I always appreciate your posts and have often thought it particularly elegant that your posts are an invitation at times even when someone may or may not fit certain labels. That kind of inclusiveness is something I have always strived for .... I think labels can be important as flags, as contours, and as markers for community. But I think they can also shut others out at times when, maybe, a possible connection is possible that transcends a label.
I feel the same about labels and have said so many times. I am a trans male but do I run up to people saying, "Hi I'm Lee, I am transgender", Hell no. I am not in a closet, I just choose to not make my gender my introduction.
The great English raconteur, Quentin Crisp thought for most of his life that he was homosexual as when he was a youth in 1920's Britain there was no knowledge of the word transgender. When he finally was told later in life that this was indeed what he was he felt that suddenly his life made sense. BUT...he also said that if he had found out earlier and undergone reassignment surgery he would most likely have moved to a town where he was not known and started life again as a woman. His take was that why go under the whole process of transitioning to always be thought of as the woman who used to be a man.
For me, unless you are a close friend you do not need to know what gender I was born as and, until the writing of my memoir, I wanted to be seen as just another guy:) Of course, even after the discussion of gender, I still want to be seen as 'just another guy'. I feel no need to wave a flag:)
Thank you so much for sharing, Lee. I feel this so much: "I am not in a closet, I just choose to not make my gender my introduction."
When I came out as gay two decades ago, being non-binary wasn’t even on my radar. Had it been, my entire journey with queerness and everything else might’ve taken a much different turn. Instead, I just kept trying to find the right sexual orientation label: bi, gay, lesbian, pansexual. I’ve landed on queer because it feels the most spacious to me. And because, at least in my mind, it extends that spaciousness to both gender and sexuality.
I loved Quentin Crisp. While living in NYC in the 80s, when he was there, I had the pleasure of sitting and talking with him a few times in the bars. Lovely human being. Thank you for giving me back that memory. I haven't thought of him in years. You just made me smile.
Quentin was amazing. He wrote to me once when I was living on Christopher Street but I never met him. I know his assistant, Philip and he keeps him alive on Instagram and Facebook:)
I love this essay. I relate to so many areas that you write about. I've been out since I'm 15...almost 50 years...that just took my breath away! 50 years. I still feel like a 15 year old. What I want to say is that although I used the lesbian label for most of my life, it never felt complete for me. It's a box that can be hard to fit into sometimes. I love that we've reclaimed the word queer. There's so much more space contained in it. I know I labeled myself, especially when I was younger, in an effort to find community. But I never gravitated to all gay/queer/lesbian, etc. I have relationships with people, and if people ask me to describe myself, all I can say is I'm Nan. I'm me. There's a lot more space in that, too. And I hear you about declaring yourself as sober. When I first came to Substack as a writer, I launched my newsletter with a focus on recovery from an eating disorder. The whole newsletter was centered on my eating disorder recovery process. But then, I remembered that there's more to me than that. And I began to write whatever I want write about. And what I've noticed about my writing, is that everything, for me, is about recovery and connection. Because it's my life, and that's the path I'm on. And I'm including all the facets that make me Nan.
When I came out in my 20s, I identified as bi, then gay, then lesbian. In certain ways, identifying as lesbian felt so right - particularly because I was mainly interested in dating women. But I knew the word was incomplete, and I also sensed a sort of dishonesty in that incompleteness. This was in part because I’m sometimes attracted to cis men and often attracted to non-binary and trans folks. But also, I don’t feel like "woman" captures my internal experience of gender. I don’t feel like a man; I don’t feel like a woman; I do feel somewhere on the non-binary spectrum...but that wasn’t really a "thing" back then.
I hear that. Yes. I love a more spectrum-focused "definition." The world has changed so much. There used to be intense resistance to anyone labeling themselves bisexual. I think a large part of the community was uncomfortable with the lack of some sort of perceived commitment to one camp or another, which I always found rather stultifying. People were actually angered by the label "bi." Choose a side! That was the demand of the day. It was ridiculous to me. I had an old friend who identified as bi. Her reasoning was "why love half the world, when you can love the whole world?" I admired her sensibility. I identify as a woman who prefers women for my intimate relationships, but I would never say never because there are so many beautiful humans out there. My definition of myself is always in flux as I evolve and age. I like that!
