African American | German/French...

Photo credit: provided by subject

…British/Irish/Scandinavian/East Asian/Indigenous

My Dad is African American. My mom is European. I don’t know their exact mixture or who has our East Asian & Indigenous mix because they’ve never done a DNA test. I, unfortunately, don’t have a close relationship with either one. My father is struggling, currently recovering from being in and out of the system. The desire for a relationship on both sides is there. My mother and I are currently working on strengthening our relationship. She told me and my siblings for over 3 decades that we were Puerto Rican and Black, only for my sisters to discover through a DNA test, we’re not Puerto Rican at all. When we asked her about it, we were greeted with defensiveness but she explained she had a step-dad who was Puerto Rican that she was close to and she embraced his culture, which is 100% fine. But when we asked her why she had us believing we were something we’re not, and if she thought to ever tell us, she kind of shut down. Still don’t know to this day, truly, why she had us believing that. She told me “If being Black and European is what you prefer than ok”. “It’s not about what I prefer, it's literally who I am”, I told her. It’s fine to embrace Puerto Rican culture, in fact I encourage embracing other cultures, however, it’s another to have your children believe they are something they’re not. We were telling all of our friends and family we were this ethnicity. We were putting it on tests and everything.

I don’t know the whole story on how my mom and dad met. According to my Dad, he was walking outside and my Mom was hanging out with a friend of hers, saw him, and called him up to hang out with them. My Mom makes it clear that there’s a sore spot there when it comes to my Dad, but she refuses to talk about anything. She keeps a lot of things to herself. My Dad hasn't been in my life since I was about 3 or 4. I don’t remember his side of the family and learning about Black culture. We didn’t have family reunions. Proud to say, now I am connecting more with family on my dad’s side. Other than school I wasn’t taught about Black History Month, or my Black & European culture/traditions. On top of her own personal struggles, my mom was a single parent with 3 girls working 3 jobs until she got married to my brother’s dad, divorced, and then married my two younger sisters’ dad and then divorced. She had a lot on her plate. Culture, knowing what it is and embracing it wasn’t modelled for me growing up. Ever since that DNA test, I feel more empowered than ever before. I found a community of mixed people that make me feel seen and help encourage me to embrace all that I am. I find that I want to stretch myself in learning about the history of everything that I am. I believe God placed me exactly where I needed to be when I was in the military. My first base was in Japan and I found myself falling in love with Asian culture and now am learning Chinese and want to take Kung Fu classes. I’m just waiting for the day to find out which country of East Asia I’m connected to. I believe in breaking generational curses, and one day, if I am blessed with kids, I want to teach them the importance of loving themselves and their cultures. If you love yourself, you can serve others in helping them do the same.

I struggled, and still struggle with self-esteem. I have to be careful not to compare myself with other women and learn to love who I am. Slowly but surely getting there! That low self- esteem led to very toxic relationships and I was vulnerable to compromising situations. I was sexually assaulted when I was in the military by two Black men, and was so ashamed that I didn’t tell anyone until a year after to my Mom and slowly started telling others in my family. My faith in God, counselling, scripture, meditation, family and close friends have been monumental to my healing. My experiences and healing process push me to be the best version of myself so I can help others do the same.

I changed the way I dressed and talked just to feel like I could fit in, or to try to get a guy’s attention, especially when I was in middle and high school. We all want to fit in and feel accepted, but we need to understand that when we are our authentic selves, the people that truly accept you for who you are will stick around and will push you to BE YOU! I would much rather be around those I can let my hair down with than try to keep up some façade to be liked by everyone. It’s exhausting to keep a lie.

First and foremost, God is my role model! He is love and that’s what I strive to model. In terms of family, I look up to my sisters Lissa and Melissa. They give me a good mixture between soft and tough love. They tell me what I need to hear, not what I want to hear. They have no idea how much positivity they model and how much I learn from them. We are tight! As far as public figures some role models I have now are Pastor Jerry Flowers, Trent Shelton, David Goggins, and Jay Shetty because our hearts are aligned. They all represent love, justice, self- acceptance, self-love and no excuses. They go against the grain and refuse to conform to society’s norm. They push you to be better in love and protection and that’s what this life is all about.

