Latest news with #identitycrisis
Washington Post
3 days ago
- Politics
- Washington Post
Democrats risk taking the wrong lessons from Trumpism
The Democratic Party is having an identity crisis; that much is obvious. The question now is whether the party will draw the wrong lessons from Trumpism and try to defeat the right by replicating its populism. Americans have already seen some of the horrors wrought by right-wing populism. Among them: A growing police state. Bizarre, brain-pickling conspiracy theories about depraved elites and outsiders. (They are purportedly destroying your jobs, corrupting your kids and controlling the weather.) And of course, a cultlike devotion to a charismatic leader who represents the true will of The People and promises to solve their problems by punishing their enemies.
Yahoo
07-07-2025
- Yahoo
After every major break-up, I move to a new city — sometimes, even a new continent. It helps me heal more quickly.
After a major heartbreak, I pack up and move to a new city — sometimes, even a different continent. It makes it easier for me to heal from the heartbreak. I've done this three times, and I'm not about to stop now. Some people cope with a breakup by starting a new hobby, throwing themselves immediately back into dating, or finally giving in to those BetterHelp ads. Me? I pack up my life and book a one-way flight to a new city, sometimes even a different continent. It started in 2014 after a brutal three-month run: a breakup, a messy rebound, and getting fired from a brand-new job. I was sitting at home in Johannesburg, doomscrolling on Facebook, when an email came through from an airline offering a deal on flights to Cape Town, South Africa. My interest? Piqued. My credit card? Ready to swipe. My impulse control? At an all-time low. I booked a flight for the following week and immediately began boxing up my room at my mom's into three small boxes and sending out invites for farewell drinks at my favorite bar. Little did I know, this major life decision I had made in less than 60 seconds would go on to start a pattern of shaking up my surroundings to an extreme after heartbreak. I did it again in 2021, when I left Cape Town for Namibia, and last year, I said bon voyage to South Africa and moved to France. Is making a major move after a breakup a little dramatic? Absolutely, but there is a method to my madness. Every move forces me to confront the post-breakup identity crisis and answer the million-dollar question: Who am I without anyone else? Starting over in a new place strips away all the relationship compromises, shared daily routines, and habits. The only thing left is me: my habits, my desires, and my identity beyond another person. It gives me the space to figure out where I may have been performing in the relationship and identify where I lost myself. The crisis I had where I wondered whether I was changing my mind about having kids? It turns out I was never unsure about having children — I always knew deep down that it wasn't my path. I was just too scared to choose myself and lose my partner in the process. During my last relationship, I stopped doing all the things I love: DJing, hiking, and going to festivals. It wasn't until it ended and I moved yet again that I realized how much I'd been missing out on when I found myself in Paris at a rave, cheezing so hard my cheeks hurt, asking myself, "How did I forget how much I loved this?" I believe my heartbreak wanderlust has helped me avoid the trap of using other people as emotional Band-Aids instead of processing the pain and grief after a break-up. My self-imposed exile gives me the space to sit with my emotions without any familiar distractions (after all, you can't call up your roster or ex when you're 7,000 miles away in France). It's a launchpad to a life of independence and self-confidence, where I'm showing myself every day how capable I am without someone else, each time I figure out something new. That said, should everyone move to a new city after a break-up? If you have a remote career like mine and no responsibilities tying you to a specific location, I'd say go for it. Being in a completely different city soothes the sting of rumination because nothing is familiar. The first time I moved after a breakup was on impulse. When I realized it was helping me process what had happened and improve my relationship with myself, I got curious and wanted to know why. I learned that when I create new memories and daily habits, I'm training my brain to form new associations that aren't tied to my ex. So when I move, I'm rewiring neural pathways, and I'm spending less energy stuck in a loop replaying the same old story. But if you can't move cities, plan a solo trip for two weeks. You'll still get to reap the benefits of taking yourself out of the familiar and give your heart and brain the chance to reset and interrupt the emotional ties. It's an incredible heartbreak cure, and reader, it's probably the greatest gift I've given myself. Read the original article on Business Insider
Daily Mail
30-06-2025
- General
- Daily Mail
I was given a name so unusual the government took my rights away - it was tied to an extreme tragedy, and now I'm fighting to change it
