ARCHIVE: Juneteenth with the Destiny Adoption Foundation (2022)

0:00Hi friends, this is Sean and Lynette from The Open Adoption Project and we are showing up here in your podcast feed with a bonus episode for Juneteenth. If you remember a while back in episode 18 we interviewed Dakota. He's an adoptee and we love him and he works with the Destiny Adoption Foundation and they hosted a Juneteenth conference yesterday, Saturday, and we got permission from him to share it with our listeners. It was really great. They have a few speakers. They have Samantha

0:35Williams, she's a birth mom, and they have Gina and Drew Wilder who are adopted parents and we really love tuning into the conference and hearing what the speakers had to say and are just so grateful for the opportunity to share it with you. Yeah and because these are members of our adoption community we thought it would be fun to learn about Juneteenth together also considering how it fits into the adoption world. So we hope you enjoy this webinar from the Destiny Adoption Foundation.

1:08My name is Dakota. I'm the CEO and founder of Destiny Adoption Foundation. We started in Idaho in 2018 currently based out of Utah with me and my board in the Salt Lake area. I'm super excited that we had this idea to kind of host a Juneteenth conference webinar. We put together a stellar

1:38lineup so we're super excited for the speakers that we have today. If you guys have any questions or comments for me about our foundation please reach out to me on our Instagram page and then if anything pertaining to the webinar feel free to use that questions box. I just wanted to let all of you guys know we know that most of the participants here will be friends and family of the speakers as well as families hoping or waiting to adopt. So we're not trying to put any pressure

2:08on this but we do have a program called Dollars for Destiny which is how we stay functional. It allows individuals and families to donate small amounts as little as three dollars a month on a recurring basis just to kind of show your support. We would love if you guys have the ability to do that. Also if you guys are or know of any local businesses or are a part of any businesses that would look be interested in working together as like a sponsorship please reach out to us for

2:40those options as well. So we have Sam which is a birth mom. She will start she lives in Vero Beach Florida. We're excited to hear from her. The format of this will be they'll kind of introduce themselves tell their story. I pose some similar questions for each of the speakers that they can cover so this will be pretty much them speaking and not super interactive but they're free to use the audience as well if they'd like. So without further ado I would invite Sam to hop on and I

3:10will hop off. Hey everybody how y'all doing? So I am Samantha Rosetta. Samantha Rosetta Williams. I am a birth mom. I have been a birth mom for 19 years now. I officially went through started my process when I was 15. I got pregnant at 15 so I was a teen parent. It kind of just happened because I didn't have the education of sex. I didn't have the education of consequences of sex so it was

3:42really really tough. I actually was told that I could not keep my baby even if I considered keeping him. I didn't have that option. It was more so of if you keep this baby you're not staying in my house. So I grew up in the church and I had these mentors that I literally babysat from 12 to 14 and they stepped in and told me that they will help me and they took my baby in. So that was a huge blessing. I didn't have to go through the process of putting him in the system or you know

4:14having to do all this tedious paperwork. They officially adopted him when he was roughly between three and six. It happened so fast so I can't really tell you the exact age but it has been a blessing. It has been bittersweet. It has been all the feels. I feel everything from it but the biggest thing is he just recently graduated high school. He is a college student. He is an athlete. He is well mannered. He's well liked. He's just your all-American kid and honestly if I would

4:48have kept him I know I would have did a good job but he may have not had all the the blessings that he has now. So I do reside in Florida like Dakota said, Vero Beach Florida. I am a mom outside of being a birth mother. I did have three other boys after him. So a wonderful boy mom. It is amazing and also I just love being a mom. I love being a birth mom. We don't get enough recognition.

5:20You just hear about the children and the adoptive parents but we play a huge part in the triad. We really do. Also I am in the process of writing two books. One titled Girl in the Mirror which would be a book about me, my life and the other book is going to be Life After Adoption Placement where you will get to get the insight of how I handle it. The process of handling it because it's something

5:52that sticks with us forever. It is a part of our life. It's a part of our story. It is something that we're going to take to the grave with us and being a birth mom has been difficult. Pretty much like you know I got a lot of grief from my own community, my own family. A lot of people didn't understand why I chose the route that I chose. A lot of people didn't agree with it. A lot of people felt like I just gave my baby away. I did not give him away.

