What’s on My Floordrobe — A Sea of Discarded Labels and Identities
“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”-George Bernard Shaw
I am a woman who has an outfit for everything, and an identity to go with it. After moving up to the woods five years ago to start fresh after consciously uncoupling from was-band #1, I noticed that my closet looked like Green Acres — a “farm living is the life for me” section (flannel, work boots, plaids) and “a New York is where I’d rather stay” section (a monochromatic sea of black, white, and grey).
After spending five years communing with nature, living amongst a wonderfully weird and wacky community of healers, makers, burners, doulas and artists in Occidental, one of California’s top hippie towns, a new, brightly colored “woo” section has emerged full of hot pink, orange, metallics and aquatic colors of the sea.
My virtual wardrobe of personal and professional identities is equally if not more diverse. The sea of discarded labels and rejected identities on my virtual floordrobe more varied still. Over the past five decades, I’ve tried on more virtual outfits than Beyoncé on a world tour!
In some cases, these outfits were highly aspirational — worn for a long time before I grew into them. As a new student at Brearley, an all-girls school in Manhattan, I found myself surrounded by passionate, articulate, opinionated young women. I envied the fluidity, creativity, and freedom of their self-expression and the courage with which they put forward and defended opinions that were uniquely their own.
My intuition told me early on that envy and jealousy are, or can be, leading indicators of the change you wish to see (provided that you’re willing to do the work to be that change). Channeling this emotional energy into making that change (rather than soaking in it until it poisons you) is the path, and creates alchemy that transforms negative thoughts into positive personal growth.
My 13-year-old self was a shy, fearful, introverted girl — afraid of everything, especially what other people thought, avoiding failure and risk taking at all cost. My envy told me that I wanted to be like these outspoken, extroverted young women. That underneath all that fear and desire to please others was a passionate, creative, one-of-a-kind soul that had her own unique take on life and who desperately wanted to come out of hiding and speak her truth!
As the protectively self-critical voices in my head chanted “that’s insane”, “it’s too risky”, “you’ll fail”, “stay safe, don’t change” in an endless self-limiting mantra, I was daunted by the chasm between what I was and what I aspired to be.
It took me many years of wistful wanting before I had the courage to try on this new identity of creative self-expression and extroversion. At first, it was deeply and profoundly awkward and uncomfortable. I lacked confidence and grace and my commitment to this path was tested on a daily if not hourly basis in each and every social interaction. It often felt like I was trying too hard, over-expressing and forcing the traits I associated with this new identity and desperately wanted to embody.
In the early days of my career while working for visionary startups in Silicon Valley, I talked more than I listened and engaged in a competition to be the most clever, irreverent and colorful fish in a sea of brilliant minds and creative souls. Looking back on it, I felt like a caricature of a person, one lacking a volume control and the gift of nuance.
The awkwardness and lack of grace lasted for years before I finally started to settle in and find a more natural state of ease. In all honesty, I’m still working to fully embody this identity, to wear it in and make it truly my own. Nevertheless, despite all the awkwardness, I persisted! Because the call from deep within my soul to step into these big, bold, beautiful new shoes persisted!
Over time, this “outfit”, one which, as I reflect on it now, contained the beautiful seeds of my current and most courageous reimagination of self, has become a foundational piece in my identity closet. It’s like I traveled all around the world to magical far off lands, following the yellow brick road of my soul’s journey, collecting and discarding new identities only to find that I knew how to get home all along, dear!
Not all identity outfits I tried on ended up in my “permanent” collection — I say “permanent” because in my experience, life and identity is impermanent, fluid and ever-evolving. In fact, there are far more pieces in the sea of discarded identities than there are in the keep pile.
There’s Kate the Archaeologist — an explorer and discoverer in mind only because the reality of the dust and the heat coupled with the trauma I suffered as a frequently sunburned, heat-stroked little girl caused me to leave this in the considered not tried pile.
There’s Doctor Kate who loved the idea of healing the sick and diagnosing and solving medical mysteries but who was repulsed by the smell of sickness and death in hospitals as a candy striper in high school and couldn’t muster the enthusiasm to get through the slog that is college-level organic chemistry — not because I wasn’t smart enough but because I just didn’t want it badly enough!
Interestingly my discarded identities often contained the seeds of future careers though in more figurative than literal ways. While I may not have discovered an early hominid in Tanzania or a lost city of gold in the mountains of South America, I am a curious explorer of human nature and identity. Though I’m not a doctor, I’m a catalyst for self-healing and a doula for people as they give birth to their dreams.
There are other identities that exist in kind of a limbo state — neither in nor out, reappearing again and again inviting me to try them on one more time because they’re familiar if not comfortable and the trappings they come with (social status, salary, etc.) are so enticing. The biggest one of these is Silicon Valley Kate, an identity I’ve defined myself by for over 25 years. It’s a more specific instance of a larger identity category of Badass Corporate Business Woman Kate which is an identity I formed 30+ years ago.
