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I was sitting with a client recently, sharp woman, loads of potential, and something stopped me mid-conversation. She was describing herself, and without realising it, she had built an entire identity out of the things that had been hard for her.
Disadvantaged. ADHD. Socially awkward. Introverted.
Label after label, stacked up like a wardrobe full of clothes she never chose to wear. And yet there she was, wearing all of them. Every day.
Now, I want to be clear, those experiences are real. They matter.
They are part of her story. But there is a crucial difference between something being part of your story and something being the author of it.
A coat hanger doesn’t care what you hang on it. It will hold a stained old rag just as readily as it holds a beautiful, carefully chosen shirt. It has no preference. It has no agenda. But you are not a coat hanger.
You have a choice.
The question is: what are you choosing to carry?
The Trouble with Borrowed Labels
 We live in a world that loves to categorise us. Systems label us early. Schools, workplaces, medical diagnoses, social circles,  they all hand us tags and quietly suggest we pin them to ourselves permanently.
Some of those labels come with genuine care attached. A diagnosis, for example, can be a doorway to understanding and support. But diagnosis was never meant to be a destination. It was meant to be a tool, not a title.
When we collapse into our labels, we start to organise our entire life around proving them true. We decline opportunities because “that’s not who I am.” We shrink in rooms because “I’m just introverted.” We pre-empt rejection because “I’ve always been the disadvantaged one.”
And slowly, the label stops being something we carry. It becomes something that carries us. And not toward anything good.
The Oldest Wisdom There Is
The most enduring cultures in human history never built identity around hardship. They built it around contribution, around what a person brought to the community, how they showed up in relationship to others, and what they were willing to grow into.
Hardship was understood as part of the journey. It shaped you. But it was never the point of you.
Somewhere along the way, modern life inverted that. Now we wear our struggles like credentials. We lead with what’s been hard, what we’ve lacked, what we’ve been told we’re not. And we call it authenticity.
There is a difference between authenticity and anchoring. You can own your story without being owned by it.
So, What's the Shirt?
When I asked my client that question, she went quiet for a moment.
And then something shifted in her face.
Because the truth is, she already knew her shirt. She’d just been so busy carrying everyone else’s labels that she hadn’t given herself permission to hang her own.
Her shirt? Resilient. Creative. Someone who sees what others miss. A connector of people. A woman who has navigated hard things and come out with hard-won wisdom.
Same person. Completely different wardrobe. Resilient. Creative. Hard-Won Wisdom. Connector.
That is the identity worth building a life around. Not the labels others gave her, but the shirt she chose to carry.
