If I hadn’t had that epiphany, I’d probably still be sat here ashamed of my Pakistani heritage, but I'm not, I embrace it and I love it. There are other religious groups who live in Pakistan, there are obviously non-practicing Muslims living in Pakistan. I think because I hated growing up religious, I maybe thought I hated Pakistani culture too for a really long time, but they’re not the same thing. I think there is still a very strong perception in British society that when someone sees my name, they automatically assume that I am a practicing, praying five times a day Muslim. I love the food and I've learned to cook all my grandma's cuisine, I love the fashion that comes out of it. That was a big turning point for me because I never disliked growing up Pakistani. It wasn’t until my late 20s again that I finally started to be able to separate them. One aspect of this is that for me Pakistani culture and Muslim culture growing up were inextricably linked, so I couldn’t see a difference between them. I’m 33 now and I feel more confident talking about my family's culture and the culture I was raised in. It was only in the last few years that I realised how much I was hiding – even up until my mid-to-late 20s. People wouldn't have understood a lot of things about my family and I was definitely embarrassed by a lot of it. There weren't a lot of other people like me for one, and there also wasn't a great deal of understanding around my culture. In my life with my friends, I pushed a lot of my culture aside and it took me a long time to work out why.