Senses of Self

Identities Outside of Wife, Mother, Professor

The year 2014 was pivotal for me professionally and personally. I experienced existential awakenings and insights that have served me well over the last decade!

My first single authored book, Hannah Arendt and the Negro Question (Indiana University Press, 2014) was published that year. I submitted my dossier for tenure and promotion to associate professor. (I would get the official word that I earned tenure and promotion in spring 2015.) These were outstanding professional achievements worth celebrating! I was proud of myself, but I was not really happy. I was in the early stages of realizing that I did not want to be married anymore and I did not want to be a professor anymore. I was confronted with the reality that I got everything I thought I wanted, everything I was told that I should want, only to realize that I did not want it anymore. It was overwhelming.

My intentions were split and I vacillated intellectually, emotionally, spiritually. There were stretches of time when I was clear that I needed to pivot and plot my exits. And there were stretches of time when I tried to convince myself that I should be happy and I should stay the course, hang in there, etc. But deep down, I knew what I needed to do. I needed to exit my marriage and my job. It would take time to gather the strength and strategies to do it, not to mention learning again and again to practice patience and trust the process.

From the outside looking in, things appear to happen quickly. But when you are in it, it can feel like everything is taking way too much time. In my case, it would take three more years for me to finally file for divorce (2017) to end a 17-year unhappy marriage and almost ten more years for me to resign/retire from my professor position (2023) to end a 20-year successful academic career.

Here are some journal reflections from that time period.

Journal Entry (20 September 2014):

Reflections

- I have a strong identification w/ married, mother of 4, philosophy professor.

- What does it mean to connect to myself and/or present myself to others in a way that is different from that?

- Who am I outside of roles

• Wife

• Mother

• Philosophy Professor

• Coach

What does it mean to let go of these roles or this sense of myself?

- I have a strong inclination to withdraw myself (rather than reach out to others).

- I see my inner judge in how I view, assess, size up others.

- I am feeling unsettled in my body w/tension in my lower back and hips.

- Parallels how unsettled I am feeling in my personal & professional life.

I feel more settled when I have:

- Clear goals (that seem slightly out of reach – I desire to be challenged. It motivates me)

- A plan (w/action, timeline)

- Transition Plan

- “Loose ends” for my current work

- Explore options (re: Academic track and entrep. track)

- Offer teleseminars

- Offer yoga workshops

- Offer guided meditation

Who Are You?

1) I am.

2) I am a seeker of knowledge, wisdom, and understanding.

3) I am a manifester. I manifest in my life the desires of my heart.

4) I am a guide/coach/teacher to myself and others. I connect to and operate in my place of power and help others do the same

To be sure, I no longer derive my core sense of self from my ongoing role as a mother (or from my former roles as wife and philosophy professor). But as you can see from these decade old journal reflections, this was not always the case.

In these journal entries I was exploring deeper existential questions about who I am outside of the roles that I play. I recall how deeply “unsettled” I was feeling at that time. I was entering into what I now call an existential awakening (not an existential “crisis”) and I was journaling my way through various uncomfortable feelings.

In order to become the happily unmarried, delightfully divorced, erotically empowered, retired philosophy professor that I am today, it required me to trust my intuition, to acknowledge and honor the discomfort that I was feeling. I had to acknowledge that I was living a life that I had manifested with intention, but that no longer felt aligned.

I got married at the age of 21, between my first and second semesters of graduate school in a doctoral program in philosophy. (I will write more about that another time.)

I had my first two kids in my early 20s and my second two kids in my early 30s.

By my mid-30s, I had my share of disappointments and disillusionments.

I realized that I was unhappy with the life that I had so meticulously created and curated.

By my mid-30s, I had been married for about 15 years. The marriage was filled with frustrations. There were constant battles over gender roles. And these battles were more energetic and felt than articulated or argued. I had been very explicit that I never wanted to conform to traditional gender roles – as in being a submissive wife at home with the kids and married to a dominant husband. But I also did not want the roles to simply be reversed, with me being a dominant wife and provider to a submissive husband at home with the kids. In the end, I realized I got the worst of all possible worlds. I became the primary provider, primary care giver, and primary decision maker for the husband and kids. Now how the hell did that happen? (It is a TRAP!)

