Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 21, 1993 TAG: 9303210275
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: B-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOE KENNEDY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
SUPPORT GROUP TRIES TO EASE PAIN
She's a teacher, a mother and a wife whose husband used to work in Roanoke but, thanks to a layoff, has taken a new job in Washington.She was getting ready to join him - closing the bank accounts, preparing for the movers, saying goodbye, emotionally, to her house and leaving her friends.
"It's all beginning to close in on me," she said at a support group for the out-of-work, the soon-to-be out-of-work and their families.
"It's finally hit home. I started crying this afternoon. It's really getting to me."
Her husband lost his job through no fault of his own, and now their lives are changing. And it's hard.
In the same group was a married man with young children whose father worked at the same place for 40 years. His career has had some turns. He changed jobs a few years ago, and now he's losing that job in a corporate buyout.
He talked about how rare a lengthy tenure with a single company has become. Nowadays, the young are told to expect to change careers - not jobs, careers - half a dozen times before they retire.
"I guess what I want," he said, "is a guarantee that doesn't exist. I've got to learn to adapt and roll with what comes, and I don't like that."
Another executive talked about the feelings that accompany his upcoming layoff.
"I'm still very angry about what's happened to me," he said. "I don't want to be angry. I want to be . . . finding something for me to do."
But he's afraid. He will have to meet new people, discover new skills, fulfill new expectations and overcome self-doubt.
There is the chance that he won't find work here, but will have to move away.
"It's horrible," he said.
He survived earlier crises by living one day at a time. That's not working now.
"This can be a character-building opportunity," he said, with an embarrassed laugh, "but I don't want to go through it."
Three people, three families, three stories that represent a mere fraction of what residents in and around Roanoke are going through, as a wave of layoffs sweeps through the region.
Our jobs are a bigger part of our lives than we realize, says J. Steve Strosnider, director of counseling and psychology at Lewis-Gale Clinic in Salem.
"Our sense of individuality gets tied into who we are, what we do at work." Losing that sense strikes at our very core.
We deny what's happening. We refuse to believe it. We worry about bills, insurance coverage, our children's futures.
We feel ashamed.
We lose sleep, feel useless, cry, grieve, withdraw and lose interest in things.
Showing any of these symptoms means "you are having a normal response to an abnormal situation," said A. Ward West Jr. of Family Service of Roanoke Valley, in a support group the agency sponsored recently.
People who are losing their jobs must understand that their lives will never be the same, West said. They should view the problem of joblessness as "an opportunity in disguise."
People who lose their jobs can't change what happened, he said. "You have to make peace with it . . . You need to get off it and move on."
You have to figure out what's next.
And you have to be committed to succeed at finding another job.
"You will survive this," West told the support group. "You are not a failure. There is no shame involved. Everybody's lost their jobs before."
These were strong, even inspiring words for people to carry into the night. But the words of one listener - laid off twice in recent years, and looking for a job now - were equally strong and true.
"Unless you really go through it yourself," he said, "you don't know what it is."