Episode 3

[00:00:04] Travel create stories. Unforgettable Stories that can make a smile laugh.

[00:00:09] Or even cry.

[00:00:11] I'm David Calderon and you're listening to out of office. Powered by Contiki. This podcast is for people who love to travel. In each episode we'll be talking about hot topics and intriguing destinations. It's all about the real conversations real stories and real experiences. Today we'll be talking about traveling without labels being true to yourself and getting out of your comfort zone. Can empower us to discover who we are. I'm joined by three guests who are here to talk about their personal journeys blogger and creator of the brand back row travelling in that Richmond social activists her name core and journalist and travel writer Georgina Lawton.

Georgina Lawton

[00:00:48] Welcome to the podcast ladies. Thank you. All right. Now Georgina we're going to start off with you. Now you had a normal lovely childhood but there was always one thing that stood out to you and your family. Can you tell me a bit more about that.

[00:00:59] So I grew up just on the outskirts of London and I had a relatively normal upbringing aside from the fact I didn't look like anybody in my family. I'm tall and I've got curly hair I'm brown skinned and black and mixed race but the rest of my family is completely white. And nobody really spoke about why that was for most of my life until I asked them really what age to the lack of knowledge. And your parents not necessarily answering your questions began to take its toll. So anxieties about my race they kind of gnawed away at me at different points in my life growing up. Even I had this really nice happy childhood. There'll be points when I'll be out in five years old and I realize that you know my mom look different to me and I'd speak to my friends in school and say oh why I'm watching my skin's this color on why you think my mom's not colors I could I was very much aware of it from a young age but then I'd go to my parents and they'd say things like oh you know you're definitely related to us and you're definitely our child and we love you and you don't need to worry about that. But they didn't really ever give me answers as to why I didn't look like them. So these kind of occasional incidents would pop up but just random points in my childhood five years old and 10 years old someone would call me like a derogatory word in the playground and then I'd come back to my aunts and say this has happened why is this happening. And I think my parents just weren't able to really get to the bottom of and of why that was they just weren't able to really kind of engage with my difference at all. They just weren't able to talk about it.

[00:02:20]
Yes they obviously were trying to keep you like in a positive light and I could do it by the same times like not that's giving you the answers that you were kind of.

[00:02:26] But why exactly and like this would happen regularly and it got kind of worse as I got older because you know as you get older you get more cynical so by the time I was about 16 17 I was identifying as mixed race and I was going into central London and south London and being around people that look like me a little bit more often. But then as I kind of ventured into those pockets of London I get more questions and oh what's your mix or like why you mixed race but you don't know what country or from that's really unusual. So as I got older it kind of got more difficult to say oh my parents are white and they definitely my parents just didn't really add up. The older I got yeah.

[00:02:56] You had an instance when you were in a classroom and a teacher pulled you up in front of the class which is my fear of everything just being embarrassed in front of school and being teased is just like watching over you. But how was that for you. What happened.

[00:03:08] Yes. I was quite confident in school had lots of friends and I had quite good relationship with his teachers in my politics teacher and them for some reason in the middle of class one day. She's just looking at the school register and she pulled me up in front of everybody in the classroom silent and she was like Oh I'm just looking down the school register and I can see that the mark down on the on the school system your ethnicity is white. So my parents whenever they entered me into the school system for whatever reasons they couldn't engage with my difference they had done something really stupid because I wasn't passing is why I'm not light skinned I'm not able to to move through the world as a white person and I think for my parents them wanting me to be like them so badly was them you know putting down on the school system that I was white. That was a silly move to make. Definitely. But then my teacher kind of pulled me up on this in front of the whole front of every and then everybody in the year above heard about you you're the guy with the white parents what do you think you're white what's all this about. And it was just really really embarrassing. And it was just not not a good situation to be in and just kind of like yeah dredged up all these insecurities again on your hunt for more answers you did decide to take a DNA test.

[00:04:08] Now when did you first get that idea. When did that kind of come as a this is somebody need to do. Because I'm not getting the answers I want from my parents.

[00:04:15] So I think just in my late teens it was easier just to take my parents words as although I was gonna get from them. And when I was outside of my family I didn't identify as mixed race or black but kind of within the family I was just racist we didn't talk about race until about my difference it was just unspoken about. But then my dad got sick and then all these anxieties I had about me maybe not being related to him or not being relate to my mom they were kind of just like popping up in my mind. So it wasn't till after he passed away that I kind of got these DNA results processed that he'd given me permission to take and then I think a year off to he he'd been he'd been passed away. I finally processed it and then it kind of revealed that I wasn't related to him. I was related to my mom and my brother. I wasn't related to my dad so then that's just like when my world starts a sort of shift and everything sort of felt a lot more difficult after you took that DNA test you did another one to essentially find out where in this vast world that you come from.

