Identity labels are everything for a person who was raised by a Narcissistic parent.

Growing up between two homes after the divorce was hard, but undoubtedly worse because my parents were Jekyll and Hyde. By the age of 5 I was going on weekend visitations with Charlie (my father) which, included wearing ripped jeans and playing outside in the dirt. Then I would come back home to Cathy (my mother) and her husband, in their neurotic and chaotic home of horrors. I was to be neat, quiet, and not a bother during the week, while I was encouraged to be a wild child on those weekends. Each parent reminding me of how much the other sucks and how I should really "be". It has taken me 15 years away from them (since I became legally estranged at 16) to finally find my identity as a woman, mother of three, and wife. I only owe the confusion and trauma to them, but I owe everything to the labels that I now feel fit "me".

IDENTITY, SEXUALITY, AND LABELS

I will never forget that one week that Cathy let me put posters up in my own bedroom. After growing up in a vintage Victorian style bedroom (with glass dolls and a GIANT cross of a bloody Jesus Christ above my bed) in the 90's, while everyone else had Britney spears posters and IKEA white wood furniture sets, I was thrilled to have a chance to add some of my personality to my own room. I was in 7th grade and very into Fashion Design, clipping up fashion magazines to make collages taped into marble notebook pages. I loved to sketch fashion ideas for Avant Garde gowns & trace Victoria's Secret models to understand female anatomy in clothes. I knew right away what I would do: create a giant collage on the wall of Fashion icons, gowns, lipstick and makeup images, as well as Baby Phat ads ( of Kimora Lee Simmons).

I went to school beaming after creating my floor to ceiling masterpiece on the wall, finally feeling like I got to express myself. I wanted so badly to go tour F.I.T. (the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC) and show off the dozens of sketchbooks I had filled with fashion ideas. I was going to take pictures of my wall with my disposable camera from CVS when I got home that afternoon to memorialize my work.

I came home to Cathy screaming in my bedroom, clutching a black garbage bag in one claw and tearing down my wall with the other. She was raging and started to scream at me about my collage, calling me a lesbian for putting up images of women in small dresses. She told me it was trashy and unacceptable, shoving all the taped pictures into the bag and throwing it at my body. This was typical Cathy behavior. To promise me something and then take it away, watching me squirm and cry as she screamed at me that only brats and babies cry. She was probably drunk when she rampaged, as she was almost every single night for years of raising me. This particular event would stay in my mind forever.

I did NOT become a famous fashion designer, but I did grow up to be a pansexual woman who did like women as well as men. This was something I deeply suppressed for years due to not being able to talk to my parents about my sexuality or preferences ever. I would go on to date narcissistic men while wishing I had the guts to ask a woman out. I am married now for 7 years to a male whom I raise three children with and I can finally acknowledge my sexuality bravely without worry about what my family will think I am in a happy monogamous relationship with a male and I have gained clarity on what my sexuality is through educating myself about what it means to be queer. I am exploring what that means for my identity and self expression still, sharing bits of that journey on my Tiktok account with my followers who also grew up in abuse so they are late to discover parts of their identity too.

THE BIG AHA

Funny enough, I went off to College from age 17 to 25, and majored in Gender Studies. For years I studied Feminism, Gender labels, Sexuality, Human Behaviors, and Psychology. I wanted to know and absorb everything about self expression, labels, and identity to process my own. I also felt very drawn to analyzing the way people behaved, discovered themselves and express themselves.

This carried over into my life after College, when I began learning about Mental Health after being diagnosed with Complex PTSD. It was very obvious I had suffered a lot of emotional damage after being raised by 3 abusive adults, most of the damage coming from my narcissistic mother. Everything had always been about her or for her, but now I was finally learning how to become my own person in spite of her.

I began to blog about my childhood trauma via my own self hosted site, calling it Jaded Savior (which I now host on Vocal since 2021). I wanted to get the memories out of my head and onto paper to help myself process the experiences at greater length. I always loved writing and the stories would just pour out of me onto the page. I have written hundreds of stories (68 on Vocal) about my childhood and teen traumas, but I have written very little about my adult life as a parent and wife. To be honest, I needed to purge myself of the past in order to catch up mentally to my present experiences.

The versions of me prior to 2022 have all been greatly tainted by my childhood trauma. So much that I only now at 31 feel like I am discovering who I truly am beneath it all. Labels are greatly helping with that, as I discover explanations for how I am and have always been on the inside. Not the Cathy curation of me nor the Charlie curation of me. Not the me who has masked and fought to survive relationships, nor the me who attended college as a gifted high achiever with secret burn out and depression. I am not even just a mother or wife, like I poured myself into the last 7 years since leaving College.

All of the people who have ever been in my life, including my own little family, are not the summary of who I am. I am not JUST a mother, a partner, or a woman with trauma. There was so much more to learn, but I had to keep diving into personal development and mental health to really get enough pieces of the puzzle.

I spent the last 3 years studying identity tools and assessments, charting my own personality on my wall like I was Sherlock Holmes trying to solve a mystery. I became a consultant and writer in the process of that journey, talking about those tools and the patterns I recognized in people. I LOVED every bit of it, spending hours building binders about the topics. I memorized some of the modalities and would be able to pick up on clients' personality types within a few questions towards them. I was also getting super clear on my own personality and preferences, using the information to build up my business brand.