Nan, I love that first and foremost, you say you are "Nan". Exactly! I think it is very healthy and wonderful to allow your definition of yourself room to experience flux and to grow over time. We're complex beings. Why should sexuality not reflect that? I have identified as bisexual for years, and everything you are saying about "pick a side", etc., I've encountered. I think it's been great in some ways, to come up with labels and boxes that get more and more defined. I also wonder if we are doing ourselves a disservice to try to pinpoint things so exactly. It is awful to feel marginalized in a culture that celebrates heterosexuality - so I get it. I've truly felt sidelined for much of my life, but I do find that I don't seem to want to go around in full rainbow attire, either. Discussions like this make me breathe a sigh of relief. Like you said, there are many wonderful humans out there. It's okay to pursue authentic attraction, however that shows up.
Thanks so much for sharing, Doreen. I identify as pansexual these days (because it feels most accurate) but have often felt pressured to "pick a team."
Yes! I think it's most important, if to no one other than yourself, to identify with whatever term or label feels the most right. And that can certainly change! I'm sure we are super-confusing to heterosexual people a lot of the time, but it's really not their concern! It is us being our authentic selves. <3
This is so on-time for me this week. I’ve been wrestling with sharing my Substack on LinkedIn because sobriety plays such a major role in allowing me to reconnect, and come home to, self. However, my day gig is marketing ethanol for a variety of end uses (including beverage). So while people in my office are aware I don’t drink (but they don’t really want to talk about it, which is fine). Most of my LinkedIn connections barely know me or only know me in my corporate role. As I try to build a life beyond my current role, I wrestle with whether it’s worth putting all of me out in that space and bringing more alignment in all areas of my life, or keeping these separations of “church and state.”
I don’t have the answers, but I’m leaning toward alignment and am grateful for your share.
Oof - that’s another important element to consider, Josh. Thank you for sharing. Even for folks who don’t work in the same field as you, there’s much to consider when deciding whether (and how) to come out as sober, queer, or anything else at work.
So much appreciating your exploration and sharing around this, Dana. I have a similar conflicted relationship to identity, and how it can result in others seeing only a small portion of who I am rather than the whole, often contradictory being.
Sometimes the way I 'solve' for it is to lean into verbs rather than nouns... I love writing more so than i need to be seen as 'a writer,' etc etc. I have noticed that the more strongly i attach to an identity, the more that tends to create suffering for me, so as the years have gone by I've consciously (and sometimes unconsciously) dropped a lot of them. And yet there is the collective and systemic oppression that is still a real thing for some of those identities that are a part of me (queer/lesbian in particular), and for reasons similar to yours it feels important to stand in that space and stand alongside others in that space.
Mostly I appreciate that you name this as a question that doesn't need an unequivocal answer. It's a very rich question to live into....
Thank you for such a beautiful response, Maia. Love that you used the word "attach," because lately I’ve been thinking about addiction using the language of attachment (in a Buddhist sense). And it holds true for me as regards identity, too. I’m still very attached to identity and self-ing...but the older I get, the less so.
Honestly it feels like a relief to let some of them go, or at least the fierce level of attachment to them go. Maybe that comes with age : ) Did you ever hear of an exercise called the "bonfire of identities"? Sensei Fleet Maull used to do that when he taught in the Upaya Buddhist Chaplaincy Program, and I always found it so powerful. Basically it's a guided meditation where you are given a bunch of slips of paper on which you write down the identities you have been given or taken on -- "woman" "mom" "therapist" "queer" "introvert" "Christian" "white" "student" etc etc. Then Fleet would guide us through a process of imagining each one of those identities slowly fading away, and we'd wrinkle up the slip of paper and toss it away. Kind of wild to feel what's there when all those labels are dropped!
Beautiful, Maia! Thank you for sharing! Love this: "Those habits of thought that say: I always love this, or I could never do that, or this is just the way I am…get in the way of your evolving self, and undermine your sovereign capacity to grow, change, discover, embody more of your soul’s potentials."
“This othering is the number 1 reason I feel pulled to lay claim to those identities and to push back. Because whether I’m being demonized for perversion, or patronized as an addict or identified patient, or told that I’m not recovering correctly, I feel called to say:
No. This is who I am, and we’re alike.”
I wonder if there is space for a third response, something that is neither attachment (i.e., laying claim) nor aversion (i.e., pushing back). You seem to suggest that there is at the post’s end: “loosening our grip and looking beyond the labels and boxes.” Perhaps we can call this “letting be.”
