My Biracial Journey and Evolving Perspectives

How living between other people’s assumptions taught me to observe more deeply, put God before labels, and begin the work that became Initial Finds.

This is not a story about choosing the right identity box. It is not an attempt to resolve every question about race, religion, or belonging. It is an introduction to how I learned to observe the world—and how that way of seeing eventually shaped Initial Finds.

I am biracial. Some people immediately recognize that I am mixed. Others see me as white. I grew up in a Black community, where I experienced love, belonging, acceptance, rejection, and discrimination in different measures. I learned early that people could look at my skin and decide something about me before they knew anything about my character.

Sometimes my mixed background was understood. Sometimes it did not matter. At other times, acceptance seemed to carry an unspoken cost: I could belong, but only if I accepted someone else’s definition of who I was supposed to be.

That tension made me curious.

How did being biracial shape the way I see the world?

My grandmother was part of this awakening. Within the family and community, she could sometimes be treated as “the white lady,” even though her own background was more complex. Meanwhile, much of the family simply identified as Black. As a child, I did not have the language to explain everything I was noticing. I only knew that the same family story could look different depending on who was telling it and which part they chose to emphasize.

It made me wonder: How much of identity is something we discover, and how much is something people place on us?

That question stayed with me.

Years later, in high school, the military, and different work environments, I encountered the other side of the experience. When people assumed I was white, they sometimes made remarks they probably would not have made if a Black person had been standing in front of them. Occasionally someone would ask why I “acted Black” or make a joke that revealed what they really believed.

Then I would tell them that I was mixed.

Sometimes the relationship changed immediately. People who had been comfortable around me became distant. Invitations stopped. The atmosphere shifted. At other times, especially in a workplace where I was not trying to build personal relationships, I chose not to explain myself. I simply observed.

I was not trying to operate as a spy for one side against another. I was learning what people reveal when they believe no one who matters is watching.

What do people reveal when they think no one is watching?

When no one is watching, who are you?

My experiences did not teach me that race is unimportant. They taught me how powerful racial assumptions can be—and how incomplete they are as a measure of a person.

I stopped allowing other people’s reading of my skin to define the whole of me. I could recognize the community that helped shape me without pretending that any single label explained everything I was. I could acknowledge discrimination wherever I encountered it without turning pain into permission to mistreat someone else.

That was the beginning of a deeper practice: observe what people say, watch what they do, and pay attention to what remains when the performance falls away.

Over time, I began applying that practice to myself as well. It is easy to notice contradictions in other people. The more difficult work is recognizing the identities, beliefs, loyalties, and habits operating inside your own life.

Why I refused to become someone else’s definition

I did not want either acceptance or rejection to become the author of my identity. The more I observed, the more I understood that belonging without honesty is another form of performance. I could respect the communities that shaped me without surrendering my responsibility to examine what was true for me.

That distinction would later become central to the Initial Finds Framework. The work is not to erase identity. It is to see when an identity, role, or inherited script has become so dominant that it prevents you from observing the rest of your life clearly.

How did my faith evolve from religion to a God-first practice?

I was raised with spirituality and belief in God. As I grew older, especially during my time in the military, I encountered people whose relationship with God did not look like the version I had been taught.

I met Muslims whose faith was as serious to them as Christianity was to the Christians I knew. I saw conviction expressed through different languages, customs, and traditions. That forced me to confront an important question: If people across the world are sincerely reaching toward God, how much of our certainty about who God accepts or destroys comes from God—and how much comes from human identity, fear, and the need for our group to be right?

My faith did not disappear. It deepened and changed direction.

I began learning to put God first rather than putting a religious identity first. For me, that meant becoming more willing to observe, question, and correct myself. It meant recognizing that truth is larger than my ability to possess it completely. It also meant understanding that spiritual growth is not a magical escape from life. It is an ongoing relationship with truth, responsibility, imbalance, correction, and change.

That perspective eventually led me toward universal principles and a broader awareness of how the world operates. I began questioning other things I had once accepted without much thought—including food, processing, health, institutions, habits, and the systems surrounding everyday life.

I did not arrive at a place where I believed everyone had to make the same choices I made. I could make the best decisions I knew how to make for myself and my family while respecting that other people had to work with their own circumstances, responsibilities, and understanding.

My purpose was not to judge. It was to see more clearly and offer perspective.

How did these experiences become Initial Finds?

The original language of Initial Finds was simple:

Find your fit. Find your balance.

At first glance, “fit” can sound like belonging to the right group. My life taught me something different.

Fit is not conformity. It is not shrinking yourself until you become acceptable to a community, workplace, belief system, or audience. It is the relationship between who you understand yourself to be, what you believe, how you live, and what the world is asking you to become.

Balance is not pretending every position is equally true. It is not avoiding hard decisions or standing permanently in the middle. Balance is the continuing work of noticing when your beliefs, behaviors, responsibilities, relationships, and inner truth have moved out of alignment—and making the corrections available to you.

That is why Initial Finds is not ultimately about adopting a new identity. It is about finding a path toward the truest version of yourself you can live in this world.

My biracial experience did not give me every answer. It gave me a vantage point. It taught me to notice how quickly people confuse appearance with truth, belonging with conformity, religion with God, and confidence with character.

Initial Finds grew from that habit of observation.

It exists for people who sense that something in their life does not fit, even when they cannot yet explain why. It offers language, frameworks, questions, and practical tools for looking beneath the surface—not so someone else can tell you who to be, but so you can see what is shaping you and decide what comes next.

I am still doing that work myself. I am still observing, learning, changing, and correcting. Initial Finds does not come from a person who has completed the journey. It comes from someone committed to walking it consciously and helping other people see their own path more clearly.

That is a little of who I am.

And it is part of why Initial Finds exists.

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