The last year or so, I’ve been working really hard on my identity. If you’ve never done identity work, this concept might sound a bit strange, but the truth of the matter is that the person I thought I was as a middle schooler, high schooler, and college student are not actually who I have become. Much of my identity then was based not on who I wanted to be, but who I was expected to be.

And I’m not really the type of person to just sit back and let myself evolve. I like to have a say in the matter.

I’m not sure where the drive to understand and decide who I am came from (other than I think it’s a common experience shared by a lot of people), but what I do know is that I’ve been experiencing increasing levels of cognitive dissonance since I was about 12, when a Sunday school teacher told me that if I dated anyone, my future husband would be getting “damaged goods.” The teacher illustrated this point with a very impactful object lesson in which all the girls in class were given construction paper hearts and told to go around the room and “fake date” the boys in class. The boys were instructed to rip a piece off the heart of each girl they dated.

Me circa 2002, clearly very concerned with dating lol

No, the boys did not get hearts too.

After our fake dating, we were told that if we (the girls) dated too much or broke the “rules”, this is what our hearts would look like by the time we met our husbands.

Even at 12, this was very confusing. I already had a basic understanding of biology, and knew that if my heart was literally ripped to shreds like this, I’d be dead. I also understood metaphor, but I struggled to make the leap. How could I become damaged just by dating someone? Were boys really that evil? And in the christianity I was raised in also taught me that god was supposed to be a great healer and forgiver. So… even if something bad did happen, wasn’t he strong enough to prevent this heart-shredding? Or at least fix me after? After all, how was I magically expected to know whether a particular male specimen was the right one? Surely there had to be some room for getting it wrong at least once or twice?

Like I said, cognitive dissonance.

The question I was walking around was one of right and wrong, morality, and ideology; but more importantly, I was asking the question: What do I think? And why?

The message of “you’re inherently damaged,” was particularly strong in the specific culture I grew up in, and it didn’t apply just to dating. I was inherently sinful in every way, I was told, but I honestly didn’t want to be. I tried to be good anyway, to be better. I believed I was broken, and had to do everything in my power to fix it. But the whole time, there was a part of my mind that didn’t feel damaged. It didn’t feel wrong. It didn’t feel broken.

Sure, I messed up sometimes. But wasn’t that just part of the process of learning how to be a human?

In my efforts to fix myself, I tried to embody the fruits of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, and self control. I tried to be kind and listen and obey my parents. I learned the ten commandments and beatitudes. I followed all the rules taught to me by my sunday school teachers and pastors. I wasn’t always good at it, but I tried.

Mostly, though, I tried to make things make sense.

Me circa 1999, clearly also very concerned with dating lolol

I started my own personal study into apologetics when I was about 13. I read book after book after book on faith, religion, and philosophy, trying desperately to understand what I was missing. By the time I was in my early twenties, I’d made some significant shifts in my understanding of my self and eased the relentless cognitive dissonance somewhat, but then life got hard(er). I graduated during the recession, worked part time jobs making under $20k/year for two years, before I finally got a full-time position that allowed me enough of a financial cushion to have time to think again.

I remember my twenties as being wildly chaotic. I was desperate to figure out how to be an adult, longed for any type of stability or safety, and barely hung by a thread throughout, emotionally speaking. Then, everything I thought was going to be safe or stable turned out not to be: my first company was sold only a little over a year in and I got laid off; the second company had an incredibly toxic environment; I started freelancing with a solid number of contracts and making a good salary, but they slowly dropped off one by one, no longer needing freelancers and preferring full-time employees.

me circa 2013 with my first published book <3

I had started publishing with great hope, but my books didn’t take off. Dating was chaotic even after I met Josh, and then once we decided on each other, it was a whirlwind of dating, moving in, engagement, and marriage, followed almost immediately by his career shift dragging us to a different state.

And it’s only since 2020 (the year everything stopped), that I’ve found a little bit of room to notice myself, and to consider who I’m becoming. And who I want to become.

