Despite this clear reference to feeling shamed and although she used the word “sordid” and “emotionally distressing situation” (Baxter’s personal journal) to describe the situation to her attorney, the journals Baxter shared with me do not reflect many expressions of anger or a desire for vengeance. Instead they reflect a vacillation between trying to organize her thoughts in order to do something to remedy her situation and feeling overwhelmed and yet hopeful that good would result from this loss. During her vacation, which the human resources representative encouraged her to take despite her supervisor’s preferences, Baxter assiduously avoided thoughts of her job. “This was our family time; I didn’t want to spoil it,” she recalled. Nevertheless, thoughts of her loss “came creeping in” and she cried privately in quiet interludes.

When Baxter returned to work, she had no work to do because all of her projects had been redistributed to her staff. She remembers her boss protested while she packed her belongings (he felt she should not bring attention to her status change). In addition, she remembers avoiding her co-workers and eating lunch alone because she felt “in her own world” and not “up to comforting them” and she read in their faces anger, shock, and embarrassment, signs suggesting to her that they did not know how to respond to her humiliation. Her files at home suggest a less narrow story than she recalls: During the weeks after her termination, she received cards of condolence and gifts of flowers and music from co-workers and friends. Not only was her distress her primary emotion for the weeks following her termination, her distress became the focal point of her memory for that time.