How do you define yourself?

Linda Joy · September 16, 2026

In different stages of our lives, we define ourselves by whom we belong to. In childhood, we are someone’s daughter or son, sister or brother, granddaughter or grandson.

Moving into adolescence, we begin to define ourselves by the groups surrounding us: our sports teams, our church group, our interests.

Past high school, we define ourselves by the college we attend, the jobs we find, the social groups we enter, and eventually to the person we marry.

Moving through life, we become someone’s spouse, someone’s parent. We often define ourselves by the career path we choose, or the hobbies we enjoy.

We are not the only ones who define ourselves by these various roles. Others define us as well.  We are defined not only by the roles we play, but by the choices we make. And sometimes the choices we make put a label on us that isn’t easily removed, even years after the choice.

Sometimes people see our labels. Sometimes we secretly carry them decades after the event. Sometimes the label accurately depicts a choice that was made, though it never reveals the circumstances around the choice – all the things that were at play, the influences, the hurts, the environment, the beliefs that informed the choice.

Sometimes labeling events occur, but not by our own choice. Some choices were made for us, by others. And yet we wear the label as if we chose it.

But do roles and events in life really define us?

What if the people in our life that we once belonged to leave us, or die? Does that change who we are? What if our choice of career doesn’t fit our abilities and aptitudes, and we find ourselves in need of change? Do we become a failure by one choice, then a success by another? What if an accident leaves us physically disabled? Are we any less ourselves? What if we retire, or can no longer fulfill the vocation we have pursued during our lifetime? Are we no longer of value? What if we didn’t choose the course of events in our lives? Are we defined by the things that happen to us along the way?

We often define ourselves by the path we take in life, and the things that happen to us along the way. Some of those things were in our control. Some were not. Some choices were good. Some were not.

As someone who has experienced trauma in my life, I have carried labels that I believed defined me for most of my life. These labels were inside of me, unseen by the rest of the world, but ever present behind every decision I made throughout my lifetime. I defined myself by those labels, even though some of them were not choices I made for myself. Believing the labels, my view of myself was marred and distorted, and from an early age I believed myself to be broken beyond repair, unacceptable to God, and never to be good enough. Those false beliefs informed so many choices I made throughout my lifetime; some good and some bad.

I have been on a healing journey for the past six years of my life. It has been excruciatingly hard work. I have had to examine the labels I had been wearing for a lifetime. Some of the labels I put on myself, other labels I took on from others. And what I have come to know. deep within me, is there is only one label that is true. And it is a label that was sewn inside my heart before I was even born. That label reads “God’s beloved child.”

“For the Holy Spirit makes God’s fatherhood real to us as he whispers into our innermost being, ‘You are God’s beloved child!’”  (Romans 8:16, The Passion Translation)

The best way to start my day is by reminding myself who God says I am. And by letting that soak in to the core of my being. No other labels can stick to me when I do that.