I’ve put my identity down, and now I can’t find it!

What happens when we become curious about who we are, rather than feeling we have to keep being who we've always been?

There's a tension in it. We spend so much of our lives trying to work out who we are. We acquire identities, build careers, become partners, parents, professionals, the reliable one, the capable one. We work hard to become somebody, and then there can be moments when the identity we've worked so hard to establish no longer quite fits.

Sometimes that happens gradually, almost without us noticing. At other times, life has a way of stripping things away or forcing us to change direction. Work roles change, we have to pivot, we get made redundant, relationships break down, children grow up and the people we love pass away. Sorry, perhaps not the cheeriest of starts. Stay with me, I promise it gets better!

At one point in my life, I realised that I was almost always referred to as someone's daughter, someone's sister, someone's mother (even the dog's mother fell into that category), someone's wife, and then by the various work roles I had held. I love(d) all these roles, and I am gladly all of them. I wouldn't change that. But I did stop one day and think: so, who am I as just me?

Are any of us ever just us? Or is it the many roles and identities we inhabit that give our lives meaning and give us a sense of purpose? I'm still not sure I know. But someone asked me recently, "What if you can't be those things? What if you can't do those things? What if…?" I'm still not sure I know the answer, but the vague sense of rising panic tells me just how invested I am in all of it.

I can remember going to so many workshops and group events over the years where the icebreakers were all about who you were and what you did. As if the measure of our whole being and our whole life could be summed up by a name and a job role. It is true that when many of us think about having a purpose, it often comes with the expectation that there will be a role or profession attached to it. Being born simply to be who we are and live our seemingly uneventful lives can sometimes feel a little like it's not quite what was advertised. But back to the icebreakers…

As they went around the room, everyone, it seemed, was somebody. A "this" or a "that". And I would feel the pressure building as it got closer and closer to me. Most of the time, I was just me. I wasn't a this or a that at the time. I wanted to say my name and move on, but that wasn't quite the name of the game.

I can remember trying to come up with something as my turn got closer. I could already feel the self-consciousness, even the embarrassment, before it had reached me. By the time it was my turn to say my name, I was usually a hot, sweaty mess and would just as soon have had the ground open up and swallow me. It didn't feel enough to simply say, "I'm Jo", and leave it at that.

And "Tell us something interesting about yourself" was even worse. I wasn't a this or a that, I definitely wasn't interesting, and I couldn't think of anything particularly interesting that had ever happened to me. I did get over this, although my loathing of icebreakers has never really thawed – see what I did there?

The thing is, even when I reached a point in my life where I could say I was a this or a that, it didn't actually get any easier. Deep down, I still felt like I was just me, and at times I wasn't sure if that was enough.

I suppose the point I'm making is that identity can be a bit of an illusion, or at least something we buy into without always questioning it. We find ways to describe ourselves, and those descriptions become familiar. They help us understand where we belong and how we fit into the world. But what happens when life throws a curveball and those descriptions change? It can take a while to adjust, but it doesn't mean we have failed, or that we've wasted our time on a detour that took twenty-odd years. Perhaps we weren't off track at all. And dare I say it, perhaps it really was about the journey.

Identities can be helpful. They give us an anchor in what can sometimes be a stormy world. But they can also become little containers we feel obliged to stay inside. We work hard to establish an identity, and then spend just as much time trying to describe it to others in a way that makes us distinctive, interesting, worthy. Perhaps the difficulty isn't that we don't know who we are, or that we are somehow lost and need to find ourselves. Perhaps we're trying to describe something that is still moving. Something that is meant to keep moving.

When we invest so much of our time in striving, producing, doing and fulfilling our roles, so much of our value and self-worth can become intertwined with who we are, what we do and who we do it for. So, when, for whatever reason, some of that comes crashing down, what then? Perhaps we don't know who we are without it. Perhaps we have mistaken familiarity for identity. Or perhaps we have simply changed and haven't yet found the words for the person we're becoming.

When this has happened to me in certain areas of my life, letting go has sometimes felt as though it makes all those years a waste somehow. And yet I believe we are who we are because of the experiences we've had. Nothing is ever entirely wasted. The intellectual part of me knows that, although the emotional part still sometimes wants to argue.

