My Jamaican and St. Lucian ancestors would cock their heads back and kiss their teeth in disbelief (or pride) about my recent choice to take a career sabbatical. An “adult gap yah (year).” A Westerner is what they’d call me. And honestly, they’d be right in saying so. In the 1950s, my grandfather and his seed boldly travelled to a new territory — London, England. It was a process that required sacrificing comfort, familiarity, time, money, and energy. In some ways, his sacrificial behaviour is mimicked in my journey. Except there’s one big difference — privilege.
After various career paths and lifetimes over many decades that wound from the 1950s into the 2000s, he found his way to my deeply empathetic grandmother, who had already seen so much for someone so young. With the yin and yang of his hard-headed stubbornness and her soft fragility, they strived to dig roots deep in the UK and, later, my grandfather’s home country, St. Lucia. They built a legacy for their future family to savour under the ironic name ‘Heritage.’ And boy, did we enjoy it. Summer holidays were spent peering out of a plane window on the way to St. Lucia, pointing out sea and land. My mum would prompt us to label each and beam with pride when correct. Rows and rows of Caribbean English parents and children waved goodbye to European lands to welcome the land of sunshine, palm trees, and family.
In some ways, tenacity and the drive to achieve are also our heritage, as I saw my mother work tirelessly as a single parent so we weren’t left wanting. She even ensured she had some left over for us to experience the gift of travel. Travel was more affordable back then, but her efforts don’t go over my head. Travel is a luxury, and even though our life wasn’t the most luxurious as council estate-ers and we didn’t travel in particularly extravagant ways, it was a luxury that she wanted her girls to have. We’d explore the Caribbean, Miami, Florida, and Disneyworld. We might’ve stayed with family usually and eaten sweaty sandwiches at Disneyworld (that I was upset about at the time), but we were there, god dammit. And in hindsight, it warms my heart to think of her tiredly making and packing those sandwiches before putting on a face so we’d enjoy the day. In retrospect, as an adult that can barely keep house plants (or at times myself) alive, I know it couldn’t have been easy to keep showing up. I saw glimpses of the struggle every now and then in deep sighs, wiped tears and bed rot days.
Despite our differences, she’s the one who taught me to roll my sleeves up, work hard for what it is that I want, not let a man side track me, and courageously forge my path. She left my dad with two children when many others would’ve stayed, she got married and then divorced when it no longer suited her, she had a bald head before bald heads were in fashion, and she went to University in her mid to late 30s to rebrand herself. She has brought herself back from dark times repeatedly — choosing herself even when it felt like the scariest option.
She is a trailblazer, and I am eternally grateful for her and her experiences because there would be no me in every sense without her. Whether she knows it or not, she planted the seed for me to live my most authentic life many moons ago by being so truly herself. I was always going to move to Berlin and then later quit my job to travel the world because I’d been raised by a fearless powerhouse who was also raised by a set of fearless powerhouses. Boldness and bravery course through my veins. It was inevitable.
After years and generations of sacrifice and hard work, I feel that I can rewrite this chapter of our history a little bit and use the privilege I have to fucking enjoy. I’ve worked hard for it too but in this lifetime, there is peace, softness, and choice. And I feel wholly blessed to be able to absorb this experience for all that it is. I’m approaching it with maximum curiosity. I just wish my grandad were alive to see how much I’ve grown and blossomed. From the hormone-filled, teary-eyed teenager he dropped off at University to almost thirty years old travelling the world alone!? What a difference a decade makes.
You can read more articles by Zhané Hylton in her Medium.