Using the Wheel of Power + Privilege

It’s starting, it’s starting, it’s STARTING. We’re officially launched and starting with our planned reflection activities for January. First up is a very structured exercise in mapping out aspects of social identity using the Wheel of Power + Privilege.

Using social identity wheels as a tool for self-reflection has become increasingly popular in educational and corporate settings. Whichever wheel you choose (there are lots out there) and whomever your facilitator for the activity, it’s a tool to help visually map out various social identities, highlighting areas of privilege and marginalization, which encourages critical thinking and ultimately builds self-awareness and empathy.

For Selfyontology, the identity wheel gives us an explicit, fairly objective, and nicely structured starting point for mapping the self. We’re starting with the easy stuff, the outside stuff. This will give our project some good momentum right off the starting block. If you’re already subscribed, then you received the reflection packet I created to help walk myself through this in a way I think will be most helpful.

I’m going to include everything. Which is a lot to read, so I’m splitting it into part 1 (this post) and part 2 (next post). Because the point of this project for me is the actual doing of the exercises, in full, I’m not going to summarize or provide only snippets of my process. It’s aaaallll here.

Please feel free to skip around and only read what calls out to you! I’ve tried to make it very scannable so you can pick and choose what to partake of.

Page 1: Overall Score

My overall power + privilege score is 31 out of 36 possible. That means I hold more power and privilege than about 86% of the rest of the world, at least so far as current societal norms and arrangements determine allocations of power and opportunity. This isn’t something to feel guilty about or apologize for, but it is important to acknowledge. To own.

It’s an important reminder, right there in black and white (and pink highlighter), that I got a huge head start in life. Even being in a position to dedicate this next year to self-study—to spending an hour or so each day writing and curating resources to publish online as a simple passion project without any associated income—is an obvious demonstration of significant privilege not enjoyed by most people in this world. Acknowledging that imbalance is important because it requires that gratitude and responsibility be weaved into the design of Selfyontology from the very beginning.

If you want to pause here, you can go subscribe really quick and within a couple of minutes you’ll receive the worksheet from the photo above. That might make it easier to follow along with this longer post.

Pages 2-4: In-depth Identity Reflection

Reflecting on each aspect represented within the Wheel of Power + Privilege can take as much time as you’d like. Honestly, I feel like I could have written pages on some of these aspects of my identity and I’m thinking there are a couple I will be coming back to for further exploration. When thinking about each aspect, the idea is to write whatever comes up for you while also being sure to reflect on the following:

• How it shapes your worldview or life experience
• How conscious you are of it in day-to-day life
• How closely you hold it as part of your Self

Let’s get into it.

Language

I was raised in an English-speaking home by two English-speaking parents. As a kid, I always wished that speaking Spanish hadn’t been lost to my family and that I’d grown up bilingual. I still wish it, but I also see how privileged I am to have grown up with such easy understanding of and access to the world around me. Working with students in middle school who understand very little English provides a front row seat to the struggle I might have encountered if my family story had been just a little different. Even fully bilingual kids constantly deal with assumptions and social nuance that simple English-speaking kids don’t have to worry about. Understanding the world around me (signs, instructions, basic information) has always been straightforward, and access to social enrichment (small talk, shared experiences, etc.) has always been available. I am lucky.

I am lucky, and I still feel longing. My grandmother is Mexican and spoke Spanish growing up. When she was young, her parents divorced and she came with her mom to California. Speaking Spanish was discouraged, and eventually she forgot most of it. As early as I can remember, I’ve longed to know and speak Spanish easily, like its part of me. I took every class I could starting in 8th grade and by the time I graduated high school I was sort-of fluent (depending on the topic of conversation). Now, I’ve lost most of it due to lack of practice. Maybe this is an area of my Self that’s been on the back burner and needs a revisit.

Gender

This one might surprise you, but not me.

I am female, mostly cisgendered but maybe a little non-binary. When I was a kid, there were several years that I wanted to be a boy. Mostly due to the unfair expectations associated with being a girl. I wanted to play outside, get dirty, pee standing up wherever I felt like it, be wild and free. I did not want to play dress-up or pretend or Barbies, and I really hated not being allowed to go places by myself and needing my brother to go with me for “safety.” I dressed as a boy off and on, but sometimes liked dresses too. When I was 10, I tried to get people to start calling me Stephen and really went for it with the boy clothes. I remember showing up to the first day of 4th grade wearing the same giant JNCOs as my brother.

It didn’t stick though, and I’m not sure if that is due to teasing or slow religious shaping or puberty starting. My parents were devout Christians, but they did not overreact, try to stamp it out of me, or any of the other harmful parental responses I’ve heard stories of. They did try to constantly affirm my identity as a daughter—theirs and God’s—perfectly and wonderfully made, just as I was. They also tried remembering to call me Stephen for a little while when I really put my foot down, and they bought me the JNCOs.

