This post was written for the Race in America series on the Kindred Blog

When you think of mixed-race families, it seems that my parents broke all the “rules.” My dad is white, which, in and of itself, is rare among mixed race couples. I never really thought about it until I started hearing, “Wait. So your dad is White?” I met a woman recently who studied sociology and criminal justice and she explained to me why it’s rare to see a White man and a Black woman together.

In the historical order of things, White men have always been regarded as the “ideal human”, and as such, they carry the most privilege (thus perpetuating the myth of White Supremacy). Black men, despite how we see them treated today, were given rights that women did not have, positioning men as better than women regardless of race. Therefore, a Black woman is treated societally as the least of these.  carrying the least amount of privilege (which is still reflected in the wage gap—Black women make $0.62 for every $1 a White man makes, compared to the $0.79 White women make). For a White man to marry a Black woman used to be seen as him marrying down, which is why you don’t see it as frequently with mixed-race couples as a White woman marrying a Black man.

On top of that, my dad grew up very poor. So poor, in fact, that he lived in a Black neighborhood in Boston. My mom grew up with her grandparents, who were prominent business owners in Savannah, Georgia, prior to moving to Boston when she was about five. When my parents decided to get married, they moved out west to protect their future children from the kind of overt racism that they had both grown up experiencing.

I grew up in northern Arizona and was surrounded by a mix of kids of different races – mostly Navajo, White or Mexican. My experience of racism was always as a witness to someone else being subjected to unsettling comments. I understood the concept of racism, but at the time, I really believed I hadn’t been on the receiving end of it.

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When it comes to productivity, I have struggled so much with being a successful multi-tasker. When I first took a role as a Project Manager for a marketing agency, the Type-A personality wanted to nail it. I already knew that the company president wasn’t fully behind my hire and I had to prove my salt. I got familiar with our production schedules and had multiple clients with varying deadlines that I had to learn to juggle.

I learned to respond to emails while sitting on conference calls. I often carried on multiple conversations over IM or text (and again, while sitting in a meeting). I got really good at scheduling press checks at our printers so that I could review multiple jobs in one visit. I would often scarf down my lunch in the lobby and check emails while I waited for each one. I was an efficiency queen, or so I thought.

Read the full post on the Kindred Voice Blog.

This article was written for Holl and Lane Magazine Issue 20: Growth.

How boundaries helped me to reclaim control of my life

Whenever I see velvet ropes, I think of all the fancy people that are allowed to see what’s on the other side of them. I correlate this image in my mind with exclusivity and permission. Not everyone gets to go behind the velvet ropes and not everyone deserves to be invited in.

I’ve started to think of boundaries as my personal version of a velvet rope.

I’ve never been good about saying no when I should or not speaking up when I didn’t agree. I always wanted to be liked. I always wanted to be agreeable. I didn’t want to be the girl that made everything more challenging for everyone else. To describe me as a pushover would be accurate.

I was raised by a Southern woman who taught me how best to keep up appearances and avoid making waves. When things were good, you shared only enough to let people know that you had it together. More than that would be bragging and that was unbecoming. When things were bad, you pretended that everything was A-Ok so that no one would know that you didn’t have it together. Don’t ever let anyone feel sorry for you.

My entire life, I said yes to things I wanted to say no to, I never told people how I really felt until I exploded in anger, and I was walking around carrying a lot of resentment in my heart. I was mad at the world for my feelings of discontent, but it took my parents’ divorce to make me realize that I actually had control over how others were treating me.

My parents divorced when I was 35. I haven’t figured out whether or not it’s harder to have your parents divorce as an adult or as a child. When you’re a child, your parents do everything they can to protect you from the pain. When you’re an adult, all bets are off. My siblings and I were square in the middle of the fallout as our parents’ 36 year marriage quickly unraveled.

Both of my parents were horrible as they dissolved their marriage. My mom regularly spent her air time with me bashing my dad and telling me all of the things he was doing and what a terrible human being he was. My dad used his to explain why he was such a victim in all of this as well as why he had better sexual chemistry with his new girlfriend. (TMI, Dad, TMI).

