Every few years, I embark on a project to figure out who I really am. I do some work on self-discovery and actualisation, I design a vision for the person I want to grow into and the way I want to show up in the world. But it never seems to stick. And now I think I’ve worked out why. Every time I go through some kind of life change, I feel the need to completely redefine my identity.
I couldn’t just have a career - my career became who I was. I worked around the clock - often on weekends, even on holidays - until I was burnt out. When I realised I didn’t love my corporate career anymore, I had the panicked realisation that I didn’t know where that left me as a person.
Motherhood provoked a full-on existential crisis, particularly as it effectively ended said career, and I tried to completely reshape myself around my existence as a parent. My experiences and challenges as a mother filled that gap my career had left, and became the foundation for a new identity.
Then, when my daughter came out of school, I pinned my whole sense of who I was on being a home-educating, subversive, stick-it-to-the-man rebel. (I mean, it wasn’t a huge leap - I’ve been raging against “the man” for most of my life, but now it came to be definitive.) So as my daughter told me she wanted to return to the school system, it didn’t just feel like a change of approach or a new decision to address her needs - it felt like an invalidation of who I was. An annihilation of this newly constructed self.
Of course, I had to get over that pretty quickly. I didn’t want to let me feelings influence her choices or make her feel guilty about finding the best path for her. I had to choke it down and get on with it. But it stung. A lot.
Battle grounds
It struck me, hard, when I started home education just how much ideology there is within the movement. People cling fiercely to terminology (home educating vs home schooling vs unschooling) and philosophies (classical vs Montessori vs Charlotte Mason) and every camp is so sure they’re right. And so ready to go on the attack if they sense disagreement. Not only that, but if a member of a particular camp expresses a view or admits to an action that doesn’t follow the authorised code of belief, they’re likely to be berated or even ostracised. It’s intense.
I get it - these are hard-won rights and recognitions that people have had to fight for in the face of systemic inequalities and societal hostility, of course they hold on tightly to them. But to a newcomer trying to navigate this space, the threat of chastisement for getting it “wrong”, and the sense of tension in the air amongst all the different factions, are a little off-putting, to say the least.
This sort of ideological entrenchment is everywhere. It is not lost on me that I’m writing this in the aftermath of a UK general election. Ideology has dominated British politics over the last decade. Brexit - which should have been a discussion about economics and trade - became about immigration and, ultimately, racism. Because economics are too complicated to engage people with, and the Leave campaign understood how to speak to things that would mobilise action. We’ve been locked for a while in debates where the word “woke” (originally a word American Civil Rights activists used to describe those who were conscious of systemic inequalities) has been weaponised, and where a tiny section of the population who pose no statistical threat have been the focus of a frankly insane amount of political time and attention so that we can all be protected from these <checks notes> not at all dangerous people, instead of from the actual threats to our safety and existence.
Our latest election has been fought - and it does feel like a war that continues to be waged - along deeply ideological lines. I voted Labour because I felt that was the only option if I wanted change (which I very much did, and do). But many people considered this to be an act of treachery to my “side”, because the leader of the Labour party has betrayed many key elements of the belief system we all signed up to. They couldn’t possibly vote for him now, so they would look elsewhere. I respect that, but sticking firmly to allegiance to that ideology would, in my constituency, have equated to a vote for the Conservatives (the UK’s voting system is archaic), and my priority at this election was to get them out. Which is, in itself, an ideological viewpoint. And while those on the left in this country bickered over whether it was ok to support someone who wasn’t supportive enough of trans people, of Gaza, of rebuilding our relationship with Europe, the right were busy mobilising support amongst people who are quite happy to destroy all of those.
We’ve ended up with a situation where everyone is so eager to be seen saying the right things (whether that’s being “woke” enough or “anti-woke” enough, depending on your side of the fence) that no one is really doing anything. And everyone’s so busy criticising each other’s approach and finding fault with people on the “other side” and their own side that no one is able to have a conversation about how we get out of these trenches and move things forward.
