The Resilient Dollar

They say the emotional cycle of change is real. You don’t need a psychology degree to feel it. This happens when your life gets flipped upside down.

I lived it. We’re living it.

Paul, my husband, is seriously good at what he does – strategic pricing for SaaS companies. Ten-plus years in the game, worked with everyone from small startups to CEOs. The guy knows his stuff.

So when he came downstairs that day, looking genuinely stunned, and said,

“I was laid off. I’m not kidding.”

He wasn’t.

Ten years of climbing the ladder, working with startups and CEOs alike, and just like that—gone. No warning. Just another casualty in a brutal wave of tech sudden layoffs.

He was pissed at his company, his boss. I was right there with him. Couldn’t believe it. 

That was June 2024.

It was summer when Paul got laid off. 

Maybe that summer air gives you this dumb optimism. It felt like we had time. Time to breathe, reset, and find the next opportunity. We told ourselves it might even be a blessing in disguise. Warm weather, sunshine – feels like anything’s possible, right?

For a while, he’d get an interview invite maybe once or twice a month.

Then two months turned into four.

Sometimes he’d make it to the very last interview round. Each time, we’d let ourselves get hopeful. “This is it! He’s got this.”

Crushed. Every single time.

The severance pay eventually ran out, and still no job offers. We finally applied for unemployment. It’s not the same as his full salary, only about 70%, but it helped ease the pressure a little.

And just when we thought things couldn’t spiral any further, something unexpected happened in August 2024. Out of nowhere, he had this freak accident with a grocery bag. The edge of a brown paper bag sliced his eyeball, taking a chunk out of the surface. Instant stabbing pain, couldn’t see clearly. For a second, we both thought he was blind. I was terrified, rushed him to the ER. 

He was thankfully fine, but a fat medical bill followed. 

I couldn’t imagine how people could handle the medical bills without insurance in this country!

And then, the house foundation and deck repair. Started as a $45K project, ballooned to $102K with all the “oops, we found more problems.“

Felt like dominoes falling. One damn thing after another. 

It felt like the universe kept tapping us on the shoulder, whispering, “Oh, you thought that was the bottom? Think again.”

It wasn’t just the lost income that started to eat at us; it was the disruption to our whole life. No routine for him, our personal and investment plans on hold, a shift in his identity. 

Paul went from being a high-earning, high-performing professional to… a man without a clear next step. At first, he slept a lot. I mean a lot. Some days, he’d roll out of bed after I’d finished my morning meetings and made lunch.

I figured he needed the rest. The grief. The reset.

Then, something shifted.

He became our full-time chef, cleaner, handyman, errand-runner, and family helper. He helped his mom with her chores. Fixed things around our house. Showed up for everyone around him. He stayed busy—not just to be useful, but to feel human.

In the midst of the chaos, we began to joke. We said, “At this rate, you’ll be a full-time husband in an apron. You’ll be waiting for me in bed.”

We laughed because the alternative was crying.

Unfortunately this is not like a college essay with an ending because we are still living it.  Every day, we hold on to each other and take one step forward in this unexpected midlife reset.

This is hands down the hardest thing I’ve ever had to navigate. And for my husband, this stretch of unemployment is the longest he’s ever faced in his life. The story’s still being written, and right now, it feels more like a gritty survival guide than a success story.

If you’ve ever gone through this kind of loss, you know it’s about more than losing a job. It’s losing a version of yourself. And maybe—just maybe—finding a new one

Has your family ever gone through a layoff or sudden career shift? What helped you hold it together? I’d love to hear your story.