Identity

I want to spend time with Big Tab Three today as it relates to Identity:

Big Tab Three

3. Finishing the surgery/recovery cycle, embracing an end to the journey, and beginning the next chapter.

Actually finishing this current surgery/recovery cycle is a ways off still, but it is the final step, therefore I have been working through the process of what that closure will be like and how to best prepare myself. While there are several layers to this, today I am concentrating on Identity.

Spending three years 100% immersed in this world of surgeries and recoveries, this lifestyle that has impacted my whole family, has had an impact on my identity.

I came into this all as:

Athlete, Runner, Fun Mom That Takes Her Kids On Awesome Outings And Adventures, Spontaneous And Playful Wife, Wearer And Causer Of Face Breaking Smiles.

While I have tried to hang on to as much of that as I can, it simply has not been possible.

I have temporarily become:

Hip And Pelvis Patient, Often Grumpy Mom That Might Take Her Kids To Target And Call That An Adventure, Stayer Homer, Intolerant And Overly Sensitive Wife, Wearer Of Smiles But Sometimes They Are Half-A$$ed. 

This is a huge reason why I do not ask for, or accept, much help. I do not want to validate the identity of Hip And Pelvis Patient and every other identity that comes with it. As if helping hands and hearts are confirmation of “yes, you are this now.”

I don’t want to be that!
I want to be who I decide I am!

(I realize that is not the intention of the giver, but this is how I feel regardless.)

I clearly cannot run and move in the ways I am accustomed to, but I can retain the athlete mindset that accompanies the actual activities and apply it to how I work through the repeated cycles. I have been determined to hold onto that mindset and make it fit in whatever way possible. Adapting and going on ANDventures has been a vital part of this.

While some things have decidedly changed based on my abilities and predicament, I’ve held onto my pluck. My grit, moxie, determination, focus – these have never wavered as I have worked through these cycles – all pieces of my Before Surgeries Identity. I have held onto these tightly because I know they are imperatives for making it through, but they also keep my foot in the door for my eventual exit from the surgery/recovery world and back into my own.

This helps me retain parts of my identity and not get totally immersed in a new, uninvited one.

If I am what I do, then my identity is tied to the outcome. If I am a Hip And Pelvis Patient, my identity is wrapped up in the success/lack of success with that. If instead I identify with being a hip and pelvis patient, I can do that for the duration yet still be fully me before, during, and after. I can focus on who I am independent of what is happening.

I do not say:

I’m a Hip And Pelvis Patient.

I prefer to say:

I’m a Temporarily Sidelined Athlete Getting An Overhaul For Peak Performance. I’m a Mom And Wife Modifying Life Temporarily While Making Plans For The Future When This Is Over.

I identify with the events, but not as.

This makes it much easier to retain zoomed-out scope and perspective on the entire thing. I can see it all for what it is, a short chunk of time that will improve my life, rather than taking it on all the way to the cellular level, getting stuck in the day to day, microscope lenses glued on my eyes.

This makes it easier to step out of it once it is over. In my experience, I have seen patients so firmly adopt the identity of “Patient/Sufferer Of Whatever Disease” that they don’t know how to not be that once it is over. It delays or hinders healing and stifles the full expression of the gifts of having gone through to the other side. I want to tell people – You are not your affliction! You have an affliction, but you are who you decide you are! Decide who that is and then go do whatever it takes to be that.

Unbelievably, Seth Godin wrote on the topic of Identity today, too. I swear, the universe keeps delivering for me a la The Alchemist. 

This is what Seth has to say about it:

Confusing identity with strategy
Who we are isn’t the same thing as what we do.

But sometimes, what we do can change who we are.

Our identity describes the person we see in the mirror, the groups we identify with, the version of ourselves (and reality) that we come back to over and over. “I’m not a writer,” or “I’m not an entrepreneur,” or “I’m not a leader,” are fairly definitive statements.

But when the world changes, opportunities change as well.

All of us struggle when our identity doesn’t match the reality of the world around us.

In the face of that confusion, it’s tempting to abandon possibility and to walk away from an opportunity simply because it doesn’t resonate with the person we are in this moment. But only when we do something new do we often begin to become someone new. – Seth Godin

The Identity I will fully step back into once this is over? The same one I set aside for a few years in order to do this thing – with added layers of gratitude, growth, integration, perspective, patience, fortitude. I brought myself TO this experience rather than allowing it to define me.

First tell yourself what kind of person you want to be, then do what you have to do. For in nearly every pursuit we see this to be the case. Those in athletic pursuit first choose the sport they want, and then do that work.

– EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 3.23.1–2a

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