Jeff, from southern California,   grew up with the knowledge of and separation anxiety about his adoption. In reunion, he found his birth mother who mirrored his looks, but who has pushed the boundaries of their relationship, and a birth father who is simply not his type of guy.

Jeff is the inspirational photographer behind the adoptee focused innocent People Project.

This is Jeff's journey.

Jeff Forney.com/Innocent People

IG: @JeffForney

FB: Jeff Forney Photography

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259 -  The Innocent People Project

[00:01:00]

Jeff: I don't need her to conspire in my healing.

Damon: I'm Damon Davis and you're about to meet Jeff. He called me from Southern California. Jeff, grew up with the knowledge of and separation anxiety About his adoption in Reunion, he found his birth mother who mirrored his looks, but who has pushed the boundaries of their relationship and a birth father who is simply not his type of guy.

Even in their supportive home adoption left its mark, and for Jeff, it showed up in moments that stuck with him over time.

Jeff: I was always. Told that I was chosen and that I was loved. And you know, they, my sister also younger than me, a year and a half younger, she was also adopted. So I always knew I was adopted. But it was a very supportive family in that sense.

So in a way, I don't know if I really felt like I had any issue with it, even though some things would come up, sometimes, you know, tag playing tag after dinner in sixth, seventh grade. And like one time my neighbor said, well, Jeff, you're adopted, so how would you know blah, blah? I'm like, Ooh, that stung.

And so they adopted my sister and I and that we were, you know, it was a loving house. But that doesn't take away from, I. You know, the other things that adoptees can get from them.

Damon: Absolutely. Separation.

Yeah.

Damon: Yeah. Tell me about your family. How were, how did you all get along? Did you look alike or, you know, are you sort of the brunette in a how home of blondes or do you guys look like you absolutely passed?

Tell me about your family's status. That,

People who didn't know that I was adopted, I'd mentioned it and they would say, wow, you look just like your mom and dad. How could this be? But yeah, we, I forget what your second part of that question was. We,

Damon: I was just kind of interested in how you got along.

Jeff: That.

My sister and I. Yeah. We're different people. And I think my sister took some things from the adoption and went one way with it. I went another way with it. I think I've worked extra hard on relationships, especially my love relationship with my wife, because I don't think I ever wanted to be left.

So my sister maybe had a harder time getting traction with relationships and she found it a little bit later in life. But and getting along, we were a little different. I think I had some success with sports and friends in high school and my sister did. Two in certain respects, but I think she also was more rebellious then.

I was more in line with my parents and I think now I'm the one that's a little bit more outside the box and my sister's the one that toes the line and she's more fitting in with my folks. So, that is

I. Do you remember other triggers when you were younger? There's some classic ones that I can think of, but I don't wanna seed your train of thought.

Jeff: Well, I, I do remember one time I'm sitting at the dinner table, like eight years old and we had some friends over and they, and you know, it was open enough that the father of this other family said, Jeff, what's it like to be adopted?

And I said, well, I think it's great. I know that I was chosen, I'm loved. And at the time I was really getting into playing baseball. I. And I knew who Willie Mays was. I didn't know what he looked like. So I said, you know, it's great. And who knows who my real father could be? Maybe it's Willie Mays.

And so even though I was supported and my I really had a great relationship with my father. But there was always a knowing that I was not biologically connected. Yeah. So, but other triggers that would come up. I don't like to be in a conversation where somebody says, you know what? I'm tired of this.

I'm leaving the room. I'm walking out. I'm like no. Like, it kind of ties back into the, let's work on my relationship so I get, make sure that I'm not, you know, relinquished by my love relationships. I got relinquished by my original, my biological parents. Let's try not to repeat any more relinquishment.

Jeff: That's hard on me. That's really hard on me. Yeah. And travel sometimes could be hard. When I was younger, going far away from home, I wouldn't like it.

'cause I felt like maybe I did one time when I was like five, four or five years old, my parents were taking us to San Francisco for the day and I said, I don't wanna go to San Francisco. And they said, why? And I said I don't want to go. They said, why? I said, I'm afraid we're gonna go there and then you're gonna leave me and drive back to the East Bay, you know, and I'm gonna get left in San Francisco.

And my dad, threw his napkin down. He was a very pleasant, never got upset, but he was like, we love you so much, we're not leaving you. But that's a trauma that I still had, that I was still afraid that if I get too far away from home. I might not get myself back if I, so , I liked to stay around home a lot.

