Assimilation, adaptation, authenticity?
As a woman who consumes her fair share of personal growth and business development books, podcasts, and courses (not to mention Lizzo - lots of Lizzo), I’ve been hearing a good deal lately about authenticity, about being true to yourself and thriving because of, not despite, your uniqueness.
It can be a bit much: all those ideas, encouragement and exclamations about Living Your Truth ping ponging around in an echo chamber of self-affirmation. It’s even a bit cliché, for a newly minted forty-something. I grant you all that.
But hey, I’ve decided I’m into it. Because, honestly, being myself hasn’t always fully squared with my nomadic lifestyle.
For over half of the past 20 years, I’ve lived and worked outside the U.S. So I’ve spent a chunk of time trying to be culturally sensitive and appropriate, which often felt like it had to be a smoothed-over version of myself: a middle class white American woman working in development and humanitarian aid. It results in a kind of hyper self-awareness. And, at times, editing.
When I’m new to a country, I can lose the sense of joy in my difference in my quest to be respectful, humble and appropriate. Just as I feel muted in a new language until I’m fluent enough to crack jokes and make sarcastic remarks.
But the line can get blurred between adaptation - which I see as positive and necessary - and assimilation - which feels like a losing of myself. And when I lose, or question, myself, I lose my unique offering, my perspective, my ideas, my creativity. It all gets stifled under a weighted blanket of Fitting In.
The development space feels a bit like that these days. The sameness of the approach, the fear of innovation, the risk aversion. And why? Because we have donors to court. We can’t do the work without the funds, and yet we’re hamstrung by the funds. The incentives are all wrong (more on that in another post), so we’re chasing money to keep projects afloat, offices open, staff on board.
Instead of asking ourselves what our unique offering is. And being honest with ourselves if we don’t have one.
p.s. Should they be of interest, here are some things I’m listening to and reading lately:
Podcasts
Books
Dark Nights of the Soul: A Guide to Finding Your Way Through Life's Ordeals, by Thomas Moore
Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger, by Soraya Chemaly
Composing a Life, by Mary Catherine Bateson