Reclaiming Your Identity After Loss

Johanna Stamps recalls how she re-crafted her life after change, loss, and becoming a mother.

When I returned from Africa in 2019, I was weighed down by the idea of who I was—who I had spent 20 years working to become. The idea of walking away from this identity was unfathomable. I spent months crafting a plan where I could become a mom and still work with entrepreneurs in Africa. I was trembling inside when I even cracked the door open to explore what starting over would look like.

I was grieving the loss of something I loved—something I had built an entire identity around. A few months before my little one was born, I felt the weight of working to keep my identity in place. I felt like I was trying to hold up the falling walls.

But how was the world going to identify me? The idea of being just a mother or just a caretaker frightened me. How could I just let it all go? Didn’t it amount to anything? I was so worried that if I shed these boundaries like layers of clothing, I would look like a stranger—that the clothes that once adorned my body would be thrown away forever. It felt like they were no longer necessary when they were once all I knew.

As I began dismantling the life I had built, I also started assembling a cohesive life by raising a little boy and caretaking my two elderly parents. Around this time, I began hearing whispers of truth: “The world will never know you like I know you.”

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Suddenly, a truth about identity began to hit home: when we tie our identity to anything other than God, we sink with it when we lose it. The things of this world are not strong enough to tie ourselves to. Even a mother, daughter, sister, and wife can fall away at a moment’s notice.

Other than being a Child of God, every identity that we claim for ourselves is associated with others or how others see us. We don’t control the world, and we surely can’t control other people’s thoughts or perceptions. Wisdom calls us to be very careful about where we place our identities.

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I was grieving the loss of something I loved—something I had built an entire identity around. #CatholicMom

As the months of motherhood began to progress, there was an awakening inside of me. Instead of crafting a catchy elevator pitch, God began to bring to life dreams that had been dormant for most of my adult life. Suddenly, there was room to think, pray, and play in discovering me.

Discernment shifted from crafting an identity outside of myself to (finally) finding my identity in who I was with God.

What is your identity tied to? What have you lost that has shaken your view of your identity? What identity are you being called into in this new season?

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