Three words. That is all it took.
"I served too."
I said those words more times than I can count — at networking events, in casual conversations, at the dinner table with my own family. My husband and I were what the military calls "dual military." We both served. We both sacrificed. But when conversations turned to military service, I noticed something that cut deeper than any deployment briefing ever had: sometimes, even the people closest to me did not acknowledge that I had served too. I had to say it out loud. I had to insert myself into my own story.
And when I did, the response I heard most often was: "You don't look like a veteran."
If you want to understand what that response means — and why it matters — this article says it well. But let me tell you what it felt like from the inside.
The Image Problem No One Talks About
Les Brown says, "You cannot see the picture when you're in the frame." When I was a Soldier, I did not think about what veterans looked like — because I was not one yet. But when I became a veteran, I suddenly had to contend with a picture I had never seen myself in.
Society has an image of what a veteran looks like. It is almost always a man — most often a white man. It is someone with visible wounds, or severe mental illness, or a visible marker of brokenness. Women were not "real veterans" in that image. We were nurses. We were admin. We were support.
I am a veteran. I am a woman. I am an American Soldier. And I strive every day to overcome the invisible wounds that others need to validate before they will acknowledge my service.
Research confirms this is not just my experience. A landmark study by Burdett et al. (2013) found that while 55% of male veterans identified themselves as veterans, only 30% of female veterans did the same. Think about that. Nearly half of the women who served this country do not claim the title that is rightfully theirs. Not because they did not earn it — but because the world has spent decades telling them they do not fit the picture.
The Paradox of Being Both
Here is what the research on women veterans' leadership identity calls a paradox: you leave the military as a fully formed, battle-tested leader — and then you enter a civilian world that has no category for you.
You are not quite a veteran (because you "don't look like one"). You are not quite a civilian woman (because you carry yourself differently, you think differently, you lead differently). You are not quite a newcomer (because you have more leadership experience than most people in the room). But you are also not recognized as the expert you are.
A 2024 qualitative study of 10 women veteran leaders found that participants experienced this paradox acutely — they held strong leadership identities forged in the military, but civilian workplaces routinely failed to recognize, reward, or leverage those identities. One participant described the exhaustion of constantly having to re-establish credibility: "You have to demonstrate competency every single day and be able to establish credibility and maintain credibility."
I lived that. When I left the military and opened my fitness studio, I walked into a world where the structure, the discipline, the chain of command, the buddy system — none of it existed the way I knew it. The rules I had lived by simply did not apply. And in that vacuum, I did what many women veterans do: I started watching everyone else, trying to figure out how to translate who I was into a language the civilian world would understand.
When Watching Becomes Comparison
The research describes a phase where women veterans spend significant time watching and learning — observing civilian culture, trying to decode the unwritten rules, figuring out how to belong. That phase is necessary. But it has a shadow side.
For me, that shadow was comparison. I watched other fitness entrepreneurs on social media. I watched the transformation stories — the dramatic before-and-afters, the "fat to fit" narratives that seemed to generate the most engagement, the most followers, the most credibility. And I tried to compete.
The problem was that was never my story. I had never been on that journey. My narrative was different — it was about discipline, about mental strength, about the kind of grit that gets built in a uniform, not in a gym. But I could not see that clearly then, because I was too busy trying to fit into someone else's picture.
The study participants described this same experience. One shared, "I had a really rough time. It was a very alone time for me because I didn't reach out to anybody… I felt like I would be admitting that I was a failure because I couldn't find anything." Another described the disorientation of entering civilian leadership: "I don't have a career, I don't have a plan, I don't have anything, I'm lost."
That isolation — that sense of being lost while appearing completely fine — is one of the most consistent findings across research on women veterans. You were trained not to show it. You were trained to face fear, not announce it. So you isolate in plain sight.
The Civilian Leadership Gap
When I looked around at civilian leadership — in business, in my community, in the spaces I was entering — almost nothing felt familiar. The structure was different. The sense of urgency was different. The chain of command existed on paper but not in practice. The "buddy system" — that instinct to have someone's back, to move as a unit — was largely absent.
The research participants named this gap explicitly. One noted that "civilians lack a sense of urgency." Another described the difficulty of relating to civilian women who had never operated in high-stakes, mission-critical environments. Several noted that civilian leadership felt more self-focused than others-focused — a stark contrast to the servant leadership model most of them had been trained in.
This is not a criticism of civilian culture. It is an honest observation about the translation gap. The leadership skills you built in the military — mission focus, decisive action, team cohesion, leading under pressure — are extraordinary. They are also invisible to organizations that do not know how to look for them.
Finding Your Way Back to Yourself
For me, the turning point came in stages.
The first step was becoming an entrepreneur. It was the hardest lane I could have chosen — no blueprint, no chain of command, no one telling me what right looks like. But it was also the lane where I had to stop performing and start leading as myself.
The shift accelerated when I enlisted the help of coaches. My first coach, Chris Goodman of Goodman Coaching, pushed me with hard questions and challenged me to stop running from my calling. Then Dr. Tracy Timberlake came into my life — and she did not just challenge me, she stretched me, validated me, and helped me see that the things I felt were not weaknesses. They were data points pointing me toward my purpose.
The research supports this finding. Participants in the paradox study identified coaching, mentorship, and peer networks of other women veterans as critical supports during transition. One participant credited her network of military women: "I don't think I would have made it had I not had a camaraderie with a group of women."
Own Your Story. Own Your Title.
The O in the OWNIT™ Framework is Own Your Story — and for women veterans, owning your story starts with a single, non-negotiable act: claiming your title.
I am a veteran. Full stop. Not a veteran with an asterisk. Not a veteran who needs to explain herself. Not a veteran who has to say "I served too" and wait for someone to decide if that counts.
Owning my story as a civilian started with acknowledging and valuing my service — acknowledging that I was indeed a veteran, that my sacrifices mattered just as much as my male counterpart's, that I had decided to sacrifice myself for the other 99% of the population. I had to learn to embrace that truth and not hide it, disguise it, or allow anyone else to minimize it.
That category is Woman Veteran. I served. And I am an American Soldier.
The research found that nine of ten women veteran leaders in the paradox study ultimately acknowledged their willingness to self-identify as a veteran following their transition. That shift — from hiding to claiming — is not just psychological. It is the foundation of every leadership move you will make in the civilian world.
You cannot lead from a story you are ashamed of. You cannot build on a foundation you keep apologizing for.
- O — Own Your Story: Claim your veteran identity without apology. Stop letting someone else's limited imagination define what a veteran looks like.
- W — Work Your Gift: The leadership skills you built in uniform are not expired. They are waiting for the right context — and the right translation.
- N — Navigate with Purpose: Stop competing in lanes that were never yours. Chart a path aligned with your calling, not someone else's picture.
- I — Ignite Impact: Your story — the dual military household, the fitness studio, the comparison trap, the coaches who pushed you — is the exact story someone needs to hear today.
- T — Take Bold Action & Thrive: Thriving is not the absence of fear. It is the decision to stop isolating in plain sight and start leading in the open.
If you are a woman veteran navigating the paradox of civilian leadership — feeling invisible in spaces where you should be leading — you are not alone, and you are not broken. You are exactly where the research says you would be. The question is: what will you do next?
Research references: Padron (2022), "Paradox and Transition: Exploring Women Veterans' Leadership Identity Construction from Military Leader to Civilian Leader"; Burdett et al. (2013), veteran self-identification study; Davis (2022), female military veteran leaders' transition experiences.