81. How I’m keeping my culture alive while raising my mixed-heritage son abroad

How do you keep your culture alive for your child when they’re growing up somewhere else?

My son is British and German, with Jamaican heritage, and is growing up in southern Germany. As he gets older, I’m realising that raising a mixed-heritage child abroad involves far more than teaching him two languages. It means making deliberate choices about the stories, traditions and parts of myself I want him to carry with him.

In this episode, I talk about:

• passing on British books, nursery rhymes, celebrations and childhood memories

• keeping English alive when I’m now the only person regularly speaking it with him

• helping him feel connected to his Jamaican heritage when there is very little local representation

• watching him develop roots in a place that may never feel quite the same to me

• raising a mixed-race child in a predominantly white environment

• why “I don’t see colour” isn’t enough when the world will see your child differently

• navigating education, belonging and cultural identity in another country

• the beauty and pressure of giving a child more than one culture and sense of home

There is so much richness in raising a child across cultures. But there can also be grief in realising that the traditions they absorb naturally may not be yours, while parts of their heritage could disappear unless you intentionally keep them alive.

This is an honest reflection on language, race, identity and the responsibility I feel to help my son know all the different parts of who he is.

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