How Does the Loss of a Job Impact Your Relationship with Laverne McKinnon

How is your career impacting your relationship?

Think about it this way: when you have a bad day at work, what happens when you get home? It’s easy for your partner to get the worst version of you when you’re unhappy at work, right?

What if you lose your job? How might that impact your relationship? What if your partner got such an amazing promotion that it invited you to move to a new city and afford a house of your dreams? Are you beginning to see the ocean of emotion that careers can bring to the hearth of your relationship?

Today, I introduce you to grief specialist and career coach, Laverne McKinnon.

We’ll talk about why giving your grief a voice reduces pain. Because when we don’t acknowledge our pain, it lingers.
But she’ll help us see that we’re not here to “fix”. We’re here to integrate.
And you’ll get Laverne McKinnon’s RISE formula that offers 4 tasks to help you with that integration.

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How to deal with disenfranchised loss

If you’re lucky enough to stay married a long time, you and your partner will change over the years. Those changes trigger disenfranchised losses. Naming them and investigating the meaning you ascribe will help you and your partner notice where you’ve come to different conclusions about the meaning of things.

When you correct these misunderstandings between you, you’re able to embark on your future in a united way.

I invite you and your partner to sit down and use Laverne McKinnon’s RISE formula:

R: Recognize the loss
I: Investigate the meaning
S: Signal the shift
E: Embark on what’s next

I love the way Laverne talks about these 4 tasks of grief as more of a loop than a ladder. Be patient with yourselves as you need to loop back to recognize more layers of loss. That’s normal and healthy.

Try this:

This week’s habit for your happily ever after is to slow down the way Laverne demonstrated in this episode. Did you notice how she slowed her breathing? Closed her eyes. Put her hands over her heart?

When we do these things, we deepen our connection to our parasympathetic nervous system which is about resting and digesting. This slower state of consciousness allows us to tune into those invisible things we’re grieving. When we name them, so much of the work is already done. Grief likes to be seen, felt, acknowledged, and let go.

Laverne talks about how we have an ethical responsibility to rest. I love this commandment that gave me so much permission.

Connect with Laverne McKinnon

Laverne McKinnon has been a film and television producer, as well as a senior executive in Hollywood at CBS and EPIX. These days she’s on the faculty at Northwestern University and is a Career Strategist and Grief Coach. She leads an ongoing group program called Solid Ground for people who are navigating a disruption or upset at work.