How Women Who’ve Lost Work Are Coping

AMY GALLO: You’re listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review. I’m Amy Gallo.

AMY BERNSTEIN: I’m Amy Bernstein.

EMILY CAULFIELD: And I’m Emily Caulfield. So, far this season our conversations have been centered on women who have jobs. But because of the pandemic, there are many, many women who don’t. Women who aren’t sure when their industries will reopen, or when clients will want their business again.

AMY GALLO: Three women who’ve lost work opened up to us about how they’ve been doing the past several months. How their processing the loss, not just of income, but also their sense of identity, waiting for clarity, questioning and rethinking their future.

AMY BERNSTEIN: We’re starting with Veronica who lives in a suburb of Boston. She began her career as a web designer then switched to massage therapy where she found more fulfillment. In March, the small business where she’d been working closed, and she’s been unemployed since then.

VERONICA: You know, at first, I was grateful to get a break because massage therapy’s a very physical job. But then I started realizing how not seeing people, not talking to people, not being in physical contact with people was really affecting me, so the only person I was seeing on a daily basis was my husband. And all these emotional needs and need for physical touch, it all came down to him. Like you have to fill my cup that 100 people a day used to fill. That put a lot of strain on our relationship, among other things. It was really challenging.

So, I started going to online meetings. It’s basically for children who come from families with any sort of dysfunction. Not that I had a bad childhood, it’s just that there were a lot of challenging beliefs that came out of growing up, and all these beliefs were sabotaging me in my job search. So, such as I have to be perfect or, I’m nobody until I get a job, stuff like that. I didn’t go to these meetings to kind of blame my family. It was just a way to get support for where I am in life right now.

So, my goal right now is to find a job in user experience design. I do feel that user experience can be very fulfilling for me because I come from a background of visual design, and I enjoy talking to people. User experience is kind of a molding of all of those things for me, and I think I could be a really good fit. I think a few years back when I tried to break into this field, my beliefs were holding me back. The belief that I have to know everything. The belief that I have to have all the answers. Push comes to shove, like I have to just try it. I have to just do it. I’m just going to be living with the what ifs for so long, if I don’t do it. So, I really have to take a good stab at it and see what comes out of it.

So, the biggest lesson I’ve learned through the pandemic is that I need to focus on making small steps towards my goal instead of trying to, what they say, eat the elephant in one bite. This goal of finding a job is just such a huge thing and there’s so many small little elements of it, so I need to build a portfolio, I need to create case studies or projects for the portfolio and all of that seems so overwhelming that sometimes I focus on the feelings of overwhelm, rather than focusing on actually completing small steps. So, learning how to be kind to myself while I’m feeling overwhelmed, leaning on people in my community for help, for support, for advice and also just not trying to do everything at once. Because that’s my tendency. I’m so uncomfortable with this feeling of uncertainty and feeling of guilt of not having work that I just want it done now or tomorrow. But I need to be able to sit with these feelings and make small steps towards the goal.

EMILY LOUISE ROBINSON: So, my name is Emily Louise Robinson. I go by my full name because I’m a professional opera singer and Emily Robinson’s a very common name.

I teach piano and voice to kids from the age of four to adults who are singing both as amateurs and professionals, the whole gamut, and I am a member of the Houston Grand Opera Chorus, as well as a freelance opera singer.

In March, I had just completed the busiest two months I had had in a while. So, I had decided last winter to sort of pivot away from doing the contract opera work, to focus on what I can do here in Houston. I’m going to focus on being in the Opera Chorus here at Houston Grand Opera that is just fabulous to sing with, and teaching, and the church job that I have and just be home. And I was working constantly. I had students at this high school that I’d teach during the day. I had my private studio and then I was doing two shows at the Houston Grand Opera. In those two months I made half of what I made last year, in the first two months of this year. So, I was like this is going to be the best year yet. This pivot and focus is like the smartest thing I’ve ever done, right.

And then I had taken off a week in March to go see my friend who was singing with the Paris Opera. So, I had gone to Paris the first week of March. And I’m so lucky. The last thing I did before we all got stuck at home was go to Paris. And I pivoted. I decided to teach online. Many of my students didn’t want to do that, so I have about half the number of students that I had. The church I sang at shut down. The spring operas were canceled. And obviously now the fall operas have been canceled. So, within the span of a few weeks, a year of singing contracts had been canceled, and not just for me, for everyone. They just rolled in, and I have students whose parents have lost their jobs. There’re some kids who’ve just disappeared off the face of the Earth. Even when I’ve messaged their family to be like, “well you paid me for three more lessons. Would you like me to refund you?” Nothing. So, that’s very strange to have that. And then the church I worked for, my former boss there actually set up donations for the musicians so there were a few donations that came in to make up for the lost income, which is very kind of them. He went above and beyond trying to help in that way.

