I found my true identity when I found my lost sense of humor. As a result of being able to take myself less seriously I began to finally realize that I was abnormally pale and eyebrow "challenged"! Up until then I was kind of "anonymous" to myself. In other words I was in denial about my reality.

Like my mother, I always looked very Irish in an unhealthy, anemic way and I had sparse eyebrows and I was unable to or too impatient to fill in my eyebrows. I realize now that for almost 50 years my appearance, especially an abnormally pale skin color and my face being without eyebrows, (well, practically speaking, almost without eyebrows), gave me an unearthly appearance, ghostlike. I frightened people. In other words, I made a ghostly impression because I had zero expression! I appeared and was judged to be without AFFECT! I appeared to be totally ambiguous!

I seemed so alien in my appearance that I generated fear in others. I only knew and was experienced at reacting intensely to others automatic fear response. I wanted to go THROUGH life almost as if on auto pilot, reacting, instead of making a life and an identity for myself. I wanted to give up or give back any power, and any responsibility, because I preferred REACTING in ways that were predictable.

I despised surprize! However I began to "bloom" late, you could say I was a late bloomer, baby boomer! Specifically, what helped me to bloom was the concept of "less IS more". After hearing it many times, I began to take baby steps to actually live it. I began to be attracted to and curious about the smallest nuances of my own, mostly isolated, existence, instead of being curious about others.

Whereas formerly I attempted to live almost vicariously through others, trying to live a secondary existence as the reaction to others energy, and other's motivations, now I would start with baby steps begin to risk to live for me. I began to notice all the subtle details of life around me and these gave me great pleasure.

I realized that I had allowed all my energy to be focused on trying to figure out what made other people confident. Now, instead of limiting myself to having confidence, I want to spend all my time finding my IDENTITY in subtle pleasures. For me this means that I seek to risk finding myself, AND my identity, IN subtle pleasures, like FEELING what my identity might be like to myself, if I had my identity in a kind of less is more "currency", instead of the drama and ego type identities that are commonly typical.

I started by listening more and more to my instincts, especially after a few, or maybe many, "wake up" calls that were close to, if not actual, near death experiences. Being grateful for many second chances helped me to see the difference between quality of life and life and death.I began to relax more and more when I gave myself permission to stop trying so hard to be around others, and instead started spending much needed time with myself.

First there was a lot of sleeping. There was SO much sleeping that I might be appropriately called by the nick name Ripette, for the female version of Rip Van Winkle! This almost voluntary "coma" down time was productive in so many ways. I began to keep a dream journal and this was dream "work", as well as de-stressing and emotional recuperation, and rejuvenation. I needed this for energy replacement due to depletion of my humanity resources (nerves, etc.) due to always reacting to what seemed to me to be other's confident portrayal of their identities.