The Identity You're Carrying Isn't Yours to Keep

There is something most of us never question — a belief about ourselves so deeply embedded that it feels less like a thought and more like a fact. It lives in the background of every decision we make, every room we hesitate to enter, every opportunity we talk ourselves out of before we even begin.

We are walking around carrying identities we never chose for ourselves.

Someone gave them to us. A parent. A teacher. A sibling. A group of girls on a sidewalk in Anaheim, California when we were twelve years old and desperate for a friend.

Think about it this way: we accept without question that we grow out of tube tops and crappy friends. We outgrow phases, tastes, and relationships that no longer fit. But nobody tells us we're allowed to do the same thing with the identities that were handed to us before we were old enough to choose for ourselves.

Nobody sits us down and says — hey, that label? You can put it down now. It was never really yours to begin with.

The Phone Call That Shaped Me

When I was in sixth grade, my mom and I were living in a rented house in Anaheim. I had no friends at school — not a single one — but I wanted one so badly it ached. I was awkward in every possible way. Wearing my mom's hand-me-downs. Frizzy hair I had no idea what to do with. Trying so hard and showing it.

One afternoon, three girls from my grade approached me walking home from school. As they got closer and called my name, I felt it — this is the moment. Finally, someone noticed me. Someone wanted me around.

We walked together, I mostly listened, and then one of them said I should come to her sleepover that night. I could barely breathe. I ran home, begged my mom, got a yes, grabbed the phone number she'd written down, and called.

She answered. I could hear laughter in the background.

I told her my mom said yes and asked what time I should come.

And then she really laughed. Not the excited kind. The darker kind. The cruel kind.

"Oh my God — we were totally kidding! We don't want you at our sleepover!"

The phone went dead.

I stood there in the kitchen, the receiver still in my hand, completely crushed. Not only was I alone — I was a joke.

What I Did With That Story

For years, I carried that moment without even realizing it. It became part of the furniture of who I believed I was. There were rooms I didn't enter because of it. Opportunities I didn't pursue. Friendships I kept at arm's length. A quiet, persistent belief that certain spaces — certain rooms — simply weren't for me.

Not cool enough. Not pretty enough. Not someone people actually want around.

I never questioned where that belief came from. I just accepted it as truth.

It wasn't until I started doing the real work — going back into the rooms I'd stopped entering — that everything began to shift. And what I found when I returned to that sixth-grade memory wasn't what I expected.

Those girls were still terrible. What they did was still cruel and humiliating and wrong. Going back didn't change any of that.

But here's what it changed: my understanding of what it meant.

When I sat with it honestly — when I journaled through it, meditated on it, really looked at it — I realized something that should have been obvious but had never landed for me before. Those girls didn't know me. Not even a little. We had never had a real conversation. They had no idea who I was, what I was made of, what I was capable of. Their cruelty said absolutely everything about them and absolutely nothing about me.

That realization cracked something open.

The Work That Followed

Once I saw that, I got curious. I started asking myself:

When did I first start believing this about myself? I journaled about the earliest memories I had of feeling like I didn't belong. I wrote about the labels I had been given — not just by those girls, but by circumstances, by survival, by the stories I'd absorbed growing up.

Then I did something that felt almost too simple: I looked for evidence to the contrary.

I made myself find examples — real, specific, undeniable moments — where the belief had been proven wrong. Rooms I had entered and thrived in. People who had chosen me. Spaces where I had not only belonged but led.

There were more than I expected. Far more than the belief had ever allowed me to see.

And slowly, something shifted. The identity I had been carrying — the one that had been handed to me on a sidewalk in Anaheim when I was twelve years old — started to loosen its grip.

Because here's what I know now that I didn't know then: we are not the labels we were given. We are not the cruelty of people who didn't even know us. We are not the rooms we were too afraid to enter.

We get to decide who we are. We get to go back, heal what we find, and rewrite the belief — even if we can't rewrite the story.

Where I Am Now

Those rooms I used to stand outside of, convinced I wasn't cool enough or brave enough or enough of anything to walk through the door?