I would sit and listen to each of them for hours at a time, feeling a constant tug on my loyalty from side to side. Both of them would profess how much they didn’t want us to take sides and then launch into a spouse-bashing diatribe that made it clear that each of them hoped the side we would choose was theirs.

It was exhausting. After a few weeks of this daily battle, I couldn’t take any more. For the first time in my life, I put up a boundary. I simply used the phrase, “I may be an adult, but I need you to remember that I am still your child.” It was my way of signaling that I didn’t want to participate in this feud and that my energy was spent.

Both of them had a similar reaction. At first, they retreated in shock. And then they pressed forward harder. This time, telling me bigger, more salacious details. He was so abusive. She was a controlling bitch. It was as though they both believed if they could make me see their side of the story, I could be swayed to join the alliance. And while I did see their respective sides, I also saw a little girl who was having the images of a strong mother and a loving father shattered.

The phrase, “I am still your child,” became a mantra that I repeated over and over until they both backed off. At this point, I was using it to convince myself that I was right not to get sucked into their mess.

About a year after the divorce, I started therapy. At this point, I had been estranged from my mom for the better part of a year and the guilt of cutting my mother out of my life so completely was overwhelming me. I had good reason for not wanting to talk to her–my mom had interpreted that the boundaries I was learning to set with her as me taking my dad’s side and she punished me for it.

When the opportunity came for her to move across country with her job, she not only chose not to tell me, but she asked my siblings not to tell me either. As if I wouldn’t have noticed when I came home for a visit that she no longer lived there. Her reasoning was that she didn’t want my dad to know that she was moving and she assumed I would be the one to tell him. I was so hurt that my mother would choose to punish me in such a cruel way that I decided to just disengage completely. I reasoned that she couldn’t hurt me if she couldn’t talk to me.

But after about six months, I began to doubt my decision. What kind of a person cuts a family member out of their lives? Only the truly horrible ones, right? I knew I wasn’t horrible, but I also knew that having a relationship with my mother was hurting me. I was lost and confused, so I found a therapist and started talking.

As I rehashed the previous 24 months of my life, my therapist asked why I felt this obligation to my mother, who was clearly manipulating me for her benefit. I paused and considered the question.

“Well, because she’s my mother,” I answered finally.

“So?” she said.

I looked at her quizzically and said, “I don’t understand what you mean. The woman gave birth to me. I can’t just avoid talking to her for the rest of my life.”

The next thing she said will stick with me for the rest of my life— “If a relationship is hurting you, then you are under no obligation to participate. And if you do, it needs to be on your terms, not theirs.”

Wow. I had never once thought about having a different relationship with my mom than the one I had that wasn’t serving me. To put myself at the center seemed so incredibly selfish. I was being given permission to share only what I wanted to share and learning that I was not obligated to anything just because she gave me life.

I suddenly felt free.

It took a lot of time to modify the terms of our relationship, and my mom was not always accepting of my boundaries. When I would put up the velvet rope, signaling that she was not allowed in to this part of my life, she would push harder to get in. But I learned to hold the boundary and stopped feeling guilty for doing so.

This article was written for Holl and Lane Magazine Issue 19: Redemption.

“I believe you” and “I’m sorry” are the two phrases that victims yearn to hear. They are the phrases that validate our experience and allow us to begin to heal. It’s not uncommon that we never hear either. Living with that void is torturous.

Two years ago, I received a phone call I never expected. It was my daughter’s school calling to tell me that there was evidence of child abuse–she had come to school with bruises on her neck–and that they needed to contact the authorities and I needed to come to the school as soon as possible. My heart dropped into my stomach. I wasn’t sure what was harder to believe, that someone had so violently hurt my child or that the person who hurt her was her father.

The events of that afternoon are both crystal clear and somewhat surreal. We spent time at the school being interviewed, having photos taken, and mostly sitting there in shock. While he was always more of the authoritarian, this seemed so out of character for the man I thought I knew.