I need a partner who has inner introspection, strives to grow and has a willingness to understand and accept our differences. Different doesn’t mean bad. Different is just different. One culture or ethnicity is not superior over another. I want all of our cultures to come together. Given the fact that I did not grow up with cultural traditions, I would love for us to create our own together and for me to learn from his. We all bring something to the table. We all want love and acceptance. Instead of fearing what we don’t understand, that leads to bias and hate, we should aim to learn and embrace what we don’t understand. If we truly seek to understand why people do what they do, we will find out we’re not so intrinsically different. Different perspectives challenge and stretch us in the most beautiful way.

Challenges I have faced are being told that I’m not ‘White enough’ or ‘Black enough’, whatever that’s supposed to mean. I’ve been called the n-word. I’ve had a kid when I was younger, who I was told was a racist, try to light my hair on fire on a school bus. I’ve been told that if I were a slave in the 1800s, I would’ve be fine because I would be a house negro. I will never understand why people won’t let others be who they are fully and peacefully. Positives around my identity is that I am unique. We are all unique. Everything about me, my smile, hair, skin tone, body type, my accent, EVERYTHING is unique. There is only one me so why not be the best me I can be. I remember the things I thought were ugly when I was younger, I actually want more of now as an adult. I used to hate my natural hair and didn’t care too much for freckles. Now I want more freckles and want my hair to grow out more. Trying to be someone else is a terrible slap in the face. You’re telling yourself that you’re not enough and that is one of the biggest lies I’ve ever heard. We all have worth.

I have been to Germany when I was in the military for 3 years and I loved it there! I would love to go back. I also want to travel to Africa, China and Korea one day.

I believe that if our parents don’t know who they are, then we won’t. And that’s something I want to break when I have kids someday. I want to teach my kids the importance of ethnic unity and to embrace themselves fully, and to also learn about and embrace other cultures. My outlook will only keep getting better from here! The more I do my research in the media, the more I see I am represented and that there are places where people understand me and accept me. I didn’t know this growing up. I didn’t meet a lot of mixed people growing up, and the people I did meet, they didn’t talk about their experiences about being a mixed person. So, it’s so beautiful and refreshing to see.

In addition to my love for African music and Afro dance, one tradition that I notice is dominant in Black culture are family reunions/vacations. My family and I have been keeping that alive for the past 3 years.

The last time I cried was during our family vacation at Myrtle Beach. Me and my two younger sisters Lissa and Melissa really take to heart breaking generational curses in our family, especially when it comes to how we talk to each other. I notice that my other two younger sisters, Makayla and Sydnie, talk horribly to each other. I’m talking cursing, calling each other names, accusing, assuming, and yelling. And being their older sister who was taught that was normal by our Mom, I had to talk to them. I believe there’s power in the tongue. I pulled them aside telling them the importance of asking questions, not assuming, loving one another and mediated the conversation as they talked to each other about how they felt. It was hard. Once I told them that we are family and family is so important I just broke down. I hate seeing people tear one another down. There’s so much power in vulnerability, love and unity, not division.

Covid definitely helped me come to a place of true self-discovery and self-respect. I was in a toxic marriage for 7 years and was just in auto pilot. Every relationship I was in prior to that I was in auto pilot mode. After going back and forth for years, I finally decided to get out and find out who I truly am. As someone who didn’t know her worth, I believe that was taken advantage of through narcissistic and manipulative behaviour on his end. I knew before the marriage that I was in that relationship out of dependency, and not from a place of me being whole. Since covid hit, it really helped me to slow down and to realize what I will no longer tolerate. To also realize that I too had red flags that needed to be addressed within myself. Proud to say that I’ve grown tremendously these past 2 years and look forward to this new chapter in my life.