Don't look down

Losing your job is never easy. It's not very nice to be told you're disposable. But what's worse than that is knowing that the world you worked so hard to create and make steady is about to be turned upside down. The rug pulled shockingly from under your feet leaving your arms flailing and your head spinning.

Over four years ago I dipped my toe back into working waters following a few years off to raise the children. As a newbie blogger I was thrilled to be given the opportunity to not only set up a bloggers network for Netmums, the biggest parenting website in the UK, but also to run it on an ongoing, work-from-home part-time basis. It was the holy grail of work \ life balance and I embraced it with open arms. Over the next four and a half years I would lend my hand to many other tasks, learning content marketing, blogger outreach, sub-editing, content writing, brand relations and more. I loved being able to champion other bloggers, offer them paid opportunities and keep up to date with all the new talent joining the parent blogger ranks.

Sadly that will now come to an end having been let go from Netmums last week.

On hearing the news the first feeling was inevitably one of shock, then devastation, then absolute fear. Because although losing your job is never easy, losing your job when you are a single parent is simply terrifying.

I'm lucky enough to have a little money squirrelled away for a rainy day that will give me a bit of breathing space - not much, but enough to mean I'm not hyperventilating into a paper bag right now.

I'm hoping that after licking my wounds for a few days I can then pick myself up, dust myself off and open myself up to the universe of possibilities.

For now I'm just trying to not look down, or backwards, or forwards. I can't say I'm looking up though. Not yet anyway.

So I will stand at this crossroads for a little while, looking left and right, paper bag in hand. Just in case.