Restorative Matters
The edges of Identity
I was standing in the supermarket, halfway through another negotiation with myself about what might pass as a nutritious meal and still stand a chance of the kids actually eating it.
Carrots hidden in sauces.
Lentils blended beyond recognition, all whipped up with the somewhat jaded optimism of someone who has tried this before and will, apparently, try again.
In other words, I was somewhere else in my head when he passed.
A man, perhaps in his seventies.
He caught my eye as he smiled.
And I clocked it.
It was one of those smiles that already had a sentence waiting behind it.
“Cheer up, love, it might never happen.”
And just like that, he walked on.
A hit and run of the conversational kind.
By the time I had fully caught up with what had been said, and the jolt of immediate irritation it produced had landed, he was already halfway down the aisle, blending into the blur of other people’s dinner decisions.
I was left in one of those moments where there is a lag, that fraction of a second between the thing happening and an appropriate reply being issued.
Like a glass slipping from your hand.
You know how it is going to play out, but its still too late to catch it, too late to respond in any way that would land cleanly and flash a clever reply.
So, with a defeated sigh, and short of following him and unraveling the whole thing in aisle twelve, I did what most of us do.
I let it go.
Or at least, I appeared to let it go.
Because what is the correct response to a comment like that?
A thank you, for the gift of helping me fix my face so that no other poor soul has to be burdened by my apparent misery?
Perhaps I should have launched into a feminist rant, I know too well he wouldn't have felt as comfortable offering such unsolicited comments to a man.
Or maybe I could have used it as an opportunistic therapy session?
I believe the current hourly rate is sitting at around £70 a hour, so why not?
I mean, after all, I am exhausted by the constant attempts to provide healthy, nutritious meals that my children will eat, so I'd welcome the opportunity to vent to any willing party - qualified or not.
But no, he is not in the slightest bit interested in my inner world, and I am well aware of the social rules and the acceptable response in this scenario.
I'm supposed to just smile, offer up a small, inaudible laugh, and give a quick nod of the head.
The internalised misogyny in me disagrees though.
I am overreacting.
I have simply misunderstood his intention.
He just wanted a little bit of connection and light banter.
And he didn't see 'me'
Not fully.
He simply saw a tiny fleeting part of me that had slipped loose and hung there long enough.
There is an old idea, found in Celtic folklore, of something called a fetch.
A double.
You can imagine it as a ghostly form just beyond the physical body.
Not quite a reflection, more like an echo that has slipped slightly out of sync.
It moves just ahead of you or lingers just behind, close enough to be convincing, not quite close enough to be true.
It was said to be a part of yourself that was not fully embodied.
In some tellings, it was a way of foretelling impending death.
But it wasn't always meant as something that dramatic.
Sometimes it could mean a misalignment, a sense that you had stepped slightly out of place, and a version of you, or a part of you, had lagged behind, where, for a moment, the two do not quite meet.
I am not suggesting that being told to cheer up in a supermarket is a death omen.
But I do think it touches something that happens to all of us, all the time.
Moments where we are briefly seen, and somehow, in that instant, also mis-seen.
Only today, I met with a friend who shared that somebody we were on a year long course with a few years ago had decided during the course that I was “too much”
Apparently, every time I asked questions or contributed, she would make comments about me to the person next to her from her seat towards the back.
Initially, it was horrible to hear, it stirred up a long standing feeling of being too much, of not fitting in, or worse, being just plain irritating to be around. I wondered, who else also thought that?
Luckily these feeling were short lived, and I was able to shut the spiral down.
Thankfully I've reached an age, partly due to the the slow shift of the 'people pleasing hormones' I am beginning to feel less affected by outside judgments.
I have come to understand we are are all something different to everybody we meet.
Not everyone sees our worth, and most of the time what people see is partly a reflection of their own sunshine and shadows, or perhaps they settle on something else entirely.
A small part of you, held just long enough to become their whole story of you.
It is like the idea of the fetch, an echo of us that someone fixes on, as though it were the entirety of who we are.
This is why identity is so confusing and complex.
