When Your Roles Become Your Identity

On what happens to a woman when the thing she built her life around changes shape.

Shortly after college I wanted an adventure, and to move out of my home state. I joined the Air Force. But that’s not what this post is about. It’s about what happens when a role, or position, or title is what we hang our identify on. I was twenty-something when I left the Air Force. I had an identity there. A rank. A purpose. But I also left as a wife and a new mom. I had a very clear answer to the question of who I was and what I was doing with my life.

I was a wife. A military spouse. Which came with its own identity, its own rhythm, its own sense of purpose built around someone else's career and someone else's timeline.

Then I wasn't that anymore either. I was divorced. Which ultimately society likes to force that on us as an identity too. Like it is the most important thing about you for a while, whether you want it to be or not. I saw myself as “divorced”, it became my label before it ever had a chance to become just another chapter in my life. Then slowly I began to shift that identity to Single. And for the first time in a long time, finally just me. And, well mom.

I didn't know what to do with that.

What I did know was how to be a mom. And I went in fully. But I also knew, early on, that I didn't want that to be all I was. I had heard enough women talk about how devastating it was when their children left home. I was determined to be okay.

So, I worked at it. I got into CrossFit. I tried pottery, art, gardening. I built a life alongside the mom role, not just inside it. I tried. I really did.

And it was still hard when he left.

He graduated. And he left. And I want to be clear — I saw it coming. He was my only child and I knew the day would arrive. I prepared for it. Honestly started mentally preparing when he was in 5^th grade. I faced it early. I thought I was ready.

Transition is hard even when you see it coming and plan for it.

What caught me off guard was not the leaving. It was the mix of it. The pride. The excitement for him. And underneath both of those, quiet and a little surprising, the loss of the everyday. The loss of being needed in the same specific way I had been needed for nineteen years.

I didn't think I liked being needed that much. And then he called to ask me to help him find a barber shop in his new city. And then he called to ask how to cook the chicken. And I felt something lift in my chest both times.

Helping him cook. One of the roles I hope never fully changes, even as he grows into his own.

Those are roles I hope never fully change. Even as he grows. Even as he learns. I know he will do all of it on his own one day. And I know that is exactly what is supposed to happen.

But I also know that I was not prepared for how much of my identity had been living inside the everyday of it.

A year after he left I got remarried. Twelve years after my divorce. And that was its own identity shift, from single mom to wife again, to partner, to someone's person in a new and different way.

Each transition asked the same question. Just in a different voice.

Who are you now?

Here is what I want you to hear.

Your roles are not the problem. Being a devoted mother, a committed partner, a loyal daughter. Those are not things to be ashamed of. They are real and they matter and they are part of who you are.

But they are not all of who you are. You are much fuller and deeper than that.

And the danger of building your entire identity inside a role is that roles change. Children grow up. Relationships end. Careers shift. Parents pass. The thing you organized your whole self around can change in the blink of an eye. And if there is nothing underneath it, if there is no self that exists outside of what you do for everyone else, that change can feel like losing everything.

Not because you actually lost everything.

Not because you actually lost everything. But because you were convinced that if you stopped holding it all together, everything would fall apart. And somewhere in all that holding, you forgot to carve out even a sliver of space to hold yourself.

This series is about finding out who you are underneath the roles. Not instead of them. Alongside them.

She is still there. The woman underneath all of it. She has just been waiting for someone to ask about her.

If you are curious about what it looks like to do that work in a real and supported setting, the November retreat has a small number of spots remaining. Early bird pricing through October 10th, registration closes October 16th. I would love for you to be there.

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