Cora shared three identities with me as ‘Human’, ‘Helper’, ‘Sister’. Her story is powerful and honest, deeply reflective. She had put a lot of thought into it before our interview. There is a theme in this story which permeates throughout, about our individual value, and the ways others judge or see us.
This is the story of someone who crosses boundaries: a female footballer challenging established views and power. Someone with compassion that drives them to help. Someone who describes themselves as ‘version 28’. A work in progress, but crucially increasingly on their terms. In some ways this is a story of finding independence and power, and helping others to find theirs.
Cora’s Story
My three identities are ‘Human’, ‘Helper’ and ‘Sister’, but if you had asked me a few years ago it would have been different! When i was thinking of these i played with changing ‘helper’ to ‘leader’, but somehow helper feels right.
My first identity, as human, well i was torn on this as to whether to put something related to what i do in my career, but i went with what underpins it.
Who am i if you take all that away, which has happened to me a few times.
The constant for me is that before i put my job after my name, i am a human being first.
I try to hold that as my front of mind thought in every conversation and action. I want people to know that i am genuine, authentic to myself.
For me this allows other people to feel comfortable to know where i am coming from.
In the sporting world there is status and kudos around people, fame and fortune, and you can get lost in that - i am an outlier, where i don’t get caught up in the big stuff - it’s my second nature to be grounded.
I have had this identity played back to me far too often to ignore it: what i think i am is always reflected back to me.
Sometimes i feel i walk a simple path through a complex landscape: it’s a ‘dog eat dog’ world in sport, in football especially.
I used to work for a national sporting body. It’s a super complex setup and you know you are a small cog in a big wheel. You can lose yourself in the process. I saw good people get consumed - it takes a lot of energy not to do that.
It’s a space where the system can be imposed upon people, rather than good people adding value to a system.
From time to time i’ve had to deal with change, to move on, i’ve had to almost have a golden thread as a human being, when others are being stressed or stretched.
To be what i believe is a good human being, to strip away everything else. Acting with kindness, thinking things through, doing lots and lots and lots of listening, and getting things wrong.
I own that as often as i can.
That can be to my detriment, but it helps me to move this world, to see change. From my standpoint i can deal with most things. I am pretty strong at the centre, when things are always changing and moving.
I don’t know if ‘helper’ is the right word, but that is what i do most of the time.
When i was reflecting on the different roles i’ve had, with family, voluntary roles, my job, since university, it’s almost what i was taught as a child: If you can, you help the next person.
If you can make their life better you should not question that.
To be of value and to be useful. I find it difficult where i cannot help, when there is no value to add.
I went with helper because that for me is in the smallest of things, not just the biggest. Asking for help is not easy, but people ask me for help all the time.
People ask for my time or energy - i am approachable - people often tell me this - people can offer me a problem without judgement.
I have helped a lot of people without realising, not naively , but it radiates from me. Because i’m good at it, i try not to leave it behind.
It stresses me to think i have not left someone in a slightly better place.
In my family i take that role as well, like when my sister became a mum, if i could do anything, i would.
My younger brother, i want him to know that asking for help is something he can always do.
This comes from an experience where i’ve led a double life, with my parents breaking up when i was young, so i had to do more to get validation, to make things work, when help was not always readily available.
I had to help on a larger scale, to see how we got on in this world.
To manage that is interesting and i have held on to that.
I recognise the challenges that people face - i may not know what they are, but i can take that lens, to recognise that everyone has things going on, but i can still be here.
What does helping give you? Cynically it gives me nice experiences, i have been able to go around the world, through wanting to help people, to influence change in sport. I’ve been rewarded with tangible things like stamps in my passport and a network of people who have given me a chance to rely on them as they have relied on me. I have been rewarded with a sense of worth and value.
I attach myself to that - to feel i am doing my best for the people around me. I do not measure my life in awards or numbers, money in the bank, but rather in how fulfilled i feel as a human.
Allowing others to be happy.
My identity as a sister: this one i was not sure what to put, but it is the most important.
I don’t know if ‘sister’ is the right word, i am not religious, but use it in a faith perspective.
I am a sister in true definition, but it’s almost at that next level. It’s very specific: when i think about all my achievements, the thing i’m most proud of is being someone my younger brother can rely on, or when he needs someone to send a WhatsApp message to - he gets in trouble for saying i’m his favourite! He should not say that!
Now i am an auntie and the relationship with my sister is that she has watched me for the last ten years, living my dream, and now i watch her with her dream. Her journey to get a house and child is different.
Our relationship has evolved. There is a real sense of trust and connection that i would not ever want to lose.
When i think of all the things that happen around the world, my dysfunctional family is the most important! To be the best family member i can be.
That’s above and beyond the perception i care about from anyone else.
I toyed with what the wider world think of me: what would my colleagues have put in here? But these are the relationships others do not see, which take most energy, but bring the most value.
They are like a funnel - start broad - down to the one that means the most, but only a small number of people would see that true picture of me.
I chose sister because growing up in a broken family, with a brother 14 years younger, it was a constant. We are each others biggest supporters. Not happy clappers, but an undercurrent. Those experiences shaped us as people.
It’s an easy ask for help now. We are so in tune. Just we get it. An experience that won’t be shared with anyone else. Helping us be who we want to be.
If you asked me a few years ago, one of these three words would have been ‘leader’, or ‘sports person’, or maybe ‘change instigator’ or something like that. When i worked for the sporting body, a lot of people attached themselves to the organisation and lost themselves. My name always had a job attached. My value was not me as a human being, but what i was attached to.
I consciously tried to escape from that.
I tried to get back to the central pillar. It’s take me time to get to these thoughts. But i am happy to live in them.
