It’s been one year since I last wrote a blog post.

In that year, I have finally had my honeymoon, my mum died, the world went into a global pandemic, another black man was killed by a white police officer in broad day light, and I lost another baby.

When I tell you that my heart is heavy. I mean. My heart is sinking and I can’t imagine it ever feeling light and airy like candy floss ever again.

That being said. I know there will be fun times ahead. I know there is happiness and laughter and hope. I know I am not writing off the life I want and know I can live. But I am full of fear and sorrow and anger.

I am in acceptance that I can be angry and accepting of the circumstances at the same time. I can cry and laugh on any given day and I can and will ask why, whilst also knowing deep down… things happen for us.

Today after a weekend of realisation about the world we live in, the system I have been complicit to, the heart ache other people have just for the mere colour of their skin, left me feeling like a little girl who was screaming and crying because her party got ruined. I wanted to rewind time. Back to my naive bubble when I had not realised the things I cannot unsee. I cannot go back to a world where I believe I am untouchable, the world is fair, racism was abolished years ago, having a baby is piss easy and people dont die. Not the ones you are closest to. They don’t get sick and just die.

The idea that I cannot go back to 2018 and I cannot go back to my naive, protected, privileged world, hurt me. Not as much as George Floyd was hurting on that road with a knee under his neck, and so I am trying to shut the fuck up. I am not dismissing my pain. I am not belittling my own heavy personal hurt that I am feeling. But I am acknowledging that my rose tinted glasses were knocked off at the ripe ol age of thirty four. Some people never got given the rose tinted glasses. Some people got given boxes to live in and live from, that kept them separate. Kept them believing they were separate. Kept them believing that they were not entitled to the same life I thought I was having and the same system I thought was protecting all of us. It was not. It is not.

So yes. Gosh yes I want to book a flight, buy clothes I don’t need that do not cover my bum, to wear round a pool whilst I drink cocktails and get drunk and read chic lit mind numbing books about nothing but love and bubble baths. I WANT to check out. I WANT the light hearted, pain free, numbness of lying on a lilo with the smell of sun cream on my skin that was never dark enough to offend too many people and never light enough to make me think I had any privilege.

Accept I did. I have mixed privilege. I have soft curly hair privilege. If there was racism directed at me, I was privileged to not noticed it. I was privileged to say things like “I don’t even notice the colour of my skin. Or your skin for that matter. One race. One love” right?

I did not realise I was not validating your skin tone, my skin tone, theirs. I did not realise I was invalidating different experiences. And whilst I still want a world where we all just get treated the same, I want a world where we acknowledge our differences. Same souls, different stories. I want a world with same privileges but it doesn’t exist because history exists and we cannot re write that.

I have so much to learn. But my 1st lesson is this.

I am brown. I am mixed. I have privilege yes, but I have an experience unique to my self and I need to learn about it and what it means to me.

My 1st lesson is that I know nothing, until I know my story.

I am heart broken. I am miscarrying. I am grieving.

I am going to come out of this wiser, better, alive. That is a fucking privilege and I will not take it for granted.