I Am.
Introducing myself: since we may not have met. This text is an outcome of taking Ronnie McGrath's 'Discussions on Identity' at the local Stroud & South Gloucestershire College.
Aspects of Identity
I am a middle aged, middle class, straight, cis white woman of mixed north-west European heritage - an Irish citizen and a British one, Scottish, Welsh, European, with some rumoured Jewish ancestry, and probably lots more. I am a Clapham kid, an international kid, a boarding school survivor, a sister. A daughter of a lawyer and a journalist-librarian-teacher. A granddaughter of dairy farmers and school heads. A great-granddaughter of exiles and traitors, witches and wretches.
I am a socially-engaged conceptual artist, a scientist, a botanist, an explorer. A portrait painter, a ritualist. A composter and wildlife gardener. A reader, a thinker, a talker, a teacher. A global citizen and an islander, an inhabitant of a small rural English town. I feel Cypriot, I look English, I sound posh. I am neurodivergent (with ADHD) and somewhat fat and differently-abled. I am a human. I am an ape, a primate, a mammal. I contain an entire ecosystem of microbes. I am a mother, a parent, a coach, a wife, a householder. A lover, a crone. I am wealthy, I am struggling with money. I am unwell, I am alive. I am chaotic and organised, insightful and foolish. I am a failure, a disaster, a genius.
My name is the most consistent thing about me, Sarah Margaret Dixon. Sarah is from the ancient Egyptian ‘Child of the King’, commonly translated as ‘Princess’. I am a descendant of peasants and farmers and industrialists. I am a coloniser, I am decolonial. I am biological and technological. I am a Luddite and a futurist. I am a witch and a warrior. An anti-racist intersectional feminist campaigner-activist-fb admin.
Whiteness overlays me like a blanket, protecting me from some of the attacks of the world, whilst muffling my self and de-orienting my identities. My femaleness carves out a specific set of pathways in the world. I identify as a woman and occasionally as a man. Mostly I am simply an artist. My identity is what I feel myself to be/ My identity is what others perceive me to be. I am completely unique, just like everybody else.
I am a rheumatology patient, non-compliant and complaining. I am a dreamer, a Dreambody worker, a perennial student, a dropout, a champion. I am a consumer and a pedestrian and a driver, a cyclist no longer. I’m an adventurer, a dilettante, a quack, a tarot reader, a Goddess-worshipper, a published author, a problem solver, a fantasist, an alchemist, an ancestral healer. I am a class-slider, a rebel, a conformist. I store gold in the baking cupboard, and dead bodies in the painting room.
Out of all this and more, what aspect stands out to you? What matters to you?
