can we have confidence without labels?

Our relationships in many cases define who we are. When we meet people for the first time, in many cases they will ask, “What do you do?” Then we are tasked with the question of responding with a profession or the absence of one. We even encounter the same ordeal when introduced by our significant other. Even more, our identifiers when we are out some place like our child’s school. “Oh you’re Raegan’s mom.” You are thinking…”I have a name. I had a name before I ever had a child!” Ugh! Can we have confidence in who we are without the labels?

In a world of labels, it is sometimes difficult to find a way to have an identity outside of what others associate us by. We are so much more than someone’s mom, wife, or our profession. So how can we get something that belongs to “just us?” I think about my private moments and the things that build my confidence. I know they are different for everyone, but its stuff like doing my makeup really well when I have nowhere to go or the boudoir photos that I took for my engagement several years ago that I literally just looked at again with my husband. I owned those moments and the only person I was in those moments was myself without anyone else assigning a label to who I was supposed to be. What can you own today?