What Was Mine to Keep
TRUE FICTION
Stories that never happened — but are always true.
Photo by Dwayne joe on Unsplash
They gave her five minutes and a box with no lid.
Her name was still on the door when they walked her out.
Inside the box was a branded water bottle, a Montblanc pen, a half used Moleskine, and a photo of her daughter taken during the ribbon-cutting ceremony of the new HQ, back when the company still felt like hers.
Amara Kingsley didn’t say a word as the lift doors closed. The HR lead avoided her eyes. One of the junior execs offered a tight, embarrassed nod, the kind you give someone in mourning.
And in a way, she was mourning.
Not for the job, not even for the title, rather, she was mourning the version of herself that believed merit could outlast politics.
We met 72 hours later, in a private hotel suite in Mayfair.
I had coached Amara before, back when she was still being courted by investors, back when the press couldn’t stop calling her “The Next Big Thing.” She had managed to negotiate coaching from me as part of her exit package
She sat across from me in silence, her posture still upright, still measured, but her eyes were vexed. Betrayed. Hurt.
“So,” she said, unsmiling. “What’s left?”
I waited a beat before answering.
“Whatever you choose to keep.”
The first few sessions were quiet, sparse and very protective.
The thing is, she didn’t cry, rage or vent as she was entitled to. She intellectualised everything like a report to the board. Every sentence was delivered without a trace of emotion and in bullet points.
Then one day, she broke.
“I walked into that boardroom thinking I had allies,” she said one morning, eyes brimming with tears. “I walked out, realising I was a liability on their spreadsheet.”
Then silence.
And finally, a whisper, more to herself than to me
“I gave them everything Dave. Everything”
I let the silence linger.
“They didn’t take everything,” I said. “They just took what they could reach.”
We did the work. Quietly and steadily. I drew on all the coaching tools I had. Week by week, we stripped back the layers. Not the strategic layers. The human ones.
I got her to write a letter to her younger self.
The Amara who started the company on borrowed money and impossible dreams.
She journaled her fears without trying to fix them.
She walked without her phone.
She practised saying her name without the title.
One afternoon, she said: “I used to think I was the company. Now I think I might have been the soul of it.”
Six months later, Amara agreed to speak at a private event for young women in tech.
She arrived without fanfare. No slides. No script. Just her voice.
She told them the story not just of her rise, but of her reckoning.
She spoke of betrayal, yes, but also of rebirth.
“Sometimes,” she said, “you don’t bounce back. Sometimes, you bounce forward into something truer.”
I smiled to myself and thought, “You lickle teef you didn’t even credit me for that”
A year after the takeover, we met again on the rooftop as Soho House in Shoreditch. Gold hoops. Natural curls. Turmeric latte in hand.
She’d just closed funding for a new venture. Sustainable tech, female-led, values-first.
“I thought I lost everything,” she said, eyes scanning the skyline.
“But it turns out, I only lost what I’d outgrown.”
I smiled.
“They took the company,” I said. “You kept the leadership.”
She nodded.
“No, Dave”, she said with a smile. “I reclaimed it.”
Coaching Notes
Leadership is often mistaken for a title.
But the real leaders? They’re the ones who lead without it.
Amara’s story is fictional but the truth it carries is real. I’ve seen this story, or versions of it, more times than I can count as an executive coach.
A founder was ousted. A CEO is undermined. A leader is cut loose.
Not because they lacked value but because their values clashed with those who measured only profit and ego.
But here’s the thing about loss:
It has a way of revealing what was always yours.
Reflective Questions:
Who am I when no one is watching?
What have I outgrown but still carry?
What would I build if I had nothing to prove?
