She_Reinvents (100th Post)
She_reinvents is my Instagram name. I wondered about the reasons I called my account this. It would have sufficed to simply call it Tracey Lee Author. Why not? That is my name and what I do. It would have had clarity and caused little confusion and made me easy to find. But no, I quite like the more complex route to a simple solution. And it says more about the journey I’ve undertaken.
Do not think that I’ve changed under the social media banner of she_reinvents. I’m not new or changed nor was I dissatisfied with the earlier versions of myself. I say versions because I’ve lived a fairly long time and there have been several incarnations. Afterall I have managed the 1970s with an original kind of styling that blended something of the sixties flower power with a smattering of the original Charlie’s Angels je ne sais quoi. We were definitely hybrids in those days. I had an 80s look that really couldn’t make its mind up. I landed somewhere between the power silhouettes of massive shoulder pads and acid wash casual wear. Add another layer of ruffled poet shirts and military jackets and you might come close to the visage one embodied. The casual 90s, the professional 2000s and beyond.
But this mélange of hodgepodge fashion choices matched with an assortment of hair styles was merely the outer manifestation which spoke not of who I was, but who I thought I should be. And that is the pity of youth in most generations. We brewed and concocted personas to marry the fad of the day. But no amount of black eyeliner, huge gelled hair and a ridiculous assortment of shoes ever spoke to who I was. I’ve said this quite a lot in talks I’ve done… I was a weird little kid and I suspect that flowed into my teen years and no doubt into adulthood. It was quite exhausting trying to conceal the oddity of personality. I was shy, uncomfortable in my own skin, a bit awkward, introspective, creative and striving to find the niche that made me feel okay to be me.
So with all that going on I thought why not become a teacher. You will spend your life in the spotlight and glaring criticism of teenagers. That’s a real way to find yourself. But despite the lack of personal traits one might assume that would make a successful teacher I grew into that role. I had no fancy skills, no confident patter, I was no magician but something resonated in my classes. Perhaps I’d found that the only magic required was a lack of pretense. Maybe this incarnation of self was a true one. Maybe in this version of myself I had actually found some form of contentment, some self-acceptance.
The parenting years afforded another range of adjustments. The baby years were perplexing and required learning on the job. I’d had little experience with the infant world and I’d hoped that something instinctual would kick in. Turns out there was no rule book. We just loved them to bits, defended them with the protective will of a mother lion, accepted the messiness, the mind-befuddling sleeplessness and hoped that our own flaws would not impede their happiness. It turned out okay. Once again, without magic skills or inherent gifts they journeyed from child to adult magnificently.
But then I thought somewhere in the middle of that I’d complicate life a little more so along with a full-time teaching career, a wonderful family I released the author persona. She had been a lurking presence from the first time I knew words. I loved a narrative. Every moment of life was a story. So I became her. The writer. And I wrote a lot. It seemed that once I acknowledged this creative entity she could not be silenced. I scribbled on notebooks, typed up a million ideas and even completed some major pieces. I juggled life. Perhaps this was more my circus phase!
And then when I was no longer a full-time mother and teacher I was just the writer.
So is this a journey of reinvention?
This is the dictionary definition: Reinvention noun: the act of producing something new based on something that already exists, or the new thing that is produced.
Is this it? Or is the road travelled merely a catalogue of experiments that simply capture a normal life and all the versions of self we have allowed ourselves to be.
We are who we are? We are what we are? We are what we believe we are? There are many philosophical texts and literary quotes that can help the curious discover whether the versions of ourselves are re-inventions or simply progressions of the original text and each year we add a chapter. Perhaps our lives are updated editions, improved adaptations with codicils and supplements to explain the self.
So why she_reinvents? Perhaps it simply is the writer explaining that her work is an invention of the imagination and that in the telling and retelling there is a level of re-invention. Or maybe it isn’t about becoming something new but finally being able to integrate all the versions that become the one she is meant to be. So in this 100th blog I continue on this journey not just of discovery but of contentment and growth. Perhaps by the 200th or 300th I'll have an answer.
A self is not something static, tied up in a pretty parcel and handed to the child, finished and complete. A self is always becoming.
Madeleine L'Engle A Circle of Quiet
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