The short answer
You're grieving a real loss — not a job, but the version of yourself that belonged to that workplace. The identity you built there was genuine. The work now is to figure out which parts of that identity were always yours, and carry those forward into whatever comes next.
You built something real in that old workplace — a way of working, a set of relationships, a sense of purpose that felt like it fit you. Research on identity and job loss shows that when the context around us changes suddenly, we can feel like *we* changed, even when we didn't. The grief you're feeling is the right response to a real loss. It means what you had mattered. That's not a problem to fix; it's a signal worth listening to.
Marcus Aurelius wrote that change itself cannot hurt us — that the world is always a 'swift current' of things passing through. He didn't mean loss isn't painful. He meant the current was always moving, even when the old workplace felt solid and permanent. What that points to is this: the meaning you felt wasn't stored in the building or the org chart. It was something you brought. The reorganisation took the container. It didn't take what was inside you.
This week, try one small thing: write down three moments from the old job where you felt most like yourself — most alive, most useful, most proud. Don't write about the company or the team. Write about *what you were doing* in that moment. Look for the pattern. That pattern is yours. It survived the reorg. Knowing what it is gives you something to look for — or build — in what comes next.