022 – I’m Still On This Journey, Using My Experience to Help Others

Marni grew up in Madison, WI in a transracial family that lived a predominantly white community. Everywhere they went, they were stared at for the heterogeneity they brought to the community. The attention their family received was a constant reminder of their own racial diversity, but Marni’s father seemed to have wise and crafty ways to turn the tables to make his own children feel more comfortable. Still, Marni’s family had some internal dysfunction that fed her desire to search for her biological family always wanted to find her biological family.

Initially, she thought things with her biological mother were going to be great, but it turned out that her biological father was the one she had the deepest connection to. Marni makes her living supporting foster youth in the Washington, DC area, pulling from her own experiences as an adoptee to uplift others.

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Marni:                          00:06                Maybe, just maybe all of this has led to a place where I am stable emotionally. I’m okay with talking about everything as it relates to my journey and why not use that as a backbone of strength to give back and help others.

Voices:                         00:27                Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?

Damon:                        00:38                This is who am I really a podcast about adoptees that have located and connected with their biological family members. I’m Damon Davis and today my guest is Marni. She grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, in a transracial family that lived in a predominantly white community, but everywhere they went, they were stared at, the attention their family received was a constant reminder of their racial diversity, but her father seemed to have wise and crafty ways to turn the tables to make his own children feel more comfortable. Still Marni always wanted to find her biological family, so on her 21st birthday, that’s exactly what she began to do. Initially, she thought things with her biological mother, were going to be great. But it turned out that her biological father was the one that she truly had a connection with. I asked Marni to tell me what life was like as an adoptee in her family and in her community. Marni recalls her childhood as one challenged by racial identity. Her family was racially diverse in, in Madison, Wisconsin in the 1970s, the kind of racial diversity and integration that her family showed was far from the norm and their families stood out in their community.

Marni:                          01:53                We had a rainbow coalition, if you will, of a family in the early seventies in Madison, Wisconsin, which wasn’t exactly popular. And although my parents did, I think, everything they could to normalize something that really was not normal by society standards, it was still rough because we would go places and...

Marni grew up in Madison, WI in a transracial family that lived a predominantly white community. Everywhere they went, they were stared at for the heterogeneity they brought to the community. The attention their family received was a constant reminder of their own racial diversity, but Marni’s father seemed to have wise and crafty ways to turn the tables to make his own children feel more comfortable. Still, Marni’s family had some internal dysfunction that fed her desire to search for her biological family always wanted to find her biological family.

Initially, she thought things with her biological mother were going to be great, but it turned out that her biological father was the one she had the deepest connection to. Marni makes her living supporting foster youth in the Washington, DC area, pulling from her own experiences as an adoptee to uplift others.

Read Full Transcript

Marni:                          00:06                Maybe, just maybe all of this has led to a place where I am stable emotionally. I’m okay with talking about everything as it relates to my journey and why not use that as a backbone of strength to give back and help others.

Voices:                         00:27                Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?

Damon:                        00:38                This is who am I really a podcast about adoptees that have located and connected with their biological family members. I’m Damon Davis and today my guest is Marni. She grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, in a transracial family that lived in a predominantly white community, but everywhere they went, they were stared at, the attention their family received was a constant reminder of their racial diversity, but her father seemed to have wise and crafty ways to turn the tables to make his own children feel more comfortable. Still Marni always wanted to find her biological family, so on her 21st birthday, that’s exactly what she began to do. Initially, she thought things with her biological mother, were going to be great. But it turned out that her biological father was the one that she truly had a connection with. I asked Marni to tell me what life was like as an adoptee in her family and in her community. Marni recalls her childhood as one challenged by racial identity. Her family was racially diverse in, in Madison, Wisconsin in the 1970s, the kind of racial diversity and integration that her family showed was far from the norm and their families stood out in their community.

