Too “White”, too “Black”!
“Little Limbo”
As a kid, I believed I was born as a result of some sort of curse.
I was the living, breathing product of two proud bloodlines with a bloody history.
Indigenous.
British.
Two worlds that were never meant to mix.
Oil and water.
Like many kids with mixed heritage, I grew up in limbo.
Too Black for the White kids.
Too White for the Black kids.
Never enough of either world to truly belong.
People today call this “white passing.”
But “white passing” doesn’t mean the racism skips you.
It means you hear what people say when they think you’re one of them.
I heard the remarks.
The stereotypes.
The names, I won’t repeat.
It hurt because every time someone said those things,
I didn’t just think about myself.
I thought about my Nanny Kim.
A beautiful woman whose whole family were stolen, for the crime of Aboriginality.
A family filled with undeserved pain, shame and trauma,
Simply for the colour of their skin.
Those years carved deep within me.
Heavy shame for who I was and the question:
Where do I belong?
It was this inner question that brewed for another 20 years, to get me to this point.
Travelling towards A Grave
What felt like an eternity later, after navigating life in a state of limbo and finding my way out of a period I did not think I would survive, on the 13th of June 2024, one year after my grandfather took his own life, I drove out west toward my family’s graves.
The wind was on my face.
The sun was on my skin.
And for the first time in my life, after decades of internal conflict, something finally became clear.
All the inner fog had suddenly vanished.
I felt my grandfather speak to me.
“You weren’t born as a curse, mate. You weren’t born as a mistake between two bloodlines. You were born as a bridge.”
In that moment, I remembered who I was.
Rest In Peace, my Poppy.
A bridge between the divide
Being made from both sides gave me something rare.
Eyes that can see both perspectives.
Ears that can hear where both sides’ concerns truly lie.
A heart shaped by two cultures, able to feel their differences without fear.
And a voice that can translate, articulate, and mediate between the two.
My identity is not in limbo.
It is a pathway.
A meeting place where both sides can walk together without guilt, blame, or shame.
In that moment, through pop, I realised why I was here.
Not to carry the conflict of the past.
Not to repeat it.
But to break it.
My purpose is to become the mediator my future children will never need.
To make sure they grow up in a world where they never question whether they belong.
Where they never feel “too white” or “too black.”
Where they never feel they have to choose a side to embrace.
Where they never have to walk on eggshells around others due to ignorance and racism.
So they never have to carry the pain of the past repeating itself, in a world that knows more but understands less.
This is the heartbeat behind YourOnlineBrother.
This is why I do what I do.
