Adopting the identity of being a victim
Some years ago, I found myself witnessing the subtle shadows of my inner victim, that part of me who had held the central reins of my being for most of my adult life.
This is how she showed up. She lived in a story of me being oppressed by the nature of being a woman and a single mother. She would gather evidence every day of her right to be a victim. She would use the status of victim to fuel the story of difficulty. How difficult my life was. How unfair. How unjust. How much harder I had to work just to be seen. I always had a fallback position. A justification. But more than anything, I always had a poor-me story.
This aspect of myself, my victim, was the noise playing constantly in the background that I could not even see or know.
I had no idea. Until I saw and witnessed her.
I was horrified. She had truly ruled my life. She oozed through my being like a very low-grade bad smell.
Some part of her was true. It is hard to be a woman in business and a single mother in a world that supports differently. Our victimhood is often built on truth.
But the rule of my inner victim was disempowering and completely unserving of me, my future and my expression in the world.
And this is the point. We can be true victims of circumstances. But to adopt an identity as a victim is a choice, often one we do not know we made in the beginning.
When I caught a glimpse of her, I knew she could no longer occupy space in my identity. She had to leave.
There is no such possibility of being a victim and being in your power simultaneously. The two cannot coexist.
I can now acknowledge the challenges of being a woman in a world still designed to serve men and the challenges of raising a child fiscally and responsibly with very little support.
But I can refuse to allow any of that to inhabit my being as the victim.
My power comes from knowing I get to choose, in every moment, how to respond. I can respond as a victim or as an agentic choice-making being.
No matter the circumstances, I get to choose my response.
No one can take that from me.
Denying the part of me that lived as a perpetual victim was the beginning of my liberation from a sense of oppression.
As Ta-Nehisi Coates says, Your oppression will not save you.
*Tomorrow, I will share how to recognise and extricate your victim.
Photo May 7th 2023, Article written May 7th 2025
