Darnese Support remembers the Tuesday morning in March 2025 when she tried to log into her federal computer and found herself locked out. She assumed her password had simply expired and called the help desk for a reset. Within hours, a different picture emerged.
Locked Out of Stability
An IT department representative asked her if she had received a call from her supervisor, to which she replied in the negative. He then informed her that her name was on a list of individuals denied access, leaving her confused. After contacting her supervisor, he promised to investigate and call her back. Later that day, both her supervisor and the IT representative informed her that she was on a list of probationary employees being terminated during a mass layoff.
Her initial response was a mix of numbness, panic, and dread. With a child in private school and ongoing financial obligations like rent and car payments, she felt overwhelmed. She recalled retreating to a corner to cry.
More than a year after being fired from her position as a grant management specialist in the Department of Health and Human Services, Support is struggling, not just financially, but to cope: struggling to stay strong, struggling to keep the faith. The constant strain, she says, has taken a toll on her mental health. “I thought I would have a job a year later,” Support, 47, said. “The worry of where I’m going to get the money to do what I need to do and how long will I be out of work, it’s mentally draining.”
Disproportionate Impact on Black Women
In January 2025, Trump’s executive order eliminated diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, and in February and March, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was tasked with reducing the federal workforce. This resulted in thousands of Black women losing their jobs. Beyond dismantling a key pathway to the middle class for Washington, D.C.’s majority-Black community, these cuts severely impacted the well-being of the Black women who are integral to that community.
A study by University of Maryland labor economist Brandon Enriquez revealed that the DOGE cuts disproportionately affected Black women in federal employment compared to other demographic groups. The study estimated a 25% reduction in Black women’s federal employment, while other groups showed no statistically significant effects.
Enriquez noted that Black women’s employment dropped by nearly 50% at its lowest point in April 2025, with minimal impact on other groups. Despite a partial recovery in subsequent months, the layoffs exacerbated racial inequality, given the overrepresentation of Black workers in the federal government.
In many of the agencies that were targeted for massive staff reductions, women and people of color made up the majority of the workforce, according to a 2025 report by Sarah Javaid for the National Women’s Law Center. Javaid wrote that “while women made up 46% of the total federal workforce in September 2024, they represented the majority of the workforce” in the departments of Veterans Affairs, Education, Health and Human Services, Treasury, and Housing and Urban Development.
People of color – including Darnese Support – made up 46% of probationary workers, according to the report, including 65% of those at the Department of the Treasury, 55% at Housing and Urban Development and at Homeland Security, and 53% at Health and Human Services.
Like some of her colleagues, Support’s probationary period lasted two years. After years of contracting in the private sector and with the State Department, she had secured a permanent position at Health and Human Services. As a single mother of two, she had been in her role for a year and seven months when she received the unexpected news of her termination.
“It was always my goal to try to get into the government,” said Support. “My parents always said: ‘Get with the government, it’s stable. You can grow. You can move up.’”
Dream Job Turns to Devastation
Support had been excited about her new job and working with her new co-workers. And she was proud that despite struggling with a learning disability and adult ADHD, she’d recently gotten a raise in her pay and job grade. Her work felt important to her, too. As a grant management specialist, her responsibilities included working with organizations such as hospitals or construction companies seeking government funding.
If a hospital wanted new X-ray machines or a therapy facility wanted equipment, she helped them work through the application process. “I had finally gotten my dream job. It was devastating to have it snatched from me,” said Support. “I had things in my life that I was putting in order, and goals that I wanted to do. This is where I was going to retire from.”
At the time of her firing, Support’s oldest daughter was a senior in college and her youngest daughter, who was 9, was in private school and an avid dancer who took part in competitions. Since the firings, her daughter has continued to dance, but Support can’t afford the cost of competitions. “I try not to take too much from her because she’s 10,” says Support. “I did keep her in dance, so she doesn’t lose all that she’s learned, so she won’t feel like, ‘Oh, I can’t do anything.’”
Support says she has not been coping well. She received unemployment benefits for only six months. She lost the items in her storage unit because she couldn’t afford the fees, and she has struggled to pay for her daughter’s private school tuition. She feels like she’s in a “sunken place.” “I’ll drop my youngest off at school and just sit in the car and cry,” Support said. “What’s next? Where am I going to get the money to keep a roof over our heads?”
For a 2022 study focused on Black women’s gender and race-related stress, epidemiologists Meghan Tipre and Tiffany L. Carson conducted focus groups and found that the top stressors identified by Black women were single parenting, Black children’s safety and finances. “Black women report higher levels of psychological stress than White women and carry a disproportionate burden of chronic conditions associated with psychological stress,” the authors wrote in the journal Women’s Health Reports.
Trauma Beyond the Paycheck
Dr. Raquel Martin, a licensed clinical psychologist who focuses on Black mental health, says abrupt termination can be both a financial stressor and a traumatic stressor, because it’s not just about the loss of income.
“It’s the sudden loss of predictability and control, identity, community, and even future planning,” Martin says. “There’s a significant association between unemployment and increased depression, anxiety, and psychological distress, as well as just life satisfaction overall.”
Job loss is more than just about money, Martin points out. “When you think about job loss, you often think about money, but psychologically, abrupt termination can create a profound sense of instability, (and) human beings need and thrive off of predictability,” Martin says. “When employment disappears suddenly, people aren’t just grieving that aspect of a paycheck, they’re grieving a future of a world that they could count on.”
And when demands exceed your resources, Martin adds, the stress can be almost unbearable. “When an experience overwhelms your ability to cope, and it leaves this lasting impact on your sense of self, safety, and sense of the world around you, that’s trauma,” Martin said. “Trauma is not only what happens to you, it’s also what happens inside of you, when you’re repeatedly forced to adapt to conditions that threaten your safety or your dignity or your humanity or your ability to thrive.”
The way people respond to trauma varies greatly from irritability to depression to becoming sedentary or changing eating habits. Support said after her job loss, she sometimes slept all day or sat at her desk and scrolled. She also admitted being “a lot more snappy” toward family and friends. Martin says some people who lose their jobs experience “low pressure tolerance,” which she describes as being really irritable so that every little thing makes you want to “flip a table.”
Black women like Support who are breadwinners and heads of household may be especially stressed since they are overwhelmed with guilt and shame for not being able to provide at their previous levels. Even though the federal firings aren’t something that they brought on themselves, the experience left some, like Support, shattered. “Mental health is affected by policy decisions, economic instability, and access to health care and employment protection. The solution can’t be only telling Black women to cope better with the trash circumstances that they didn’t create in the first place,” Martin explained.
Fighting to Rebuild a Future
Support says she’s applied unsuccessfully for more than 100 jobs since her firing last year. In the interim, she braids hair and has worked as a consultant on political campaigns to make ends meet. She meets regularly with a mental health practitioner and tries to stay upbeat through prayer and affirmations. Nevertheless, Support feels like she is failing — failing as a mother, failing as a provider, failing at parenting. “I feel like I’m almost 50 and I’m way behind. I don’t have a life insurance policy to leave my kids. No savings,” Support says. “It weighs heavy for me as a mother.”
It’s not only the stress of not having the money to do what she needs to do as a parent, but the stress of having to lean on her 23-year-old daughter and mother to help pay the bills. As she continues to look for full-time employment, she says she is drained by the rejections.
Right now, Support says, she’s holding it together, taking it one day at a time. “I do believe in God, but when you’ve been down in life and have had disappointments, it’s kind of hard to keep your faith,” said Support. “You try to stay strong, but you wonder, when is there going to be light at the end of the tunnel? How long do I have to stay like this?”