A Texas woman with an unusual name and no social security number has been battling the government for her identity. Sandra Wardlow, a 39-year-old from Houston, is named 'Baby Girl' on her birth certificate. 'My mom passed away when I was nine-months-old and she didn't name me,' Sandra told 'My birth certificate is just "Baby Girl" and my last name.' She was raised by her mother's first cousin and has gone by Sandra for as long as she can remember. 'My birth mom's name is Cassandra, so my mom who raised me just gave me half of my mom's name,' Sandra explained. Now married and working as a property manager, the mother-of-four is facing the consequences of a logical discrepancy she had no part in creating. She has tirelessly going back and forth with agencies including Social Security and the Texas Department of State Health Services to correct her birth certificate. But the process has been both expensive and convoluted, with no one able to rectify the issue to date. 'It was like everybody was giving me a runaround - "Do this, we need this..."' she said. Over the years, Sandra recalled being turned down from jobs or being unable to open bank accounts, but now that she has children, matter have only gotten worse. Due to her identity issues, Sandra said she is not allowed to pick up her own kids' birth certificates. She has also struggled with eligibility for her SNAP benefits because in order to receive them, she must provide a Social Security number. Further complicating matters, she has been issued a state ID, which ordinarily would require having a SSN. Growing impatient with the lack of answers she has been receiving from various government agencies, she has become increasingly concerned that 'Sandra' is not being legally acknowledged. 'They're saying Sandra doesn't exist - I'm legally married under that name, so am I not married?' she asked, outlining her uniquely difficult circumstances. 'I still didn't get no answer to that. Nobody ever reached out to me about that.' Sandra wants to go on a cruise with her family, but the legal confusion surrounding her identity has made travel virtually impossible. Now married and working as a property manager, the mother-of-four is facing the consequences of a logical discrepancy she had no part in creating 'I just want to fix my name,' she reiterated. 'So I can do stuff with my isn't my fault.' A Nebraskan toddler has found herself in the same boat as Sandra - as the little girl's father has been trying to legally change her name from Unakite Thirteen Hotel to Caroline. The perplexing backstory behind the one-of-a-kind name began when Carolina was born inside a home in Council Bluffs, Iowa and was transferred to state custody without a birth certificate or Social Security number. Her mother was reportedly suffering from a drug problem, and was not currently in a relationship with the child's father, Jason Kilburn of Omaha. The little girl was taken into foster care, and Kilburn successfully fought for custody of his daughter. But while she was in the state's care, Nebraska's Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) gave the child her unorthodox computer-generated name. 'I'm worried that this child fell between the cracks,' attorney Josh Livingston told WOWT in February. 'And I'm worried that when it became apparent that this child fell through the cracks, any authority did anything to fix it.'
Yahoo
28-06-2025
- Yahoo
How a Solo Bachelorette Helped Me Let Go of My Decades-Long Fear of Marriage
Parade aims to feature only the best products and services. If you buy something via one of our links, we may earn a commission. How a Solo Bachelorette Helped Me Let Go of My Decades-Long Fear of Marriage originally appeared on Parade. For many people, the day they get engaged is one of the happiest of their lives. When I got engaged seven months ago, it was for me, too, but in the weeks that followed, it led to an identity crisis. Witnessing my parents' rocky marriage turned me off the idea completely. At 18—the age I first realized being married and having kids wasn't the only life path that existed—I decided I wanted the opposite of what I had seen growing up, and to me, that meant never getting married. Then, I fell in love. I was 36 and had just become a licensed foster parent. My focus was on motherhood on my own terms. But after my friends set me up with a cute guy in our friend group, I knew pretty much immediately that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. After we got engaged, I felt grateful for the unexpected turn my life had taken, but I couldn't just shake off my long-held fears of marriage. My partner's parents didn't have a successful marriage either. How could I be sure our marriage would work? I decided to go on a solo bachelorette to think more about all the fears and questions I had. I spent several days at Civana Wellness Resort & Spa, located right outside of Scottsdale, Arizona. The trip ended up changing my views on marriage entirely. Related: Solo travel is a rising trend, especially among women. A survey conducted by tourism marketing firm Future Partners found that nearly 40% of female travelers want to take a solo trip in 2025. Jen Trazer, the founder of female solo travel planning company The Soloist, says women often come to her during a big life transition, such as after getting engaged, divorced or when changing careers. 'Solo travel is more than just a vacation. It's an introspective experience,' she says. Brittany Duffy, a travel expert at Go Ahead Tours, adds to this, saying, 'There's been a cultural shift toward prioritizing self-care and personal wellness, especially around major life events.' Duffy says that social media has helped drive the trend too. 'Social media has normalized solo travel, showing women that it's not only safe but incredibly rewarding. We're also seeing more women who are financially independent and comfortable making their own travel decisions. They're not waiting for others to be available or interested in their dream destination— they're just going.' Trazer says that taking a solo trip by yourself before your wedding (aka a solo bachelorette) isn't mainstream yet, but she says it's becoming more popular, and both experts say there is a lot to gain from taking one. 