What defines you?
Is it an illness you are struggling with right now? Is it your profession? Is it a toxic relationship?
What do you find yourself talking about all the time? Is it a broad range of things or just one?
What is the language you use about yourself? Are you just a mum? Do you talk about your grief over a broken relationship all the time?
Are you getting swallowed up in something, drowning in it so much that you don’t even know where it ends and you begin?
We all have seasons of having to focus on just one thing. We have seasons of really hard slog in our professions, or seasons of illness and grief. We all have seasons of understanding our new role.
But these are just one part of our character. They are just one facet of the jewel. And the difficulty comes when you allow that thing, whatever it is to define you. To be all you talk about, to be all you think about.
Are you losing your identity?
What do you need to do to find it again?
Sometimes you have been your job, or a mum, or a hurting woman, for so long that you don’t even know anymore.
That’s okay; take the journey to find out.
Maybe write a list of things that make you happy, or give you joy
Or a list of things that you really don’t like but have been doing for such a long time you forgot you don’t like it.
Make a date with yourself, and go somewhere you love.
Let the tears fall if you need.
Be present and let the reality of the past and the possibility of the future wash over you.
Talk aloud to yourself, write a letter to yourself, paint a picture, collect things and make a collage … Whatever you need to do to find those other facets of your identity do it.
Like a jewel, let the light into all the different parts of your identity and then share that inner glow.
Jodie Mc Carthy