[00:05:13] Tell me about that.

[00:05:14] Yeah after the results came out that revealed that me and my dad went related it was really difficult between me my mom and I couldn't really see myself staying in London for the foreseeable future so I decided to go and travel and write and sort of do all these things that I hadn't done as a person of color because I've been too afraid to do that sort of hanging around with people like me dating people that look like me just living in spaces where there's other dark skinned people that's something I'd never done growing up on the outskirts of London is a very white area. And so yeah I decided to leave and travel and then I took a DNA test on the road in Mexico with a company that sent me a DNA test they'd read about my story. So I sort of blogging and writing about it at this point and talking about the link between travel and identity and then this company sent me a DNA test and were like oh you should you know find out more about your origins. So then I did the test I think in Mexico and they posted it to me in Cuba. It was all all over the place and then I got the results when I was in Nicaragua. So that was kind of crazy just kind of taking the test and being all around these different places when all this stuff was going through my head. I was around different types of people and around people that look like me for the first time and I was kind of learning about my own blackness whilst being in countries where blackness was perceived in varying ways. Like in Cuba I was a mulatto in Nicaragua.

[00:06:27] I was just black. And then in New York I was kind of biracial so I was having all these different experiences and having this kind of crash course in blackness while still trying to work out where I was from. And then I got the test results back when I was in Nicaragua and it said I was about 50 percent Nigerian. Okay so I was like okay cool. This is interesting but also a bit of a shock. Like I just had all this stuff going through my mind about where I would be from and not having an identity was kind of my identity in a way. All my life people have in my life to go with white parents and that's the girl who's mixed race doesn't have mix. And then suddenly to have a country. It was satisfying but it was also kind of anticlimactic in a way. I was like I was in all these different blends. It's just one area of Africa in Nigeria. And I've got a lot of Nigerian friends from London as well and they were all like oh yes we're sisters.

[00:07:11] Well well I was just like oh OK that's it.

[00:07:14] Then call her with the knowledge of knowing that you're half Nigerian. Have you gone to visit Nigerian hopes of trying to connect with a new part of your identity. Have you done that yet or is it on the books to try to.

[00:07:25] Definitely on the books this year I really would like to go on some sort of Heritage Tour. That's something I'd love to get involved in this year and maybe see if I can go to Nigeria and just kind of get in touch with some part of my heritage. Of course that's not really going to be the same as my Nigerian friends who've grown up with that cultural knowledge but it'll be maybe a taster of just what we've missed out on.

[00:07:45] HORN um so you were diagnosed with condition when you were 12. Can you tell me a little bit more about that and your story.

[00:07:51] First what I want to say starts all right. She's just sat here listening to you and I can just listen to you all day. I'm sorry.

[00:08:00] I can't honestly because I'm like I'm half Punjabi and a half Tanzanian. But I've always gone to Punjab and I've never been to Tanzania. So I really want to go. Yeah. So I have polycystic ovaries and it's a condition that affects the way that the ovaries work.

[00:08:17]
So ovulation can be quite hard. It can be quite difficult for me so ovulate which causes irregular periods it causes infertility and I literally just have more antigens in my body than any other woman words which causes facial hair and PCOS when I was first diagnosed I thought it was a very rare condition and grown up I realized one in five people with ovaries actually have one in five really one in five used to be one in ten but so many people have it they even trans men too and yeah when I first got diagnosed I thought I was dying of a rare disease I didn't want cackling about that. But yeah I was dying of very rare disease because no one spoke about it. The celebrities out there that have it Victoria Beckham has it.

[00:09:04] No way. It really like. I'm trusting she keeps it on the DL son.
 

[00:09:08] Now talk to me about the transition about wanting to remove your beard because of bullying and becoming a spokesperson for the body positivity movement when a person's been ridiculed and abused all their life and they've gotten to a point where you know they're backs up against a wall and they've got their hands up and you know they don't see themselves moving in any which way. For me as a person in that situation I could either drown in this deep dark hole of depression suicide and self-harm that I was in or I could say fuck this what I'm going to live it for me you know I'm going to live life how I want to I'm going to adorn myself whether I want to. I have tried living with you know through people's opinions and expectations of me and I still can't please them. So literally middle finger up to society I'm going to live how I want to live. And at the age of 16 you're trying to you know socialize have a social life go out with friends etc. But for me that's when I started just accepting my battle. It was booze I went through years of trying to remove and change the way I looked remove my facial and any which way I could. And you know I'm a bit obviously wanted to be there because it came back with a vengeance.

