Caitlin Dwyer ‘06

I sat on the white sand, gazing out into the ocean. The salty sea air enveloped me and the rhythmic crash of the waves against the shoreline soothed my aching heart. I felt that if I could just sit there long enough, my frustration would gradually go out with the receding tide. I was 25 and had just moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with my husband and two young children. Aside from them, I didn’t know a soul. And I was starting to wonder if I really knew myself.

For as long as I could remember, I’d been a “doer.” In high school I strove for success in the classroom, sports, clubs and service. In college, the frenetic pace continued as I pursued leadership and service opportunities in my dorm and clubs, helped launch an annual student-run conference, and continued to seek academic excellence. I thrived off of the rewards and praise that came with this lifestyle. I’m guessing many in the ND family can relate to this constant pursuit of high achievement and the satisfaction of measurable success.

In graduate school I had to slow down because my husband and I had our first child, and the second arrived two weeks after graduation. But I continued to perform well academically and had my grades as a standard to measure myself against.

When I got to Florida, all of this was stripped away and I entered a time of separation and vulnerability. I empathized with Mary and Joseph’s Egypt experience—being a young family in a foreign land filled with sand and palm trees.

I felt particularly isolated because my husband and I made the joint decision that I would stay home with our children, so for the first time in my life, I didn’t have an immediate school or work community. There was no one to satiate my thirst for praise for achievements and no objective measure of success for my life. My children were absolutely precious but very young and unable to communicate the affirmation and encouragement that I craved. There were lots of potty-training and good behavior sticker charts for my son, but no gold stars for me on the fridge.

Up to this point I had seen myself as an independent, driven person but I suddenly realized my self-worth was very dependent on the opinions of others. I felt so lonely and empty and fell into intense self-questioning: Was I a good mom? Was I living a worthwhile life?

I began to see that I had fallen into some of the thought-patterns of modernity I had desperately wanted to avoid, particularly the idea that identity is something that we can and must create for ourselves. In our earliest years Sesame Street tells us “You can do anything, you can be anything!” and the message continues throughout our lives.

In one sense this seems incredibly empowering. We can be whatever want! We can create any image of ourselves we choose and post it in pictures on Facebook or Instagram for all the world to see.

On the other hand, it can be extremely anxiety-producing. If my identity is something I create for myself, then I have to constantly keep it up through my own activity (which must be continually documented on social media). It can suddenly change or fall apart if I lose a job or a certain relationship. And there seems to be nothing objective about it, so it becomes difficult to have certainty about who I am and where I am going.

Thankfully, our faith gives us a refreshing alternative. My identity is given to me by a loving Father—I am a child of God—and nothing can take that away from me. Made in the image and likeness of the divine, I am called to be in a relationship of love with Love itself, now and forever. This relationship not only defines me, it gives me an ultimate goal and destiny.

Having had the opportunity to earn two degrees in theology, I knew all of this in theory heading to Florida. What I didn’t realize is the extent to which I had failed to internalize this truth. I am now thankful to God for my “Egypt time” as I like to call it, because it led to a profound conversion of identity I desperately needed. For the first time in my life, I had to truly accept that who I am is not primarily what I do. My identity is not something I need to grasp for or prove—I simply need to receive it from the Almighty God who loved me into existence.

Our spiritual thirst is intense and never truly satisfied by temporal praise or other worldly rewards, but only with the living water given to us in the Sacraments. Gradually this water did wash away my heartache and replaced it with a fundamental sense of peace in my identity as God’s daughter.