Reflections on Identity

I am going through a training to become authorized to facilitate workshops with Leesa Renee Hall's Unpack Biases Now program. I am really excited to be able to use such powerful tools, developed by a whipsmart and compassionate highly sensitive Black leader, in writing. Not only do I not have to re-invent the wheel myself, and I can use her amazing tools, but I also get to support and emanate out her style and approach, which has greatly impacted me in the last year or so.

Over time, I am investigating identity more and more with my Contemplative Writing groups. This has been a blindspot in my teaching practice in writing - not going directly for or into identity, especially ways in which access via identity privilege some of us more than others. My students are majority white, cisgender female, middle class. While I have a high percentage of queer women in my classes, in terms of sexual orientation, I have found for myself and others that "being queer" can only carry us so far in terms of compassion and direct understanding with People of Color. More often than not, it can actually serve as a bargaining tool, an "oppression Olympics" player piece. As in: "Well, I may be white, but I am also a woman, and I am queer, so I know what it is like to be oppressed," said in a defensive tone, especially when called out for having expressed a racist view.

There is so much wisdom in exploring our identities, especially the dominant identities, with a contemplative lens and deep curiosity. So I wanted to share, along the lines of blog posts I used to do more frequently, some of the reflections which have come up. These are anonymous, only occasionally direct quotes (when the person's articulation was stunning) but other than knowing they come from my classes over the last few weeks, I have removed any identifying factors. As a lot of you know, I so prefer to tell stories from first person, or relate them to a specific person. I generally avoid, "you," or "one," or "we," in writing, because I don't want people to feel if they don't fit into the description there is something wrong with them. However, when I am protecting identity, I generalize a bit in order to protect identity. So please keep that in mind.

Here is a wisdom culling from reflections on identity in class a few weeks ago. The prompt was on what we see in the mirror - and what is not shown in the mirror.


-Recognizing identity as a series of truths - not one truth, not objective from outside or inside - and recognizing, as I so often discuss on Memoir Mind, that even our histories (out of which our identities are constructed) are a series of beliefs we hold to be true until proven false to us in some way. For example, people who believe themselves to be straight until they fall in love with someone of the not-opposite gender. Does that mean they weren't straight before? If you believe you are straight for twenty years, and you are not in conscious or even unconscious denial, then that is a truth for you - not necessarily that you were straight but that you believed you were straight.

-The strong, strong tendency we have to need to believe a story that confirms itself, and how that keeps us consistently from seeing clearly how complicated people are. People in positions of power, even limited power (like social workers deciding on a custody case based on family visits) are subject especially to keeping things consistent. Whenever we do that, we wipe out the "unfitting" views which are some of the crucial truths (again, plural, not singular) needed to see and feel the whole situation. Seeing and feeling that kind of complexity often leaves us without an immediate, direct answer (yes/no), but is also more accurate and human.

-We often look in the mirror to seek confirmation. What we are confirming is interesting and changes based on who we are - looking to confirm how bad/ugly/icky we are, looking to confirm how beautiful/put together, etc we are. Can we look in the mirror to see our deep inner selves - not just the outer shell? Who/what mirrors our inner children, the parts of us who don't show up in our outer appearance anymore, but are still there and need our care and reflection?

-What we may have developed as survival tools: making sure everything is in order, not out of place, so we know where all physical objects are in case we have to make a quick exit - can become self-care and nurturing if we can soften the trauma response/mindless reactivity associated with these actions. Keeping a bag packed to escape an abusive spouse at any moment can turn into always making sure the bath salts are stocked, there's comfort food in the house, and a spare bed available for a friend.

-So much of the seemingly consistent "mirror" of our identity consists of fragments we have received from others - usually more from others than ourselves, originally. These are often "self-loathing vows" to use one students' phrase. A lot of reclaiming our own identity - especially those who have been consistently marginalized - is to break that mirror, claim the mosaic quality, and see how a glued-back-together reflective surface may in fact be not broken at all, but completely and complexly accurate.

-Can we look at ourselves in the mirror and see "what should horrify me," see a body that "is a statement others would rather not condone," and instead accept what is there? Can we break the conditioning reflected back to us in myriad faces, expressions, gestures of others, telling us we shouldn't be exactly as we are, ever?

-So many women, as we age, notice getting less and less attention. For decades, many women receive positive or negative attention about our bodies, just our bodies, often, and not our mind/hearts. Then, all of a sudden, we wake up one day and find we are invisible. For most women this happens after 50 and it is a mixed experience - it can be a blessing, but also feel intensely like de-humanization, even though the objectifying that was a part of an earlier experience is another form of de-humanization. As well, can we still let ourselves want to be wanted for our bodies, once they no longer draw the kind of attention we may or may not have wanted when younger?

I know a woman in her late fifties who loves this song, The Shape of You, because it expresses exactly the kind of pure but respectful love of someone's body she craves in her middle aged experience.

-There's such a delicate balance of being honest about our inner beliefs, especially self-doubt, with our children, and overdoing it so they become imprinted heavily with our fears and anxieties. Hidden agonies can poison us, and our children and loved ones, just as much as shared ones, due to energy exchange and how our own states of being influence our relationships. Finding that "balance" is, like all balance, an active and imprecise practice.

-"I started therapy when I felt my mom's face in mine," one woman shared. From early on as a mother, she was afraid she would reproduce her own mother's sarcasm and mean-spirited behaviors, and as soon as she noticed that starting, she went to therapy. What the mirror was in this case was less her own image (not when she saw her mother's face in her, but felt it) but relationship - and relationships are a huge mirror.

-What is it like when mirror neurons reflect our own experience inside ourselves? Can they work on that level? So much of experience now is about interacting with others, and that kind of reaching out and connection is good. But some of us worry about a loss of inner reflection, contemplation, and mirroring ourselves in a deep and healthy way. If our only reference points are outside ourselves, we lose connection with what it is like to be a "solitary explorer," which, underneath, we all actually are: together alone.