Now, I love being a woman. I feel powerfully feminine, but also masculine. I like to dress according to my mood, and sometimes the clothes I choose align with what our culture typically thinks of as women’s and sometimes its more androgynous. If I were growing up today, I would probably choose to label myself non-binary or gender fluid. But as a 37 year-old who’s already grown, I’m actually really comfortable just being whatever kind of woman I am—no extra labels needed. In my daily expression of Self, I do not feel confined by gender expectations and reject any pressure to adhere to gendered norms that don’t align with who I am.

Talking about society at large, though, I have a pretty big problem with the emotional labor and mental load shoved into women’s roles within relationships. That’s for another rant though.

Citizenship

I was born a US citizen, to two born US citizens. Likely, my citizenship is the aspect of identity most responsible for my formed worldview and life experiences while also being the one I’m least conscious of. I take this one for granted, and to be honest… I’m not even sure how to not take it for granted.

Similar to my feelings about speaking English vs. Spanish, I always longed for dual citizenship as a kid. I wished I could have been both a Mexican and an American. I wished I had been brought up connected to a tribe, to our Native American culture. I still wish it. And now that I’m more aware of my dad’s family background, I wish we were more connected to his Scandinavian-turned-Canadian history as well. I feel cut off from all my roots, grown from branches hewn and thrust into new ground, assimilated.

I’m grateful for the privilege and opportunity afforded me by my US citizenship, but I’m sad about how much it cost.

Skin Color

I am light brown, but pass as White if you don’t look too closely. Growing up, people often commented on my skin, how easily I tanned, and I sometimes even got the question, “What are you?” But my skin color has never been a barrier for me. Which leads me to believe that, while I’m brown enough to be intriguing, I’m also light enough to avoid being subject to unconscious bias.

This has always made me feel guilty. I strongly identify with my Mexican and Native American heritage, or I want to—but I feel embarrassed. I wasn’t raised with any ties to my grandparents’ culture and the shade of my skin has let me avoid any mistreatment based on assumptions about my ethnicity or race. Who am I to claim that heritage now?

Am I a privileged white woman, desperate to be special by association with the history and hardships endured by Mexican-Americans and Native Americans? Or a descendant adrift, longing to fill in the gaps and feel connected to both the beauty and pain of her ancestors? Usually, I feel both at once.

Formal Education

I have a Master’s of Science in School Counseling from Capella University. Before that, a Bachelor’s in Finance and Accounting from Northwest University. Before that, I graduated from Central Kitsap High School.

During elementary school, we moved around a bit and I bounced between public school and homeschooling. I was half-and-half during middle school. I went back to public school full-time in 9th grade. CKHS offered advanced classes and encouraged college right after graduation and I was on their fast track, but… due to some personal stuff going on my senior year, I almost didn’t go to college at all. At the last minute, my parents pulled the you’re-still-17 card informed me I needed to go to college for at least one year. So I did what they wanted and went off to Northwest University, a private Christian school near Seattle, telling myself I’d go off to El Salvador the following year once I was 18. Obviously, I did not end up doing that. Instead, I started dating someone and stayed in school.

I graduated from Northwest University’s School of Business in 3 years by taking extra classes online and over the summer, earning my BA in Finance and Accounting. I chose F+A because I thought it would be the most useful aspect of business administration to learn in school (aka, the hardest), thinking I could learn things like Marketing and HR out in the field, then take my business acumen to South America and work with a non-profit there offering micro-loans and coaching local borrowers in effective business development. I still didn’t do it. Instead, I got married and reorganized my life goals around my husband’s calling to be a pastor.

See a pattern here? I do

That’s a story for another time, though.

Eight years later, I went back to school and earned my MS in School Counseling through an online program that fit into my working, single-mom life. The three years I spent in this program were the most formative of my adult life. At least, in a proactive way. I’d had more formative experiences that happened to me, requiring me to grow and change in order to deal. This was one I chose that really changed me, for the better. My higher education changed so much about how I think and what I choose to focus on, it completely re-formed my ethics for interacting with others, and I’m extremely grateful the stars aligned the way they did.

My degree is closely tied to my career as a school counselor, so this aspect of my identity is one I’m very aware of in day-to-day life. I also hold it very close to my sense of Self, because undertaking my Master’s program and a career change is one of the first major decisions I made as a real adult (with a fully functional prefrontal cortex). It was hard, I’m proud I did it, and I’m really happy with the changes it brought about in my life and in my psyche.

Ability

I am fully able, unless you count needing glasses to drive or watch a movie. This is part of my identity I feel more and more aware of lately, striving to no longer take my healthy body for granted. Part of this project will include embodiment practices to increase my connectedness and identification with my body, because she is an inseparable part of my Self. No one can draw the line where cellular structure ends and the soul or psyche begins. I am my body and my body is Me, but I don’t do a good job of living like that’s true. At least not yet.

Sexual Orientation

Another potential shocker. But it’s really not, I promise.

Every relationship I’ve ever been in has been heterosexual, therefore I’ve experienced no prejudice or exclusion based on my sexual orientation (again, leaving the rant about the oppression and exploitation of women in traditional hetero marriages for another day). However, the older and more in tune with myself I get—I’m realizing that I am attracted to people based on personal connection, not body parts. Depending on what’s going on with me and/or within my relationship, there have been times I’ve wondered if I’m actually asexual. Most of the time, there just seem to be a hundred other things more important to me than getting down… but, I can certainly enjoy myself with someone I love and trust, especially if they get things started and bring me along.