It was, something back then that was definitely part of my life for sure.

Especially not at a young age. And I'm just wondering, do you recall anything happening? Did you get lost as a child? Did someone tell you're not coming out? Like, how do you think you got so in touch with the meaning of adoption and separation at a young age?

Jeff: Well, I think it's, you know, my, our folks told us very young and said, , I remember saying one time like, what does it mean to be adopted?

They just showed up. But we actively went to get you so you know that you were wanted by us. And so I knew that, but I also knew that I was not in the household that I would've been if I had, I knew that there had been a separation. So I think that did not get lost on me. And you know, it's affected me to this day.

We were invited, I was sharing on another interview, but I was invited last summer to a 50th birthday party. And they said, you and your wife are invited. And I said, can we bring the kids? And they said, no kids. And we had to fly to Wyoming to do this. And I said to my wife, I said, I don't know if I'm gonna be able to do it.

So I fly by myself. That's fine. My wife flies by herself to jobs or whatever she's doing, that's fine. But we've never been on an airplane together. So that still is something that I'm realizing that became my little way of doing things for the last 17 years. And I know it's gonna have to change.

My daughter's going off to college soon, so I'm. Yeah,

I'll be home when the semester ends or at the break. But this isn't you. Yeah. That's gonna be, sounds like it's gonna be absolutely heartbreaking for you in that moment.

Jeff: I, yeah. It's gonna be really strange at some point, maybe my daughter or the, my other daughter, they're living out of state and we're gonna have to go fly to them and like at some point I need to let that go.

Yeah. But I'm realizing that I've kind of ignored it. Put it to the side. Put my own little fog bubble over it where I didn't realize until last summer. I was like, oh my gosh, I've never flown without my kids 'cause I've just been afraid to do so. So those are some of the separation things that still I carry with me as an adoptee.

Damon: That's really interesting. Have you talked to your children about that?

They would've been upset, but they're like, oh, okay, well you guys just stayed home. But no, I've told them that, and I've also told them at times when I, as a parent, when I'm parenting and I, things come up. I realize other it's touching on an adoption issue, I will pull the kids to the side and say, look, you know, dad's working on things as well as, you know, you're learning things.

So is 55-year-old dad, like, I'm still learning things and I apologize for the things that I still need to work through that I end up putting onto you. So, I think there is something to talking to other adoptee parents about what it is to parent coming from that adoption, lack, separation spot.

So

Damon: that's really cool. Yeah.

Yeah. And I'm sure they appreciate it too. And there'll be a day when they're older and they can truly fathom what it means, especially when they become parents and they'll say, oh, I see how if dad was adopted and he felt that way about us, that's part of the reason why I feel this way about my kids.

Yep. And I stopped so she could think about it for a minute, and when she did, she was like, wow, holy macro. You know? And she really, and so I think it's important for folks to understand that parenting as an adoptee hits a little differently, right? Because of what we know of our origins and therefore what it means to have a child and keep that child and raise that child and see your mirroring and all the other stuff.

It is a different parenting experience altogether. It's really incredible.

The only two people I'm biologically related to out of all that is my two, two daughters. Yeah. That's all I got. And you know, but I got two. my wife's like, her niece looks like her a little bit. Then she's got a second cousin and she's got a whatever, and she might be biologically related to like 12 people in the room.

Yeah.

Jeff: I still got two. That's all I got.

Damon: Crazy. Yeah, it can be weird that way. Tell me about your teenage years. I, and forgive me for bringing your career in, but I can't help thinking about a couple of things. One, you young, handsome guy, right. I presume you had a few ladies who were after you , but in teenage relationships, they're not awesome, right?

But you can't do that as hard core. Yeah. When you're a teenager, how were your relationships in your younger days as a guy?

Jeff: Well, I tried to apply that. My parents were married happily for 50 years until my dad passed. , I tried to apply that even to my high school relationship.

I had a two year high school relationship. I ended up kind of breaking it off when I went to college. I had a five year girlfriend in college. I moved to New York. We, and that ended, I broke that off, went to, you know, and they're very amicable. Everything was always amicable. I didn't want anybody hating on me.

