Finding My Way: A Memoir of Family, Identity, and Political Ambition

by Robin F. Schepper

Overview

A deeply personal memoir about finding family and belonging from White House staffer Robin F. Schepper. 

Growing up torn between her single Pan Am–stewardess mom and brothel-owning grandmother in 1960s New York City, Robin F. Schepper never imagined that she’d one day have an office in the East Wing of the White House. Her childhood in a German American neighborhood on the Upper East Side was peppered with half-truths, from the family secrets surrounding her grandmother’s immigration to deceptions about her biological father. 

In a world of self-absorbed adults, Robin largely raised herself: she secured a scholarship to a prestigious private school and worked several jobs as a teenager to pay her own living expenses before finally escaping to California for college. Street-smart and undeniably driven, once in the professional world Robin quickly ascended in the male-dominated political sphere, traveling the globe while being subjected to sexual harassment and assaults that echoed obstacles her mother and grandmother had faced. Through it all, Robin searched for her biological father. She felt that if she could understand why he abandoned her, she could free herself from secrets, lies, and shame. 

Robin eventually rose to work for the First Lady of the United States Michelle Obama and, in the meantime, created her own family by adopting two sons from Kazakhstan. Intimate and captivating, Finding My Way follows an ambitious woman who reached the highest pinnacles of a political career while simultaneously fulfilling her own quest to heal from family trauma and discover her true identity. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781954854963
Publisher:	Girl Friday Books
Publication date:	04/18/2023
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	1,050,056
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

For more than thirty years, Robin F. Schepper served at the highest levels of American politics and government. She worked on four presidential campaigns and in the Clinton White House, was staff director for the Senate Democratic Technology and Communications Committee under Sen. Tom Daschle, and served in the Obama White House as the first executive director of Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity initiative, Let’s Move! She’s advised numerous nonprofits and helped draft policy reports for the Birpartisan Policy Center. She lives in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, with her husband and two sons.

Editorial Reviews

I couldn’t put it down. Robin Schepper’s life story weaves a personal history of growing up in New York City in the 1970s, a lifetime [spent] searching for her biological father until Ancestry.com and 23andMe provided her with answers, and [a career] at the highest level of American politics, breaking down barriers for women in that field for my generation.” —Sweta Chakraborty, president, US operations, of We Don’t Have Time and climate, behavioral scientist

“Finding My Way is more than a book. It is storytelling from an author who brings readers into her closest circle of friends, sharing the details of her life that [give her] questions, challenge her values, and demonstrate her capacity to achieve and willingness to love in spite of the obstacles in her path from her earliest days of childhood. Schepper trusts her readers with her story the way so many . . . in her family, community, and profession have trusted her. We’re all the better for knowing her story and will be less fearful of our own because of her courage.” —Kiki McLean, public affairs and political strategist

“Written with gravitas, the memoir Finding My Way is about leading a purposeful life and imparting knowledge with dignity and honesty.” —Clarion Reviews

From the Publisher

2023-01-21
A political operative recounts her long struggle to find her biological father.

Schepper, born in America but a German speaker until entering school in Manhattan, was raised by a single mother who “was called a bastard child in the Catholic Church” because she gave birth to her daughter out of wedlock. Her mother, an international flight attendant, was always vague about the father’s identity. (In an intriguing passage, Schepper speculates on her mother’s relationship with the Indonesian dictator Sukarno: “If Dr. Sukarno had been successful in his advances toward my mom, she might have become one of his wives—and I would have never existed.”) The author’s grandmother ran a brothel, which required Schepper’s intervention when Nana was back in Germany and “some of the girls wanted to do house calls to make more money, which was against Nana’s rules of operating her business.” Work in the film business and then politics followed, with Schepper always on the lookout for clues and DNA that would establish the facts of her parentage. The clues her mother left were unhelpful, but Schepper proved to be an adept investigator, stymied but never broken by a long chain of dead ends and false leads. Unfortunately, some of the matters that she would have profitably spent more time on go by in a flash, such as her service in the West Wing as the head of Michelle Obama’s program to encourage young people to exercise. Where she could go deeper into the inner workings of political campaigns, the writing often falls flat: “I worked the event in Boston for election night, when Dukakis lost to George H.W. Bush. It was hugely demoralizing, as we all feared how Bush would lead our country.” Adoptees and those in search of birthparents may find the example of Schepper’s perseverance to be inspiring, but a handbook for political advance work it’s not.

A heartfelt memoir whose details are unusual but whose center is unexceptional.

Kirkus Reviews