This post is part of ROOTS – a series that originates on BlogHer’s NaBloPoMo – see what others are posting on the topic.
Roots: they are the stories that ground you, the food that returns you, the music that comforts you, and the people who know you. Everyone has roots that influence them, even if they don’t consciously know them or can’t access them.
Tuesday, June 11, 2013:
How much does your culture come into play in your day-to-day life?
How much? An awful lot, I would say!
My culture is extremely grounded in the fact that I lived in France for forty years, and that when I moved here, being French was so much part of my identity that I felt very foreign.
Living in a very rural part of the county when I had been a city girl for so many years may have added to my sense of isolation, and then came the diagnosis of autism for our elder, followed very shortly after with the collapse of the relationship with my husband. I needed to cling to something solid. My culture was my backbone, and I had no one left to share it with.
So the other part of my identity, being Jewish became even more important. Thankfully, there was a strong Jewish community in my town, and I affirmed and grounded myself in that part of my culture, that was not as foreign anymore, even though I had to adapt to some very significant different customs than from what I had known back in my hometown.
See my other posts of the series:
One Day at a Time 
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