I recently read something along the lines of being allowed to outgrow a life you once worked so hard to belong to, and this really made me stop and think. I have outgrown so many things in my life, and yet I know how often I have clung (thank you, Cancerian pincers!) to things waaaay past the point when I should have let go. I have fought tooth and nail to hold on, only to suddenly, as if hit by a bolt of lightning, realise I was doing it again. My usual response at that point is, "What on earth are you doing?" before finally letting go with a small hope that no one noticed.

I had even been doing that thing where you look back and think about all the effort, the blood, sweat and tears that went into something: the worry, the time, the energy and the sacrifices. And I began to recognise the unspoken rule I had been carrying: if something mattered enough for me to work hard for it, I ought to keep wanting it. And let's not even start on the thought of having to begin again from scratch. Starting again doesn't always feel like the adventure it's supposed to be.

Did I mention being tired from all that hard work to get to the place I thought I was meant to be, only to find myself facing another curveball?

There is comfort in what we know, even when that comfort begins to feel less like safety and more like stagnation. Sometimes the thought of "I'll never get that time back again" becomes the very reason we feel something has to keep mattering, even when it no longer does in quite the same way.

A career, a role, a way of living, even a version of ourselves, can have been right for us at one point without needing to define every point that follows. We don't have to decide that our former selves were mistaken in order to allow ourselves to change. We are allowed to outgrow a life we fought for, or a place we worked so hard to belong to, without making it mean anything more than: it's time.

This is where astrology, as it so often does, feels in conversation with what I'm noticing in myself. For anyone who follows the planets, at the time of writing, several are considered retrograde, including Mercury, Venus, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, alongside Chiron. Retrograde means that, from our perspective here on Earth, they appear to move backwards, although they don't actually reverse their orbits. In astrology, these periods are often interpreted as invitations to reflect, revisit and reconsider. That symbolism offers me a way to look again at the patterns, stories, directions and detours that have brought me here. To consider what is really of value. What matters? What do I want to take forward into the winter months and the year ahead?

What interests me is the distinction between looking backwards and going backwards. Revisiting an earlier version of myself doesn't have to mean returning to it. I can look again at what mattered, what I hoped for and what I learned, without assuming that the life I chose then must be the life I keep choosing now. That thought changes how I see the in-between. I have put so many identities down and outgrown so many things.

Perhaps what I had considered the waiting room of my life was actually the training room of my life: not necessarily a place where I was waiting to become someone else, but somewhere I was learning, noticing and discovering what I wanted to carry forward. If my heart was a doorway, perhaps the journey so far has been part of learning how to walk through it. I wouldn't arrive empty-handed. The experiences would come with me, even if the old identity didn't. So yes, not only have I put my identity down and can no longer find it, I'm just not sure I want to anymore.

Perhaps, rather than asking myself to produce a new, definitive answer to "Who am I?", I could be a little more curious. What did that part of my life give me? What did I learn about myself along the way? What has changed, and what am I noticing now? What do I want to take with me, even if I no longer want to take the whole thing?

These questions leave room for gratitude as well as change. They allow me to recognise what a chapter has given me without making a promise to stay in it forever. Looking back becomes a way of understanding where I am, rather than a reason to remain where I was. And maybe some of you recognise this too?

And that brings me back to the icebreaker. Perhaps my unease was never simply about not knowing what to say. Perhaps it was about trying to make something still moving fit into a neat description.

There's one last thing that comes to mind. My mum once told me that she had chosen my name, and when it was registered, the registrar made a comment about not letting anyone shorten it, as that would be a shame. I always used the shortened version of my name. It was quicker, easier, and my full name was only ever used by Mum when I was in trouble! Yet, after she passed away, I suddenly found myself introducing myself by my full name. Somehow, it fit in a way it never had before. I think she would have liked that.

And… maybe… just maybe… that is all the identity I have ever needed. Perhaps the next time I'm asked who I am, "I'm me" might feel like enough, even while I'm still finding out what that means.

If you are on your own journey with identity or life’s curveballs, or even if you just feel like connecting with others who understand, I would love to hear from you. You can find out more about how to work with me here. I will also be releasing details soon for my December Women’s circle, so look out for this later in November.  

With warmth and curiosity,

Johanna 

Curiously-U