My Self-Worth Is Still Coupled to My Career. I Thought I Fixed That in 2020.
TLDR: I've been laid off before. I know the drill. In May 2026, it happened again. I know it's not personal. I know my value isn't determined by whether a company keeps me. I've done the therapy. I've done the work. And yet here I am, feeling like if I'm not at my computer applying to jobs or making content or building something, I'm not worthy of the thing I'm waiting for.
I thought I fixed this in 2020. I didn't.
I'm guilty of meeting someone, learning their name, and immediately asking what they do for work. We all are. It's the second question, always. As if the answer tells us something essential about who a person is. I've spent years knowing that's not true and doing it anyway.
This Isn't My First Layoff
In July 2020, in the height of the pandemic, I got laid off for the first time. It was truly awful. But it was also somehow easier, not because the circumstances were better, but because everyone was going through something. The world was in chaos. Layoffs were everywhere. There was a collective grief to it that made the personal loss feel somewhat less isolating.
The first layoff also gave me my first viral LinkedIn post. I wrote honestly about what I was going through, the interviews that didn't pan out, the rejection that stung, the team energy I missed, and 8,248 people reacted to it. 484 comments. 85 reposts. I didn't write it to go viral. I wrote it because I needed to say something out loud.
I think about that a lot right now.
In May 2026, it happened again.
This is different.
The world is “normal” now (whatever that means). People are going to work. Life is happening. And I'm sitting at my computer refreshing my email, wondering if today is the day someone decides I'm worth hiring.
I know, logically, that a hiring decision is not a reflection of my worth as a person. I know that. My therapist and I have talked about it at length. And still, every morning I wake up and feel the pull to prove something, to be productive enough, visible enough, strategic enough, as if the right LinkedIn post or the perfectly optimized website will be what tips the scales.
The Waiting
The waiting is the hardest part. Not the applying, not the interviewing, not even the rejections (though they do sting!).
The waiting: the part where a huge, life-altering decision is in someone else's hands and there is nothing left to do but exist in the uncertainty.
I am not good at existing in uncertainty like this.
I am good at building campaigns, testing hypotheses, and optimizing toward a measurable outcome. Job hunting has a funnel but no dashboard. There's no metric that tells you you're close. There's just the silence between emails, the calendar invite that may or may not come, the version of yourself you're trying to present while also trying to remember who you actually are.
Still In It
I don't have a resolution for this post because I don't have a resolution yet.
I'm still in it.
Still waiting.
Still working on uncoupling the thing I do from the thing I am.
Still not there.
Katie Frank is a B2B SaaS growth marketer based in Birmingham, AL. She writes about marketing and travel at katiefrankmarketing.com
