Identity Creation

What if we viewed identity crisis as an opportunity to create-or recreate-the identity we choose?

I’m a fifth-generation Arizona small-town girl.

I moved to my hometown when I was 11 and left for five years to experience college, a mission, and my first year of marriage, after which my husband and I promptly moved back to the same small town when he received an unexpected but generous job opportunity.

A good deal of my family (both immediate and extended) lives in this small town in Arizona, and for the majority of my adult years, I did, too....

...until a repeated spiritual prompting during January of 2020 invited both my husband and I to decide to sell our house (which we loved) and move to Utah.

Through many months and tears and dead-end experiences, we ended up following through on this decision and moving to a suburb of Salt Lake City, Utah, in November of 2020--when the COVID pandemic was still rearing its ugly head but feeling less life-threatening.

Pulling up roots that deep in order to transplant elsewhere is always a pretty traumatic experience, and ours was no different. It led to some significant grief-on my children's part.

They were used to small-town living, where they could ride bikes to friends' houses and explore empty fields and farms they had known their entire lives with little to no parental supervision.

We now lived in a city and knew no-one within bike-riding distance. Schools were big and had a different culture than what they'd previously known, and our new ward was loving, but smaller and more introverted than our previous ward had been.

I tried holding space for their anger and sadness (my 11-year-old son spent a full year trying to convince me to let him move back home and live with his grandparents), but this was especially difficult because along with the upheaval of everything my children had ever known came a great upheaval of my own identity.

I was from Arizona. I was a country girl who grew up raising steers and pigs for 4-H and building fences in the summers for college money.

I had always kind of assumed, when my husband and I moved back to the same small town I’d grown up in, that my children would have similar experiences and learn similar lessons I had.

And then came the plot twist.

I could write an entire book on what I learned from this moving experience (and maybe I will someday), but the one principle I wanted to focus on for this particular article was how, as a woman in my mid-30’s with a strong testimony and good relationship with my husband and children, I experienced some pretty significant identity crisis when my environment changed.

Suddenly, I no longer saw myself as similar to the other women in my neighborhood.

I became the only stay-at-home mother I knew. I didn’t even speak the same language as my next-door neighbor.

I learned that I wasn’t very practiced at making new friends without the comfort of the familiar safety net of friends and family I’d spent the last two decades building up around me.

Moving here and attending my first doctor's appointment with all five kids in tow because I couldn't find anyone to babysit for me, I cried, missing my group of friends who had regularly and willingly traded babysitting services with each other.

I didn’t realize how stressful navigating freeways and city traffic felt until, 6 months after the move, I drove to visit a friend in a small country town and felt like I could finally breathe as I navigated the small two-lane highway to her rural home.

Little details, like running into people who knew me at the grocery store or waving at everyone on the street (even if you didn’t recognize them) had been taken away from me, along with a great deal of how I defined myself.

If I wasn’t a country girl, and I wasn’t from Arizona any more, then who was I?

I felt like an outsider and a fraud, trying to navigate new unfamiliar roads and new unfamiliar relationships.

I’d experienced a great deal of culture shock as a missionary serving in Taiwan before, but this time was different.

I didn’t have the security of a name badge or a special calling anymore to buoy me up-I was on my own.

So when I felt lonely or isolated or homesick, it felt like a personal failure on my part.

If God had called me to come to Utah (and I genuinely believed He had), then it must mean something was wrong with me if I didn't feel like I fit in here.

Even when introducing myself, I found myself still clinging to vestiges of my previous identity: "Well, I'm originally from Arizona, but live in Utah now."

This transition was uncomfortable and even painful at parts, but despite the discomfort and unfamiliarity of the situation, I tried to remain willing to love those parts of Utah that I could genuinely hold on to: the mountains, the new friendships I was striving to cultivate, the cultural opportunities found in museums, shows, parks, and other resources not available in my previous.

As I learned to stretch my capacity and decide which parts of myself to shed, I found myself learning to lean into the discomfort even further; claiming Utah as my home, finding joy in the unique quirks and challenges living in a city presented.

So many times, when change comes along, we can see it as a threat to our identity and even our very existence.

Change in career, in age, in phase of life, in relationships--these can all trigger a sense of identity crisis.

I'm learning, however, that every crisis is an opportunity in disguise.

From my own experience, willingness Is the key to this transformation.

I still consider myself a country girl at heart--and I've also gotten to be a pretty good driver in freeway traffic who no longer hyperventilates at big crowds.

I will always love my Arizona pioneer heritage--and I genuinely love living in Utah and introducing myself that way.

I miss Arizona sunsets and the wide-open nature of my homeland--and I love watching the mountains and the beauty they offer in every season and situation.

My circumstances have changed, and I have changed along with them to some degree, but those vital parts of my identity--my core self--are eternal and unchanging.

I am a daughter of God.

I am a covenant-keeper.

I am a disciple of Christ.

No matter what my external situations may bring, those three core principles of my identity have become a rock upon which I have found myself blessed enough to build a joyful, fulfilling, meaningful life.

Not a perfect one, by any means.

But a beautiful one, nonetheless.

(for further resources, see "Choices for Eternity," by President Russell M. Nelson, May 2022)

Categories: : Emotional Health, Faith, Families, Identity