Women at Work - How Women Who’ve Lost Work Are Coping

0:01You're listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review. I'm Amy Gallo. I'm Amy Bernstein. 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. Three women who've lost work opened up to us about how they've been doing the past several months.

0:28how they're processing the loss, not just of income, but also their sense of identity, waiting for clarity, questioning, and rethinking their future. 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.

0:54You know, at first I was grateful to get a break because massage therapy is 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, you know, it all came down to him.

1:22Like, you have to fill my cup that, you know, 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...

1:55It's just that there were a lot of challenging beliefs that came out of growing up. And all these beliefs were sabotage. I made my job search. So such as, you know, I have to be perfect or you know, 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. You know, the belief that I have to know everything,

2:57the belief that, you know, 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 gonna 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

4:03focusing 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. So my name is Emily Louise Robinson. I go by my full name because I'm a professional opera singer and Emily Robinson is a very common name. I teach piano and voice to

5:13kids 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 course 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

6:11high school that I would teach during the day. I had my private studio and then we out as 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'd 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

7:10the number of students that I had, the church I sang at shut down, the spring operas were cancelled, and obviously now the fall operas have been cancelled. So within the span of a few weeks, a year of singing contracts had been cancelled, and not just for me, for everyone. They just rolled in and I have students whose parents have lost their jobs. There's 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...

8:01set up donations for the musicians. So there were a few donations that came in to make up for the lost income, which was very kind of them. He went above and beyond trying to help in that way. And now what I'm doing, churches come back slowly in drips and drabs. I have 10 students right now. Honestly, in the scheme of things, I'm very grateful.

8:33I'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.

9:03I'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 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 gonna mess up.

9:50Your 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 struggle is not about the job. The struggle is about meaning. Am I a singer if I'm not singing?

10:22What 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.

10:52months. 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 really like I don't know not really for what and I think that surprised him so well 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've put more than the 10,000 hours into to not have a goal for. It's very difficult to not have a goal.

11:50I 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'm not a human being based on my job. And I know everybody struggles with that. But I can't define myself by that. My name is Lisa Sloan. I am an entrepreneur. I own a small business. We are focused on healthcare.

12:32equity, utilizing data to improve outcomes for patients. We teach leaders how to use 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, you know, probably the most difficult part of all of this for me because they are depending on, you know, that income to help them, you know, 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 talking over six months or so about doing business together.

14:03We talked about what was going on in the country. It was after Ahmad 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, you know, 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, you know, like 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, you know, his station in this country having a mod Aubrey murdered, I started crying.

15:07You know, I'm like talking to a prospect and I'm on the phone, you know, just bawling. I don't mean just like sniffling. I mean like bawling and you know, 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 siege and are under siege So as far as business was concerned, I just I I had no way of predicting I had no way of figuring out You know, what is a path forward? What do I do next? So I would say about Maybe you know three weeks to a month after George Floyd's murder. You know, there were a lot of companies that were making statements about racial injustice and their desire to address racial injustice and, you know, a lot of executives making statements about, you know, their understanding that their black employees were feeling

16:49extremely 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 health care. 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.

18:25So 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.

18:51To everyone, you know, this was a topic of conversation. You couldn't turn on the news without hearing about the inequities. And, you know, myself and others who are in this field were saying, this is predictable. And if there is ever another pandemic, let's make sure that we're in a different spot. So as, you know, the pandemic and the related statistics and realizations.

19:19were evolving, my thinking was evolving. My experience with the company and my decision making around the company was evolving. So this has been a roller coaster ride. I'm a very resilient individual and I have built methods for retaining good mental health.

19:53and good physical health over the years. You know, I've had lots of challenges in my life and I mean, I came from a family that didn't have a lot. You know, I've had to learn to be resilient over the years and you know, 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 re institute, you know, some of those practices. So, you know, 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.

20:54And in 2019, I had been on this treadmill grinding to get these customers on board. And when COVID hit, everything stopped. And I got off the treadmill and it actually felt refreshing. As difficult as it has been, I would say has been a good thing for me personally.

21:22I'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 health care. But we still have to make it another quarter until they are ready to start.

21:54Thanks 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? Well, I heard a couple of really important themes. And one of them, Lisa was just talking about is this resilience that they have managed to find in themselves and they're leaning on it in ways that I find really inspiring.

22:22They'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. That was one of the things that resonated with me so much was Emily Louise talking about, this is what I have thought and worked and strived for my entire life, and now I'm not doing it. I think that would really put someone under, put to your point, maybe she's really being quite resilient. One of the things that really pained me in 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? Yeah, and also the

23:22question of, do I define myself by my job? I think it's 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 describe themselves in.

23:40these questions are asking about what is fulfilling, what's satisfying, who am I if I'm not doing the thing 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. I have had like short periods of unemployment before in my life, and I can definitely empathize.

24:06with 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 muster up that energy. Right. Well, even Emily was saying her husband suggested she do a recital for family or friends and her saying, no, you know, my heart's just not in that.

24:36right 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. Yeah. That's our show. I'm Emily Caulfield. I'm Amy Bernstein. And I'm Amy Gallo. Our editorial and production team is Amanda Cursey, Maureen Hoek, Adam Buckles, Rob Eckhardt, and Tina Tobimak.

25:07Thanks for listening and take care.