When the Proof Disappears, You Still Have to Know Who You Are

Last December, I chose one word for 2026.

Uncomfortable.

At the time, I thought I was choosing a word that would challenge me.

I imagined bigger rooms. Harder decisions. Greater visibility. More courage. More willingness to do the things I had been avoiding because they felt unfamiliar.

I did not realize I was choosing the thesis for my entire year.

Because 2026 has asked me, repeatedly, to become comfortable with being uncomfortable.

In my business.

In leadership.

In visibility.

In the way people see me.

And perhaps most importantly, in the way I see myself.

This year, I became the 2026 American Business Woman.

That recognition came with a level of visibility and responsibility I had never occupied before.

It placed me in rooms where I was no longer being recognized only for what I had built as a marketer or business owner.

People were responding to something bigger.

Leadership.

Influence.

Ambition.

Voice.

The ability to move people.

That should have felt natural after years of leading businesses, teams, clients, organizations, and communities.

But it did not. Not immediately.

Because sometimes people recognize who you have become before you do.

The identities we outgrow

For years, I knew exactly how to describe myself.

I was the marketing woman.

The social media strategist.

The agency owner.

The person people called when their content was not working.

That identity was earned. It was familiar. And because it was familiar, it was comfortable.

Then my speaking started changing.

I was still being asked to talk about marketing, but increasingly, I was being invited into conversations about leadership, influence, ambition, confidence, identity, and becoming.

At first, I treated that shift almost like a departure from my expertise.

Then I had to confront something uncomfortable.

I had already been doing the work of a leader for years. I just had not fully claimed the identity.

That realization taught me something I believe many accomplished women eventually face.

We can become so loyal to the version of ourselves that built the career that we struggle to make room for the woman we have become because of it.

The title that once fit perfectly can become too small. The audience that once understood us may need time to catch up. Sometimes we do, too.

Growth is not always about becoming more qualified. Sometimes it is about finally acknowledging that you already are.

Then the visible proof disappeared

Just as I was beginning to more fully occupy this expanded version of myself, another part of my professional identity was stripped down almost overnight.

In September, I lost the social media platforms I had spent years building. More than 20,000 followers across personal accounts, business accounts, and other profiles disappeared.

Years of content.

Years of engagement.

Years of visible social proof.

Gone.

I have spent 15 years working in social media. And suddenly, I was a social media expert rebuilding an Instagram account with 130 followers.

There is something deeply uncomfortable about being highly experienced while publicly looking inexperienced.

Before the loss, someone could visit my profile and immediately see evidence.

The audience.

The engagement.

The years of content.

The awards.

The speaking clips.

The work.

The community.

The number beside my name was not my expertise, but it helped communicate it before I ever had to explain myself.

Then that disappeared.

And I was left with a question far bigger than social media.

Who are you when the proof people used to validate you is no longer immediately visible?

When achievement becomes part of the mirror

Women are often encouraged to achieve more.

Build more.

Lead more.

Earn more.

Speak more.

Become more visible.

And I believe in ambition. Wholeheartedly. I am unapologetically ambitious.

I do not believe women need to apologize for wanting success, influence, money, recognition, leadership, or a bigger life.

But there is a line worth paying attention to.

Achievement can be something we are proud of without becoming the thing that tells us who we are.

That distinction is easy to understand when everything is going well. It becomes much harder when something disappears.

A title changes.

A company struggles.

A marriage ends.

A promotion goes to someone else.

A business closes.

An audience disappears.

An opportunity falls through.

A room stops applauding.

Suddenly, the woman who knew exactly who she was when the evidence was everywhere has to answer the question again without it.

That is where identity gets tested.

The expert before the numbers

The line I keep coming back to in this season is simple:

Be the expert before the numbers make you look like one.

That applies far beyond social media.

Can you know you are capable before the promotion proves it?

Can you know you are a leader before the title catches up?

Can you know your voice matters before the room applauds?

Can you know you are qualified before the recognition arrives?

Can you trust your experience when other people cannot immediately see the receipts?

That is the work.

