Photo by Jasmin Sessler via Unsplash
Last week I wrote about how my family gave me trust issues. I briefly wrote about how my experience in brown (or Surinamese-Hindustani) spaces wasn’t a safe one for me. In part because of my messed up Family and the destabilizing formative years. But there’s another layer to it:
Photo by Blanca Paloma Sánchez via Unsplash
There are many reasons why I have trust issues, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve realized that I don’t feel safe around my own people, in my own community, and that’s because of Family. I don’t think that’s talked about enough.
Sure, we all know about judgmental aunties... but let me tell you about mine.
Read MorePhoto by Nikhita S on Unsplash
As an Indo-Caribbean person with both Guyanese and Surinamese heritage, it’s been really interesting to contrast and compare the two different (South-)Asian diasporas. Although my insights have always been limited and based on personal experience rather than cold, hard data… I’ve still noticed that there’s a loss of language.
Read MoreGoodbye to the days of hundreds notes on my phone or random to-do scribbles, and hello to the 52 Lists Planner! By now, you may know that I love journals. I don’t journal as intensely anymore as I did when I was a teenager, but I still try to write in one whenever I can. I’ve three journals, in fact, all for different writing intentions. The first exclusively focuses on the many things I did or experienced that brought me some form of happiness, the second journal is for ranting, descriptions of situations, and important notes about (the improvement of) my mental health. The third journal, the one I am sharing with you today, is actually a planner for my daily/weekly to-do lists.
Read MorePhoto by Priscilla Du Preez from Unsplash
If there’s something I struggle with it’s unlearning people-pleasing behavior. It’s so prevalent in the Indo-Caribbean (Surinamese-Hindustani) culture I’m from. But I also grew up in Dutch society, which has more direct and down-to-earth attitudes. This means I have a bicultural upbringing, and that there’s already a tension in different norms and values. This tension runs deep, because culture influences our behavior, the way we see the world, and what we think and feel.
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