Is there anything more to say about this third possibility?
Thanks for that, Taishin Michael. I think, for me, it comes down to leaving space for more than one thing to be true. Also being comfortable with ambivalence, uncertainty, and not knowing.
Thanks for sharing this, Dana! I appreciate hearing your story and how you balance the different parts of who you are. I'm newer to Substack and historically have been cautious in online spaces. I prefer to share myself with others in person and in writing articles; social media, even on Substack, feels trickier to me. I dislike the competitive nature of it. So I find it harder to discern what I want to share about myself in those spaces. And can relate to finding places that feel like home and how impotant that is!
Thank you so much for being here and for sharing, Serena. I hear you on the competitive nature of online platforms - even if that competition is with ourselves, there’s a kind of urgency that feels constructed, distorted, and divorced from offline reality.
Lovely share, Dana. And I’m so glad you articulated this feeling. As I can see from the comments, so many others feel this too, myself included. I’ve always found for me that there are times when I need to be cozy inside a certain identity to fortify my spirit and then times when they feel confining or exclusionary to myself and others. It feels like a continual process of taking inventory of how it all lands.
Thank you so much, Kaitlyn. And I love how you describe a kind of self-aware fluidity. We truly don’t need to make one ultimate decision around it all.
This piece opens us up and allows us to think. What a gift!
When I first got sober I strongly identified with it. I came out publicly (which, as a health care professional in a small community was a big deal) and built an online platform to share my experience which also helped hold me accountable at first. That work, possibly more than any other writing I've done, got more engagement and feedback about how much I helped others than most of my other work. Eventually, while I still maintained my sobriety, I no longer felt the desire to keep putting it out into the world on a regular basis by writing and speaking about it so I shifted my work back to personal growth and spirituality with sobriety thrown in sometimes. (However, IRL with my patients I talk about it all the time.) I can appreciate the question of how much to identify with it online because it is only one part of the whole, that is my sentiment exactly.
I had to go back to my About page to see if I refer to being sober there and see that I don't (which I will change) but it remains part of my bio here on Substack and everywhere else.
I love the way you break down how our identities are created, genetically, environmentally, and by choice and that, if we are choosing growth, parts of it may shift.
Thank you for your generous words and for sharing, Donna. I love all that. And it’s so interesting how personal identity intersects with our professional work.
I got sober and came out as sober online at the same time. It was absolutely a way to create more external accountability. Now, I feel extremely solid in my sobriety...which, perhaps paradoxically, makes me less inclined to make it front and centre of my identity.
I don't particularly like labels because I have never quite fit into them. I am straight-ish, polyamorous but currently in a monogamous relationship, I am sober without having ever been an alcoholic, so that sometimes feels like a weird label for me. I just show up as me and try not to box myself in. I find labels limiting, and my Aquarian nature rebels against them.
Such a beautiful share Dana. While I don’t share all your proclaimed identities—I certainly take a certain Pride in my sobriety. Maybe less about being actually sober—and more about living an examined life and what that brings me. Connection to people like you—an expansion of my previously more narrow belief systems—and a curiosity for new things. The lens through which I view the World will always reflect my sobriety and I’m most grateful for that “othering.” Loud and proud 💪🏻
Your post has got me thinking.... about the labels I claim (eg. psychologist, yogi) versus those I reject (eg. straight, queer). In some areas of my life I hate being put into a box (I've had relationships with men and women but never liked to wear any label around this - I simply love who I love). While other labels (eg professional ones) perhaps help prop my sense of self-worth?? No answers, but lots of thoughts. Thanks for posing some interesting questions....
Thank you for a lovely essay. Recently, I've been thinking a lot more about having multiple selves or parts and relating to myself in that way. The idea of the individual self, the atomized monad, is a trap of unbearable loneliness, I think. The more I can get my different selves conversing, the more it feels like flying as opposed to a Broken Self, stuck in quicksand. In this way, I think I can use labels to describe these selves without feeling like I'm negating myself. The online identity thing I am still thinking about. Thanks again.
Such a powerful reflection, Dana. One that is making me think a lot about how much I am leaning (needing?) my identification with being a sober person.
