On Bringing Your Full Self

Why I Dress The Way I Dress For My Speaking Engagements

I often get asked why I dress the way I do for my speaking / teaching / preaching engagements.

Here’s why I show up the way I show up:

1. A colleague (who is also my speaker coach) advised me to visually embrace the fact that I’m different and that I might say things in love that offend people - because I really am that different.

2. I usually wear a full Kurta Pyjama set. I buy my outfits from a Pakistani store in the Greater Toronto Area and the Muslim store owner gives me generous discounts as his way of supporting the justice work I do with IJM. I love this because I grew up hating Pakistan as a kid in India (largely because of the way our colonizers divided us against each other to rule us). But the love of Christ reconciles all things.

3. I also wear a Nehru jacket - a traditional South Asian waistcoat popularized by India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. To many of my South Indian friends’ dismay, my outfit is visibly more North Indian than South Indian - even though I’m ethnically 100% South Indian (Malayali). But there’s a reason for this: my grandparents immigrated to Mumbai (western India) in the 1950’s where my parents & I were born and raised. So I’m culturally way more North Indian than I am South Indian.

4. As part of bringing my full self, I also wear a crucifix because my faith is also a big part of my family’s history. My family believes itself to be Christian for nearly 2000 years thanks to the Apostle Thomas. Many Indian Christian folks from Orthodox backgrounds (just like my ancestors) often tell me I look like their Priest. I also like to wear my crucifix because it sometimes messes with westerners (whether it’s the lady at the Minneapolis airport who asked me if that day was Diwali or the steakhouse server in Texas who assumed I wouldn’t eat pork) who often ignorantly assume I’m either Hindu or Muslim.

5. Last but not the least, I wear a bracelet of beads hand-made by restored Filipino survivors of child online sexual exploitation - a gift from an aftercare partner in the Philippines. I do this to remind myself of the strength of the survivors that I get to speak up on behalf on - until they’re rescued & restored from oppression so I can get out of the way and make way for them to speak for themselves.

But perhaps the biggest reason why I show up the way I show up is because when you show up as your full self, you also (often unknowingly) inspire others to do the same.

For example - a female colleague recently told me that I’ve inspired her to also show up for work engagements in her traditional cultural attire.

Another example is this friend (a woman in ministry) who preached on the Magnificat (Mary’s Song in Luke 1: 46-55) this Sunday while showing up as her full self. She sent me this message soon after (shared with her permission) after seeing me tweet about this earlier last week:

What does bringing your full self look like to you?