Chinese/South African | English

We would always travel a lot as a family. That’s when I realised that we looked different. When we were out as a family, people would always stare at us and come up to us and say, “what’s your mix?”, “What’s your background?”. As a family we looked very dark with olive skin. My mum would take it offensively. She would get very defensive. That had an impact on me. She would always dumb herself down because she didn’t want to be stared at. She is a very beautiful woman but looked different. She was very tall and very Chinese looking which is unusual. I was aware of that and I would always dumb myself down too. It is only in recent years that I have really started to celebrate the way that I look and own my background as well. I think that everyone is on their own journey with that. It is something that goes across culture even; learning how to understand the way you look and who you are.

I believe based on my spirituality and my beliefs that we choose our parents and we choose on some level, a soul level, to come into our culture and our gender to give us the lessons that we need in this lifetime to become our full expression. So on some level, I chose a multi-ethnic family because it brought together diversity and challenges that I have needed to overcome in my life. I believe that everything happens for a reason. I don’t live with regret. My life is perfect the way it is and it is meant to be this way. If I were to come back again, it would be a different experience because I have something else to learn. I want to be the fullest expression of myself and I want people around me to be the fullest expression of themselves. We are such bright, big people when we really embody everything that we want to be.