"Jala A. McKenzie-Burns was born of biracial parents on November 11, 1965 as Dave Edward Morris. Abandoned in the hospital, she was placed into the foster care system and adopted by an African-American family in 1972. As a young child, she personally experienced the racial unrest and was taunted for her dual racial heritage.
On top of this, she found herself expected to live up to society's demands of her as a boy and a young man, while she yearned for the things of a feminine nature. To hide the truth of who she felt she was inside, she joined the U.S. Marine Corps, worked in the political arena, graduated from college, married, and raised a child. In all that time, pain and depression followed her that she could not express her true nature. When her adoptive father died, she fell into a deep clinical depression, which triggered an attempted suicide and admission into a psych ward.