I'm not standing outside them anymore.

I'm speaking at the front of them.

And I want that for you too.

The identity you're carrying — the one that was given to you, handed down, absorbed in a moment of pain you never fully processed — it isn't yours to keep. You can put it down. You can go back, look at it honestly, and choose something different.

That's the work. And it starts with being brave enough to open the door.

When You're Standing in All the Rooms at Once

"It was like all the rooms that carried the disappointment I felt from her, I was in all of those rooms all at once." — The Room to Be Brave

Sometimes I am thrown back into rooms I thought I healed from. These are rooms that held significant trauma. Where I woke up from my coma on a ventilator, having no idea that I was fighting for my life from meningitis. The delivery room where I had my daughter and was bleeding out while they worked to save both of our lives. The room where my foot was gray and a limb preservation specialist told me she would do whatever she could to save my foot.

Hospital rooms are rooms of trauma for a lot of people, so I am no different in that way. I wonder how many people feel the weight of those rooms when they are facing a new medical diagnosis, a new, unexplained symptom, a feeling like something is wrong.

I know the weight of that feeling. I've sat in that room many times.

This is a room I am healing in layers. I have worked through what I think is the worst of it and in the day to day I'm good. Until I'm not.

As soon as there is a lab value that's red, or an impression on imaging that recommends further imaging… I am standing in all of the rooms I have been in. I'm 19 again, laying on my stomach on a table while the doctor takes samples from my kidney to run a biopsy and confirm my chronic kidney disease. I'm 22 again, looking at my hand for the first time after my fingers were amputated. I am in every room where uncertainty, my mortality, and almost always pain are overwhelming.

So, what do I do when that overwhelm hits? How do I handle the weight of all of those rooms?

I come back to the room I'm in.

I journal my thoughts to get the fears out of my system, reminding myself on the page that I am not in any of those rooms because I already survived those moments.

I meditate to clear the rapid onslaught of thoughts, the what ifs, the oh my gods.

I call a friend. I am between therapists at the moment so I let someone in and let the words fall on understanding ears.

I find my joy. Rather than look into my own thoughts, I look outward and find somewhere to put my hands. I write, I hug my daughter, husband or cats, I go outside and feel the air on my skin and take joy in each breath.

I do for someone else. I send a text to a friend telling them I love them, I buy my daughter a treat. Doing for someone else takes me out of the panic and stress of my own thoughts.

I don't do all of these every time. I'm not insane, I couldn't keep up with all of them. But I use the most accessible at the time. And they work. These tools pull me out of the layers of rooms that I have already survived and put me into my body, and into the current moment.

Heavy moments carry enough weight without piling the ones you've already survived on top of them.

Whatever rooms you're carrying right now, I hope something here helps you find your way back to where you are.

The Room to Be Brave: Sometimes the Way Forward Begins with Going Back is available now. Order your copy here

What rooms do you keep returning to? I'd love to hear from you in the comments below.

The Fear of Change

What are we so afraid of?

I have no research to back this up, but I’m pretty sure fear of change has to be right up there with public speaking and death. Change is terrifying. Even good change. Getting married. Having a baby. Getting a new haircut. Why does all of it feel so scary?

What the heck are we actually afraid of?

So let’s try this: I’ll show you my fear, if you show me yours.

The Room Where It Started

I’m mostly afraid of two things: failure and judgment. And I know exactly where both of those fears were born.

I’m twelve years old, standing in our kitchen in 1990, holding a cordless phone. A group of girls had invited me to a sleepover—or so I thought. When I called to say I could come, they laughed. It wasn’t an invitation. It was a joke.

I wasn’t wanted in that room.

That kitchen—with its marble-brown carpet and Formica countertops—became the room where I learned I wasn’t enough. Not cool enough. Not pretty enough. Not wanted. And I carried that belief out of that kitchen and into every room I entered after it.

Thirty-five years later, I was still standing outside of rooms, afraid to go in.

