From Service to Severance

A StoryTelling Project with Federal Government Employees

“The simple act of being able to tell the truth about your feelings and your life experiences and be heard and hearing someone else’s truth, that is how we understand the collective truth.”  

-Gloria Steinem 

From Service to Severance is a project that tells the story of eleven civil servants who were impacted by the 2025 efforts to reduce the federal workforce.  It is composed of individual portraits by Deb Niemeier and accompanied with profiles by Tara Van De Mark and draws from sessions held in the spring and summer of 2025.  Each federal employee's experience is unique: they represent five federal agencies, they range in years served from under a year to over forty, and their backgrounds vary from financial manager to education researcher.  The stories also speak to each other with themes around community, trauma, service, and morals.  Together, these first hand accounts document a moment in time that deepens our understanding around who federal government employees are, why they chose to serve their country, and what they experienced in early 2025.

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