Episode #052 · Monique Jackson-King
The Hidden Cost of Getting What I Wanted
When Monique Jackson-King was eight years old, she watched Who's the Boss? and decided she wanted to become Angela Bower, the successful marketing executive who seemed to have it all. Years later, she did.
An MBA. A coveted role at Amazon. Leadership. Influence. The career she'd imagined for decades.
Then it disappeared.
In this conversation, Monique shares what it felt like to lose not just a job, but the identity she'd carefully built around it. We talk about panic attacks, grief, shame, friendships that changed, the seductive pull of prestigious titles, and the slow work of becoming someone whose worth isn't dependent on a business card.
This is what happens when the dream you've chased your whole life finally comes true and you realize it doesn't actually fit.
When the Career You Worked For Starts Taking More Than It Gives
Monique's experience at Amazon wasn't uniformly bad. After realizing her first team wasn't a fit, she moved into a role that felt genuinely meaningful.
She was leading people, helping build a new initiative, and working alongside people who shared her interest in community involvement and corporate social responsibility. For the first time, pieces of her background and values seemed to converge inside her work.
“I’m exactly where I want to be,” she remembers thinking.
There was another side to reaching that level of professional success. Monique noticed how differently people responded to her because of her company, title, and proximity to power. Invitations arrived. People wanted lunch. People she admired suddenly seemed interested in knowing her.
She understands why it was intoxicating. She also began looking more closely at the people in those rooms. She respected their accomplishments while questioning how some treated their families, colleagues, and vendors. The professional ecosystem she had worked hard to enter began to feel increasingly performative.
By 2023, the gap between the career she had wanted and the life she was actually living had become difficult to ignore.
When Your Body Knows Your Job Isn't Working Before You Do
Monique had received signals from her body almost from the beginning.
On her first team, she remembers feeling like she couldn't breathe. She was exhausted and regularly felt physically unwell. After going to urgent care one night, she was told she appeared to be having a panic attack and her blood pressure was extremely high. When she mentioned her blood pressure to a colleague, he responded, “All of our blood pressure is really high.”
Monique remembers thinking: Why are we normalizing this?
Changing teams improved her experience professionally, but the physical signals never fully disappeared.
By 2023, her blood pressure remained high. She was gaining weight, experiencing intense anxiety, and had become afraid to fly despite traveling frequently for work.
Then there were the smaller signs. After returning from a trip, Monique started making dinner and discovered her daughter no longer liked mushrooms.
“When did you stop liking mushrooms?” she asked.
She had been gone enough that she'd missed changes happening inside her own family.
Monique knew something was shifting, although she didn't yet know what it meant. Toward the end of 2023, she took medical leave. While she was out, a meeting appeared on her calendar. Her role was being eliminated.
Losing a Job When Your Identity Is Wrapped Up in Your Title
Monique had been laid off before. This one felt different.
Afterward, she disappeared from public view. She had been active on Instagram, sharing pieces of her personal and professional life. Then she stopped. Behind the scenes, she was crying every day, struggling to get out of bed, and questioning what she could have done differently.
Should she have compromised more? Changed her tone? Handled certain situations differently?
“I could not see the accomplishments that I achieved at that time,” she tells me. “I was just broken.”
Work had become the place where Monique knew how to find affirmation and worth. Earlier relational experiences had left their own wounds, and professional achievement became an area where she could excel and receive validation. When the job disappeared, all of that collided.
She describes an “avalanche” of things she suddenly had to unlearn, deconstruct, reconstruct, and rebuild. The experience affected her physically as well. Her iron dropped. She lost hair. Her relationships and sense of self were strained.
There was no immediate pivot waiting on the other side.
When I ask whether she had any space to dream about what came next, Monique tells me she didn't begin dreaming again until nearly two years later.
For much of those 20 months without a job, she was surviving.
Figuring Out Who You Are Without the Business Card
When I ask Monique what she learned about herself through the experience, her answer is immediate: “I have never been my title.”
Her identity, she says, is bigger than any office she could occupy. No company created it, and no company has the ability to take it away. She's also had to let go of something else: her need for other people's affirmation and acceptance. That process has reached beyond work.
Friendships have ended. She's reconsidered relationships built during previous chapters of her life. And she's returning to parts of herself that had less room when work consumed so much of her attention: creativity, faith, art, movement, animals, hosting people in her home, and being the person she is, as she puts it, “on a Tuesday night.”
Her voice is part of that return.
Monique doesn't want someone else's assessment of her communication, leadership, or value to send her scrambling to prove herself again. She wants to be able to hear those judgments without immediately responding, I need to show you how valuable I am.
But she hasn't replaced her old professional identity with a perfectly formed new one. When I ask Monique the open question she's living inside now, she says: “Where do I belong? Where do I fit?”
She still loves strategic work. She enjoys building businesses and wants multiple streams of income. She can imagine herself inside an organization again and has found fulfillment building things of her own. She just doesn't know yet which dream she wants to pursue.
And after 20 months spent figuring out who she is without the title she worked so hard to earn, that's where Monique actually is when we talk: still deciding where all of those pieces of herself belong next.
Mentions and links
Monique Jackson-King
Monique Jackson-King is a keynote speaker, corporate retail strategist, and founder who helps leaders navigate growth, change, and identity with clarity and conviction. Her career has spanned corporate retail leadership, consulting, education, entrepreneurship, and nonprofit work, giving her a unique perspective on what it means to lead through transition without losing yourself in the process. Having experienced significant professional and personal pivots herself, Monique is passionate about helping others align strategy, purpose, and performance while remaining grounded in who they are. She is the founder of Curate, a consultancy that helps brands and leaders build integrated growth strategies, and the host of Shattered Ceilings, a podcast exploring the intersection of faith, leadership, and life's unexpected transitions. Through her speaking, consulting, and content, Monique encourages leaders to pursue meaningful success, embrace reinvention, and lead with both courage and authenticity.
