Girl Panties Diaries — The Unfiltered Edition — is about all of us. It’s about normalizing the hard parts of professional transformation: the grief, the uncertainty, the identity shifts. Because the only way we move forward is by telling the truth — together.
I’m on a mission to make these conversations part of how we lead, live, and heal.
From Ghosted to Grounded
When I first wrote Entry #7: My Career Ghosted Me. Grief Got Me Through, I was 10,000 feet up — Cayuga Lake below, clouds heavy, heart heavier — trying to make sense of losing the career I’d built for 18 years.
Hot yoga and heartbreak became my survival plan. That story was my grief era — the one where I cried through Savasana and called it growth.
By Entry #59: The Messy Middle Is Where the Magic (and Meltdowns) Happen, I’d learned that transformation doesn’t happen in a straight line — it happens in the still, fragile stretch between what was and what will be.
Then came Entry #105: Lost Two Jobs. Found My Backbone — the moment I stopped waiting for stability and started building it from within.
And most recently, Entry #108: Who Are You With? I’m With Myself — the moment I stopped needing a logo to belong. Because sometimes the most powerful seat at the table is the one you pull up for yourself.
This edition — Career Grief & the Art of Reinvention — is about what happens after all of that. When the storm quiets. When you’ve felt it, faced it, and finally realized: You’re not starting over — you’re starting truer.
The Awkward Middle
There’s this strange in-between — the identity hangover. You’re not who you were, but not yet who you’re becoming.
You clean closets. Make lists. Reintroduce yourself to your own kitchen. You smile in coffee chats that feel part therapy, part improv. You pretend you’re “fine,” even when your confidence is hanging by a thread — or a sports bra.
Then one morning, something shifts. You stop defending the old story. You start designing the new one.
That’s not just healing — that’s reinvention.
Truth Bomb
BGPD Rule: You can’t reinvent yourself until you’ve grieved the version that got you here.
🔄 The Rebuild
Reinvention isn’t about becoming someone new — it’s about remembering who you were before you had to shrink to fit.
For me, it looked like:
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Saying yes to the blank page (hello, Julie Whitten Consulting).
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Reconnecting with people who saw me before the title.
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Creating work that feels like oxygen, not armor.
It’s messy. It’s brave. It’s still unfolding — but that’s the point. We’re not meant to stay ironed and pressed. We’re meant to stretch, wrinkle, and reimagine.
Because after “My Career Ghosted Me” came “The Messy Middle,” then “Lost Two Jobs,” and finally “Who Are You With? I’m With Myself.” Each chapter taught me a new muscle: how to feel, how to trust, how to stand taller, and how to belong fully — to myself.
This newsletter is the next evolution — from one woman’s diary to a collective conversation about change, resilience, and leading ourselves through it.
🩲 Panty Picks
🎧 Song on repeat: “Dog Days Are Over” — Florence + The Machine
📖 BGPD Throwbacks:
💬 Real Talk
If you’re grieving a career, a company, or a version of yourself that no longer fits — you’re not broken. You’re rebuilding.
Comment below or DM me: What’s one part of your “old self” you’re ready to release … and one part you’re ready to reclaim?
🩲 Because the comeback isn’t about bouncing back. It’s about bouncing forward — together.