For me, it truly took getting sober to see fully. To see that life is not about identifying one way or another. To see that life is way more gray than black or white. To see that we can change and shift and surprise ourselves. It wasn’t until I was in active recovery that I realized I can hold two opposing views in one hand and say, hmmm maybe they both belong.
So much yes to this stance: make space for ambivalence rather than solve it. Walking through life with both/and eyes is so much more expansive. It airs things out and helps me think outside just myself.
And yet, even with all of that, I find I am lately feeling like I can only trust other sober folks with my big feelings. Somewhere along the way I’ve convinced myself that people not on a sober journey won’t “get it”. And what I know is true is that some do/will and some just won’t. I guess I feel I’m not giving some people a chance to prove whether they do/can. Maybe I am othering them - labeling them as close minded just because they have a different experience with alcohol or substances. It’s such a slippery slip, right?
Thanks for this thought provoking piece, Dana. You always hit things deeply for me and I so appreciate you. 🙏🏼
Thank you, Allison. And huge yes to making space for ambivalence. For me, that’s been one of the greatest gifts of sobriety. It’s also allowed me to take fuller accountability and to forgive people whom I never expected to forgive.
And, yeah...to be honest, I do "other" people who drink. It’s not that I think I’m better than them. It’s just that I know what alcohol does to the brain of ALL humans, and I don’t trust people when they’re drinking alcohol.
I always appreciate your posts and have often thought it particularly elegant that your posts are an invitation at times even when someone may or may not fit certain labels. That kind of inclusiveness is something I have always strived for .... I think labels can be important as flags, as contours, and as markers for community. But I think they can also shut others out at times when, maybe, a possible connection is possible that transcends a label.
Thank you from my heart, Amy. Hearing that my posts land in such a way means so much. And I love how you describe the both/and of labels.
I feel the same about labels and have said so many times. I am a trans male but do I run up to people saying, "Hi I'm Lee, I am transgender", Hell no. I am not in a closet, I just choose to not make my gender my introduction.
The great English raconteur, Quentin Crisp thought for most of his life that he was homosexual as when he was a youth in 1920's Britain there was no knowledge of the word transgender. When he finally was told later in life that this was indeed what he was he felt that suddenly his life made sense. BUT...he also said that if he had found out earlier and undergone reassignment surgery he would most likely have moved to a town where he was not known and started life again as a woman. His take was that why go under the whole process of transitioning to always be thought of as the woman who used to be a man.
For me, unless you are a close friend you do not need to know what gender I was born as and, until the writing of my memoir, I wanted to be seen as just another guy:) Of course, even after the discussion of gender, I still want to be seen as 'just another guy'. I feel no need to wave a flag:)
Thank you so much for sharing, Lee. I feel this so much: "I am not in a closet, I just choose to not make my gender my introduction."
When I came out as gay two decades ago, being non-binary wasn’t even on my radar. Had it been, my entire journey with queerness and everything else might’ve taken a much different turn. Instead, I just kept trying to find the right sexual orientation label: bi, gay, lesbian, pansexual. I’ve landed on queer because it feels the most spacious to me. And because, at least in my mind, it extends that spaciousness to both gender and sexuality.
I loved Quentin Crisp. While living in NYC in the 80s, when he was there, I had the pleasure of sitting and talking with him a few times in the bars. Lovely human being. Thank you for giving me back that memory. I haven't thought of him in years. You just made me smile.
Quentin was amazing. He wrote to me once when I was living on Christopher Street but I never met him. I know his assistant, Philip and he keeps him alive on Instagram and Facebook:)
So great! I didn't know that. I'll look for him there. No one like him in the whole world.
Yes Philip has three Instagram and Facebook pages, his personal one, the Philip Ward Project and The Quentin Crisp Archives
I love this essay. I relate to so many areas that you write about. I've been out since I'm 15...almost 50 years...that just took my breath away! 50 years. I still feel like a 15 year old. What I want to say is that although I used the lesbian label for most of my life, it never felt complete for me. It's a box that can be hard to fit into sometimes. I love that we've reclaimed the word queer. There's so much more space contained in it. I know I labeled myself, especially when I was younger, in an effort to find community. But I never gravitated to all gay/queer/lesbian, etc. I have relationships with people, and if people ask me to describe myself, all I can say is I'm Nan. I'm me. There's a lot more space in that, too. And I hear you about declaring yourself as sober. When I first came to Substack as a writer, I launched my newsletter with a focus on recovery from an eating disorder. The whole newsletter was centered on my eating disorder recovery process. But then, I remembered that there's more to me than that. And I began to write whatever I want write about. And what I've noticed about my writing, is that everything, for me, is about recovery and connection. Because it's my life, and that's the path I'm on. And I'm including all the facets that make me Nan.
