Sometimes the only way forward is through the unraveling.When I was a little girl, I thought identity was a declared truth — a neat little box you checked once and carried forever. I chose my mother’s.She was everything I wanted to be: an embodiment of resilience. A Russian Jewish immigrant who could, and did, make something out of nothing. I hoped with every fiber of my being to mirror her courage in any way possible.Around my fourth birthday, I ran to the park, magic wand in hand, ready to play princess. Another little girl quickly ruined that dream when she told me I didn’t fit the role because my skin was too dark. And I believed her.All I knew were heroines like Belle and Cinderella — pale and golden. That night, my mom sat me down and played Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella with Brandy and Whitney Houston. She called it “curly-hair Cinderella.” We watched it hundreds of times. That version taught me something the first one didn’t — that girls like me deserved a crown too.Growing up, my mom made sure I was connected to my Eritrean roots. She took my sister and me to gatherings where the air smelled like berbere and laughter rolled through rooms to the rhythm of Tigrinya music. She learned to cornrow my hair — painfully, lovingly — before I decided I wanted box braids instead. So she learned that too.Still, I felt a distance, like pressing my face against the window of a home that wasn’t fully mine.As a child, I didn’t question it. My mother was my compass, and I followed her unquestioningly.The suburb we lived in prided itself on diversity. My friends and I looked like a walking United Nations poster, or so we liked to say. But somewhere between middle school and high school, that illusion started to crack.It began with jokes — the kind that sliced and disguised themselves as laughter. The first racial slur I ever heard wasn’t whispered; it was shouted across my ninth-grade music class. The laughter that followed made it worse.I laughed too. A beat too late.I laughed until I didn’t recognize the sound.That became my defense — silence and small smiles. It felt safer than exposure. I thought maybe if I leaned into my white side, I’d fit better. It was easier to blend in than to risk visibility.But laughter is a poor disguise. Every chuckle chipped away at something. And soon, the ache of assimilation became a constant hum under my skin.By the time antisemitic jokes started echoing through the hallways, I knew the choreography by heart. Smile. Shrug. Stay quiet.It worked — until it didn’t.In my first week at Queen’s University, a friend encouraged me to join a Black student group. I said no. Then I went home and sat on my dorm bed, trying to understand why.It hit me like a confession I didn’t want to say out loud:I was scared of being perceived as Black.I stared at my reflection — my curls bleached and broken from years of straightening, my Magen David necklace tucked deep in a drawer — and realized how far I’d drifted.I had spent years trying not to lose myself, and somehow that’s exactly what I’d done.The unraveling came slowly. It didn’t look brave. It looked like crying in a dorm mirror, wondering if there was still something left to find.Then came the shift. I studied under a professor who changed everything — a man who made authenticity feel safe. His classroom became a sanctuary where Blackness wasn’t something to shrink from but to stand inside of.Through his courses, through long talks and harder truths, I began piecing together what I had buried. I started wearing protective hairstyles again — not as armor, but as celebration. I took Black Studies classes and stopped pretending to be a guest in my own skin.At the same time, I reconnected with my Jewish community. I joined a campus group that reminded me that faith doesn’t require explanation or apology. That Jewishness and Blackness didn’t cancel each other out — they coexisted. They belonged together in me, as I belonged to both.That old box I’d once ticked as a child couldn’t contain me anymore.“The fear of losing myself was never about loss. It was the fear of finally finding me.”When fear fell away, all that was left was freedom — messy, beautiful, overdue freedom. The kind that doesn’t come from perfection, but from surrender.The girl who once laughed too late stopped performing. She picked up her Magen David again. She wore her curls loud. She prayed and protested, sometimes in the same breath.Because identity isn’t a fixed place — it’s a living thing, constantly reshaping itself as we dare to be seen.“If you hide long enough, you forget how to look for yourself.” “Identity isn’t a label — it’s a conversation between who we were and who we’re becoming.”Today, I am both — my mother’s daughter, my father’s roots, my own voice. I am Russian and Eritrean. Jewish and Black. I am proud of every part of me.The journey wasn’t clean. It wasn’t easy. It was an unraveling — and that’s where the power lived.Sometimes, you have to lose yourself just long enough to meet the version of you that was waiting to be free.
