Losing Your Identity

One thing you have to process when you lose the one person you feel you can’t live without, is another loss, your identity. The last five years I have spent intertwining my whole self with Curt. We spent countless hours talking about our views on this life, the good and the bad. We talked and kissed and talked some more. Before we knew it we didn’t know where one of us ended and the other began. I literally felt a gravitational pull between us. We very rarely disagreed about things and always, without fail, listened to each other. Respect was the basis of our relationship, we adored each other.

As much as Curt changed me into the woman I am today, I know I breathed a newness into his life as well. A way of looking at this world with a softness. We blossomed together and were very aware of it. We never took this fact for granted, we discussed it regularly. We figured out what made each other feel good and what we should avoid. Our souls meshed and our identities became a wife and a husband first, everything else second.

During our relationship I put a lot of time and energy into our story. The story of how we met that fateful day on the river, and the years after as supported each other in our goals of travelling, school and work. We figured out that fairy tale love does exist. The years bled together and I let them characterize who I had become. These years unleashed my ability to think critically, to analyze the world, and to understand that this life is a mosaic of beautiful colors and definitely not black and white.

This story and my identity have been what I have struggled with since my husband died. This identity that I have been so extremely and vibrantly proud of, felt gone. It is a terrifying feeling when you find yourself alone, desperately trying to hold onto the story that you have created, but not having the other person there to share your memories with or make the story crisp.

Ive talked to others who have lost a loved one and struggle with that same loss of identity. The idea that you don’t know how to be a person in this world without your person here beside you. You put countless days and years into meshing your lives together and that person has become a vital part of your story.  When that person is taken from you, you are stuck here figuring out who you are, if not their wife, husband, brother, sister, son or daughter.

How do you move forward when you feel that your identity has been pulled out from under you? How do you move forward at all if you don't know how to be a person without the other person there along side of you? My identity has been my story, the story of us. Now I feel I am missing half of that story, therefore missing half of my identity.

As I ponder this subject, mull it over in my head and process this part of my grief, I have come up with this. My identity is not only made up of the time I had with my love, it is also made up of what I had gone through before him and what I have withstood since his passing. So for all of us, yes, our identities may be strongly and fiercely shaped by another person, but we also are shaped by our experiences, which in turn shape our thoughts and our hopes and our dreams. Those things make up our identity as much as another person does.

I believe and have hope for the future and that is my identity. I have this hope and this faith only through Jesus, and that is my identity. As much as I have put so much of my time and energy into our story and being Curt’s wife, I know that my identity, first and foremost, is God’s precious daughter.

My time with Curt shaped me into a woman of strength, dignity, and confidence. Dealing with the loss of the only person I can’t bear to lose, has molded and changed my identity and forced me to ponder this idea of how we identify ourselves on this earth. My identity over the last few months has changed into a woman who knows she is not alone, she is being carried by her creator. A woman who is precious in God’s sight and is still here, despite the crushing pain, because she has a purpose and a plan to carry out and I will do so with confidence.

I believe that all of our identities are shaped by this fact. We all have a reason that we are here and a responsibility to seek out what it is we are supposed to do during our time on this earth. There will inevitably be times in our lives when we will lose the ones we have loved, but our identity does not change with this loss. Our identity is deeply rooted in our paths that we are here to seek and deeply rooted in God's love for us.

So, as I continue on, I will do so with the assurance that my identity is a girl that has learned how to love with all her heart. I will continue to give that love back with an understanding that love is the whole purpose of our time on this earth. Love is what shapes our stories and allows us to understand why we are here. It is our job to open our hearts and listen to our stories calling us forward.