Beyond Colonial Guilt: A Dual Inheritance
Reconciling Heritage, Healing, and the Art of Belonging
Excerpt:
In this essay, I explore the quiet guilt and confusion that grew from my time at UCLA — how learning about systemic oppression left me feeling voiceless, and how, in trying to respect others’ stories, I began to lose my own. As a descendant of Cockney Irish laborers and European settlers, I carry a dual inheritance: both oppressed and oppressor, survivor and participant. Through reflection and art, I’m learning how to hold both truths — to reclaim my heritage without denying the pain it’s tied to. This piece is about that process: the reckoning, the reconciliation, and the healing that comes from creating beauty out of contradiction.
The Silence of College Years
When I was at UCLA, surrounded by brilliant voices from marginalized communities, I often felt like I should shrink. I carried guilt for what my ancestors had done — for systems of oppression I had indirectly inherited. I wanted to respect the space of others, to honor their reclamations. But in the process, I felt compelled to quiet my own voice.
I became cautious with my words — uncertain of what I should or shouldn’t say. I struggled with language, afraid that any attempt to engage might be misread or cause harm. I understand now that this stemmed from my own insecurity, but regardless, over time, I began to silence myself. And beneath that silence was a deeper unease — as if the culture around me, the collective reclamation of marginalized voices, had replaced my own sense of identity. I admired their strength and truth, but in the shadows of that awakening, I began to hide my culture out of shame.
As a heterosexual woman — and an older student — I struggled to find my community. Don’t get me wrong, I made some wonderful, lifelong friends along the way, people I still hold dear. But even within those friendships, I often felt slightly out of place — like there was an invisible, unspoken line between us.
That line wasn’t caused by any conflict or tension. Most of my close friends were LGBTQ+ or people of color, and those relationships deeply enriched my life. But they also made me hyper-aware of our cultural and social differences, especially within the context of what we were studying. Because our discussions at UCLA often centered on race, gender, and systemic power — that awareness became a constant undercurrent. Every reading, every conversation, was a reminder of what white colonial systems had done — the harm, the dominance, the silence that followed.
I agreed wholeheartedly with the need to confront those truths. But the deeper I went, the more conflicted I became about my own cultural identity. I felt included, but only up to a point — conscious that I would always stand on the other side of that history, —haunted by self-inflicted erasure. It was a line I felt, but not one that necessarily existed — at least not for my colleagues. It’s important to note this, because it came from my own awareness and sensitivity to imbalance and injustice coupled with my desperate need of cultural grounding.
Pulled Under by History
At times, as we were collectively raising up marginalized communities — which was both necessary and long overdue — it felt to me that we were quietly invalidating others. There was an undertone that blurred the line between condemning historical systems and condemning the cultural identity of the people connected to them.
In those classrooms at UCLA, surrounded by difficult and important conversations, I often felt pulled under by that undercurrent — because of the weight of history pressing on all of us. For me, it became personal. It felt as though my entire cultural identity had come under scrutiny. I carried shame — a heavy, aching kind of shame — for the harm done by people who looked like me. I didn’t know what parts of my heritage I was allowed to honor or what traditions I could pass to my children without guilt. As I began to distance myself from my own people, I felt I had no cultural home.
Looking back, I understand that this dissonance had to happen. I needed to confront the grief and the guilt to find clarity. That process was my identity crisis, and also my evolution. Through it, I began to see that love for one’s culture doesn’t have to mean denial of another’s pain. I could honor my ancestors — the poor laborers, miners, and mothers who fought to survive — while also acknowledging the harm done by others in the same lineage. I could love the Black Hills my family cherished while grieving what was taken from Indigenous peoples.
That paradox is the truth of history: every culture carries both beauty and violence, resilience and harm. We can’t undo the past, but we can choose how to live with it — what to keep, what to release, what to grow from. That’s what I try to do now: to reclaim what nourishes and let go of what wounds. That’s what growth looks like.
And that, I’ve realized, is exactly what I do through art. My paintings hold all of it — the contradictions, the reverence, the reconciliation. On the canvas, I don’t have to choose between shame and pride, oppressor and oppressed, dark and light. They coexist, as they do in me.
A Dual Inheritance
As a descendant of Cockney Irish, I know cultural shame on that side as well. At the turn of the 19th century, my ancestors were labeled “dirty Irish” in the East End of London, pushed into slums, treated as lesser. That story lives deep within our DNA.
