General Discussion

@Speedypigeon it's ok bro one day we'll get past that disconnect [i]one day[/i] but for today, we'll have this instead: [img]https://rob.nu/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/d71b9edc53659d1d16b8a320cee13e49.gif[/img] Sleep and we'll tackle it [s]then overanalyze and dissect it to pieces[/s] another day

im mixed but its a bit difficult for me to talk about. what i need to do is reach out to people when i have the ability to. posting mostly in solidarity for you.

best of luck on your journey!

i'm not a fan of labeling myself in general, but i'm mixed too. my parents have both done ancestry/DNA tests, and i have one yet to be opened, but i keep forgetting to do it lol. my dad is like full on mexican (specifically indigenous mexican... aztec) and my mom is a variety of european stuff, mainly swedish and polish.

i just call myself mexican because it's what i look the most, and that's what everyone assumes i am anyway. it's funny, i work with a lot of international people in the summer, and they always ask me "where are you from??" assuming i'm not from the US like they are LOL.

my dad never taught me spanish (like most children are, i was stubborn and he just chose to give up instead of actually teaching me), which is something i've kinda resented lol. i can understand spanish (more or less), but i can't really respond in it. sometimes i feel "left out" of my mexican side, since i can't speak the language and i was never close to my dad's side of the family and never really got to be involved with any of the culture. add on growing up in a hicky redneck country town and not meeting any other latinos until i was 17 years old, and i guess i've always been more "white" than anything else.

i don't get too bent out of shape over it, though. i understand why knowing who/what you are in terms of race/ethnicity is important to some, but to me i am what i am and it is what it is. best wishes on figuring out what works for you!

At this point, I don't try to assign labels regarding my specific ancestry & heritage anymore. Yes, I am of highly mixed Eurasian descent according to the tests, but I can't narrow anything down 100%. Wars, famines, & other tragedies tore my family tree to shreds at worst, across the whole world at best.

So, like others mentioned prior, I just stick to my lived culture, which is my version of the human experience. I've moved around too much, and lived in too many places, to not feel & foster a global kinship instead. At the end of the day, regardless of culture or creed, we're all living beings who just want to be safe, happy, and healthy.

But it still isn't an easy subject for me. There is a lot of pain that comes in knowing that I will never have a soul-deep connection to even one culture I have genetic ties to. Many family members across the world have tried to provide that for me, but they too struggled in finding it for themselves.

To be fair, I think that would be my best advice in this scenario. Pay respects to those who came before, and move forward into the new with their blessing. Culture is as we are: everchanging, adaptable, and diverse.

I know my ancestors would have wanted me to be that way, as it was how they survived catastrophe after catastrophe. How they loved through horrors aplenty. How they found happiness in the moment.

It's okay if others find & have the same kinship that I long for.
I just have no choice but to forge my own path & practice from here.

I never had this problem growing up and I'm glad about that. It must be very confusing if you come from a mixed family and are unsure where you belong. From my father's side, I can go at least around 7 generations back on the same Island where I am still living to this day, so I'm not only Dutch, from his side I'm at least a true true islander and belong on this small island in the north sea. And my mom's side all come from the same province and around the same area in that province as well... Which is also in the Netherlands. So I can say for sure I am Dutch. I do have some very distant family in Germany, but it's very very distant and technically they moved there, so not sure if that counts xD

honestly, i really appreciate this thread. it's been nice to see discussion about this topic from all sorts of different perspectives <3

I’m mixed, like a lot of people in this thread. Never learned my mom’s native language as she felt she wouldn’t be able to teach to me well enough (she can speak it but not read it). Not a big deal to me as no one here speaks it anyway. [quote=Negative] i don't get too bent out of shape over it, though. i understand why knowing who/what you are in terms of race/ethnicity is important to some, but to me i am what i am and it is what it is.[/quote]

I once calculated via surnames of grandparents and bits and pieces I know. I say that I'm 3/4 Irish. Am I? Probably not, I'm an American. I'm part Lithuanian, 3rd generation Swedish, and one of my family lines has been in America since the 1600s. But I do have a large degree of Irish in me. Everything else, well, the cultures didn't interest me. But Irish culture drew me in, I love the music, the art, the people, and I'm proud to be a part of it, even if I've never been there physically. [img]https://wtfflorida.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/not-physically.gif[/img] Here's the thing you might find interesting (and sad): When I was younger, proudly talking about our Irish heritage, my parents would say "you're not THAT much Irish, you know..." and I came to understand they were playing it off because Irish-Americans have historically been low-class and seen as "white trash," so they were raised to distance themselves from it.

I know I'm Sicilian and Dutch primarily, just because my grandparents were immigrants.

It would be really cool to know the whole history of my family, but as an American I am extremely resistant to doing any sort of genetic testing or tree mapping because if there's anything in my genes that could cause me health problems, I could be denied insurance coverage for that problem on the grounds that I knew about it prior (Pre-Existing condition). The only test I've ever had done was for the BRCA gene and that's it. (Don't have it, thankfully!)

I know that my maiden name is related to professions regarding childbirthing and pregnancy care so, at least on my dad's side, I'm pretty sure my heritage is rooted in midwives which is neat! But that's as far as I'll go trying to dig up my family history, lol.