Second Anniversary

Today is my second anniversary. Two years ago I arrived in Cardiff, tired, jet-lagged, confused and infinitely relieved, and began a monumental journey that has led me through many changes and into a new life I couldn't have dreamed of that day.

I have achieved what I set out to achieve - and so much more. I have been awarded my MTh, the degree I came for, but I have moved beyond that, being accepted into the PhD programme. I have gone from someone who wouldn't preach "if I can help it" to someone who readily does preach when asked and has more positive than negative feelings about it. I have journeyed through the consideration of a variety of plans for my life, my calling and my future, to settle on a vision of my future that was far from my wildest dreams two years ago.

In the last four months, the challenges and changes of the last several years have come to fruition, one by one, until I suddenly find myself seeing a person in the mirror that is totally unlike the face I would have been looking into even last March.

As I sat in an "anti-racism" seminar yesterday, the past and the present collided in a simple identity exercise involving at sheet of paper with a line drawing of a bare tree on it. We were instructed to write on the roots those things which had influenced and shaped our early life and on the branches those things that influence and shape our present life. Then we were asked to share with one other person why there was a disconnect between "roots" and "branches." For me it was obvious: I crossed an ocean, but it was in vocalising that disconnect that it all began to unravel.

As the day continued and we talked about our fears of being judged based on appearance or culture, I faced for the first time just how uncomfortable I have been for these two years: an "American" immersed in "British" culture. It was a deliberate choice - to immerse myself here, but in so doing, I have purposefully hidden my roots and completely disassociated myself from my mother culture. I don't want people to know. I get cross when it is mentioned.

Don't get me wrong. I love it here. I have loved the last two years. I have found a great freedom here, to be and to do and to think in my own ways, as I please and not as I think I am "expected" to, but I have also felt a need to suppress, ignore, deny my cultural heritage because, looking in from the outside, I suddenly saw so many negative things in it, things I wasn't comfortable with, things I didn't want to be identified with.

As I considered my "tree" yesterday, and complied with the expectations of the seminar by discussing my feelings with other students, one-on-one, I realised that, for the first time, I was voicing to someone "British" my insecurities with being "American." It took two years. Almost to the day. Somehow that seems significant to me.

I've made the decision now. I'm staying. I'm going to make a life here. As I digest the implications of that decision, I am realising the necessity of "reconnecting" my "roots" and my "branches." Who I am involves all these things, and it is time to embrace them, time to decide what is "me" and what is not, and to acknowledge that, whether good or not, these things have shaped me and will always be a part of my identity. Now is the time I begin to put together who I was and where I came from with who I am and where I am going.

With the help of those who love me, accept me and know me for myself, I am actually excited about the process. Eagerly, I anticipate the future. More than ever before in my adult life, the future has more attraction for me than the past. I am not alone. I am not who I was. I am excited to see what the next two years will bring.