When I was a little girl, my family moved around a lot. I had to get used to new places and people all the time. Because we moved so often, it became hard for me to make friends. But things changed when I started third grade. We moved to Glenpool, and we finally stayed there until I finished high school.
At first, Glenpool felt different. Before that, I had always gone to schools where most of the kids were Black. I had always been surrounded by people who shared my appearance. But Glenpool was mostly white. It was hard at first, but I slowly got used to it. I made new friends and became part of the community. Everyone was kind to me and made me feel like I belonged. Growing up, I stayed active with sports and really enjoyed myself. My parents raised me to treat everyone with kindness, regardless of their race, and that’s something I always lived by.
My husband had a different childhood. He was raised in a quiet town where hardly anyone was Black. But his parents taught him the same thing, treat everyone with love. He had Black teammates, coaches, and friends, and he never saw race as something that should separate people.
We met in college as freshmen. We had classes together and slowly became friends. After a while, we both realized we liked each other. We acted like we didn’t at first, but we couldn’t hide it for long. After a few years of dating, we got engaged once college ended and tied the knot ten months after that.
Ten months after getting married, we found out we were having a baby girl. Life has changed a lot since then. We’ve grown together, now we have a home, cars, two dogs, and our beautiful daughter.
Marrying someone of a different race has come with its share of challenges. Sometimes people stare at us or give us rude looks in public. We’ve even heard mean comments. When we were younger, it hurt. We didn’t understand why people cared so much. But now we’ve learned to ignore the hate. We know some people don’t like seeing a Black person married to a white person, but we don’t let it affect us.
We love each other deeply. And we’re raising our daughter to love herself, her curls, her skin, her green eyes. We’ll teach her about both of our cultures. Most of all, we’ll teach her to love everyone for who they are, not how they look. We are proud of our family and proud to be part of the change.