I went, even went to see Betty Jean Lifton from Journey of the Adopted Self. Wow. I actually went to her apartment on the Upper West side and I was trying to learn a little bit more about myself and I had gotten into Reunion so I was working on that and then I, about six months before I met my wife, I said, I'm I'm healthy again and I'm ready to be in another relationship. And then that was, this is the one, but I actually had Okay. Success. I really wanted to work on it. I know it's kind of unusual for adopted men like you and I sometimes we can have our

I was not expecting you to say that. . And I can't help thinking that was your means by which to try to navigate the adoption piece is that you were practicing this, I want to stay with you thing from a very young age.

Jeff: Yeah. I kind of felt like I, maybe it's something I needed to tether myself in and I saw my girlfriend as that.

Tethering piece. So, okay, now I'm attached. Let's hold onto that. So maybe it was my practice or as you put kind of my, that was my template for, trying to stay connected. Yeah. I didn't wanna get thrown out there.

Damon: Jeff said it wasn't until college when he started redefining who he was, investing more into becoming himself. He said he liked himself a little bit more as he expanded his friend group away from people he had known since he was in kindergarten.

Jeff: And I was really nervous. To say, Hey, I would like to look for my biological parents, bi biological roots. And I said, this is not a commentary on you guys. I love you guys, but I do need to know how I got here.

And it's hard. It's kind like feeling like you're breaking up with your parents or like, Hey, you didn't do good enough. So I'm gonna go look somewhere else. So it was hard for me doing that, but my parents were very supportive and said, I think you should do that. It won't be easy. You might find some things that are hard to deal with, but we're behind you a hundred percent.

Damon: that's incredible. And it sounds like they received it. Okay. Yeah. Also incredible. That's not. Always the case. And I love that you set the conversation up with, this is not a commentary on your parenting or my love for you.

Yeah. This is a need within me and I think that may be a component of the conversation that some adoptees miss. Yeah. We get so attached to the fact that we want to search that some folks, not all, will not take the extra moment to say, I love you, you are my parent, however. I also need this other piece.

And it's good that you set them up with that. Yeah. Yeah. So, so what did you do next? Did you, did they give you documents? How did you even go about your search and what year is this?

I that, speaking with my parents, they did give me all my non-identifying information. and there wasn't a lot there. I knew height and weight and hair color and whatever, and, but I joined Alma, which doesn't even really even exist, adoptees, Liberty Movement Association. And there was a chapter in Chico and this woman, Leila Hicks, was our den mother.

And I was the only guy who. Who was 21 years old, it was mostly women. And there was one old older gentleman who in his fifties, and then it was two guys and 18 women. But I went studiously every Wednesday and went to these meetings and they said, start looking at marriage certificates around this time for anybody who might be that age.

Wrote handwritten. Hi, I am Ms. Lynn Taylor. I would like my birth records from this day. And we, and the same request for the same records. This is over like three weeks. And we're like, let's write it back. And she's writing it out and I'm telling her what to write. We sent in, either there was somebody else working there or we took the bait and they said, okay, I can't get fired now I can give it to 'em.

They gave me the same nine pages with everything.

Jeff: Which were accurate, but there was just a miz. There wasn't even a first name. It was a Ms. Lynn Taylor and Taylor's a made up last name.

And we got everything and Lela was shocked. I took it in on Wednesday night. And she was like, how did you get this? We must have somebody on the inside at San Francisco Children's Hospital, we were all just shocked. So, and so the records people handed it to her or to you? The records people put it in the mail and mailed it back to me up at Chico.

Damon: Ah, so. It would be coincidental for anyone who knew that you had just asked for these records. Right. But then if there was, if one person received your inquiry and a different person received the second inquiry from the fake Ms. Taylor they would never have connected the two, and so they would've absolutely just sent it on.

Ah,

Damon: you know?

Yeah. Good job. Well, that's incredible. So what do you find in this information that you received? You said, what was it? Nine pages?

Jeff: It was nine pages. It just said my wait and what time My birth mother was relinquished, I mean, or was released from the hospital. And she says she was picked up by her father and it had all this info, but it had a social security number.

So I had everything it happened so quick, and it was so bizarre. And then I just stared at the paper for the info for like three or four days. Mm-hmm. And then they train you what to say when you call. So I was working over my training and I got the nerve to call like three, four days later.

I was with my roommate. I was in my apartment in Chico. And my my roommates were very encouraging and I went in there to make a phone call. And you know, when you call, you're supposed to say, hi, I am calling long distance. Can you, this is 91.

