30 Something; Identity Exploration
Welcome to the start of my 30 Something Series!! I have had the hardest time figuring out where to begin. Nothing seemed to come easily or continue to stay on topic as my mind jumped around. The one thing that kept coming up was the idea of identity and how we see or define ourselves. I began to deep dive into other topics that have come up for me in this new stage; changing body, mental health, motherhood…etc., I realized that with each of these phases have come a change or a question of my identity. I started to question how we see ourselves and why we see ourselves a specific way and how our identity changes throughout each defining phase in our lives.
So that is where we will start! As newly, and not so newly 30 year olds, how has our identity changed and where do we find ourselves now??
We can form a sense of identity to so many aspects of life. It kept coming up as I was writing about self image and body image because for years part of my “identity” was that I had bad skin. I just accepted at one point it was never going to get better or improve so I stopped taking care of it because nothing was working. It wasn’t until the last few years that I started to have any sort of skin care routine or looked at my face as anything other than “problematic”. It was in my 30’s that I started to possibly form a new story about myself and let go of that particular aspect being part of my “identity.”
It also started to bring up some questions of identity vs. the story we tell ourselves. For me I would say my biggest change of identity was when I found out I was pregnant around 28 years old. Our son was a wonderful surprise, although at the time we really felt the emphasis on SURPRISE. Everything I saw for myself and HOW I saw myself drastically changed. I have to admit in the moment of change I saw myself as a young “20 Something” who was adventurous, easy going, in a new exciting relationship where we just picked up and moved across the country and still very much in my young and wild years. When in reality I was 28 years old, never been described as easy going a day in my life, and had already been with my partner for 4 years at that point. Not only was the story I was telling myself changing but with it my entire identity. So what is identity if not our own narrative?
What is Identity?
I love a good definition! I need something concrete to hold on to and to reference so let’s define identity. According to Psychology today, Identity encompasses our values, memories, relationships and experiences that create one’s sense of self. It involves external characteristics, some of which are out of our control; height, race, appearance, socioeconomic class. Identity also encompasses political opinions, moral attitudes and religious beliefs that guide our outlook and choices. Identity involves the roles and titles we take on or identify with such as mother, daughter, student, or teacher. Our identity continues to evolve and change over the course of our lifetime.
How is Identity Formed?
Identity formation involves three key tasks: Discovering and developing one’s potential, choosing one’s purpose in life, and finding opportunities to exercise that potential and purpose.
It is my understanding that the story we tell ourselves can be a piece of those three steps involving how and why we choose our life’s purpose or choose what piece of our potential we exercise and give more fuel to. One thing that I have been learning more recently is that there are times where I am giving fuel to the wrong fire. I am continuing to tell a story that no longer serves me; i.e. the bad skin narrative. So of course now I want to learn more about and define “the story we tell ourselves.”
The Story We Tell Ourselves
“Storytelling occurs at our most basic experience of navigating the world”. We come up with stories daily that help us understand the world around us. For example you are walking down the street and see a candy wrapper on the ground. Some of us might immediately assume someone was lazy and inconsiderate. Some may take it further and see it is an act of ignorance or even defiance that is leading to the devastation of our planet and others might think; oh the wind must have blown in from a garbage can or someone’s pocket. The stories we tell ourselves become a narrative in which we view the world around us.
“It takes conscious effort to experience the world without interpreting it”. Philosopher Nassim Nicholas Taleb describes our instinctive need to connect A to B- the weaving of separate facts together with explanation- as the narrative fallacy. This is a very primitive response to the world around us; we connect the dots and find meaning in patterns.
Our need to fill in the gaps helps us make decisions and make sense of the world; it also plays a part in us jumping to conclusions. Daniel Kehneman, Author of Thinking Fast and Slow, describes the halo effect as “exaggerated emotional coherence”. Essentially once we have an opinion on someone we are more likely to assume other things about them that fit the narrative we have created.
These are just a few theories that affect the way we view the world around us and the stories we tell ourselves. Story-telling is part of the human experience. It helps us make decisions, keep ourselves safe and understand internal and external factors.
What Does it Mean?
In short, identity is a story made up of moments, memories, titles and roles. It is our understanding of those moments and the meanings that we attach to them that can tell us about “who we are” or “who we want to be”. To take it back to the candy wrapper scenario if you are someone who had the “story” that someone littered intentionally and perhaps feels this is a sign that you must do more to bring awareness on how to care for our planet; you can learn that your values may lie heavily with environmentalism, accountability and activism. By better understanding our stories we can actually change the way we view ourselves and therefore have some control over developing our stories and identity. Self Narrate co-founder, Dr. Jaron Jones, states that without taking control of our own story we run the risk of letting others write the narrative for us. The more we pay attention to the story that we tell ourselves and start to feed the narratives that best fit our goals, values and the titles or roles we want to see ourselves in; the closer we are to changing or defining our identity.
Where Do I Find Myself?
Since I can remember my identity has been wrapped up in my physical appearance, the people I surround myself with and the titles I hold; wife, mother, nanny. While these pieces are the literal definition of what forms identity, I haven’t taken the time to reassess the story attached to them; i.e. bad skin.
It wasn’t until probably the last few years that being in my 30’s forced me to start to redefine certain aspects of my “identity”. In this stage our physical appearance starts to change, the big social circle that we used to see every day may now be limited to 2 or 3 people we see daily, and the roles within the titles we hold are constantly changing. For example: “mommy” meant rocking him to sleep, spending all day together, picking out what he wears and getting him dressed and now “mom” means; spending our days apart each in new roles, nagging him to go to bed, drop offs and pickups, but still snuggling to sleep.
Between 28 and 33 years old I moved across the country with my then boyfriend, found out we were expecting, became a mother, bought a house, got married, endured a pandemic, and started a whole new career path. While that is indeed A LOT, I know I am not alone in the last 5 years being a whirlwind of change, stress, and loss of identity regardless of what decade you find yourself in. I am now in a period where I can begin to breathe, slow down and actually explore who I have become and who I WANT to become.
When things began to slow down I found myself in a process of “mourning” and reassessing. I caught my breath and all of a sudden I was 33, with a son in school, I didn’t have my own core group of friends where I lived, my body had changed, what I could put in my body had changed, the world around me had changed and I was starting back into a field that I never really explored outside of grad school. I was holding on for dear life to the stories I had been telling myself for the last 10 years when almost none of them were “true” any more. So this has been the first year that I have not only found acceptance in this new stage but have been enjoying finding myself, re-evaluating my story and embracing this “new” identity.
For me the best thing about identity is only so much can change. It’s not like I am taking a stranger to the decade with me but dragging, pushing and even chasing after 5 year old Olivia, 15 year old Olivia, 22 year old Olivia and saying “Hey! Let’s go see who we are for the rest of our 30’s!!!” And let me tell you, we can’t wait to find out!!
