Evie Muir: “I found a safe place, but I still have unanswered questions”

The founder and author on dealing with the top of the pile, a Jamaican homecoming and understanding working class tensions

Hi, welcome back to Mixed Messages! We’re back from our break and speaking to Peaks of Colour founder and nature writer Evie Muir, who is of mixed Caribbean and white British heritage. Evie has just released her first book Radical Rest: Notes on Burnout, Healing and Hopeful Futures, a blueprint for change in a world that’s over-worked and under-resourced. Keep your eyes peeled on Thursday when we’re releasing an exclusive extract from Radical Rest, as well as giving you the chance to win a copy. Read Evie’s story below.

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How do you describe your background?

It changes depending on what room I’m in and how much energy I have to explain it. The short and sweet version is dual-heritage, Caribbean-British. I give so little thought to it nowadays. I only ever seem to be asked in a context where I’m like ‘who the fuck are you to be asking this anyway?’

My racialised identity rarely feels like the reason I’m in a space as opposed to my trauma and my experiences of gender violence and domestic abuse. A big part of it is convenient for me too. In therapy, I think of what’s on top of the pile that I’m dealing with. If I hadn’t experienced gender violence, the confusion of being mixed-race would be higher up there, but because it’s not the thing keeping me up at night, it falls lower down the pile. 

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Did you have a connection to your Black heritage?

My mum and dad separated when she was pregnant with my brother because he was violent. My mum got a restraining order when I was five, and he died when I was eight. I have mostly negative memories of my dad. I can project a lot of empathy onto him – he was part of that Black Windrush generation. He must have had to adapt, and maybe that’s what led him to be this extremely angry guy with unprocessed emotions.

He left so much absence and a lot of unanswered questions. Part-truths and part-lies have been woven. He stereotypically had a lot of kids older than us, and he lied and said some were his siblings. I don't believe I've met any of them, now I’m weirdly in touch with them via Facebook. There was a point where I thought ‘this is it, we're going to be able to find out more about our heritage.’ I tried to go down the ancestry.com side of things, but you need dates and we don’t know that from my dad’s side.

We were raised by my mum’s side of the family, an extremely white, working class, loving family from Donny. My mum did her absolute best and gave us access to as much culture in Doncaster as she could, but there’s only so much she could have done. I hold no blame. She was a single mum, an abuse survivor, who had two kids on benefits. When you’re focused on putting food on the table, cultural identity probably falls lower on the pile.

As a kid, I was made super aware of my Blackness, whilst not necessarily feeling that reflected in how I was brought up so that was always the tension.

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There's a lot of talk online about who's ‘Black enough,’ especially when it comes to mixed people. Do you think about those things? 

Yes and no. In the context of the pile, it's truthfully something that I avoid. I feel like there’s something missing or out of reach. I’ve tried to access the things that would help me feel more myself. There's so much grief around it. When I met my white partner, jealousy and resentment came up because he can articulate three generations of both sides of his family, he’s visited them and has all these extensions of himself. 

I've never been to Jamaica. It feels huge, like it would be a homecoming trip. It would also feel like research. I couldn’t just lay on a beach without trying to find some record or something that could piece it all together. I’m also conscious that I would go to Jamaica and not be racialised as Black either. Having had that experience, to have that replicated in Jamaica would feel way worse, more personal.

I think my experiences of gender violence in intimate relationships have been extremely racialised and I’ve been exploited because of it. If I had more understanding of myself and felt more secure in who I was, then that couldn’t have been manipulated. 

I feel way more comfortable and confident in myself now in terms of how I relate to people and the communities I have around me. There’s the political Blackness, cultural Blackness and relational Blackness and I have found a place in all of those that feels safe and homely and comforting – but that still doesn't negate those unanswered questions.

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I was really interested in hearing you speak about decolonising the outdoors rather than diversifying it in Radical Rest.

At Peaks of Colour, we support Black and queer survivors of gendered violence. I was witnessing how unsupported survivors aren’t reaching healing or justice, because the framework we understand that within is a carceral model where you can only access support through policing and institutions. Survivors rarely get the outcomes that criminal justice promises, never mind anyone who doesn’t fit into that white cis het box. I was burning out based on that disillusion. 

The sector is increasingly so institutionally racist and dangerously transphobic. Peaks of Colour was me saying ‘I'm going to explore alternative routes to healing and justice, and I'm going to do that in nature,’ then suddenly you’re thrust into this outdoor sector, which is branded as sports, skiing, snowboarding and personal bests. Nature is forest bathing, wild swimming and nature meditation. I found it quite difficult to know what our place was. 

There are a lot of groups bringing people of colour to nature, and those groups have a purpose and a place, but often it feels like bringing people of colour to a white led space. It’s mental because the outdoors is just land which should be free and accessible to all, we shouldn’t have to ask for permission. I’ve turned down so many “opportunities” because the conditions were that we could come if we behaved in a way that outdoorsy people behave, if we looked and acted a certain way.

xeviemuir

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What’s the best thing about being mixed for you?

There’s something with being mixed and working class, those cross-cultural, cross-political struggles that I've experienced and witnessed. I’m able to understand white working class communities and my politics is informed by that, understanding where racial tensions are and witnessing the intricacies of British politics.

It's helped me develop a nature-allied practice that is so informed by a class-based and racialised practice, because it becomes easier to use the same template. There's an element of being able to hold understanding and fight from that place as opposed to a place of hatred, resentment and alienation. 

Can you sum up your mixed experience in one word?

Possible. There was a time when being mixed-race wasn't legally possible. Now, there are routes to alternative thinking. 

Buy Radical Rest here. Next week, I’ll be speaking to actor, comedian, rapper and all-round creative Ben Bailey Smith. Subscribe to get Mixed Messages in your inbox on Monday. Don’t forget you can now shop Mixed Messages on Etsy!

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Mixed Messages is a weekly exploration of the mixed-race experience, from me, Isabella Silvers. My mom is Punjabi (by way of East Africa) and my dad is white British, but finding my place between these two cultures hasn’t always been easy. That’s why I started Mixed Messages, where each week I’ll speak to a prominent mixed voice to delve into what it really feels like to be mixed.