GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Graci Harkema made headlines for stepping down as director of Diversity and Inclusion for Founders Brewing amid a discrimination lawsuit.
That was nearly three years ago.
For the last three years, Harkema has been writing a memoir that serves as both a personal recount of her story and an educational tool.
Harkema does not name Founders in the book, explaining that that is just one small part of her story.
“There was so many times throughout my life that I didn’t think I could make it. I didn’t think I could go on,” Harkema told FOX 17.
Instead, Harkema says she has chosen to continue to rise above all of life's hardships. In her book, she shares her journey of being born sick and malnourished in the Congo, to a having a mother she believed was dead.
“The life expectancy in the Congo is a fraction of what it is here,” Harkema said.
Harkema found out when she was 30 that her mother was very much alive. Graci was adopted as a baby by her parents.
Tattooed on her arm is a sound wave of the first words Graci's biological mother, MariJani, spoke to her upon their meeting.
"The first thing she said to me in Swahili was ‘My child, my child, my child,'" Harkema said.
But the journey to finding her biological mother isn't where the story of Graci's trials begin or end.
As a transracial adoptee, Graci shares in her book the challenges that came with growing up in suburban Grand Rapids, being one of the only people at her school with dark skin.
“The one point, where I began was in the mud hut in the Congo where I was born in civil unrest, and it speaks to being able to rise through adversities of being near death many times, and living through and surviving disease and so many hardships that I’ve experienced. To be at this place now, to continue rising, my path and our path isn’t over,” Harkema said.
Her path would extend to high-profile jobs, one at a local law firm, a career at Tek Systems, all while hiding a secret: Harkema identifies as queer.
“It’s so important, for myself and my journey— in coming out. I came out at a work environment in the technology industries. I came out too a stranger who was my boss, who was a straight, white male,” Harkema said. "The role that he had in my life and the role that my colleagues had in empowering me to be my authentic self, was so impactful."
So impactful that Tek Systems made the photos section in the book.
A book where Harkema chronicles each difficult chapter of her life, from being born teeny tiny with little chance of survival, to being a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, with one hope: that dear readers feel seen.
“All of them were terrible. All of them were equally awful. All of them could have been debilitating. But with each one, it was like ‘I did that,’" Harkema said.
“Each adversity that we go through, gives us a little more strength and power and insight for the next one."
Harkema's book is for people 16 and up. Each chapter ends with tools and resources for how to be a better ally and educate people on how they can live a more inclusive life.
