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Editor's Letter: How Being Married Helped Me Appreciate & Look Beyond "Black Britishness"

When you get married, people give you advice, pearls of wisdom, guidance and sometimes it is not needed or wanted. When you are getting married, suddenly everyone becomes a marriage expert and while most advice comes with good intentions, sometimes I did wonder why distant family members and friends of friends felt the need to give me their opinions on holy matrimony. However, one of the truest things someone told me was "you find out who you are". So after nearly three months of marriage, I can confirm that it is true, or at the very least, marriage confirms who you are.

So what marriage has proved to me is that I am black British and why I’ve held onto that identity for so long. While both my husband and I are were both born here and have Nigerian parents, our upbringings couldn’t be more different. I never grew up having jollof on a weekly basis or parents trying to convince me down the doctor route because I achieved As in science subjects. I never had a parent switching between English and their native tongue within the same sentence. While of course, I know this is not every Nigerian child’s story, it definitely wasn’t mine.