Do Not Disturb: The Inside Story
Gillian Orr
Journalist and former editor-in-chief Gillian Orr joins Simona Deifta for a candid conversation about losing a senior media role while on maternity leave—and rebuilding a working identity when the expected career path disappears.
A clear-eyed episode about work, motherhood and the uncomfortable difference between losing a job and losing yourself.
Gillian Orr on Do Not Disturb
When Your Job Disappears on Maternity Leave
Gillian reflects on the double identity shift of becoming a mother while her role was eliminated during a restructure. Together, she and Simona examine ambition without the old ladder, the freedom and precarity of freelance life, and why maternity leave can feel especially lonely when the professional future is suddenly uncertain.
Listen to the episode
A Conversation on Career Identity, Reinvention and Freedom
Listen for an honest account of what happens after a title disappears: how confidence is rebuilt, why flexibility can be both liberating and destabilising, and how women create a working life that belongs to them rather than to an institution.
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The Guest Edit
DO — Protect the Work That Still Feels Like Yours
Keep a part of your professional identity that is chosen rather than assigned. A role can disappear; your judgment, voice and body of work do not.
NOT — Confuse a Job Title with an Identity
Stop giving one institution the power to define the whole shape of your ambition. A title can carry status, but it cannot contain everything you are capable of becoming.
DISTURB — The Career Ladder That Only Moves Up
Gillian’s story disrupts the idea that a successful career must be linear, institutionally validated and always advancing in one direction. Sometimes reinvention looks less impressive from the outside—and feels far more honest from within.
About Gillian Orr
Gillian is an independent writer and editor and the former editor-in-chief of Refinery29 UK. She writes Slouching Towards Bethnal Green, bringing cultural intelligence and an unvarnished eye to work, motherhood, media and modern life.
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