[00:10:26] Aligner guy really I know I know. She was like Bitch I'm coming over.

[00:10:31] So I just got sick and tired of always being put down always trying to change myself and I got to a point on all sides you know I'm going to just be me at the age of 16 I thought Okay this is a time where I'm just going to re-evaluate myself in the relationship I have with my body and you know who thinks about that at the age of 16. You know it's hard. Obviously I had like the 5 o'clock shadow half earn a little stubble half an hour. OK. This feels good. And then I just thought you know what you've gotten this far. Now I just carry on growing your hair out. Just see how it goes see how it looks.

[00:11:05] Yeah. And then it just grew and I realized that now that I've actually decided to keep my beard life's gonna be a lot harder. You know I had obviously a pressure from society and these Eurocentric beauty standards I had pressure from my family and friends to look a certain way and I mean I don't look like what a regular woman looks like. But what is normal.

[00:11:32] You look amazing. I know I do.

[00:11:35] It's taken a long time for me to build a relationship with myself and actually realize you know that you do look different you know. But your difference is beautiful. And you know it's a different that's allowed you to be powerful and strong and you know you've made a life for yourself where you know body shaming and bullying is universal and so many people go through it. And you've made a life for yourself where you're not actually able to help people through your story. You know my life now has got nothing to do with my beard my beard is just a part of me just like my arm is. Yeah. But the message that I have that's what's important. I have tomorrow my battles to go naturally because I went physically remove her my message I'll still say this stay the same.

[00:18:11] What challenges did you encounter. Were there any net negative stereotyping because of your size.

[00:18:16] I definitely feel like I get a lot of stereotypes not only because of my size but also because I'm black. So that is something that I deal with specifically in Asia when it comes to body type as well. They are still very much into the like smaller is better and lighter is is right here they mean. So if I'm travelling through Asia as a black person and they put whiteness above everything else that's already an issue here they mean. But then if I'm traveling as a fat black person like obviously in certain countries in Asia the smaller you are the better. So it's being light and super small is like what is socially acceptable I'm on the opposite spectrum of that.

[00:19:03] However I haven't had too many like negative experiences. I feel like regardless of if I'm in the States or if I'm in Asia or Athens if I'm in Europe people are sometimes going to stare at my body and I'm going to feel otherwise you know. But it doesn't necessarily matter where I am because my body type is undesirable everywhere too. Yeah I mean it's just not what people consider beautiful like I consider it heartbreaking to hear actually you are beautiful.

[00:19:36] Right.

[00:19:37] Right. Of course it's just getting other people to kind of view your beauty the way that you do. I think that that can be really difficult but once you kind of align yourself to the fact that those opinions don't matter then it's quite freeing. So it's amazing. And that sounds like she's been able to do that.

[00:19:53] Totally aligner that's also another thing to wear for me and my platform like my size and my fat is like the except acceptable fat like I'm not so big that it's unacceptable. So people that have bodies that are fat like mine are easily going to be able to get more representation are going to be able to say oh I was featured in Teen Vogue or something but I do want to also mention that there are lots of different types of fat and there is still a lot of stigma with people who have bodies bigger than mine and there's still a lack of representation in that. And that is definitely something that I'm actively trying to change by being more diverse even in the images of fat women that I'm showing on my platform.

[00:20:43]
No and I think that's definitely something to be applauded for you to have created this platform where you can showcase this. But right now I kind of like open it up to everyone right here right now. So feel free to chime in but one of the first things I want to talk about is self-love. I think it's important to practice tough love and to not let other people's opinions bother you so no matter where you are in the world. How do you practice self-love while travelling.

[00:21:07] I mean it's very easy to say oh just love yourself and you'll be fine. I mean it's very easy to say that but how does someone find self-love when they've gone through so much trauma they've gone through so much abuse and they've got you know they just hit rock bottom and they don't see a way out. It's the hardest thing to do and.
 

[00:21:26] I want to say just by being kind to yourself it makes the world of a difference.

[00:21:34] And for me I had to build a relationship with myself. You know who I am you know why am I here what's my purpose. What do I want to do with my life. How do I make myself happy.