6:27And it's just it's been really tough. It's been really tough. So that is pretty much my story. That's pretty much who I am. If any of you guys have any questions let me know. Let Dakota know. If it's anything else you want to know. And that's what I got for you. Any questions Dakota? Yeah so a couple a couple questions I posed in our email. Because Juneteenth is tomorrow,

6:59can you tell us what you do to embrace your culture? I know you're from the south. If you could change one thing about today's society what would it be? So what I do to embrace my culture is honestly I embrace it because I love being African American. I love being Black. As you can see my picture in the background that's just like something about me. And the way I do it is just I also educate my boys. You know it is you know we all see what's

7:30going on in the world and how hard it is for a lot of African American men and how like the grief they get. So I just teach them that it's beautiful. Black is beautiful. Like I'm sure a lot of you guys can agree with me. Being Black is beautiful. We are I teach them that we're powerful. I teach them that you know it's no one like us. We do have you know guys don't get on me but you know I'm not that woman that's just like you know all soulful. But we do that's one of the things we do to embrace it.

8:02I educate them with books. I educate them with movies. I just have those those conversations with them. It's something that you said something that I would change. Was that what it was? Yeah is there anything that you would change in today's society to help us be more inclusive, fair and to like improve the racial equity in the country? Yeah I think a lot of conversations need to be had because racism is going to live on forever. Racism is happening as young as children. So it's just like being open having an open-minded heart

8:38and having those conversations and being honest and authentic and just agreeing to disagree. We may not agree on everything. We may not you know understand everything but just have an open mind. I feel like if a lot more people did that it would help us all. It would help our younger generations, the older generations you know it may help but because I am a mom and my youngest child is two and I do have a 14 year old it's just having those open conversations and having an

9:13open mind and open heart and I feel like if we can do that a lot of things can be done. A lot of things could change. It's all about the mindset. Awesome so kind of a two-part question to follow that up. You said those conversations are extremely critical and I really believe that. To take it from two different perspectives, what would you encourage people of color to teach their kids about racism and then vice versa? What would you teach people who have white children or who don't have that racial ethnicity or diversity

9:49in their family to be more inclusive and fair? That's a good question because that's good. So what I would say is like for me my 14-year-old he did date a Caucasian girl, a little white girl and I had to tell him that you know you have to in her household they may not have the conversations of Black or African-American but if you sit down and have those conversations and one start with letting them know it's other people in the work. It's not just you walking around you know it's

10:23like it starts with respect. You got to teach them respect regardless of them not liking or them thinking they're ugly or different. If you start with respect everything else will follow and that goes for white kids, Black kids. It starts with the respect and just the honesty. That is that's just what I do in my household and that's how I teach my kids. Like my seven-year-old he doesn't see color but he knows it is other races but it's not like he's going to school be like you know

10:58seeing certain things or picking or doing anything like that and that's because we have the conversations of it's different people in the world, it's different races in the world and this is what it is. Awesome I love that. When can we expect your books to be ready? So my goal is September especially for the Girl in the Mirror because September is my 35th birthday month and this book is something that the world needs. Be on the lookout for that and he's laying on me but

11:31you can't see it. I did create a t-shirt for birth moms but it applies to any and everybody to wear your voice matters too and those are a part of my brand that is a part of my story that is a part of even with you know Juneteenth. Your voice matters too so you can also find that over at Samantha Rosetta. Awesome well thanks so much for joining us. I definitely appreciate this and I look

12:03forward to hearing from other speakers. Awesome well thanks so much Samantha you rock. It means a lot that you'd be you'd be here and it was so good to meet you. I heard a lot of good things about you from my friend Melana. So thank you. We will move forward to have Gina come next. Hi guys Gina and Drew awesome. You guys have the floor we'd love to have you speak about your story. I posed some questions that we'd like to have you cover but you were really good at this stuff so

12:35we're excited to hear from you. Awesome well we're excited to be here. Yeah so we are a transracial adoption or transracial kinship adoption family. You guys obviously can see Drew and I are an interracial couple. We have four biological biracial children and then we have our we have our one white daughter who we adopted in 2019. Like I said she's a kinship adoption so she is biologically related to Drew and we've been married for 10 years and we always knew that we

13:14wanted to adopt. Drew's family was built on adoption. His mother is his biological mother is adopted. His aunt is adopted. His biological uncle is adopted and his biological grandmother was adopted and so adoption has been very prevalent in his family and so when we got married adoption was kind of like the like it was just like uh it was something we talked about when we first got married if it happened when it would happen if we were open to it this kind of thing and we always knew

