What Happens When You Don't Know Who You Are Anymore

I moved to Ireland just over two years ago. What brought me here? My heart. 

I thought it was going to be a piece of cake, after all I had been to Ireland before and the people were pretty much the same as the Kiwis. Easy going, ready for a laugh. I was going to bust out into that country and enjoy everything it had to offer. The music, the literature, the history and the countryside.

What I hadn’t thought about was who was I going to be once I had moved to this country of opportunities?

You see I had been a pharmacist for 30 years. In that time I had owned two pharmacies, employed dozens of people, assisted and coached many many people within the community and my business, pierced the ears of every little girl in town even! I had created large events that involved the professional community, the business community and young women to build their confidence and self-esteem. I had been on PTA’s, raising thousands of dollars to build playgrounds and provide extra school buildings. I had been active with my children in their worlds, and active within my own – on stage, in sports clubs, attending community concerts and supporting anything I could. Sewing for dance productions and providing makeup and applying it to both school and dance clubs. Loving life. Wringing the juice out of it.

I was somebody. 

I had connections. If you needed a place to rent – I knew somebody who could help. If you needed financial help in their crisis – I had a name. If you wanted to know what it was like to travel in Vietnam – here, these people can have a chat with you. And I was active in health. Within the pharmacy I was an advocate of the power of the mind and the effect on health. Homeopathy worked on people in a crisis. Natural supplements and nutritionals supported their individual health journeys. Gratitude journals were recommended as part of a healing journey. I was Google. Although I didn’t have all of the answers, I could point you in the right direction.

Then I moved towns. The new city which was only an hour from my little world, was one I had lived in years before. In this city I was still ‘somebody’ enough to step into work when I needed it, to pick up relationships. I knew how the city worked and was able to join choirs and participate in stage productions making some wonderful friendships in doing so. I had a coaching room and helped people. I locumed at many pharmacies in the region. My children were at a phase of not needing so much parental participation and I was able to slide into a new role within motherhood – the apron strings were getting longer and longer and I welcomed it. I also enjoyed a certain level of anonymity as well – it was impossible to know everyone.

Then I moved hemispheres. 

I landed in March and it took me 16 months to come up for air. 

I was suddenly different. I didn’t understand why I didn’t want to go out and mix and mingle and show Ireland that I was here!  I wasn’t the bubbly me, the one to laugh first, the one to put my hand up to take part in anything. I missed my kids. Even my hair was different and the bouncy curls had suddenly gone straight. If anyone realised that I had been a pharmacist, they asked for advice, they never seemed to take it. It was as if I had no credibility. I joined an exercise class that met twice a week in an effort to drag myself out of the house, not only to get the body moving, but to have the opportunity to smile within a group. I got to know my barista really well, on a superficial, how are you today kind of level. I was miserable. I didn’t understand what was happening. All of my usual tools and techniques weren’t…….. well, to be honest, I didn’t even remember to use them. It was a foggy time. At one stage I figured out that I was homesick, but putting a label on it was simply grasping at straws and didn't really fit for long.

It wasn’t until an argument erupted that I ‘got it’. As I was rushing out of the house in a fit of rage, I was asked ‘Who are you?’ and the answer that just came up from who knows where, was ‘I don’t know anymore!!’ I slammed the door and the healing started. 

My identity had become unravelled.

I felt like a short piece of wool. The strands of that wool had become unravelled and only the very top of that piece was where it held together. The other strands of me were loose and dangling around, not knowing where to be and looking to connect with the other strands. 

I was no longer a mother in the usual sense, no longer a pharmacist, no longer anyone that anyone else could believe, no credibility, no longer a stage performer, no friends, I didn’t know the kids around me, I had no history. I was even in the next biological phase of being a woman. I was lost.

So sitting at the beach, blubbing my eyes out, at that moment I decided I could reinvent myself. 

The lights came on. I could ‘be’ whoever I wanted to be. How liberating to be able to do that! I was no longer stuck in the rut of the old me. The opportunities were endless now.

The little piece of wool that was me started to ‘restrand’ itself. 

It has taken a lot of work on myself. I am happy and relieved to say that those dark days are over. I suppose that if I had wanted another label, I would have said I was depressed yet there was something deeper to the ‘symptoms’ that needed to be cleared, that a tablet wouldn’t have allowed.

Are we ever ‘there’? Nope. The journey continues and we go through incredible stages of growth then plateau, as the new learnings are embedded, then the growth happens again.  We seem to get more stuff to work on, when we think we are done. Then sometimes it comes up again and we realise that there was more to what we were working on and we have to look at it again.

We all get to the dark places. Realise that you are not alone in the darkness . Get a team around you to help you direct the light. Be prepared to shed things and take on new ones. Like a new coat. Try it on, see how it fits and whether you wish to keep wearing it. Don’t give up on who you are, shining your light – yes, that light dims, but it can flicker to it’s fullness again with some patience and help.  Be vulnerable – hiding won’t help you, and when you think you are being vulnerable, you actually realise that you are not the only one in the world thinking or feeling what you are. Thank God.

I wish to thank, from the bottom of my heart, my Irish fellow for standing within the storm that I was in. And for the band of kind souls, who live all over the world, for coaching me through this. Sometimes they didn’t know they were coaching me! Haha! (But then they probably did!)

I love David Bowie – how often did he reinvent himself? He came up with more than a couple of identities. And people loved him at all of those stages of identity. How clever of him to go for so long identifying with so many new ways of being himself.

I AM - that's a very zenned way to be isn't it. And for now, I AM.

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