If you had met me twenty years ago, I do not think you would recognize me.
Truthfully, I am not sure I would recognize myself.
Back then, my life looked successful from the outside. I had spent years pursuing an education, building a career, and trying to create the kind of future I thought I was supposed to want. I worked hard. I followed the rules. I checked the boxes.
In many ways, I was doing exactly what I had been taught to do.
Yet there was a question quietly sitting beneath all of it.
A question I did not have the courage to ask out loud.
Was I living my life, or the life I thought everyone expected me to live?
I did not wake up one morning and suddenly decide to reinvent myself.
The change happened slowly.
Over years.
A question here.
A disappointment there.
A lesson that took much longer to learn than it should have.
Like many people, I had become very good at meeting expectations. I could work hard. I could achieve goals. I could solve problems. What I was less skilled at was understanding what I wanted for myself.
Looking back, that should not surprise me.
I was adopted as an infant.
My childhood was not unhappy, but there was always a lingering feeling that some pieces of my story were missing. I did not know it at the time, but I spent much of my life searching for answers to questions I could not fully articulate.
Who am I?
Where do I come from?
Why do I feel different?
Questions like that have a way of following you.
Even when you pretend they are not there.
As the years passed, my search took me down unexpected paths. Some led to adventure. Some led to heartbreak. Some led to growth. Some forced me to confront things about myself that I would rather have ignored.
None of those experiences provided a single answer.
Instead, they gave me something more valuable.
They gave me perspective.
I began to notice a pattern.
Some of the biggest decisions in my life were not made because they were practical. They were made because they felt true.
Not easy.
Not popular.
Not always understood.
Just true.
Over time, those decisions changed the course of my life.
They shaped the way I approached relationships.
The way I raised my daughters.
The way I viewed success.
The way I chose to spend my time.
Eventually, they even shaped the name I carried.
That story will come later.
For now, it is enough to say that the name was never the beginning of the journey.
It was simply one marker along the road.
What changed my life was not a new name.
It was learning to become myself.
The older I get, the more I realize that many people are walking around carrying stories they have never fully examined. We inherit expectations from our families, our communities, our culture, and sometimes from complete strangers. Eventually those expectations become so familiar that we mistake them for our own desires.
At some point, I began asking a different question.
Not “What should I do?”
But:
“What brings me alive?”
That question led me toward learning, travel, service, friendship, adventure, love, community, and a hundred experiences I never could have predicted when I was younger.
It also taught me something important.
Most people spend their lives chasing the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
The promotion.
The perfect relationship.
The bigger house.
The next achievement.
The thing that will finally make everything make sense.
What I discovered was different.
The gift was never waiting at the end.
The gift was the rainbow itself.
The colors.
The experiences.
The people.
The lessons.
The journey.
That realization became the inspiration for this publication.
The Color Rainbow is not a guidebook.
It is not self-help.
It is not a list of answers.
It is simply my story.
A story about adoption, identity, family, joy, mistakes, growth, adventure, and the lifelong process of figuring out who we are.
Some stories will be funny.
Some will be painful.
A few will probably make me uncomfortable to share.
But all of them matter.
Because every color belongs in the rainbow.
My hope is not that readers see themselves in me.
My hope is that they begin to see themselves more clearly.
Your story is different than mine.
It should be.
But perhaps some of the questions are the same.
And if they are, maybe we can explore them together.
Welcome to The Color Rainbow.
The journey begins here.
Thank you for reading the first issue of The Color Rainbow.
For many years, I have wanted to tell these stories. Not because I believe my path is the right path, but because I believe each of us benefits from examining our own.
In future issues, I will share stories about adoption, identity, parenthood, relationships, adventure, joy, mistakes, and the lifelong process of becoming who we are.
If any part of this story resonates with you, I would love for you to subscribe and join me on the journey.
Jeffery Joyous Journey