Dumped! Ex-magazine editor Louise Chunn didn't just lose her job - she lost her pride and self-esteem too

Sacked: One day, Louise Chunn was at the helm of a glossy magazine - the next, she was unemployed

When I look at my face, objectively reflect the, I know, it doesn't look anything different ways, it has in the past few years.

But in my eyes, I no longer is the same person. My face, my body, my own indelibly changed, last winter, when I lost my job.
A minute, my soul has 40 odd - in my swing, partly because many millions of pounds in profits, then I go up like a zombie Oxford street, my office life waiting to be packed into the box is my dad and my home.
Of course, I'm just a pain in the tens of thousands of the same fate as the country's economic downturn, but still play, I have to tell you, I feel really bad.

I spent more than 25 years of magazines and newspapers news in London, but I prefer the I kept the bigger picture in mind.
The work is always interesting to me, is more important than money they mongering colleague or title, - Adhere to a special treatment, gave I ambiguously ridiculous.

I'm a realist writing is not troubled by her boss. "I have self won awards, head hunted - from a job - but I really believe that in the future, I also took its prospects.
Ha! Over the past few months has taught me, you really don't know how you evaluate yourself, until the carpet at your feet, you can imagine the world pratfall talking about you.

I had lost a job before - it happens in the senior echelons of the media - but I was completely unprepared for this one.

Being at home with my husband, children, even Snowy the incredible moulting cat, was a definite improvement on what had become a grinding way to earn a living.
But still, I found daily life without the structure of work simply bizarre.

The emotional cost of losing your job: Louise found daily life without structure bizarre

I clear basement for a week, bake batches of biscuits, then don't consider how to handle.

I don't know who is very good, but there is little in the career of suffer the same fate, I drink or high-grade lunch.

Most importantly, they tell me, I can't let yourself feel failure. I nodded and clever, but I can't even breathe normally, not to mention a flush out the smile.

I don't know, at age 52, I will never learn to cope with shame.
But don't mind what I think -- as the days, weeks passed, I began to realize that I lost my job is significantly influence, how do I see.

Strangely, at first it seems to have a good effect in the way, when the impulse of a confusion of romance, can put a woman look incredibly, she lived in the actual hell.
It is not important, I wear down - and - the sun - whether in the school gate - and swanked or meeting, everyone in the west is about my brilliance ".
This is not a word, I ever use for a period of time.
The stress of the previous months' mounting tension had, on particularly bad days, manifested itself in bags under my eyes, hunched shoulders, and a general lack of fizz, so there must have been an improvement.

Fashion maven: Louise even had to rethink her wardrobe

My friend, I praise lapped up determined to spend more time, I will now in his face. - I rushed into the book hairdressing, massage to help me look "better" (small). They didn't have obvious difference.
I have a personal trainer it twice a week for years - in our local park together and do other various sports - but has pined, find the real time "I enter the yoga.

But, even so, I can no longer as a free institutionalised beast, and all of the company flexibility. I think I was so by fear of an uncertain future, I can't relax.
So much spare time, I put it often funny, I used to make a fuss. I began to doubt my signature of wisdom and short blonde hairstyle - level -, sweep the forehead is futile, Deyn Agyness funkiness.

Since last year, redundancy among women has risen by 2.3 per cent - almost double the rate for men - according to a TUC study

My long-time hairdresser Richard supported my decision to ditch the obvious 'anti-ageing' formula of caramel and blond chunks. Instead we let my grey (which had been encroaching since my early 20s) come through with just a little peroxide.
But while it was all very well to imagine I was channelling Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada, that kind of hauteur only worked so long as I had a grand job, too.
When you leave the house not to run a magazine but drop an eight-year-old at school then come back home and unload the dishwasher, looking soignee isn't required or desired.
Was the new, kicked-in-the-teeth me more like 'geography teacher grey' than 'glamorous grey'? I determined to discuss a solution with Richard, when I turned up for my next appointment, a couple of weeks after the axe had fallen.
We've known each other for 20 years and can easily spend an hour talking and laughing about life. But, in my free-fall, I couldn't even open my mouth.
He smiled gently, and said: 'So are you going to tell me?'
He'd heard - everyone had heard! - but he never thought that job was good enough for me anyway. As for my 'youthifying' my hair colour, he batted away my neurotic twitterings. 'It suits you like this, doesn't matter what job you do, or don't.'
I felt quite a lot better after that little pep talk. And then there was the issue of clothes.
Because I have worked in and around the fashion end of the media for 25 years, I have over time built up a rather nice wardrobe.
I shouldn't brag, but I do I have four Prada dresses, two Alexander McQueen  jackets, and a beautiful white leather Burberry trench.