My Double Life.

There’s a particular kind of ache that comes from loving a family who will never fully recognise the life you’ve built. Do you know it too?

This month, more people than usual have been asking how my work impacts my family relationships.

I can feel that when people ask, they assume I’ve figured it out.

I haven’t.

I am half Samoan, raised in a huge, deeply religious aiga (family), and for the last fifteen years, I’ve kept conversations about my life at a safe distance in order to maintain those relationships.

Sometimes this hurts more than I can explain. To know that my family, some of the kindest, most loving people I’ve ever known, are deeply devoted to a worldview that disagrees with mine.

I carry a wound of belonging. For me, being mixed race has always felt like your soul is split in two from birth, and your life becomes the journey of stitching those pieces back together.

Last week, I sat in a family church service, undercover, grieving the passing of my auntie. Arms wrapped around my aiga, I practiced offering myself love, empathy, and validation for the life I’ve chosen - while my uncle preached the word of God.

There’s a common piece of advice for people like me: 
 

Lead with your authenticity. If they reject you, that’s their loss. Go find the people who accept you fully.

But that mindset doesn’t click for me when it comes to my extended family. If I were to “be fully myself” in front of them, I do believe I’d lose more than I’d gain. 

So yes - while it hurts at times, I’m willing to pay the price of hiding certain parts of me to preserve the relationships I have.

They don’t even have the frame of reference to understand it.

While religion can and has caused so much harm, I see the beauty in how my family practice. The hymns sung together in spine-tingling harmony. The way they (we?) hold space for raw emotion. The sense of community and belonging that runs bone-deep.

Alongside this pain, I’ve learned to validate, believe in, and trust myself. I’ve learned to hold multiple, contradictory truths at once. I’ve learned to love myself while sitting quietly in church every few years and to refuse the shame that once tried to settle in my body.

Last week, I also met two Samoan women at a sex-positive event I was speaking at who I clicked with immediately. I was in awe of them the moment they walked into the room. 

After hearing me speak about sexuality and seeing my burlesque performance, they embraced me and uplifted me as a sister. I have only ever had an interaction like that with one other Samoan woman and it was one of the highlights of my entire year. These brief, powerful moments of recognition feel like tiny doors of belonging opening inside me.

About seven years ago, I had a spiritual experience where my great-grandmother - and the mothers before her - came to me. They told me I’m meant to be at the front of the va‘a (canoe), exploring new lands, and that they understand… that it’s safe. I draw on that support constantly.


It is scary to be publicly visible while essentially living a double life in a small country. When I worked with Snoop Dogg and videos of me pole dancing onstage went viral, my heart raced for a week straight.

I’ve also accepted that one day, everything might come crashing together. And still, I won’t let that possibility stop me from moving in the direction that feels true and good. I trust myself to navigate whatever comes. 

I have found the people who accept and love me for all of who I am. I never doubt that I belong when I am with them (or whenever I am deep in nature, or when I am spellbound by performance art) and this support holds me.

I look at the life I’ve built and think, “Wow, I really did that”.

Beautiful, filled with love, and so very good.

Just like me.
And you.

All my love,

Michelle x