I’m tucked inside with the AC on full blast, looking out at the sun shadows cast from the large palm trees on the veranda.  Meanwhile Monty dog is ‘spatchcock golden retriever’ on the kitchen floor doing his best impression of a breathing fur rug, Roscoe is currently hanging out on a beach with a bunch of Bajan 16 year- old babes and Craig is busy being important somewhere in town.

Its been quite a few months to get to this point.  in truth, its been quite a few years and I’m thankful to the Universe for creating this opportunity for us to heal and grow as a family unit again.

But the shiny outside does not portray the learnings going on inside.

It’s very, very odd to be here as the wife/Mother/supporter of.  As a couple we have not been this way for 12 years.  Actually in truth, it’s not been this way ever before.  When we met, I’d already been in Uganda for several years  and had profitable working business relationships with the Presidents of both Uganda and Rwanda as well as being in and out of the boardrooms of several multi-national corporations based across Africa.  A few years later, we arrive back in the UK while I’m heavily pregnant with Roscoe,   6 months on, I’m in Vodafone forging a revised UK corporate career which keeps me busy for the next decade.

Fast forward almost 13 years and I find myself with dust on the floor, beds which need changing and thinking about what to cook for dinner.  The pile of ironing seems to grow by looking at it and the dark coloured faux- wood furniture so beloved of any British government property, seems to mark when any insect, and there are many, many insects here, land upon it.  I’m finding out that keeping house is harder in so many ways than going out to work.  I’m also discovering that my perfectionist tendencies manifest large on a home which is entirely covered  in white tiles and white walls.  And having arrived in hurricane season to a garden which can quickly resemble a mud pit with a 6 month old puppy and a boy who would live in sand and sea if he could, I’m fighting a losing battle in trying to keep the darned place semi-clean. I’ve decided that hiring someone to come in twice a week is the only way I’m going to stay slightly sane.

 

For my other, much larger, battle is with myself.  Forging a different identity from the one I have  held onto for all my working adult life, is tricky.  It’s hard not to qualify my sense of self when being introduced to new people.   What is my self now?  And I realise in my old life how often I defined myself by what I do.  And now I am open-skinned-bare and I’ve an introductory 10 seconds to show up and be who I am.

It strikes me that who and how rather than what and when defines the difference between leaders and managers.  A leader sets the parameters of the task and who is responsible.  A manager decides how the  task is done.  Craig and I often argue when I delegate the task and then tell him how I want it done.  And he is right to push back.   I realise it’s often my perfectionist OCD which  pulls me right back into manager mode.  When you meet Senior leaders or Presidents, they rarely introduce themselves by their title or explain what they do.  They use their names and let it settle.  A title is everything and nothing. What counts  and demonstrates the mark of the wo/man are their behaviours and actions.  Words come easy but it’s their meaning and associated results which make the difference.

Today I met a senior representative of Unicef at her rather palatial home tucked away in a leafy exclusive enclave of Bridgetown.  She gives me her card which states her name and written underneath is ‘A representative of Unicef’.   This rather egalitarian approach really appeals to me and my transforming sense of identity.

I know I need to get comfortable in the skin I’m in.  Not finding my role yet, or a title, doesn’t change who I am.  I know I can turn up to official functions and be the “wife of”, or go to the school and be the “Mother of” and the changing of hats to facilitate and integrate is a healthy way of being part of the community.

But beyond the hats, the clothes, the image, the plastered on smiley face, lies a big question with an answer somewhere close but elusive.  Who am I now?

Ask yourself this question.

Who are you?

It’s  a much bigger question than “what do you do?”  A much more meaningful question.

Perhaps I will start asking this while making the obligatory small talk at the official functions. Perhaps the answers I hear will help me clarify my own answer.

Perhaps you can help me with your answer….

 

A fool there was and he made his prayer
(Even as you or I!)
To a rag and a bone and a hank of hair,
(We called her the woman who did not care),
But the fool he called her his lady fair—
(Even as you or I!)

Rudyard Kipling, The Vampire, 1897