When did you become aware of your own cultural identity?
By Lisa Brosseau

I never really felt a strong connection or sense of belonging to my church, neighborhood or extended family growing up. We lived far from my parents’ families and rarely visited them. My Mom took us to Catholic church and religious education every Sunday, but she left the church in my mid-teens in response to its stance on abortion. I decided not to be confirmed and turned away from organized religion. The first time I felt a sense of cultural identity was in college. I went to a women’s college in the late 1970s. All the leadership positions in the college – staff and students – were held by women. This gave me a vision for what I could be in the “outside world” at a time when there were few women leaders in most organizations. The next time I felt a sense of cultural identity was in 1990 when I moved from the east coast to take a job at the University of Minnesota. I found a place that was welcoming, progressive and committed to the common good. My profession as a public health researcher and educator was full of colleagues and institutions focused on making people’s lives healthier. Encouraged by my soon-to-be husband to attend Unity (I was very skeptical), I also found a home with like-minded people in a spiritual and giving community. The first time a woman minister (Gretchen Thompson) led the service, I knew for sure I had found my spiritual home. Belonging, being accepted, and sharing similar beliefs are so important to one’s wellbeing. I count myself lucky to have found them in Minnesota and at Unity Church.

I am industrial hygienist (workplace health and safety professional). I worked at the University of Minnesota and University of Illinois Chicago as a researcher and educator for my entire career. I grew up in upstate New York and lived in Boston for 12 years before moving to Minnesota. I retired from academia in 2018 but continue to consult part-time. My husband (Allen Giles) and I are avid birders - we try to go at least one new place for birding each year.

An All Our Fullness story about cultural identity. 
By Ann Sax Mabbott

I became superficially aware of cultural difference quite early in life, as I came to the US as a Dutch-Indonesian refugee at the age of five. I was born in Amsterdam, but my parents were born in Indonesia, and considered Indonesia to be their home. When Indonesia gained its independence from the Netherlands in 1949, anyone who was Dutch, or part Dutch as my father was, could no longer live there. We were sponsored for immigration by a Presbyterian church in Pittsburgh.
I grew up eating both Indonesian and Dutch food, and with many stories about life in Indonesia. It wasn't until I was an adult that I learned that the United States was only accepting Dutch Indonesians as long as we were at least 50% European, which my father was.

​An All Our Fullness story about cultural identity.
By Ray Wiedmeyer

It was during a walk around Lake Harriet with a friend that the lightning struck. I am not sure how the conversation had developed but he shared something that day that has stuck with me ever since. He had read an article in The Atlantic entitled “The War on Poverty Is Over. The Rich Won.” 

Now I had never considered myself to be rich, or given much thought to what class we might be floating in. The statistic he shared that day was the amount of savings a “rich” person in America owns – their net worth. I realized that day that we were in the top tier of Americans when one considers wealth. I was shocked. After harboring negative thoughts all these years about the well-to-do, I suddenly found I was, in fact, one of them. 

Over time, I was challenged to realize how we had gotten here. Was it just because we had no kids and were frugal? We were not the beneficiaries of much generational wealth. But we were both able to attend college without accruing debt because the government chipped in much more than it does today. We were able to buy a house within five years of marriage because of a government guaranteed assumable loan in a neighborhood where property values would triple overtime. And we could afford to invest fully in government tax-advantaged savings accounts at home and at work that grew quickly.
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What we didn’t have was the need to work two or three poorly paying jobs just to make ends meet. One of us slipped easily into the burgeoning computer industry, learning on the job, in what would turn out to be a well-paying profession. We were able to move smoothly through life because we were white, educated, and had advantages not everyone had available to them.