Independence

A July Birthday Edition

Birthdays make you think about things you spend the other 364 days avoiding.

This month I turn 37.

America turns 250.

Somewhere between those two birthdays, I found myself wondering not how old either of us are, but who we are. Age and identity aren't the same thing. Existing for a long time doesn't mean you've figured yourself out.

Who am I?

The more I reflected on my own identity, the more I wondered if my country was asking the same question.

Ciara.

That used to be my answer, but it's a strange one when you think about it. I didn't choose that name. My mom didn't either. She got it from my great aunt. The first thing people know about me is something that didn't even come from me.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized none of us really begin with ourselves.

Before we're born, we're handed a name, a race, a family, a country, traditions, expectations, and enough labels to fill an entire closet. We inherit stories we didn't write, beliefs we didn't choose, and sometimes even pain we didn't create. Then we spend the rest of our lives deciding what belongs to us and what never did.

America is celebrating 250 years. That's only about nine generations, long enough to inherit traditions, trauma, dreams, silence, and eventually forget where some of those stories began. Countries, like families, pass things down. So do people.

America is still trying to figure out who she is.

At 37, I realized I was doing the same.

Before I ever had the chance to tell the world who I was, the world had already decided who I should be.

And for a long time...

I believed it.

Seen, Not Heard

"A child should be seen and not heard."

We heard them so often they became more than a sentence. They became a way of life.

There was a time they protected people. Keeping your head down, knowing your place, and staying quiet could mean making it home alive. Black families learned how to survive in a country that didn't always make room for their voices, and survival lessons have a way of outliving the danger that created them.

The problem is that survival and identity are not the same thing.

What protects one generation can quietly shape the next. What once kept us alive can eventually keep us small. Freedom isn't forgetting where we came from. It's deciding what we no longer have to carry.

Sometimes I wonder if America is still trying to separate who she is from the stories she's inherited.

I don't think Black Americans inherited only silence. I think we inherited being seen without being heard. America has always loved pieces of us. Our music, our fashion, our creativity has shaped this country in ways impossible to ignore. But our grief, our fears, our humanity, and our stories have often been much harder to sit with.

I've been seen my whole life. People saw the quiet girl, the dark-skinned girl, the angry Black girl, the sexual object. They saw labels before they ever saw me.

Being seen isn't the same as being heard. And being heard isn't the same as being understood. I wasn't born quiet. I became quiet. There's a difference. One is personality. The other is survival. When people don't hear your voice, they eventually start writing your story for you.

I spent years wondering if I was the problem. Now I realize I was trying to fit inside stories that were never mine to carry.

Hungry for Labels

"I'm just like my country. Young, scrappy, and hungry." I've always loved that line from Hamilton because I think it describes all of us.

Before we know who we are, we're hungry. Hungry to belong, to matter, to be loved, to become somebody. Hunger doesn't make us picky. It makes us consume whatever is around us.

That's what happens with identity.

We consume our environment before we become ourselves.

If our environment rewards silence, we learn to be quiet. If it rewards perfection, we learn to perform. If it rewards survival, we adapt. By the time we're old enough to ask, "Who am I?" we've already spent years learning who the world applauds.

Every environment has a reward system, and countries are no different. America has always been hungry for labels, not only the ones we give people, but the ones we give ourselves. The greatest nation. The land of opportunity. The home of the free. Stories can inspire us, but they can also become identities we stop questioning.

People do the same thing.

Before I ever knew myself, I already had labels. Ciara. Black. Girl. American. Christian. None of those were choices. They were introductions.

Then I started collecting labels I could earn. Good daughter. Good student. Good worker. I thought if I became the best at every role, I would finally know who I was.

Instead, I let the labels tell me who I was. I thought I was building an identity. I was following a blueprint.

The American Dream promised that if I graduated, built a career, bought a home, raised a family, and checked enough boxes, I would eventually find myself waiting at the end of the list.

But identity has never lived at the end of a checklist.

That's the strange thing about blueprints. They feel like freedom while you're following them. You don't realize you've been walking someone else's path until you stop long enough to ask where are you trying to go.

The hunger was never the problem. I was hungry for identity. I just kept feeding on everyone else's definition of who I was, hoping one day it would finally taste like me.