We are not the same person to anybody. Even my children experience two completely different versions of me.
I recently saw a world leader, someone many in the west have been raised to fear, filmed in a sweet moment with his daughter.
To her, he is not that figure. He is her father.
Like many of us, I spent my teens and twenties trying to form an identity, a sense of place. Now, in midlife, I can see how transient it is, and how quickly it tightens when we begin to believe in it too fully.
Because, in truth, we are a thousand versions of ourselves.
Possibly more, if you include the versions shaped by periods of overwhelm, fear, or times feeling lost as move through life challenges.
These moments of judgement do not land once and disappear.
They have a habit of accumulating if left unchecked.
Someone reads your face.
Names it in their mind.
Sometimes even corrects it.
Tells you what it should be.
Often, especially as women, that instruction is allowed, expected even.
Small, passing comments that carry just enough authority to stay with you.
Over time, those readings gather.
A version of you begins to form just ahead of you, shaped by how you are met and perceived.
I'm reminded of that scene in American Beauty, where he watches a plastic bag appears to dance, but in fact its simply caught in the wind, moving with no real intention, pulled and pushed, much like our identity is by the perception of others, or earlier on, by our attempts to adapt and blend with what is expected of us.
At what point do we step into that, question it, or reject it entirely?
Perhaps this is part of midlife journey.
A slow shift between caring less about how we are seen, and at the same time feeling a stronger pull to understand who we are from within.
Because to that woman on my course, perhaps I really was 'too much'
Was the ADHD part of me too enthusiastic for her.
Or perhaps, and more likely, something in me triggered something in her and that did not sit comfortably.
I will never know.
I'd like to say it doesn't matter, but that wouldn't be true.
What has changed though, is that it no longer holds the same weight.
Moments like the one in the supermarket fall into the same pattern.
He was not responding to me.
He was responding to something that had slipped loose and held its shape long enough to be acted upon.
And that happens all the time.
Identity does not arrive fully formed.
It is worn in slowly, shaped through repetition, for as long as we allow it.
Until, eventually, we begin to notice.
We move through our twenties, and often into our thirties, with a sense that we are at the centre of our own experience.
Adjusting, and refining.
Polishing the edges where needed.
And then, gradually, something shifts.
Like a seam coming loose in a garment that once fitted perfectly.
The same life continues, the same conversations, the same responsibilities, but something about it begins to feel different.
There is space where there used to be certainty.
A sense that the identity we have been carrying is not as fixed as we once believed.
If you have children, that shift can feel even more pronounced.
It often comes with a total obliteration of the self.
Either way the need to be recognised as something specific begins to loosen.
What once felt essential begins to feel partial.
Its still there, still available, just no longer the whole story.
There is a kind of freedom in that, even if we are not entirely sure what to do with it.
We know how to step back into familiar patterns.
We have practised them for years.
But something hesitates.
Perhaps it is hormonal.
Perhaps it is simply that we have lived long enough to notice the repetition.
The same patterns.
The same concerns, voiced by different people.
Spend any time reading comments online and it becomes obvious how much overlaps.
I remember the first time I saw someone write, “we are basically all just the same person” under a relatable instagram reel.
It stayed with me.
there is something really comfortable in that.
A reporter on a BBC program I watched a few years back spent time with a hunter gatherer community in Africa - one of the last truly nomadic tribes left in the world.
The program was centered around understanding the many differences between life in the west, and their tribal lives.
Yet, he came back describing conversations that felt entirely familiar.
Relationships dynamics, common disagreements, who fancied who, alongside moments of care and connection.
The setting was different.
The patterns were human. Almost boringly so.
There is something relieving in that.
A sense that we do not have to hold ourselves quite so tightly.
At some point, attention on identity fades.
For me, it has been a little bird.
Izzy we have called her.
A blackbird in the garden, when I I first encountered her 8 weeks ago, her foot was turned at an angle that made no sense at all.
She was moving across the ground with a kind of uneven determination, seemingly unbothered by the fact that one part of her no longer does what it should.
She could still fly.
