When I was growing up, there was little room for “and”. Everything in my life was an “or”; a jagged line superimposed over always seemingly opposing extremes, a frantic dance between salvation or damnation, perfection or peril.
The thing about identity is… it’s everything while holding onto it, yet not fully understood until we let it go. Like a costume worn for a role only to be removed and hung back on the rack where it may hang lifelessly juxtaposed against other colors and textures, we don’t always realize the contrast of something until it’s over.
Our careers, our work, how we spend our days, and how much this can change and transmute if we allow the natural needs of ourselves to do so is like this. Identities perpetually being built and torn down, recycled, reworn, destroyed, reimagined, transformed…
My first iteration of college was an “or” decision. Go, earn a degree, get a job, make money and buy a sense of self OR don’t go, be less than what others perceive you as capable of, disappoint your parents, and flounder.
As it turned out, I’d flounder regardless.
College gave me plenty of experiences, but little wisdom or insight around who I was, what I wanted, or how to best live with myself each day. It was a breeding ground for my still slightly dormant struggles with mental health and while I did graduate, what was supposed to bring me clarity and orient me appropriately to the next checkpoint of a “well-lived life”, instead rendered me desperate for existential safety and riddled with debt.
Fast forward through two post-graduate career trajectories explored and abandoned before deciding to return to school to earn teaching credentials; I again felt the excitement of an affirmed choice.
This, I remember thinking emphatically. “This, is the right move. If I do this, then I’ll finally be getting it right.”
Like we tend to do, I entered this next season of my life both naive and unprepared. The daily turmoil of a middle school classroom simultaneously fueled my high functioning anxiety while destroying my physical health. I loved that each day was something new and I took pride in my ability to connect with students, yet the work consumed me. I had no way to balance my own needs against those of the job.
It took some time for me to admit, but the truth was, I didn’t love teaching like I thought I would.
I loved aspects of how it made me feel. I loved the title and sense of identity. I loved that I got to use my voice and energy to tell stories and lead.
However, I did not love many key components of the job: lesson planning, the politics, the need to essentially parent all of my students.
In 2020, the love of the field was tested for every teacher in the profession. The dawn of the pandemic and being six months pregnant with my second child – it was simply too much. My anxiety was at an all time high and I was frantically confronted with that familiar truth:
Not this…
My inner cries were deafening.
Not only did I want to leave the profession, I wanted something different for my life altogether. I wanted to be out of the fast lane and home with my young children. I wanted to have a more easeful relationship with my days. Less hustle, more rest. Less achievement, more presence.
This was not an easy hill to roll down. Admitting that I wanted to shed this role in favor of another was incredibly taxing. I surveyed and polled and grappled for several months, not allowing myself to simply exhale into the new desire.
I hung on to the bitter end, fighting impulsive email checking and other anxious behaviors that had developed in the wake of the indeterminate.
How could I just walk away from a career ten years in the making? Who would I be if I didn’t have this title to my name?
I could not see the And. I could not feel into what it would mean to be BOTH mom AND something else. Everything felt like an either/or. I knew I didn’t want to work full-time in education any longer and for reasons far beyond the strains of the pandemic.
But what next?
I wish I had a shiny one liner for what that looks like, but I’m still drafting the solution. It’s been nearly three years since I left teaching and in that time, I have had success as a recruiter and in other various freelance projects that have allowed me to work flexibly from anywhere.
Some of these roles I’ve abandoned, others I’ve reworn. Some have transformed into new opportunities both found and created as I continue to collect data on what I most want and need.
I have learned how narrowly my identity was historically tied to how I earned money. I had a hard time seeing who I was beyond my job title. I needed to reparent myself a bit and work through some of the achievement addiction that was coming from a place of shame and worthiness hustle rather than from a place of empowerment and true desire.
I am learning how to be in the And of it all.
I can be my children’s teacher AND a smart, capable woman with other skills to offer the world when I want to, not because I need its stamp of approval.
The thing about living in the And is that when we let go of something that no longer serves us, it’s not gone forever. The memory of what that costume felt like, how it draped or constricted our frame, how it made us have to stand or sit or crawl or cry… this stays with us. We get to be formerly something AND currently something else. It can all have space on the rack.
Sometimes, we have to reorient and take on a new leading role. The key here is flexibility. The resilience we desire to have to fuel us through our next big decision or hardship only comes from the act of flexing, from making a new choice, doing the hard, but necessary thing.
My life is very different now than it was in 2020. I’ve changed careers, begun to explore homeschooling, moved across the country, taken a more gentle approach with my days and still I wonder what tweaks need to be made. I am working on feeling more comfortable in this playful space and letting go of the idea that there is a penultimate place I’ll get to when I’ll earn all the approval I still sometimes seek; internally and externally.
What if all of life really is a stage and we get to try on as many roles as necessary until we find the ones we most want to play?
What if there is room for And?
