Wellness Wednesday Issue #179

🛡️ Can your compliance program actually hold up in 2026? Join this June 10 webinar + earn SHRM/HRCI credit.

💬 Five ways to actually get your team to tell the truth before everything becomes “it was great!” feedback.

🧐 Ten cognitive distortions your brain runs daily without telling you.

☀️ Thirty morning routine ideas that support your mood, not just your to-do list.

First, take a breath. Getting laid off is a gut punch, and it deserves a minute of acknowledgment before you do anything else. Whether it blindsided you or you saw it coming, the emotional impact is real. You’re allowed to feel scared, angry, relieved, or all three at once.

But here’s what’s also true: this moment, as disorienting as it feels right now, is something you can move through. And the way you handle the next few weeks will set the tone for what comes next. So when you’re ready, here’s where to start.

Get your financial footing first

Before you update your resume or send a single LinkedIn message, get clear on where you stand financially. Review your severance package if you received one, and look into filing for unemployment as soon as possible since there’s often a waiting period before payments begin. The sooner you file, the sooner the clock starts.

Then do an honest audit of your monthly expenses against what you have in checking and savings. Knowing your runway takes some of the panic out of the situation and helps you make clearer decisions about how urgently you need to move.

Sort out your benefits

This one is time-sensitive, so don’t put it off. Find out exactly when your health insurance lapses, because it’s not always immediate. If you can move onto a spouse or partner’s plan, do that. If not, COBRA lets you keep your existing coverage for up to 18 to 36 months, though you’ll pay the full premium yourself. If that’s too expensive, check your state’s insurance marketplace. Your former employer’s HR team can often point you toward a broker who can help you navigate it.

While you’re at it, figure out what happens to your 401(k). You generally have a few options: leave it in your former employer’s plan if you have at least $5,000 there, roll it into a new employer’s plan down the line, or open a rollover IRA. Whatever you do, try to avoid cashing it out. The taxes and early withdrawal penalties will cost you significantly more than you’d expect, and the long-term damage to your retirement savings is hard to undo.

P.S. You can also check the database for previous companies if you forgot to do this step during other employment.

Do a brain dump before you forget

While everything is still fresh, write down every project, initiative, win, and contribution from your previous role. The campaigns you ran, the processes you improved, the revenue you influenced, the people you managed or mentored. All of it. This becomes the raw material for your resume, your LinkedIn, your interview stories, and the love letter we’ll get to in a minute.

Don’t filter yourself here. Write it all down and sort through it later.

Refresh your resume and LinkedIn

Pull up your resume and look at it honestly. Does it reflect the professional you actually are, or does it still read like a job description from three roles ago? This is the time to update it with everything from your brain dump, and to make sure it’s framed around outcomes and impact rather than just responsibilities.

Our AI resume prompts can help you rewrite and strengthen it without making it sound like a robot wrote it. And if you want to build out your brag file and learn how to use it to position yourself effectively, we’ve got a guide for that too.

While you’re at it, tidy up your LinkedIn. Update your headline, refresh your summary, and make sure your experience section reflects your most recent role. Then start posting. You have the time right now, and consistently showing up as a thought leader in your field, sharing insights, perspectives, or lessons from your experience, does more for your visibility than most people realize.

Activate your network

Make a list of friends, former colleagues, mentors, and family members you want to loop in. Be specific about what you’re looking for when you reach out. People genuinely want to help, but “let me know if you hear of anything” is hard to act on. “I’m looking for a senior marketing role at a mid-size tech company” gives people something to work with.

While you’re networking, ask a few trusted colleagues to write you a LinkedIn recommendation. Offer to return the favor. Social proof matters, and a few well-written endorsements can make a real difference when someone is deciding whether to reach out.

Write yourself a love letter

This one might sound a little cheesy, but do it anyway. Write yourself a letter from a work perspective: everything you’re good at, every milestone you’ve hit, every hard thing you navigated and came out the other side of. Be generous with yourself.

On the days when the job search feels endless or the rejections are stacking up, you’re going to need a reminder of who you actually are and what you’ve built. This letter is that reminder. Think of it as your personal brag board, written by the person who knows your work better than anyone.

Invest in yourself while you have the space

Think about whether there are any skills you’ve been wanting to build or certifications you’ve been putting off. Short-term courses and certifications through platforms like LinkedIn Learning or Google Career Certificates can strengthen your resume and give you something productive to focus on during the search. Even a few weeks of intentional learning can make you a more compelling candidate for the roles you actually want.

Also consider whether you need income immediately or whether you have a little room to be intentional. If you have some runway, use it wisely. If you don’t, a part-time or gig role can take the financial pressure off while you search for the right full-time opportunity rather than just the first available one.

