The Chapter I Wasn't Finished Writing.

Written by: Keely Heyman - Driving Public Safety Engagement Through Story, Strategy & Marketing | Former 911 Executive Director | Public Safety Leader

It was just after 7:00 a.m. on a Tuesday when my phone rang.

I was at the Atlantic APCO Conference, wearing two hats that week. I was there representing the company I worked for, and I was also serving on the conference committee. I was standing next to a coworker, fellow committee member and dear friend when I looked down and saw my boss's name on my phone.

And I knew.

Maybe that's a strange thing to say, but I knew. It had probably been the worst-kept secret in the business that change was coming. We knew a reorganization was imminent. We knew a reduction in force was possible.

I just hadn't really considered that it could be me.

"I have some difficult news."

I remember those words.

After that, mostly ringing.

I know there were other words. I know HR went through all the things they are supposed to go through. But somewhere between "difficult news" and the realization that I was being laid off, my brain stopped processing sentences.

Instead, the emotions started coming in waves.

Sadness.

Disbelief.

Anger.

Embarrassment.

Fear.

For a few moments, I think part of me genuinely believed there had been some kind of mistake. Then the other part of my brain kicked in and understood something that I am historically not very good at accepting: I had no control and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.

And maybe that's why this ending has felt so different from the last one.

I had already ended one career. But I got to choose that ending.

After 25 years in 9-1-1, I retired.

I had been a dispatcher, trainer, supervisor, deputy director and eventually an executive director. I left at the top of my game. I loved my people. I was proud of what we had built. I was also tired. It was time. I got to decide when that chapter ended.

What I didn't know was what the hell I was going to do next.

I entered the private sector with decades of public safety experience and absolutely no idea what "corporate Keely" was supposed to look like.

I joined a company whose mission I deeply believed in. And when I say believed in, I mean I genuinely loved what this company was trying to accomplish.

After spending 25 years in 9-1-1, I knew firsthand what it meant to have the right information at the right time. I knew the frustrations, the limitations, the challenges and, most importantly, the people on the other end of that technology. So, the opportunity to work for a company whose mission was to support those very people felt like a natural extension of everything I had spent my career doing.

I wasn't just excited about the job. I was excited about the possibility of helping shape the future of an industry that had given me so much. I believed in the technology, the mission and the potential to make a real difference. And I was surrounded by some incredibly talented people who believed in it, too.

For the first time in a long time, I felt like I could take everything I had learned in 9-1-1 and use it to make an impact on a much larger scale. I hadn't left public safety behind. I had simply found another way to serve it.

And I loved that.

Now, there had originally been other ideas about what I might do there, but somewhere along the way, I got kidnapped by Marketing.

Marketing....If you had told me five years ago that I would eventually work in marketing for a technology company, and absolutely love it, I would have told you that you were out of your tree.

I wasn't sure I belonged there. Then something weird happened.

I found a home.

I loved figuring out audience voice. I loved sitting with an executive, listening to how they talked and what they cared about, and then helping them communicate it in a way that actually sounded like them.

I loved ghostwriting.

I loved finding customer proof points that actually mattered instead of simply telling people how wonderful a product was.

I loved interviewing people.

I loved storytelling.

And more than anything, I loved taking complicated technology and making it human.

In a world increasingly filled with AI-generated everything, I liked being the human reality check.

Does this sound like something a person would actually say? Would a 9-1-1 professional care about this? Why should they care? What does this technology actually mean when somebody calls 9-1-1 on the worst day of their life?

Those were questions I understood.

And somewhere along the way, I stopped feeling like a 9-1-1 director who had somehow wandered into Marketing.

I became a marketer.

That mattered to me more than I realized until suddenly I wasn't one anymore. That's the strange thing about being laid off. Everyone talks about the financial part, and don't misunderstand me, that part is terrifying. Income disappears. Benefits disappear. Severance creates a very real clock in the back of your mind.

But I wasn't prepared for the grief. I wasn't prepared for the loss of routine. I wasn't prepared to think about all the projects sitting unfinished. The interviews I had already recorded. The stories I still wanted to tell. The ideas scribbled down that I thought we might turn into something. The people I wouldn't get to talk to every day anymore. The daily messages from HR telling us it was National Whatever Day. I even miss those.

