Rich Monday Paper- How Do You Preserve Your Identity?

There are times in life, often quiet, often unexpected, when you ask yourself a question that doesn’t echo out loud but stirs something deep within:
Who am I, really, when no one is looking?

Not the titles you have earned. Not the roles you have had to play. Not the version of you shaped by fear, survival, or someone else’s direction. In this edition of Rich Monday Paper, we explore one of the most urgent and quietly powerful themes of our time:
How do you preserve your identity in a world that keeps asking you to edit, dilute, or forget it?

Whether you’ve been praised for blending in or punished for standing out, you’ve likely felt the tug-of-war between who you are and who the world wants you to be. And that quiet battle—between authenticity and approval—is something every soul will face more than once.

This issue is a love letter to your true self. The parts of you that still carry your grandmother’s lullaby, your mother’s laughter, your father’s silence, your child’s love. The stories in your skin, the places you dream in, the language you cry in. The parts that survived when life tried to make you forget.

This Week’s Better Lifestyle Choices

• Say Your Name with Power: Reclaim the sound of your name. Teach it. Repeat it. Wear it like armour. It is your first story, your mother tongue.
• Preserving Your Identity: Clean your digital feed. Anything that makes you question your worth—let it go. What you consume shapes what you believe about yourself.
• Who are Your People?
• Write the Hidden Chapter: Each day, write one memory no one else knows. The unfiltered, unedited truth. These are your roots in ink.
• Your Capsule Wardrobe This Week : Wear something this week that reminds you of home, longevity and the person you promised to become one day. One DAY at the time.

Good News We Love This Week

The Birmingham Wall of Names: Imagine standing in front of a wall that stretches into the sky—each brick holding a story like yours. Now imagine every one of those prayers was answered. Artists and local residents are co-creating a giant mural made entirely of ancestral names. It’s a living tribute to the identities that colonization, war, or shame tried to erase.

• Curriculum of Self: In Norway, students now write “Identity Journals” in place of standardized essays, exploring where they come from, what shaped them, and how they see the world.
• A Name Restored: A global software firm just announced it will now allow employees to use their full names—including diacritics, characters, and original scripts—in internal systems. It may seem small. It is not.

Identity Headlines

• The Cost of Belonging – A powerful report on the compromises immigrants make to be accepted—and what it costs their children.
• Told by Us – Diaspora storytellers take back the mic with new platforms built around native language, ancestral truth, and joy.
• Resisting the Blur – As technology can clone voices, faces and stories—we ask: What does it mean to be real in a synthetic world?

The Reading & Writing Room

• “Minor Feelings” by Cathy Park Hong – A fearless excavation of race, belonging and the half-truths we learn to swallow.
• “The Namesake” by Jhumpa Lahiri – A haunting, exquisite reminder that home is not a destination but a place something we carry inside.
• “How to Write a Memoir” – Dr Marina Nani shares a private guide to writing your truth, even when the world wants fiction.

This isn’t just a themed issue. It’s an invitation to come home to yourself. To remember that preserving your identity isn’t an act of vanity—it’s an act of survival. Every time you choose your truth over fitting in, you are reclaiming your place in the story of the world.

Identity isn’t just something we inherit. It’s something we defend, sometimes quietly, sometimes boldly, always at a cost. It’s the accent you softened in a boardroom. The name you shortened to make others comfortable. The family story you’ve carried in silence because the world had no space for it.

This issue is for the parts of you that never stopped longing to understand who are you here to be. The parts you’re just now beginning to reclaim. This is your invitation to pause and remember who you are when nothing and no one is asking you to be anything else.

Who you are—at your most raw, real and unruly—is plenty. And always has been. Perhaps our next edition will look into the relationships you allow to influence your identity. With depth, dignity, and unwavering belief in your becoming,

With Gratitude, Marina