Understanding Little Bird

In mum's final months, as we nursed her at home, I started to call her Little Bird. As she gracefully slipped towards death she seemed so very small, fragile and dependant, but also so pliant and yielding - a fledgling chick. It was a name born of tenderness. But, although she never said anything, I suspect mum was slightly irritated by the implicit intimation of role-reversal it encapsulated.

In our home, I used to be known as 'mumma' or 'babe', 'mum' or Bethan.

But almost imperceptibly, coincidental with my diagnosis and gradual transition to chemotherapy patient, I seem to have acquired a new moniker. Over the past few months my family have unbiddenly renamed me Betty.

This is not without precedent. Betty and Bobby are pet names that Rob and I sometimes use for each other, gently evoking the vision of elderly inter-dependent couple, complete with sheepskin foot warmers, matching ill-fitted V-necked cardigans and an unfathomable taste for Garibaldi biscuits. Affectionate, certainly, but with a healthy dose of irreverent satire thrown in.

I recognise that my renaming is partly about our teenagers finding ways to individuate. In a lockdown world where so many other avenues of independence have been closed to them, they are attempting to redefine our relationship, publicly marking their transition towards adulthood. An expression of a creeping (but necessary) separation that I was feeling all too acutely even before cancer arrived in our world.

I also know that, at heart, my new name is used as a term of endearment. It is said with affection and a wry smile, and is a way of my children expressing their desire to look after me. Much like Little Bird.

But even understanding this, my uninvited renaming has somehow not sat comfortably with me. Much as I suspect Little Bird did not sit comfortably with my mum.

Receiving a cancer diagnosis and starting chemotherapy is a time of brutal transitions. A sudden fall from apparent glowing health to life-threatening illness. A seismic shift from perceived (if misplaced) invincibility to deep vulnerability. A recalibration of how the future may look.

Amidst the myriad of emotions, these changes bring with them an unwelcome but creeping sense of retreat. The slow but tangiable loss of life as you knew it. A distancing from the world around you. The feeling of an identity in free fall.

For now, I am largely unable to participate in many of the things I felt defined me. I am signed off work for the foreseeable. I have stepped back from many household activities. I am (with a few exceptions) not seeing friends and family socially or feeling able to reach out to support them with their problems. I am not doing any sport. I am not following the news. I have little motivation to pick up any hobbies. I am increasingly not even able to walk my crazy dog.

As a result I have felt an acute loss of identity, a diminishment of self. My life and conversation are increasingly dominated by one thing and one thing only, and at times it feels as if my only clearly defined role is rapidly becoming that of 'patient'.

While meant lovingly, by calling me Betty my precious family have somehow unintentionally reinforced my own self-inflicted narrative of lost identity. The falling away of 'mum' and 'babe' has felt indicative of my loosening grip on my primary roles of actively involved and fully engaged mother and equally weighted life partner.

Which raises a poignant question. What is identity, and can it be lost this easily?

Each of us has multiple roles that we perform in our families, communities, workplaces, and societies. I am a wife and mother at home. I am a coach and manager at work. I am a caring friend with my peers. And more recently I have become a person living with cancer (and a fledgling blogger...).

Roles can, quite evidently, tell us a lot about a person. They are a public display of self, a sort of social short hand. It is not chance that (in this country) "What do you do?" is so often our opening line when meeting someone new.

But our roles do not define us. With many of my own roles temporarily on ice, I am starting to learn the importance of not confusing our roles with our identity.

Our roles may help give us a sense of identity, absolutely. But they are not our identity.

Roles are fluid, they come and go with the passing of time. They are not fixed, but rather a limited snap shot of what we are doing in our lives at any one time.

As individuals, we are so much more than our roles. Whatever roles come and go, we remain complex, multi layered, messy humans, with all of the vulnerability, textures and wonder that life encompasses. Regardless of what we do, each of us is an intricate, knotty bag of experiences, characteristics, opinions, emotions, values, fears, hopes and dreams.

To define our own (and others') identity simply through our roles is to be present to only part of who we are. Over identification with our roles confines and shrinks us. Holding too tightly to what we do, not who we are, causes a certain brittleness and inability to adapt, preventing us from stepping into and sharing the richness of our full glorious selves with each other.

And so, in this time of unprecedented personal transition, I am learning to be more gentle on myself (and my family). Temporarily loosening my hold on my previous roles (and perhaps stepping into new ones) does not mean that I am losing myself or becoming any less of a person. It does not rob me of my identity, or of who I am at my core. It simply means that for now I am re-prioritising my roles a little. No more, no less.