Identity

Back to blogging again after another sabatical...this time I will try and stick with it :-)

I think so many of us struggle with the question of identity- who we are inside. People tell us to just be ourselves- but which self do they want? Do they want the college student, the therapist, the patient, the depressed girl, the daughter…or the victim. I think before I began the healing process I fell into the category of victim. Once therapy began, I clung to the identity of survivor. The word survivor emitted a sense of strength to me and hope that I could rise above my past. And so I went from victim to survivor and was all the more strong for it. Then came the time when I ended therapy, when I finally healed and suddenly I became at a loss for an identity again. I was a victim, I was a survivor, but I was so much more than that now. So I settled for woman- strong woman.

As much as I am a survivor, the term itself is confining, because it would be a constant reminder of my past and in a sense meant that I would always be searching for a way to rise above it all. But in reality- I had gotten to the point where my past was just that- my past. My life was now centered on the present and future and I no longer suffer through the negative consequences of where I came from. So when someone asks me who I am…I just want to say I’m a woman, a strong woman. Victim, survivor, strong woman. Now that is the transformation of identity that I like to see.