To help people know they don’t need the attachments.
I don’t think anyone knows all my identities, at least not in the way that i describe them.
People may see two at once, should they choose to. People start to see my family stuff more visibly perhaps. They may see ‘sister’ and ‘helper’, but they may not see ‘human’ as clearly as i do.
It’s a non negotiable to see my humanity. I see it in me all the time.
I would love people to see them all, all these identities, but that is not how the world works. There are times that they collide.
When i open up to my family - when i make myself vulnerable - forgoing the help of others - it deepens things.
Its like they see sparks: they are never neatly in a stack, there are always parts off the edges. They are never neatly lined up.
Does identity change? I think so. Does it change, or does it get covered with other things?
When i was younger, at school, and did not know who i was, i would attach myself to other groups. Who was cool at the time? My roles in football have been to instigate change, to advocate for others, but my identity looked different to what i would want in the everyday. But it’s kind of elastic. I don’t know if it changes, but we are never overly sure as we grow and learn - people give us identities we have to grapple with and sometimes let go.
Watching people not be sure, based on who they think they should be, or who they think in their core that they are.
My identity has been challenged lots of times, in lots of ways: when i was still very young i joined a steering council for a particular sport. It’s a small group of people who make decisions: at the time i was the youngest ever council member, and also female amongst a majority of men who were three times my age.
I thought i knew who i was, and i thought i knew what i could bring, but just being young and female in that room was not enough. Males could say the same thing, but i was judged as naive. Sometimes there was a feeling that ‘we are not sure if we can believe her’.
It’s my internal challenge, I was asked this week what’s it like to be a female in a male dominated world - it’s not that scary because i’ve worked hard to be sure of who i am .
When i’m not being attacked by people who feel challenged by their own lens of difference.
One of my strengths is showing who i am. When challenge comes it’s not about capsizing, but knowing who i am.
I no longer question every aspect of my being.
In my younger years, being the football girl at school, - i didn't fit in - that’s not what girls do - that became my identity - i was insecure, figuring out how to be in the this world when i did not have a strong anchor of who i am, or what i bring. My values.
The more i have grown, those things still happen, but i am better equipped to deal with them. I get more acceptance, more self worth. These things do not knock me off my path.
I have seen it a lot: where my identity was attached to the game, i as a person was not enough for them anymore. That was a challenging time to live through.
There are a lot of people in the world who only use you, or need you, for a specific purpose. My value changed for them.
I own my identity.
Right now i do - but for a long time i did not.
I’m 28, and i’ve spent 25 years attaching myself to other people’s opinions of me, to what they think i should be.
Now i am being clearer that i do not want to be their expectation of me anymore.
I do not want to leave myself behind to fit in with other people’s expectations.
Sometimes when i left the front door i felt that i was leaving the most valuable parts of me behind.
Who owns my stories and what power have i given them?
As i grew up i have sometimes attached my identity to the wrong things, and had no space to understand how or why. It’s like having a backpack that i carry, but i filled it with stuff from other people. Now i have to think what i want to keep. I want to own everything in that backpack, to own it all the time.
That took a lot of deep thinking. Pulling out things i did not want to face. Leaving them behind.
I own this identity, however i do not own other peoples reading of this.
My intention is to live this.
I don’t want there to be a link between gender and identity, but i know that there is.
I don’t like that i work in a space where it looks good for me to work in sport. High visibility and impact, often that occludes everything that goes behind it.
I have often said i would be mortified if i ever got a job, or was asked to speak, because i am female.
I wonder if the three identities i have chosen, being human, and identities based on trust and relationships, i wonder if i would have chosen the same three if i was male? I don’t know.
I have had to work harder to be seen and heard. Through jokes and stories , sexism, it was made clear to me that i have to work harder.
Things that were spoken as a joke, but it is not.
My gender is part of my identity because that is what you see if you do not ask questions.
Just from a photograph what can you tell?
I was nervous to use ‘female’ or ‘woman’ as one of my identities.
Have i ever tried to escape from an identity?
Oh... that’s a question… i have, but it’s hard to say it comfortably. There are parts of my identity that i do not share, that i do not want to share.
I am often described as a nerd! I am cool with it now, but was not at the time. I was the person who makes lectures last too long, asking questions.
I am not the coolest of humans!
When i have heard these things, i have tried to play it down, at the risk of not being myself. I would risk not being myself because of what others thought of me.
Am i the same person that i used to be?
I don’t know if i like the word ‘different’.
I think a lot of things have always been there, i have just hidden them. It took time to strip them away.
I am different to who i was before my parents split up: as a young child i just tried to get by. I think being in a high profile role is different to who i am in realty.
There was a period of time that created an identity that was not true. I would share my story for an hour and people would assume that that story was me all month long. But it’s just a story about me.
I am not the same person i was when i was at university. I’m not the same person who was bullied at school.
I have had to be different versions of myself.
Maybe i’m version 28.
My identity is not fragile, not right now. I have worked hard for it not to be, on the basis that i know what it’s like when it is.
I think there is an element of fragility if i place too much onus on my identity being in someone else’s control.
If i give the definitions away, then it becomes fragile.
I have been challenged too often not to know. When i attached identity to things that could be taken away, it was. But now i own those things. In Covid, the ‘gym’ people, the ones who loved to hang out in the gym, some of them lost themselves, as that ability could be taken away.
My identity is not connected to the physical features of my body. No. A lot of people have met me ‘in real life’, months after i started, and are surprised that i’m six foot one inch. When you are in sport, it’s easy for your identity to become what you play: what sport do you play, what position that you have. Now that i don’t play sport, it does not play a factor.
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