Two Women Throw Off the Shame of Being Fired

Nobody wants to get fired. But I recently read a great article in the VOICES section of the October 2025 edition of Harper’s Bazaar that put a whole new light on it. Based on an interview with two young women, who have written a book about being fired from their jobs earlier in their careers, it was not a sob story. In fact it was a very life-affirming story. It made me think of something once told to me which has stuck with me over many years. “It’s not about what happens. It is about how you handle it.”

Here’s how the interview was introduced, “There was a chunk of time in the last decade when ambitious women were encouraged to lean in: to work later and harder and be better than their male counterparts — to do whatever they needed to do to get that seat at the table, regardless of whatever else might be going on in their life, including raising kids.”

That is true. That is what the “lean in” message was all about. For the record, I was never on board with it, and I have disputed the Sheryl Sandberg version of success for women on many occasions. For me it was always about balance and not sacrificing one side for the other.

The book, All the Cool Girls Get Fired by Laura Brown and Kristina O’Neill, is an update on “lean in” and puts that notion to bed nicely. The examples of the wildly successful and well-known women who have been fired from jobs are very good reading, and their stories of survival are motivational. And, perhaps more importantly, these stories provide fodder for what to do next if it ever happens to you.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from the interview:

“The reason why so many women feel [the shame of losing a job] is because it took us so much longer just to get to the same place that men have taken for granted for a long time.”

“It [being fired] didn’t mean we sucked. It didn’t mean we were incompetent. … It made us immediately stronger to admit it. It firmed us up. It made us stand taller.”

“Everything you’ve built over the course of your career does not go away [when you are fired]. … Ambition to me now is taking what I built and using it in the bigger world. It may not look like the Devil Wears Prada version of ambition or the corner-office version of ambition, but I think all of that is terribly dated.”

“When I had to think about what could be next, my relationship to what made me happy changed. I think that is the gift you get when you lose your job. My family is first and foremost the thing that drives every decision I make.”