Episode 18: Who am I outside of family and work responsibilities?

Tune in as Jackie explores her own identity and the ambiguity of who she is apart from who she is as a sister, a daughter, a mother, a wife, a business person and "multi-hyphenate." She delves into her own struggle and shares, not the wisdom of hindsight, but a perspective from inside the confusion.

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We hope that you get something helpful out of this conversation. If anything, know that you’re not alone. You see, we all struggle, mourn, yearn, question, laugh and cry. No matter our age, background, or titles, at our core, we are all not so different, You & I.

Make sure to listen until the end to hear the question we will be diving into on the next episode. And if you feel inspired to respond to this asker and are interested in being a guest of this episode, or if you have a short word of wisdom for them, write to us on the contact page on youandipodcast.com or DM us on Instagram at @youandi.podcast.

Episode Resources:

Jackie Kai Ellis: Website / Instagram

You & I Podcast: Website / Instagram

Resources on finding trusted professional help can be found here.

• Transcript

  The following transcript was automatically generated. Please be aware that it may contain errors. Thank you for your understanding.

  Welcome to You & I.

  I'm Jackie Kai Ellis and it's my genuine hope that through sharing our most vulnerable stories we know, in the moments where it matters so much, that we're actually not alone. It needs to be said, I'm not professional, just someone with some personal experience to share. I do hope this is helpful, but as always, take the advice that resonates and ignore what doesn't. And don't hesitate to seek out professional help through a trusted source.

  We have some resources on our website. For today's mini-episode, it's a question that I really, really struggled to write. It's because I struggle with this question right now, every single day. They write, who is this? So I've decided to name you Asker Sound.

  Dear Sound. I really don't know. This question is almost impossible for me, because right now I'm in a season of my life where I can't even answer that question for myself. Who am I apart from being a sister, a daughter, a wife, a mother, a business person, a multi-hyphenate or whatever, someone you occasionally see on Instagram, this voice you're hearing right now.

  I really don't know how to answer this. I feel as lost as you probably feel. I've spent weeks rewriting a response to this question, and every time I sat down to write, I started over with something totally different. I don't yet have the hindsight, the objectivity to distill it all. I'm still in the middle of it, like bobbing in a moving ocean, searching for some piece of land I can cling my eyes to, some truth I can stand on. But my situation is still constantly evolving. I'm constantly evolving. And at some point, I just need to stop rewriting this and honour the process as much as the result. I need to trust that sharing the process too can be as helpful.

  And I do hope it is. Who am I when I peel away who I am to everyone else? I've been thinking about this a lot. Who am I when I've removed my family, my child, if that's even possible? Lately, I feel like I've been swallowed up by the needs of others. I hear this is natural, being a new mom, but it's so much greater, deeper, more airless than I could have even imagined.

  For example, yesterday, I hadn't eaten in 24 hours because I was so much more tired than I was hungry. We were rushing out the door to meet family obligations. I was changing diapers, trying to figure out which toy Kai was crying for while I packed his bag.

  I calculated that again, I didn't have time to wash my hair. And in making sure he wasn't hungry, I didn't even have the energy to feel hungry myself. Hours later, when I finally had to plate a food in front of me, Kai was also hungry. So I decided to feed him first because, as most parents know, happening on a window to successfully feed your toddler is like swinging from jungle vines.

  If you don't catch the next vine, you fall flat into a hangry tantrum. I was so hungry, my stomach hurt. But feeding him was the lesser of evils in that moment. And after we got home, I had to go to the bathroom so badly. But he also needed milk so badly.

  So of course, I took care of him first. And as I write this, there's this external voice that comes in and judges me for not being more organized with a constantly changing set of variables, for not being both able to care for myself and yet selflessly care for my child at the same time, for not being able to split myself into two, for not being a better mother. So I also have to question who I am, apart from these insane societal expectations of a mother as well. And as I chastise myself for not always fulfilling my responsibilities to my child, my family, my work, my society, and myself, I wonder, how am I supposed to figure out who I am, apart from everyone else, if I can't even go to the bathroom without having to consider everyone else? And as for who I am without my work, well, that is in some ways more complicated and so much simpler to answer. You see, in the midst of being swallowed up by my role as mother, work has helped me to carve out a space for at least another identity to exist, because another responsibility is a really good replacement for responsibility. Especially if you feel guilty or selfish, it's easier to take time away from family if you have a work responsibility to wedge into its place. But who I am, apart from my work, even before I became a mother, was a question I had been struggling with.

  You see, my identity has always been fused with my work for as long as I can remember. I remember going to a Buddhist temple when I was about nine. My family and I went kau tzim, also known as lottery poetry or Chinese fortune sticks. When one performs kau zim, they present a question to the gods or ancestors while shaking a bamboo cup filled with sticks marked with words and numbers until one falls to the ground.