Marni:                          01:53                We had a rainbow coalition, if you will, of a family in the early seventies in Madison, Wisconsin, which wasn’t exactly popular. And although my parents did, I think, everything they could to normalize something that really was not normal by society standards, it was still rough because we would go places and people’s jaws would drop. My family is, um, pretty into outdoor sporting. Um, for example, camping, canoeing, and in Wisconsin there’s lovely lakes and forests and such to hike through in the northern part of the state and in the northern part of the state, there’s no diversity of any kind. And so because that’s something that our family did recreationally, we spent a lot of time in northern Wisconsin in the summers and such. And there’s one particular story that I remember when we went into a restaurant, northern Wisconsin and literally walked in and all of the forks just dropped on the plates and everyone stared at us and it was very uncomfortable.

Marni:                          02:55                I was maybe five years old and I just kept looking at my dad to see how he was responding because it was quite frankly a little scary. And we sat down, my dad reassured us it was fine, and everyone just kept staring. And my dad said, look at their shoes, just stare at people’s shoes. And I thought, okay, if dad says so we’re going to stare at shoes, so we’re all staring at people’s shoes. And one by one, people start kind of out of the corner of their own eyes looking down at their feet. And then we kinda started snickering and, and I, my father never ever said anything about that incident ever again. And it was years later that I realized the brilliance of my father because it was as silly for them to be looking at us as it was silly for us to look at their shoes. And so I use that as an illustrative story because it’s an example of how my parents very pragmatically took on the world because they decided to take on a colorful family.

Damon:                        03:52                that’s fascinating. And that is really brilliant, right in the moment saying, you know what, if they want to stare at us, we’ll stare back at them and we’ll see who feels sillier. Because the honest truth is you guys are in the world, you can’t change it. And, and their, you know, lack of exposure to people of color shouldn’t mean that you guys should feel uncomfortable. That’s, that was pretty brilliant. Their family structure was really complicated amidst the adoptions. There was also divorce. And remarriage, adding step siblings to the mix. Siblings will always have some kind of rivalry with one another, but Marni experienced racism even within the sibling structure.

Marni:                          04:28                One of my older sisters who is also biracial, black, white, but she is much darker complected than I am. She taunted me for my entire childhood and and would often times make comments about the fact that I was so fair complected and make up rhymes and stories and jingles about how fair complected I was, like to the point where I would blend into snow. And it’s interesting because I didn’t really get that racism like the black on black hate race stuff until much later in life. When I went to Howard University and it was, I think that it really came out of the fact that when we would go places as a whole unit, we were obviously different. But if I went some place with my parents, independent of my black siblings, I was treated completely differently and my sister knew that and she saw that, from afar. And you know, like going into restaurants when we were teenagers and my older brother and sister who are darker complected, the host is not even recognizing that they’re with us and wanting to seat them separately as if they’re a couple. And so my sister just resented me so much because I was the other black kid, but yet I got treated differently.

Damon:                        05:41                Mhm. Wow.

Marni:                          05:42                And then honestly I just, I’d have to own and admit that I used that to my advantage.

Damon:                        05:47                In what way?

Marni:                          05:48                because I, well I use it in the advantage of being able to fit in socially growing up because sometimes I just got really sick of the fact that we always had questions and stares and everywhere we went it was always, you know, why is your hair like that? Or is, how can that be your sister? That’s not really your brother. And if I could escape being around the different looking family structure, then I definitely would use it for my advantage to, to hang out with different kinds of peer groups. Like all white

Damon:                        06:17                Yeah. There’s an element of all of us that just wants to fit in and to the extent that you can escape sort of being ostracized for especially something that’s visual to other people and just be and feel normal for a while. I could certainly understand why you would want to, you know, exercise a little escapism and tried to get away from that. So you were probably always in a position of feeling both a, what I assume is a black and a white side and probably trying to identify with two communities. All be it challenge to be identified in the black community, in you know, a predominantly white society. It must have been really hard for you to make that, that navigation back and forth between, you know, two separate cultures while living in a house that had two separate cultures as well.

Marni:                          07:09                It was almost impossible to find any black identity within my upbringing. And it’s interesting because as much as I would try to escape it to fit in into my very white community, I then chose to go to Howard University because when I visited Howard at the age of 18, when I was a senior in high school, I was absolutely bewildered by the fact that there were, there was like an entire University of people just like me. I never even knew that that existed. And I knew that I had to go to Howard in order to have an opportunity to fully submerge myself in a black culture for four years. Okay. It was five years. To be able to get in touch with my black side because I knew if I didn’t take the opportunity then that opportunity would not present itself again in my life.

