Negativity

Being raised during the mid to late sixties and seventies I was often the butt of racial jokes as my father being Italian and my mother Australian born but having French descendant grandparents, gave me the look of a dark skinned, dark thick haired sharp thin featured foreigner. During my school years it was hard to verbalise how I felt about being in the minority and because I was born and raised in Australia during that era, I had no history or cultural awareness. Of course in the multi cultural society we live in today so many are proud of their heritage and culture, as I am today also and now even learning my fathers native tongue.

Not knowing how to address my peers to my ethnicity or to get them to understand and portray that I also was an Australian caused such frustration and anger which often resulted in attacks physically on those who would hurl these insults at me.
During the course of my life the term "Wog" was so offensive and even hearing it the other day brought my mind right back to where it once dwelled. In today's generation it's become a racial discrimination (and punishable by law if used incorrectly), but the emphasis has lost it potency. Once it meant you dirty greasy, non English speaking unwanted invader of my country or so I felt. Now it's a word of slang that is used so seldom and has lost the real meaning of what it used to imply.

Now not to get side tracked my whole point is that for me it effected the total and whole perspective of myself, how I viewed myself and was perceived. I was the ugliest, most unwanted, non Australian, useless and good for nothing lowlife ever to walk the face of the earth and I had to deal with these thoughts and emotions on my own. There was no one to discuss this with or who could go into bat on my behalf as I couldn't even communicate the very thoughts or feelings of my youth, they were bottle up tight and were always at the surface waiting to explode.
Often being chosen for a team of compulsory sport at school was so hard to deal with as I was the "wog" who no one wanted!

I had to deal with this through the course of my life and it effected so many views and outlooks on my life of who I was becoming. I made a lot of decisions based on the way I thought of myself and missed many opportunities because I thought I could never be good enough! or was ever needed.
Eventually I learned through all of this that I was made up of more than what I looked like on the outside and my thoughts of self were incorrect after many years of being repulsive not only to others but also to myself.
I see this now as an adult who now lives in such a hugely multicultural society, that all these untruths I used to think of myself, were fears that others had, rejections from others who were lacking in knowledge and their perceptions were forced upon me which then became my own. But only through the positive and consistent words of LIFE spoken to me through the word of God and through those who love and have accepted me for who they see, have I now been enabled to overcome most of the hurdles, and allow the positives to take root in my heart not the negatives that I had developed in my mind.

We are all created equally and beautifully in the sight of God and can stand without shame of culture, breed and race for we are all the same in His sight! Loved and wanted.....HUMAN BEINGS OF EQUAL VALUE

"The mind is like a darkroom, it's where we develop our negatives"