Being laid off felt like someone slammed a door in my face while I was still in the middle of speaking. There was no wrapping things up. No finishing the project. No last day walking around saying goodbye. The computer I had brought to the conference stopped being accessible.

And suddenly this thing I had poured so much of myself into was simply...over.

That can mess with your head. Because no matter how many times someone tells you, "This was a business decision," there's a tiny voice somewhere inside asking:

But why me?

Was I not good enough?

Did any of it matter?

Am I actually as capable as I thought I was?

And then there's one sentence that had been said to me months earlier that decided to take up permanent residence in my brain:

"You're a bundle of potential. Maybe just not here."

When I first heard it, I didn't know what to do with it.

Now that I'm unemployed, it occasionally rattles around in there like something out of a horror movie. Because if I have nearly 30 years of experience in public safety, reached executive leadership, moved into the technology side of the industry, learned an entirely new discipline and discovered I could thrive there too...

If my potential isn't "here," then where exactly is it?

I don't know. And maybe that's the part I'm finally becoming comfortable saying out loud.

I don't know what comes next.

I'm in my late 40s, and apparently I am once again trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. Some days that's exciting. Some days it's terrifying.

I wonder whether I've spent so long in public safety that employers outside of it won't understand where I fit. I wonder whether marketing teams will look at my resume and see a former 9-1-1 executive instead of a marketer. I wonder whether public safety companies will see the marketer instead of the executive. I wonder whether someone will look at all of it and simply decide I'm too hard to put into a box.

And, if I'm being truthful, there are moments when I wonder whether I'll find another job I love as much as the one I just lost.

But here's the part I'm trying very hard not to forget: I already did this once.

I walked away from the only career I had really known as an adult, in fact, I hadn't even graduated high school when I stepped into my first role in public safety, without knowing exactly who I would be on the other side. Then someone handed me a curveball called Marketing. I figured it out. Actually, I did more than figure it out. I fell in love with it.

I learned that I like being surrounded by creative badasses who can take nothing and turn it into something. I learned that storytelling is not something I happened to do in 9-1-1. It's part of who I am. I learned that I can translate between worlds. I learned that I can walk into something completely unfamiliar, ask a million questions, listen to people who know more than I do, and eventually find my place. I've also learned that I have a pretty healthy amount of figure-it-outness in me.

And losing the job doesn't take any of that away.

So now I'm in the middle.

Not the inspirational ending. Not the triumphant new-job announcement.

The uncomfortable part before that.

The blank page. And I'm trying very hard not to rush through it just because blank pages make me nervous.

I've told people for years: "If you're scared, do it scared."

I first heard those words from a little girl named Cash Rowley, who was maybe three years old at the time, fearlessly snowboarding down a mountain. One wrong move and she was headed straight for a snowbank, but down the mountain she went anyway.

Well, I guess this is my snowbank.

And it turns out "if you're scared, do it scared" is much easier to say when you're not the one who's scared.

Because I am scared.

And right now, "doing it scared" doesn't look particularly courageous.

It looks like getting out of bed.

Taking a shower.

Being present for my child and my family.

Having another conversation with people and connections in my network.

Sending an application when something genuinely interests me instead of panic-applying to everything with a salary attached to it.

Figuring out insurance and finances and all the very unglamorous things that don't make particularly inspiring LinkedIn content.

Letting myself be sad.

Letting myself be angry.

Letting myself miss something I genuinely loved.

And still getting up the next morning.

I don't know what the next chapter is. For someone who spent most of her adult life knowing exactly who she was professionally, that is a deeply uncomfortable sentence to write.

But maybe chapters don't always close with a satisfying ending. Sometimes somebody slams the book shut while you're still in the middle of a sentence. Then you're left staring at a blank page.

The difference this time is that I know something I didn't know the last time I had one in front of me:

I know I can write something new.

I just don't know what it is yet.

And yes, I'm scared.

I guess I'll have to do it scared.