'A solo bachelorette offers an incredible opportunity for introspection, self-discovery and personal growth during one of life's most significant transitions. This type of trip allows brides-to-be to reconnect with themselves before entering marriage and the next chapter of their lives. There's also something profoundly empowering about celebrating yourself. Instead of focusing solely on the upcoming wedding, you're honoring your journey as an individual,' Duffy says. Related: Civana ended up being a perfect place for introspection because the resort offers a wide variety of classes and workshops created to help you learn more about yourself. I signed up for three: manifesting, numerology and feng shui for relationships. I also signed up for a type of massage I've never heard of before called watsu, which combines water therapy with Shiatsu, a form of Japanese bodywork that involves applying pressure to specific points on the body. Below are four lessons I learned during my stay that completely transformed my views of marriage and gave me peace before entering my own. In my manifesting workshop, I learned that manifesting is bringing your deepest desires to life. It means visualizing the life you want and taking action. The teacher said it's important to act as if you already know those desires are going to happen. It was easy for me to visualize the marriage I wanted because it reflected the relationship I was currently in. But it served as a reminder that I can take actionable steps to be the wife I want to be. I closed my eyes and visualized myself as a wife. The type of clothes I would wear and the ways my partner and I would support each other. Those are things I can actually do—or in many cases, continue doing. The teacher also shared that having a gratitude practice is an important part of manifesting. 'If you think about things you are lacking in your life, those things will expand. If you think about things you are grateful for in your life, those things will expand,' the teacher told the class. With this in mind, I made a note that I should regularly tell my partner specific reasons why I'm grateful for him. Focusing on what I love about my partner will make me even more grateful for him each day. Feng shui is an ancient Chinese practice focusing on arranging physical spaces to achieve harmony and balance. In my feng shui for relationships class, I learned how to create a home where love can flourish. 'Your home acts as a vision board for your life,' the teacher told the class. I learned that the back right corner of each floor of the house is the 'love area,' according to feng shui. For me, that meant the den the bottom floor and my bedroom on the second floor. One of the tips was to add touches that feel romantic to your love area, like candles, photos of you as a couple and flowers. This made sense to me: It's easier to feel romantic in a romantic setting than it is in one that's sterile or encourages a different type of mood. She also shared that having photos of anyone outside of your life as a couple was a no-no for the bedroom. 'It's pretty hard to get into a sexy mood if there's a photo of your mom on your nightstand,' she shared. Point taken. It was empowering to learn that I can create a home environment that sets a romantic vibe in my house. I certainly don't want to lose the romance in my relationship after we get married! During my watsu massage, I had to trust my masseuse completely as he gently dragged my body through the water while my head rested on his shoulder and my limbs floated on the surface. This was definitely one of the more out-there wellness activities I'd ever done, but it taught me the power of surrender and going with the flow. As someone who likes to be in charge, it was helpful for me to remember to let go and trust—which is important in relationships too. The most transformative moment of my trip came during a numerology class. Numerology is the belief between numbers and coinciding events. Everyone has their own 'life path' number, a core number derived from your birthdate that can be used to learn more about your personality traits, life challenges and life opportunities—similar to an astrological sign. (You can find out yours with this life path number calculator.) My life path number is nine. 'Nine represents completion—it is the end of the 1-9 number cycle—and it also represents the belief that all things are possible,' the teacher told the class. I calculated my partner's life path number, and his turned out to be a nine as well. Another coincidence is that the year we are getting married (2025) is also a nine. After the class, I asked the teacher if there was any significance in this trio of nines. 'Oh yes,' she said. 'To me, this means that your marriage will be the one to end unhealthy relationship cycles in your families.' For her to say that to me, not knowing the baggage I brought on my solo bachelorette, meant a lot to me. Also, when we calculated the number for my wedding day, it was a two—a number that symbolizes partnership! When I called my partner up that evening to tell him about the class, he thought it was pretty cool too. 