I really enjoyed this post and all the angles of contemplation and discovery. While so much has changed about me, physically and emotionally and philosophically, and on and on, there is something that always remains the same. I do notice too, that when I go home to visit my family, suddenly I am that child/sibling/daughter/ way back when. I haven't lived near family for 30 years now, and don't go home very regularly. There are just some people where no matter how long it's been since you last saw them, it's like you pick up right where you left off, good or bad.
I used to like to ask that question, Who are You, at a party when meeting new people. I think people thought I was a bit odd, usually the question goes more like "What do you do?" But the answers were always along the same line. Oh i am a mom of... Oh I am a teacher... so they answered as if I asked What do you do?.
When I can't sleep at night I contemplate this question. Who am I?, I dream it up without words the best I can. Using words really throws a wrench in the wheel of the imagination.
When I was a little girl, I had a game I invented: putting on embodied personas of neighbourhood teenagers, impersonating their gait around the kitchen table and asking my mother (at the sink or cooking), "Mummy, who am I NOW?" She would have to guess.
As an adult, using journalling as my self-care resource, I have periodically asked myself the Mummy-who-am-I-NOW question. We seem to be constantly evolving beings with threads of continuity amidst a landscape of disruptions and redefining experiences.
The last few years have created a chasm between "me" and my former "self-identity" because so much of what I thought I knew, and those I thought I trusted, has dissolved as I crossed through a looking-glass. I now look back through the seemingly one-way mirror at my former self and my absent friends - can they see me at all, or have the labels "antivaxxer" and "conspiracy theorist" made me invisible?
Thanks for your comment Rosemary. I value the sharing.
I love the "Mummy, who am I NOW?" question. I can picture the scene. While I didn't have that relationship with my mother and can't picture asking her that, I really relate to the idea and probably would ask my own inner parent the question (also because I never really felt anyone outside of myself understood who I really was...so never fully trusted their perceptions of me).
Your contemplation of being recently rendered invisible stands out to me too. The invisibility thing has been a life long recognition and learning for me...and so intimately connected to the self-identity and 'who am I' pondering.
If I ever talk with people on the phone, it is regularly reflected that I sound exceedingly younger than my 55 years. I find this fascinating, because I have wondered for some time...decades perhaps...whether the reason people don't seem to listen to me, hear me or pay attention to the things I say, is because they hear my 'child voice'. I have had a very distinct awareness, very recently, of moving into a very different place in my awareness. I only realised this when contrasting it with my past...feeling a disconnection from who I used to be...best described as feeling like I have transitioned into maturity.
I really enjoyed this post and all the angles of contemplation and discovery. While so much has changed about me, physically and emotionally and philosophically, and on and on, there is something that always remains the same. I do notice too, that when I go home to visit my family, suddenly I am that child/sibling/daughter/ way back when. I haven't lived near family for 30 years now, and don't go home very regularly. There are just some people where no matter how long it's been since you last saw them, it's like you pick up right where you left off, good or bad.
I used to like to ask that question, Who are You, at a party when meeting new people. I think people thought I was a bit odd, usually the question goes more like "What do you do?" But the answers were always along the same line. Oh i am a mom of... Oh I am a teacher... so they answered as if I asked What do you do?.
When I can't sleep at night I contemplate this question. Who am I?, I dream it up without words the best I can. Using words really throws a wrench in the wheel of the imagination.
When I was a little girl, I had a game I invented: putting on embodied personas of neighbourhood teenagers, impersonating their gait around the kitchen table and asking my mother (at the sink or cooking), "Mummy, who am I NOW?" She would have to guess.
As an adult, using journalling as my self-care resource, I have periodically asked myself the Mummy-who-am-I-NOW question. We seem to be constantly evolving beings with threads of continuity amidst a landscape of disruptions and redefining experiences.
The last few years have created a chasm between "me" and my former "self-identity" because so much of what I thought I knew, and those I thought I trusted, has dissolved as I crossed through a looking-glass. I now look back through the seemingly one-way mirror at my former self and my absent friends - can they see me at all, or have the labels "antivaxxer" and "conspiracy theorist" made me invisible?
I'd like to share with you my latest grapplings and artistic gropings in my new heterodox world, in case they resonate with your current BEING. http://www.resilienceintransition.net.au/articles
Thanks for your comment Rosemary. I value the sharing.
I love the "Mummy, who am I NOW?" question. I can picture the scene. While I didn't have that relationship with my mother and can't picture asking her that, I really relate to the idea and probably would ask my own inner parent the question (also because I never really felt anyone outside of myself understood who I really was...so never fully trusted their perceptions of me).
Your contemplation of being recently rendered invisible stands out to me too. The invisibility thing has been a life long recognition and learning for me...and so intimately connected to the self-identity and 'who am I' pondering.
If I ever talk with people on the phone, it is regularly reflected that I sound exceedingly younger than my 55 years. I find this fascinating, because I have wondered for some time...decades perhaps...whether the reason people don't seem to listen to me, hear me or pay attention to the things I say, is because they hear my 'child voice'. I have had a very distinct awareness, very recently, of moving into a very different place in my awareness. I only realised this when contrasting it with my past...feeling a disconnection from who I used to be...best described as feeling like I have transitioned into maturity.