And now, what I’m doing, church has come back slowly in drips and drabs. I have 10 students right now. Honestly in the scheme of things I’m very grateful. I’m very grateful to have these multiple streams of things. I have so many friends who were singers and servers, or two industries where the bottom fell out, or singers and in retail. Everybody’s hustling. Everybody’s doing multiple things because everybody knows how unstable singing is. But I think the bottom fell out for everyone in everything they were doing, all at once. I’m also incredibly privileged and lucky that my husband and I have set up our finances such that we knew that my job’s unstable and that if we couldn’t do it on my husband’s salary, we wouldn’t do it.

What I love about singing opera, it is utterly and completely consuming. There’s not room for any dialogue in your brain. That nagging voice, if it’s in your brain you’re going to mess up. Your brain just is full. It’s full of the physical. It’s full of the mental. It’s full of: am I with the orchestra? It’s all-consuming. I love the all-consuming nature of opera. And I find that now, there’s very little that I do that is all-consuming. And I think that’s the greatest loss. The struggles not about the job. The struggle’s about meaning. Am I a singer if I’m not singing? What am I if I’m not doing this thing that I’ve been struggling and striving for, for 15 years of my life? This is the first year I’m not going to fly to New York City to sing dozens of auditions in the fall. I’m not sending out recordings and applications. Some people are. That’s not completely dead. But I have no motivation to do that. I don’t think I’ve practiced in earnest in months. My husband asked me if I wanted to do a Zoom recital or a recital in the park for our friends and family, and I was just like, “I don’t know, not really. For what?” And I think that surprised him. So, I’m doing a few professional development things and studying, and connecting with people, but I think that there’s a lot of, well I have nothing that’s coming up and no foreseeable auditions. It’s very difficult to practice. It’s very difficult to maintain this level of skill that I put more than the 10,000 hours into, to not have a goal. It’s very difficult to not have a goal. I don’t know when I’m going to get to perform again. And, I guess I have to just remind myself that I can’t define myself. I am not a human being based on my job, and I know everybody struggles with that, but I can’t define myself by that.

LISA SLOANE: My name is Lisa Sloane. I am an entrepreneur. I own a small business. We are focused on healthcare equity, utilizing data to improve outcomes for patients. We teach leaders how to us their knowledge and their skills to provide better healthcare for people who are different than them. And, because of the pandemic, a lot of our business has been shelved. I’ve had to lay off my team for the most part, which is probably the most difficult part of all of this for me, because they are depending on that income to help them during what’s a very difficult time. You know, at one point I thought I might have to sell my assets to a larger company and so, we actually prepared to do that. We prepared all of our products to sell. I remember talking to a customer. I was actually having a conversation with a customer, or I should say with a prospect, but we were well acquainted, had developed a relationship and talking over six months or so, about doing business together. And, we talked about what was going on in the country. It was after Ahmaud Arbery had been shot, but it was before George Floyd had been murdered. So, I was already feeling a lot of stress and a lot of pressure, a lot of feeling like I’m not sure what’s going to happen with our business. Really feeling like in a state of shock. Really confused and dazed and it felt like being in a fog. I just don’t know where we’re going. I don’t know where the healthcare industry is going. I don’t know how we’re going to end up after all this is done.

And, talking to that customer about his station in this country, having Ahmaud Arbery murdered, I started crying. I’m like talking to a prospect, and I’m on the phone just bawling. I don’t mean just like sniffling. I mean like bawling. And I suppose it was the stress of not knowing what was happening business-wise, but it was also the stress of knowing that Black and Brown people in this country were under seize and are under seize.

So, as far as business was concerned, I just, I had no way of predicting. I had no way of figuring out what is a path forward. What do I do next? So, I would say about maybe three weeks to a month after George Floyd’s murder, there were a lot of companies that were making statements about racial injustice and their desire to address racial injustice. And a lot of executives making statements about their understanding that their Black employees were feeling extremely stressed. You know, so there were little glimmers of hope and glimmers of action. And so, I started to feel encouraged in terms of our ability to continue to evolve as a company and to serve those that were really interested in making a difference in healthcare. We’ve been what I would describe as a marginalized company, because many organizations do not want to acknowledge the challenges with racial injustice and health equity that we have in this country. So, we had spent a good part of 2019 building out training centered on implicit bias. And we tap danced around racism. Because frankly, there weren’t many organizational leaders that were ready to have that conversation. And so, we could talk about implicit bias and in some ways, we were pushing the envelope. Well, now we can talk about racism. And, the folks on the other end are ready to have that conversation.

