Mini Episode 6: Can a person call two different cities “home”?
For today’s mini episode, I chose a question that seemed deceptively simple. One that I thought had a straightforward answer. But as I dig into the question, and related to the asker’s quest for belonging, I began to remember, re-trace my own path to where I found a sense of belonging, and what belonging means to me, as someone who never felt like they did belong anywhere.
They write:
As someone who is bi-coastal…having an identity crisis. Question: can a person maintain allegiance to both cities or have to choose one over the other? Feeling divided and conflicted!
We got this question over instagram, but we keep our askers anonymous so I’ve decided to name you…placeless. Thank you for your question, placeless.
It needs to be said, I am not a professional, just someone with some personal experience to share. I do hope this is helpful, but as always, take the advice that resonates and ignore what doesn't. And don’t hesitate to seek out professional help through a trusted source. There are resources on our website.
Tune into the episode wherever you listen to your podcasts to hear Jackie ponder our listener's question and give her own personal experience navigating similar feelings.
This podcast is produced by More Good Media.
Episode Resources:
Jackie Kai Ellis: Website / Instagram
You & I Podcast: Website
Resources on finding trusted professional help can be found here.
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INTRO:
Welcome to You & I.
I am Jackie Kai Ellis and it’s my genuine hope that through sharing our most vulnerable stories, we know, in the moments where it matters so much, that we are not alone.
DISCLAIMER:
It needs to be said, I am not a professional, just someone with some personal experience to share. I do hope this is helpful, but as always, take the advice that resonates and ignore what doesn't. And don’t hesitate to seek out professional help through a trusted source. There are resources on our website.
QUESTION INTRO:
For today’s mini episode, I chose a question that seemed deceptively simple. One that I thought had a straightforward answer. But as I dig into the question, and related to the asker’s quest for belonging, I began to remember, re-trace my own path to where I found a sense of belonging, and what belonging means to me, as someone who never felt like they did belong anywhere.
They write:
As someone who is bi-coastal…having an identity crisis. Question: can a person maintain allegiance to both cities or have to choose one over the other? Feeling divided and conflicted!
We got this question over instagram, but we keep our askers anonymous so I’ve decided to name you…placeless. Thank you for your question, placeless.
ANSWER
When I first got this question, the answer seemed deceptively simple. “Well, yes,” I wanted to say. “Of course you can have an allegiance to two cities, 5 or 100 if that pleases you. Why not really?”
But I wondered if, as someone who has never truly felt a sense of belonging to a city, perhaps I didn’t understand the complexity of the question. While I’ve felt an admiration and appreciation for many cities, I've not had the privilege of feeling so attached, as the asker has…so fused with a place that I could consider it to be “me.”
The closest I’ve ever come to this feeling is with Paris – a city that once revived me from a life that was atrophied from lack of living. Paris fed me delicious things, reflected coral sunsets on its sandstone skin, taunted me with its charming hidden gardens prodding my curiosity for life. It argued with me, it pushed me with its cheeky conceit until I pushed back with a strength I didn’t know I had, and then it fed me again, and again until I became alive. Even though Paris had become an integral part of my story, I never felt like I was the city, and the city was me. I’ve never called myself Parisian.
And in Vancouver, a place I was born and raised. A place where I built my life, flourished, built careers, had a baby, built a home. A place I have so much love and respect for, a place that has been so generous and giving to me. Even still, I am not sure I would feel it correctly defined me to be called a “Vancouverite” either.
I pondered your question, trying to get to the heart of what you, Placeless, are truly struggling with. I wanted to ask you, “who is it that’s asking for allegiance? Who is asking you to choose? Your friends? Your family? Your sports teams?”
I imagined that perhaps you were trying to find that sense of home, and didn’t know if it could be done without total and utter loyalty. Like how some choose to be with one partner because of the depth that can be built through the experience of monogamy.
I wondered, “is this need to choose one city, coming from an external pressure to conform? Or is it a desire to put down roots and experience a home fully without the distraction of a “what if,” a wandering eye?”
If it is the latter, then it might be a choice you make because you desire what can flourish from it…but I still don’t see it as a choice that HAS to be made.
If I were to guess, I suspect that the heart of the question is not so much about where we live, or even the ever-present question of identity and our attachment to labels like westcoaster or eastcoaster. I suspect that, at the heart, it's about our deep desires to belong.
