I am ....

When I was at the most recent Leadership Development Conference, one of the training sessions was on anti-racism/anti-oppression. An aquiantance of mine, who is trained as an AR/AO trainer, and one of the youth that I work with, came in and talked to us about the training. After their talk, our trainers led the exercise for the section. The exercise consisted of each of us going off on our own and writing sentences (I know. It sounds like punishment. It wasn't.) Each of the sentences needed to start with "I am". After we wrote our sentences, we would then form small groups and discuss our lists, and the process that we underwent to generate those sentences. (We didn't have to share anything we didn't want to.) This was intended to show us something about our identity.

I had a hard time starting the list. Sure, there were easy things. I am caucasian. I am 35. I am male. Then I thought of a few less obvious things. I am an uncle. I am a computer programmer. I am an advisor to youth. Going further.... I am secretive. I am scared. In all, I ended up having about 20 lines on my sheet. When we got into the small groups, I went first. I shared probably about 1/2 of my list (mostly due to time constraints, but there were some things I wasn't ready to share), and commented on how hard it had been to write some of these things down on paper, but in a way, it made me think about who I am, how I see myself, and how I am seen in the world. I thought it was a very interesting lesson.

I know plenty of people in that circle who never got beyond those first two categories. They expressed the obvious, or the easy. But even thought I didn't share some of my harder things with my group, I did write them down, which forced me to consider those lines as they applied to me.

Take some time, and consider your identity. Write it all down. The easy things, the non-obvious things, the hard things, and even the things you are hiding. Write them down.