Today is suomalaisuudenpäivä — The Day of Finnish Identity. In Finland, flags rise in honour of J.V. Snellman, the statesman and philosopher who championed the Finnish language and helped shape the soul of a nation. He believed in a Finland that could speak — in its own language, with its own voice. For those of us who live far from that northern land, that voice still calls — across distance, through generations, and into the quiet corners of our hearts.

For me, a migrant child who arrived in Australia at the age of eleven, Finnish Identity Day is not just a date on a calendar. It’s a mirror. It’s a longing. It’s a reminder of the journey I never fully chose, yet one I now fully walk.

I still remember that first step into the unknown — stepping off the plane into a country where everything was new: the sky bigger, the air warmer, the accents unfamiliar. I remember the deep, unspoken pressure to adapt. To lose the tongue that cradled my first words. To hide the strangeness of my food, my name, my history. To assimilate — because belonging felt like survival.

Rupi Kaur once wrote: “They have no idea what it’s like, to lose home at the risk of never finding home again, to have your entire life split between two lands, and becoming the bridge between two countries”.

But I do. And I — I am that bridge.

I have mourned the Finland I didn’t get to grow up in. I imagine it often — what my life might have been had we stayed. I wonder about the girl I would have become had I walked through pine forests instead of schoolyards with gum trees. I miss a place that lives mostly in memory now. And I long for it like water in a dry land — sometimes as a soft ache, sometimes as a storm.

I am an uprooted tree. And I always will be.

But there is power in roots that run in more than one direction. I’ve come to understand that my Finnishness isn’t measured by the soil beneath my feet, but by the stories in my bones. It’s in the lullabies I sing to my grandchildren, the stubborn strength that rises when life is hard — sisu, taught to me by the women who came before. It’s in the way I speak two languages, love two homelands, and still, sometimes, my dreams at night return to the land and language where my story began, even when I navigate life in a new country.

Sometimes the ache comes unexpectedly — like a wave crashing through an ordinary day. A scent, a melody, a memory, and suddenly I’m there again. I’m walking along a gravel path through a quiet forest, the birch trees whispering their secrets above me. I can smell the damp earth, feel the softness of moss underfoot, hear the distant call of a blackbird at dusk.

The air is different there — cooler, sharper, as if it carries stories older than time. There’s a rhythm to Finland that lives in my chest. Its silence is not empty; it speaks. And when I’m away, as I so often am, it feels like a quiet hollowness where something once sang inside me.

I long not only for a place, but for a feeling — the feeling of being wrapped in the embrace of a country that knew me before I knew myself. Of walking streets where my ancestors walked. Of hearing my mother tongue all around me like music I don’t have to translate. That kind of longing never fades. It settles into your soul and becomes a quiet companion — one that both hurts and heals, one that reminds you who you are.

And music — Finnish music — stirs something in me that is beyond words. The notes find places in me that have no name. Whether it’s a melancholic folk song or the powerful swell of Sibelius, it breaks something open. It brings tears to my eyes, not of sadness, but of recognition — like hearing my own heart played aloud. It’s a reminder that there are languages the soul understands, even when the world doesn’t.

These are the echoes of a life lived between two lands. And while the ache never fully leaves, neither does the richness. I have walked barefoot in both worlds. I have found beauty in eucalyptus leaves and snowflakes, in Vegemite and rye bread, in children who speak with an Aussie slang but know how to say äiti. I’ve had to make peace with not fitting entirely into one place or the other.

And yet — I don’t need to choose.

Because more than anything, I am Finnish Australian. Not half of each, but whole in both. Finland lives in my blood, in my values, in my longing. Australia lives in my laughter, my resilience, my home. My identity is not a torn page — it’s a double-stitched tapestry. And on days like today, I honour every thread. I carry two homelands, but only one soul — shaped by the silence of northern forests and the sunburnt warmth of southern skies.