13:45it would happen for us so it's just kind of a matter of when and that happened for us in 2019. And we have uh we're I guess we're pretty like we do social media on instagram and tiktok and we talk about a lot about multicultural family and adoption transracial adoption and obviously I talk about like being a black mother to a white daughter and biracial children and so I talk a lot about that on social media and um and I help other transracial adoptive families understand what it's

14:21like um or well what it's like to be a black mother to a white daughter but also some of the things that I've had to deal with as being a black um black woman and a black mother um in living in the U.S. and just talking about some of the things that we've had to deal with um the racism that I've had to deal with as a teenager and then as a mother as well. Awesome when we when I first had you on my podcast almost two years ago um you were a big advocate of home school right when COVID was

14:56happening happening um kind of tell everybody about about that journey for you and then you became a huge advocate of black history and juneteenth kind of tell us about um where that came from and how you incorporate that into your family. Yeah so um in 2020 like a lot of other families one of my daughters was really struggling with learning virtually and so we decided to home school but even before then um I had been doing black history with my children but once we started

15:26homeschooling I fully um sorry or maybe having a great time um sorry guys I'm gonna walk this way so you can hear. So in 2020 I decided to home school my kids to make it a lot easier for them to get the best education and in that when our curriculum I ended up adding um um black history into my kids curriculum which was really important to me because as a kid I obviously did not get any

15:58black history or anything that particularly talked about um black um like black history in any way. We would get of course little tidbits here and there of course you get the typical civil rights movement very short in your history book or um like talking about enslaved black people black Americans very short and that was pretty much it and so it wasn't until after high school I realized how much I was not getting from the um education system or yeah from the education

16:30system so once I had kids I realized that was something that I wanted to do and so I have black history in our kids curriculum currently and then um I after high school I learned about Juneteenth and we did little snippets um with my toddlers and as they got older I would have um bigger lessons around Juneteenth um and then in 2020 I ended up sharing one of my like curriculums ended up sharing it with Old Navy and taking over but Juneteenth and just black history is something really important for my kids to learn just because I know if um if they if we would ever choose to

17:06send them back into public school that's not something that most black children or any children of any race will ever um get to know until unless they get they themselves or their parents make the conscious decision to teach their children about black history and it wasn't until I started making that conscious decision myself to learn for myself and for my children my family that I realized how much that black Americans really had a role in in America and um in America and um

17:38right now we have um I love Juneteenth it's like one of my favorite things to teach my kids and we currently have a bucket list where we check things off as a family it's like a big little bucket list on our wall that we check off and it's little things that build up that help um children understand the the importance of Juneteenth so I have it right here I could tell you some of the things that we have which was like make tea cakes read the emancipation proclamation support local

18:09black-owned businesses read children books on slavery read children books on Juneteenth those are a couple some of the things that we've done and you would be really surprised about how many children books there are on slavery and for Juneteenth to help children understand on their level um what Juneteenth what slavery and what um what like abolishing slavery was and how and how it looked and the reason the whole reasons behind it um some of the other things that we have on our

18:39list on our Juneteenth list was how to learn how to be advocate um uh visit a local Juneteenth celebration these were all things that we do as a family just because even though I learned took the time as a high like a college student to learn about Juneteenth my husband who is white had never learned about it until we were married and I would start celebrating it and um it's really important that I teach my whole family just because I have biracial children and white child who like they all

19:13need to learn because I feel like it's it's just a really important part of history in America and it's weird because I have been learning about it for so long and people a lot of Americans are just learning about it especially this year where it's our first year celebrating it as a federal holiday and a lot of people are just like it's just a little holiday we're just getting off I don't understand it I don't understand I've even had messages where people telling me I don't understand why we're celebrating a holiday about race in reality we're not celebrating a holiday

19:46about race we're celebrating a day that black Americans and it's not even the day that we were it was a day that about abolishing slavery because slavery had been abolished about a year a year and a half beforehand but it was a day that they had finally found out in Galveston Texas that they were free so they were free for about a year and a half before um they they renew and of course because the way how news travel of course there were um slave holders who didn't want to let their

20:16uh enslaved people know that they were free of course just continued to take take advantage of that of their labor and just or would actually if some that didn't know were um kind of pressured into saying well you can't go just because it is um just because slavery is abolished doesn't mean it's abolished for you and so it was just we're celebrating a day that of course abolishing slavery but also um the day that a lot of black Americans really felt that um black Americans were free.

