In the early 2000s, I left my hometown, leaving one chapter of my life behind as I stepped into another. Since then, I moved across continents, had three beautiful children, juggled various roles, changed careers, celebrated life, faced challenges, met incredible people and continually pushed the boundaries of my consciousness. Though I have gotten lost a few times along the way, I am slowly integrating my many selves, feeling more whole, though still troubled at times, with each passing day.
This journey, marked by both expansion and fragmentation, has taught me that change is deeply tied to the unfolding of who we are. As I reflect on these transformations, I see the dance between the self that I was and the self I am continuously becoming, the interplay between the personal and the universal. This unfolding brings me to a larger question: Who am I? And how do we navigate the lifelong shaping of our identity?
Going through my old notes, I found these words: ‘[…] That is the immeasurable wealth of encountering various places and cultures: You hear new sounds, you discover new smells, new tastes, you learn new languages, you witness new ways in which people express themselves, you grow to appreciate a new humor, you understand a new value system, you get to experience life through a new mind. Your sense of normalcy changes. Your range of thinking, feeling and being expands. Your sense of self expands. There is more room for creativity. Your limits are pushed further, out of newness. It comes with a discomfort, in the beginning, not the discomfort of going against oneself, but the discomfort of reaching out for THE other, THE different, THE unknown, reaching further. If one can be open to new places, to new people while staying true to oneself, wonderful things can come into the world.’
I must have written this in a moment of elation, following the countless ups and (mostly) downs, I went through as I was grappling with the transition from New York, a city where I felt deeply aligned, to my new home in the South of France. Looking back at my thoughts, penned in fleeting moments, reminds me how writing can serve as a way to orient oneself amidst the currents of change.
As I write this now, feeling self-conscious about centering it around my own story, I am struck by how deeply writing, and any creative endeavor for that matter, often begins as, and sometimes simply is, an act of turning inward; a necessary narcissistic act. Joan Didion captures this beautifully in her essay ‘On Keeping a Notebook’: “The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself.” She adds, with piercing honesty: “But our notebooks give us away, for however dutifully we record what we see around us, the common denominator of all we see is always, transparently, shamelessly, the implacable ‘I’.” (‘Slouching Towards Bethlehem’, 1968)
This recognition brings me to the heart of my reflections: how much of my readings, my writings, and my interests has been an attempt to find my way back to myself.
In my years of wrestling with the intricacies of my own identity, I found some clarity in Gilles Deleuze’s unique interpretation of Spinoza’s theory. He distils the self into three main aspects: our essence, our ‘intensive parts’, and our ‘extensive parts’. At our core lies our essence, a singular expression of the universal energy. It is the internal force that connects us to the larger web of existence manifesting in our body, mind, and soul.
From here flows our intensive parts: our desires, our sensations, our feelings, our thoughts and our creative potential. It is the inner life that animates us, driving our striving to ‘persist in our being’. It manifests in the interplay of two primary affects as defined by Spinoza: joy, which increases our power of being, and sadness, which diminishes it. Our inner world is inseparable from the outer world; it is the way we process, interpret and navigate external encounters. In turn, our external expressions, our extensive parts are the ways in which we engage with and respond to the world around us.
According to Deleuze, though diminishing, sadness often serves as a necessary teacher, offering lessons that, once integrated, enable us to move toward active joy, cultivating a life anchored in greater affirmation, responsibility, and freedom. In this evolving process, our uniqueness is shaped by the interplay of our inner and outer worlds, as new parts of ourselves are created and old ones transformed.
These insights have allowed me to understand how my striving for clarity and my search for meaning are not simply personal quests but are driven by a deeply human impulse; a manifestation of the life force within me. This force, as Spinoza so profoundly described, desires nothing more than to persist in its being, to live, to expand, and to unfold. As I reflect on my experience, I see how this impulse to persist and grow continuously influences my ever-evolving self.
How does this translate in terms of our identity? Although we all originate from the same force, our heredity and our roots fundamentally shape our uniqueness even before we take our first breath. Yet this blueprint does not define everything that we will become. Science, through the study of epigenetics, demonstrates how our environment and experiences shape the very expression of our genes.
At birth, the emerging self not yet fully differentiated, moves toward an encounter, an encounter with the first other. It is through this other that these early experiences are metabolized, ingested, and transformed into the fuel that propels us forward. Gradually, desire begins to shape the first awareness of the world around us, planting the seed of connection. These early experiences of babyhood and childhood lay the foundation of who we will become. Then, each moment, each experience, adds a layer to our memory and shapes our being. According to Leibnitz, memory is the anchor of our identity, the thread that holds us together as we go through life. Reclaiming and integrating our own memory enables us to regain the resilience needed to navigate and integrate the other, the unknown and the changes essential for our growth.
“Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.” –Rumi
Just as memory threads together the facets of our identity, therapy became a way for me to revisit and make sense of these facets, particularly during moments of existential crisis. Therapy supported me in revisiting my story, peeling back its layers, and allowing it to settle into its own order. It guided me in making sense of who I am and what I want in life. A teacher once explained something that deeply resonated: “Therapy supports the individual to organize the pieces of their story. If they haven’t made sense of the chaos, they cannot reach the final stage: a cohesive sense of self. At this stage, the structure of identity remains fragile, struggling to stabilize in the tension between angst and reality. Therapy reaches a pivotal moment when the patient [client] begins to discern what is universal in their experience and what is uniquely their own, based on the patterns that have shaped their life. Only then can they start to put words to their identity: “Can you define who you are?” This is the moment when they can say: “I know who I am. I am the child of this person, this is what has happened to me, this is how my life has been, this is what I suffer from, this is what I can no longer tolerate, and this is what I desire.” And it is in that final declaration “this is what I desire” that their identity finds its foundation. For it is in our desires, unique and personal, in what truly makes us feel alive, that lies the true core of who we are.” (David Faure, March 2022)
This aligns with Deleuze’s three aspects of the self, offering a space to distinguish the universal from the personal, weaving these threads into a cohesive sense of identity.
Over time, I came to understand that remembering is not solely a matter of the mind but is deeply rooted in the body. I also realized that letting go and moving on is not something we can simply will into being. Instead, it involves revisiting and reliving, within a safe and supportive environment, the experiences held in our bodies. Only then, can we release the patterns that keep us stuck and can we allow the nervous system to rewire itself. It is through fully reliving certain past experiences that we can let them flow through us, let them go, and finally, move on.
In exploring how the body holds our buried memories and emotions, I am reminded of Alan Watts’ insight into the relationship between the body and the soul. He said: “Psychoanalysis comes to remind us that we are bodies, that repression is of the body, and that perfection would be the realm of the absolute body. The aim of psychoanalysis, still unfulfilled and still only half-conscious, is to return our souls to our bodies, to return ourselves to ourselves, thus, to overcome the human state of self-alienation.” (“Psychotherapy East and West”, 1961)
This understanding, and the turns life has taken, led me to Core Energetics, a body-oriented therapy that has been profoundly supportive in my own journey. It has supported me in anchoring myself in my story, connecting with what arises from within, and allowing it to resonate with others. In this process, I strive not only to foster connection but also to honor and serve our shared human experience.
For others, this anchoring might emerge through solitude, contemplation, meditation, reading, writing, drawing, dancing, music, creative work, community, or a combination of the above. Whatever helps you sit with your own questions, root yourself in your body, and move towards what makes you feel alive is the way forward. Although deeply personal, this journey ultimately leads to something universal: the reclamation of leadership over one’s life, paving the way for others to find their own.
Rainer Maria Rilke’s wise words in ‘Letters to a Young Poet’ gracefully capture these reflections. Though he speaks of romantic love, his insight feels applicable to all forms of love: “Love at first has nothing to do with unfolding , abandon and uniting with another person; for the individual it is a grand opportunity to mature, to become something in himself, to become a world, to become a world in himself for another’s sake.”
Ultimately, it is a return, a coming home to feeling, understanding and embracing the values that truly resonate within us, while staying connected to our body. It begins with the ‘I’, but it grows to include the other. It becomes about ‘us’, about love, whether romantic, friendly, familial, or the love we have for our community. This path may feel solitary at times, but its potential to ripple outward makes it essential. It invites others to be moved, to move, and eventually to act. In this mutual holding and witnessing of one another, we find a sense of unity that transcends the self. It is within this space that we find the possibility to co-create a world that is freer, fairer, and shaped by the vulnerability of our shared humanity. Grounded in this expanded connection, we come closer to the beauty of living.
We are our essence, our origins, our story and the creative potential that comes through us; woven into the larger fabric of life, an ever-becoming self. This ongoing journey of self-discovery calls us to integrate what was and create space for what lies ahead. In “The Ever-Becoming Self, Part 2: Integrating What Was, Opening to What Could Be”, we will explore how to honor our past and step into new possibilities.