That’s so beautiful, Nan. Thank you for sharing.
When I came out in my 20s, I identified as bi, then gay, then lesbian. In certain ways, identifying as lesbian felt so right - particularly because I was mainly interested in dating women. But I knew the word was incomplete, and I also sensed a sort of dishonesty in that incompleteness. This was in part because I’m sometimes attracted to cis men and often attracted to non-binary and trans folks. But also, I don’t feel like "woman" captures my internal experience of gender. I don’t feel like a man; I don’t feel like a woman; I do feel somewhere on the non-binary spectrum...but that wasn’t really a "thing" back then.
I hear that. Yes. I love a more spectrum-focused "definition." The world has changed so much. There used to be intense resistance to anyone labeling themselves bisexual. I think a large part of the community was uncomfortable with the lack of some sort of perceived commitment to one camp or another, which I always found rather stultifying. People were actually angered by the label "bi." Choose a side! That was the demand of the day. It was ridiculous to me. I had an old friend who identified as bi. Her reasoning was "why love half the world, when you can love the whole world?" I admired her sensibility. I identify as a woman who prefers women for my intimate relationships, but I would never say never because there are so many beautiful humans out there. My definition of myself is always in flux as I evolve and age. I like that!
Nan, I love that first and foremost, you say you are "Nan". Exactly! I think it is very healthy and wonderful to allow your definition of yourself room to experience flux and to grow over time. We're complex beings. Why should sexuality not reflect that? I have identified as bisexual for years, and everything you are saying about "pick a side", etc., I've encountered. I think it's been great in some ways, to come up with labels and boxes that get more and more defined. I also wonder if we are doing ourselves a disservice to try to pinpoint things so exactly. It is awful to feel marginalized in a culture that celebrates heterosexuality - so I get it. I've truly felt sidelined for much of my life, but I do find that I don't seem to want to go around in full rainbow attire, either. Discussions like this make me breathe a sigh of relief. Like you said, there are many wonderful humans out there. It's okay to pursue authentic attraction, however that shows up.
Thanks so much for sharing, Doreen. I identify as pansexual these days (because it feels most accurate) but have often felt pressured to "pick a team."
Yes! I think it's most important, if to no one other than yourself, to identify with whatever term or label feels the most right. And that can certainly change! I'm sure we are super-confusing to heterosexual people a lot of the time, but it's really not their concern! It is us being our authentic selves. <3
Agreed!
I so much relate to what both of you are describing...
Thank you for your comment, Maia!
I agree!
This is so on-time for me this week. I’ve been wrestling with sharing my Substack on LinkedIn because sobriety plays such a major role in allowing me to reconnect, and come home to, self. However, my day gig is marketing ethanol for a variety of end uses (including beverage). So while people in my office are aware I don’t drink (but they don’t really want to talk about it, which is fine). Most of my LinkedIn connections barely know me or only know me in my corporate role. As I try to build a life beyond my current role, I wrestle with whether it’s worth putting all of me out in that space and bringing more alignment in all areas of my life, or keeping these separations of “church and state.”
I don’t have the answers, but I’m leaning toward alignment and am grateful for your share.
Oof - that’s another important element to consider, Josh. Thank you for sharing. Even for folks who don’t work in the same field as you, there’s much to consider when deciding whether (and how) to come out as sober, queer, or anything else at work.
So much appreciating your exploration and sharing around this, Dana. I have a similar conflicted relationship to identity, and how it can result in others seeing only a small portion of who I am rather than the whole, often contradictory being.
Sometimes the way I 'solve' for it is to lean into verbs rather than nouns... I love writing more so than i need to be seen as 'a writer,' etc etc. I have noticed that the more strongly i attach to an identity, the more that tends to create suffering for me, so as the years have gone by I've consciously (and sometimes unconsciously) dropped a lot of them. And yet there is the collective and systemic oppression that is still a real thing for some of those identities that are a part of me (queer/lesbian in particular), and for reasons similar to yours it feels important to stand in that space and stand alongside others in that space.
