Take a moment to visualize yourself. Your interior self, though of course that may play itself out on your skin, in your face, in your clothes and your posture and your eyes. Who are you? What words capture what makes you unique? I would say this is the thumbprint of your psyche, except I think identity is more malleable.
How do your identities intersect and interact with each other? Where do they contradict each other, placing you in a state of perpetual cognitive dissonance? The great poet Denise Levertov articulated my two warring halves in her work, 'In Mind,' in which a single being is
kind and very clean without
ostentation —
but she has
no imagination
And she is also
dressed in opals and rags, feathers
and torn taffeta,
who knows strange songs
but she is not kind.
Don't you just love how we can find ourselves in the poetry of others? The Scottish writer, Jackie Kay, says that in poetry our stories are handed back to us, or something along those lines. Certainly it helps me understand who I am.
What about you? Who are you? Are you a Dutch-reformed soccer mom raised on watermelon seed fights and Christianity? A Korean teenager driven by bitcoin and philanthropy? A student—a perpetual one, of course—with noteworthy characteristics of the dilettante? Are you a writer? A dreamer? A fighter? All three?
Now. In what ways does your identity affect the way you move through the world? How does it impact your wellness?
These are the questions my colleagues and I posed to dozens of potential contributors to our newly-published work, Braided Identities—a collection of creative non-fiction, poetry, academic and personal essays, and visual art. The answers they came back with were astounding. I was amazed by their steely-eyed visions of themselves, of who they were, of how that affected their health and well-being.
For myself, I found the question profoundly difficult to answer.
How do I define myself? What are my primary identities? People often draw from their profession (I'm a physician), their family situation (I'm a divorced single mom), their sexual orientation and gender identity (I'm a straight male), or their religion (I'm a Muslim)—and sometimes a combination of these positionalities: 'I'm a straight Muslim male, a father, and a physician.'
I found drawing from these 'usual suspects' as I contemplated my own identity didn't resonate for me nearly so much as the more abstract qualities that make me me—qualities so intangible they are most easily described in metaphors.
I am a lion—that is, courageous. A fairy—by which I mean gamine. Samwise Gamgee—in other words, loyal and persevering. Willing to stride into Mordor, even when all hope is lost. A honey badger—wait? what? This one needs some context:
I'm not big. I don't appear to be overly muscular. But I can hold my own in a fight with startling tenacity, both literally and figuratively. So, I Googled, 'What small animal on the Serengeti can beat a larger animal in a fight?' I was hoping the answer would lead me to images of a relatively diminutive but nonetheless fascinatingly wild and majestic beast, but it turned out it is the perceptibly humble honey badger that can drive off much larger predators. Petite and startlingly lithe, the honey badger knows how to scramble. C'est moi.
Among the myriad marvellous things that comprise who I am are countless less-great things—'lowly' attributes that 'put the roots of my identity / down there,' to borrow from the poet, A. R. Ammons in his affecting poem, 'Still.' It is with equal measures of anger and regret that a defining characteristic of my identity is that I am, by every measure, mentally ill.
What follows is an excerpt from one of my contributions to Braided Identities. In this excerpt, I draw from my personal experience with mental illness. The chapter tells the story of how I have navigated my sickness in a healthcare system whose cracks are as wide as they are deep.
#1 Performing Wellness
Imagine you are looking at my headshot. My eyes are cheerful, and they stare confidently into the camera. My nose is slightly crooked. (“I was dropped as a baby,” I like to say—a lie, I think.) I have a smile that people call “million-watt.” My chin is marginally raised—defiant but not haughty. My Adam’s apple is curiously pronounced for a person assigned female at birth. The photo is cropped just below my shoulders. Some have called me handsome and others (generously) beautiful. All say youthful—their uncritical eyes haven’t spotted time’s tracks, traced down my cheeks by ruthless crows.
No one has ever looked at my photo and called me ill. After all, they have merely encountered the features of a human who appears largely ordinary, though perhaps with a hint of mildly theatrical je ne sais quoi. And this is why I have a headshot: because all performers get them, and I am an A-list performer. Everything from the intrepid eyes to the electric smile is an act.
This is the face of someone masking their mental illness. In my case, treatment-resistant major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder. Of the highest order. Pretty garden variety as diagnoses go, except that no combination of medication or meditation has a lasting impact. I run circles around most therapists that make their heads spin.
My illness has, at time of writing, never stopped me from meeting a deadline, going in to work, or fulfilling a professional obligation. But it’s an illness that severely compromises my quality of life and affects the lives of those closest to me.
Mental illness isn’t something we talk about very much when we have it because we are afraid to lose friends and jobs. This is an illness that, undiagnosed and untreated, can be terminal. Sometimes, even with excellent treatment and boundless love, horrible things happen to the mentally ill no matter what you do.
But we keep fighting.
How can you help? Watch for signs of illness in your children, especially your teens, and tell them you love them and will be their biggest advocate. It’s hard to get professional help. Fight for them until you get attention. Never give up.
We’re worth fighting for. Your children are worth fighting for.
If you'd like to read more, please visit your preferred online bookseller/shopping platform (e.g., Chapters/Indigo or Amazon), or call your local bookstore and ask them to order in Braided Identities: Being Well in Canada. The collection is available throughout Canada and the United States.
Or, if you don't prefer to pick up the book, then I recommend going to YouTube and searching 'honey badger vs lion.' I promise, you won't be disappointed.
Braided Identities: Being Well in Canada by Julie Sutherland, Margo Greenwood, Sarah de Leeuw, and Audrey Kobayashi, is published by the University of Alberta Press.
Julie, not only is this self-revelatory piece interlaced with naked honesty but, as always, you braid your writing with poetry: your metaphorical lines give me a sense of you. I can see your ‘time’s tracks, traced down my cheeks by ruthless crows’, and I understand what you mean when you nearly self-mockingly write that you ran ’circles around most therapists that make their heads spin’.
Congratulations on the publication of ‘Braided Identities’, and thank you for this exploration of your own identity, which also raises many deep questions for me to ponder.
Thank you, Jeff, for your kind words and your congratulations. I am glad to think my words may leave food for thought and, for some, for healing.