identity crisis part one.
I had climbed the corporate ladder quickly and was praised for it. I was climbing multi pitches on Yosemite granite with overnight big walls in sight. I was the closest I had ever been with my mother and had overall solid relationships with friends and family. I stayed active and worked out with a trainer multiple times a week. I got my labs done and took supplements accordingly. AND at the end of the day, I was burned out, as so many unfortunate souls are.
I had carried the HR weight of multiple healthcare organizations through COVID, drafting and implementing the ever-changing policies associated with the pandemic, the death of my father, relationship ups & downs, broken bones - along with the surgeries and recovery that followed - lost jobs, started new ones, out of state moves, and a lifetime of codependency. Oh. And did I mention being a cancer survivor? No? That’s because it didn’t cross my mind. I had cancer when I was a wee little three year old and had clearly worked through those emotions many moons ago…right?! So why, when I hit my breaking point, did all of this resurface? And what did that mean for my path forward?
I was a perfect mess. Kind of like a perfect storm, except instead of it passing on its own, I had to do the work to get up and out of it and then embark on cleanup efforts. Something had to change and the universe wasn’t going to do it for me. It started with a fleeting idea. Social media had me pegged as an adventure-seeker and kept feeding me advertisements for Clipper Round the World. The idea of taking a year to embark on circumnavigating the globe on a sailboat with strangers from around the world had me more than intrigued, it had me dreaming. I committed to apply, casually mentioning it to my support system. My application led to an interview. My interview led to acceptance for training. Holy crap, I WAS IN! This was my future.
I was excited. I was nervous. I was a ball of emotions, but didn’t allow myself to feel them because at the end of the day, I had to carry on. I was still knee deep in corporate healthcare transformation. I was still navigating relationships and the rest of life. Acknowledging that I was burned out wasn’t an option. I had to be strong, even when I was failing, dropping the ball, unmotivated, losing my grip on my social life. The realities of leaving my life for a year to sail around the world began sinking in with my support system, sparking many uncomfortable conversations. I was crumbling and didn’t see a way out.
I took a leave of absence from work and upped my therapy game. Five days a week, for hours on end. EMDR, music therapy, group sessions, yoga, brain spotting, art therapy and the list goes on. I faced my emotions head on, multiple times a day. I sought to understand the shame I carried with me about so many aspects of my life. I was praised for my growth and my strength and how far I had come. I battled with acceptance.
Imagine you’re isolated inside a snow globe; everyone peering in on you, so close, yet distanced and unable to connect. That’s what life felt like at that time in my thirties. And all of a sudden, I was back at three years old. The child with cancer, inside the snow globe. Friends and family on the outside hurting in their own ways, battling with the possibility of losing a child in their life, wishing I wasn’t in pain when all I wanted was to take their pain away. All I wanted was to play, have a normal childhood (whatever normal means). This visual stuck and the realization hit. I didn’t know what it meant to be a cancer survivor. I had run away from the title as long as I could.
Both in my thirties, and at three, I was told how brave I was. That felt like lip service. Bravery incites the concept of having choice. Cancer happened to me. At three, I didn’t make a conscious decision to live through it. I just did. I spent my youth being a poster child for the American Cancer Society, raising money and speaking as the face of childhood cancer in my home town. I did it because it was the “right” thing to do and for the external validation, not because it was in my heart. Again, in a snow globe.
As I got older, I backed away from the external-facing activity and explored what it meant to be a cancer survivor through my art, scrounging for understanding. I created pieces about putting my identity back together, about being told my boyfriend’s mother didn’t want us together because if we had children they would have a higher probability of having cancer, about the physical and emotional pain I had felt through the years. I left those emotions in my artwork and moved on with life.
Through my later travels, I met other cancer survivors around my age. Some made “survivor” their entire persona. I couldn’t relate. I gravitated toward those who were willing to talk about their experience, understood its impact, but didn’t dwell. Maybe it’s because I’m an adventure-seeker, or maybe cancer tends to increase one’s threshold for “risky” activities, but I found that many survivors I met through adventurous activities tended to turn their experience into motivation rather than their identity. It became our way of working through the emotions while finding connection to ourselves. It became a physical expression to allow the difficult emotions to work through our bodies in a positive manner without being held back by titles. It wasn’t until I acknowledged that little girl in the snow globe and allowed others into my experience that I was able to fully embrace the fact that I had lived through something so painful.
I still grapple with how much being a cancer survivor plays into “my story.” Putting myself out there through writing or social media and stepping into the public eye through my Clipper Round the World journey begs the internal reflection of “who am I?” and “how do I want to present myself to the world?” I want to be genuine. I want to acknowledge the struggles that got me to where I am today, but not make it about the struggle. I want to acknowledge the complexities of life while living in the present rather than dwelling in the past or making it all about the future. I want to allow for exploration and growth and not pigeonhole myself into one thing, because I am so much more. More than a climber, more than an HR executive, more than my relationship titles. I am more. Life is more.
As I started seeing my way out of the snow globe, I imagined re-entering the work force. I imagined facing those who had seen me “fail” before. I decided to face my fears and stepped back into my HR position. After several months of being back in that corporate environment where I couldn’t thrive, I stood up for myself and had the conversation with my manager about transitioning out of the organization. Naturally, when asked to, I extended my time with the company because I was a people pleaser and didn’t want to see things fall through the cracks before they hired three people to replace the job I had been doing by myself for several years. Then, finally, my last day came. I had everything I thought I wanted: freedom, adventure, a blank slate. But stepping off the corporate ladder wasn’t an ending—it was the start of a much bigger question: Who am I without the titles (professional and personal) I had spent years building?
