Part of the series Men & Grief.
How men grieve ·
Grief after a breakup ·
When work falls away ·
Grief for a pet ·
Supporting a grieving friend
In 2009, my first career came to an end. With pride, devotion, passion, and obsession I had spent nearly twenty years immersed in news, in writing, in adventure, in justice and humanity. Journalism had become my entire existence. No holidays, no rest. Always searching, always critical.
When I was no longer a journalist, it hurt tremendously to shed that identity. On the worst days it felt as if the skin was being peeled slowly off my body. As if someone’s fingers were tugging at me one by one—not forcefully, but persistently—until I no longer recognised my own outline.
Work is rarely just work. It is rhythm. Ritual. Identity. Especially for men, work is more than work—it is the place where they experience meaning, recognition, belonging. As Thomas Moore writes:
It takes courage to disentangle yourself from what you once did. Work became your skin too—sometimes thin, sometimes rough, sometimes comforting. But leaving it means having to meet yourself again. That is a harsh transformation.
Thomas Moore continues:
A life work is like a peacock’s tail: It has many facets. As you go from one job to another, you begin to see who you are and what you might do with your life.
Every job, every role, is part of that larger self. And yet each one can also be ripped away—without warning.
Identity and Loss: The Invisible Grief of Redundancy
The struggle lies not only in the absence of rhythm, but in the tearing of role and self-image. For a man, work can feel like glue: everything by which he was recognised, affirmed, valued. Losing it means losing recognition—by others and by yourself. Each time someone asks, “How are you?”, you feel the stumble in your answer.
Many men feel shame about seeking support. Naming that shame — and finding strength in vulnerability — can be a first step in carrying the grief of job loss and male identity. Losing work can feel like losing yourself. In my online counselling for men facing job loss offers a place to name that grief.
Moore also emphasises that work is essential: through work we live more deeply, grow as people, and find our place in society and community.
Grief is not only sadness. It is the unravelling of who you thought you were—and the tuning back to what you truly were. That process is chaotic, unwanted, often paralysing. But it is also a path to growth.
The Shaman’s Ordeal: Transformation through Breakdown
In some shamanic traditions, transformation is depicted as the loosening of bones and blood—so that the spirit can re-order itself. In these images, loss is not destruction, but transmutation. The flesh is stripped from your bones, so that something new can grow.
Carl Jung described the shaman’s ordeal as an experience of sickness, torment, death and regeneration. Through that breakdown comes a kind of sacrifice, a reshaping that makes the person whole again — lifted into a new, transformed state.
Losing a role sometimes feels like bone fragments—splinters of self left behind.
But if you dare allow the bone to break, the flesh around it can heal—in a new form, in a new direction.
The Disentangling: Dealing with the Erosion of Recognition
There is no torchlight procession after being let go. No farewell letter from who you once were. No tribute to what you gave. Only the quiet erosion of recognition. You are no longer the colleague. No longer the specialist. A role disappears, and with it a network of meaning.
Your body feels it. Nights grow heavier, dreams more restless, muscles tighter. As if something in you is warning: beware. You are falling. Not only into chaos, but into yourself.
Some say that after loss “you can start over again.” That is true—but only after dismantling what you were. First pain. Then stretch. Then room for renewal.
Alchemy in the Struggle: Finding the New You
What helps? Not quickly filling the emptiness. But giving time for the cracks to speak. The ritual of slowly unravelling and perhaps re-attaching—in another form.
Grieving work does not mean being lazy. It means feeling that what has vanished was more than labour: it was part of your soul — an experience familiar to many facing male mental health struggles after redundancy.
And grief does not mean jumping back into an old shape. Letting grief do its work also means: growing into a new rhythm, a new role—step by step.
What Next?
When I was no longer a journalist, it felt as if my skin was being peeled away. As if I was dissolving. Not collapsing—but vanishing. I became someone I had not been before, and only much later dared to be again.
I had no alternative waiting. No blueprint, no sketch. Nothing lay on a shelf calling me. No plan B saying: come here, I am ready. Only emptiness. It felt frightening, unreal, infinite.
Until I remembered what a wise shaman once told me, as he reached for his pouch of small objects and slowly looked my way: “Let life happen, Aernout. It will be good for you.”
Letting go. Trusting. Not knowing who you are becoming—and still making space.
On the worst days it may feel as if nothing of you remains. After being laid off. After retirement. As if you are dissolving.
But believe me: that new you already exists.
Now. Here.
In the discomfort. In the pain. In the silence and in the grief.
That new you is waiting.
Waiting for you to meet him.
The book by Thomas Moore that partly inspired this text: A Life at Work
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Part of the series Men & Grief.
How men grieve ·
Grief after a breakup ·
When work falls away ·
Grief for a pet ·
Supporting a grieving friend
