Who Am I?

What is an identity, really? Is it who we are, or who we were told to be? Is it something we inherit, or something we craft? I’ve been thinking a lot about the answer, not as a concept, but as a lived experience. I used to think identity was something fixed, like a title or a role. Now I see it more like skin. Some layers stay. Others shed. And some cling long after they’ve stopped fitting.

Through the years, I’ve worn so many names. Morning person. Survivor. Romantic. Writer. Mother. Wife. Florist. Photographer. Healer. Chef. Manager. Volunteer. Fisherman. Bird watcher. Artist. I didn’t gather them all with pride, some I clung to for safety. Some were handed to me like uniforms. Some were stitched into my bones by love, and others by trauma. But I carried them all. I performed them all. Because I thought that’s what strength looked like- being everything to everyone, proving I could adapt, thrive, be seen.

Some of my earliest identities weren’t even mine. They were expectations wrapped in ribbons, names given before I could speak. My birth name is Diệu Hiền - it means gentle, meek, tender. A soft hope whispered by my parents the day I was born. But in the real world, that name felt like a weight. I was teased. Bullied. Laughed at. Kids mocked me for being different, for being meek, for having a name that didn’t roll off their tongues or represent beauty. To them, it was weird. And to survive, I had to make it small. I had to become someone else.

So I did. I played the tomboy. The rebel. The girl who ran faster than the insults could catch. I fought to prove that I wasn’t weak, that I wasn’t fragile. And in the process, I buried that gentle name beneath layers of noise.

But the thing about identity is- it waits. It doesn’t disappear. It hums underneath the surface until we’re brave enough to listen.

For a long time, I thought all those identities were my power. I thought collecting them made me whole. But at some point, I realized I was exhausted. I had become a museum of who I used to be. A curated exhibit of everything I survived, everything I’d proven. And still - I felt lost.

That’s when I understood something that changed me- I could choose again.

Identity isn’t static. It’s not a sentence. It’s a conversation. And sometimes, the most radical thing we can do is cut away what no longer fits. Not out of shame, but out of love. Sometimes you have to take an axe to the version of yourself the world handed you. To say: Thank you for getting me here. But I need to become more honest now.

I didn’t stop being a mother, a sister, a leader. Those are sacred to me. But I did stop clinging to roles that were born from fear. From trauma. From the need to prove. I stopped apologizing for being too much or not enough. I stopped trying to be palatable. And slowly, I returned.

Not to who I was before the world told me who to be - but to who I had been all along.

Hiền.

Not a curse. Not a mistake. A girl with tenderness in her bones and fire in her chest. A woman who chooses to be both soft and strong. Who wears her name now like a bloom- not because it’s easy, but because it’s true.

So maybe identity is not about becoming someone new. Maybe it’s about remembering who we were before we learned to be afraid. And maybe, the greatest power we hold is to choose- every single day - who we want to be next.

Not for them. For us.