20:47I love that thank you so much um when making that curriculum what were some priorities for you and I know that you kind of just taught the history of Juneteenth but share why it is so important being like over 130 years later however long it's been to to finally make kind of make things right. Why I feel like uh repeat the question one more time. Yeah so there's two questions so first why well I mean my parents have Monday off and they had no idea why I had

21:20to tell them my mom said it was a June holiday so um tell us I mean especially your feelings why finally making this a holiday is important to to black Americans and Americans in general and then second question what was your priority in making that curriculum for your children on teaching them black history and I remember like a lot of you had focuses on different individuals and stuff so. So the first part was just why is it why is it important for us to learn about it I like I feel

21:52like the reason why it's important for us to learn about it is um I feel like I mean obviously we know there's a lot of racial divide here in America right now in 2022 and I think a lot of it just comes to a lot of people not understanding and not knowing a lot about our history like I said like I know your parents still even know about it they just thought it was a June holiday and then online because I share about it a lot I had a person who just said it's a holiday about race and I think with knowledge I think people could understand a little bit more more but also empathize a lot more

22:24like celebrating a day about slavery that should be a day that I feel like across all races should be able everyone should be able to celebrate but I think because a lot of people don't understand it they just feel like it's another you know something that's they feel like something black is being shoved in their face in reality it's about celebrating black Americans who are Americans being able to be free and be able to have autonomy over their lives make choices

22:54be able to provide for their family without be able to have a family and I think that's really important just because I mean I know this sounds really cliche being being able to learn from our mistakes means that we're able from our history means that we're able to go forward and make a better America for everyone for our races but we can't do that if we're continually ignoring black history or any history like Asian-American history anything like that we need to learn about it so

23:25we can have a better America for everyone and so learning about black history as simple as like Juneteenth I think if more people talk about the history about it they won't see it as just another holiday because that's not what I want as a black American that's like exactly the opposite I want I didn't want it to be a holiday where we just go cook out or have food and we have a day off and then we just go back to work the next day I feel like it should be a day of learning and that's why for us we've made it not just a day a whole month of learning where we're checking things off of

23:55our bucket list but that I think I feel like that's the reason why it's so important to have a holiday like Juneteenth like around this it just makes other it'll in a way force or maybe not force might not be the best word to say but it might push people to want to take the time to learn about a holiday that it might not be that might not have had a huge effect on them or their ancestors and then the second part was why did I make it was why did why feel like our family right oh yeah how

24:27did you prioritize the curriculum when you were making that okay so how I mean I think the biggest part was just sitting down with my husband because like I said we've been teaching it to our children little like of course on their uh like their level because our kids we have a good nine-year-old to all the way down to a 11 it'll be 11 months in a couple weeks 11 month old and so I sat down with my husband and I started talking to him about the things that he's learned over the last couple of years and some of the things that he would want to learn and then we also talked about some of the

24:58things that like as a family we should learn together and so how we prioritize it was just talking to my husband talking about some of those things but also I thought about some of the things that I would have wanted to learn as a child and so little things like like I said um we would visit a museum dedicated dedicated to like black art and black culture like that's little things like that just learning it's just a lot of things that we don't get um as like at least I didn't get

25:30as a child and so just prioritizing it in that way um a lot of it is just things that we should not just be doing around Juneteenth but doing all around and so I feel like those were just some of the things things that I feel like we should be doing all the time I prioritize it and just in that way and so I feel like it feels weird I probably am running around in circles but mostly just talking to my children um thinking about the things that they would like to learn me myself thinking about the things I would have liked to learn as a child and then talking to my husband

26:03and seeing the things that he has yet to learn or has learned it feels like we need to read and like re-talk or re-learn or teach to our children so I just got a question that really ties into what I was going to ask you to kind of close your comments and it says what do you wish your friends or community would do to better support black children and families it's weird I mean I feel like so like you guys know we're a multicultural family and a lot of the things that I feel like I have to do I wish other families would do would be like we live in a very diverse

26:34area we make sure that we have diverse friends and so we I make sure that I have racial mirrors for my children for all like all five of them because we not only have like I think maybe just making sure that we have diverse friends and racial mirrors around the people around our children I know there are people I've met people who they are they don't have a lot of friends

