Sometimes it is polite. Sometimes it is curious. Sometimes it is something else entirely.
But the question is always some version of the same thing.
What are you?
And for a long time — longer than I would like to admit — I tried to answer it in a way that made other people comfortable.
I would lead with one part of myself. Minimise another. Fold the complicated bits away.
Because the full answer — the real answer — has never fit neatly into a single response.
I am Sudanese. I carry Turkish and Greek heritage. I am Australian. I am married to an Iranian man. I am a mother to two boys who carry every one of those worlds between them. I am a founder building across industries that most people would never put in the same sentence.
I am all of those things at once.
And for most of my life, that felt like a problem to solve.
It isn’t.
Growing up between cultures means growing up between versions of yourself.
There is the version that belongs in one room — that knows the language, the food, the expectations, the unspoken rules.
And then you walk into a different room and that version does not quite fit anymore.
So you adjust.
You read the room. You translate yourself. You figure out which parts of you are welcome here and which ones you leave at the door.
You get very good at adapting.
What nobody tells you is that all that adapting takes something from you.
Not obviously. Not all at once.
But quietly, over time, you start to lose track of which version is actually you.
You become so good at becoming what each room needs that you forget to ask what you need.
I carried that into business.
When I started Rotana Health and Wellbeing, I was stepping into a space that had its own unspoken rules about who belonged there and who did not.
I learned them quickly.
I adapted quickly.
And I built something real — something I am genuinely proud of.
But I also noticed something.
The same feeling followed me.
That sense of being slightly outside. Of having to work harder to be taken seriously. Of carrying credentials and capability that still somehow needed to prove themselves in ways they would not have needed to for someone else.
And when I expanded — into new industries, new regions, new ventures — I kept encountering the same thing.
Every new space had its own version of the question.
What are you doing here?
Here is what I know now that I did not know then.
The discomfort was never mine to fix.
I was not the problem.
I was just someone who refused to shrink themselves down to fit a container that was never built for them.
And there is a difference between those two things.
A significant one.
I have built across industries because I genuinely see across industries.
Care and wellness and fashion and heritage and hospitality and Africa and community — these do not feel like separate worlds to me.
They are all connected.
They are all part of the same larger thing I am trying to build — which is something that reflects the fullness of who I am rather than one convenient slice of it.
Rotana Health and Wellbeing. Nuru Botanica. Royal Meroë. Ritual Atelier.
Each one came from a different part of me.
Each one is an answer to a question I was holding.
Not a business strategy.
A conversation with myself about what I believe and what I want to exist in the world.
Between Worlds is not just the name of my podcast.
It is the most accurate description of my life that I have ever found.
Between cultures — Sudanese, Turkish, Greek, Australian, Iranian by marriage. Between industries. Between the person I was raised to be and the person I am becoming. Between the version of myself that adapted to fit and the version that is finally done adapting.
For a long time I thought being between worlds was a limitation.
A gap. An in-between state on the way to somewhere more settled.
But I have come to understand that the between is not a waiting room.
It is where I actually live.
And it is where some of the most interesting building happens.
Because people who live between worlds see things that people firmly planted in one world cannot always see.
They see the connections. The overlaps. The things that are possible when you refuse to accept that categories are fixed.
I stopped trying to fit into one world because one world was never going to be enough.
Not for everything I am. Not for everything I want to build. Not for the life I am actually living — which is messy and layered and crosses lines that other people drew and does not apologise for any of it.
I am not between worlds because I could not choose.
I am between worlds because choosing one was always a lie.
If you are reading this and you recognise something in it —
If you have spent years translating yourself for rooms that were not built for you —
If you have been asked what you are and felt the question land like a challenge rather than curiosity —
If you are building something that does not fit a single category and you have been made to feel that this is a weakness —
I want to say something to you directly.
The between is not the problem.
The between is the point.
The people who change things — who build things that actually mean something — are rarely the ones who fit neatly into what already exists.
They are the ones who stood in the gap between worlds and decided to build there.
You are allowed to build there too.
You always were.
— Joice Motref