I thought this was a weird question, but, trusting our couples’ counselor, I answered, “I am a wife and a mother.”

“That’s it?” she asked, looking a little disappointed.

The counselor starting digging further. “If you took away those words that you used to describe yourself just now, who are you?”

I was a little taken aback and felt really awkward. I knew there was more to me than wife, mother, sister, etc. but I didn’t know how to answer so I replied in a sheepish voice, “I don’t know…”

Who am I? Who am I? It should have been so easy for me to answer but wasn’t.

In another universe, if I was not a wife, a mother, a sister, or a woman, who would l be?

In the months that followed, I worked hard to find who I was. I changed my hair, read different books, and tried new foods thinking that ‘the real me’ was a series of like and dislikes. I love pink but dislike grey and so on and so on.

On the edge of exhaustion and tired of trying, I gave up ‘finding myself’ and found that I am just me. Accepting the real me is a challenge but I am on the path to knowing myself. Not as a label but as a complete Hailey.

If you remove words like father, daughter, or artist, who are you?