(Originally published on my Medium blog)
I wear over twenty different identities on any given day, and I think that’s a conservative count. Mom, product director, facilitator, chief logistics officer, taxi, maid, chef, booboo kisser, therapist, woman, horse lover, chief cat herder, chaos coordinator, student, and the list goes on and on. I joked with a colleague that I feel like I have a stack of 10-gallon hats (one for each identity) that reach the roof. And embedded in the middle of the neatly aligned stack is a baseball cap, sending everything askew (but not enough to fall over, just enough to be annoyingly out of order).
We have home identities, work identities, personal and corporate ones. We have ones that are given to us by others, ones that we create on our own, ones that vary drastically from what others think, and others that are perfectly aligned. So, it’s easy to get lost in the sea of everything we have to be on a given day. I could say this is a “mom” problem, but I think that’s selling it short; this is a human problem. We are all faced with this reality and have to navigate our days based on the needed identity at hand.
It’s maddening because it’s easy to look up after a week (or even a day) of wearing all these things and wonder, “who the hell am I?” Trying to simplify it feels like we’re losing a part of ourselves but trying to acknowledge them all is overwhelming. It can feel like a no-win situation. Personally, I’ve learned to embrace the chaos and recognize each identity for what it is — a necessary mechanism to make it through the day. As multi-faceted humans in an increasingly complex world, each of these identities (well, most of them) are necessary to get from sun up to sundown.
In trying to make sense of it, I have learned that I’m not just a mom or a daughter, a taxi driver, or a logistical genius; I’m all of these things together and separate. There are some I actively try to shut down (hellooo Mrs. Doubter, and goodbye to you), but there are others that I embrace — the caregiver, the lover, the optimist. My favorite, perhaps, is the problem solver. She’s a fun one who has a can-do attitude with a side of duct tape and chewing gum.
I’ve also learned the weight of these identities can be a burden or a blessing depending on your day went. Even the slightly askew stack of hats has redeeming qualities if you look at it the right way. However, it can very quickly drive you insane due to its somewhat uneven stance — your choice, colored by your day. Learning to take the good with the bad is a lesson in patience and sometimes creativity.
Learning to “hang up” the work portion of these identities (or hats) at the end of the day and focus on being present with my family has been an ongoing effort. The cook, maid, teacher, and referee get to stay (at a minimum), but the rest need to find a place to chill until morning. I’m not always great about getting them all out of the way, but each day is another opportunity to try. And you can’t ask for much more than that.