One writer that I fell in love with during my home education research was Julie Bogart. Julie rejects any form of ideological conformity in favour of an open and inclusive approach - and, good grief, isn’t breaking out of institutionalised conditioning one of the reasons for choosing home education in the first place?! - and I love this quote from her book The Brave Learner:
“When an environment becomes ideologically controlled, members stop feeling free to tell the truth about their experiences. They move from aspiration to pretence - hiding what isn’t working, sharing only what they believe the group wants to hear. […] In the end, the reason the philosophy appears to work is that no one is permitted to share the messy, imperfect practice.”
Julie Bogart
We’ve all been in groups where we don’t dare talk about how we’re really feeling, how things are really going, in case it’s not acceptable to the group. We try to frame our lives, our actions, ourselves in a light that aligns with “party policy”, and we guiltily hide any parts that don’t fit the sanctioned narrative. We try to fit ourselves into a box and we feel shame about the parts that spill out over the sides.
We can’t form any true belonging or connection as a community that way, and we certainly can’t solve any of the world’s problems if we’re refusing to see the world the way it really is. But, possibly most tragic of all, we lose some of ourselves when we’re trying to trim our souls to fit someone else’s mould.
Making meaning
The trouble is, the world feels like an overwhelming and scary place right now. Maybe it always has, I don’t know. I can only see it from my point of view, in 2024. I don’t know if my ancestors hundreds or thousand of years ago felt like the world was changing rapidly. I know that they did fear the world might be ending - they didn’t know the science behind climate change, but there were plenty of doomsday prophecies telling them that their days might be numbered for different reasons. They didn’t have to deal with capitalism, but their system had its own issues. Being a woman and a mother was hard in a very different way. Inequalities were less talked about, but they were undoubtedly more severe. So maybe it’s always been this way. But, right now, a lot of us feel our backs are against the wall.
As Pema Chödrön put it:
“As individuals we, too, have fundamentalist tendencies. We use them to comfort ourselves. We grab on to a position or belief as a way of neatly explaining reality, unwilling to tolerate the uncertainty and discomfort of staying open to other possibilities. We cling to that position as our personal platform and become very dogmatic about it.”
The world feels scary right now, and conflicting truths make it feel even more unstable and confusing. We don’t like it. We retreat into the safety of simplicity, of right and wrong, black and white. We want someone to take on the responsibility of explaining the world for us so we don’t have to navigate the poorly lit paths of complexity for ourselves. And when we feel there are wolves along those paths, we panic even more.
When human beings are under pressure, when we feel the world is attacking and everything and everyone outside us is a potential threat, we go on the defensive. When we feel others are trying to hold us back, getting in our way or simply judging us, we fight our corner. And if we don’t fit the mould society has set for us, if we feel that who we are is unacceptable to those with the power, then we become even more frantic about supporting any framework that offers us a refuge from which to protect that identity - it feels like a matter of life and death.
In difficult circumstances, where I’ve felt I was drowning, I tried to make it mean something, make it all worthwhile, by making it who I was. A bold new lifestyle and a lens for viewing the world, rather than simply an aspect of my life to integrate into the whole.
Now it’s time to take stock. Who am I? When you strip away all the identities that I’ve been wearing like suits of armour - to protect me, to make me look secure and confident, to hide within - who’s underneath?
I tell my daughter, often, that the work of her lifetime is to come to fully understand who she is, and to be the fullest version of that person that she can be. It’s time to take my own advice.
If we could all let go of the identities we feel we’re supposed to wear, and the party lines we feel tied to, if we could step outside of our ideological trenches and be willing to accept the complex, contradictory and messy humans that we all are, I believe that we could solve a lot of the issues our world is facing. We could certainly help a lot of people to heal. There are a lot of challenges that come along during a lifetime, and our unwillingness to allow multiple perspectives, uncomfortable feelings and different versions of the truth make it hard for us to integrate the lessons and experiences of those challenges in a healthy and productive way.
