I didn't start researching identity. I started trying to help people.

The question underneath

In 2014, I was medically discharged from the British Army after 15 years of service.

And I remember the practical questions.

What are you going to do now?

What job are you going to get?

What training do you need?

What happens next?

All important questions.

But there was another question sitting underneath all of them.

Who am I now?

Nobody seemed to have a particularly good answer.

And if I'm honest, neither did I.

I had spent years being a soldier.

It wasn't simply what I did.

It was who I was.

Then suddenly, that role was gone.

That was the beginning.

Trying to help people

In 2015, I set up Direct Transitioning Help as a CIC.

I self funded it.

I wasn't sitting there thinking I was going to build a research programme that would eventually become AURIS.

I was trying to help people.

People who were going through the same sort of transition I had just experienced.

And that is where some of the questions that still drive my research today first appeared.

Sixteen soldiers

2015. 2 LANCS.

Sixteen soldiers signed off.

From Private soldiers through to Colour Sergeant.

Sixteen people leaving the Army.

Five subsequently signed back on.

That information was given to us by the Battalion Commanding Officer, with whom Gareth worked closely.

I remember the number.

But what has stayed with me much more strongly is the question behind it.

Why did five go back?

Was it the job?

The people?

The structure?

The sense of purpose?

The belonging?

The identity?

Or something else?

At the time, I didn't have the language I have now.

I wasn't talking about occupational identity.

I wasn't talking about identity adaptation.

I certainly wasn't talking about a research hypothesis.

I was simply looking at people and asking:

What happens when the thing that has defined your life is suddenly no longer there?

Liverpool, 2017

Then came 2017.

Ten veterans took part in a woodworking project in Liverpool.

They were homeless and living in halfway housing.

They were collected each day, taken to the project and returned afterwards.

Many were struggling with drug and alcohol addiction.

And then we saw something that I have never forgotten.

Two stopped using drugs and alcohol and began finding purpose again after leaving the Armed Forces.

Before the project finished, three had found accommodation and moved into full time employment.

Now I need to be very clear here.

I cannot tell you that the woodworking project caused those outcomes.

I cannot tell you that coaching caused them.

There were many things happening in those people's lives.

And I would never turn two historical experiences into evidence they cannot support.

But I can tell you what was part of the support.

Coaching.

And it was delivered by people who had lived their own lives within the Armed Forces.

They understood the culture.

They understood the language.

They understood the expectations.

They understood the pride.

They understood the structure.

And they understood what it felt like to belong to something bigger than yourself.

The people being supported didn't have to spend the first part of the conversation explaining why those things mattered.

Someone already understood.

Looking back through the lens of research

And this is where it gets really interesting.

Because more than a decade later, I am looking back at those experiences through the lens of research.

And suddenly, some of the questions I was asking back then are appearing in the evidence base.

A 2024 study of UK veterans examined the role of military support and social identity during the transition to veterancy.

It found that maintaining and gaining social groups was associated with psychological resources including meaning, self esteem and personal control.

It also found that perceived military support during transition predicted the ability to gain new groups.

Read that again.

Meaning.

Connection.

Belonging.

Identity.

These weren't words I was using in 2015.

But they were things I was watching people struggle with.

What if it happens later?

And now we have another problem.

What if identity disruption doesn't happen when someone leaves?

What if it happens later?

Much later?

The current AURIS research is beginning to point towards something that I find incredibly important.

One participant took roughly ten years to recognise what had happened to his sense of identity.

Another fifteen years followed before he fully accepted it.

That raises a very uncomfortable question.

What if we are measuring transition at the wrong point in time?

Someone can be employed.

Someone can be housed.

Someone can appear settled.

Someone can be functioning.

Someone can look completely fine.

And still not know who they are.

That possibility is now part of the questions being investigated through Identity After the Uniform.

Back to 2014

And that brings me back to 2014.

Because I know what it feels like.

I know what it feels like when people ask:

What are you going to do now?

when the question inside your own head is:

Who am I now?

That is why Direct Transitioning Help mattered to me.

It was my first attempt to do something about a problem I had personally experienced.

It was self funded.

It was practical.

It was imperfect.

But it gave me something incredibly valuable.

Questions.

Questions from the people we supported.

Questions from what we saw.

Questions that didn't have neat answers.

And those questions stayed with me.

When questions become research

Today, those questions have become research.

Identity After the Uniform now looks beyond military service.

It is examining identity adaptation following identity defining roles across military, police, fire, ambulance, NHS and other service environments.

The research combines lived experience interviews, validated measures and longitudinal follow up.

And the emerging evidence is pointing towards a possible relationship between:

Identity

Community

Purpose

Stability

But I am deliberately calling that an emerging pattern.

Not a proven model.

That distinction matters.

AURIS is also recording cases that do not fit neatly into the emerging pattern, because if we are going to call this research, we have to be willing to look for the evidence that challenges us too.

Perhaps I have been asking the wrong question

So perhaps I have been asking the wrong question for the last twelve years.

Maybe the question isn't simply:

How do we transition someone out of the military?

Maybe it is:

How do we help someone rebuild a sense of who they are after the role that shaped them has changed or disappeared?

And perhaps employment is part of that.

Housing is part of that.

Financial security is part of that.

Health is part of that.

But perhaps so are:

Purpose.

Belonging.

Community.

Identity.

And perhaps we need to understand how those things interact before we can genuinely say that someone has successfully transitioned.

Still asking

I didn't set out to research any of this.

I was a woman who was medically discharged from the Army in 2014 and didn't know who she was anymore.

In 2015, I tried to help other people.

In 2017, I watched things happen that I couldn't properly explain.

For years afterwards, I kept thinking about them.

Now I have the opportunity to ask those questions properly.

Not to prove that I was right.

Not to prove that AURIS is right.

To find out.

Because behind every statistic is a person.

Behind every transition is an identity.

And sometimes the biggest question after someone leaves the uniform isn't:

What are you going to do now?

It is:

Who are you now?

I've been trying to understand that question since 2014.

And I'm still asking it.

Because I think we need to.