An Identity Shattering Loss

The loss of Tatsuda’s was catastrophic.

Not because I couldn’t handle change.

Not because I was attached to a job or a title.

And not because I lacked resilience.

It was catastrophic because it shattered an identity structure that had organized my life for decades.

Not one I chose.

One I grew up inside.

Tatsuda’s — the grocery store my great-grandparents started — wasn’t something I built my life around.

It was the root system that fed my sense of belonging, responsibility, and worth long before I had language for identity at all.

When something like that disappears, you don’t just lose one version of yourself.

You lose layers.

The child who learned early how to be useful.

The teenager who learned how to belong by contributing.

The adult who carried responsibility not as a role, but as a way of being.

Those layers weren’t false.

They were formative.

They taught me how to lead.

How to show up.

How to hold something steady for other people.

They also shaped how I learned to move through the world — warm, capable, readable, trustworthy. Not performative, but attuned to what people needed from me.

When the store was lost, it wasn’t just the role that ended.

It was the context that made those layers coherent.

The scaffolding that had quietly held my identity fell away.

What followed wasn’t weakness.

It was disorientation.

A life that had been organized around a shared root suddenly had to learn how to stand without it.

And that sudden exposure mattered.

The loss left me profoundly vulnerable — not emotionally fragile, but structurally unprotected. Without the container that had once buffered me, I was more open than I had ever been. More permeable. More susceptible to confusion, misplacement, and harm.

That vulnerability had its own cost.

When an identity collapses, discernment hasn’t yet caught up. You’re still strong, still capable — but without the familiar guardrails. And that gap can be painful. Things land harder. People reach places they wouldn’t have before. Not because you are weak, but because something essential is missing.

That pain was real.

And it deserves to be named.

Over time, I rebuilt.

Not by replacing what was lost, but by integrating what remained. I took stock of what still fit, what no longer did, and what had been shaped by necessity rather than truth. I built new structures — work, leadership, relationships — strong enough to hold who I am now.

And they do hold me.

But rebuilding after an identity-level loss isn’t clean or linear.

There are still gaps in the rungs.

Places where the old structure once carried weight that the new one hasn’t fully replaced. Labels that describe parts of me, but never the whole. Containers that work well enough, but don’t quite feel like home.

That doesn’t mean I’m unstable.

It means I’m still integrating.

And yes — somewhere in that integration, a quieter question emerges.

Not Will I survive?

But Will I still be received?

Without the familiar container.

Without the version of me people already know how to place.

That question isn’t the center of the loss.

It’s a byproduct of standing in the open after something foundational disappears.

I don’t mistake it for insecurity.

I recognize it as part of becoming visible in a new way.

Losing layered identity isn’t a collapse of self.

It’s a stripping back to what remains when inherited structures fall away.

What remains is not emptiness.

It’s discernment.

I know what fits.

I know what doesn’t.

I know when a structure supports truth — and when it merely fills space.

The loss of Tatsuda’s didn’t break me.

It exposed me — and then required me to build again.

What I’m building now isn’t a replica of what was lost.

It’s something more spacious. More chosen. More alive.

The roots are growing again.

And this time, they’re growing from who I am — not just where I came from.