Episode 14 - Loss Of Identity

Hi everyone! in today's episode, I will be sharing my own personal journey with not fitting in with society growing up.

Growing up, I often felt like I didn't belong and that I was different from everyone else.

It was a difficult and lonely experience, and I struggled to find my place in the world.

However, I have since come to realize that our differences are what make us unique and special.

In this episode, I will be discussing my journey of feeling like an outsider and the challenges that came with it. 

I will talk about the impact that this had on my self-esteem and confidence, and how I eventually learned to embrace my individuality and find my place in the world.

I will be sharing my own personal experiences and the lessons that I have learned along the way, in the hope that they can help others who may be going through a similar journey.

So, sit back, relax, and join me on this personal and intimate journey as I share my experiences of not fitting in with society and what my journey has been like.

Hope you enjoy!

Transcript

Hello beautiful soul, I'm Sarah Michaels, and welcome to the Elated You podcast, where we dive deep into the world of self discovery, growth and healing to find out who you truly are. So, loss of identity. This has been a really big one for me, and I'm sure that there are a lot of people out there that can relate. Yeah, this is definitely a big one for me growing up, not so much now, now that I found spirituality and now that everything in my life makes so much more sense, but yeah, I'm not sure where to start when you are born into a Muslim home and sent to a Catholic school, and not taught anything about Islam and your parents are conflicting in their beliefs. It was just really, really hard to be honest. And I was very, very confused. It was my brother and I but I'll just speak on my behalf because this was you know, this is my story. This is how I felt growing up. Definitely confused, not wanting to go down and believe anything that Islam was about because it didn't make sense. My parents could never answer half the questions, and I'm not really sure why I think they both grew up in homes where they weren't that religious and plus, because they both left at such a young age to come to Australia, like 17 I think they just kind of found their own way and a lot of their friends, I remember were, were very, like Anglo, they had a lot of Anglo friends. They had a variety of different friends, but three or four Muslim, but they were like whose social butterfly so they had lots of friends so Italian, Greek, Japanese, Australian, because they lived in a block of flats and where did they live? Alma road… So if you're from Melbourne, you know that Alma road is St Kilda is predominantly a Jewish area. So you know it was really normal for us to see orthodox walking on a Saturday because they don't drive and synagogues everywhere. So I grew up the opposite side to where a lot of the Arabs lived. So I didn't know any Arabs and all the Arabs that my parents knew. They met along the way were really far they didn't live in the areas that we lived in, because then from there, we moved to Ashburton. And the schools I went to, there was one Egyptian family that were Christian. And that was my primary school because I was a Catholic school, but then high school, there was not one Arab. Can you imagine? like I went to a school there was not one Arab. It was a private school called Sacre Cur, but growing up, let's just get back to that, so when I was growing up in primary school, I couldn't understand why I wasn't going to have communion, I couldn't understand why I was led to have my confirmation and I just remember that being a really big deal, you know, everyone else is going for their confirmation, and I didn't understand I still don't really understand what it is. But here's the thing, I understood Christianity because I went to school and learned and you know, there was a chapel in all the schools I went to, I learned more than I did about the Muslim religion, about Islam. And so I would ask certain questions about you know, our religion and no one could answer me no one could give me specific answers. There were always these roundabout ways. It was only till recently, actually, a client of mine explained things to me, and it made so much more sense. It actually made the religion sound so beautiful. But the way it sounded to me was like, if you show your hair, then you'll get snakes, and then you'll die and you'll burn in hell and everything was about burning in hell. And it sounded like women had no rights, but it's actually not the case. It's just the way it was interpreted to me. So I rejected that religion totally, and ate pork and drank alcohol and growing up as well my parents ate salami, and a prosciutto and so if you know and you're a Muslim, or you know anyone that's Muslim, it's just a no go like you just don't eat pork. For so many different reasons. Again, like I don't even know which reason it is. Once someone told me the pickets period, someone tells me because the peak is very similar to us. Someone told me because the pig is dirty. Someone told me because the pig is greedy. Someone just told me again recently because the pig is the only animal doesn't look up to the sun in the morning. When at sunrise, and it's like, wow, like no one could ever give me a straight answer for anything. So if you're listening to this, and you are Muslim, I'd love to do a podcast with you and you can perhaps clear up some things with me because I'm sure I'm not alone. So that was growing up, you know, in my primary years, and then moving up into secondary, my parents would allow me to go to church functions with Lebanese. Now here's the thing, why do I say loss of identity? Because I'd meet boys and I'd meet people and they would always ask me, Are you Maronite or orthodox which is a umbrella under Christianity. And I was like neither and whenever I would say Muslim, 100% It was not a story and it wasn't something in my head. It was definitely a shock. And almost like I wasn't accepted, and as I grew up, I realized that Christians didn't want to propose or be with me, because I wasn't Christian. And Muslims wouldn't really want to marry me or be with me because I wasn't Muslim. Enough. And so I grew up going, What am I supposed to do? I liked the Christian Christian religion, but I'm not born a Christian. So I'm not accepted. I can't be more Muslim because I just rejected it. It was like it went against everything that I wanted to do dance, be a woman, have fun. Listen to music, were revealing