[00:21:45] You know we as people we spend our lives abiding by other people's opinions trying to make them happy. But you know we even sure ensure things like our cause and other homely things but when how can we ensure ourselves when we hit rock bottom like Oh when we break down you know what can we do for ourselves and it's like just be kind to yourself you know speak kindly to yourself because I feel like I speak about a lot of things that are quite triggering and I believe that I need to do so because if I don't I'm afraid that it will become a taboo topic.

[00:22:19] So things like self harm it can be very physical but it can be very mental as well. You know talking to yourself in a negative way it's not self harm. And I think we need to be able to change narratives of what the norm is and you know realize that you know we as people we're very diverse we're very different and it's our differences that make this society flourish and it's the differences that we have within ourselves that we need to celebrate for this society to be what it is. And you know the more we realized that and that we actually add value to this world I think that's when we're able to find that self value to say this is who I am. Fuck anyone that doesn't understand who I am or why I'm here to do.

[00:22:55] But I understand it. I know why I'm here to do and I'm going to live life how I want to that was well said who who's ready to follow that guy.

[00:23:05] I think that self-love is a journey and I think slowly being a part of this body positive community. The misconception is that like you're you're always going to love yourself You're always going to love your body and like self-love is like a destination that you get there and once you're there you're just staying there forever and just always just in love with yourself. But that's not the truth. Like everyone has good days and bad days. And I think the key is just appreciating the small things give yourself the grace to know that everyday is not going to be a self-love day and every day you're not going to look in the mirror and be obsessed with yourself but you'll be able to point out one great thing that you love about yourself that day or one thing that you're appreciative about that day and that will hopefully become like a snowball effect and help you see the positive things.

[00:24:00] I remember one day sitting on my bed just sort of contemplating just self-love and sort of thinking about it. What does it mean to me and I think on my down day one day could your thoughts and your words that you say to us all very powerful your thoughts are very powerful. And I remember sitting on my bed one day and I thought to myself how dare I not love my body when I'm sleeping like Maha is being I'm not doing anything. My body is fighting for me to survive. I'm not doing anything and my heart is beating my lungs are inhaling and exhaling like my blood is flowing through my body when I'm cut like my body is healing my car you know my body is fighting for me to just carry on living this life. How can I not love something that is rooting for me to live.

[00:24:44] That's so true. And I think to love yourself these days in an age of sort of Instagram sort of homogenous models and you know society telling us we have to be one way as a woman of color to love yourself is definitely a radical. Yes. And to love yourself whilst you're traveling it's so freeing. And for me learning how to love myself was just kind of listening to what I wanted to do each day and just slowing things right down. And I think travel for me has been this kind of really sort of reflective meditative process where I could grieve and I could think about the person I wanted to be and the woman of color that I wanted to be and the kind of writing I wanted to produce and the places I wanted to go and the books I wanted to read and that has been granted to me because I've really just slowed things down and I know not everybody gets the chance to travel slowly or live in different countries for months at a time. But for me it was really important to not rush around and country tech and sort of you know sightsee all the time but to kind of have a base and to wake up each morning and just check in with myself and think What do I want to do today. I want to write something do I want to build my brand on Instagram. Do I want to go make friends. I'm just constantly listening to myself and also realizing that yeah. And was saying not every day is going to be a self-love day some days are going to be more difficult than others but it's just that consistent checking in with yourself to find out you know how do I feel today what I want to do what is it I want to produce where do I want to go in the next few weeks and few months few years whatever. So for me yeah travel has been really kind of restorative and just allowing me to reflect and think about the kind of person I am and who I want to be in terms of travelling and how it can empower you.

[00:26:18] How has travelling because everyone here has done their fair amount of traveling and has also I have come to grips of kind of like you know self love or like identity. How has travelling empower you to be who you are to be more true to yourself or did you find. Did you think you found yourself while travelling.

[00:26:36] Yeah it's really interesting. People talk about finding yourself because it's like is there this destination that you have to reach or is it just kind of like a gradual journey that everybody is on and I think for me traveling I just learned a lot more about myself and the kind of work I want to produce and the kind of person I want to be because also it takes you out of your comfort zone because if says you if you go traveling by yourself you're to have your family you'd have your friends you don't have anything that essentially makes you who you are your you you.

[00:27:01] Exactly. Other thoughts.

