The Capes of Identity

Five years ago I walked away from a job that defined me and my life for twelve years. It was cushy, highly sought after, and seemingly perfect on paper. It was my identity, my comfort zone, my known.

Yet, I craved more.

I wanted to fill my soul. I wanted purpose in all that I did. I wanted to desire the life I had. I wanted to choose it.

The questions and doubts from so many around me felt endless. How and why would I leave what I had and knew? I could have been swallowed by the external.

However, the voice in me knew to forge ahead. It was one of those moments where the fear of staying and continuing ‘as-is’ was worse than the fear to give it all up and walk away.

To live by my own choice meant that for the first time I needed to truly design my own identity. In turn I had to examine the identities I’d assumed over the years, determine what served me and what didn’t, and in essence strip away and let go of many layers.

Identity is tricky and multifaceted, especially when it comes to changes in life. It’s a topic to explore much more deeply in the future as I’ve long had ideas lingering in my head about how identity shapes us. The long version is for another day.

Some identities we are assigned, some we assume based on circumstance, and others we consciously choose.

I’ve always thought of identity like a cape. It is what you wrap yourself in and it has the potential to be powerful like a superhero’s cape and it can be protective and comforting like a cozy blanket or Harry Potter’s invisibility cape. At the same time, it’s interchangeable and can be ripped off of you.

When you take the cape off, or it’s taken from you, you might stand there frozen and naked, looking around, and then panic arrives. The protection the identity provided is no longer there and suddenly it’s the realization that you have no idea who you are.

When I left my job I immediately lost what was the most comfortable and powerful of all my identities at the time. Without realizing it my whole life was wrapped up in this job and the company I worked for. Now suddenly I was shedding that. There was a gaping hole. 

I knew that job, life, and identity, didn’t fit me anymore. It was all so comfortable and deeply ingrained that letting go and shedding the cape was a rude awakening. But I needed it. It was a realization and learning that I would not let externally prescribed identities, ones that I did not consciously choose and evolve over time, be who I was or who I am.

Something externally prescribed cannot be your essence or what defines you. You must know and be yourself at your core and shape your identity that way. Others will try and put things on to you or define you but that’s on them. When you are solid in your core and foundation you are unbreakable. Any change that would normally rip the cape off and leave you standing naked in a panic becomes weather-able.

And there will be storms, there will be change, there will be shifts but when your identity is owned and set by you, your conscious choice, you are powerful and in control.

Just because you fall into the category of one thing does mean it has to define you. You define you. You choose.

We all have multiple layers, interests, categories into which we fall, that’s life. This is what keeps it interesting and at the same time challenging. It’s how you decide to express, take on, and embody these things that define and create your identity.

I recently did a triathlon. Do I consider myself a triathlete? Is that now my identity?

For me, no. I am an athlete. I assume and love that identity. It is at my core and has been for many years. I don’t need to be anything more specific like a runner, a triathlete, a yogi, whatever it might be, unless I want to.

I’ve learned so much over the last five years and this piece about identity is one of the most empowering. Coming to realize that I truly needed to decide for myself who and what I was at times was terrifying and overwhelming yet it’s all part of the journey.

So take a moment a reflect at who you are, what identity capes do you have on. And then consider whether you’ve consciously chosen them. Which ones do you really know at your core are for you? Are there some that don’t actually serve you?

What would it look like to shed a cape or two and put on only the most empowering and essentially ‘you’ identities going forward?

xoxo,

jessie

PS. I just realized as I was scrolling back through my posts, knowing that this time of year always makes me reflective of the journey, that the banner photograph is exactly the same as the one I used last year almost to the day. This photo is one of my absolute favorites and happens to be one of the very first that I took upon leaving work.

So rather than go to a different photo I’m just gonna leave it.