This place has been there with me as I went from an 8 year old to a pre-teen, to a teenager and to a young adult all while I battled several episodes of depression and milestones within my life. One of the aspects that came with my battle of mental health was reconciling with my cultural identity as I grew into an adult. I've always felt and at times even told by others that “I wasn’t brown enough to be brown or white enough to be white.” This identity dichotomy influenced me to ditch my culture in my younger years as a way to go against the grain but while that was a temporary fix from Bengali societal pressures and battling my inner demons, it was never a solution.
As I grew up and matured, I began healing from this dichotomy within me and re-connecting with my culture once again. I would go to cultural events with my mom and claim my space within the room unabashedly as a young Bengali-Canadian woman. Despite the looks or the whispers within the room, I would carry myself within this world as vividly as myself as possible. I’m no longer afraid to live loudly and claim my cultural space despite the inner critic and society telling me otherwise.
It’s always better to leave the world better than how we found it; a motto I live by. Now at 25 years old, I want to use my mental health and cultural identity struggles to show youth that you should live loudly, claim your space, be bold and life doesn’t have to feel stuck at 15 or 16 years old. There’s so much to live for and that hope is instilled and nurtured by the adults around us.
I want to nurture the youth as it’s never too late to start living loudly.
-Wasifa Noshin