Sell Out

America has always celebrated people who leave home to chase something bigger. Until it's someone we know. Then they've "changed." They think they're better. They forgot where they came from.

It's funny how we celebrate growth from a distance but question it up close.

I spent years afraid of becoming one of those people. Not because I didn't want to grow, but because I didn't want anyone to think I'd forgotten where I came from. That's one of the greatest fears we inherit: the belief that becoming more of yourself somehow means becoming less loyal to everyone else.

Nobody taught me that in a classroom. My environment taught me. It was the same environment that taught me to be seen and not heard, made me hungry for labels, and handed me a blueprint before I ever had the chance to write my own.

For a long time, I thought I was chasing the American Dream.

Dreams are wonderful servants. Terrible identities.

Somewhere along the way I stopped asking whether the dream belonged to me. I only asked whether I was achieving it. I confused accomplishment with identity, achievement with authenticity, and success with self-worth. Every opportunity came with two emotions: pride and guilt. As my life grew, I quietly wondered who would think I'd forgotten where I came from. So, I stayed smaller than I needed to because shrinking felt more loyal than growing.

I wasn't selling out my family, my community, or my culture. I was selling out myself. Growth has never been betrayal. I had simply confused familiarity with loyalty.

What if becoming isn't selling out? What if staying the same is?

Glitch in the Matrix

Someone once asked me if I was on the spectrum.

I laughed.

Then I realized he wasn't joking.

The question stayed with me, not because I needed another label, but because it made me wonder why we're so uncomfortable with people who don't fit neatly into our categories.

The older I get, the less interested I am in whether I'm different. I'm more interested in why so many of us are trying so hard to be the same.

We call ourselves the land of the free, yet I've never seen so many people afraid to be themselves. Somewhere along the way, we traded individuality for acceptance. Technology didn't create that problem. It simply made it easier to perform. We scroll until we start dressing alike, thinking alike, speaking alike, measuring our worth by strangers instead of ourselves. We confuse attention with connection, fitting in with belonging, and performance with identity.

That's why I've always felt like the black sheep. Not because I wanted to stand apart, but because I couldn't convince myself to disappear into the crowd. People have called me different my entire life. Too honest. Too serious. Too much. Maybe they were right.

Or maybe I was finally asking the questions that freedom requires.

For years I thought freedom meant the ability to do whatever I wanted. Now I know freedom is much quieter than that. It's having the courage to tell the truth about who you are after a lifetime of being told who you should be.

I was born free.

I'm just finally taking my freedom back.

Love

If you've made it this far, you've probably realized this was never really a birthday blog.

It was my Declaration of Independence.

Not the political kind. The personal kind. The kind that begins the moment you stop building your life around fear and start building it around truth.

So...

Who am I?

Thirty-seven years later, my answer is different.

Love.

Not Ciara. My mom gave me that name, and my great aunt gave it to her. For years I thought I had to become someone worthy of it. Now I understand that my life's work was never becoming someone else. It was uncovering the person who existed before the labels ever did.

For most of my life, I answered that question with what I did. Therapist. Mother. Writer. Healer. Today I see those titles differently. They don't define me. They're simply the ways love moves through my life. I don't think I heal people. Love does. I just make room for it.

Love for humanity, truth, our Creator, and the greatest love of all: self-love. Not the kind that says, "I'm perfect," but the kind that finally understands, "I'm enough."

Maybe that's what independence has been trying to teach us all along. Not just as a country, but as people. Freedom isn't the ability to do whatever we want. It's having the courage to become who we were created to be.

America is celebrating 250 years, and I'm celebrating 37.

I don't think either of us are finished becoming. Growth doesn't end the day you discover who you are. It finally has somewhere to grow from.

I know who I am.

Love.

And if America ever asked for my recommendation, I'd simply tell her to begin there.

Take Notes

Freedom isn't about becoming someone new. It's about having the courage to uncover who you've been beneath the labels, expectations, and stories all along.

Reflection Question

If no one else's expectations existed, who would you be?

Reflection Affirmation

Today, I give myself permission to question, to grow, and to become more fully myself. My freedom begins with being true to who I am.