But it’s not that simple. After all, how do you quantify becoming?

One interesting thing I’ve noticed is that for the first time in my life, I’ve begun to accept one-word labels for myself. Agnostic. Absurdish. Exvangelical. Intelligent. Imaginative. Neurodivergent. Introspective. Wanderer. Opinionated. Curious. Strong.

Me & Chainsaw circa 2016. Nothing says cognitive dissonance like your friend of almost 30 years having a baby

But the one-word labels are, for lack of a better idiom, only the tip of the iceberg. They’re individual words that may have a technical definition in the English language, but they mean something very specific to me (and not necessarily what someone else might think). It’s like saying, “Oh did you read the book about the wizard?” and knowing exactly what book that is, with the whole story, plot, characters entering your mind like a wash of color in response to a simple phrase. But there are a thousand different books about wizards, so someone else might think of a completely different one.

In the book Atomic Habits by James Clear, the author talks about how, if you want to instill a specific set of habits in yourself, one of the most useful things you can do is adopt an identity that those habits reflect. If you want to run, decide you want to be a runner. If you want to write regularly, adopt the identity of writer. Because, if you want to be a runner, then you have to run. If you want to be a writer, you have to write. If you don’t feel like a runner or writer, it’s okay; you can still act like you’re one.

It can create a positive feedback loop over time, and eventually you can look back and realize you’ve embodied the identity you wanted. You want to run, so you identify as a runner; you want to be a runner, so you run. Even if you weren’t a runner before, you are now—because you run, and have consistently over time. And if you want to continue to be a runner, you have to keep running. And voila! Habit.

I picked runner and writer because they are easy examples. But what does it mean when you’re working with more complex identities? What does it mean to be intelligent, for example? Is it a passive thing, where you just are or you aren’t? Or is it something that you can work on? What actions embody “intelligence”?

Similarly, what does it mean to be imaginative? Or a wanderer? Curious? Introspective? How do the things I choose to spend my time doing embody these concepts? And how do these concepts influence the way I spend my time?

Right there—the answers to those questions? That’s the rest of the iceberg.

Me circa 2006, one of my last parades. Fun fact: this was the first time and only time I ever played bass drum. I usually played bells for parades, but this particular one, none of the bass drums showed up, and five bells players did. So I volunteered, and the drum line was me, one snare player, two cymbals, four bells, and a quints.

And the answers to those questions may be entirely different to me than to someone else.

For example, to me, being imaginative means to use my imagination in a way that is unique to me. Not just for the stories I write (my vocation), but also when I’m solving problems in real life, when I am brainstorming how to spend my weekend, and when I’m being creative in my free time. I even plan time now simply for exercising my imagination. Josh will walk in on me doing nothing but staring out the window, lost in the exploration of an idea.

I’m imagining. Because I’m imaginative.

I can create habits and actions for any identity I want to embody. And I can look at the actions I’m already taking and use those to identify who I am becoming.

In college, I took a class that delved pretty deep into Identity Theory. We looked at how identities develop over time, social identity, and neurology. We explored some of the practical expressions of identity, specifically in the context of communication, which included things like behavior, mental schemas, gender, religion, sexuality, and myriad other things. We read books and essays about identity expression.

But I didn’t really get it then. Because back then, I thought I knew who I was. I’d been told my entire life up until that point exactly who I was meant to be. Helpmeet. Future mother. Feminine. Kind. Good. Pure.

But none of those things reflected who I wanted to be. Only who others thought I should be. I can see the double and triple binds inherent in those labels. And I can see why I never fit inside them.

I get it now. I get why you can have a whole class on Identity Theory. And I get that my professors barely scratched the surface. I get why it’s complicated and messy, and why so often it doesn’t seem like it makes sense.

The whole thing about becoming is that it’s hard. And it hurts. And it’s never over.

We become until we die.

And I think maybe that’s what it means to be human.