Who am I?

If someone were to ask me, "Who are you?" I could answer so many things.  I am a mom and a wife.  I am a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a cousin.  I am a teacher, a reader, a TV lover, sometimes a cynic and even a semi-reluctant runner.  I am so many things: different things to different people.  How I label myself, the things I say and think about myself, define who I am.  They are self-fulfilling prophesies in a way.  If I say to myself that I am strong, and repeat it enough times, eventually I will believe it.  That's how I made it through the first few years of my husband's hospitalizations and diagnoses.  The power of words cannot be understated.  The words you hear, the words you believe, become internalized.  So what are our children hearing and believing?

In my case, what I say and what I believe are two separate things.  This was brought clearly to my attention when I was talking to another mother in a NAMI support group the other night.  After sharing that my two boys "are bipolar", I listened to her talk about her son who is struggling with schizophrenia.  Struggling with....not identified as.  Talk about a wake up call!  I would never identify myself as, "I am OCD."  I have OCD and sometimes it impacts my life.  I take medication to combat the symptoms of my OCD but I am NOT defined by my OCD.  So why am I defining my children by their illnesses? 

I love my children unconditionally and accept them in their uniqueness.  That is the message that I thought I was giving them.  Now I wonder if that is truly what my words have said.  When Bryce asks me if his bad dreams are because "I am bipolar" does that mean he now considers an illness as his identity?  Have I, in my attempts to be open, honest and accepting instead been labeling and limiting?  It struck me, listening to this mother in similar circumstances, that with my careless choice of words, I was defining my children by their illnesses. 

So, who am I?  From now on, I am a mother who is more careful with her words.  I am the mother of two children who struggle with bipolar disorder. Perhaps by changing the way I identify my children I can lead them to place their disease as separate from their identities.  One day, when someone asks them the same question, I hope that they can answer with power and without the weight of illness coloring their sense of selves.