Why I Don't Call Myself a "Natural" Mom and Other Thoughts on Labels

There's a particular aspect of mom culture, and among women in general, that has bothered me for a long time. I'll call it over-identification with an external. I see it in the leagues of "natural moms" who band together over their shared choices....until someone makes a different choice.
Are you still a "natural mom" if you can't/don't breastfeed?
If you don't have a super strict diet?
If you had a c-section?
Everyone seems to have their own, differing, definition of what makes a "natural mom" and thus social inclusion becomes a roving target. At any moment you might slip and become not "natural" enough. What then? Are you out of the "natural mom" club?

I'm picking on the "natural mom" label first because it is probably one of the most egregious examples, but I see this among other groups of women too. There's the marrieds, the singles, the married with kids, etc. In our quest to find people who share our experience, we have all managed to create our own little sparsely populated boxes.

What happens next?

We take to the internet to complain about how lonely and isolated we are.
After that.
We complain about how the internet, and social media, is making the problem worse.

Y'all, the internet didn't make this problem. Plenty of people felt isolation before social media. What social media did do was provide another avenue to do what we were doing before - over-identifying with externals that ultimately say nothing about who we ARE.

All those labels? They are all about what we do, what we think about ourselves, but not who we ARE.

Homeschooling might be a big part of my day to day, but my soul does not have a mark on it that says "homeschooler". No matter how many labels you collect to try and name for your own personal constellation of attributes, those labels tell me nothing about YOU. They might tell me how you spend your time, but we are all more than our day jobs.

There is a notable exception! My label of "baptized Catholic" does say something about who I am. Baptism left an indelible mark on my soul, and I couldn't deny it or get rid of it even if I wanted to. Being a baptized Catholic is now an enduring part of my being, and it makes sense to convey that identity.
I can't fail to be Catholic now. I can fail to fulfill my duties as a Catholic, I can dislike Catholicism, but I cannot unCatholic myself. That's a safe identity.

While I appreciate the yearning to share commonalities with others, I wish I saw less of a use of those commonalities to triage who is enough like ourselves to be worthy of our social energy.
The fact is that I am doing all of those externals just for a time. What happens when that external ceases to make sense in my life? Do I then become too different to be close to those with whom I used to share a label?

Over-identifying with an external means that our identities, our concept of ourselves, are only safe as long as we keep doing things the "right" way. It often means going with the crowd for the sake of relationship. That sounds like an exhausting way to live!

Lately I've been consciously avoiding calling myself by a label. When I meet someone I try not to immediately list out my marital status, number of kids, diet, schooling choices, etc. Instead I focus on having an organic conversation. And it has been HARD! You don't notice what a bad habit triage by label has become until you try to consciously shift your own interactions.

It has been a worthy experiment, and one I recommend. Perhaps there are labels that you would be better off letting go. Perhaps there's a person you have seen around, but never gotten to know because y'all didn't seem to have a lot in common. Give her a chance to be more than your perception of her.

What are your thoughts on labels? Do you agree that social media didn't create the storm? Have you ever clung to a label for the sake of belonging?