How would I show up as Jennifer Conneley?

Man people here don’t get it.

Should you have vented to your skip? Prob not. There’s better ways to approach. But there’s NO WAY your feedback was the sole reason your boss was fired. Not a chance. You said it yourself. Your boss had performance problems. Now if they had indicated medical problems then the company may be in legal hot water for firing her. But frankly she probably was not doing great all the way around and it was over for her. If it wasn’t your feedback it woulda been someone else’s.

And people don’t seem to understand OP was getting run over before she was fired. OP maybe was naive but definitely the victim. And now they’re bringing in people who are poor managers and ruining morale and performance even worse.

This is a blessing in disguise. Both you and your old boss are going to get better roles.

You might reach out and say that you think she was screwed over and now you’re being screwed over.

Others have said never to talk to the skip because they aren’t there to help you. This is false and immature. THIS SPECIFIC skip may be horrible but indeed a skip manager tends to try to get feedback to validate or invalidate things they already know. My skip asks me about my manager all the time. And my manager asks my directs about me. It’s supposed to be extremely constructive. And as long as you approach it this way, it will be.

Your skip was looking to be a hatchet man. You didn’t cause that.

I always thought balls deep was the same as waist deep when I was a kid because people used them interchangeably. As an adult I knew better but when I said Balls Deep as a kid I definitely meant it like you were up to your waist in it.