[00:27:03] Yeah. Definitely so I just took myself to New York. I always wanted to live in New York. So when I kind of got these DNA test results I was like Right I'm just gonna go and travel I'm gonna start in New York. I always wanted to live this kind of girl style writer's life. That was really difficult to get visas. I was just there for a few months and then from there then I kind of went to South America and in Costa Rica and Nicaragua and Cuba and all these other places. But it was definitely really really difficult just taking myself off with no plan and kind of no network in New York I had like one friend I'd met in Colombia like a few months before and I found it really empowering in the way that I knew that I had to rely on myself I couldn't sort of count on anybody else to help me out when you know the rent was due or to help me out when I you know Mr. Fly or helped me out when I needed to go out for dinner with somebody and there was anyone around. I just start to do these things myself and I realized that actually I quite like going for meals out in restaurants by myself on the beach if there's no one around. I'm fine with that and I quite like not knowing what I'm going to do each morning and I quite like waking up and deciding to write something for my blog on a whim and then the next day deciding to move on to another place. So I found out all these things about myself that kind of I'd been burying a little bit more in London because once you're in a situation where everybody's doing the same thing it becomes very difficult to leave and say Actually I don't really want to do the nine to five or I don't really want to get up and go on the tube every morning I'd quite like to do something else cause all your friends say oh no but this is what everyone does and you know we're going to get a house next year and we're gonna get this job next year and you kind of just become part of the furniture as well. You just kind of start doing stuff that everybody else is doing. So once I took myself out of that situation for a while I realized that actually I could make maybe a career out of freelancing and writing and I could make sort of a brand out of travel and identity and just being in a different situation and being around other travelers and other people that were maybe doing other things that were similar. I met lots people that also were making money from Instagram or from blogging or from writing or designers that were working on the go and it just showed me that that is a viable career route as well and if you want to live like that that's totally fine it doesn't make you any better or any worse than all of your friends back home doing you know a 9 to 5 job it's just people have different paths and once you take yourself out of kind of the situation where everyone's doing one thing you can see that perhaps you know there's another route for you and that's totally okay. So I found that really liberating and really empowering. And even though now I'm back in London it's something that I know that I can go back to I can go back to sort of living on the road and I can go back to freelancing as I go. And it's fine to have those options just travelling kind of white in that perspective for me and made me see that there are other routes other than being stationary and just working in a city for you know years a time you couldn't you can mix it up you can leave for a bit you can come back it's not the end of the world and people kind of try and persuade you that perhaps it's not the best route for you but it's totally fine you don't need to stress about it because there are so many routes for so many people we don't know have to do the same thing.

[00:29:48] Exactly and I think for me like I mean I know my mom and dad would love me to get into business and lawyer.

[00:29:56] I'm just life. No you know I'm more of a doer and go guy like I'm quite feisty with it because like I know that my image is needed and I know that someone that looks very different and that's confident within fearless self empowered with it is needed.

 [00:30:13] So me traveling I'm like well I'm here bear shares you know sort of thing that's a stance I take on it like even being present as someone I look so different I think that's a revolutionary move in itself and being able to travel like I love meeting new people you know and I love hearing about people's lives and you know experiencing other people's cultures and ethnicities and sort of different food etc. and like just being able to travel it sort of freed my mind and it made me realize even more that this world is actually a lot more diverse than I knew that it would be. And also to realize that everyone is sort of on the.

[00:30:54]
Everyone just wants to be happy regardless of where they are in their lives and I think traveling has allowed me to you know connect to all these amazing people in the most wondrous way and also realize that we're not all that different we look different but in essence we just want to be happy and find love and be loved.

[00:31:13] That's so true. I think that a lot of people say that you find yourself when you travel. I personally have felt that I've learned more about myself while traveling. I haven't really found myself like Georgina said I don't think that like my identity is some destination that I'm still searching for or anything like that. But I think that every day while I'm on the road right now I'm a digital nomad. So I'm traveling full time. It's definitely a journey pun intended but well I definitely feel like each day I'm learning something about whatever city or country that I'm in and in that I'm learning more about myself I'm also confronting different like preconceived notions that I had or biases that I had for certain countries or for certain people. So not only am I learning more about different cultures and different food in different countries but I'm also learning more about myself travel for me is just me learning more about myself while I'm learning more about other people and other cultures and that kind of gives me the freedom to grow into change because I feel like as long as we're living we're going to be constantly changing and growing and I feel like that's something that we should be striving to do because when we change and we grow that is when we're really living life and you know confronting what's in front of us and really being present will say well I said Well thank you very much ladies thank you for taking part in today's episode of Real talk.

[00:32:54] Thank you. Thanks for having us. Thank you so much for having us.

[00:33:00] Thank you so much to my guests and that rich man hard on core and Georgina Latin for sharing their stories on traveling without labels. That's it for me out of office. Powered by Kentucky. Don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss the next episode. I'll see you then.