My Identity

If you google Identity, you will come across the phrase “sense of self” in more than one definition. How can one define their sense of self? We are at different stages in our lives. We might have lots of experiences or we might be just at the beginning of our adult lives. Our identity or sense of self is defined by everything that contributed to our upbringing: our family values, education, culture, society and its norms, experiences, the country we were born in. I must look many years back when I think about the “origins” of my sense of self.

I was born in Eastern Europe, Romania, in Curtea de Arges, a city close to the Southern Carpathian Mountains.  This city was the capital of Wallachia, a small local state in the 13th century. I grew up in a land filled with history and legends: remains of a royal court dating from the 13th century, Dracula’s (the real one, Vlad Tepes) fortress, and a beautiful Monastery, built in the early 16th century. The Monastery, renovated by king Carol I in 1886 is still standing and became the burial place for the king and his family.  My parents moved from their villages to this city where they built their house and established a family of five (they had three daughters), and they lived there until their passing.  They worked very hard their entire life to make sure that their daughters would have everything they needed.  Most of my summer breaks were spent with the grandparents, in two beautiful villages. During the day I helped them working their land, and in the evenings, we would gather around a fire pit, and I would listen to their stories about old times, and how fast the country was changing. One of my fondest childhood memories is about the hiking trips we would all take as a family on the hills and the mountains that surrounded our city. During these hikes we learned about nature, and we had long conversations about life in general. They always encouraged us to aim high, pursue a higher education and make our lives better. We were the first generation on both sides of the family to go to college. We were raised to be very respectful and to value our family and all the members of the community we lived in.

I attended an elementary school close to our house. Part of the curriculum was learning two foreign languages, so I studied English and Russian. Foreign languages were mandatory, and I continued to study these two languages throughout high school. My second grade English teacher had an important role in guiding my future education goals. All his teaching and all the discussions we had during the six years he was my professor broadened my horizon and opened my future. Being born and raised during communism, the curriculum was heavily influenced by the political dogma. He was not only my English teacher, but a source of information about the Western world. He became my mentor until I left for college. I graduated from college one year after the fall of the Communist Block in Eastern Europe. Everybody was excited and looking forward to the new emerging democracy. It took me more than ten years to realize that we needed more than two generations to change what fifty years of communism did to my old country. When I realized that I decided to emigrate to the United States of America, because for me this country always represented the beacon of democracy. And here I am now. I have been calling this land my home for more than twenty years and my life has never been the same. I am still hard working and very respectful to everybody I know and work with. I built a house and a family with my husband here, and for the last eighteen years we have lived in the same place, and probably will not move from here.  I am grateful for being given a chance to live in a true democracy, where people are free and have opportunities to pursue their dreams. Grateful for all that I and my husband were able to offer to our daughter and grateful that she has a chance to reach for the sky if she wants to.

We do not choose when and where to be born. We know that if our parents are White, Black, Hispanic, or Asian we will be the same. We are the result of the intricate interplay between nature and nurture, between our genetic inheritance and the environment where we were born, raised, and lived or currently live. I was born white and female, and I was fortunate to be born with no disability. I was raised by a Christian Orthodox family, and I am a Christian Orthodox at core. I respect every single religion belief and that every person is entitled to have one or not. We all have a sense of self shaped by the way we were raised, by our family beliefs, education, our experiences, our society and its norms, our culture, and the part of the world we were born in.  When I decided to leave my old country, I was aware of the difficult parts of my future life in a new country: the process of adjusting to a new culture, to a new society and its norms, missing the rest of my family and friends left behind. I knew that I would have to work hard so I could get a job, make a career, and get a house. I had to start all over again. During my first year I often doubted the level of my English knowledge, because sometimes I was not able to fully understand the English spoken around me. When I look back, I realize that at times I was tired of being asked where I was from, and even annoyed by people trying to guess where my accent was coming from, and that when they heard Romania, the only thing they knew about my country was Dracula.

I can put things into perspective when looking at the Wheel of Power and Privilege now. Being White and a documented immigrant did not place me closer to Power during the first years that I lived here. The fact that I did not have a work history made it difficult to find a place to rent. We had to hire a realtor to vouch for us that we would be able to pay rent (although we had the required amount of money to put down as a deposit). I was able to get a job and be promoted to a management level in a couple of years. Later, I found out that I was not paid the same amount of money as my fellow male managers, although my results were better. So being White and female did not place me closer to Power. And now, after so many years, I do see that I have a considerable degree of privilege because I check almost all the sections of the circle closer to Power: I am White, I have post-secondary education, I am a citizen, I speak English, I own a property, I am able-bodied, heterosexual. But I do not consider all these criteria to be privileges.  I worked hard to get everything I got. I was raised to value hard work and not to accept defeat. Nevertheless, according to this chart, I am placed in a category that could be identified as privileged.  All people are biased (because of their culture, the way they were raised, society norms, etc.) and consciously or not, we have the tendency of looking down on other people that we may deem socially inferior, or because their skin color is different from ours, and maybe this explains our urge to judge and place people into categories. Yet we all have the same needs and feelings no matter the color of our skin, gender, age, sexual orientation, abilities, and disabilities. People need to be given opportunities to reach their potential and be treated with respect regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender, age, or sexual orientation. I do feel that I was given this opportunity when I started my life all over again in this country. However, was I given this opportunity because I am White? Is my daughter privileged because she is White and closer to Power?

Our identities are continuously changing and adapting to the world we live in.  Maybe some of us, at a certain point in our life, will find ourselves having an identity crisis: we don’t know who we are, and we have the feeling that we do not belong anymore to the world we live in. I experienced this feeling during the first years of living in a new country: I didn’t belong here, and I didn’t belong to my old country either. After many years I realized that my identity was changing. I was adjusting to a new society, and I was trying to redefine my sense of self. I have never forgotten my roots. I have just learnt how to become aware of my own biases, and how to understand and respect the diversity of the people’s identities that are part of the world I live in.