Grieving my former self.
Identity is something we all grapple with. We’re all searching for it, what about losing it?
It’s my current belief and opinion that identity is less of something to be found than it is something to be developed. The complexity I suppose is in attaching our identity to circumstances, places, people and things that lie primarily out of our control. We identify with places, faces and behaviors and when these are stripped away from us, we feel loss. We feel we’ve lost a part of ourselves. I hear this occasionally from new mothers. Many new mothers express a feeling of loss and grief for the person they were before taking on the role of ‘Mother’. I’ve heard it from empty nesters, the joy of new found freedom is quickly replaced with a feeling of loss and a desire to be needed. There’s a shift inside, a longing for the familiar. But what about the smaller, less monumental moments. The moments that others can’t see but you can feel.
I recently went through a 3 year season of building. Building new friendships, new connections, new skillsets. The season felt like a whirlwind of upswings. New job, new neighborhood, new investments. My network was growing, my friendships were growing, my skillsets were growing and best of all, I was being celebrated for all of the above. I felt like my life was on a never ending upswing. This was it, this was my new life.
And then.. everything changed.
Something happened within my family that shook up the contentment in my heart. I went to therapy. It was good, but it wasn’t without loss. I was being pruned. I was learning a better way but I was grieving the old way. My new found perspective was better, healthier, but it came at a cost. I was grieving.
Then, in March of 2020 everything shut down. For the remainder of the year our DTLA apartment would be a front row seat to marches, riots and looters. There was loss, fear and political divide. Elevators became areas of tension and argument. Helicopters were the soundtrack we went to sleep to every night. Several nights we counted at least 8 of them. People were grieving. I was grieving.
Around this same time I began experiencing the symptoms of a hormone imbalance coinciding with auto immune issues. It felt like my body was no longer my own. It was crying out against me. This was effecting my health, my mood and my relationship with my now husband. I searched for answers through many Dr. appointments and eventually found that my greatest source of help was my trainer. She was a wealth of information and helped me to recognize some of the foods that were causing my body harm and how to begin healing the damage that had been done.
In addition to these changes, my friendships were changing. I began to crave more connections of high quality and consistency. Connections of equality, a give and take. With the other changes I was processing, I didn’t have much energy left over for relationships that lacked depth. I needed consistency and reliability. Sadly, this meant my friend circle naturally became a bit smaller.
As of January 2023, almost nothing is as it was. In many ways for me personally, it’s better. But it came at a cost and a shift in identify.
I am not the person I was and so I do not take up space the way that I used to, and the relationships I invest in look different. And sometimes that makes me feel sad. Sometimes new and good and different can feel good and sad at the same time. I think to experience the good, we need to also process the sad. Sadness, like grief, deserves its moment. It’s much easier to grow and move on without resentment once we’ve given our past the moment it deserves. To quote one of my favorite Johnnyswim songs, “If it matters, let it matter. If you’re heart’s breaking let it ache”.