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First Blog

May 28, 2026

Hello, my name is Susan Fullerton and I, like you, wear a multitude of hats and in my life I have worn and discarded innumerable more. Some hats, like children's Easter bonnets (remember those?) were designed to be worn and discarded in a single day, and others, whether we liked them or not were donned at birth and will not be removed until the end of our lives. We remain siblings until our sisters or brothers die, parents until our children leave us and children until our parents do. Yes, we can abandon these hats, and many do either by necessity, cruelty, or desperate need, but for many of us these identities are permanent.

 

Other hats we put on by choice, our style of clothing, or haircut or hair color nowadays. Many of these choices are small but can say large things about us:  Someone who wears their hair uncombed and puts on pajamas to go to the grocery is a different person from someone who wears designer sunglasses and carries a Kate Spade handbag to buy vegetables.

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Some hats absolutely define us after we put them on. A person who identifies themself as A Pilot or A Doctor or A CEO may lose themself if they are fired or if an accident renders unable to work. If I can no longer call myself a....insert appropriate profession...who am I?

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Many of us have reinvented ourselves at a point like this. We are wearing a hat that either doesn't fit and we need to rip it off OR it fits great and is ripped off by something that happens in life. Some of these paradigm shifts are good and some catastrophic.

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The first such change happened in my life at age ten when my family move to an Asian country half way around the world in the middle of the Cold War. It was a wonderful surprise and changed my life in only good ways.

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The first catastrophic change came twelve years later when we had to leave, never to return when that country began to devolve into war. It was Afghanistan. It devastated me. 

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Have you had catastrophes that caused you to reinvent yourself? What were they and what did you do?

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