My family fought with all their grit to rise above those stereotypes. My grandmother’s immaculate home — so clean you could literally eat off the floors — was not just pride, it was survival. I understand now that her obsessive cleanliness was a fight against erasure — a fight against shame.
And yet, my story doesn’t stop there. My heritage also ties me to colonizers, to systems of power that harmed others. This is what makes my inheritance so complicated: I am both oppressor and oppressed. On one hand, my ancestors bore the weight of poverty, displacement, and stigma. On the other, they benefited from — and in some cases participated in — structures of dominance.
Whether directly or indirectly, we carry the shame. Even if the actions were generations before us, they ripple forward into how we are seen, how we see ourselves, and how we either hide or embrace our culture. My dual inheritance is also, in many ways, a shared inheritance — because the weight of shame and the strength of resilience ripple through generations, not only my own.
The Weight of Colonial Guilt
That inherited shame doesn’t just belong to me — it echoes through many of us. Colonial guilt doesn’t silence; it distorts. It tempts us to distance ourselves from our own heritage instead of transforming how we understand it. It makes us question what we’re allowed to love, what we’re allowed to reclaim. And in that questioning, we risk losing the pride and belonging that come with knowing who we are and where we come from.
For me, it wasn’t only that my culture was erased — it had to be hidden. Hidden out of embarrassment, hidden out of shame for the actions of generations before me. And in hiding it, I lost parts of myself. I lost the songs, the pride, the rituals, the sense of belonging that comes with community and lineage.
But I am reclaiming that now — not with defensiveness or denial, but with love and forgiveness. I am learning to embrace my family’s heritage with open hands, to see it not as a stain but as a story, one I can tell truthfully and tenderly. And in doing so, I am also honoring the river of subcultures that have flowed into me, my husband, and our children’s lives — the ideals, influences, and practices that have woven themselves into who we are, a living blend of past and present cultures breathing together.
This blending is visible in my art — in its layers, textures, and colors that echo both my lineage and the diversity of the world around me. This is not about separation, because separation only breeds disparity and resentment. My goal is blending — to stand out culturally, yes, but to do so as a tapestry, woven of my family’s heritage and the other cultures I respect, embrace, and claim as part of me.
That’s what I paint: the meeting of histories, the coexistence of contrast. The way color and form can collide without canceling each other out. That paradox — oppressor and oppressed, shame and resilience — is not something I can resolve with logic alone. I work it out in my art. On the canvas, I let both sides speak: the splintering shame of oppression, the blooming resilience of survival. The dark weight of being tied to oppression, and the fierce grit of rising from it. I weave those contradictions into color and form, into something that refuses to be reduced to one side of history.
Clarifying What This Isn’t
I want to be clear: I don’t want to go back. Not to the stories we were taught in school. Not to a colonial version of American culture that erased the histories of marginalized people and told only part of the truth. That version of “heritage” was never whole, and it can’t be our destination now.
What I see — and what I’ve lived — is that we are in the midst of a cultural identity crisis. Our collective longing for equality has collided with our need for belonging. People of every background are trying to find footing in both equality and identity — searching for a way to love their culture without diminishing another’s.
Cultural identity is not a luxury; it’s a form of survival. It shapes our foods, our stories, our languages, our art — the very ways we understand ourselves. We need to allow space for all of it: for reparations and reclamation to coexist, for pride and accountability to live side by side.
In my own journey, through education and through art, I’ve learned that I can hold both truths. I can support the voices of marginalized people while also embracing my heritage — Danish, Irish, English, and more — with love, curiosity, and compassion. I can honor the beauty in other cultures while recognizing how deeply those cultures have influenced and enriched my own.
This, to me, is where we’re struggling as a nation. Many white people, uncertain of how to love their culture responsibly, have turned fear into resistance. But the answer isn’t retreating to the “good old days.” It’s learning how to stand in the present — grounded in our histories, respectful of others, willing to evolve.
Closing Vision
If guilt keeps us paralyzed, creation sets us free. The civil unrest we feel today, I believe, is rooted in this very tension: the inability to embrace our culture without shame, the unresolved conflict of oppressor and oppressed living side by side in our blood. We cannot heal by erasing ourselves. We must exist together — all cultures side by side — each embracing truth with honesty and responsibility, but also with compassion and pride.
Through art, story, and connection, I am reclaiming my heritage — not in opposition to others, but alongside them. Not to erase, but to create. And in that act of creation, I believe we can all begin to find our way home.
Splinter & Bloom — a continuing story of art, memory, and meaning