Losing a Culture

There’s a certain compensation for the chaos in my life: I’ve an sense of improved "clarity" of understanding.

This morning I played a song on my computer called "Répondez-moi." As soon as it started I realized something huge.

The story of my life was successfully sold as a screenplay because the clues in the mystery to who I was before being adopted were French.

I know that the Tyrell's household was a disaster for me, but they were not the cause of my problem. The problem was being removed from an exclusively French existence into an English one—that and losing my mother. I know that had I been placed in a French home, I would be fine now but losing my culture and my mother was too much.

That’s it. That’s when this breakdown started. I was 6-8 months old. Again, there was a hint in my determination to change my name to a French one. It’s wonderful, as I embark on this journey of becoming a different person that I will be doing it as a French person.

An interesting fact: BC was the first constituency in North American to open birth records and they did it because local First Nations people won the right in court to know what Tribe they were from—not their parents, but their tribe, because of the impact of being removed from their culture and raised white.   

When that song played this morning, it was like cortisone on an itch; it felt so incredibly soothing to hear French. It’s my true language and culture and I am over-the-moon proud of that. From now on, if you call me Tyrell, I am going to correct you. That is not who I am. You cannot call me Tyrell any more.