You Can’t Find Yourself in Roles That Were Never Meant to Fit
“I confused surviving with thriving, performing with being, and roles with identity for 20 years. The day I stopped, everything changed.”
The moment I stopped asking ‘How can I be better at this role?’ and started asking ‘Who did God create me to be?’ - everything changed. My identity isn’t found in the costumes I wear, but in the relationship I have with the One who knew me before I was born.
You can’t find yourself in roles that were never meant to fit.
I thought I had found myself twice in my life.
I was wrong both times.
Let me explain.
I got married at 18 while still in high school. But here’s what most people don’t know - I’d already had my first child during the summer between my 9th and 10th grade year. At 14, I went from being a kid to being a mom. At 18, I went from teenage mom to wife.
I never got to just… be.
For 11 years, I wore every cape I thought a good wife should wear. The supporter. The fixer. The peacekeeper. “Why don’t you change jobs? Let’s try counseling. Maybe we should have another baby.” I became whatever I thought would help, whatever I thought would make it work.
When that marriage ended in 2017, I thought “FINALLY! Now I can find out who I really am!”
But here’s what actually happened: I just traded one set of roles for another.
Since I had 50/50 custody, when I had my kids, I was full-force mom - the relaxed, fun version without the stress of marriage. I focused on my health, worked out every day, ate well, poured into my career to provide for us.
But when I didn’t have my kids? I became the party girl I never got to be in high school or college. Every weekend, and plenty of weeknights, I was out drinking and meeting new people, doing at 29-32 what most people do at 18-22.
I thought this was me “finding myself.” Really, I was just trying on the role of the carefree young woman I’d never been allowed to be.
In 2020, I met my now-husband. The party girl cape shifted to “relationship party girl” - still drinking, still going out, but now as part of a couple. The mortgage business exploded, and I was working 12+ hour days, seven days a week.
Then COVID hit. Hurricane Ida destroyed our hometown in 2021 and brought my booming career to a screeching halt. Between the pandemic, the natural disaster, and early relationship struggles, the alcohol went from “fun” to survival.
I wasn’t the party girl anymore. I was drinking to numb the pain and stress of everything falling apart. But alcohol doesn’t numb emotions - it amplifies them. All that buried pain came raging out, usually directed at my husband. The blacking-out, raging alcoholic cape was the heaviest one I’d ever worn.
This went on until 2022, when life started getting back to normal. COVID was subsiding, we were rebuilding after the hurricane, things were stabilizing.
That’s when I had the day that changed everything.
I drove home drunk with my kids in the car. That night, I went into a drunken rage in front of them for the first, only, and last time. The next morning, listening to my husband recount what I’d said and done while I couldn’t remember any of it, every cape I’d ever worn fell off completely.
Standing in my bathroom mirror, I finally asked the right question.
Not “What role should I play next?” but “Who am I underneath all these performances?”
For the first time in my life, I realized I had been confusing roles with identity for 20 years. The young mom, the perfect wife, the party girl, the career woman, the functioning alcoholic - none of those were ME. They were just costumes I wore to survive different seasons.
Here’s what I learned: You can spend your entire life switching from role to role, thinking each new performance is you “finding yourself,” when really you’re just… coping. Adapting. Surviving.
But roles are temporary. Identity is eternal.
My identity isn’t found in being the perfect wife, the fun friend, the successful businesswoman, or even the good mom. My identity is found in who God created me to be before I ever put on a single cape.
That 14-year-old girl who got pregnant? She was worthy of love just as she was.
That 18-year-old bride trying to fix her marriage? She was enough without performing.
That 30-year-old party girl making up for lost time? She was valuable without the validation.
That 34-year-old woman drinking to numb her pain? She was seen and loved by God even in her darkest moment.
The roles we play - wife, mother, entrepreneur, friend - those are things we DO. But they’re not who we ARE.
When I finally stopped asking “How can I be better at this role?” and started asking “Who did God create me to be?” everything changed.
I didn’t need to find myself in another relationship, another career move, another version of who I thought I should be. I needed to meet myself - the woman God knew before I was even born.
If you’re reading this and thinking about all the roles you’ve played trying to find yourself… maybe it’s time to ask a different question. Maybe it’s time to stop looking for yourself in costumes that were never meant to fit and start discovering the identity that was always meant to be yours.