Damon:                        07:52                And did the racial struggle in your life sort of propel you, was that one of the propellers for wanting to find your biological family?

Marni:                          07:59                It was. It absolutely was. Um, and also I, there was, there were a lot of challenges with my siblings as well. I mean, like I, one of my brothers, um, he spent most of his adult life in and out of prison. Um, because he was so challenged being black, being adopted by a white family in Wisconsin, just not fitting in, just always getting into trouble. I mean he had a lot of psychological damage prior to being adopted and my sister had a tremendous amount of, of psychological problems. She was actually removed from our home in seventh grade and bounced in and out of group homes because my mom couldn’t control her behavior anymore.

Damon:                        08:39                This is the sister that was challenging your racial identity?

Marni:                          08:42                Yes, and I just really felt like, wow, you know, this is a really dysfunctional household and I want to find my real family cause I’m sure they’re completely perfect.

Damon:                        08:52                I wondered with all of the racial in their home, how did Marni’s parents make her feel comfortable as an adoptee? Her mother made sure she never felt like her adoption was an alternative to anything else. And their family tried to connect with other families like themselves.

Marni:                          09:08                Well, I think there’s two things. One is as, as any natural child’s curiosity would, would prompt them to, I would often ask, why did you adopt kids instead of having your own? And My mother would always say, well, why would I have biological children when I have you? And I’d be like, oh, that’s not the right answer! Like I want know, like, why did you really do this? But she would never get into that with me. And I think that that’s interesting because she just wanted to take that out of the equation of, you know, you were like the second choice or the backup plan or something, which is what I think is. But then the other thing is by, my parents were part of something called the Wisconsin Open door society. And, and that was a, I mean that it no longer exists, but they were one of a few chapters around the country, um, have a national chapter called the open door society.

Marni:                          09:57                And it was, it’s all a white parents who adopted either across racial lines or children with physical or cognitive challenges. And so we would get together with say 50 or 60 other families that look like ours, about four times a year for the weekend we’d, we’d go on camping retreats, things like that, that in some ways normalized our being adopted because at least we had the visual a couple times a year of other people like us. I’m just so grateful that they got themselves involved in this organization and I do have really profound, um, experiences with that group. And, and I think absent of that, I can’t imagine how twisted I may have become.

Damon:                        10:38                Yeah. Yeah. That sounds like they were able to locate and really connect with a community that was something that you all could identify with. Tell me a little bit about how you finally reached a moment where you decided that you were going to seek out your biological relatives. How did that go?

Marni:                          10:55                Well, I always wanted to, since I had conscious thought I was heck been on, I’m finding my biological family. And so I then learned, I was adopted through the state of Wisconsin and the state law was such that you could not search for your parents until you’re the age of 21 so I think on my 21st birthday I fill out the application and sent it in. And then they said to me that it’s about a two year wait to search because they’re just, they’re understaffed and underfunded in that particular office. So I waited the two years and almost two years to the date I got a call and they said, okay, we’re ready to start your search. And it was going to be $100 an hour to do the search. So I at the time was, I’m a senior at Howard University, so you know, $100 was like $1 million.

Marni:                          11:38                But I went through the coat pockets and cushions on the sofa and found, you know, $100, sent it off and then it took two hours of search and then they called me and they said, okay, we’ve got your mother’s name. Cause I only searched for, for my mother at, at first, because it was $100 an hour per search. Um, and I thought, well, if I can find the mother, then hopefully she can tie me to the father. So in Wisconsin, the child always has the right to privacy. And so what happens is the state then goes to the records, they find her, they located her they contacted her, asked her permission to give her contact information to me, um, which she granted, and then it still lies on the child. So if I had received that information and still decided, oh no, I’m, I’m chickening out, I don’t want to find her, I would always be protected. So then the onus is on me to make that call to her.

Damon:                        12:28                So the state representative tells Marni that her biological mother has visited their office and she’s excited to meet Marni. Marni was a senior in college living with several other girls when she got the news.

Marni: