The Beauty In Not Defining Who And What I Am

Wave of ocean with the text: I am. That is enough.

When I experienced my inner earth quake in September 2015, I suddenly lost an important part to the answer of who I thought I was. Suddenly, all definitions that I had hold about before, especially about my professional identity, weren’t true anymore.

I could still see all these things somewhere existing, the "I am a psychologist", "I am a CR Master" (the Method I earned my money with these times), "I am a consultant", but it was as if someone had cut the cord between these concepts and myself. They existed and I existed, we just had nothing to do with each other anymore.

This experience left me in an existential crisis, putting one question on an inner never-ending loop:

If I wasn’t anything of what I thought I was, what was I instead?

WHO Was I Instead?

There was no obvious answer to that. Every time I asked myself, and I asked often, I realized that these questions – Who/What am I really? – had always been there even in the times when I thought I had found an answer to them. Being a psychologist for example was something that filled my identity for many years. Maybe it was because I followed my heart in becoming one. Maybe it was simply because I was good at it.

And still, all these years there had been a nagging doubt laying under this obvious identity, which became much stronger when I left university and even more when I started my own business.

Who was I really? What was I really?

I always felt that I missed an important thing about myself, but I didn’t allow myself to dig deeper into these questions. I just wasn’t ready for the answer.

The Blessing Of Loosing The Answer

After experiencing my inner Earth quake it took me weeks and months of inner work until I finally realized what true blessing this loss of identity was. Not only made it space for new abilities and a whole new way to live my life and do my work (this was my beginning of my shamanic path). It also gave me the opportunity to really dig into the big questions:

If something I think is true can break away so easily, what does it mean about myself?

About my world?

My reality?

After a while, when the panic about loosing myself had ebbed a bit and the relief about freeing myself from something burdening had become stronger, I realized what we actually mean when we say that we construct our lives by stories.

I realized that all these things that I put behind these words of „I am“ where my stories, my attempt to label myself and act based on it. I also realized that they only highlighted a tiny part of who I truly was. It wasn’t only true for my job description, it was true for anything.

If I recognized for example thinking the thought of „I am sad“, I instantly got the answer, that only a part of me was sad, and there was so much more. Could I truly say that I was sad? Not really. Something inside of me was sad, but I, the human being, wasn't.

So I looked for the exceptions, the bigger stories. What about the facts I couldn’t deny?

For example, what about „I am a woman“?

Again it came: Yes, a part of me is a woman and there is so much more. I realized that this was true. Calling me a woman only touched a bit of all these experiences I had lived in many lives which were again present in my consciousness.

I couldn't find the exception I was looking for. So I took the biggest thing I could think of: „I am human.“ That wouldn’t be deniable, would it? The answer came in a second. Yes, I am human and I am so much more. Infinite consciousness for example. Energy. Light.

And when I picked „I am light“ I realized I was shadow too. And when I picked „I am light and shadow“ I realized that I was – and am – something totally different, something beyond any labels that human minds can create or understand.

I knew: With whatever I would end the sentence of I am, it would be a limitation of my actual existence.

I was fed up with limiting myself. What was the answer here?

And then, one day, it hit me. There was none. There was no answer, no ending of that sentence, no description, no label, no definition about myself that was actually true.

Putting something after „I am“ (or any versions like „I was…“, „I have been…“ and „I will…“) was like holding a torch and lightening into a corner of my being, leaving the existing rest unnoticed. That could be somehow practical in one way or another but it wasn’t TRUTH.

The Answer I Have Found

From that point on this knowing has never left me. It has completely shaken the way I see the world and what I feel is possible in this reality. Not only for myself but for others as well.

Sometimes this knowing is clearly present in my consciousness, sometimes I loose a bit sight of it, especially when I turn back into crisis mode. But as the nagging questions were underlaying currents in the past, now the knowing is the underlaying current in my life:

Whatever I put into the light of my torch it is only a tiny bit of what is truly there.

It is tiny bit of what is truly possible, too. For me. For others. For the world.

So what IS the answer to the old nagging questions of who I am or what I am?

To this question, there is none. But there is another.


That’s enough.

It might evoke some practical problems when it comes to dealing with everyday issues like job descriptions and about pages. But it gives me a sense of my true essence. Instead of creating limiting stories again, it opens space to be.


That is enough.

Simone Wiedenhöft
About The Author

Simone Wiedenhöft is a bridge between the worlds. She was an academic psychologist once, turned into a Shaman then. Now she is breathing union of both, living the often beautiful and sometimes challenging dance of intuition and intellect in everyday life. She loves to experience life from a place of freedom, love and joy, and she loves to empower and encourage others to do the same – in her working, in her speaking, in her wholehearted being.

She lives in Germany at the moment. Her heart belongs to the world.