So I was a bit inspired today after reading a friends blog (Thanks Dawn!). She talked a bit about losing her identity. Man…Is this something most of us can relate to your what? I truly believe most of us, if we are honest with ourselves, go through this at least once in life, and sometimes, many times.
See. When we are born, we simply start off with one title.
I was my mother’s daughter.
This is all I knew for a while. Then I met my dad, and I became my father’s daughter. Michele’s sister. I learned I was a granddaughter. A cousin. A niece.
Each of these titles expanded my world a bit, and therefore, formed a part of my identity.
I went to school and learned I was someone’s Friend. Someone’s Student.
I became someone’s babysitter. Someone’s enemy. Someone’s girlfriend. Someone’s co-worker.
I became an adult, and willingly became Steve’s wife. I also uknowingly, became Angie’s sister! HAH…(Some titles come upon us when we aren’t looking!) And so on and so on….
My titles. My world. Expanded. Little by little. Year after year. Experience after experience.
But what happens when you lose a title? Or, if you thought you would have a title but didn’t?
Well, it changes you. You have to switch gears, adapt, and keep going.
See. This happened to me. I think its happening to her. I think it happens in some way, to all of us. We forget, or perhaps we never knew, who WE WERE at the core. Before we acquired all these titles. And so some of us feel the need to find that. Will the real Dawn please stand up????
I laugh when people I love say they “Know me so well”…Really? Because there are many days I don’t even know myself…LOL…
I have been through much in the last few years. Much of it self inflicted. Some of it, not of my making.
Most of it, from outsiders, can be traced back to my first significant weight loss. Which led many to comment that “Your weight loss has changed you”
Well. True. It did. You can’t lose a significant amount of weight and remain the same person. First of all, the dedication and motivation it takes to get there changes you. Determination is a powerful thing.
Second, as you shed layers of fat, and people start complimenting you in ways you haven’t heard before, you change. Your confidence in yourself soars. Your pride goes up. You are proud of yourself and have every right to be. Losing weight, working out, its not easy people. This is why we are in the middle of an obesity epidemic here
America.
Third, you find you are less content to just settle for the things you have always settled for. Whether it is a job, toxic friendships, or even relationships. You realize that HEY. I CAN DO ANYTHING I SET MY MIND TOO…I went out and grabbed the brass ring and damn it. I deserve better!!! You want to live life more fully. Right or wrong, that is the thought process.
And you lose patience with those who are stagnant in their lives. For many of us, losing the weight and getting healthy is the first significant thing we have ever done for ourselves. So yes. It changed me. And I am sad to say I lost more than one friendship on my journey.
I denied this for a while. I kept saying I was the same old Dawn…But I wasn’t. The thinner Dawn is different from the morbidly obese Dawn. Period. How could she not be??
But, here is what I have had trouble explaining to folks…It wasn’t just THAT title that changed me. It was a whole series of lost titles that changed me…
See, shortly before my weight loss journey, and, in fact, the reason I started the journey, I lost my dad…My dad, who had been out of my life more than in it. I could write ten blogs and never ever get that relationship down…
So what happens when you are no longer Dave’s daughter? Some of you know this feeling. No matter how old you are when it happens. Losing a parent changes you. I lost a title. I adjusted the best way I knew how…
Then my mom had a nervous breakdown. And somehow, my role/title flipped from being Lynda’s daughter, to being her care giver. WOW. That was a blow I did not expect. I truly believe, that experience alone, changed me more than any other…
When you essentially lose two parents within a year, it knocks you down. My mom was essentially mentally gone from her life for two years. I found I had great strength. Great will to survive. And I learned to carry on without her. I had no choice. This title too, I lost, without my permission.
Then we come to the biggie. The one title lost that has shaped my entire adult life.
I am nobody’s mother. 
Being a mother is a title that from our earliest memories, us girls assume we will one day have. I, like them, assumed it would one day just happen. They don’t teach you in kindergarten about infertility. They shove a baby doll in your hand and say go be a mom.
The fact that I am not now, nor ever will be, a mother, has changed me. Forever. And many many people have no idea how much. This title too, was taken from me, without my permission. And I deal with it the best I know how…I shove it down deep inside.
This brings me to my most recent lost title. I was Steve’s wife. Very happily. For many years. Then all these changes happened in a three year period, and well, Steve and Dawn couldn’t keep up with them. We tried. Both of us. At different times and in different ways. But we couldn’t adapt…
I couldn’t go back to what I was for him. And he couldn’t change and keep up for me. It was a sad state of affairs. This title I gave up. Willingly, I suppose. Depends on how far you analyze it.
And my newest title? I am a divorcee…
Talk about change…
Now. All of these titles have given me, at times, great sense of achievement, and also great sense of guilt and failure…The divorce. The infertility. I feel like a failure some days for those. The weight loss, it’s ongoing. There are moments of pride. And moments of disappointment.
So, what is the point of all this? I have rambled on and on…And if any of you are still with me, then God bless you. Go get yourself a candy bar on me! LOL…
The point is. None of us are what we seem. Truly. These titles that are slapped on us, sure, they are a part of us, but not one single one is entirely encompassing of who we are…
You can look upon another’s life. You can judge. You can assume.
You can assume one title makes up that person. “Oh, she is a soccer mom”. “Man, she is a slut!”.
You can make a million and one comments or observations. You can say “I can’t believe she did that. Why did she do that?” Etc etc. etc. But you will never know what it is like to walk in that person’s shoes…Armed with that person’s knowledge…Isn’t that a rule we learn very early in life?? To not judge until we have walked in another mans moccasins?
Yet we all do it. Even myself.
So the next time you are tempted to judge. Don’t. And the next time you are tempted to find who you are. Do. Shed the titles that no longer fit. Embrace the titles you like. And do your best to adapt to the ones you lose. Go out and find new ways to define yourself.
But remember…You and ONLY YOU know what’s at your core. And to deny it is almost like dying a bit every day. Go out today and be everything you WANT to be. Not what THEY want you to be.
“To thine ownself be true” ~William Shakespeare
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