On July 1st, 2009, I attended my Air Force Reserve retirement ceremony at McCord Air Force Base, Washington. That was the specific date the loss of my title of “Air Force JAG” became real. I knew I would never be a JAG in the Air Force again, and I grieved the loss of the role.
When you retire, you don’t just lose a job — you lose the built-in assumption of competency and expertise. The title, the position, did invisible work before you ever opened your mouth.
Your Title Was Doing More Work Than You Knew
Professional titles pre-answer the question of competence before anyone even speaks.
The deference, the calls, the room turning toward you when the hard question lands — none of it is portable. It lived in the role, not the person.
Rebuilding in retirement isn’t just about finding competence.
It’s about finding competence that’s witnessed by others. The feedback loop that told you you were doing things right disappears when you retire, and that loss is as real as the loss of the role itself.
When Being the Expert Was Who You Were
We identify deeply with our role of being the expert in the room.
When I functioned as a JAG, commanders almost always accepted my advice because I was the legal expert as far as they were concerned. On one assignment, I regularly briefed a two-star general on issues he would decide. What I said carried weight, and his decisions were based on my advice.
When I retired from the JAG Corps, I left that role and identity behind. It feels like what I have to say now does not matter as much, and people can take it or leave it.
This loss can be especially acute for men, where competence is often central to self-concept. As Will Storr writes,
> “Assaults on our perceived confidence are assaults on our masculinity, which are assaults on our very sense of self.”
Competence Without Witnesses Doesn’t Count
One underrated dimension of expertise loss is the loss of witnesses. Colleagues and clients knew you in your competence — that specific, sharp version of you. Without them, you don’t get the affirmation and verification of your competence.
It’s not enough to have competence in retirement. It needs to be competence that other people can see, recognize, and confirm back to you.
That external feedback loop is what tells you you’re still doing things right. And it’s exactly what disappears when you leave a structured professional role.
Not All Witnessing Is Created Equal
There are really two tiers of witnessed competence, and not all witnessing is equal. I’ve experienced both of these in retirement.
1. In-the-room witnessing. As a National Park Service volunteer ranger, there’s immediate, visible, and unambiguous public witnessing. When people come into the visitor center and see my uniform, they respond to me as though I’m the one with the expertise. They ask me questions and listen as I give them a brief orientation.
The uniform isn’t the goal — it’s the mechanism. It preloads the assumption of expertise, so I can get to do what I actually love: teaching.
During my retirement, I’ve worn a uniform as a shift supervisor in a sheriff’s posse. I’ve also served as a National Park Service ranger and currently as a volunteer ranger.
I kept finding my way back. The uniform gives me a built-in assumption of expertise — people listen and believe. I wasn’t conscious of what I was doing at the time, but it makes sense once I named the need.
2. Public but silent witnessing. My blogging is an example — it’s technically witnessed by readers, but the feedback is sparse, unpredictable, and delayed. It’s nowhere near the feedback I get when I’m wearing a uniform in a National Park Service visitor center.
Without the witnessing feedback, I sometimes wonder if what I’m writing about is helping anyone. In other words, I’m questioning my competency as a blog writer.
What to Do With This — Before and After You Retire
You’re going to miss being the expert in the room. You’re going to need to grieve it, and you’re going to need to find other contexts where you can be that expert and be recognized as such.
For pre-retirees, the best thing you can do is see this coming and name the loss before it hits. That way, when it does hit, you understand that your response is perfectly natural — and why you’re feeling that way. And you can give yourself permission to grieve when it happens.
For retirees, you want to recognize what happened and rebuild your confidence in contexts where, ideally, it’s witnessed and felt.
For example, if you have accounting skills, you might volunteer to do accounting for a nonprofit. In that organization, you’d be seen as the expert in the room. You might attend board meetings and give financial reports. You’d become the go-to person for financial questions.
That’s what’s happened to me in my current role as a National Park Service volunteer. I greet visitors, give orientations, answer questions, and lead tours.
Visitors see me as the expert and learn from me. The uniform and the role are the shortcuts to credibility. I feel competent in this role because of the public witnessing and feedback.
The Answer Already Has a Shape
The good news is that this is a solvable problem. You don’t need to recreate your old career. You need to find the context — a role, an organization, a volunteer position — where your specific expertise is visible and valued. Where people turn to you with the hard questions.
It doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be real. Start with what you already know how to do, then ask: where could I do this where someone would see it, rely on it, and tell me it mattered?
That’s the shape of the answer. The specific content is yours to fill in.
Note: I wrote this blog post myself using my own words and thoughts for the initial draft. I used AI only to suggest headlines, section headings, images and text improvements.
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