i’m…a librarian: separating our professional and personal identities

Post context: I’ve recently added “medical librarianship” to the subtitle of this blog, but in doing so, I also want to share some insights into this label by reflecting on how the professional and personal have played a role in my life. This blog is a fluid project for me so things may change and when they do, I’ll try to provide more context to you, fellow reader. This is my longest post to date, but I hope the insights help to provide a moment of self-reflection in thinking how the professional and personal manifests in your life.

Since the age of eighteen, I’ve worked in three different libraries: public, special, and academic. Libraries, specifically, public libraries served as a refuge for me and my siblings. It’s where my mother would go to learn about topics that interested her, because as a single parent often working multiple jobs, she did not have the time nor the means to go back to school and finish her college degree. It’s where I began my career path as a teen volunteer in the children’s department of my local library.

Kids like me who experienced housing insecurity, greatly benefited by the fact that a community resource like a public library was an open and welcoming place. When we moved into a motel after experiencing our second eviction, the library was the safe space my siblings and I could hang out in after school and during weekends. I will never forget how much this place protected us, provided a place to learn, create friendships, connect with empathetic library workers and future work colleagues.

I began working in my local public library right out of high school and after working there seven years having obtained my associates degree and bachelor’s degree, I realized it was time for a new adventure. A job opening came along to work in a hospital library. I applied and the rest was history. I would get my first masters degree while working as a library tech assistant and moved into my first librarian role. I loved helping patients, nurses, doctors, hospital workers find resources and ensure they had a place to read, study, or take a break from the 24/7 cycle that is a busy health care system. I would work there another seven years, before I realized that a new adventure awaited and decided to step into academic librarianship.

I share this with you to provide context around my professional identity as a library worker for more than two decades and a medical librarian for 10 years (and counting). For a long time, my professional identity WAS my personal identity. I couldn’t avoid not fusing the two identities for two specific reasons: (1) how long I’d been in this profession and (2) my lived experience as a kid who grew up poor. For the latter, having a professional identity combated my internalized deficit thinking of growing up low-income and with no role models in professional fields existing within my immediate family. The closest person to fit this role would have been my father, a special education teacher in Puerto Rico. Unfortunately, my memories of him are spotty as my parents divorced when I was six years-old and short of receiving dresses and the occasional letter in the mail, I would never again see him having passed away just shy of my high school graduation. For those of us who are “firsts” in our families (I was the first to get a graduate degree), the first librarian in our family, the first to hold a professional job, it is very tempting to merge professional and personal identities. But that temptation brings about serious consequences. What happens if I’m no longer a librarian or in a library field? What happens if I’m no longer a “professional”? Does that mean I’m devoid of a personal identity too?

It’s taken a long time to separate my professional and personal identities although in the last few years, the disconnect between the two has become more clearer. Returning to school has also helped me to see that the things I love doing, regardless of profession or field, remain within me as I continue to see myself leaning more and more into these areas and each time I do, I genuinely feel my heart fill up with joy. Here are the things that I have discovered over the years that are part of my personal identity despite my professional title.

my love of learning, connecting, and writing: This has always been with me since I was little. It’s become most clear having returned to school. I truly enjoy the act of learning, connecting ideas together, forming new ideas, and writing about them.

my love to create something: Writing is creating, devising research is creating, this blog is an example of creating. Growing plants is having a hand in creation, building safe spaces, reinforcing acts of supportive parenting are all forms of creation. I really love that I am able to do that.

my culture and lived experience: What can I say? I’m not apologetic for who I am. I’m Puerto Rican through and through and my lived experience is so varied having survived and thrived in a low-income single-parent household, to being a single-parent, to raising a family and finding my way into academia.

my role to those I love and care about: Having been a workaholic for many years, I realized that connecting with those I love has been impacted because of my own prioritization of completing work and projects above everything else. I’m moving further away from this way of thinking and into a place where nurturing, supporting, healing, and creating memories are what’s most important.

my love of nature, exploration, history, music, and whatever else brings me joy: I gush when I think about the things that make me smile. Documentaries about the vastness of our oceans and the animals that live in it? Sign me up! Looking at a still picture of a beautiful Sequoia tree or seeing it in real life? Why not! Listening to lofi music while sipping coffee (what I did while writing this post), or reading historical text, or just enjoying new places, wepa, I can feel the endorphins kicking in just thinking about it.

I hope this list continues to grow for me, because the act of separating the self with the professional self is truly a form of healing. So, what about you? Are you also finding yourself merging the professional and personal? Are there underlying reasons why that might be? Have you started or are now on a path of separating the two? I hope so, it’s good to always find our way back to what brings us joy, despite the titles we have or accolades given. Being our human selves is so much more complex and beautiful.

🎧 I wrote this blog post while listening to Work Lofi - R&B That Sparks a Mood [rnb , lofi hiphop] by A Lofi Soul. I don't get any compensation for sharing this link, I just really enjoy lofi and thought you might too.

To your salud & success,

AW

📸 Image credit: Photo by Felix Mittermeier