Mostly I appreciate that you name this as a question that doesn't need an unequivocal answer. It's a very rich question to live into....
Thank you for such a beautiful response, Maia. Love that you used the word "attach," because lately I’ve been thinking about addiction using the language of attachment (in a Buddhist sense). And it holds true for me as regards identity, too. I’m still very attached to identity and self-ing...but the older I get, the less so.
Honestly it feels like a relief to let some of them go, or at least the fierce level of attachment to them go. Maybe that comes with age : ) Did you ever hear of an exercise called the "bonfire of identities"? Sensei Fleet Maull used to do that when he taught in the Upaya Buddhist Chaplaincy Program, and I always found it so powerful. Basically it's a guided meditation where you are given a bunch of slips of paper on which you write down the identities you have been given or taken on -- "woman" "mom" "therapist" "queer" "introvert" "Christian" "white" "student" etc etc. Then Fleet would guide us through a process of imagining each one of those identities slowly fading away, and we'd wrinkle up the slip of paper and toss it away. Kind of wild to feel what's there when all those labels are dropped!
Sounds like such a powerful practice. I can almost imagine the spaciousness and lightness...
I had to google it because I was curious if others know of it…. here’s a beautiful piece by Hiro Boga, who is herself pretty awesome! https://hiroboga.com/blog/rule-your-world/bonfire-identities-really/
Beautiful, Maia! Thank you for sharing! Love this: "Those habits of thought that say: I always love this, or I could never do that, or this is just the way I am…get in the way of your evolving self, and undermine your sovereign capacity to grow, change, discover, embody more of your soul’s potentials."
Thank you for sharing this, Dana.
I found myself focusing on these lines:
“This othering is the number 1 reason I feel pulled to lay claim to those identities and to push back. Because whether I’m being demonized for perversion, or patronized as an addict or identified patient, or told that I’m not recovering correctly, I feel called to say:
No. This is who I am, and we’re alike.”
I wonder if there is space for a third response, something that is neither attachment (i.e., laying claim) nor aversion (i.e., pushing back). You seem to suggest that there is at the post’s end: “loosening our grip and looking beyond the labels and boxes.” Perhaps we can call this “letting be.”
Is there anything more to say about this third possibility?
Thanks for that, Taishin Michael. I think, for me, it comes down to leaving space for more than one thing to be true. Also being comfortable with ambivalence, uncertainty, and not knowing.
Thanks for sharing this, Dana! I appreciate hearing your story and how you balance the different parts of who you are. I'm newer to Substack and historically have been cautious in online spaces. I prefer to share myself with others in person and in writing articles; social media, even on Substack, feels trickier to me. I dislike the competitive nature of it. So I find it harder to discern what I want to share about myself in those spaces. And can relate to finding places that feel like home and how impotant that is!
Thank you so much for being here and for sharing, Serena. I hear you on the competitive nature of online platforms - even if that competition is with ourselves, there’s a kind of urgency that feels constructed, distorted, and divorced from offline reality.
Yes @Dana Leigh Lyons - and the rules are all different online in the absence of body language, eye contact, and physical presence!
So glad you brought up that aspect, Serena. Most of how we actually communicate as humans is missing online.
Lovely share, Dana. And I’m so glad you articulated this feeling. As I can see from the comments, so many others feel this too, myself included. I’ve always found for me that there are times when I need to be cozy inside a certain identity to fortify my spirit and then times when they feel confining or exclusionary to myself and others. It feels like a continual process of taking inventory of how it all lands.
Thank you so much, Kaitlyn. And I love how you describe a kind of self-aware fluidity. We truly don’t need to make one ultimate decision around it all.
This piece opens us up and allows us to think. What a gift!
When I first got sober I strongly identified with it. I came out publicly (which, as a health care professional in a small community was a big deal) and built an online platform to share my experience which also helped hold me accountable at first. That work, possibly more than any other writing I've done, got more engagement and feedback about how much I helped others than most of my other work. Eventually, while I still maintained my sobriety, I no longer felt the desire to keep putting it out into the world on a regular basis by writing and speaking about it so I shifted my work back to personal growth and spirituality with sobriety thrown in sometimes. (However, IRL with my patients I talk about it all the time.) I can appreciate the question of how much to identify with it online because it is only one part of the whole, that is my sentiment exactly.
I had to go back to my About page to see if I refer to being sober there and see that I don't (which I will change) but it remains part of my bio here on Substack and everywhere else.
