Seeking Identity & Dreaming of Vocation
By Kathleen M. Danley
It was not my plan to turn 25 and drown in a “quarter-life crisis” during a global pandemic.
I had earmarked the year leading to my 25th birthday as one of change. Within a few months of turning 24, I had broken up with the boyfriend I thought I would marry, quit a job I had loved for years, re-enrolled in classes with the vision of a career shift, and begun a new interim job. I planned to move into the new career field while the economy was good and move out of my parents’ house all before the summer of 2020.
In the course of my breakup, I had to set aside, for the immediate future, my longing to be a wife, mother, and homemaker and choose to pursue career aspirations that had never come as naturally instead.
As I planned this year of change, I allowed myself to dream big—bigger than I had in my whole life. I had begun to say to myself, “I want to be a writer,” and let those words sink through me; through the fearful part of me that said I wasn’t ready, down to the part of me that had said these words as a little girl with hope, excitement, and courage. I set goals for my attainable dreams along with concrete steps to achieve them. It was going to be a hard year but, in just a few months, I would be doing things I had previously never let myself believe could happen.
While I worked towards these goals, I took a job as a nanny. Five days a week I cared for three little girls and I thrived in a way I hadn’t thought possible. I loved working regular hours for the first time in my life and having the margin for hobbies, my classes, and learning more about my own likes. I loved meeting the baby’s eyes while she ate and watching the older girls play.
Sometimes when the girls and I were at the park or I sat on the couch with the baby while her sisters napped, I would melt back into the ever-present and favorite dream for my future—a husband and children of my own.
While I was dreaming of new ways to thrive and grow during my 24th year, I was always dancing around this—my biggest, oldest, and deepest dream of being a mother. Unlike career goals, I can’t make this one happen, but my inclination is to always leave room for it. Many of my friends have gotten married and others have even started families. While I know that my own hope for marriage and family could be years away, or never happen, it also feels like it could be right around the next bend. The wavering tangibility of the dream taunts.
Meanwhile, COVID-19 took the world by storm and, in the space of about two months, I lost my nannying job, turned 25, landed back at the food service job (temporarily, I hoped), and my car got totaled.
Separately, each of those things was hard, but stacked together they showed me the fragility and fluidity of the things I believed made up my identity. I had forgotten during the hours I poured myself into those little girls that it could end so quickly. The nature of little kids is that they are little and I am big. Consequently, the time I spent loving them was more important to forming my view of myself than theirs.
When a man ran his SUV into my cute little hatchback and caused more damage than it was worth, I faced an odd earthquake in my mental stability. I came to realize I had expected this car to be part of my life much longer and I had subconsciously rested in the comfort that this car wouldn’t change, even while so much else did. I dramatically went through every single stage of grief over a diminutive collection of red metal and leather seats.
And while this time was also strewn with glimpses of hope, beauty, and grace, it was, frankly, a difficult couple of months. In the midst of everything, I felt like I couldn’t see who I was, as many of the things I had lately rooted my identity in were suddenly gone. Looking for comfort, I turned back to the deepest wish—that one day I will be a mother.
I’ve realized that the core of this dream is stability: while cars can be totaled, jobs can be lost, and years will pass, motherhood is an identity that doesn’t go away. Nannying introduced the exhausting difficulty of caring for children, but it also allowed me to taste the rewarding depth of love I can have for little ones. While those girls will grow up and I will likely only be a short memory from their younger years, children of my own will remain part of me forever even as they grow.
In the interim, because there is still an untold amount of time before motherhood might happen for me, I have learned to settle into what my identity is now. On the hardest days, when I was so confused about the simplest essence of who I was, I would go back to the smallest things. I would remind myself, “I am loved by God,” “I am a daughter and a sister,” “I am a redhead,” “I am a singer,” and “I am a writer.”
I found that each of those “I am” statements held a different power. “I am loved by God,” which felt like a corny line from childhood, was a fundamental reminder of my place in the universe within the wisdom and grandeur of my God. “I am a daughter and a sister” reassured me of the place I hold in relationships that do not change, even on my worst days. “I am a redhead” centered me in my physicality while also reminding me to search beyond the physical for the fundamental (since I’ll one day go grey!). “I am a singer” and “I am a writer” reminded me that I have an unrepeatable personality, talents to give, skills to invest in, and hobbies to enjoy.
These and other basic “I am” statements felt like a silly exercise in the moment, but helped me contextualize multiple aspects of my identity and how I chose to see myself in light of those different aspects. Identity became this beautiful tension between living in the present moment and reaching for what I am called to in the future.
As I learned to be more honest with myself and reconsider priorities and goals, stepping into the truth of the long-held dream of motherhood has been a comfort; however, even during hard times, I cannot ask an aspiration to bear the weight of defining who I am or allow it to take me away from what God is calling me to now.
Throughout this 25th year, I have come to recognize that longing to root my identity in one particular vocational aspiration would be reductive. God’s plan for me is infinitely broader and this discovery of the multi-faceted nature of my identity allows me to pursue His will with greater freedom. I now have a deeper understanding of the confluence of fluidity and stability within identity and how that interacts with my dreams as I work each day towards the will of God. Do I still long to be a mother? Oh, yes! But I now know it’s not the only thing I want—or am called—to be.
