i feel so authentically me ~

reconnecting with my family and ethnic identity

i’m finally feeling excited about going back to australia in august. i think it has a lot to do with spending time with my mum here in berlin. its only been a few days with her here, but its been incredibly healing to be around family. i know ive spoken about this before - how i grew up in a family where it was us against the world. we all held each other in such high regard and felt so connected. but as we all grew older and splintered off, my cousins and siblings and i lost a bit of the magic we had as kids. thankfully though, ive been reconnecting with my family again and i think we’re starting to get our magic back.

i feel so authentically me when im around my family. even tom said the other day that he hasn’t seen this side of me in years and he is loving it. tbh im loving it too. i feel so free and silly and myself. my mum has this disposition which could come across as maybe a little staunch, but she’s actually so accepting of everything and everyone. looking back on my childhood, i grew up in a household of acceptance. my parents never judged weirdness and i never heard them talk trash about people. i think this has a lot to do with the fact that ive always felt comfortable being myself around them. i’ve never muted any parts of who i am.

i look at me and my siblings and the curve balls we’ve all thrown at my parents over the years, it’s honestly a miracle they still love us. it’s unconditional. i mean, of course they should still love us, but i guess looking at other boomer parents, i feel quite lucky to have such open minded people as family.

i am very conscious of passing on this openness to genie. i need her to grow up knowing she can be herself around us and we will never judge her. i think the key thing is to make sure we’re actively talking about people in ways that nurture individual difference. we’re pretty conscious of it already but im sure there are ways we can improve.

i’ve also loved having mum here because im reminded of my brown-ness. there’s so much culture embedded in my mum that i’ve forgotten about. from her food to certain language quirks, religion, stories from her life in asia and even her parenting and grandparenting style. i’ve fully embraced it and feel very thankful that genie is being exposed to this side of her identity. it’s currently 9am and my mum is cooking a curry for the evening. it’s a recipe that has been passed down in her family for generations. my grandma always used to cook in the morning because “it’s always best when left to sit”. it’s hard to explain just how good this food is. it’s honestly life giving. and how lucky is it that i was able to grow up in a household where food was the centrepiece of any special gathering or even an average day.

i have so many fond memories of food from my childhood. like going to yum cha every sunday, curry every night after school, my grandma teaching me all the secret cooking tricks when i lived with her for a couple of years as a teenager, going to the chinese butcher and no matter what, whenever we would have family around we would congregate in the kitchen. cooking and food was a joy and a privilege and part of our identity.

i have quite a confusing ethnic identity. i guess there’s the fact that im half anglo but also on my mums side they were so nomadic. my mum was born in brunei, my grandmother in myanmar, my grandfather in singapore, and my great grandparents were from india and indonesia. so i’ve never really had one solid ethnic identity. despite my grandparents speaking multiple languages, they only spoke english once they moved the family to new zealand. at the time my mum was around 10 years old and so she only has minimal knowledge of languages other than english. but i find it so fascinating and cool how my family have these elements of different asian languages and cultures, and they’re all kind of fused together.

the hard part about living over here, away from my asian family, is not having the chance to expose genie to this side of her identity in the subtle ways i was exposed to it. i feel like my asian identity is obviously a little less apparent in me because i didn’t grow up in asia, my dad is anglo and i also don’t appear very asian in the way i look. so i find it challenging to know how to impart all of the cultural artefacts onto my daughter. but my plan is to spend a lot of quality time with my mum and cousins and aunts and uncles as much as humanly possible. for my sake too. i adore them. i know i went through a strange period of rejecting my family and developed so much anger and bitterness about feelings of abandonment, but ultimately they are good, amazing, interesting people who know how to love unconditionally. for them i am eternally grateful.