I am adopted and was raised in a small town by my adoptive family. My enduring, supportive and loving family, worked hard to provide me with the social and emotional tools required to build a really good life. Even though my adoptee-brain makes it difficult for me to process why someone would choose to love me, the continued reassurance, backed by constant action, gave me extra bursts of strength when I needed them most. As I grew older, I began to realize that the way I was raised stirred up a lot of turmoil inside of people who couldn’t stomach the idea of a biracial person living what they deemed to be a “white” life.