27:07there are different races from them and honestly I feel like it's not only hurting yourself as parents but it's hurting your children because I've been to predominantly white colleges where I was their probably first friend that was black and that was really hard not only on me but I felt like on them because some of the things that they did while I was their friend was really harmful

27:37where I felt like I had to deal with a lot of microaggression I had to deal with feeling very tokenized and I think that would be probably one of the biggest things that I would wish that other families did were have more racial mirrors and more diverse friends for parents and their children not just the children but your children to have friends of different races but parents as well because I know as a transracial adoptive mom I make the effort to not only have people in our lives that are white but I actually have friends that I feel like who are actual friends that I could call

28:11off if something was wrong or like I could invite over like those are all important things for my kids to see because I know like kids can see the difference between someone that mommy just knows or between a friend and I think that would be probably the most beneficial if all families it didn't matter what race all had very diverse friends and have racial mirrors around their children so making sure like you know like a teacher or like a gymnastic teacher or the people

28:42that they see around them all diverse and for us that was living in a diverse area but for other people I know it can look differently but I think that might be one of the things that I wish other families did. Cool to kind of circle around what you were talking about I really believe that a lot of our racial divide can be mitigated as we teach and raise our children not only educating them formally but also like you said like having diverse friends and being close with people of different cultures and backgrounds and beliefs as well. You come from a unique perspective where

29:16you do have that interracial adoption but first you had an interracial marriage so instead of like teaching the the children all of this stuff what what did that transition look like for you when you were marrying and dating Drew and if he's available and has any input then that would be cool too. I mean a lot of it was just learning like early in our marriage just little things I mean I feel like we've always been I've always been we've always been teaching and learning from

29:46each other a lot of times too it's there have been events that have happened that we've talked about certain things we've also had things happen to us I mean I don't feel like there's been anything pinpoint where I said like this is the time where we sat and learned I mean I could say that for certain things but go ahead can you repeat that question for Drew and maybe he might have better. Yeah of course so throughout tonight we've talked a lot about teaching our children about racial

30:16equity you could say but I said Gina had a unique perspective because first she did it with her husband so what does that transition look like for you as you've learned more about Gina's culture and how to be more sensitive and knowledgeable about black history and what does that look like for you as you've dated and married Gina and had kids with her. Yes but I think that's a good I think for me it's been really interesting I think it's to try to sum it up I'll try to give like just two examples and one is a lot of people will say like they don't see color

30:51like I don't see color and so that was kind of a perspective I had for a long time is like I just see you for you I don't see color the problem with that is for me personally I had a lot of ignorance to what African-Americans and other minorities have been through a lot of ignorance just to being able to just gaslight you know things and say things didn't happen or weren't happening and those kind of things like I remember we first got married and

31:22we'd be walking somewhere and Gina would be like do you not like feel uncomfortable and stuff and I'm like what are you talking about and then I look up or look over where she's looking and people were definitely like staring at us and kind of giving us looks and I just was like oh maybe they're just like looking at like how the store looks or something you know and it was just more of like that couldn't happen to me or that wouldn't happen to us and that doesn't happen yeah like we're this is way advanced like that doesn't happen anymore and so just going through

31:54that process of learning and it was pretty difficult Gina and I had a more than a few like just heart to hearts and really come to terms with each other and what what it meant for us and and those kind of things I think the other example I would give is once we adopted our daughter we we'd had some conversation about race but not a lot because the kids were still really young but once we adopted our daughter one day I just remember being in the van and she pointed over

32:26and she's like oh look my skin is white and daddy's skin is white and you're one of our other daughters your skin is brown and mommy's skin is brown but she said it in a way almost like me and daddy have this special connection and you guys are together and have this connection it really prompted us to be like oh my goodness like we really are going to have to have an in-depth discussion with ourselves and the kids about what does the color of your skin mean or what doesn't that mean and how do we start having those conversations with kids even as young as what

32:58five six years old even younger than that you know four years old yeah and so it really prompted those discussions for us awesome thanks for participating drew do you guys have any any last thoughts that you'd like to tag on before no I mean I think one of the things is just continue to have the conversation continue to be like I think I always try to continue to be an advocate and just teaching other families multicultural families and how we need to continue to have

