Ep 4: The Identity Crisis I Didn't See Coming

In episode 4, Cheryl opens up about the identity crisis she didn't see coming: walking away from her career, the fear underneath it, and the conversation with her son that changed everything.

In This Episode:

• Why Cheryl's sense of worth got tied to her education and career from an early age
• The physical reaction she had to the thought of losing her professional title
• Realizing the problem was never her job, it was what she'd projected onto it
• The pivotal conversation with her son that solidified her decision to leap
• What it's meant to embrace the "too much" parts of herself she used to hide
• Why fear, not desire, was the only thing actually holding her back
• A reflection question on what you'd chase if you knew it would work out

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:20

Welcome to Fire and Fairy Dust, The Long Way Back. This episode is called The Identity Crisis I Didn't See Coming. When you were growing up, what was the one thing that you were really good at? That one thing that came more naturally to you that you actually didn't mind doing, and just seemed a little bit easier than some of the other things. Mine was school. And when I was in earlier grades, I remember enjoying homework because it gave me something to focus on other than, you know, what was happening at home. But my parents always made it clear to me that I would never go to college or university because our family was very poor and nobody on either side of the family had ever pursued a post-secondary education. And I remember thinking that I would be the first one to go. That I would be the first one to finish college and university. And I was. And I don't think that I realized how much of my self-worth or value I placed on that education and professional title until I was guided to walk away from it. I mean, I loved my job. I cared deeply for the people that I worked with and I believed in the work I was doing. But I also knew it was no longer aligned with where I was headed. And it was terrifying. Because if I don't hold a professional title or license, then what value did I have? The funny thing though is that I never have seen anyone else that way. And I still don't. When I meet someone, I don't give a crap about what they do for work or how many degrees they hold. I look for depth, not credentials. But when it came to me, I struggle to let that thought process go. And I didn't know how deeply embedded it was until January of 2026. The thought of me being at an event or anything social and someone asking what I do for work and not being able to say that I was a nurse or that I was, you know, aligned with a college of any sort actually made me nauseous because to step away from nursing, I resigned my membership. And so I started to do what I usually do. I dug deeper because that response didn't make sense to me. Because this was actually a very exciting time for me. And yes, I was about to take the biggest, scariest leap of faith I've ever taken, but it was also a good thing, right? Well, what I realized was that not only had I tied my worth to my profession, but so had other people. I mean, think about it, right? Like when we first meet someone, we don't ask, are you a good human? We ask, what do you do for work? As though that is the thing that actually matters. And I also realized that throughout my career, I was told multiple times that my degree wasn't enough. My education wasn't enough. And I let those people make me feel small. And I don't say they made me feel small because people can't make you or make me feel anyway. And it got to the point where I really started to believe it. And I started to look into getting more education, more degrees. But the thing is that another degree was not the solution because my education wasn't actually the problem. The problem was projection. The problem was that I allowed that projection to tear me down and make me think I wasn't capable. But the real question, again, as I dug deeper, was why? Why would I allow that? Why would I allow myself to feel so poorly about my accomplishments when I knew what it took to get there? And I was actually very good at my job. So here's the answer. I spent my entire life making sure I achieved the highest grades I possibly could. And I'm talking like if I got 98 on a test instead of 100, the world was ending. Very silly. I know, but that's where my mindset was at the time. And I did this, I completed my degree, and I started a career. And that was that was my focus for a really long time. The reason for that, now looking back, I can break into two parts. The first reason is that I knew that education and a decent paying job were my ticket out of the life that I grew up in. I had this gift for being able to excel academically, and I knew that it would allow me to build a better life for me and the family that I knew I wanted someday. It was my ticket out, and I used it. The second reason is that my career was actually my entire identity. It was what made me feel different from those who I promised myself I would never be like. And I'm not just talking about money, just to be clear. But mostly if I was successful and I did all the things that I was told I