On leaving the job that helped hold me together while everything else changed
At the end of 2024, my life as I knew it was winding down.
After a year-and-a-half battle, my divorce was finalized, and we sold our home. Everything was in upheaval. I was starting over from square one.
At the very same time, I took a new job with a state agency.
Today, almost two years later, is my last day there. Tomorrow, I will begin a new job, a promotion with another state agency.
It is an opportunity I worked hard to find. For months, I searched job postings, filled out applications (nearly 40), rewrote cover letters, prepared for interviews, and waited for calls that sometimes came and often didn’t. The process was slow and frustrating. There were jobs I wanted that went nowhere, interviews that left me hopeful, and long stretches when it felt as though I might never find the right next step.
Eventually, I did.
But getting what I had been working toward has turned out to be more emotional than I expected, because I am not leaving a place I disliked. I am leaving a place that became incredibly important to me.
When I first started, I had no real experience in this particular field, but I desperately needed a change. After working with the public for so long, I was ready to leave that behind. This was an office job with no public contact and normal weekday hours, something I had never really had before.
Despite my job background coming somewhat out of left field, they decided they liked me and took a chance on me.
I remember my first few days and how foreign everything felt. Sitting in my new cubicle, I distinctly remember the pit in my stomach as I thought, Maybe this was a mistake.
But time went on.
I found the bathrooms. I learned the shape of the building. I discovered that the office was ice cold and brought in a jacket. I decorated my cubicle. Slowly, the unfamiliar started becoming familiar.
The work itself was incredibly overwhelming at first. I thought I would never learn who was who or what was what. I had a counterpart in one of our other offices, though, and she helped me make sense of it all. We worked on a team of seven women, doing the same job from two different locations. We met frequently to go over things and spent plenty of time on Teams chat in between as she explained how everything worked, often more than once.
Eventually, things began to click. I stopped feeling quite so lost. I started to learn, and then one day I realized I actually knew what I was doing.
From the very beginning, I also felt valued and respected.
I joke that nearly every workplace has at least one toxic person, and somehow, ours didn’t. When they asked what I would miss most, that was my answer.
We respected one another. We laughed together. We worked through things together. I had never experienced a work environment that felt so consistently positive.
They gave us gifts and lunch for Administrative Professionals Day, including a McDonald’s gift card for my daily Diet Coke. They celebrated birthdays. When I accepted my new position, they held another little party to celebrate the promotion and say goodbye.
When my entire world was falling apart, I had thrown a new job into the mix too. At first, it only seemed to add another layer of stress. Before long, though, it became something else.
It became my steady.
I went to the same place at the same time every day, even when nothing else in my life felt steady or consistent. I knew where I was supposed to be. I knew who would be there. During a period when nearly everything familiar had disappeared, this job quietly became one of the safest parts of my life.
That is what makes leaving so difficult.
But I also knew I could not stay simply because staying felt comfortable. As a single mom, opportunities to earn more are necessary. I needed room to advance, even though part of me would have preferred to remain exactly where I was, surrounded by people I already knew and trusted.
Still, searching for something better was exhausting. Each application carried a tiny amount of hope, and each silence or rejection chipped away at it. There were moments when I wondered whether I should stop looking altogether and simply be grateful for the good job I already had.
Then this opportunity came along.
I was scared to tell my boss that I had accepted it. Instead of being disappointed or making me feel guilty, she was thrilled for me. She supported me completely and had even given them a reference on my behalf.
That reaction says almost everything about the kind of place I am leaving.
The Words I’m Taking With Me
Over the last week, my coworkers sent messages that made leaving even harder, but also reminded me how lucky I was to have landed among these people.
“Thank you for being part of our team. I hope your new team appreciates you as much as we do.”
“You were an amazing asset to our team and will be missed. They are lucky to get you.”
“Your presence will be deeply missed, but I’m excited to see what you’ll achieve next.”
“It was such a pleasure to have you on the team. Wishing you continued success in your next chapter. I will miss your adorable laugh.”
“You will be missed, and I will especially miss you helping with reminders to keep me on track.”
“Her greatest strengths are willingness to help, approachable demeanor and readiness to assist, attention to detail and quick response. She excels at answering my common questions: Where is…? How do you…? Can you find…? No matter how we define her skills and abilities, we can’t express enough thanks to her for being an amazing teammate.”
Reading those words was emotional. I had spent so much of the past year feeling as though I was rebuilding my life from the ground up. I did not always stop to consider that, while I was doing that, I had also become someone other people relied on, appreciated and would genuinely miss.
Today, I packed up the cubicle that once felt so strange. I took down the decorations, gathered my Diet Coke supplies, and said goodbye to the people who helped make an unstable time in my life feel manageable.
Tomorrow, I will walk into another unfamiliar building. I will find the bathrooms, learn the shape of the place, and probably spend at least a little time wondering whether I have made a mistake.
But this time, I know that unfamiliar does not always mean wrong.
I know that sometimes a place slowly becomes yours. Sometimes people who began as strangers become the people you talk to every day. Sometimes a job you accepted because you needed something different becomes an anchor you never expected to need.
I will miss this place. I will miss the work that became familiar and the people who made it feel safe. Most of all, I will miss being part of a team where I felt genuinely valued, respected, and wanted.
I am nervous about what comes next. But even still, I am proud that I kept looking, even when the search was discouraging. I know accepting this promotion was the right decision for me and for my family.
But the right decision can still hurt.
During one of the hardest chapters of my life, this job gave me somewhere steady to land. Now, I have to trust myself enough to step into what comes next.
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