Our Many Changing Identities

Throughout my life I have taken on many roles. I am a daughter, a sister, a friend, a student, an athlete the list goes on and on. To different people I fill different roles and it is interesting to hear my friends or family members introduce me to new people. My father seemed to always place a title after he would introduce me...  “This is my daughter Jessy, she is a swimmer or she is a volleyball player”.  I understand why he did this though be these identities fill a necessary void when meeting new people, it allows categorization to happen which keeps life simple. Otherwise we would be overwhelmed with too much information all the time. This is the same reason why we place people into stereotypes. If I mention, banker, football player, doctor, hippie instantly images and description words come to your mind and that is normal.

As a child I placed a lot of importance around these identities. Since this was how my father introduced me to people I always created this pressure to fulfill that role to the best of my ability. But what if I didn’t win my swim race, was I still a swimmer even though I wasn’t the best? There was never any direct pressure from my parents growing up to be a straight A student or a high level athlete but for some reason I needed those accolades to feel good about myself. Funny how that is something that I created and it stayed with me my whole student-athlete life. Once I left that role as student-athlete I knew to expect a slight identity crisis. However, I did not expect it to lead me to questioning my entire past!

Now, being injured those questions of, “Who am I? What do I value? What is my personal legend? What is my purpose of life?” resurface and get my mind going again. If I cannot express myself in a physical manner through hiking, swimming or jumping what do I do? I recently spoke with a volleyball friend of mine who is going through the same thing as me. She is in pain, cannot be physically active and pursue her passion of beach volleyball. She will be going for surgery in a couple weeks and I wish her the best of luck. During our conversation we both acknowledged negative feelings that have aroused during this time. I like to believe that it is during these hard times that we develop true character and allow ourselves to be more than our identities or labels. I realize that I am enough, just the way I am right now. I don’t need to be a world champion, I don’t need to climb all the mountains in the world, I just need to be kind to myself and kind to those around me all the while exuding gratitude and love for this life I have been given.