Growing up in one of a handful of Chinese immigrant families in a predominantly white community in the 1980’s, I’ve always seemed a stranger. As a child, I remember feeling as if I lived a double life, going to school. My family spoke an entirely different language, they were louder, more boisterous. We ate foods that smelled different, and took on different shapes and textures than those of my friends. We ate congee with pork floss or fish with fermented black beans out of a tin, while they ate spaghetti squash and cheese with apples. There were words in my vocabulary that didn’t exist in English, and ways of expressing myself that didn’t translate to Cantonese. The person I was growing into in the outside world didn’t always have a natural place at home, and the person I was, the place I came from didn’t feel welcome in the world either, so I’d hold those parts of me in separate arms until they grew strong but weary.
In highschool, I wanted to belong to something so badly, as most do at this age. I tested out personalities, taking ideals to extremes, went through a grunge phase and then a rap and hip hop phase, which now serves to delight my husband when I pull out my 90’s music expertise. But, in the search to find belonging, and at the time, specifically belonging to “White Culture”, I believed that I needed to divorce myself from my Chinese roots. So I dyed my hair blonde, wore blue contact lenses, stopped speaking Cantonese entirely, and rejected almost everything Chinese that I could, in a violent and even disrespectful way.
There were much deeper issues that I won’t get into at length, as it may not be as relevant to your question, but should be mentioned regardless with the intention of telling a true and real story…I think I also did so, so aggressively because I had felt and witnessed small, almost imperceptible daily acts of racism, so subtle that, as a child, I could barely make out the wrongness of it, or make sense of it all on my own. I think unconsciously, I just didn’t want to be on the side that felt “wrong.” It took time to unravel the kind of subtle racism that slowly seeps into your fibres like a thick oil.
And on the flip side, my Chinese culture seemed to be rejecting me for not being “Chinese enough,” whatever that was. I had an English accent when I spoke Cantonese, which was often ridiculed. When I went back to Hong Kong, my body was not sleight and tiny like others, and I was told not to enter women’s clothing stores and redirected to men’s shops down the street. As a teenager, this was mortifying. The subtle racism existed on both sides and it became obvious that I was no more Chinese, than I was White.
But bit by bit, over decades, I began to reconcile this tension between these cultures that I came from. And it first began by seeing belonging in a different way. I noticed that not belonging gave me a flexibility others didn’t have, an ease in movement because I wasn’t as burdened by the usual boundaries of language, culture or what was supposed to be delicious or not. Straddling these two cultures and being able to move nimbly in both, gave me a unique perspective that allowed me to empathize more broadly, understand words between words, see similarities even in things that seemed completely opposite, and knowing the world is so much bigger and more nuanced than we could imagine from where we stand. I began to embrace the wholeness of these halves, the unique mixture of who I am as an individual. That I cook this unique version of Chinese food that mixes French, Chinese, Westcoast Canada influences simply because a stirfry of thick bacon, dates, gai lan with a sticky soy chili glaze over rice and a sunny side egg on top is exactly what I’m craving.
That no, though I didn’t fully belong to either culture, I CAN enjoy living in both, that I live where I stand, wherever I chose… and that I belong to both myself, and in a sense I have the privilege of belonging to both cultures and belonging to many places, if I choose. Because if this has taught me anything, we are more expansive and we exist beyond just than the cultures we come from, the titles we give ourselves, the cities we live in. I am the vast experiences I’ve lived, the new perspectives I’ve seen, the empathy I can share, the things that make me smile, the lessons I’ve fought to learn, the joy I’ve learned to appreciate. These things are “placeless” and they belong to me.
END:
Thank you Then & Now. This was such a pleasure to ponder. I hope you got something helpful out of this…if anything, know that you’re not alone. You see, we all struggle, mourn, yearn, question, laugh and cry. No matter our age, background, or titles, at our core, we are all not so different, You & I.
OUTRO: [music]
Incase you missed it in the last episode, check out next month’s question on our homepage.
If you feel inspired to respond to this asker and are interested in being a guest of this episode, OR if you have a short word of wisdom for them, write to us on the contact page on youandipodcast.com or DM us on instagram at @youandi (DOT) podcast. And of course, please submit your questions there too.
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Music ends
This podcast was produced and edited by More Good Media.