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It had never occurred to me to write about being in an interracial marriage.

This is, after all, 2017. My husband and I don’t feel any different than any other couple.

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But, in early December, we came back from a fabulous road trip to Whistler to find mail addressed to me that the Edmonton Journal had forwarded. Jesse thought it would be filled with praise. I assumed it would contain criticism for some parenting choice I’d made with our then-six-week-old baby, Indiana.

It turned out to be a racist and hateful handwritten note. It was unsigned and there was no return address. Anonymous letter-writers were the predecessors to anonymous Internet trolls, I guess.

“I don’t appreciate your & Journal’s attempt to advertise mixed-race marriage,” it read.

Peppered throughout the letter were all kinds of assumptions made about my husband and our relationship based on negative and false black-male stereotypes. Those made me furious.