This question has been sitting with me for some time and resurfaced again yesterday.

How will I be a good ancestor?

A lot of what I now understand about this country was never taught at school.

For a long time, I did not realise how much was missing. I grew up with fragments. With gaps. With versions of history that were softened, incomplete or avoided altogether. I moved through the world without questioning that absence, not because I didn't care, but because I didn't know what I didn't know.

Coming to terms with that has been uncomfortable. There is a naivety in realising how much you don't know, and how easy it is to benefit from that not knowing. Naming that matters. Pretending otherwise helps no one.

What I can say honestly is this. I have gone out of my way to learn.

Not because it was easy. Not because it made me feel good. But because it felt necessary. I have sought out conversations. I have listened more than I have spoken. I have stayed in rooms where my thinking was challenged instead of retreating. I have been corrected. I have been uncomfortable. I have been grateful for the people in my extended spaces who were willing to teach me anyway.

I am not cultured in the way people sometimes assume. I am still learning. Probably always learning. I have come to understand that not knowing is not the problem. Staying comfortable in that not knowing is.

This question about being a good ancestor lands differently now that I am a mum. My son is watching me. He learns from how I move through the world, not from what I say. One day he will look back and decide whether his mum leaned into hard truths or turned away from them. I want him to know that I chose honesty over comfort. That I admitted when I didn't know enough. That I was willing to change.

The legacy I want to leave him is not perfection. It is integrity. It is courage. It is a willingness to keep learning even when it unsettles you. I want him to be proud of the way I showed up, not because I had all the answers, but because I did not pretend to.

My old people are no longer here to guide me directly. Their voices are not something I can return to for clarification or comfort. What remains is responsibility. To honour their lives by not wasting what they endured. To carry forward what I can, even when the knowledge feels incomplete. To walk carefully, knowing that what was lost cannot always be recovered, but what remains still deserves respect.

Being a good ancestor sits between that absence and the future I am shaping for my son. It means telling the truth about what I didn't know. It means refusing to stay ignorant. It means understanding that learning late is still better than not learning at all.

I know I will get things wrong. That is part of this journey. What matters is whether I am willing to listen, reflect and do better when I do.

So how will I be a good ancestor?

By telling the truth about what I didn't know.

By going out of my way to learn.

By staying open.

And by walking a path my son can respect, even when the way forward is imperfect.