Written by Courtney Snyder
For some time, my daughter has loved the “Sound of Music” - the songs, the clothes, the children and of course, Maria. Recently, however, Liesl, Marta, Brigitta and Gretl were replaced with Harpo, Groucho, Zeppo and Chico. It seems my six year old is now in her 1930’s Vaudevillian humor stage. Though I loved those moments when she called for me from the top of the stairs,…. “Mariaaaaaaa,” I equally love when she says “Mommy,” and I look in the rear view mirror to see her smile as she forces her eye brows up and down ...like Groucho himself.
Childhood gives us permission to enjoy those different parts of our personality. When I was young, I would wear different hats as I read, studied or listened to music. Each one had a different persona. There were no favorites.
By the end of my teens, however, I'd given the hats away. They were no longer necessary. I was on my way to successfully forming a very singular image of myself. Through college, medical school, psychiatry training and then a psychiatric career - no hats, just hair that didn't move very much.
Twenty years later, motherhood shook that image. As an at home mom, my days, like my hair went from order to an enjoyable chaos. Out of seemingly nowhere, I discovered I loved to create art. With this, I began to abandon that former image of me the psychiatrist and replace it with another singular image - that of an artist, …then a photographer, ...then an interior designer.... Each time I thought, “This is it – this is what I’m supposed to do. This is what I was supposed to do all along.” Eventually the seriel “This is it's" left me in doubt.
"Follow what energizes you, trust the process... the answers will come," I'd tell myself. I started writing this blog to find those answers. And with each post, another interest - another possibility. “I’m a decluttering expert and I write about the psychology of aesthetics, ….that’s not it, I’m an inspirational writer/photgrapher, …no, I’m a serious writer of creative nonfiction, ….no, that hat doesn't fit either, … I'm a humorist and my writing is ...humble or is it grandiose?...simple or refined?... gentle or sharp? ... charming or odd? ...smart or not so smart?"
Despite being completely energized as I tried on these different hats, I'd tell myself, "You'll have to find your voice and when you do, you'll have to stick with it. You have to present yourself in a consistent way. Only then will people know what to do with you; only then will they'll know what box to put you in."
Recently though, I've been thinking maybe I should stay out of boxes. I never did like closed spaces…you know, like…jail cells and coffins.
Maybe instead, I need to keep trying to live what I believe, which is that:
- we are all multidimensional and part of our job while we’re here is to discover those dimensions. Like dinner guests, those parts may arrive early or even late. When they do, we have to welcome them in, if not embrace them.
- if we ignore our "selves", we'll struggle with restlessness or even an identity crisis - one of those moments when part of us breaks the door down. We didn't hear them as we were too busy entertaining that singular notion of ourself.
- we'll miss life's possibilities if we reduce our lives to what we've already seen in the world.
- all of our experiences, abilities and passions make someone we and the world have never seen.