on why i ignored my one-quarter scottish ancestry for ten years

About six months ago, I began feeling a need to reconnect with my Scottish roots. This yearning. A hole. I began doing things on my own but didn't talk about it with anyone. This morning I realized why, and why I also haven't openly celebrated my heritage and my pride for over ten years.

• I moved away from my family, who had raised me with Scottish food and traditions and dance and festivals, and I didn't take/haven't taken the time to maintain that at college, with my husband, or with my children. 
• I realized that my friends didn't think it was cool that I was Scottish. I got the vibe that it was "quaint." Of course, now I wonder if unconsciously-passed-down perceptions and traditions and ideologies haven't played a part in that. Almost all of my friends have had a lot of English blood (as do I also). The Scots and the English have always had a tense relationship. And even in America, a lot of Scots emigrated to the Southern states, and the South has also had a tense relationships with other parts of the country. This is all very hard to explain. But I'm trying to express that I perceived being Scottish made me different from my friends and it was hard to appreciate that difference. [I'm remembering now, once or twice in college, I heard a student across the quad practicing bagpipes in the evenings. And I loved it; it made me feel at home. Everyone I overheard talking about it said it was stupid or annoying and they wished it would stop, some of them yelling at the piper.]
• Scots have stereotypes. As do any and every group. And the stereotypes push me to shy away from associating myself with it out of fear of being pre-judged. But that's just silly, and I'm trying to move past that. 
• The things I've always gleaned from stories about my Scottish ancestors that I've loved the most and wanted to be also happen to be things that are, at present, usually culturally unacceptable to be as a woman (let alone a Mormon woman or Christian woman or mother woman, or a woman who's always been complimented on for her "niceness," etc.....): stubborn, willful, independent, wild, pioneering, passionate, boisterous, and rebellious. 

So here's to being stubborn, willful, and independent, passionate, pioneering, and wild. Here's to (yet again, because who doesn't give themselves this speech at least once every few months?) rebelling against everything I've thought I've been told I always should be or shouldn't be, and just being whomever I want to be, doing whatever makes me feel joyful and whole. People say you should live for your responsibilities and for others and not for yourself, but I don't have the strength or motivation to reach out and live for others and fulfill my responsibilities unless I first love, care for, and have rights for myself. When I do, I find myself tearing out in the world to fight and love and to act with a fierceness and loyalty that surprises me. 

“It’s not the critic who counts; it’s not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done the better. The credit belongs to those of us who are actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood. We strive valiantly and sometimes there’s the triumph of achievement but at the worst, we fail, but at least we fail while daring greatly.” --Theodore Roosevelt