33:31conversations and that the world may see us one way or may continue want to be colorblind but in a way we should be celebrating other people we should be celebrating other races religions um we should be celebrating differences instead of trying to ignore it and not see it um because I honestly feel like that's what we've been doing for years centuries and I think changing that might get us somewhere differently at least that's what I'm hoping but in reality we should never be wanting to ignore people and who they are because I can definitely say being black is part of who I

34:05am and being white I feel like is part of who you who true is it's not the only part of us but I would never want someone to ignore part of me even like something as small as like it's not small but being a stay-at-home mom that's part of me and so when we continue wanting to say I'm colorblind I don't see that and also saying you don't see part of me and that's not I feel like what we need here right now I think we should continue have conversations and to continue to see people for who they are that's awesome hey thanks so much Gina and Drew I admire you guys a lot and I was

34:39so grateful you guys came and spent spent a little bit with us tonight yeah for sure um I do have two more questions mainly one geared towards Sam from our Instagram um Sam are you available again yes awesome and and this is based on your comfortability so if you don't want to share that's fine we just had a question asking if you and your um three boys currently have a relationship with the child that you placed for adoption yes that's a good question we actually do still we

35:10we have a relationship with him he lives in our city and it's funny because the boys adore him like my three boys that I'm raising myself um my 14 year old and him you would think they grew up in the same house but growing up they did meet each other early on um so I did used to get my now 19 year old when he was younger and he will come over to our house I would have him on certain days weekends and all that so they did start off younger um growing up together because of the age

35:44difference but they literally are like this so they're really close my seven-year-old with him being so young he's he knows that's his brother but he kind of sometimes forgets like well he ain't here all the time so like is he my play play brother and I'm like no he's he's your brother mommy carried him in her stomach and that's your brother so yes we all have a relationship um we even have a relationship with adoptive parents so that's one of our biggest blessings

36:19awesome thanks Sam that's happy to hear too we do have a couple minutes left we can kind of do it open mic style if anybody has any more questions um for Samantha or Gina and Drew or um about Juneteenth or or about our foundation as well hi I'm Sasha and um I am actually a family member of Sam and I have a question for Gina and Drew actually go ahead awesome Gina are you available yeah we are cool perfect so um when

36:54you guys have that conversation with your older babies about um the color of their skin and embrace and things of that nature um from your oldest say your oldest to your your white adoptive daughter and your biracial biological um what is their reaction to the conversation how do they feel about it because um Drew you said that there it seemed like she was making a distinction like I have a particular bond with daddy and you have a particular bond with mommy so after the

37:25conversation took place like what how do they take it how do they react so I can say that when we realized that she was making distinctions like that we started uh automatically having the conversation about how mommy and daddy was different but how a lot of ways we were the same as well and we started doing that um for her and her siblings as well so we started saying like oh yeah that is true you and dad both have white skin while your twin sister has um like brown skin like

37:58mommy and like but you did you know like um like your sister she's eight like you and I'm like 30 I'm 32 now but like I'm 30 so that's something else that you guys have like similar so that you might have not have the same skin color right but you're both eight what are something some other similarities that you guys have and so she started spouting out a lot of the similarities that they had and so okay well what are some of the differences that you have and she started spouting out some of the differences that she had which with her sister and it's like whoa wow like

38:30you guys have a lot of similarities and a lot of differences like are you guys family and she's like yeah and like are you guys sisters she's like yeah I'm like huh like it seems like even mommy and daddy we have a lot of similarities we have a lot of differences and you can see some of the differences outwardly right and you can see and maybe some of the differences you can't see and some of the similarities you can see and some of the similarities you can't see like do you feel like that makes you see your sister or mommy and daddy any differently do you feel any differently

39:00about us I was like and I tell my daughter to be very honest just because you can't have any um you can't have a good conversation without any honesty and she's like no she's like I still see you as my mom I still see her as my sister and so I one and I make it very um I don't want to use the word nonchalant but I make it where it's something that a casual conversation yeah because we have the conversation often in our family and that's just because we're

39:32we're a very multicultural family we have like physically on the outweigh we have a lot of differences right even with with me and my biracial children like I am black my children are biracial they obviously have different skin tone that I do even um two my children have different hair textures one has the same hand texture as I do so all between us we have a lot of differences and so having her be open with that and talk about that but also make also not make her be like the bad guy for wanting to point that stuff out was one of our priorities and so