By my mid-30s, I had been mothering the four kids that I wanted (and their father, too, sigh). Motherhood is challenging even under the best of circumstances. And these were not the best of circumstances, at least not for me. I never desired to have my role and responsibilities as a mother to be my primary identity or my only sense of self (nor my role as wife, nor my role as professor).

By my mid-30s, I earned tenured and was promoted to associate professor of philosophy at a research one institution. I was well compensated with a great research budget and institutional support for all my initiatives. As a professor, I enjoyed reading, writing, public speaking, and traveling for conferences. I did not enjoy the department meetings and politics, committee work, grading, and the overall extraction (and simultaneous attempted erasure) of my labor.

As I often say, I “had it all” and I felt trapped by all of it. So, I liberated myself.

My liberation journey started with me connecting to my intuition (inner spiritual and ancestral guidance), emotional epistemologies (knowledge gained from taking my feelings seriously), embodied epistemologies (knowledge gained from connecting to my body and the insights of the tension in my body, the migraines, the insomnia, and all the other physiological indicators of stress). Later I would also learn to trust the ease and pleasure in my body when things felt more aligned. My liberation practice included bibliotherapy (I am a bibliophile and that has served me well) coupled with these existential inquiries into who I am outside of the roles that I play. And, of course, I am supported and loved deeply by community - family, friends, energy workers, body workers, therapists, all the people and things!

Seriously questioning who I am outside of the roles of wife, mother, and professor empowered me to connect to a sense of self that was not defined by or overdetermined by those roles. Realizing that I am directly connected to the Universe, Spirit, Source, Ancestors, etc. disabused me of the illusion of dependence on external institutions and titles for my sense of self, satisfaction, validation, and provision. And there is so much freedom in that knowing!

To be honest, this is initially disorienting and even frightening. And then it becomes liberating and empowering. And then you remember that most lessons in life are about remembering who the fuck you are, coupled with how to build and be in community.

I often say that I have had three major disillusionments in my life: church, marriage, and academia. Ultimately, I experienced all three as forms of institutional bondage. I left the church first, then the marriage, then the academy. It is because I was able to evolve spiritually after leaving the church that I had the faith to leave the marriage. It is because I was able to flourish on the other side of leaving the marriage, that I had the confidence to leave the academy. And it is because I am living my best life after leaving the academy that I know I can walk out of and into anything. I make good life choices. I know from experience that I can trust myself and my intuition. I know that I can walk away from the familiarity of known and into the unfamiliarity of the unknown and live to tell the tale. And I have so many more tales to tell!

Substack Statement:

I am Dr. Kathryn Sophia Belle, and I did all the things Black women are told we are supposed to do – all the degrees, certifications, successful career, marriage, and 4 children. I had it all. And I felt trapped by all of it! So, I liberated myself. Now I live on my own terms, doing what I love – from reading, writing, speaking, and coaching, to embracing my sensuality and sexuality with lovers and in Black Kink spaces! On Substack I share my core pillars of transformation in my life to motivate and encourage you on your liberation journey, while also building beloved community.

Author Bio:

Dr. Kathryn Sophia Belle a philosopher, published author, and public speaker. She is also founder/owner of La Belle Vie Academy (with signature program La Belle Vie Writers) offering coaching, course suites, and community for High Achievers, Exit Strategies, Happily Unmarried, and Erotic Empowerment! After earning her doctorate in philosophy, she worked in Academia for 20 years (2003-2023). Her scholarly specializations include African American/Africana Philosophy, Black Feminist Philosophy, Continental Philosophy/Existentialism, and Social/Political Philosophy. She is author of Beauvoir and Belle: A Black Feminist Critique of The Second Sex(Oxford University Press, 2024) and Hannah Arendt and the Negro Question (Indiana University Press, 2014, also in French: Éditions Kimé, 2023). Current writing projects include a new book about Audre Lorde’s philosophy (under contract with Yale University Press) and her own memoirs.