British | Iranian
My Mum is Iranian and Dad is English. I am yet to visit Iran, the closest I’ve been is when we lived in Kuwait until I was 4. Neither of my parents have been back since the Iranian revolution. I would love to go but I feel it would be bittersweet. It’s a country that is so different to the time my Mum grew up there, where it was more open for women and for those of different religions. Growing up and coming from an Iranian Bahai family would make it more difficult due to tensions within the country’s current political climate. There are some things I feel I don’t fully understand, as a result of not being able to visit, but I don’t feel incomplete. I think that is down to my parents and my Grandmother, who lived with us whilst I was growing up, always making sure we knew where our family came from and maintaining those ties. Growing up I didn’t consciously identify as mixed-race, I was just me and my culture was just my family traditions, which they still are. As I’ve grown older, I’ve become more and more interested in where I come from. There is so much more to learn of not just my own culture but everything in general. It’s only by understanding and experiencing other cultures that we can truly learn and accept ourselves to feel at home, no matter wherever we are. We have taken a couple of Ancestry DNA tests and the results are fascinating. Tracing back to France, Greece, Turkey, Armenia, East Africa, as well as English and Iranian. What I think this shows is that we are all, as humans, more mixed-race in ‘blood’ than we all thought. That we are far more global and connected to each other. It throws up interesting debates in what is culture, which culture you identify with and why. Is it down to your parents, friends or society? What part of your heritage molds who you are and which tribe you feel you belong to?
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