Don’t be afraid of what this might open up

Here’s something worth sitting with: a lot of people look back on a layoff as the moment things actually changed for the better. Not right away, and not without the hard parts, but eventually. Many people start their own companies, pivot into consulting, launch something they’d been dreaming about, or finally go after the role they always told themselves they’d pursue “someday.”

Getting laid off has a way of removing the comfort that was keeping you from taking the leap. If there’s something you’ve been wanting to try, this might be the moment that gives you the audacity to actually do it.

You didn’t lose your value when you lost your job. You’re still the person who built everything you wrote down in that brain dump. The next chapter is just beginning to take shape.

You opened ChatGPT, typed “write a work email,” got something generic, and closed the tab. Same loop most of us are stuck in.

The difference between people who get real work out of AI and people who give up usually comes down to one thing: knowing what to actually type.

HubSpot’s free guide is 100 copy-paste prompts plus the techniques behind them, organized around real work like marketing, project management, and customer support. It also walks through the 2025 ChatGPT features most people haven’t touched yet.

Work through a few and you stop guessing, sound sharper in less time, and become the person your team pings when they’re stuck on AI.

Snag the free guide here.

We’re a newsletter written for women. “So why are we taking up space to talk about men’s mental health?”

Fair question. It actually came up in our content planning meeting, and the answer is simple: allyship goes both ways.

Most of us have a man we care about. A partner. A brother. A father. A son. A colleague. A friend. When those we love are struggling, we’re impacted too. We want to see them healthy and happy. Plus, understanding what’s actually going on with them helps us show up better. It helps us stop misinterpreting their behavior as indifference or cruelty when it’s actually a cry for help.

But here’s what I want to be clear about: being pro-women and anti-patriarchy doesn’t mean we’re anti-men. We’re not. We love the men in our lives and we want them to be okay. We want them to feel supported the same way we want to feel supported. Right now, a lot of them aren’t okay.

What’s actually happening with men’s mental health

Men’s mental health manifests differently than women’s. The struggle also depends on which generation you’re talking about.

Baby boomer men grew up in a world where mental health wasn’t discussed. They have stigma. They have a definition of manhood—be strong, don’t cry, provide, protect—and they’re not questioning it. They’re passing it down.

Millennial men are caught between two worlds. Their fathers and grandfathers can’t advise them on manhood anymore because everything has shifted. Women don’t need them financially. The Me Too movement made many anxious about consent and making the first move. Modern women are operating in completely different ways. Millennial men are grappling with anxiety and inadequacy about what being a man even means, and there’s nobody to ask.

Gen Z grew up knowing what modern women look like. But they have nobody to turn to. Their millennial uncles don’t have answers. Their boomer grandfathers are out of touch. Some are falling into red pill spaces and incel communities because at least someone is talking to them about their confusion and pain, even if it’s toxic.

Underneath all of this, across generations, is a loneliness epidemic. Layer on “boys will be boys” and “big boys don’t cry” and all the other stereotypes we’ve collectively placed on men, and you have a crisis that deserves attention.

Yes, women face harder things in a lot of ways. That’s real. It doesn’t make the men’s mental health crisis any less real.

How to identify what’s actually going on

Men show their struggle differently than you expect. Depression in men looks like sudden irritability. Anger. An obsession with work. Emotional distance. What you read as him not caring is him drowning.

When he needs to process stress, he needs space. Quiet. Solitude. He’s resetting, not shutting you out. If he’s withdrawn, snapping at you, working endless hours, or obsessing over fixing things; these are signs he’s struggling.

Many men are also carrying silent burdens. They’re terrified of being a disappointment. Admitting they’re struggling feels like it will reduce their value in your eyes. So they suffer alone rather than tell you they need help.

How to actually support them

Stop waiting for him to bring it up. Create the space. Tell him directly that you see him struggling and you’re there.

Respect his need for solitude without interpreting it as rejection. Don’t push for conversation if that’s not how he processes. Some men need to sit with their thoughts first.

When he does open up, listen without jumping to solutions. Let him know his feelings don’t make him less of a man or less attractive to you.

Most critical: make it safe for him to break the mold. Make it okay for him to not be the strong one all the time. Make it clear that vulnerability and asking for help don’t disqualify him from manhood

Whether it’s in your family, your workplace, or your friend group, you have the power to shift the culture around what manhood means. You can be the person who doesn’t judge when a man cries. You can ask how he’s really doing. You can normalize the idea that mental health matters for men just as much as it matters for us.

This is how we support the men we care about. This is how we build a culture where they feel safe enough to let their guard down.

Thania (TA Sr. Content Mgr)

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