Who Were You Then? Integrity, Identity and the Stories We Leave Behind

I’ve been trying to resolve a conflict in my head for almost an entire year now.

How fiercely do I guard my integrity, and how closely do I try to stick to it?

That brings up an entirely new problem. In order to remain true to who we are, we need to know who we are. I can look back at each period of my life and know who I was at that time. But each of those versions of myself differs from the last in nuanced ways, and you don’t necessarily feel that shift in the living moment.

When I left the police, I had to completely rebuild my own version of myself in my head. I needed to find out who I was outside of uniform and create an identity that didn’t feel like a loss, simply a new one that filled in the gaps of my old job. I tried immediately applying for hundreds of jobs, but that didn’t fill the hole in just the right way. I moved house, which brought a new set of routines and distractions. But at the core of it, I hadn’t fully formed a new identity in my head, one I could stick closely to and call “integrity”.

Then I founded a company and created a social media presence, telling the story of my life up to that point. I gained 200k views, quite literally overnight.

And yet this attention troubled me deeply. It didn’t sit right with me, and still doesn’t. It didn’t feel like I was moving with integrity, and yet I hadn’t done anything wrong. In fact, I had achieved a small pocket of success. Even now, every time I open the app I have dozens of notifications: likes, follows and message requests from people all over the country telling me how inspiring it has been to hear my story, or that it showed them they are not alone, or asking for my advice.

I think it unsettled me so deeply because it didn’t fit with who I used to be. Not necessarily who I am now.

What the records taught me

Working on family trees has helped me see this differently. Every ancestor I research is caught in the records as a series of snapshots. In one census, a man is a labourer in one house. Ten years later, he has a new trade, a new address and a bigger household. Nobody would say he lost his integrity between the two. He changed, as people do.

The same goes for the people in my own family history, like my great-great-grandfather, who went on to serve as mayor, or my great-grandfather, who kept a diary through years as a prisoner of war. I only ever see them through the pages that survived. Each of them was many versions of themselves over a lifetime, and I have no right to hold any one of those versions up as the “real” one.

If I can see that so clearly in someone else’s story, why couldn’t I see it in my own?

Letting go of the umbrella

The more conversations I have, and the more life I live after the police, the greater my sense of self becomes. I’m realising there doesn’t need to be some imagined version of shame hanging over my head, held up by no one other than me. I can let go of that umbrella and embrace the new aspects of my personality.

I think I like the new version of myself. I’m starting to find joy in accumulating exciting nuances, like adding sprinkles to a birthday cake. 🎂

What this means for your own family story

One day, someone will sit down and try to piece together who you were, from the photographs, letters and records you leave behind. They won’t find a single, fixed version of you. They’ll find someone who grew and changed, and who tried to stay true to what mattered at each stage.

Integrity isn’t about staying the same. It’s about knowing who you are right now and living by it honestly. That’s what your descendants will read in your story, and it’s what I hope to find when I look back at mine.

If you’d like to understand the people who came before you, and record your own story for those who come after, take a look at our packages.