Not particularly high, due to perching issues, but far enough.
And so I found myself outside more often.
Keeping still. Blending in.
Waiting, without really knowing exactly what I am waiting for.
Connection, I suppose.
Just like in my twenties, when I looked at identity as a way to connect, yet here in midlife I find myself turning to nature, trying to shake off the weight of my human identity for the same reason.
Over the past few weeks, I have been feeding her, learning the small, particular ways she moves through the garden.
Watching as she has slowly regained use of her foot, and ability to fly and land higher in the safty of the trees.
I sit more carefully now.
More patiently.
Trying not to startle her.
Trying not to interrupt what is already happening.
To become part of it.
There is something else happening in those moments that is harder to name, but impossible to ignore once you feel it.
Sitting there, trying to hold still enough that she will continue about her business, I am aware of myself in a different way.
Not as a person moving through a day, but as something far more obvious.
A shape in the garden.
A presence that does not quite belong.
Every small movement feels amplified.
The shift of weight.
The turn of a head.
Even the direction of my gaze.
I learn quickly that looking directly at her changes something.
That eye contact carries a weight
I cannot soften with intention.
So I look slightly away.
There is a carefulness to it.
And within that, something begins to loosen.
Because the effort is no longer in shaping myself for other people.
It is something else entirely.
An attempt to become less noticeable.
Less defined.
Less distinctly human.
Over the past few weeks, I have found this unexpectedly captivating.
The way time shifts.
The way attention narrows and deepens at the same time.
I recently read Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton.
It is a beautiful observant account of an unexpected relationship between a woman and a wild hare, one that unfolds slowly through patience, attention, and a willingness to meet the animal on its own terms.
There is no force in it, no attempt to impose control, only a gradual building of trust that feels as much about the human unlearning as it is about the animal adapting.
There is another book, Feeding Bob, where a gardener describes a similar relationship with a robin.
And in both, something subtle but profound is taking place.
Because these moments are not about identity.
They are about the suspension of it.
For a short while, I am not the person I have spent years becoming.
I am simply there.
Trying, as best I can, to blend in.
Of course, there is an irony in this.
The moment I step back from it, write about it, shape it into something that can be shared, I return to identity again.
But in the moment itself, none of that is present.
There is only the attempt.
And the attempt runs deeper than it first appears.
Because sitting there, trying to be still enough that a wild bird will tolerate my presence, I am aware that I am not starting from neutral.
I am human.
And that carries weight.
Not just my own intentions, but the accumulated behaviour of those who have come before me.
In that context, I am a threat.
And she knows it.
I see it in the distance she keeps.
The quick recalculations.
Trust, if it comes at all, is not given easily.
It is negotiated, moment by moment.
And so I find myself working against something much larger than my own presence, trying, in small and almost imperceptible ways, to soften what I represent.
To sit more still.
To take up less space.
To prove, in the only way available, that I am not there to harm.
There is something else I have been thinking about as I sit there.
Joe Hawkins, in Neurodivergent by Nature, writes about the natural world as a non judgemental environment, drawing on the work of Alastair McIntosh.
And I understand what that means.
To a large extent, I agree.
But sitting there, with her watching me as carefully as I am watching her, it does not feel entirely true.
Because the natural world does judge me.
In instinct.
In distance.
In the quick decision that I am a threat.
And I feel that.
And so I find myself trying to soften it.
To sit more still.
To move less.
To allow space.
There was a time when I tried to belong by standing out.
Now I find myself trying to belong by not being seen at all.
Not disappearing.
Just not placing myself at the centre.
The blackbird continues across the garden.
Not rare. Not remarkable.
And yet, entirely herself.
In a world that feels full of demand, full of expectation, full of small and constant invitations to be something, to present something, to respond in a particular way, there is something restorative about stepping out of it.
Not in any dramatic sense.
Just for a moment.
To take up space without needing to define it.
The world continues as it always does.
Full of noise.
Full of expectation.
But here, for a while, none of that is required.
I am not trying to be understood.
I am just here.
And for today, that feels like enough.
