My Identity Crisis

Currently, I am in the process of not only becoming comfortable in my identity, a black queer woman, but, also attempting to find solace in my identity as well. Something that all women, especially black queer women, should achieve in their lifetime. It is that dream that inspires me to travel to experience other cultures and to unite with women from various cultures across the black diaspora. Throughout many cultures, women’s identities are defined by their male counterparts and the labor they provide to them. Therefore, a major goal of mine is to create a space where women are able to exist outside the scope of their relationships with men and live uninhibitedly to become their best selves. That is why I find it pertinent to travel not only

Every year I look back on the previous and I see how much I have changed. I see the friends I have gained and lost. The heartbreak and the happiness. Despite how rough times have gotten, it has truly made me stronger. Everything has shaped who I am today, it has shaped my identity. Identity is a complex topic because it consists of changeable and unchangeable traits and outside internal influences; my own identity has been shaped by going from private to public school, young life camp, and my current friends.

There are many factors that shape us into who we are, and who we will become. Some of these factors we can control, while others we cannot. While we are born into many traits of our identities, much of our other behavior is learned. My identity, for example, is “based not only on responses to the question ‘Who am I?’ but also on responses to the question ‘Who am I in relation to others?’” (Allen, 2011, p. 11). My identity and the question of who I am, are both influenced by many aspects of my life, including my hometown, my family, my friends, and my beliefs and moral values.

Change has been an inconvenience for me the past few years, and even harder this school year. To start, although I talk about this far too much, change first started when I came out. Telling my friends and family was something that was so personal, and extremely out of the ordinary that I couldn’t even think about what it would be like to openly like boys. Now thinking about this, I question: Did I even know myself? Did I even pay attention to people? Because I don’t think I could have gotten any gayer when I was a child. So I assume that means, I wasn’t hiding from people, I was hiding from myself really, because everyone knew I was gay and was just waiting for me to say something.

My Identity has changed a lot in 5 to 10 years. Just 5 years ago I did not have a son and I was single. My identity was a teenage athlete. Throughout high school, I played all types of sports. I played football, basketball, baseball and also ran track. That was my mother way of keeping me out of trouble. I was very popular in school and was able to associate with all different types of social group in school. I was also a nerd and enjoyed science. I was honor roll in all my classes and had study groups through my years in high school. I was also raised in a single parent household and was alone and lonely outside of school. My mother did not have time for me because she worked two jobs and did not associate with other family members. Fast forward

My social identity plays a huge part in shaping and defining my role as a leader. The way I view myself combined with the way that others view me frames the narrative of my opportunities to be a leader in many ways. Of my various social identity characteristics, the two that play the largest part in my life are my gender and appearance as a woman and my economic standing as lower middle class.

A person’s identity is shaped by many different aspects. Family, culture, friends, personal interests and surrounding environments are all factors that tend to help shape a person’s identity. Some factors may have more of an influence than others and some may not have any influence at all. As a person grows up in a family, they are influenced by many aspects of their life. Family and culture may influence a person’s sense of responsibilities, ethics and morals, tastes in music, humor and sports, and many other aspects of life. Friends and surrounding environments may influence a person’s taste in clothing, music, speech, and social activities. Personal interests are what truly set individuals apart. An individual is not a puppet

I am truly proud of my background and how it has formed my identity. My background consists of me being Portuguese. I could not be any more thankful for how greatly my background has impacted my life into what it is now. It has helped me gain many friends that I am still very close to and gain interests that have started since I was a child. Simply experiencing my family’s numerous customs and traditions is why I love to express that I am Portuguese. It has given me the opportunity to visit Portugal every year during each summer where I fall in love with the country each time. Being Portuguese has taught me many lessons throughout life that I will continue to pass on for future generations of my family.

So I lived in fear of my possible sexual orientation. My parents had always seemed open minded so I shouldn’t have worried about coming out. But in the last few months, my college-age sister had begun to date a conservative guy. Suddenly, my parents seemed to change their minds to match his beliefs. If they didn’t actually change their minds, which opinion was the one they truly believed? Suddenly coming out, or even accepting myself, no longer seemed like a viable option. I denied it for months. It eventually got to the point where I told a friend that I hadn’t been feeling myself for a while, that I hadn’t felt truly happy for almost a year. She told me how much she cared about me and that she couldn’t lose me. I said it wasn’t that bad and that I would talk to her if I needed to and it helped for a while, but I still lived with

provide all students with necessary help, KSU also offers online and telephone consultations and services. Student Success services also provide a CARE program that addresses the needs of students who have experienced homeless, foster care systems, and food instability.

My purpose is to show my individuality and to express myself. This is for others including myself, to see and to remind us that our identity is very complex.

Everybody has an identity, it makes them individual and unique, and it defines who you are as a person. This project about my identity showed me what makes me unique. I would have never known how much my friends mean to me or how my identities connect with each other. I have three identities that make me who I am, cultural, personal, and social. A specific quality that covers my cultural identity is being Czechoslovakian. Both sides of my family have at least a part of Czech in them. My great-grandparents are from Czech Republic and my grandpa was the first generation in America, he was born in Ohio. This is very important because I have always identified as Czech and it is a big part of me, as I am so interested in ancestry. For my personal identity, the biggest part is my personality, being loud and outgoing, has always been important to me. The reason being, it is how people view me. A lot of people know me as the loud person or the person who talks a lot. That is meaningful to me considering I like people to view me in a certain way The last identity, social, is one of the most important to me because it involves my friends, and through this project, I learned how vital they really are to my social identity. I realized that I have a good amount of friends in this project. It is nice to have people as a support system and to relate with. These qualities show that I value being loud and outgoing. It also says that I value my family and they are a big part of life. The last one, social, ties in with the first one because it shows I am outgoing and friendly.

I’m eighteen years old. I’m the child of two highly educated, bright academics. I have several siblings in grad school at ivy league colleges. I love them, but I hate them, too, because I want to be like them and I don’t know if I can. There 's nothing really wrong with me, but I wish there was, so I had something to blame.

Many use their middle and high school years as a path of self-discovery, whether they know it or not. Like most people, I spent most of my life feeling I was like everyone else that was around me: cisgender and heterosexual. In middle school, I began to learn that there was even such a thing as having a different sexuality, though at that age it was all being ridiculed in front of me, and I shrugged the whole ordeal off as being something that had never and would

Growing up, my family viewed human sexuality as a taboo topic. I cannot remember seeing my parents kiss each or hug each other and they never taught me about puberty or sex. My first experience with learning about puberty was in my fifth grade class where the girls were separated from the boys and we watched a video about menstruating. The idea of menstruating was scary for me. The first experience I can recall related to my body changing was when I was 11 or 12 on a family walk and my dad said to my mom that she needed to take me bra shopping. This statement completely embarrassed me. Not long after, I woke up at my best friend’s house and saw that I started my period. I was mortified. Once I convinced my friend’s mom to take me home, I called my mom and work to tell her, and I remember her sighing and then saying, “The pads are under the bathroom sink.” My mom’s reaction made me feel as though I was a failure or