QUESTION: Do you have an identity you keep going back to, trying to make it fit but it just won’t?
The business world represented power and influence, freedom, self-determination and the promise of riches. But, from my earliest corporate jobs, I experienced extreme cognitive dissonance between my ideals of the business world and the realities I found there. The bureaucracy and arbitrary rules that seemed to suck the joy out of everything. The politics and lack of humanity that divided those purportedly working on a shared purpose. The soul killing hours spent staring at screens in generic cubicles that made me wish I was somewhere, anywhere else.
I was too colorful, too emotional, too feminine, too animated and too outspoken to fit into the collection of corporate identities I discovered. I felt like I had to put on a straitjacket and mask and hide my true identity every day to be successful. That “success” came at too high a price and resulted in a schism between the inner and outer me — a tradeoff between making money and being me. For the longest time, I thought I was the problem — feeling like I just didn’t fit in because I was somehow deficient — rather than seeing that these identities just weren’t me.
QUESTION: Where in your current identity(ies) do you feel deficient? Can you explore whether it’s actually you or an ill-fitting job that’s making you feel this way?
Over the past 2 years since I had my “I am…Contagious Vulnerability” epiphany during a values and purpose workshop, I’ve found myself exploring new frontiers and launching passion projects while simultaneously reverting back to the security of this larger-than-life past identity — jumping at opportunities to keep being what I have been, doing what I’ve done because it’s a known quantity and a proven way to make money.
Earlier this year after engaging with a strategic consulting firm that seemed values-aligned and purpose-driven (the new criteria my brain invented for corporate gigs that it told me would heal the schism in my soul), I noticed that the more I engaged and the closer we got to doing actual client work, the less resonant I felt about it.
I had a complete meltdown one February morning and finally had to admit that my latest identity as a partner in this shiny new consulting firm — really my latest attempt to make the Silicon Valley Kate suit fit — didn’t really fit me and that my attachment to it was coming from a place of fear and scarcity. I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to build a successful business on my own and make the kind of money I had in previous jobs.
I was a mastress of making other people’s big audacious dreams come true and of succeeding inside the containers they created but could I turn this superpower inwards and make my big dream come true?? And what was my heart’s desire anyway?? I sobbed as I voiced what I had been feeling for several weeks — that this prestigious and lucrative opportunity just wasn’t me and holding onto it was making me miserable.
Two of my beloved and amazingly supportive friends canceled their plans for the day and held space for me as I wrestled with this realization and the big emotions it brought up in me. Within minutes I spoke the words my soul had been whispering to me for a long time:
I am a voice! A voice for personal transformation…for finding the joy within. My soul’s purpose in this lifetime is to share the wisdom gained through my experience with others to be a catalyst for their own journeys of self-healing.
It was like I woke up and realized that I was 8 months pregnant with a big new identity and had no idea! As my friend Christel said to me at the time, when you’re 8 months pregnant, there’s no going back!
Filled with a mixture of fear and exhilaration, I quit the consulting group and started my trust fall with the universe. Last week, after many months of being with this big new idea — really resisting, ruminating, procrastinating, hiding, basically doing anything besides voicing — I took the courageous first step and published my first piece on Medium to start an authentic and contagiously vulnerable conversation with the world.
As I contemplate the diverse riches of the treasured pieces in my physical and virtual wardrobe and the sea of discarded labels and identities represented by the outfits on my floordrobe, I realize that my life has been and will always be about trying on new things.
Having the courage to feel uncomfortable and to be curious about that discomfort — curious whether to keep wearing a new outfit despite the initial discomfort because of a deep inner longing that just won’t quit or to release a long-held identity attachment born of scarcity and fear.
Being willing to shed identities that no longer (or never really did) fit no matter how beautiful the outfit or how many compliments I got while wearing it.
Having fun mixing and matching different pieces to create an ever-increasing collection of identity mashups uniquely my own, limited only by my courage, imagination and tolerance for discomfort.
And embracing a life of curious exploration to continuously discover new outfits to reflect and celebrate the ever-evolving me.
Do you have a Marie Kondo experience when you examine the contents of your own wardrobe of identities that leaves you feeling less than joyful?
Is your soul calling out for an identity makeover?
Are you feeling trapped in a label or identity that no longer fits (or never really did)?
If you’re having one of these identity crises, know that you’re not alone, that you can do this! And if you’re feeling like it would be helpful to have a partner, I’m here to help you on the courageous journey to unlock your secret, hidden identities and find the joy within. Please book a curious conversation to explore how the Vulnerability Doula can be of service on your journey of becoming a more wholly—more holy—authentic you!