Identity

Gerry Adams in his interview after his release from goal said, he was an activist, "that's who I am." 

It started me thinking...

How many of us have such a clear idea of who we are?

Years ago on the Loretta Young Show which was a weekly drama where she swept into a room in a swirling gown, in the following play which she introduced a character was told to define themselves in three sentences.

What a good idea, I thought. And I've been doing that since then every now and then. I know when I was 12 my three sentences were very different from today and they've changed over the years. 

I did forgo the almost obligatory identity crisis in my late teens early twenties because I could always come up with three sentences to define myself.

• Woman
• Wife 
• Student

During my daughter's growing up years it was:

• Mother
• Woman
• Wantabe writer

Now they have switched order to:

• Woman
• Writer
• Mother

It isn't that I care less about my daughter, it's just that I am no longer involved in her daily activities. Whether she brushes her teeth is her decision not my responsibility.There is no more homework to worry about. However hopes for her welfare are in every atom of my being in a way I never thought possible before I became a mother. She is who I am although she is a 100% independent human being.

I've added a fourth sentence happily. I'm a wife. It is a new role, one I'm learning and loving at the same time. I never thought, never wanted to be a wife again. I wasn't good at marriage, but this person who came back into my life showed me that the impossible was possible. He also makes it hard to put the four cores of my being in order just like I can't rank people I love by order for each is unique.

Mothers who say they love all their children equally I don't understand, because each person is different with different ways of being and different ways of being related to (Sorry J for the preposition at the end of the sentence) . Love comes in so many forms that ratings are useless. I'm blessed to have so many wonderful people in my life to love. But people are important to the core of my being.

There are many other ways to define myself which goes beyond limitations that the poor tomato has.

A partial list...

• New England Yankee
• Ex American
• Naturalized Swiss
• Aging (have been since the day I was born)
• Friend
• Housemate
• Stubborn
• Socialist
• Pagan or Humanist (take your pick or both)
• Short
• Reader
• Thinker (rather than intellectual, although I may qualify)
• Environmentalist

Like everyone, there are so many things that make me me. And they vary by the day. I try and be the things I would like in a friend, a lover, a mother. 

That doesn't mean I've always been sure of my path but I have known whom I was on the different paths I've taken, which has helped greatly when I've made a mistake in finding new paths.

Unlike Gerry Adams, I have not had great causes that have shaped me but more ordinary events that make up a rather ordinary life. It makes me me.