I want to tell you a brief story about my journey as an eldest daughter…

Yasin here… quick question, when did you first realise you were going to lead a different life from my non-immigrant peers? For me, it was at the age of 11 when I had to prioritise babysitting my 2-year-old brother while my parents worked / did other tasks. I bet you’re thinking “poor girl”.   Or perhaps you’re thinking “gosh, this was/is my life”.                             

Perhaps you’re also an eldest daughter from an immigrant home, either way I want to encourage you to relax whilst reading this.  You deserve it, we all deserve to rest.   It’s part of human life.  Resting is the only way we can better ourselves, I mean you need energy to cook, clean, be emotionally available for the whole family, be a second mother, pull your hair out and not to forget, be financially stable from the age of 18 to provide for everyone and their grandma.  These are some of the work experiences that come with being an eldest immigrant daughter. If you were lucky enough to have not experienced any of the above… PLEASE TEACH ME!

Maybe you grew up in a house where resting was a taboo. For me at least, staying in bed past 8am on a weekend could have caused an intervention to be held by my parents and all the village aunties, their friends and pet goats. Yes, it didn’t matter if you were suffering from anaemia and you genuinely had ZERO energy to stand up. As long as that cleaning music was played (if you know you know), you had to Usain Bolt it out of bed and get ready to make the house sparkle. I’ll say 99% of eldest daughters have master’s degrees in cleaning & housekeeping. Damn some of us even have PhDs. Call me Dr Yas.

Speaking of doctors. Someone needs to tell our parents that we cannot all be doctors. Maybe some of us, some of being me, want to enjoy life, stay in bed past 8am and be a freelancer. I’m really not asking for much. That conversation is for another day. Anyway, it’s 4:31am and although I don’t have to be up early tomorrow. I’m going to run off, I’ll most likely be up by 10am. Yes, I’m grown now. I can sleep past 8am. They can’t stop me.