I’ve been thinking a lot about identity. Who I am as a person. Not the widow, mom, employee, etc., but Lisa. Who is Lisa?

I walked into therapy last week with this on my mind and a list of questions in my journal with a note at the bottom that said, “Identify grief?”

Some of the questions/statements were:

• What is my identity after love?

• I feel like every thought leaving my brain is over-edited.

• My contributions are assumed rather than celebrated.

• What colors do I actually like for my house? What colors do I like in general?

• Do I like this furniture, or is this my husband’s identity bleeding through?

• Have I ever known who I am?

A great deal of this comes from growing up in a matriarchal family where women ruled, and also did not allow choice. Instead, you were told what you liked. The most concrete example is my mother being asked to pick out a winter coat as a girl, and my grandmother telling her, “No, you don’t like that coat. You like this one.”

For me, it was, “If you lose xxx amount of pounds, I’ll buy you a new wardrobe.” Except I didn’t have that much weight to lose, and the clothes would have been outfits I wouldn’t pick for myself.

And here I am, 53 years old, and I have no idea who I am. Most days, I don’t recognize the woman in the mirror, so I avoid looking in them. The work I have to do is daunting. Terrifying, actually, but at times, there are glimmers of excitement.

This was supposed to be the part of life where I had figured things out, where I would simply know who I am. Because what if I discover things that require me to change?

When I look at the questions and reflect on them, such as “What colors do I actually like?”, that is me genuinely questioning everything I thought I knew about myself. I suspect it is permission to go beyond grade school and the gender assigned colors I learned in my early years. Maybe this permission is the first time I have ever given it to myself.

Which is why I now have a space in my journal where I write down what I like and don’t like. And every week during therapy, I report back on what I have learned the previous week. Needless to say, my list is small.

It is a radical thing to sit with at 53. And I know I'm not alone — so many women my age are asking the same questions, some for the first time. Most of us were never taught to. We just kept the coat our mother picked.