My heart is heavy and longing. I am mixed-race. Over 60% of my DNA is African. But according to my mother ‘those people don’t want you,’ I was brought up without any connection to my heritage or culture. I wasn’t even allowed to ask questions. My ‘real dads’ name was a swear word. So I have had to exist inside whiteness. And it hasn’t wanted me or allowed me to be, or exist in anything reminiscent of softness. Every time I take steps to explore the richness and beauty inside my blackness, I am met with fear that I do not belong and am not accepted because that one sentence my mother spewed plays loudly and unapologetically on repeat. I am tired. But I am reaching for myself.