The man that fathered my child was kind and gentlemanly, even if he was a bit selfish and aggressive. He hadn’t wanted anything to do with his child for five years, but never complained about paying me a scant amount of child support each month. When he finally decided to get involved, he seemingly went all in and made an earnest effort to forge a relationship with his child. He and I got along, even though we had the occasional angry disagreement over how best to parent our child.

I just couldn’t believe that this was the man now being accused of child abuse. I thought for sure there must be some mistake, that the police would speak to him and he would admit that he had been wrong, he would apologize, and we would take whatever steps necessary to fix this situation. It didn’t take long for me to realize that the charming man who had fathered my child didn’t really exist and that he was going to fight this allegation with every fiber of his being.

The court process took a few months to get underway, and another five before it was finished. It felt like an eternity. Hearing after hearing, I had my character attacked while he plead his innocence in the matter. I believed that I had truth on my side and that it would prevail, but when truth is constantly attacked and twisted into something that is then weaponized against you, it starts to feel like the truth wasn’t all that real to begin with.

I just wanted it to be over and to hear the words, “I’m sorry to put you both through this. How can we move forward?”

I will never hear those words.

Through the entire process, I have been vilified at every turn. I have worked hard to protect my child from the lies, the anger, and the manipulation. It is only thanks to his insistence on making this about me that I have been able to keep her safely away from him.

In the midst of the criminal proceedings, he decided to take up a battle on the civil side of things as well. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to break me financially or spiritually, or if it was just fun for him to watch me struggle to manage everything he threw at me. I submitted to an investigation. It came out in my favor. I gave a deposition. They didn’t get anything they could use. They tried to get me to give up, by dragging out the process, but I kept fighting for my daughter.

At no point did he stop, accept responsibility, and apologize for what he had done.

In therapy, I talked for hours about how I couldn’t believe that I was being treated like the bad guy in all of this when my only fault was protecting my daughter. The facts were being obscured by semantics rather than looking at the overall effect this aggressive act had on my child. She became ancillary to the process, rather than its central subject. It was clear that this had become all about retribution for him.

I came to accept that he would never admit his wrongdoing and would certainly never apologize for what he put us through. I held out hope that maybe his family would.

I had only managed to forge a somewhat decent relationship with one member of his family in the five years he had been actively a dad. I had spoken to his oldest sister shortly after the incident and told her what had happened. A few days later, she sent me a text begging me to do everything in my power to make sure that he would still be able to see his child. She argued that my child’s life would be so empty without him and his family in it. She had clearly taken his side. I disagreed and did not respond.

I never knew what had been said to her or any other member of the family, but they completely stopped calling. I didn’t understand why. My heart broke for my child. I was angry and disappointed, but I chose to believe that when they wanted to hear the truth, they would ask. I hoped that everyone would someday tell my daughter they were sorry for abandoning her and for not being willing to at least hear her side of the story.

This has been my reality for the past two years. I keep hoping for redemption and it never comes. Every time I think that we are on the cusp of that breakthrough, I am reminded that the story is already written. No one thinks to ask for my perspective before passing judgement. When I do have the opportunity to speak the truth, the bias that has formed against me is all too real. I am the villain, every time. My motives are questioned and I find myself constantly defensive of my words and my actions. Any effort I have made to repair the relationships has been seen as controlling.

I see communication between the attorneys where I’ve been painted to be manipulative and dishonest. I’ve been subject to accusations filled with lies so blatant that it wouldn’t take much effort for me to fully debunk them. The way his attorney is openly hostile toward me in every interaction makes me wonder what else has been said about me. I know I shouldn’t care. It angers me that anyone could believe the falsehoods that have been shared about me.

I know that none of what I have been fighting against is my fault. I know that the stories I hear are untrue. I know that the efforts to twist my intentions into something negative are only to give cover to the real villain. I know that the things that are said about me and the feelings that are directed toward me are all a result of the lies that have been said.

Every time things go quiet for a bit, I keep hoping that it’s over. That I will finally be able to let my guard down and not have to think so hard about the words I use. That I won’t have to defend the latest thing I said. That someone will finally say, “I believe you” and “I’m sorry to have put you through this.”

I want to believe it, but I know that day will never come.