Quora | Identity Question

Sunday Martin
Jul 30, 2017 · 3 min read

I tossed a question out to Quora about 9 weeks ago about loss and identity. I wrote it from a place of deep anguish and despair.

Question:

At age 6 my mom separated me from my father & his huge Latino family (half the context of my first yrs). Can such an identity “limb lost” be restored?

Question regarding: emotional health, wounded inner child, cultural identity, family identity, language, loss, divorce, separation, children of divorce, Latino culture, healing, trauma

The response I got suprised and delighted me. It brought comfort, too.

Answer by Les Matheson, Never assume that you know who you are.

“Yes and no. The tricky part of identity is understanding that you don’t need it to be yourself — that frees you up, and then you start to discover your capacity to experience and express and engage creative powers to awaken new identities.

Perhaps that’s a bit confusing. So try it from this angle: if you believe that you’re defined already, and that your self-definition is some immutable truth about yourself, then that belief blocks out true self. You can’t see true self, because this fixed belief about yourself is standing in the mirror, taking up all the space.

This applies to negative as well as positive beliefs. If you think that you’re defined as a “lost limb”… something that got separated from community and love and belonging, then that belief displaces your ability to recognize your true being as a whole person. You keep trying to “find your lost parts” or “redeem your identity” somehow, but it’s never enough.

The belief that your identity is a fixed thing that you’re stuck with has a masking effect… you can’t experience yourself as a complete thing.

People spend years or even decades trying to repair their broken identity. That can continue until the grave intervenes unless they have a fundamental insight that turns the game inside-out. This transformative insight is always some form of a realization that you’re already complete… that you’re already OK, that

your being-whole is unconditional.

If you’re broken, and you go seeking your missing parts, you can search forever without finding them. But if you’re already whole, and you go looking for ways redeem your broken parts, it all works out… somehow, you always find a way to heal and bring life back to the dead limbs. You learn how to make everything meaningful, which isn’t the same as controlling life or changing yourself or changing your situation.

The point is that it’s a mistake to think that you need something from others in order to turn this around… it’s not about finding your new family or recovering your old one, it’s about recognizing a universal truth about being human, which just happens to apply to your situation as well:

you’re OK, no matter what.

Standing there, what about your family? What do you want to express or create? You don’t need what you think you need, but it can still enrich your life as long as you’re not dependent on it to know yourself.”

Les showered so much wisdom on my question. I couldn’t help but weep in appreciative recognition of all the truths.

Sunday Martin

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Walking toward a free heart, an open life, a story written.

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