All that is hypothetical though, because I am happily married to a sexy man with no plans at present to open our relationship. Part of the reason I feel comfortable thinking through these delicate aspects of my Self and sharing my process is the safety I feel in our partnership, and my confidence in his longstanding love for me—including all my curiosity.

Neurodiversity

On any clinical scale, I register as neurotypical. Subjectively, I strongly identify with certain aspects of ADHD and ASD thinking. But my anxiety, perfectionism, and people-pleasing have always driven me to meet the expectations of others in any and every scenario—so my actual behavior doesn’t reflect those aspects. On the inside, I feel like a mess. On the outside, I look very put together. Maybe that IS typical?

Which is a great segue into a quick pause to ground and remember: I’m not publishing my process because its exceptional or because I am special, but because the structure is replicable.

Mental Health

Thanks to therapy and medication, my mental health is mostly stable. I’ve struggled with clinically significant levels of depression and anxiety since I was in middle school, though I didn’t realize that’s what it was until I was in my 20’s. When I was younger, I understood my depression as a spiritual ailment, a wrestling with God, a heart afflicted by sin, and I spent all my energy seeking spiritual healing within my church community and personal faith practices. What I now know to be anxiety, I thought was the Holy Spirit speaking to me, convicting me, keeping me faithful to God and his plans for me.

When I went off to college, I struggled deeper and harder than I ever had before. Depression runs in my family, and I didn’t want to face the reality that it also ran in me. So I lived in denial for awhile. Eventually, I talked with my doctor and started working towards finding the right medication and dosage to treat my depression. This started a cycle I’d keep up for the next decade—taking meds for 6 months to a year, deciding I was strong enough not to need them any longer, getting off, doing okay for a bit (usually during summer), and then eventually starting meds again.

If struggling to accept the help of medication is part of your story, this part is for you.

Via lots of therapy, I’ve come to accept that depression being part of who I am does not make me weak. I’ve also been able to separate out my “inner drive” and see it for what it really is: anxiety. Both my depression and anxiety are active in my life—they make me more empathetic, more understanding, and help me to do things well—but mitigated from harming my life or relationships by the right medications.

I still hope that maybe one day I’ll have the circumstances of my life organized and my daily self-care habits optimized to the point where I can try reducing or going off my medication again. But now is not that time, and I’m okay with it.

Body Size

I’ll go with average. Technically, at 5’8″ and 190lbs, I am obese according to my BMI. But I think that’s bullshit. My body is softer and curvier than it’s been in the past, I certainly have a layer of fat that I could do without, but I move through the world easily and fit into clothes comfortably. Like I mentioned previously in the “Ability” section, I’d like to have a closer, healthier, more loving relationship with my body. My goal, however, would be strength and longevity rather than simply achieving “slender.”

Honestly, I’m not sure how to describe the ways this one has shaped my worldview. Most people either think they’re too thin or not thin enough, and look at someone else’s body size as “the ideal.” I’m not immune to this, so I’ve spent most of my life wishing I were smaller or thinner or more defined and thinking that my life would be better if I could just lose 20lbs. But that is a part of my Self I hold at a distance and constantly try to shake off. I want so badly for it to not to be part of me that I almost want to delete this paragraph. But I won’t. It’s there.

This one is still a little tangled up for me. More to come in part 2.

Housing

We own a house that is inhabitable, that we purchased with a rehab loan more than 3 years ago because it was the only way we could afford to buy a home. We have been jumping through hoops and navigating red tape and remodeling it one project at a time for waaaayy longer than we planned. Again, I’m gonna keep this one short and sweet because I have too many feelings about it and will unpack them in greater detail in the next post.

Wealth

In my original handwritten reflection, I wrote that we are solidly middle class. We make enough to be comfortable, not worrying about being able to eat well or take warm showers. For this, I want to be more grateful. I know I take it for granted and don’t feel as grateful as I could, so I try to slow down for a moment and actually say, “thank you.”

Thanks for doing that with me.

Just now, I used the World Inequality Database Income Comparator tool to gain a more realistic perspective. And I got a reality check. Apparently, my household ranks pretty damn high. Only 17% of Americans are wealthier than we are, and if you consider the entire world only 4% of people are wealthier. That would mean that we are wealthy, very wealthy.

Yes, our circumstances are stressful and I spend too much mental energy worrying about bills (anxiety at its finest), but even being in a position to leverage our wealth to gain an ongoing service like daycare or internet is privilege. Stressing about paying for that service on time doesn’t cancel out the extraordinary wealth we experience living the way we do.

That’s it for part 1!

This is what mapping the self looks like before interpretation, before meaning-making, before fully healing. There is no bow on top. If you read this far, you’re a true nerd and I love you. If you skimmed this far, I get you 😉 Look for pages 5-6 in the next post, How to Map Your Social Identity, part 2, in the next post.