The Wednesday Play: Discovering Identity

Hi Playmakers,

Every family has stories. Some are proudly passed down. Others stay hidden—buried under silence, shame, or simply time.

A few years ago, I uncovered one of ours.

It began on my grandmother’s deathbed. In fleeting moments of clarity, she started revealing pieces of a story no one had heard before — details about my grandfather’s past, mentions of another family, and hints that the life we thought we knew wasn’t quite real.

After she passed, we found the proof.

Tucked inside old boxes were faded documents from India, stamped with a name none of us recognized: Gupta.

That’s when the truth surfaced. My grandfather had run away from his home country and abandoned a secret first family. In the mid-1950s, he traveled alone through Gibraltar, learned fluent Spanish, and by the time he arrived in the U.K. and met my grandmother, he had reinvented himself completely.

He called himself Juan Decosta. He claimed he was a Cuban refugee and told his children, including my mother, that Spanish was their native language. Our last name, our heritage, our story — it was all made up.

We later confirmed it through 23andMe and found cousins throughout India. We learned that we were Bengali. To this day, we don’t know what he was running from, only that he erased an entire past to start over.

And somehow, that discovery changed everything.

I haven’t yet reconnected with that side of my heritage, but I hope to. I’ve even considered joining some of the Indian events or communities in my city.

What this experience taught me is that identity isn’t a fixed destination. It’s something we build and rebuild as we uncover the truth. My grandfather made a bold choice to start over. I may never fully understand why.

But I do know this: the stories we inherit shape us — but they don’t have to define us forever.

Sometimes, discovering the truth doesn’t change who you are. It simply brings you home to yourself.

Jenny

Before she became one of the most successful Hispanic founders in beauty, Andrea Lisbona was a girl in Barcelona with an eye for design and an entrepreneurial spirit. Her parents ran a small family business, and she grew up watching them navigate the highs and lows of self-employment. From an early age, she was fascinated by branding. While her classmates played with toys, Andrea sketched logos and imagined building a global company of her own.

Read the story now.

Today, she is the founder and CEO of Touchland, the personal care brand best known for transforming hand sanitizer into a design-forward product beloved by consumers and celebrities alike. What began as a bootstrapped idea turned into a viral brand sold in more than 20,000 retail locations — and in 2024, Touchland was acquired in a deal valued at up to $880 million.

Andrea’s story is not one of overnight success or industry privilege. It is a journey marked by vision, grit, and a willingness to go all in when others didn’t believe in the category.

Read how Andrea achieved a near billion dollar exit.

Insights are only valuable if they’re acted on. Let’s turn this knowledge into impact with small but powerful action steps.

This week’s challenge: discover a part of your identity that is no longer serving you.

Sometimes we put ourselves in a box. Think about how you see yourself, and try to identify which aspects of your identity are simply stories that you are telling yourself. Are these stories serving you? Which ones can you shed?

Call to Action:

1️⃣ Identity an element of your identity tied to a story that is no longer serving you.

2️⃣ Share online and tag me, or drop a comment and share your post below. The best responses may be featured next week.

Every week, I spotlight somebody from the community who is making a big play in their career or industry. This week’s play comes from Amanda Goetz, one of my favorite X creators.

Amanda’s viral tweet about Mother’s Day makes her this week’s #Playmaker, no doubt. Truly a mic drop, it’s not a surprise that she’s gone viral again this past week.

Want to be featured next?

Make sure to tag @Jenny Stojkovic on your post for a chance to be featured.

The Wednesday Play isn’t just a newsletter — it’s a community. I’ll be announcing much more in coming weeks and months! For now, let’s connect across social.

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