COMM0014 Blog Post 5 – Personal brand

Sarah Currie is many things to many people: mom, wife, employee, friend, sister, daughter. I wear a lot of different hats, and I tend to compartmentalize my life and my personality. The one quality that seems to shine through regardless of the situation I am in, however, is resilience.

I grew up an army brat. My early life was a series of transitions: some fluid, some less so. They left an indelible imprint on my psyche. A popular internet myth suggests that the cells in our body are completely renewed on a 7-year cycle. My personal homeostasis seems to need regeneration on a tighter schedule than that. As an adult, I now get restless without a steady stream of change: a change of environment, a change of pace, a change in the faces around me.

That I am resilient does not mean that I am completely unfazed in the face of change. I am anxious; planning helps mitigate that. I make a lot of lists. I write letters to myself and tear them up. And then, inevitably, the change must be met head on, if not embraced.

The one role in which I feel my resilience flounder is as a new mom. I plunged head-first into toddlerhood. My son and I didn’t get a chance to know each other slowly over the course of his gestation and infancy. Our worlds were completely foreign to each other, yet we were instantly expected to be a family, to adapt to our new titles of mother and son overnight. I found myself second-guessing my every thought, feeling and action. I began to wonder if my previous adaptability was just an illusion conjured by my ego for self-preservation. I have since learned that my resiliency is still there; I just need help tapping into it sometimes. I need to stop seeing myself as a lone wolf, and remember that I am part of a pack. I have a team. I have a whole village. Learning when and how to ask for help doesn’t make me less resilient; it gives me strength.

I hope that this quality continues to serve me well, and that learning to cope with change is a skill I can teach to my son. His childhood will be a lot like mine. He’s an army brat, too (with less emphasis on the “brat” aspect). Perhaps change management can become the new family business.