Shedding Old Identities

On the subject of identities… it is a familiar one to me, losing old ones, finding new ones. I think the greatest upheaval in my life came with my divorce. Everyone expected me to remain in my Victorian home, puttering in the garden and devoting my life to charitable good works, with a little travel thrown in… perhaps Elderhostel. Instead, I fell in love again, learned to sail, and headed north… in winter.

Our Winter Passage continues…

After the purchase of twenty-acres on Middle Rendezvous Island, I had little time for reflection over the next two months. I decided it was time to sell my home in Oregon, which required my traveling there to prepare the house for sale. My 1892 Victorian house had been the culmination of a long-held dream. I thought I would grow old in the house on the corner of Fifth and Adams. Now I found myself leaving it without a backward glance.

I had no second thoughts, or regrets, but I became aware that another aspect of my “self” was being stripped away …that of pride. The gracious Queen Anne house and surrounding gardens had given me that. It had set me apart from others, given me an identity of my own. Before then, society saw me through my husband. How many times had I been introduced as the “lovely wife” of so and so? More often than I care to remember. It was that pride, that ‘identity,’ which I now found hardest to part with – the recognition that went along with having restored and owned a landmark house. It was a double-edged sword, an ego booster that too rigidly defined who I was, even as “wife and mother” had previously defined me. In people’s minds, the house and I were inseparable. It became who I was.

Living on a sailboat a thousand nautical miles north solved that. No one in British Columbia knew or cared that I owned a National Register home, and that was okay. It was yet another identity that I had outgrown, like a snake shedding its skin. Life does have a way of stirring the pot just when you think you’ve got it all figured out. I remember sitting in my car outside the Social Security Office soon after my divorce was final. I looked at the newly reissued S.S. card, at the name MORNINGSTAR… my name. I began to cry… When I returned home from the Social Security office, I wrote in my journal:

(March 1996) Who could have known that there would be such significance in a name? Today I drove to the local Social Security Office to have my social security card reissued in my maiden name. I was not prepared for the sense of retrieval that came from this small act. Leaving the office, I thought, “I am no longer someone’s possession. I am my own person again.”

I still recall the feelings I experienced during the divorce, the fear of losing my identity. I didn’t know who I was anymore. I was not a wife, a couple, or part of a mother/father team. I began to lose my sense of self when I gave up my own name thirty-five years ago. The “I” became “we” and as with so many other women of my generation, the self became submerged into the lives of others. With my divorce I have lost those roles, but I have gained the freedom to create my own identity. I guess that’s called growth.

“If you don't get lost, there's a chance you may never be found.” ~Author Unknown

... PLM