  The fortune teller at the temple will then look up the corresponding marks in an index of short poems and then divine the answer for you. You might wonder what was occupying my mind as a nine-year-old, what I asked. Well, I was stressed out about my career, naturally. What will I be when I grow up?

  What should I study? Will I be okay? What came back was essentially, don't worry, everything will be fine. I remember feeling a little patronized by this poetic prophecy. I wondered with intense frustration, did I get this dismissive kind of answer because I'm only a child?

  Did adults get better answers than this? Will I be fine? How do I know I'll be fine? And what does fine even mean?

  Okay, maybe the oracle was right. I am fine, and perhaps I was a little bit too stressed out about my career at nine years old. But I like this story because it reminds me that work being important to me is maybe just me too. I love my work.

  It's the way I express myself. It's where I play is my painter's palette. It's both a source and outlet for my creativity.

  I'm naturally just someone who shares my passions and it energizes me to think about how to turn my passions into something I can do all day long for work. But I was also taught very young, growing up in an immigrant family that my self worth was defined by work, how hard I worked, how much I could produce, how successful or impressive I could be, my titles and accolades. Now I know I'm not my work. And yet what I create is an expression of who I am. So you see, it's simple and complicated at once because the line between joyful expression and having my self worth be defined by the success of this expression is quite blurry.

  And it's always been a challenge for me to separate where I begin and where my work ends and where I end and the expectations of others begin. All this to say, I'm really confused right now about who I am, who I am apart from everyone else, who I truly am when stripped to my core. And frankly, it's embarrassing and it pains me to say that I don't know. It's embarrassing because a part of me feels like I should know having known so clearly before who I was, so clearly that I wrote a memoir about finding myself. I had built a life around knowing me.

  I had a somewhat accidental persona around knowing myself. And it's painful because I remember the joy and stability of knowing the confidence and peacefulness that comes with knowing. It's painful for me to contrast my current confusion to a time when I didn't feel so heavy, when I didn't weigh my needs and desires to the needs and desires of everyone else, when I wasn't so confused as to which of those were important to me. But simply life for me has changed in both joyful and challenging ways. And I've changed too. And now there are so many more voices than there was before when I was alone.

  Voices that sound like even my own voice and has just become harder to hear anything at all, let alone my inner voice. And then I remembered this quote from Ram Dass that feels a little bit like that piece of solid land on the horizon. He said, the predicament is that you listen to your inner voice and it leads you to a path and you outgrow it. And you don't want to admit that you've outgrown it because you made a big investment in it. But you must be willing to let go to stand as naked as a newborn child again and again.

  To me, the key word there is outgrown. Maybe I haven't lost myself. Maybe it's that I've grown a lot. Maybe I've grown so much that the ways I've defined myself before no longer fit. Maybe seeing how I've grown requires shedding ideas of what I was before and what I was supposed to be and what I've invested in who I was. And when I do let go, stand naked as I am now, I see that so much of what makes me feel lost is all a part of who I actually am.

  I am a mother. I can't strip that away nor do I want to. I don't want to strip away my family or my work or who I strive to be in service of others. If it's not that I'm lost and I'm here but bigger and different, maybe I can stop panicking and take my time to explore who I am in the midst of this noise. Maybe each of us are an amalgamation of the noises we hear, everyday sounds, babies crying, telephones ringing or the sound of wind through trees or squirrels picking through autumn leaves on the ground or our family members bickering or honking horns in boring meetings. Maybe we get to orchestrate the noise around us.

  Maybe I'll slowly listen to each and reorganize them, choosing which to be louder, which to be quieter, slower, faster, where to be silent, which notes I'm missing, what everyday sound I want to add. Maybe who we are isn't separate from our families or our work. Maybe who we are is the unique sound our lives can create. And so maybe the question I'll ask myself instead is, what sound do I want to be?

  Thank you so much for your question sound. I hope you got something helpful out of this. If anything, know that you're not alone. You see, we all struggle, mourn, yearn, question, laugh and cry.

  No matter our age, background or titles, at our core, we're all not so different, you and I. In case you missed it in the last episode, check out our next month's question on our homepage. If you feel inspired to respond to this asker and have a short word of wisdom for them, write to us on the contact page on undyepodcast.com or DM us on Instagram at youandi.podcast. And of course, as always, please submit your questions there too. I also wanted to thank all of you who submitted questions for my upcoming book, To You Who Wonders.

  It's an advice column meets memoir. Stay tuned for updates, but in the meantime, feel free to visit toyouwhowonders.com for more information. If you enjoyed this episode, like and subscribe to our channel, which helps others who might be interested find us. And feel free to share this episode with someone who may find it helpful as well. Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm Jackie Kai Ellis, and this is You and I.