Growing up I was the kid who everyone liked but didn’t necessarily invite to their parties. I wasn’t an outcast, but I wasn’t an incast either. I had my couple close friends and we were happy but I always wanted wished to be more part of the social world surrounding me.
Like I said in a previous post, I never felt I fit in. It’s taken years to figure out who I am versus just knowing who I am not.
In my twenties and beyond, I’ve made friends with young women who were born in America but moved to Israel as children. We connect on a deep level.
When I counsel women from different cultures I notice I also connect with them. And when I met my future husband 6 years ago, I was ecstatic that he was from India, a place I had dreamed of visiting years prior for spiritual rejuvenation and self-discovery.
And when I carried our first (and thus far, only) child, I celebrated the union of East and West by writing the phrase “East meets West!” with black paint on my very pregnant belly!
When I counsel women from different cultures, I feel connected to them. I appreciate their rich culture. Even though I am American, I grew up practicing the Jewish tradition and immersing in the Hebrew language and Israeli culture, so I’m no foreigner to the foreign!
Maybe that’s why I feel connected to them. Or maybe it’s because I like connecting to people from different walks of life.
Recently I started brushing up on my Spanish, which I took in high school and have used in my nutrition career. They said in the video that learning the language means you also learn the culture.
I minored in linguistics in college and always had a fascination with language but I focused less then on the culture and more so on the mathematic rhythms of the structure of language.
Now I am realizing ever more deeply why I’ve always felt estranged from my social surroundings.
Perhaps even before meeting and marrying my husband, I was part Indian.
Even though my skin isn’t dark like my husband’s or olive like my daughter’s, perhaps my soul is.
And do our souls even have colors anyway?
Mindful Nuggets 