I Didn’t Lose My British Identity… I Expanded It

For most of my life, I never really thought about my identity on a deeper level.

I was British. It wasn’t something I questioned or analysed; it was simply the life I’d always known. Sunday roasts, cups of tea, school dinners, apologising when somebody else walked into me, and instinctively joining the back of a queue without giving it a second thought. Those things never felt particularly British growing up, they just felt normal.

It wasn’t until I married my husband, Dammy, that I realised something I’d never really considered before.

What we often call normal is simply what is familiar.

That realisation didn’t make me feel any less British. If anything, it made me appreciate my own culture even more. But it also opened the door to appreciating somebody else’s.

Before meeting Dammy, Nigeria simply wasn’t part of my everyday life. Like many people, my understanding of it came from snippets on the news, things I’d occasionally read online or the little I’d learnt at school. I didn’t have strong opinions about the country; I just didn’t have a personal connection to it.

Then I met the man who would become my husband.

Almost overnight, Nigeria stopped being a place on a map. It became the country that had shaped the person I loved. It became the place my children’s grandparents call home, where their uncles, aunties, and cousins live, and where so much of our family’s story began long before I was part of it.

When somewhere becomes personal, curiosity follows naturally.

I wanted to understand the country that had shaped my husband. I wanted to understand the traditions he grew up with, the food he loved, the values that mattered to him and the stories behind them. Not because anyone expected me to, and certainly not because I felt I had to. I wanted to understand the people I loved, and to do that, I realised I also needed to understand the culture that had shaped them.

Over the years, that curiosity has quietly changed me.

Not by replacing who I was, but by expanding it.

Some of those changes have been wonderfully ordinary. I still remember the first time I sprinkled a little Cameroon pepper into a spaghetti bolognese. Not because Dammy suggested it - he doesn’t even like bolognese! But because one day I simply wondered what it would taste like.

I loved it, and to my surprise, so did the children.

Looking back though, it was never really about the pepper at all.

It was about realising how often we decide we won’t like something we’ve never actually tried.

Five years ago, I would’ve described myself as an incredibly fussy eater. Today, I still love a proper roast dinner, pie and mash and all the comfort foods I grew up with. But alongside them, I genuinely enjoy pepper soup, yam, egusi soup, and more! My dinner table hasn’t become less British, it’s simply become richer.

Sometimes the answer is no. Sometimes you try something and decide it isn’t for you. But sometimes you discover something wonderful that you’d never have experienced if you’d dismissed it simply because it was unfamiliar.

And I’ll be honest, there are still aspects of Nigerian culture that feel unfamiliar to me. There are traditions, ways of thinking or ways of doing things that I still find difficult to fully understand because they’re so different from the world I grew up in. But I’ve learnt that not understanding something immediately doesn’t mean rejecting it.

Perhaps, with time, I’ll come to appreciate some of those things too. Or perhaps I won’t. And I think that’s okay.

Being open-minded doesn’t mean you have to embrace everything. It doesn’t mean abandoning your own values or pretending every difference is one you’ll naturally connect with. To me, it simply means resisting the temptation to dismiss something just because it’s unfamiliar. It means remaining curious enough to ask questions, to listen and to understand before forming an opinion.

As the years have passed, I’ve realised the biggest changes haven’t been about food or everyday habits at all.

They’ve been about perspective.

Growing up, I rarely questioned why we did things the way we did in Britain. They were simply the way things were. It wasn’t until I became part of a Nigerian family that I started asking questions I’d never thought to ask before.

Why do we celebrate things this way?

Why do we communicate like that?

Why does this tradition matter so much?

Why does that one feel so familiar, even though it comes from a completely different culture?

Those questions didn’t make me reject my own upbringing. Instead, they helped me understand it better. Seeing Britain through my husband’s eyes made me notice things I’d taken for granted all my life, while seeing Nigeria through the eyes of someone who loves it gave me a completely different perspective from the one I’d had before.

One of the greatest lessons my marriage has taught me is that curiosity is far more powerful than assumption.

It’s easy to look at something unfamiliar and dismiss it because it’s different. It’s much harder, but far more rewarding, to ask, “Can you help me understand?”

I’ve found that behind every tradition is a story. Behind every custom is history. Behind every culture are people who love their families, laugh with their friends, mourn their losses, celebrate life’s milestones and want the best for the people they care about.

The details may differ.

The humanity rarely does.

Watching our children grow up has reinforced that lesson every single day. They don’t see Britain and Nigeria as competing identities. To them, both simply belong. One day they’ll ask for a roast dinner, the next they’ll happily eat rice and stew. They’ll hear English, bits of Pidgin and expressions from both sides of the family without thinking twice.

I hope they grow up the same way. Not believing they have to love everything from both cultures, but feeling free to explore both with curiosity, ask questions without fear and decide for themselves what becomes part of who they are.

Sometimes I wish more people could experience the beauty of multiculturalism. Not because I think everyone should live the same life I have, but because I know how much it has enriched mine.

It has taught me that learning from another culture doesn’t require you to abandon your own. It simply asks you to approach the unfamiliar with humility, respect and genuine curiosity.

The more I’ve embraced another culture, the more I’ve appreciated my own. Seeing Britain through Dammy’s eyes has reminded me of the things I love about where I come from, while learning about Nigeria has shown me a country, a people and a culture far richer and more complex than I ever understood before.

Perhaps that’s the real beauty of multiculturalism. It isn’t about becoming the same, pretending our differences don’t exist or losing who we are. It’s about recognising that our differences have something to offer one another. Every culture carries traditions, values, perspectives and ways of seeing the world that we can learn from if we’re willing to listen.

Looking back, I don’t think I’ve spent the last five years becoming less British. I’ve spent the last five years becoming a more curious, more open-minded and, I hope, a more understanding version of myself.

I still feel just as proudly British as I always have. My identity hasn’t been diluted or replaced. It has simply grown.

Because I didn’t lose my British identity.

I expanded it.