What’s Your Story, John Hulsey?
Recently, a friend in an online group simply asked me to share a little of my story. Honestly, it caught me a bit off guard.
It seems simple enough, but where would I even start?
When I think about my life, I feel like I have been many different people over the years. They were all me, in a moment, but much of those personas was also cast off as my life moved along.
I can say that all of these were true, at least at some point:
- I am a Marine
- I am an activist
- I am a survivor
- I am a writer
- I am a husband
- I am a college graduate
- I am a runner
- I am an advocate
- I am an organizer
- I am a creator and life coach
- I am…
Some of these things are forever, of course. I will always consider myself a Marine, though my active duty service days were long ago. And I hope to always be a husband, because life with Ric is the greatest thing I’ve ever known.
It’s only in looking back, though, that I feel distance between some of the people I was then and who I am now. My activist days feel like they are behind me, as most of that took place in the 90’s while I was living in Mobile, Alabama. And though nothing can change the fact that I was sexually assaulted as a child, my identity as an abuse survivor was short-lived as I worked through what happened to me and learned to free myself of the shame and anger. These days, that part of my past no longer has the power to hurt me. And I don’t want to live forever defined by one of the worst things that happened to me.
It’s not just moments of trauma that create identities. I was a columnist for a magazine based in New Orleans and I wrote a play that was produced here in San Diego, and I felt that I could legitimately describe myself as a writer. But as the years passed and I stopped writing, that no longer felt authentic. My casual running turned into an obsession and ultimately a part in the documentary From Fat to Finish Line, but I haven’t laced up and hit the road for a long time now. So I don’t consider myself a runner, anymore, either.
Who am I today? Well, I’m a guy who believes that kindness and compassion matter, that love and good will prevail, and that everyone has something great to contribute and maybe I can act as a catalyst for them to find out what that talent or gift is.
My passion is people and finding new ways to help them. I’m good at it, I love doing it, and it brings more good into the world. So I’ll stick with that for now.
And tomorrow, who knows what I’ll be?
