The silence after redundancy

The hardest part may not be the meeting where they tell you.

It may be the morning after.

You wake at the same time.

For a moment, your body still believes there is somewhere to go.

Then you remember.

Your laptop stays closed.

Your colleagues carry on without you.

A conversation continues in rooms you can no longer enter.

People may say it was a business decision.

But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t feel personal.

The shame of telling people.

The anger of being replaced.

The hurt of discovering how quickly a working life can close around your absence.

Work can give us more than an income.

It can give us routine, relationships, status, purpose — and a place where, for years, we were expected to turn up.

Relational Space Therapy can offer a place where the loss does not have to be made smaller, rationalised away, or quickly turned into a plan for what comes next.

Sometimes there is only the silence left by no longer being needed.