So what have I learned about myself throughout the course of my challenges? What remains constant at the core of who I am? I am a writer. I love to create - words, art, photography, baking, knitting… I love to make things with my hands, I try to find creative ways to express myself and to connect with others. I’m someone who loves the beach, the sea, who is happy in any water. Who loves the forests and birdsong. I’m someone who doesn’t always understand people, but who loves very deeply. I’m a person who wants to help others, who believes in kindness above all. I’m someone with a quick temper, who can hold a grudge, but who forgives easily if someone is sorry. I’m a person who craves connection, but who is terrified of meeting strangers. I’m a person who loves music I can dance to, but who can’t enjoy a song if I can’t understand the lyrics. I’m a person for whom all words have a colour, and sounds have tastes and textures.
How do you make an identity of all that? Therein lies the issue - our modern lives want us to distil who we are into a few lines that will fit into a bio. We need a mission statement for our existence. Purpose is important - I’ve just written about why a sense of purpose benefits our mental wellbeing - but it doesn’t have to be all-encompassing, and it doesn’t have to be reduced to one single aspect. We need a sense of direction, not a definition of our selves. We need to be able to bumble around the Earth, having multiple experiences and doing a variety of things, so that we can take all the learnings and benefits that variety can offer us. But we also need to know the core of ourselves so that we don’t have to let those experiences change our view of ourselves and the world - and how the two interact - every three weeks. Some rare experiences will shape us, but most can simply happen to us and we can move through them.
For too long, I’ve been letting experiences distract me from that core, and drive me to cover it up. When I look back, though, I realise that I’ve been writing and creating my whole life. I’ve also been asking challenging questions and looking for ways to make the world better for as long as I can remember - even when that irritated the powerful adults around me. Telling stories that ask questions and look for solutions is the core of who I am. I don’t need to make myself into anything else. I need to lean into my true self, and allow that to flow through all the different experiences that come my way.
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Allegra, I want to thank you for this article which resonated with me on a level I can’t even begin to explain. It was as if the universe heard my inner voice and sent your Substack to show me I’m not alone and my thoughts and questions are valid.
I looked in the mirror today and wondered who she was looking back at me. I recently gave up work because my partner began a new role in Saudi Arabia. I didn’t much like my job but thought a lot of my colleagues. I wanted to finally do something with my life that was an actual choice and not required. Since I stopped working I have been trying to figure out who I am without the corporate framework of local government shaping my existence.
I love photography and writing poetry and being creative. I try to write a poem every day and journal when I remember or feel I should. I haven’t taken a photograph for the sheer joy of it for a while now so today I went out into the heat of Saudi Arabia, where I’m helping my partner and me, transition in as painless a way as possible to our new situation, and took some pictures with my iPhone, and felt the old thrill of seeing the world through the lens and presenting my perspective. It gave me a sense of purpose again and a nudge in the direction I think I need to take.
I’m sociable under the right circumstances, but socially awkward in new surroundings and around new people. I find that I have to work hard to make conversation and it can be tiring, but know I need to do better. I overthink things and situations way too much.
Reading your article was like watching my thoughts materialising on the screen in front of me.
Reclaiming my identity and place in this world is a priority at this time.
I hope this all makes sense. I think I’ve rambled and I probably sound disjointed in thought, but I think that’s reflective of the way I’m feeling after reading your article. It lit something up inside and gave me a little sense of excitement, so please forgive me.
Thank you for sharing 😊
Oh Allegra, this sparked so many introspective thoughts whilst reading. It allowed for internal questions, triggered my sense of navigation, pondered moments, and has inspired me to sit down and strip back to the bare bones of who I am too, what identities I’m wearing, consider which ones I may want to let go of… thank you so much for the nudge, I’m going to spend more time with this ♥️✨