'I already knew you were my soulmate, but this just shows how destined we were for each other,' he said. I left the Arizona desert with so much hope and excitement for my wedding day. Armed with the belief that my partner and I were meant to be together and that I could actively create the marriage I wanted, I felt so empowered. It completely erased the fears or doubts I started my trip with. Related: Feeling inspired and want to go on your own solo bachelorette? Sydney Getzin, a travel advisor with FORA Travel, recommends starting with a mood board, either done on Pinterest or old-school with magazine photos. She says to think about what type of environment you want to be in and what activities you want to do. Do you want it to be super active or chill? Tenzer says figuring out your budget early is key and plays a major role in choosing a destination. It's also important to figure out how long you want your solo bachelorette to be. If you want to do some soul-searching on your trip, Tenzer says to think about how you feel most introspective. For some people, that means being out in nature. For others, it means lots of workshops, like the ones I took. Some people learn a lot about themselves by pushing themselves to the limit physically. Knowing what it is for you can help you choose a hotel and destination with these types of activities in mind. Both Tenzer and Duffy say that wellness-focused destinations or resorts are great places for introspection and typically offer interesting classes to take. 'All-inclusive hotels tend to have packages that include food, spa treatments and various classes, so those are great options to look into,' Tenzer says, adding that one she recommends is Marival Resorts. Duffy says that some destinations—like Costa Rica, Bali or Thailand—naturally encourage introspection and self-care. 'They're the perfect backdrop for spa treatments and spiritual practices,' she says. Duffy says it's also important to consider your comfort level with solo travel. 'If you're new to traveling alone, choose destinations known for being solo-female-friendly like Iceland, New Zealand or Japan. If you're more experienced, this might be the perfect time to tackle that bucket-list destination you've been dreaming about,' she says. No matter where you go, all the travel experts emphasize that a solo bachelorette is a reminder that you are still an independent person, even though you are about to enter into a partnership. And Tenzer points out that it doesn't have to be your last solo trip either. After all, you're never done learning about yourself. Next Up:Jen Trazer, founder of female solo travel planning company The Soloist Brittany Duffy, travel expert at Go Ahead Tours Sydney Getzin, travel advisor with FORA Travel How a Solo Bachelorette Helped Me Let Go of My Decades-Long Fear of Marriage first appeared on Parade on Jun 28, 2025 This story was originally reported by Parade on Jun 28, 2025, where it first appeared.
Telegraph
13-06-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Why obsessing over ‘identity' is a stupid idea
Earlier this year, delivering the annual Richard Dimbleby Lecture, Gareth Southgate argued that in Britain today, too many boys and young men are suffering an identity crisis. They need better role models: only through emulating such figures can they reverse their own slump into academic underachievement, Andrew Tate-fuelled misogyny and feelings of worthlessness. The speech was widely praised. It seemed, if you'll forgive the pun, that the former England manager was shooting at an open goal. Few disputed that the fundamental problem was our boys' sense of identity, or that this sense needed to be made stronger and more resilient. Or maybe not. In this incendiary and timely broadside, Australian philosopher Alexander Douglas argues that the entire concept of 'identity', as we find it in contemporary discourse, is wrong. There's something undeniably odd about looking to others to find one's true self. Personal authenticity surely can't be a matter of imitation – and yet, for good or ill, we do it all the time. As children, we play at being superheroes, monsters, parents, criminals, police: we try to find out who we are by playing at being what we are not. As adults, Alexander suggests, we continue this role-play, but with a twist: we're motivated by fear to hunker down in silos of identity definition. Hence, perhaps, the rise of identity politics, as manifested on all sides: Black Lives Matter, the English Defence League, #MeToo, Proud Boys, self-regarding wellness crypto-fascists, the LGBTQ+ community. It seems unlikely that Nicola Sturgeon, Nigel Farage or Donald Trump would have been elected were it not for the respectively Scottish, English and American national identities to which their supporters cleave. Identity politics has for some time been excoriated by conservatives, but increasingly it is attacked by the Left too. Ash Sarkar, a regular panellist on Radio 4's The Moral Maze, who has described herself as 'literally a communist', proposed in her recent book Minority Rule that the Left's cause is being thwarted because the oppressed they hope to defend are being splintered into different interest groups riven by identity politics. If only black people, queer people, trans people and the white working-classes could see past their identitarian distinctions, and think along class lines, the revolution might have some actual prospects. It's easy to understand, Douglas writes, why we shore up our identities like latter-day Canutes. 