I love the way you break down how our identities are created, genetically, environmentally, and by choice and that, if we are choosing growth, parts of it may shift.
Thank you Dana for an excellent essay.
Thank you for your generous words and for sharing, Donna. I love all that. And it’s so interesting how personal identity intersects with our professional work.
I got sober and came out as sober online at the same time. It was absolutely a way to create more external accountability. Now, I feel extremely solid in my sobriety...which, perhaps paradoxically, makes me less inclined to make it front and centre of my identity.
Yes, that’s my story too. It remains of vital importance and simply becomes who we are but requires less effort.
Yes! It simply becomes who we are. ❤️
Love your beautiful bravery and kindness in sharing of yourself!
Thank you so much, Kat!
I don't particularly like labels because I have never quite fit into them. I am straight-ish, polyamorous but currently in a monogamous relationship, I am sober without having ever been an alcoholic, so that sometimes feels like a weird label for me. I just show up as me and try not to box myself in. I find labels limiting, and my Aquarian nature rebels against them.
Love all that, Janine! Thank you for sharing!
Such a beautiful share Dana. While I don’t share all your proclaimed identities—I certainly take a certain Pride in my sobriety. Maybe less about being actually sober—and more about living an examined life and what that brings me. Connection to people like you—an expansion of my previously more narrow belief systems—and a curiosity for new things. The lens through which I view the World will always reflect my sobriety and I’m most grateful for that “othering.” Loud and proud 💪🏻
Thank you from my heart, Dee. And I love that - living an examined life, connection, expansion, curiosity, so much yes!
Such a thoughtful and thought provoking post. ❤️
Thank you, Samantha! ❤️
Your post has got me thinking.... about the labels I claim (eg. psychologist, yogi) versus those I reject (eg. straight, queer). In some areas of my life I hate being put into a box (I've had relationships with men and women but never liked to wear any label around this - I simply love who I love). While other labels (eg professional ones) perhaps help prop my sense of self-worth?? No answers, but lots of thoughts. Thanks for posing some interesting questions....
Thanks so much for sharing that, Vicki. Interestingly, I have trouble claiming my professional and yogic labels :).
Interesting. And if I think back, it was your yoga and chinese medicine backgrounds that first drew me to your newsletter 😊
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Thank you for a lovely essay. Recently, I've been thinking a lot more about having multiple selves or parts and relating to myself in that way. The idea of the individual self, the atomized monad, is a trap of unbearable loneliness, I think. The more I can get my different selves conversing, the more it feels like flying as opposed to a Broken Self, stuck in quicksand. In this way, I think I can use labels to describe these selves without feeling like I'm negating myself. The online identity thing I am still thinking about. Thanks again.
Thanks so much for reading and sharing, Mike. That way of thinking about the self/selves/parts feels very true to me. We each hold multitudes.
Such a powerful reflection, Dana. One that is making me think a lot about how much I am leaning (needing?) my identification with being a sober person.
For me, it truly took getting sober to see fully. To see that life is not about identifying one way or another. To see that life is way more gray than black or white. To see that we can change and shift and surprise ourselves. It wasn’t until I was in active recovery that I realized I can hold two opposing views in one hand and say, hmmm maybe they both belong.
So much yes to this stance: make space for ambivalence rather than solve it. Walking through life with both/and eyes is so much more expansive. It airs things out and helps me think outside just myself.
And yet, even with all of that, I find I am lately feeling like I can only trust other sober folks with my big feelings. Somewhere along the way I’ve convinced myself that people not on a sober journey won’t “get it”. And what I know is true is that some do/will and some just won’t. I guess I feel I’m not giving some people a chance to prove whether they do/can. Maybe I am othering them - labeling them as close minded just because they have a different experience with alcohol or substances. It’s such a slippery slip, right?
Thanks for this thought provoking piece, Dana. You always hit things deeply for me and I so appreciate you. 🙏🏼
Thank you, Allison. And huge yes to making space for ambivalence. For me, that’s been one of the greatest gifts of sobriety. It’s also allowed me to take fuller accountability and to forgive people whom I never expected to forgive.
And, yeah...to be honest, I do "other" people who drink. It’s not that I think I’m better than them. It’s just that I know what alcohol does to the brain of ALL humans, and I don’t trust people when they’re drinking alcohol.