Because the danger of external validation is not that it feels good. It should.

Recognition feels good.

Winning feels good.

Being seen feels good.

Being celebrated feels good.

The danger is when we become so accustomed to using external proof as a mirror that we no longer know how to see ourselves without it.

I did not lose what built the proof

Losing my social platforms did not erase 15 years of experience.

It did not erase my education.

It did not erase the businesses I have helped.

It did not erase the campaigns I built, the strategies I developed, the teams I led, the organizations I served, or the stages I stood on.

It did not erase the woman who had earned the proof.

It erased the place where much of the proof was displayed.

Those are not the same thing.

That distinction changed the way I began approaching the rebuild.

I stopped treating the small number as evidence that I had somehow become smaller.

I began treating it as a temporary mismatch between the visible proof and the actual body of work.

The proof would catch back up. My responsibility was to keep showing up as the woman who had already done the work.

Leadership begins before the room agrees

This year has also forced me to think differently about leadership.

For a long time, I thought leadership became real once other people recognized it.

The title.

The position.

The award.

The invitation.

The stage.

I do not believe that anymore.

Leadership begins before the room agrees.

It begins in the decisions no one applauds.

In the boundaries people do not understand.

In the willingness to disappoint people who preferred the version of you that required less from them.

In trusting your judgment before consensus arrives.

In taking responsibility when there is nobody else to blame.

And sometimes, leadership looks like standing firmly in who you are while the evidence around you temporarily suggests otherwise.

That requires a different kind of confidence. Not performative confidence. Not arrogance. Not pretending you never doubt yourself.

It requires a grounded relationship with your own body of work.

You know what you have survived.

You know what you have built.

You know what you have learned.

You know what you have earned.

You know what it cost you.

That knowledge has to matter even when other people do not have all the context yet.

Faith changed the way I understood the loss

My faith is central to how I understand my life, my ambition, and my leadership.

So eventually, the question became spiritual, too.

Did I believe God had equipped me for the work?

Did I believe He had ordered my steps?

Did I believe He had opened certain doors, developed certain gifts, and placed me in certain rooms?

If the answer was yes, then I could not suddenly decide that a social media account had the authority to invalidate what God had already cultivated in me.

That realization was humbling.

Because it forced me to acknowledge how easy it is to say we trust God while quietly asking the world to provide confirmation.

The followers.

The applause.

The recognition.

The awards.

The opportunities.

Those things can affirm the work. They cannot define the calling.

I had to trust what God had already equipped me with while the visible proof rebuilt around it.

Sometimes becoming means remembering

At the beginning of the year, I believed Uncomfortable would be about becoming a stronger version of myself. In many ways, it has been.

But some of the most important moments have not required me to become someone new. They have required me to remember who I already am.

The strategist when the following was small.

The leader before the recognition.

The woman before the award.

The voice before the audience.

The ambition before anyone else understood it.

The faith before the proof.

That may be one of the hardest parts of becoming.

We think growth will always feel like addition.

More skills.

More accomplishments.

More opportunities.

More confidence.

Sometimes growth is subtraction.

Something disappears.

Something changes.

Something stops validating you.

And you are left with yourself.

That can feel uncomfortable. It can also be clarifying.

I still want the whole damn thing

None of this has made me less ambitious. Quite the opposite.

I still want the growth.

I still want the rooms.

I still want the impact.

I still want the stages.

I still want the company to grow.

I still want the audience to grow.

I still want the whole damn thing.

The difference is that I do not want any of those things to become responsible for telling me who I am.

I want them to be evidence of the work, not the source of my worth.

I want recognition without dependence on recognition.

Visibility without confusing visibility with identity.

Ambition without apology.

Leadership without waiting for permission.

And faith strong enough to trust that what God has built in me remains mine even when the external evidence temporarily disappears.

Last December, I chose Uncomfortable because I wanted a word that would challenge me.

I did not know I was choosing a word that would ask me, again and again, to separate who I am from everything I had become accustomed to pointing toward as proof.

Maybe that is why I needed it.

Because eventually, every influential woman has to know who she is before the room tells her.