Why Leaving the Military Feels Like a Death: A Veteran’s Story of Identity Loss and Rebuilding
Somewhere along the way in my military transition, I became obsessed. Not curious. Not thoughtfully engaged. Obsessed. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Couldn’t stop dissecting every step. Couldn’t stop trying to understand why, even though I checked every box, something still felt broken.
Here’s the strange part. My transition didn’t go poorly. I didn’t end up unemployed. I wasn’t lost in a sea of LinkedIn posts about personal branding. I had some luck, timing, and the ability to capitalize on them on my side. I had a job lined up. People wanted to help. I had resources, mentors, TAP classes, informational interviews, even nonprofit support. I was probably better supported than I’ve been in any other professional transition in my life. So why couldn’t I stop thinking about it?
The military-to-civilian transition is one of the most supported career pivots anyone will ever go through. That isn’t hyperbole. It’s just fact. At no other time in your life will people across every industry volunteer hours of their time to help you figure out your next step. Executives, recruiters, HR professionals, other veterans. People with full-time jobs and families will clear their calendar to help you make the jump. The Government has an entire department dedicated to veterans, providing us with employment benefits to make sure we get a job. It's a level of support that doesn't exist anywhere else.
When I left private security and moved into software, nobody gave me a transition checklist. Nobody pulled me aside and said, “Let’s talk about how to reframe your skills.” I didn’t get six months of ramp time. Nobody recommended a book club or a mentor or a resume-writing workshop. They fundamentally asked me one thing: “Can you do things we pay you to do better than anyone else?” That was the job interview. I didn’t have an inside track.
Same thing when I moved from SaaS to defense tech. Nobody offered to build me a bridge. Nobody created an event for veterans in the field. Nobody told me what the culture was like or how to succeed. I either figured it out or I didn’t. That was it.
But when you leave the military, there’s an ecosystem built around you. Career fairs. Resume coaches. Transition specialists. Nonprofits. Corporate fellowships. Federal programs. All of it exists to support one goal. To help you leave and be successful.
Why Military Transition Feels Like Identity Loss
So why does it still break people?
Why do so many of us walk through the gate with everything in order and still feel like the ground just dropped out from under us?
That is because it’s not about support. It’s about identity.
Nobody really talks about that part. Not loudly
I get why. Unemployed veterans are bad optics. So we want to get veterans into a job. Veteran unemployment is measurable. Getting a job is a teachable skill. Of course we focus on tangible outcomes instead of the fuzzy concept of identity.
In the military, especially if you stay in for a while, your internal motivations and your external demands become the same thing. You get rewarded for the things that matter to you personally. Physical fitness. Team development. Discipline. Integrity. Clarity under pressure. You don’t just get promoted for being competent. You get promoted for being someone who believes in the work. Someone who puts the mission ahead of ego. Someone who shows up even when it sucks.
Over time, that reinforcement loop fuses your identity to the role.
You don’t just work in the Army. You are a soldier. You are a Marine. You are a leader. You are the uniform. And it’s not toxic. It’s effective. You do dangerous things. You operate in unforgiving environments. You live inside systems where your failure can kill people. That level of accountability rewards identity fusion. It works. Until it doesn’t.
When the Uniform Comes Off, So Does the Self
Then, one day, it ends.
August 14th, 2020. That’s the day Captain Ruffier signed out on terminal leave. That was the day he died. I didn’t have a retirement ceremony. I didn’t stand in front of a formation and cry. It was just a form. A signature. A shrug. And suddenly, the version of me that had a rank, a structure, a set of obligations, and a sense of clarity no longer existed.
People had been calling me “Jon” for years. Except Jon hadn’t been around since I was eighteen. Maybe twenty, if I’m being generous. I went to ROTC. I commissioned. I deployed. I led teams. I planned training meetings. I managed property books and awards and logistics. I took pride in doing things right. When I did things right, my people benefited. That meant something. That gave me purpose.
Then it was over.
I left the Army with a job lined up. I had a solid paycheck. Good benefits. A nice title. I was doing fine. But inside, I felt completely untethered. Like I had walked out of my body and into someone else's life. I wasn’t crashing. I wasn’t failing. I just didn’t know who I was anymore. That hit me hard.
Why “Find Your Why” Doesn’t Work Right Away
So I did what we’re told to do. I read Start With Why. I took personality assessments. I filled out transition workbooks. I tried to “find my purpose.” But none of it felt real. Not because the tools were bad. Rather, the sequence was wrong. I hadn’t lost my sense of purpose. I had lost the person who used to have one.
That’s the part we so rarely say out loud.
Your transition is not just a job change. It is not a career pivot. It is not a rebranding exercise. It is a death. The person who dies is the version of you who used to know exactly who they were.
We don’t treat it like a death. We treat it like an opportunity. We try to optimize it. We try to put it on a timeline. And because we don’t give ourselves permission to grieve, we don’t recognize the thing we’re actually struggling with. The military gave us more than a paycheck. It gave us a name. A role. A set of expectations. It gave us a reason to feel useful and a clear understanding of how we mattered. When that goes away, there’s no civilian company in the world that can replace it overnight.
I want to be clear here. I am not saying that the transition is necessarily a bad thing. I describe it as a death to capture the reality that it’s often a door we can’t step back through. That does not mean that there is no goodness in it, that there is not opportunity in it, and that we do not need to work hard in finding our new definition of success. Those very tactical things that I describe above, often targeted as steps to getting a job, are just that, tactical things to help us improve the measurable thing. You can’t measure a soul, a feeling, or an identity.
How Veterans Can Rebuild Identity After Leaving the Military
So what do you do?
You start small. You go to the gym. Not because you’re training for something. Because your body needs to move. You take on a small project. Not because it builds your brand. Because you want to see if you can still focus. You ask yourself hard questions. Not to find the right answer. Just to see if the person inside still has something to say.
You don’t rebuild yourself in one leap. You rebuild one brick at a time. You pay attention to what feels real. What lights you up. What drains you. What makes you feel sharp again. Eventually, a new version of you starts to take shape. It doesn’t replace who you were. It doesn’t have to. It just starts to feel like someone you might want to be.
I often remark that it takes time to change time. You won’t undo a decade of habits and identity in a week. Getting out is a process that we dress up as an event. This doesn’t happen overnight, it doesn’t happen in a month. It takes years to change years. In that timeframe you will, by necessity, check off everything on those transition lists, find a new job, maybe a second job, and have a polished resume. You’ll get the tactical stuff done, we all do.
You’re Not Broken. You’re Grieving.
If you’re out now and you still feel like you’re standing in a body that doesn’t fit, I want you to hear this clearly.
You’re not broken. You’re grieving. And grief doesn’t follow the timeline on your separation orders.
This isn’t a roadmap. It’s a eulogy. And that’s okay. You’re allowed to bury the version of you that wore the uniform. You’re allowed to miss him. You’re allowed to feel like something inside you isn’t quite done processing what happened.
The good news is that what comes next is yours. No chain of command. No rating scheme. No mission slide deck.
Just you.
