My Name is Kirstie Tancock and I will not be defined by one thing, but an everlasting list of things

Have you ever read the hunger games? Especially the last book Mockingjay. Reading this book I felt a great number of similarity's to the main character, Katniss Everdeen. Why? Katniss becomes a symbol of hope a person that people look up to; she goes through huge trials and great trauma. Now I'm not saying I deserve to be a symbol of hope, but I receive a great lot of emails of people saying I'm an inspiration. To me I am just doing what I have to do, kind of like Katniss was. Just trying to survive and part of my personal survival was telling my tale. Katniss goes through a lot of trauma during the hunger games, a lot of loss and generally a hard time, I relate to this as going through my transplant. It was a great trauma. How her trauma was portrayed brought back a lot of feeling and memories and thoughts that I still feel but suppress.

Some days, I feel completely recovered and like I am ready to fight the world other days things feel like they have shifted and changed so much, I have such a great loss of identity, Who I am now and Who I was before transplant has changed, I still feel like me, but I think peoples ideas of me have changed, I guess parts of me I always knew where there, weren't so obvious to them, I was just the sick girl with CF. But I'm not you know, I'm so much more. So I have changed in peoples minds and that has left me feeling very isolated, do I fit into the CF community? Am I normal? No I am neither, I fit into this very small minority of people, transplant patients, not even transplant patients really mostly cf transplant patients as I feel like it is only this small group of people that get me. Thing is I personally would quite happily fit into all the groups, but it feels like they just wont have me anymore.

So on days when I am feeling like everything has changed so much and I am not sure where I belong, Like Katniss says 'My name is Katniss Everdeen, I am 17 years old, my home is district 12.' I say to myself, 'my name is Kirstie Tancock, I am 22, I live with my husband Stuart, My dog Kia, in a small town called Honiton' Some times its just saying the simple things and not let all the complicated stuff define me. But instead of focusing on the stables in my life. My husband, my dog. Because everything else is so changeable. Transplant as much as I knew it wasn't a cure, I hoped it would provide me with normality, Normality is something I am never able to reach, I don't fit into a box.

Have you ever wondered where you belong? The answer is in your loved ones arms, with a few simple stables. Stop trying to define yourself, stop trying to be so keen to fit in and belong, yes we as human beings need to connect to people with similar experiences and mind sets but this isn't us full stop. One part of me doesn't define me. I am so much more and so are you. Because really you can be who ever you want to be.