Yeah. So that's how we were, trained to do this. And so I called her. She my half sister picks up the phone, gets my birth mother on the line, and I told her all of that. She said, yeah, okay, I'll write it down. I said, okay. Well, on November 30th, 1968, you and I shared the miracle of my birth.

What? it was dead silent. I. And you could hear her take a breath. I have the recorded conversation. It's like she was, and she goes, can you excuse me for a second? I need to get some tissue. And she came back and she said, now what did, what was the name they gave you?

So she called her cousins and her aunt and uncle and said, by the way, nobody knew this, but I had a kid and they're gonna come up to meet me. And I'd like, after this, second night, I'd love for you guys to come over and meet Jeff. So I met a ton of people my second night up there. Of all these people that didn't even know I existed.

It was, it's surreal. And when I got off the airplane, you used to be able to, before nine 11, be at the gate. Yeah. So she said, I'll be wearing a red jacket. Look for the red jacket. And I got off the, came down the little tube out of the plane and. I see a red jacket. That must be her. You know, just giving them a hug, like, I can't believe this is like where I came from.

This is, it's bizarre. It's kind of bizarre.

I couldn't believe

Jeff: it. Yeah. Yeah. It was eyes nose mouth hands. We were just comparing everything and like ears or, you know, just, we just, yeah. But to look at somebody that had something of yours was shocking because I'd never seen it before in my life, ever.

Damon: Yeah. The mirroring is. Unbelievable.

Both in its absence and when you're able to get it in reunion. Yeah, absolutely insane. Wow. Yeah. So she picks you up at the airport, drives you home. Are you by yourself? Is she by herself?

Wonderful man. And that was it. So we're gonna go meet them. And I saw a guy who was 10 years younger than me, that's my half brother and my half sister. And. He was tall like me and just seeing physical resemblances is a mindblower. So yeah, it was quite crazy.

Yeah.

Damon: She told them about you before your call?

Jeff: She told them about me after I called. She had never said anything. They had no idea existed. Her husband knew I existed. He knew, my birth mother had wanted to look for me and evidently she said, had put something in at CHS in Oakland saying if Jeff ever looks, but I didn't get any notification of that.

So

Jeff: Yeah. It was, it's just, it's surreal.

I'm looking at things and talking and it's really kind of, yeah, a real moment of this is your life and here you are. And I couldn't believe I was actually doing this. And this is these are some blood relatives here. And , it took a while to digest what was going on.

I'm like, no you ain't. Yeah I ain't no, 'cause I don't want to be spending Christmas with two moms and this having, I don't know, have you been in the room with, two mothers? It ain't my favorite. You know? Stay more. What is it like for you? It's I feel like I'm in between this you know, there's one woman who is my mom that raised me and fed me, and there's another one that gave birth to me and.

I think the last time that happened was at my wedding and I don't really feel like doing that again.

Damon: No, you once, I imagine once you do that and you feel how uncomfortable it is, you can just kind of check the box and go, well, they've seen each other. I'm done. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I don't need to do that again.

Yeah, I can imagine though, I never had that opportunity and I think I would've liked to have, but I can imagine that it would be tense for all the reasons you named, right? Yeah. The sort of imposter syndrome that perhaps your adoptive mother might feel the. Lack and jealousy that your biological mother might feel.

Damon: parents. And I got

Jeff asked his birth mother about his birth father's identity. His birth mother said she was still in touch with the man's mother, so she called the woman who gave up the man's phone number A lot of times we have different expectations for how that first call to a birth parent is going to unfold.

Jeff: Not my kind of person first, first thing was you're not looking for money, are you? And I was like no, dude. I'm not looking for money.

Yeah I'm just calling to say, hey, , like, just letting you know I'm alive and you know, at some point if I ever get down to Arizona, we can go for coffee. And I happened to be there like three years later. In 95 I was doing a job shooting in Arizona and we went out for dinner. Kind of a bizarre guy.

But it was a way of him winning the affection of this. And he did it a couple other times. As we're walking around the club, I was like, this is gross. I

Damon: You were a trophy.

Jeff: Yeah.

Damon: Yeah.

Jeff: And I, and then I

Damon: was, may I ask, was this sort of in the height of your career at all? Was that part of it for him?