Fear of Failure

Who actually likes to fail? Certainly not me.

But here’s something interesting: if you asked me to list my biggest failures—ten of them, five of them, even two—I’d struggle. Not because I’m embarrassed, but because the things I once thought would ruin me forever barely register now.

At the time, they felt catastrophic. Looking back from my cozy home, with my beautiful family, I don’t see them as failures at all. Every choice I made—good, bad, and questionable—brought me here. And I’m grateful to be here.

My divorce. The drunken nights in my twenties. Even the time I got arrested. Were they my proudest moments? No. But without them, I wouldn’t be who I am today.

What I’ve noticed is that we use fear of failure as an excuse not to try new things, while completely ignoring a lifetime of successes that prove we’re capable. Why do we cling so tightly to the worst moments of our past, instead of standing on everything we’ve survived?

I have far more moments of success than failure. And I’m willing to bet you do too.

Fear of Judgment

This one’s a doozy.

For years, I avoided trying new things because I was afraid of being judged. And if I’m honest, most of that judgment wasn’t coming from other people—it was coming from my own insecurities.

I’d assume the thing I wanted to try was stupid. And somehow, I also assumed I’d surrounded myself with people who would agree.

Usually, neither of those things was true.

Not every interest will be shared or understood by the people around you. That doesn’t make it stupid. Sometimes the uncommon things are the most interesting. And while there are judgmental people in the world, you usually know who they are—and those aren’t the people you need to be sharing your heart with anyway.

When I started sewing, no one in my immediate circle was particularly interested. So I found my sewing people—online, in fabric stores, on YouTube. And those people were kind. They remembered being beginners. They celebrated my first crooked tote bag like it was a masterpiece.

Sometimes you don’t need permission from your current circle—you just need to find the people who are already doing the thing you want to try.

Ways I Work Through the Fear of Change

These are some of the strategies we use in my house—and the ones that have helped me the most.

1. Set reasonable expectations

You will probably not be good at something the first time you try it. Or the tenth. And that’s okay.

Beginner-level expectations take the pressure off. Being new at something is freeing. You’re allowed to scribble before you paint masterpieces.

2. Ask, “What’s the worst thing that could happen?”

This is a game we play often. The more ridiculous the answer, the better. Shark attack. Covered in honey while bears are released. Will that happen at the dentist? Probably not.

The point isn’t realism—it’s perspective.

3. Find your community

When I learned to sew, my family was politely supportive. My sewing community? They got it. They celebrated the wins and helped me through the disasters.

Find the people who understand the thing you’re trying to do. They’ll bring you along.

4. Journal it out

Journaling has helped me untangle more anxious thoughts than almost anything else. Writing takes the power away from fear. You don’t have to journal every day—but when you’re stuck, it can shake things loose.

5. Go back to the room

This one changed everything.

I went back to that kitchen—not physically, but in my mind. I sat with twelve-year-old April and told her the truth: that those girls’ cruelty had nothing to do with her worth.

When we’re afraid of change, it’s often because we’re still living in an old room. A room where someone made us feel small. A room where we learned a belief that no longer fits.

When you heal what happened there, you stop carrying it into every new room you enter.

A Final Thought

Your life is built on survival, resilience, and quiet victories. Every hard day you got through. Every time you tried again. Every moment you didn’t give up.

Fear doesn’t disappear when you find joy—but it does lose its grip.

And when you go back to the rooms that taught you to be afraid, you often discover something surprising: you were always brave enough to walk through the door.

You just needed to stop listening to the voice that learned fear too early.

So try the thing. Step into the room. Find your joy.

You’re allowed to be here.

If this post resonated with you, my memoir The Room to Be Brave explores this same theme on a deeper level—the courage it takes to try, to fail, to keep going, and to finally face the rooms we've been afraid to enter. The book releases January 27, 2026.

Want more stories about finding joy, breaking cycles, and choosing courage? Sign up here to get updates about the book launch, and you’ll receive a downloadable guide to finding your own rooms that may be holding you in place.