40:06she now knows if she ever wants to point that out or have the conversation that she knows that she can have that conversation with us and we're not going to look at her in a bad way for wanting to point that stuff out just because when you point when she points that stuff out and we bring shame into it then it also brings this reason why doesn't mommy want to talk about that she's black why doesn't want to mommy talk about our different skin colors and so then you have this kind of like hush-hush thing and that's not what we wanted we want her to be able to talk about it talk about

40:38it freely and talk about it comfortably okay awesome and um I'm sorry I had another question too how do you guys do having two eight-year-olds how do you guys deal with the topic of hair hair hair I mean that's mostly me I'm trying to think how I just do it we just have a conversation um because uh I think out of all my girls I think the biggest thing and I'm not sure if this is

41:08where you're going or not I think the biggest thing we've actually discussed or talked about is like one of our daughters can get braids and the other can't and you just talk about and it's just a different hair texture uh it's a different way your hair grows it's a different way your hair grows it's a different like products you use for each hair but you're able you do I think you do a great job at giving them each a very unique feeling that they each have their own they can do their hair their own way yeah and so at least what I've seen like you get the girls

41:40you really make them feel unique with their own hair and none of them that I've seen feel like shamed or like they don't have the same hair or they have to treat it they love their own hair being able to appreciate their siblings hair in a way that they get their own hair because all of them have like I said all different hair so one has straight blonde hair and like all with all three girls with different hair I've had to learn how to care and manage all three of their including my own because I just started my natural hair journey about four years three four years ago

42:10and so um like Drew said I there I mean there's one of my daughters who has a hair texture to get braids and two of them that don't and a lot of the times they are able to realize like hey I will love braids but also I will teach them and like hey these braids are made for certain hair textures we haven't had the big conversation about uh appropriation yet but I've but I've taught them like braids are for protective for certain hairs for certain hair textures um our daughter with

42:42blonde hair I'm like hey you don't need that like your hair grows really really well it's really long mommy's able to um take care of it and manage it in certain way that you don't need your hair you're braided all the time to be able to do that and I have one girl one of my daughters my racial bryoracial daughter with very loose fine um curly hair that's not really coily or kinky and I'm like this is how mommy manages your hair and does your hair this way I use a diffuser I use curling um curly mousse and um leave-in conditioner this is how mommy does your hair and it's different from

43:16your sister who has blonde straight hair but it's also different from your sister who has curly coily hair and so like we they've learned that they're they they're not at a very early age that they all have different hair and but they've also learned that it they're all their hair is managed a different way and so since we've been doing it at a very young age they don't kind of they don't really question it very much they don't really ask well why can she get her hair braided and not because a lot of the times if they're like hey that's really pretty like one of my

43:50sisters got her hair braided like I get my hair in box braids like that's really cool I'll say hey do you really like it I'm like huh that is really cool do you want me to do something that would be similar to that that would be appropriate for your hairstyle your hair texture and everything I'm like yeah so sometimes I'll do Dutch braids or do a really cool hysteria that will be very that will kind of mimic but that would be appropriate for their texture and their um and their density of the hair and porosity of their hair and so very early on that we had the conversation that right

44:23now they don't really ask too many questions I'm sure as they get older they will and we'll have conversations again but right now they've learned how to take care of their own hair they don't know too much about taking care of their own siblings hair but they know a lot about their hair and they know that their hair is different but that we also celebrate all hair like textures in our home and we don't love one more because it's easier to manage we just love it and we learn how to take care of all hair types in our home. I think that's so awesome how you guys have normalized their

44:57differences so much and it sounds like you emphasize what makes them a family the most and I think that's really really awesome to hear so thank you guys for that. Well thank you. Thank you. Well thank you so much for joining guys please let us know if you have any other questions I'd love to pass them on or answer them myself. We are at Destiny Adoption Foundation on Instagram. I hope that you guys take this opportunity that you've been here for this Juneteenth webinar but also

45:27to spend Juneteenth with a new energy to educate yourself and others and to help promote our country in this world to be a more inclusive and fair place. I love you guys all thank you so much for joining us and I hope you have a great weekend. Thank you so much for tuning in for this bonus episode it was so fun we were really excited to have this opportunity to just pop in with a fun a fun extra episode. We'll be back with our podcast with season three on July 11th. We hope you have a

46:03wonderful Juneteenth and like was mentioned in the conversation hope that we can each take some time to understand a little bit more and do what we can to make our country a better place. Yes be more unified and keep learning that's really our overall goal I think to just keep learning and keep growing so thank you so much for joining us.

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