For more than 20 years, I led with my job title when someone asked who I was. My responsibilities and place in corporate America had become central to how I saw myself. I am a Los Angeles native who grew up in South Central, a place few would have expected to produce a Fortune 500 employee.
But I found my way into corporate America and stayed there for more than two decades. And I loved it.
I loved solving problems. I loved leading teams. I loved creating things. I loved proving that I belonged in rooms I was never expected to enter.
Then, in 2025, I lost my dream corporate job. The call was short. The shock that followed was not.
I spent the first 60 days after my layoff in a daze. Family trips, a wedding and my sorority conference kept me moving, but they left little time to process what had happened.
Like many professionals, I did what everyone tells you to do. I updated my resume, activated my network and started applying for jobs.
This was not my first layoff, so I thought I knew the playbook.
The company gave us time and access to apply for internal opportunities, and I got to work immediately. But after one interview loop, an interviewer told me they didn’t think it was fair that a sponsor had recommended me for a role. I realized this wouldn’t be my typical layoff experience.
By Day 61, I was locked into a routine. I worked out. I applied for jobs. I networked. I stayed busy.
On paper, I was doing well enough that a girlfriend suggested I document the journey on social media.
I laughed. I wasn’t an influencer, and I certainly didn’t have a massive following. Who would care how I was managing the madness of the job market?
Still, even as I worked my plan, I had bad days.
The Conversation I Didn’t Know I Needed
One day, I decided to visit one of my closest college friends. We both started our careers after UCLA, but our paths eventually took us in very different directions. She became a successful entrepreneur whose business allowed her to live life on her own terms, while I took the corporate route.
During a day trip together in San Francisco, she told me she couldn’t believe I was still working in corporate America because, according to her, she’d “seen my potential years” before I did.
At the time, I thought I was doing pretty well. I had a successful career, a six-figure salary and a title people respected.
But she had built something different. She had freedom. She could decide on a Wednesday afternoon to take her kids to Disneyland and just go. No approval needed. No calendar shuffle. No PTO form.
When I showed up at her house feeling defeated, I expected sympathy, encouragement and maybe a pep talk. Instead, she cursed me out, with love, of course.
But she absolutely let me have it.
She told me I was not living up to my potential. She challenged every excuse I had for playing it safe and reminded me that I already had everything I needed to create the life I said I wanted.
That loving confrontation happened on a Tuesday. By Friday, I had recorded the first episode of my podcast.
That conversation changed everything.
Up until then, I’d spent all my energy trying to get back what I had lost when I was fired. For the first time, I stopped asking how to get my old job back and started considering what else was possible.
In the days that followed, I kept hearing the same advice. Update your resume. Call your network. Start applying.
And while it was good advice, it also missed the mark. I did not need another checklist. I needed permission to imagine a future beyond the one I had spent two decades building.
Being laid off is not a failure. It was a business decision made in a room I wasn’t in. I know that now.
But knowing something and feeling it are two different projects. The feeling took much longer.
My Worth Was Never Tied To A Title
First, I had to separate my identity from my job. When you give a company two decades of your life, it becomes easy to confuse your work with who you are. The badge, the packed calendar, the endless emails and the feeling that people need you by name can start to feel like your personality.
Then one day, it all stops. And if you are not careful, you start wondering whether you still matter. I had to ask myself what was still true about me on a random Tuesday morning with nowhere to be.
The answer turned out to be quite a bit.
I was still a leader. I was still good at solving hard problems. People still called me when situations got complicated.
None of those things lived inside a job title.
Learning To Ask for Support
The second thing I had to learn was how to ask for support.
Black women are often the people everyone leans on. We are the strong friend, the dependable colleague, the reliable family member and the fixer. That reputation is earned, but it can also become a trap.
I spent years helping others navigate difficult seasons. When my season arrived, I did not know how to say, “I need help.”
For me, asking felt harder than the layoff itself. But once I started telling people the truth, something shifted.
Women I admired began sharing stories about layoffs, restarts, failed businesses, career pivots, confidence crises and seasons of uncertainty they had never talked about publicly. I realized how many of us were carrying these experiences alone.
We post the promotion. We post the offer letter. We post the success story.
We rarely post the stretch in between, when the praise is quiet, and the doubt is loud.
That stretch in between became a turning point for me. It pushed me to rethink what I wanted my professional life to look like and ultimately build Koach Kam, my own consulting firm. It also inspired me to launch my podcast, Black Women S.A.V.E. (Support. Amplify. Validate. Elevate.) Black Women.
Through Koach Kam, I am building a new professional path on my own terms. Through Black Women S.A.V.E. Black Women, I am creating space for honest conversations about career transitions, money, confidence, and healing.
Building Community For Black Women Starting Over
Black Women S.A.V.E. Black Women is more than a podcast. It is a community for Black women who are rebuilding, reinventing themselves or starting over, whether by choice or circumstance.
We talk honestly about money, fear, confidence, relationships, healing and what comes next. We also laugh a lot because I have learned that rebuilding requires both grace and humor.
The goal is simple: No Black woman should have to rebuild in silence.
It’s More Than A Layoff
I wish more workplaces understood what a layoff impacts beyond the paycheck. Severance packages and career-transition workshops help, but they often treat the loss as a logistical challenge.
For many Black women, it is also an identity challenge.
We spend years proving we belong in rooms that were not necessarily designed with us in mind. When the role disappears, it can feel like losing proof that we deserved to be there in the first place.
Organizations that truly want to support people through layoffs should think beyond outplacement services. Community matters. Connection matters.
After being told that a sponsor’s recommendation was unfair, I understood how much it matters to have someone who still believes in you when the title is gone.
Sometimes what someone needs most is a sponsor who checks in six months later. A peer group that understands. A former leader who says, “You were excellent at your job, and this was not about you.”
Starting Over Is Not The End
If you are in that stretch right now, here is what I want you to know.
Take time to grieve the role. It mattered.
Then ask for help before you think you need it. Tell one trusted person the truth this week. Give them the opportunity to show up for you the same way you have shown up for everyone else.
Rebuilding takes a new resume. But it also takes community. It takes support. It takes courage. And it takes a story you can eventually tell without shame. Mine is still being written.
I am simply saying it out loud, hoping another Black woman sees herself in these words and understands that starting over isn’t the end.
Sometimes it is the beginning of the part that is finally yours.
