I Am Still: Honoring Identity

Designing Moves
Aug 12
2 min read

At Designing Moves LLC, we learn valuable lessons from our clients every day. Recently, one of our team members noticed an item indicating a client had been a physician. "Were you a doctor?" came the natural question. Without hesitation, our client responded: "I am still a doctor"

Those four words stopped us in our tracks.

The Power of "Still"

That simple correction revealed a profound truth: our core identities don't disappear when we step away from active practice. The decades of education, countless hours of experience, and deep knowledge accumulated over a lifetime don't vanish with retirement or life changes.

A doctor remains a doctor. A teacher remains a teacher. An engineer remains an engineer. The expertise, problem-solving abilities, and wisdom earned through years of dedication remain intact, regardless of current circumstances.

Changing Our Language

As a team, we've committed to shifting from asking "Were you a...?" to affirming "You are a..." This isn’t just semantic – it’s about recognizing the full person before us and honoring their complete life experience.

When we acknowledge someone as the expert they still are, we open doors to richer conversations. We invite them to share knowledge and contribute insights. We affirm their continued value in ways that purely nostalgic conversations cannot.

Beyond Our Practice

This lesson extends far beyond our work. In our youth-focused culture, we too often treat experience as outdated rather than valuable. We speak of people's accomplishments in past tense, inadvertently diminishing their ongoing worth.

But every person carries forward everything they've learned and become. A lifetime of expertise doesn’t expire – it deepens. The question isn't what they used to be—it's recognizing all that they still are.

Language shapes reality. When we change how we speak to people, we change how they see themselves and how others see them. Our client's gentle correction has become our guiding principle: while circumstances change, the essence of who we are remains constant.

We are still learning, still growing, and still grateful for the wisdom our clients share with us every day.