Proud to be me
Written in 2018
The only way I know how to write about myself, is to write myself.
Curmiah Lisette. Creative, educator, experiential learner, flower. I say flower because I am currently at a point of bloom in life. Much like plants that weather storms or seeds that still reach harvest despite displacement, I bloom in spite of everything that might have been designed to hold me back.
Uprooted from my island home at the age of nine, throughout my adolescent years I struggled with finding a sense of belonging in this bordered metropolis I never chose as home. I grew up to the sounds of UK Garage, yet my heart bled soca. I grew up playing steel pans at the Royal Festival Hall; waiting for AOL dial up internet to connect, just so that I could connect with my friends back home and in the diaspora; picking marbles and ‘chiney skip’ over game consoles; getting lost in fictional realms with my love for reading. I grew up foreign fruit, a displaced daisy with some pressure of having to mould or be like the rest.
I am thankful for family, and the root that is my mother for showing me strength and providing the constant reminder that I am enough and that my difference is what makes me individual. From her adamantly refusing to relax or straighten my natural coils, to her pressing me to speak with my natural voice. From her belief that remaining in this country by any means necessary to enable my right to free and further education was her paving the golden path for me (as if her independent island home could not offer liberty) came her admirable plight of not wanting me to know struggle. I saw much of her warnings and frets as lack of faith in me, as opposed to her teaching me the best she could from her experience. Our lived experiences that shape us are often always the result of someone’s trials, mistakes, although we often prefer to dwell romantically on the come-ups and destination – never the journey. For that, I proudly state that I am my mother’s mistakes. I did not wholly understand then, the knowledge and awareness that growth has afforded me now. How powerful and frightening it is for the white man’s world, to have an educated, self-loving, natural black woman with a truthfully poignant voice rearing from their ‘third world’. There is a sense of power that comes with true self-awareness and gratification in knowing that as an educator, I choose to spend my days enabling youth to find and embrace their own voices; to see and navigate the world through honest hearts, searching eyes, curious minds, empathetic tongues. Youth that look like me, and youth that don’t; the unheard, under-represented teaching children of the ‘first world’ in some way idealistically hoping to aid the development of a better world.
As a rebel soul I have always gone against the grain – putting my foot in a basin of boiling hot water at the age of three impatient for my aunt to bathe me, refusing to be boxed in by occupational labels or limitations on what I can be. I can be anything I choose. I am finally at a place where I repeatedly, consistently and loyally always choose myself; my spiritual, mental and physical health - wealth. My greatest lesson thus far after growing to, and on the more difficult days, remembering to embrace all the things that make me individual or different, is that in most ways we are all one in the same – of the same air, of the same earth, guided by the same sun. A tad romantic in 2018 where truths about racial and socio-economic disparities are being unearthed and made glaringly obvious? Yes. A tad romantic when my elders are being detained and shipped back home like criminals after re-building a country they uncomfortably see as a ‘home’. Yes. Very. But bloom has taught me that we can only work to change and improve ourselves, and hope that we blaze energy trails and bring light within our environments and communities. Of all that I am sure of about myself, I am proud to be woman, proud to be African, proud be a lover, proud to be human. Poet, empath, nurturer. A soul on a journey. Curmiah.