Who Are You When the Uniform Comes Off?

I knew exactly who I was at 18.

I was a soldier.

Which, looking back, is kind of wild.

At eighteen, most people are just beginning to figure themselves out. They're choosing majors, changing their minds, making questionable decisions, and slowly discovering who they might want to become.

I joined the Army.

And almost immediately, a huge piece of my identity was handed to me.

There was a uniform to wear.

A rank on my chest.

A unit I belonged to.

A mission.

People who depended on me.

Expectations about how I should behave, what I should know, and what I was responsible for.

There was something incredibly grounding about that.

Before I'd really had the chance to figure out who Ary was, I knew who SPC Hunter was.

And then one day, the uniform came off.

Nobody really tells you what happens next.

We talk about leaving the military like it's a career transition.

And technically, it is.

You leave one job and find another.

You translate your résumé into civilian language. You figure out what your military experience means in a workplace where nobody knows what half the acronyms mean. You trade uniforms for whatever constitutes "business casual."

But leaving the military isn't only about finding another job.

Sometimes it's about figuring out who you are without the identity that shaped you.

For years, people knew something about me before I ever introduced myself.

The uniform told them.

Soldier.

And being a soldier came with an entire ecosystem of identity.

There was structure.

There was purpose.

There were people.

There was a mission.

There was a very clear understanding that what you did mattered to someone besides yourself.

Then you leave.

And suddenly the question isn't just:

What am I going to do now?

It's:

Who am I now?

Those are very different questions.

I've been a lot of things since the Army.

Mom.

Student.

Veteran.

Advocate.

Researcher.

Entrepreneur.

Community builder.

Leader.

Wife.

Friend.

Eventually, somehow, a woman with a PhD.

There have been seasons when one of those identities felt enormous and others almost disappeared.

There were years when motherhood consumed nearly every part of me.

Years when my work became my identity.

Years when I was determined to prove that whatever happened before didn't get to determine what happened next.

Years when I accomplished things because I genuinely wanted them.

And probably some years when I accomplished things because achievement felt easier than sitting still long enough to ask myself what I actually needed.

That's something I'm still unpacking.

Because identity gets complicated when you've experienced trauma.

Sometimes you become very good at becoming whatever the next season requires.

You survive.

You adapt.

You perform.

You accomplish.

You keep moving.

And from the outside, it can look a lot like confidence.

Sometimes it is.

Sometimes it's survival wearing really good shoes.

There are identities we choose.

Soldier.

Student.

Entrepreneur.

Researcher.

There are identities life gives us.

Mother.

Daughter.

Friend.

And then there are identities attached to things we never would have chosen.

Survivor is one of those for me.

I am a survivor of military sexual trauma.

For a long time, I struggled with how much space that word should be allowed to occupy in my identity.

Because I never wanted the worst thing someone did to me to become the most interesting thing about me.

I still don't.

But I've also learned that refusing to be defined by something isn't the same as pretending it didn't shape you.

It shaped me.

So did the Army.

So did motherhood.

So did education.

So did building businesses and organizations.

So did failure.

So did faith.

So did grief.

So did healing.

Maybe identity isn't about deciding which one of those things is the "real" version of me.

Maybe they're all real.

I think we like identities because they make people easier to understand.

What do you do?

Where did you go to school?

Are you married?

Do you have kids?

Were you in the military?

What do you believe?

We collect little pieces of information about people and organize them into something that makes sense.

I'm guilty of it too.

But people aren't résumés.

We're contradictions.

I can be incredibly strong and still need help.

I can love parts of my military service and grieve things that happened while I served.

I can be proud of what I've built and honest about the things that have fallen apart.

I can have a PhD and still have absolutely no idea what I'm doing sometimes.

I can be a survivor without wanting survival to be the headline of my life.

I can be deeply grateful for the life I have and still mourn versions of myself that didn't make it here.

All of those things can be true at the same time.

There's a phrase sitting in my social media bio right now:

Still becoming.

I put it there because it sounded like me.

But the more I think about it, the more I realize it might be the most accurate description of this season of my life.

I'm not interested in arriving at some perfectly finished version of myself anymore.

I don't think she exists.

There will always be another season that asks something different of me.

Another thing I'll have to release.

Another thing I'll have to learn.

Another version of myself I'll have to meet.

And maybe that's not evidence that I haven't figured out who I am.

Maybe that's what being alive looks like.

The eighteen-year-old who raised her right hand and became a soldier is still part of me.

So is the woman who came home.

So is the young mom.

The student.

The advocate.

The entrepreneur.

The researcher.

The survivor.

The woman who has gotten things spectacularly right.

The woman who has gotten things spectacularly wrong.

The woman who has had to start over more than once.

And the woman running one mile today because she decided it was time to show up differently.

They're all me.

Yesterday, I wrote about belonging and the realization that coming home isn't necessarily the same thing as finding where you belong.

Today, I'm thinking about the question underneath that:

Who are you when the thing that defined you isn't there anymore?

Maybe you've never worn a uniform.

But maybe you've lost a job that became part of your identity.

Maybe your children grew up.

Maybe a marriage ended.

Maybe you left a community or a church.

Maybe you became a caregiver.

Maybe your body changed.

Maybe you achieved the thing you spent years chasing and discovered you didn't know who you were once there was nothing left to chase.

Maybe something happened that divided your life into before and after.

I don't think the answer is finding our way back to whoever we were before.

I'm not sure we can.

And I'm not sure we're supposed to.

Maybe the work is learning to carry the pieces worth keeping while giving ourselves permission to become someone we haven't met yet.

At eighteen, I thought becoming a soldier would tell me who I was.

In some ways, it did.

But it turns out that was only one version.

There have been many since.

And, God willing, there will be many more.

I'm still becoming.

Maybe you are too.

Your turn

I'm making today's question easier than yesterday's.

Give me one word.

What's something you've been in your life?

Soldier. Mom. Teacher. Athlete. Caregiver. Student. Wife. Husband. Nurse. Coach. Artist. Survivor. Friend.

Whatever comes to mind first.

I'll start.

Soldier.