Monthly Musing: On Identity...

Who made up the rules?

Not the laws that keep us safe.

The quieter ones. The unwritten ones. The ones that gently tell us who we're supposed to be.

Who decided what success looks like?

What "having your life together" is even supposed to mean?

Or who you're supposed to be by now?

Who says?

It's a question I've found myself asking more and more recently. Not in defiance. Simply in curiosity.

Over the past few years, it has felt as though a veil has been gently lifting. Not because the world has changed, but because I've started seeing it – and myself – with more clarity. I've started noticing just how much of what I thought was me was actually something I'd inherited, learned, adapted to or quietly absorbed without ever realising it had happened.

Looking back, I can see that this clarity has been years in the making. I've spent much of my professional life encouraging children to question the stories they tell themselves, to notice patterns and to become curious about what lies beneath behaviour. Somewhere along the way, I began applying those same principles to myself.

It's often easier to recognise these patterns in other people than it is in ourselves. We're simply too close to our own stories. Sometimes, it isn't until we stop and really look that we realise we've been looking through them all along.

I find myself becoming increasingly curious about the difference between living consciously and living conditionally. Am I doing this because it aligns with my values, because it's necessary, because I genuinely want to, or simply because I've never stopped to ask...

Who says?

I have short hair. I rarely wear make-up (although I do appreciate a good lash tint and freshly threaded eyebrows!). High heels and I quietly went our separate ways years ago – my feet remain extremely grateful. None of those choices were made to prove a point. They simply feel more like me.

But they did leave me wondering...

How do I know they really are me?

Over the years, I've discovered that my body often notices long before my mind does. There's a feeling – a quiet tightness somewhere around my solar plexus – that tells me something isn't sitting quite right. Sometimes it's because I've agreed to something I didn't really want to do. Sometimes because I've found myself trying to meet an expectation that was never really mine. Sometimes because I've simply forgotten to ask the question...

Who says?

We inherit far more than our eye colour and our surname. We also learn far more than we often realise. From the moment we're born, we observe the world around us. With time, curiosity and, perhaps, a little discernment, we can begin to choose what we absorb.

We absorb stories about who we should be. We absorb beliefs about success, relationships, work, beauty and worth. We inherit history too. Conflict, prejudice, fear and division can all be passed quietly from one generation to the next. So can compassion, courage, kindness and resilience.

We inherit intergenerational trauma. We also inherit ancestral resilience.

None of us arrives in the world carrying these stories.

We learn them. We live them. Sometimes, without realising it, we pass them on.

Some messages are passed directly. Others are absorbed more quietly through the people around us, the cultures we grow up in and the countless messages we receive about what success, beauty and belonging are supposed to look like.

Some of those messages protect us. Some help us belong. Some quietly ask to be questioned. Thankfully, many continue to evolve. But perhaps the more important question isn't whether society is changing. It's whether we've noticed which of those stories we've already accepted as our own.

I've come to wonder whether there are two ways we quietly drift away from ourselves.

One is by becoming who we think other people need us to be. We learn to read the room, anticipate expectations, avoid disappointment and keep the peace. Those behaviours often begin as intelligent adaptations. They help us survive. They help us belong.

The other is by allowing the world around us to define our worth. We begin measuring ourselves against expectations, achievements, appearance, roles, labels and the countless ways the world invites us to keep score, until we forget that none of those things actually tell us who we are.

Sometimes those two paths exist independently. More often, I suspect, they quietly intertwine. The more we perform in order to belong, the easier it becomes to define ourselves through the approval of others.

Neither happens overnight. It's more like a gentle tide than a wave. The drift is so subtle that what once helped us adapt, or once helped us belong, quietly becomes the way we believe we simply are. Before we know it, we've drifted so gradually that we barely notice we're no longer steering.

One of the most liberating ideas I've ever come across is that there isn't just one version of me. Every friend has a different version. Every member of my family has a different version. Every colleague has a different version. Even complete strangers can leave a brief interaction carrying a version of me that exists nowhere else.

None of those versions belongs entirely to me. They're shaped as much by the other person's experiences, beliefs, expectations and needs as they are by anything I've actually said or done. Perhaps that's why I've always found it helpful to remember that what other people say and do often tells us far more about them than it does about us.

The only version I have any real responsibility for is the one I meet when everything else goes quiet. The one who has to live with the choices I make. The one who lays her head on the pillow each night.

None of us gets to choose whether life happens. Joy, grief, disappointment, uncertainty and change are simply part of being human. We all have to learn to navigate life on life's terms.

Perhaps the freedom isn't found in controlling life. Perhaps it's found in responding to it consciously, without abandoning ourselves in the process. Every experience, joyful or painful, influences the person we become. With time, I've come to realise that I still have a say in which parts of those experiences I allow to define me.

Perhaps identity isn't something we create.

Perhaps it's something we recover.

Not by rejecting the world around us, but by gently questioning the stories we've inherited, the beliefs we've learned, the rules we've stopped noticing and the versions of ourselves we've begun to mistake for the truth. By listening to that quiet feeling in our body that whispers, This isn't me. By learning, little by little, to distinguish between who we are and who we've learned to be.

It's learning to navigate life on life's terms without losing yourself in the process.

Home isn't a place.

It's the feeling of finally coming home to yourself.