Textual Poaching: An Identity Remix

 The Original:

My remix:

Being from Georgia is a part of my identity that has, for most of my life, felt like something with a lot of qualifications involved. I wasn’t born there—but most of my siblings were. I didn’t go to middle school or high school there—but I never felt Utahn enough to embrace the beehive state the way I always embraced the peach state. I wanted to select a medium that would allow me to distinguish my experience and feelings toward Georgia from everyone else’s. That’s where the “Greetings from my Georgia” came from. Because, quite frankly, my Georgia is unique from everyone else’s Georgia. As I reflected on that, I realized how true that is for any aspect of identity. Not everyone’s experience with being female or American or a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or being a daughter or a sister is universal. We all experience our various identities differently than the next person. And, wow, isn’t that special? It means that, no matter how many identities we may share with the next person, we have nuanced ways of expressing and experiencing those roles. There seems to be an infinite number of ways one can be a sister, a disciple, a student, a wife, a Georgian, even. Being unafraid to embrace Georgia as my home and part of my identity has been an ongoing process, and one I don’t expect to be over maybe ever. This assignment has allowed me to reexamine the ways in which I experience one piece of my identity differently than others, and has also helped me cherish and understand that part of my identity even more deeply.