Last night, my daughter, angry and frustrated, ran off and slammed her bedroom door. I took a few grounding deep breaths and knocked on the door. “Can I come in?” I softly asked. I slowly opened the door and found her curled up under her dresses in her tiny closet. Her little pink face was streaked with wet, hot tears. She looked up at me and said, “It’s what I do.” “I get calm, I get mad, I get calm, I get mad.” I scooped her up. “Come here, baby girl.” She is seven. Seven years old, and my sweet little girl just boxed herself up into a blanket statement: “It’s what I do.”
This made me think about how I do this all the time. Over the years, I have claimed (or been assigned) many identities, and they simply became defaults. “It’s what I do.”
- I am terrible at remembering dates
- I hate booking flights and planning trips
- I am always the last to leave a party
- I don’t like working out
- I don’t finish things
- I have a small inner circle
I say these sorts of things to myself so often that they have, for better or worse, become ingrained in my identity. And while those statements may not seem to be a big deal, they are the sorts of things that eat away at my self-esteem. They put me in a box. They act as walls that fence in my ability to explore and to grow. They embed themselves as forgone conclusions to questions I stopped asking because I felt I already knew the answer.
And although I am not a seven-year-old little girl, I too have lots of life left to live (with God’s grace), and I too can change. What would it look like if I didn’t pin these labels to the jean jacket of my life? What would it look like if I was the kind of person who loved to move my body, who excelled at scoring low ticket fairs and booked epic hotels effortlessly, the kind of person who finished what she started?
The above is a set of beliefs that I choose to buy into over and over.
I am allowed to change. I am allowed to outgrow old identities and old personas. In fact, I am meant to outgrow these things. I am meant to expand, grow, and evolve.
To my sweet little girl, I hope you know, too, that although there will be things that become your identity over the years, you can always choose to unpin them and rock a fresh new jacket.
With gratitude and love
Have a magical day
Jen aka Downhome Mystic