Losing a job can give you chance to find yourself

As our unemployment rate soars to 8.1 percent, the accompanying pain, fear and exhausting search for a new job can be soul-crushing.

But the 84 souls who take part in the two-day "Finding Work Without Losing Heart" retreat this week in Barrington Hills learn there is something deeper to be found in the search for a new job.

"This is the soft side of unemployment," says Jerry Novotny, a 58-year-old Mount Prospect chief financial officer, controller and accountant who hasn't had a full-time job for more than a year. "You realize there is more to life than a job."

A spectator at last year's retreat, Novotny was one of the presenters telling his job-search story this year.

"It's not simply sending out resumes and not hearing back," Novotny says wryly. "It reinforces things that you may have forgotten about."

While he still wants to find a job to replace the one he lost, Novotny says he's found a greater appreciation for his faith in God, his love of spouse and family, his relationship with friends, the kindness strangers have given him, and the goodness he has returned through his volunteer work.

Going from a job into unemployment and hopefully back into a job is just another of life's transitions, says retreat leader and volunteer Al Gustafson.

"The first thing people often ask another person is, 'What do you do?' When we are out of work sometimes our sense of self takes a beating," Gustafson says. But he and the other people running this retreat help people realize we are more than what we do and what we buy.

The Chinese character for crisis is made from combining the symbols for pain and danger with the one for hope and opportunity, Gustafson says.

On the cardboard "wailing wall," participants write words such as "shame," "poor," "humiliation," "confusion," "isolation" and "fear." But on the "tree of hope" poster, those same people later write thoughts such as "the feelings I have are normal," "peace," "hope," "renewal," "smiling makes you feel better" and "it's not just me - lots and lots of good people are looking for work."

One of them is Jim Accurso, 52, a Mount Prospect communications expert with a master's degree from Northwestern University.

"I've got a few irons in the fire," says Accurso, who donated his time to write the news releases for the retreat.

"You come out stronger through a job transition. You learn things about yourself, your fortitude, your real friends." Novotny says. "Life is like a pie and only one segment of it is your job."

While graphing a chart of happiness on that pie, some people at this conference discover that some aspects of their life actually improved when they were laid off, fired or quit.

The retreat was sponsored by the Barrington Career Center, the Community Career Center in Naperville, the Arlington Heights Evangelical Free Church, St. Edna Parish in Arlington Heights, St. Francis de Sales Parish in Lake Zurich, St. Isidore Parish in Bloomingdale, St. Margaret Mary Parish in Naperville, St. Mary Parish in Buffalo Grove, St. Thomas the Apostle Parish in Naperville, Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington and Career Transitions Center of Chicago.

"This is not about finding your next job," Gustafson says.

It can be about finding yourself.

"People don't recognize this as one of the important parts in the job search," says Monica Keane, executive director of the Barrington Career Center. Coping with the grief of losing a job is important and universal.

"Whether you made $250,000 a year or $50,000, zero is zero and fear is fear," Keane says.

"I've been in transition for 10 years," says presenter Alexandra Conroy, who walked away from a high-paying job in investment banking in Asia and then unsuccessfully tried to become a nun before she found her "true self" in her job as community leader of L'Arche, a not-for-profit agency that helps people with disabilities.

No one here suggests that being unemployed is easier or more rewarding than finding a job. Only that the transition can offer people opportunities.

"One of the blessings of being unemployed," Gustafson says, "is to discover we really are a whole lot more than our work."