Hi, Ben. My name is Lexi, and I want to tell you about my identity crisis. I was unknowingly part of a community that saw me long before I ever saw myself. And for the past 10 years, I've been learning how to show up in that truth on my own terms. That's because for the first 18 years of my life, I was secretly black.

Today, The Secret Room Presents, I'm Black, part one. On this episode, we're going to open our

hearts to Lexi, who at the age of 18 had a truth bomb dropped on her. She's black. I can hear

all your questions already, because I had them too. And one question that rose above them all, of course, is, how could she not know?

But as you'll come to learn, hers is a complicated story of family, secrets, and broken trust.

Let's get started.

Hi, Lexi, and welcome to The Secret Room.

Hi, thank you so much, I'm excited to be here. You're welcome. I'm so excited to have you here. You have such a mind-bending secret for us. Yeah, you're telling me. In a nutshell, your secret is that you didn't know you were black until you were 18. Yep, that is right. There are so many questions I can just feel racing through people's minds.

And I know, because I posted your secret to our Facebook discussion group and asked for questions to ask you in advance.

Yeah.

And I'm going to work those in.

Yep, I got you.

Your mom had you young, right?

She had me two weeks after she turned 20.

You know, we're flashing back to the 90s. Everyone's wearing big,

baggy clothes all the time. So my mother actually did not tell her parents that she was pregnant.

So I was a very big fun surprise in a very big fun way. I came a little early, which my mother was not expecting,

of course. My grandparents were actually leaving for an appointment, and my mom comes rushing out of the bathroom and lets them know that she's in labor. Oh my gosh. Now, how did they not know she was pregnant?

A lot of it had to do with the fact that her fashion sense was those, like, you know,

those big baggy clothes.

And she spent a lot of time at school and at work.

So she wasn't around my grandparents very often, you know.

...