was never capable of doing, my mom would have to see my value. Right? You see, it's it's interesting because I spent years completing education and building a career and telling myself it was to get as far away from that as possible. But there was also just still this sliver of hope for a long time that those accomplishments would make my parents love me the way a child always wants to be loved. So, really, my education and career was all about the value that others placed on my job or that I thought they did, and not the value that I actually believed I had. Which meant that when that was about to be taken away, in a sense, I felt like a fish out of water. But now, because I had healed enough to know that my education and job doesn't determine my worth, but I also knew I had spent my entire life up until recently thinking that it did. I had to start to ask, what would it look like to change that? And it was a punch in the gut, I'm not gonna lie. So, like I had developed the skills to manage what was coming up, what I've shared with you. But I was still, like I said, a fish out of water, still in very new territory. And I had to ask myself, what do I actually want? And I had never actually asked myself that before. Not really, not in a way where I was allowed to answer the question without without filtering what came up. Not in a way that I was able to let myself really dream. And here's what I came up with. I realized that forcing myself to stay in a career that had come to its end would not allow me to fully embrace my gifts and the skills I had developed and the lessons I had learned and use those things to help others in the way that I know that I can I can do. And I've mentioned before that one of the best parts of living authentically is the strengthening that can happen with our natural skills and gifts when they're given the space to grow. And so I learned that if I wanted to serve the world in the way that I have always dreamt of, the only way to do that was as my messy, often intense, spicy, feather-ruffling, but also kind and loving, sometimes humorous, self-proclaimed anyway, self. And that was the part of me that I had been told was too much, that I cared too much, that I thought about too much, that I was too intense. That was the part that was often rejected by other people and therefore rejected by me, but that was the part that I actually needed. And that was the part of me that was missing the entire time. And I say that because once I started to embrace that part of me instead of hide it, the other parts of me started to surface that I hadn't seen. Well, I don't know if ever. The parts of me that are silly, the parts of me that will start a snowball fight with my son inside the house, or will wake him up on a Saturday morning by banging on pots and pans with a wooden spoon because we're in the middle of a prank war. And he, you know, had woken me up by playing my least favorite song of all time the day before. Those parts of me, they they didn't come out until all of me came out because I guess I'm an all or nothing kind of girl. So when I hid some of the deepest parts of me, I hid all of me, which, as I've mentioned in the previous episodes, was not who I wanted to be. It was a shell of a person. And so I asked myself, now that I have this information, if I could leave my career and know that it would all work out and I would end up where I dream of being, would I do it? And the answer, as I'm sure you can guess, was yes, of course. And that told me that the thing holding me back was fear and not desire. And that reason was good enough for a while, because fear can be pretty, pretty strong. Until I had a conversation with my son. And I remember as I asked the question, as it came out of my mouth, I wondered, why did I even ask that? But then as I heard the answer, I knew its purpose. But you also had the chance to chase your dream, to share your story, and potentially help people in the way that you've always wanted to. But that option was a little bit risky. There's no full guarantee that it would work out. What would you do? And I thought I knew the answer. And I thought I knew that he would say, Well, I would chase my dream. And I was wrong. Because what he said was that he would choose the safe option because that's what he chose, and he would stick with his choice, and because he would know that that job was there to provide what he needed. And that answer absolutely destroyed me. Let me explain why. My son had always been a dreamer. It's one of the many things that I love about him. So to hear him say that if he had the chance to chase one of those dreams, he wouldn't, out of fear that it wouldn't work out, that he would choose the safer option. It made me take a long, hard look at the mindset and beliefs that I had been sharing with him over the past few years. And in that moment, I knew, like, for many reasons, but definitely for this one, I had to do this. I already wanted to. But this conversation, probably one of the most pivotal conversations I've ever had in my lifetime, just solidified it. So I obviously have made that leap because I was not about to allow my fear to not only dictate my life, but then also possibly determine the outcome of his.