clothes and that just wasn't acceptable. Not to my parents, but to the men that weren't interested. And so I honestly grew up so confused and so conflicted, also growing up quite ignorant to the fact that you know, Muslims have particular names like Ali and Muhammad and Omar and Christians have names like George and Michael. And if you if you are Middle Eastern, and you know this, this is like, factual, but because my parents didn't teach me these my parents more, were more concentrating on being a good person, not to steal, to be kind not to be judgmental, not to talk about people. That's how I was brought up. And so people would make fun of me because I wouldn't know these things. I wouldn't. I would assume that people were brothers, even if they had a Muslim Christian name because I didn't know this. This wasn't you know, this wasn't it wasn't taught to me. So I was looked at I was that I was a bit stupid. I was a bit ignorant. So I was like, looked at as a sinner. If you want to call it that. So it was it was quite hard to be honest. Growing up, it really really was because I couldn't choose and it didn't really matter what I chose. It just wasn't accepted. And so I ended up marrying a non Lebanese, a Serbian who straight away was like, you know, you've got to get baptized and my parents were fine with it. And I got baptized. I kind of was a bit annoyed, because I was like, I'm 30 Something now and I'm being expected to get baptized, like really? And every now and then he would say things to me like, Oh, my grandmother would be turning in her grave if she knew that I married you know, a black Arab, which I didn't really understand. And I think that means that because I was a Muslim. And, you know, in Yugoslavia, they're all divided between, you know, as well as Bosnia is the Muslims. The Christians are the Orthodox, Serbian and the Maronite Croatia. If you know a little bit about history, so this sort of is a problem in most countries where you know, Indonesia as well, where the Muslims have questions, they don't get along. So even when I go and visit Lebanon, because I dress revealing and I drink alcohol, they would just assume and so I would hear the most horrible things growing up about Muslims. And I didn't have I feel really emotional right now, actually, because I didn't have the courage to speak up. I didn't have the voice. So I just let them speak about Muslims and I pretended that I wasn't in order not to make them feel shame. So when people would say, at least you're not a Muslim. I never wanted to embarrass them. And I used to watch my mum do the same thing. When we worked both of us. A lot of people would assume that my mum was a Christian, and so they would talk to her. And sometimes my mum would say, I'm Muslim, and sometimes she wouldn't and when I would ask her way, she's like, it doesn't matter. I know what I am. I don't have to explain it to them. But I would watch her as well. And I think well, she's allowing them to talk badly about Muslims, or to talk badly about other people that may be Muslim, because they made the assumption that we were Christian, based on the way we looked. It wasn't until once I did hear my mom say when they said you don't look Muslim. My mum said why? What does a Muslim look like? And it's true. Not all Muslims wear a burqa. As I say all Christians are nouns, but this is the ignorance of people and people still do it today. People still do it here. People do it overseas. It's just for now when people ask me what religion you are my husband and I just go we identify with spirituality. We don't like to talk about what were you were like, we don't What do you mean, we just act really dumb because it's actually quite rude and ignorant to ask. Somebody what was the gym? They are, to be honest. And so you know, for me when the whole vaccine thing came up asking the question if people were vaccinated or not, it actually triggered me because it reminded me exactly of the situation I was in when I was younger, where I didn't want to say and I didn't want to speak up about what I was because I was fearful of being judged, you know, and not being accepted. Then I ended up marrying my my husband now Zane, who, by chance was a Muslim, but quite open family, not so much but he was and he accepted me knowing everything about me we are the most open couple, to be honest. It's one of the most open relationships I've ever had, which is so refreshing not to have to hide or feel shame about anything. And he feels me he feels that he also had to, you know, just study the Qur'an and memorize it. And just go off memory, but not actually understand it. So, you know, we're actually able to relate, even though he's got other people in his family that may have had to do the same. They're not recognizing that they all they've done is just recite it. So him and I have very much the same beliefs. And so we have brought up our children very differently. We don't want them to go through the same thing, but we definitely teach them a little bit about everything and tell them that this is what we believe in and we believe in. We believe in a God the universe, something definitely greater than us. But we also believe in ourselves. We don't give our power away. To anyone else. We take that back by believing that we've got God in us. We have an inner being in us. I mean, that's probably another podcast and other conversation. Yeah, I really just wanted to let anyone out there know that if they feel that they grew up with a loss of identity, it doesn't have to come from mom and dad and your environment. It becomes within you. With you then growing up looking within yourself and not following the protocol and following what your parents did. And going What do I believe in? Have I ever sat down to think about what do I believe in? Because it was very much like I don't believe in this. I don't believe in that. But I could never really identify with what I didn't believe in. So I used to say that that I was agnostic, then I was like I believe in science. And now it's like I believe in myself and I'm and I'm open I'm open to learning more because if we say that we know it all. Then we don't know anything at all. And I also want to say that I didn't want to believe that there was a heaven outside of this. I believe that heaven is here on Earth, hell and heaven are here and you can make it your hell or you can make it your heaven. So have a think about that. Let me know what you think. Thanks for listening. If you found value in this content, please subscribe to my podcast and head over to Instagram at elated_you to see what I'm getting up to. Bye