'Drowning in a world where nothing is certain, where half of what we know is probably mistaken and the other half will soon be out of date, fear drives us to cling to the driftwood of various definitions.' Tech companies monetise exactly this insecurity and desire for stability. We're encouraged to present our 'authentic selves' online, the better for Meta and other firms to exploit our private data for profit – though the more heavily redacted, cunningly filtered and therefore inauthentic, the more engagement-worthy those selves will be. The central point of Against Identity is that these identities are not just generated by fear and algorithms but are fundamentally mendacious. As the late Christian philosopher René Girard put it: 'Individualism is a formidable lie.' That's a discombobulating axiom for the 21st century, in which individualism has become a religion for a society that's lost faith in God. Girard grew up in post-war France, when existentialism was becoming an exportable commodity, like fine wines or Brigitte Bardot, spreading its influence from Saint-Germain-des-Prés cafés to the world. The leader of the turtlenecks, Jean-Paul Sartre, argued that we have the God-like power to become our true selves ex nihilo – a tremendously hopefully message for those of us who are struggling to escape the inherited curses of family, class, sex, or (in my case) a Black Country accent. Soon, ironically enough, everybody sought to become an individual. Girard denounced the hipster narcissists whose way of becoming themselves was, ironically, to look like what he called 'a vast herd of sheep-like individualists'. Girard called this desire to establish one's authentic identity a 'romantic lie', and it's a lie that persists today, not least in Silicon Valley. Douglas points, for instance, to Steve Jobs's much-mythologised 2005 commencement address at Stanford University, where the Apple founder hymned 'your own inner voice, heart and intuition', which 'will somehow know already what you want to truly become.' How did we get this way? One account of human evolution, as related by Douglas, goes like this. For much of human history, there was no organised legal force to restrain the lawless thugs who sought to harm others. Coalitions of the willing thus formed to eliminate them and safeguard society. This is what the primatologist Richard Wangham calls the 'execution hypothesis': to put it roughly, the more aggressive members of society were bumped off or, presumably through some form of community-wide castration, prevented from reproducing. Douglas contends that this domesticated human society, which has continued to the present day, produced a civilisation that wasn't violent in a reactive way, as with the elimination of those thugs, but a proactive one: it enforces conformity to norms. Humans became selected, in the evolutionary sense, for their extreme vigilance in conforming to social norms, whether out of fear of punishment or, worse, being made to look ridiculous. 'People fear breaking the social contract,' Douglas writes, 'for the same reason they fear turning up to a gala event in unfashionable shoes finding themselves in a conversation where everybody but them seems to have mastered the appropriate slang or academic jargon.' (He is a lecturer in philosophy at the University of St Andrews: one wonders if he's speaking from experience.) One's identity, that is to say, is constrained and defined by the norms of our society. We are not meaningfully free to choose who we are. Douglas goes on: 'Many of our communities, whatever the stated purpose might be, are really identity regimes driven by egotism – patrolled and sustained by individuals determined to preserve a certain idea of themselves: a fragile idea that cannot bear much novelty.' This rings true to me. But the alternative Douglas proposes is, to put it mildly, bracing. He counsels something called 'identitylessness', which – following the philosophies of Girard, Spinoza and the ancient Chinese sage Zhuangzhi – involves breaking out of the prison of individual identity and realising that we're all, in a profound sense, connected to everything. 'We are the others and the others are us,' he writes at his most rhapsodic, 'not because we share an identity, but because we are alike in identitylessness… I believe we have barely begun to live in the world together. Our drive for identity is always getting in the way.' Alexander is alert to the complaint that this anti-identity vision might be deranging, that 'a world without identity is terrifying'. Not just terrifying, I would argue, but scarcely comprehensible. Yet he believes in it. At one point, he movingly recounts how he struggled to deal with his father's Alzheimer's disease. His dad's identity was being brutally stripped to nothing. A friend advised that Douglas should stop yearning for his dad to become his old self: give up the hope of trying to bring the father back to this world, and instead enter his. 'That turned out to be the secret,' he writes. 'My father was not vanishing but changing.' Douglas set about 'letting go of the things I was exhausting myself trying to hold on to, the things by which I had defined both him and myself, and learning to find joy in what was there'. The experience allowed him to fully understand the anti-identity philosophers he celebrates here. 'Nothing can remain the same. Trying to hold on to the way things are is a losing game. But love remains, because love can flow along with the way things change… Love is as supple as the world, and the world's transformations cannot erase it. Love is the opposite of identity and the secret to adaptation.' Ultimately, I'm not sure Douglas is right about love. Can we really love what has no personality or identity? Nor, closing Against Identity, was I convinced that we could really live identityless in a mystical communion with the rest of the universe. But the challenge he makes along the way to what many of us have become – narcissists onanistically buffing our fatuous identities, both online and in real life – seems to me more valuable and important than most contemporary philosophy.