So, when COVID started, I was thinking, this could devastate my company. So, then as things evolved, as different stages of the pandemic emerged, including the emergence of data and statistics that show the disproportionate and devastating impact that COVID was having on the Black community and on LatinX communities. It became so clear to everyone this was a topic of conversation. You couldn’t turn on the news without hearing about the inequities, and myself and others who are in this field were saying, “This is predictable. And if there was ever another pandemic, let’s make sure that we’re in a different spot.” So, as the pandemic and the related statistics, and realizations were evolving, my thinking was evolving. My experience with the company and my decision making around the company was evolving. So, this has been a rollercoaster ride.

I’m a very resilient individual, and I have built methods for retaining good mental health and good physical health over the years. I’ve had lots of challenges in my life, and I came from a family that didn’t have a lot. I’ve had to learn to be resilient over the years. And I’ve learned to create the circumstances for my happiness. And, sometimes I forget that I have those fundamental skills that I can rely on. And so, I have to sometimes go back to the drawing board and reinstitute some of those practices. So, it’s like people that meditate on a regular basis. Every now and then we fall off the wagon. And we don’t do the things that we know help us to live good, healthy lives. And, in 2019, I had been on this treadmill, grinding to get these customers onboard. And when COVID hit, everything stopped, and I got off the treadmill, and it actually felt refreshing. You know, as difficult as it has been, I would say it has been a good thing for me personally. I’ve been able to turn the negative into a positive. So, now we’re gearing up for a really fantastic 2021 in terms of being able to really go deep with some organizations that know we must address health equity and healthcare. But we still have to make it another quarter until they are ready to start.

AMY GALLO: Thanks to Veronica, Emily Louise, and Lisa for sharing their stories. Amy B., what did you hear in each of their accounts of what they’ve been through?

AMY BERNSTEIN: Well, I heard a couple of really important themes and one of them, Lisa was just talking about this, it’s this resilience that they have managed to find in themselves, and they’re leaning on it in ways that I find really inspiring. They’re not crumbling. Lisa is looking forward. She is thinking about how to rebuild her business. But we heard it also from Veronica who’s thinking about how she restarts her career. And also, from Emily Louise who, you know, she’s a singer who isn’t singing.

AMY GALLO: That was one of the things that resonated with me so much was Emily Louise talking about this is what I have fought and worked and strived for my entire life. And now I’m not doing it. I think that would really put someone under. But to your point Amy B., she’s really being quite resilient.

AMY BERNSTEIN: One of the things that really pained me and what Emily Louise was saying, but we heard it as well from Veronica, was this loss of a sense of self. If I’m not singing, who am I?

AMY GALLO: Yeah. And also, the question of: Do I define myself by my job? I think is just such an important question for all of us to ask ourselves. Because the truth is none of us is that far from the situation that they described themselves in. And, these questions they’re asking about: What is fulfilling? What’s satisfying? Who am I if I’m not doing the thing that I’ve always thought I would be doing, or that I used to be doing? These are all questions I think that are really important that we all grapple with, especially when times are so incredibly uncertain.

EMILY CAULFIELD: I have had short periods of unemployment before in my life, and I can definitely empathize with their feelings of identity loss and also that’s probably the most difficult time to sell yourself and put yourself out there, and go to interviews, and do all of the things that they say you have to do to prepare yourself for a new job. It’s really difficult to mustard up that energy.

AMY GALLO: Right. Well, even Emily was saying her husband suggested she do a recital for family or friends, and her saying, “No. My heart’s just not in that right now.” I felt that was very realistic. And as resilient as each of these women are being right now, there’s also an acceptance and a real honesty about how hard it is.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Yeah.

EMILY CAULFIELD: That’s our show. I’m Emily Caulfield.

AMY BERNSTEIN: I’m Amy Bernstein.

AMY GALLO: And I’m Amy Gallo. Our editorial and production team is Amanda Kersey, Maureen Hoch, Adam Buchholz, Rob Eckhardt, and Tina Tobey Mack. Thanks for listening and take care.