Self-Esteem and Identity
“People sometimes assume ancestorship is reserved for those of biological relation, but a queered or cripped understanding of ancestorship holds that, such as in flesh, our deepest relationships are with people we choose to be connected to and honor day after day.”
As the complex human beings we are, we very rarely, if at all, fit into neat boxes. And yet so often we spend so much time trying to force ourselves into them because society and culture often demand it. And far too often, those boxes aren’t even yours to begin with, they’re ones that other people keep insisting on putting you in.
Maybe it’s gender and sexuality. Maybe you are an queer person of color struggling to fit into queer spaces, feeling isolated within your own communities. Perhaps you are exploring your gender identity and navigating the endless discoveries that come with that process. You could be trying to figure out how to invite your family (both of origin and chosen) in, because maybe coming out is not safe right now. Maybe your problems have nothing to do with your gender or your sexuality, but it would just be nice to not have to explain your identity all the time so that you can get to the stuff you actually want to talk about in therapy.
Maybe it’s high achiever fatigue and burnout. You’ve done everything, accomplished everything, you feel like you should be happy – after all, isn’t this what you used to dream of? And yet you’re not, feeling like you’ve burnt out on your dreams, feeling disconnected from a sense of purpose and connection with yourself.
Maybe you’re in a new stage in your life, trying to figure out your goals for the future and find your identity as you go. You could be older, moving through major life transitions, trying to understand your role as a caretaker, navigating the start or the end of a relationship and the identity shift that comes with it, adjusting to a new move or a new realization about yourself. You could be younger, just recently separating yourself from your family’s expectations of you, trying to figure out who you are in this world.
So why begin this page with a quote by Alice Wong about queer and cripped understanding of ancestorship? Well, one of the first and continuous ways that we define ourselves and understand ourselves is by looking at who we come from: what is our history, what is our story, who came before us and who will come after? For many people who are trailblazers, coming out, interrupting generational trauma cycles, confronting family and culture, setting boundaries and navigating conflict, it can feel quite isolating to be seemingly in opposition to the weight that history and stories can carry. So how do we find a way forward? A personal example follows.
In one of the professional trainings I was lucky to attend a few years ago, the facilitator invited us as participants to connect with a queer ancestor. Before I knew it, I froze up, stuck on the realization that I don’t have a single ancestor in mind that would have been queer or queer-accepting, not a single ancestor who has migrated countries and navigated disenfranchised grief. To my knowledge, everyone in my bloodline has always lived on the land that is now independent Kazakhstan, with the exception of my parents briefly moving around the then-Soviet Union for college before moving back to their hometown, and no one has ever been queer. I was so stuck on that realization that I hadn’t even considered that at no point in the invitation did the facilitator invite us to think of a biological ancestor, and that I could have looked to other ancestors for help. Stay with me; there’s a point to why I’m sharing this memory with you.
This was one of the key moments in my own journey, realizing that I had subconsciously been waiting for permission to take ownership of my narrative, or maybe too stubborn and scared to allow myself to create a new story. There were parts of me that were carrying guilt and shame, feeling that I would be betraying my family, my country of origin, my culture and history if I allowed myself to move away from the existing narratives. Perhaps there are parts of you that resonate with that. And even if there aren’t, perhaps this story can serve as one example of vulnerability as we focus on your journey and your stories.