Absolutely nothing could have prepared me for what I discovered in February 2022 after I decided to transition from consulting and blogging to making content on Tiktok (about Jaded Savior / Mental Health). I thought I would funnel my followers to this Vocal account as I continued to explore my Mental Health diagnosis, which expanded from having just Complex PTSD to also having ADHD and Anxiety. As I started finding like personality friends on there, my For You Page (feed) started to fill up with more videos of moms with ADHD. I found so many women who grew up similarly to me, shared like experiences in dating and building relationships, as well as exploring their identities. I felt very seen, understood, and like I found a community I could really be myself in (whoever that was).

I spent so many years researching who I was that I did not learn how to relax and just live in a state of being myself. Personal development was a deep obsession and my unmanaged ADHD symptoms had been really debilitating in my day to day. In 2022 I was already taking vitamins daily to manage those same issues, as well as focusing on being more grounded as we moved our little family to a new apartment across the Country. I thought I would start sharing more current thoughts and feelings on my Tiktok, mixing up content about my past and my current lifestyle. Doing so helped me find even more friends who all identified as "neurodivergent". Another label to dive into learning all about so I could better understand myself.

So that is what I did. What happened next radically shifted my entire perspective of my own identity around like never before. I came across content from Autistic content creators talking about their childhood and adolescent experiences prior to knowing they were Autistic, as well as what it was like to be late diagnosed in adulthood.

I was shocked to learn that so many stories from these creators matched things I had experienced as far back as I could remember in preschool. I thought about how my mother had punished me for specific things she either misinterpreted to be bad or just intentionally criticized me for. It was many common traits of an Autistic child. I also learned about the overlap between individuals with Autism and other disorders or learning disabilities that explained so much of what I had struggled with throughout schooling into College.

I began looking into suggested resources from creators to take online assessments for Autism, ADHD, and learning disabilities that all fell under the neurodivergent umbrella. I found so many new labels that explained what I had struggled with or gotten low (even failing) grades in growing up. I realized why I had certain quirks and trouble doing certain things at all (that other peers would say are basics of adulthood). I had always struggled with routines, hygiene methods, sensitivity to noises and crowds, issues looking at people or using their names. I had so many friendships die out or be very one sided over the years, which I did not understand until long after each ended. I was also very prone to dating narcissistic men but it was not all because of my mother (and the childhood trauma I had). I also took people at face value, believing everything someone would tell me without really working out their intentions or other possibilities.

It was all a whirlwind of new information that shocked me for the last few months. All the memories I had seemed different now because I realized all the signs no one else ever did. I had these little clues with my own children who I chalked up to being a lot like mom, but are actually also neurodivergent. I have been learning what that means and looks like for us all, now being the identity expert within our own home.

So here I am in July 2022 writing about being an Autistic + ADHD content creator (#AuDHD) so I can share what I have discovered and continue to learn. I am exploring these traits I have and realizing how much each lined up with my work in the past. For instance, in taking the 16personalities test I get the results ENFP-T. I am a Projector in Human Design and I have my entire birth astrology chart mapped out. I have been labeled an empath and highly sensitive over the years. Told I am an old soul and a high achiever. All of these qualities mapped out all spelled out something right before me that I never saw before.

AUTISTIC.

I am learning about how many Autistic people feel a fluid sense of gender identity and non-hetero sexuality identities too. How so many Autistic people are non-binary and express themselves outside a non-gendered box. For so many years I was told who to be, how to be, and when to be like it by my family and peers. I was never talked to about self expression or identity, but even more so I was forced to fit the mold that suited whomever I was with.

As an adult that is coming to the realization that I am Autistic, I am also asking myself these important questions about how I want to be. WHO I get to be now that I am granting myself that freedom. I have no idea what that means for my future. But I do know I will learn most about myself by letting go of all the things that do not feel right or resonate.

I am letting go of the pain and trauma with every story I write. I am learning more about who I am now with every label I research and process. Labels and educating myself give me something that no one was ever able to give me. A sense of self that can be defined and discussed. A way to connect with community, find people who feel similar as well as be able to make friends on the spectrum like me whom share what their labels are.

I find it liberating to have labels...even if the label itself means "not identifying with"... because it means something to the person and to those around them.

It is a stance. A personal flag to wave. That is such a privilege and a gift to have. As someone who grew up with no education about the cultures I came from, my roots , and what it meant to be a member of my family (because my family was toxic and broken) - Labels and educating myself on Neurodivergence have provided me with a sense of self that belongs to me. That no one can take away or make me change. Because I was born like this, I was never wrong for being how I am, and I have the right to express myself authentically as an adult.

I am passing that torch down by having my teen daughter work with me on a Pinterest board that maps out what these labels and terminologies mean. I want her to be able to process and claim who she is as she grows without the muddled confusion of trying to adhere to who or how we want her to be. I want her to understand what it means to be neurodivergent (and AuDHD too) so she can feel "normal" about how she sees and processes the world. After so many years of not understanding or knowing what Autism is or looks like, we are both learning what it means to be Autistic as well as what other things define us. I love that for my family.

Some other fun ways I am healing...we make collages and pin posters all over our new apartment. In my family we celebrate identity, self awareness, self expression, art, and whatever else brings us joy. :)

Please consider following my Vocal account and Medium account to read about Mental Health, Neurodivergence, and trauma. Tips, likes and comments are always greatly appreciated. Thank you for your support!

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