The Pride We Carry — Belonging, Shame, and Cultural Identity

What happens when we step outside the culture we were raised in? Between Worlds: Reflections on Culture, Identity, and Living Abroad is a five-part series exploring how life abroad reshapes our sense of self, belonging, and how we relate to others.

Welcome to the third post of this five part series.

Part One: The Culture We Carry: How Our Inner Worlds Shape Life Abroad

Part Two: Masc 2.0 — Rethinking Masculinity Abroad

The Pride We Carry — Belonging, Shame, and Cultural Identity

When I first moved abroad, I imagined I'd be an ambassador for my culture. I thought I'd represent where I came from with pride — that people would see me as an Australian, and that I would feel good about that. But something else showed up instead: discomfort. Self-consciousness. A quiet, gnawing shame. Not just about how others might see me, but about how I've long seen myself.

Growing up in Australia, I carried a cultural inheritance that wasn't always easy to name — a post-colonial sense of inferiority, shaped by the country's historical relationship to the British "motherland." There was an unspoken message that Australian culture was a little rougher, a bit less refined, maybe even a bit embarrassing in the face of European sophistication. That messaging wasn't overt, but it was present — in jokes, in accents, in how we measured value. I didn't know how much of that I'd internalised until I was trying to describe where I was from, in a new language, on a new continent.

Living abroad didn't create that discomfort — it magnified it. It brought those latent feelings of inadequacy and shame to the surface. I found myself hesitating before answering questions about home, deflecting or over-explaining as if I had to justify or soften it. I was suddenly aware of how visible or invisible my Australianness felt, and of the performances I'd unconsciously been giving.

Over time, I began to notice the cost of that performance. Shame, when left unexamined, makes us shrink. It made me careful about how much of myself I shared, or how strongly I identified with the culture I came from. But pride — not boastfulness, but rootedness — makes us expansive. When I stopped trying to manage the image and started paying attention to what I actually value in my cultural identity, I discovered more complexity than I had allowed myself to feel. There's room for critique, and there's room for pride.

This post is about that tension. About how being far from home can intensify the feelings we've carried all along. And about how choosing pride, even in the face of nuance or discomfort, can be an act of reclaiming.

Reflective Exercises

1. What messages about your culture did you receive growing up — from school, media, family, or community?

2. How have those messages influenced your sense of cultural pride or shame?

3. When you talk about where you're from, what do you highlight? What do you downplay or leave out?

4. Have you ever caught yourself performing or managing your cultural identity? What would it be like to show up more authentically?

Find and Reclaim

Choose one cultural habit, tradition, or value from your background that you feel conflicted about. Journal freely: Where does the discomfort come from? Is it internal, external, or both? Can you find any personal meaning or beauty in it that you hadn't noticed before?

Share something about your cultural identity this week — with a friend, on social media, or even just aloud to yourself — that you usually keep quiet. Don't explain it away. Let it take up space.

Next week:

In next week's blog post, Excuse Me, I Was Speaking" — Cultural Scripts for Communication, I unpack how our cultural scripts around communication shape us. It's about the unspoken rules of communication we grow up with, what happens when those rules don't translate across cultures and how we can better understand each other in multicultural spaces.

About this series: Between Worlds: Reflections on Culture, Identity, and Living Abroad is a five-part blog series exploring the often-unseen emotional and psychological layers of life between cultures. Drawing from my own experiences living abroad and working as a therapist with international clients, these posts explore how identity, communication, belonging, and values shift when we step outside the familiar. Each piece blends personal reflection with questions and exercises to help you explore your own journey — whether you're a seasoned expat, a newcomer, or simply curious about the complexities of cultural life.