Identity crisis: a feeling of unhappiness and confusion caused by not being sure about what type of person you really are or what the true purpose of your life is. Merriam Webster
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I envied people who knew right out of the gates who they were and what they wanted from life. It took me years, sixty-two years, to determine that for myself.
For the most part my identity was a function of my gender. I was a daughter. My parents had expectations of a girl who was also the oldest child. My role was predetermined and I felt accepted when they praised me for being what they wanted me to be. Teachers came next and again I performed my student role, not to learn, but to please. At sixteen I had a steady boyfriend. Clueless, I tried to imagine what kind of girl he wanted and became that creature.
Education beyond high school wasn't a priority since it was assumed I would marry, have a family, and live life in the pattern set by others in the small town in Northern Minnesota where I grew up. When I said I wanted to go to college and study law, the idea sounded preposterous to friends and relatives. Very few women were lawyers in those days but I knew one who was so I broached the subject with her. She was quick to suggest an alternative. "You'll just get married and waste all that money. How do you know if you'll like law? You should study to become a legal secretary instead."
So I did.
And then, as predicted, I got married.
The wife role was similar to the girlfriend gig: figure out what the husband wants and give it to him. That didn't go well. I was too self-sufficient, too uncomplaining, too focused on being what I imagined was everything he ever wanted. Divorces littered my journey.
The third marriage survived seventeen years. For the first time my life had definable purpose. I was a mother and I believed in myself and my abilities to raise happy, healthy, reasonably well-adjusted children. I wouldn't do what had been modeled for me. My three girls would be taught that anything was possible. I wouldn't hold them back by telling them 'they would just get married' or that college was 'a waste of time.'
When I saw the end of their dependent years approaching, dread descended like a shroud. I'd continued to work as a legal secretary, a job that never satisfied me. I couldn't get past the feeling that I should have been the one in the courtroom advocating for the clients. I wanted something challenging and new to define me when the girls left home. I imagined a career that I'd love, something to utilize both the left and right sides of the brain.
"Have you considered interior design?" a friend asked. She mentioned that she'd gotten her degree in that field twenty years ago. My ears perked. A quick search showed that a Bachelor of Science in interior design was available at the University of Minnesota, a few miles from home. The more I read about the program the more it felt right. I registered, became a student once again, and at forty-six I graduated at the top of my class.
I embraced the designer role dressing and acting the part. I was good at my job, so good in fact that I partnered with another designer and opened a studio in the high-end International Market Square Design Center in downtown Minneapolis. I'd hit my stride at mid-life and now another milestone approached. I wondered who I wanted to be as a retired, single woman.
By then I was divorced for the fifth time. (I never have figured out how to ace the wife role.) My plans wouldn't include a mate. If I knew anything for sure, I knew I'd closed the partnered chapters forever. The future stretched ahead, a broad expanse of possibility. It felt delicious and terrifying.
I spent the years between sixty and sixty-two working, saving money, paying off debt, downsizing, and journaling. I called the method I developed Writing for Self-Discovery. It was a formula based on a stream-of-consciousness flow interrupted by why's. Questions that challenged and coaxed the truth out of long-repressed silent chambers did their revealing work. The process put me face-to-face with unflattering truths. But as I wrote I recognized patterns, exposed co-dependent behaviors, hated myself, forgave myself, and began to understand how to take care of myself in healthy ways.
In, around, and through the journaling swam the bigger issues: What did I love to do? Where on the planet did I feel most supported and nurtured? Could I dare to dream big? What if I could have what I wanted, and for that matter, what did I want?
When the time arrived I had answers: I would take an early retirement, move to Indonesia, and write. I dreaded Midwest winters and longed for tropical heat. I had visited Bali once and her magic hadn't left me. I'd never believed I could make a living with words so I hadn't tried. Now I didn't have to write for money to survive. It was time to devote myself fully to the joy of creating story. Social security would support a modest lifestyle and the thought of forging a new existence in a culture that was in most ways opposite from the one I knew, thrilled me.
For the past five years I've lived that dream, 100 percent in touch with who I am, loving myself and my life. My three daughters found partners. I flew back for weddings and my father's funeral. And then my middle child dropped a bombshell.
"Hi grandma!" she said when I answered the phone.
I'd like to describe the avalanche of sensations brought on by that call. I'm a writer! I should be able to communicate the wild swing from elation to fear and back again like a pendulum gone awry. For a blissful five years I'd known who I was. My identity had fit like skin: writer, traveler, adventurer, the one who'd broken out of the box, youthful, exotic, a bit eccentric, definitely non-conformist. How did grandmother fit into that description?
I was the right age but I'd avoided thinking about grandmother-hood. I couldn't imagine what it should, could, would, look like for me. So as my daughter waited patiently for my response, thrilled with her news, I knew that I was deliriously happy for her and would sort myself out later.
The baby came three weeks early. I changed my flight and hurried to be with the new parents and my granddaughter. When I saw her, tinier than anything I imagined possible, a dam-burst of love flooded my heart. As I cuddled, bounced, rocked, and loved her, I realized that the identity crisis of being a grandmother had evaporated at the first sight of her, defenseless, small, and precious.
After being with her for six weeks I knew that in addition to being a granny, I was still everything I'd been before. But in that time I'd softened toward an image that grouped me with the elderly, the stereotypical sensible shoes and white bun with wire-rimmed glasses. That was the picture I'd rejected, abhorred, and tried to avoid because it meant only one thing: old. But holding her close as she burrowed into me, stroking the velvety silk of her hair, smelling the baby sweetness, I saw the line stretching forward, my children, my grandchildren, their children.
Grandmother-hood isn't a choice. It's thrust upon us and suddenly we're not 'less than,' but expanded beings, something more than we were before. I see that now. I have another human to love who already loves me, a granddaughter to carry my genes for another generation into the future.