046 – I Am Adopted, It Is Who I Am
Jennifer is a reunited adoptee from Pittsburgh. She’s a petite, white blonde of European descent whose adoptive parents are a Spanish man and a Mexican woman. Through her search, she found both of her natural parents are deceased, and she had half brothers on both sides, both named Tom. Unbeknownst to Jen, her maternal half-brother attended the same high school she did and bullied her! On her maternal side, she experienced secondary rejection which will never be resolved because her grandmother developed dementia and passed away. The post http://www.whoamireallypodcast.com/046-i-am-adopted-it-is-who-i-am/ (046 – I Am Adopted, It Is Who I Am) appeared first on http://www.whoamireallypodcast.com (Who Am I...Really? Podcast). Jennifer (https://www.temi.com/editor/t/hqjB_-FZdmap-fdy_D1JQC9ngV-vfIh7u3jhDRWCz1YkRftRtdrOOSb6VERgyg29_UnC4tqevSSA93_Vh7E0Mqm18kE?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplinkats=4.31 (00:04)): She literally told me, she goes, you know, you focus too much on being adopted and you ask too many questions and I'm like, but I get them adopted. It is who I am. I had no information about myself for 30 years. And you think I'm not going to ask questions. Damon (https://www.temi.com/editor/t/hqjB_-FZdmap-fdy_D1JQC9ngV-vfIh7u3jhDRWCz1YkRftRtdrOOSb6VERgyg29_UnC4tqevSSA93_Vh7E0Mqm18kE?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplinkats=25.26 (00:25)): Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? This is who am I really a podcast about adoptees that have located and connected with their biological family members. I'm Damon Davis and on today's show is Jennifer. She called me from Wellsburg West Virginia, where she's a caregiver for the elderly. Jennifer is transracially adopted, but I have to admit not in the way I usually think of that kind of adoption. She stood out in her family and her family stood out in their community. Jen shared that she was completely close to looking for her birth relatives until she got some stark examples of the importance of knowing your family's medical history. When she found her birth family, one of her gut feelings about her birth mother during her search was confirmed, but she also learned a crazy cruel irony about her high school past. In the end, Jen experienced a secondary rejection from her birth family. After she made a mistake at a huge family function. As you listen, decide for yourself, what you think the factors were in that rejection was that misstep as major as her family made it seem or where the history of guilt about hiding the truth or even the early onset of mental illness also factors. This is Jen's journey. Damon (https://www.temi.com/editor/t/hqjB_-FZdmap-fdy_D1JQC9ngV-vfIh7u3jhDRWCz1YkRftRtdrOOSb6VERgyg29_UnC4tqevSSA93_Vh7E0Mqm18kE?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplinkats=112.76 (01:52)): Jennifer's adopted father's relatives are from Spain and he grew up in Pittsburgh. He got a PhD in chemistry, then took a job with a pharmaceutical company working for a while in Mexico city. Her adopted mom was her father's secretary there. They fell in love and her mother got pregnant immediately giving birth to Jen's older sister. Then her father took a job back in Pittsburgh. So he moved his young family back to Pennsylvania. Jennifer's mother wanted a big family, but after several miscarriages and her husband's health problems, they were starting to settle into the notion that it would just be the three of them, Jennifer (https://www.temi.com/editor/t/hqjB_-FZdmap-fdy_D1JQC9ngV-vfIh7u3jhDRWCz1YkRftRtdrOOSb6VERgyg29_UnC4tqevSSA93_Vh7E0Mqm18kE?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplinkats=149.32 (02:29)): Our neighbor, who was a nurse. She, I don't know the connection here, exact details. And she has since passed away. So I can't ask her, but she somehow knew the doctor who delivered me, who was my birth mother's doctor. He worked at Allegheny general hospital in Pittsburgh, and his name was dr. Bell. And he was known for, and I'll say in the air quotes, helping girls in trouble. So she had Support this podcast