Jeff: Yes, I think so. Yeah, I think so. That's, yeah. And so he was just showing me around and people were like, oh my gosh, I didn't realize you had a son. And I don't know if I like , the words he says and his politics aren't mine. I'm like, man, you, I don't even think you can say those words anymore, dude.

Damon: you know, I think the adjective you just use would differentiate between whether you're just expendable or not, right.

Like,

Jeff: I know, but I start getting into all these things. I go, oh my gosh, what? You know? Yeah. So I feel somewhat bad that I say this, but I don't really need to see him anymore. And

Damon: No, but it's a reality dude. Like. Here's the thing. You've probably got friends in your life that you love more than this gentleman.

He could have been very much in love with your birth mother. . I have no idea but the simple fact is I heard in your reunion with him something that happened with the guy I thought was my birth father, which was not a empathetic, here's this person looking to connect with me, but.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. Like your immediate reaction to something says a lot about who you are. Exactly. And if your immediate reaction is, I hope you don't want anything from me, that's an immediate wall that I could see you being very challenged to even want to overcome, let alone being able to do so if you tried.

So it's, there's nothing wrong with you not wanting to like know this do. Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff: Did you find

Damon: the correct

Jeff: biological roots on your father's side?

Damon: Yeah, so short version is my birth mother had always told me who my birth father was. Yeah. She told her best friend who helped me get adopted. I mean, her story was unwavering, never changed.

Who was responsible for my life on this earth. So to cut a long story short, I found this dude and he did a kind of a similar thing. He was just not, I mean, just zero connection. Yeah. And I was willing to let the relationship go, but I decided that I wanted to just listen. I'm gonna take a day trip. I'm gonna get on a plane, I'm gonna land, talk to this guy, suck it up, be face to face with him and leave.

We should all do DNA tests. Let's learn about her. And in doing DNA tests to learn about my wife's family and then therefore my son, I submitted my DNA as well. Ancestry, DNA just randomly pointed me to my birth father. I'm literally sitting in bed one night and I'm not even expecting to find this guy because the first guy had signed off from our relationship and my birth mother's dead.

So I was like, I give up. And so I'm sitting there looking at this thing going, holy crap. This says, this guy is my father. And in fact, it was not the guy that my birth mother said it was a totally different person. So it was a, it's been, it's a wild journey chief. It is a really wild journey. But

Jeff: Did you find that your birth mother's story ever changed with you, or it stayed the same?

She was 100% consistent across everybody she ever talked to. She also told me that if in her life she ever got close enough to somebody, she would tell them that I was out in the world and that if anybody came looking for her, she wanted to be found. She never changed her last name because she wanted to be found.

It doesn't matter how good your day is. Yeah. You're never forgetting that you have given birth to a child. Yeah. And I don't mean to say that any other woman would. I'm simply saying that a scar on your body from that event will absolutely remind you daily. So, she was always candidly honest.

Yeah. It wasn't brutal, it was just facts. Yeah. And and I really appreciated that about her. That's, she never hid anything from me and so on. That I'd love for you to tell me about some of the ups and downs with your birth mother. You guys have, you said you've taken flight. Yeah. But there were some challenges with overstepping boundaries.

Tell me about some of the challenges that you guys had and how you overcame them more importantly.

And my mom was like, what? , So she moved close to where Wow. The Forneys grew up or were living. And then as her, she shared the story, she did an article for Diablo Magazine and shared the story of our reunion, but didn't say my last name, but held up a photo in a magazine. I got like 30, 30 some odd voicemails in my apartment in the East Village in New York City saying, dude, you're like all over the place and it doesn't look that good.

And my photo is all over this. , Everybody knows that's me. , So. I don't think we spoke for two or three years after that. And then we came back around. We've had arguments over , one time my, she said to me, when am I going to, you know, I wanna make sure I get to see my grandchildren.

I go, well, I don't have any children yet, but when I do, maybe if our relationship is still going, of course. And she goes, well, no, I get to, regardless, I relinquished you. I didn't relinquish my grandchildren. I was like, what if you, if it ain't going good by me, it ain't gonna go goodbye that so Right.

Damon: Maybe you missed the part where we still have to be in a relationship.

Like they're both friend and mother, but not friend and not mother. Like, so we're talking and yes, that would, that was tough. And and then the story changed after about three years ago. The story was, no, I never relinquished you for adoption. I'm like, well, it says it on the papers. This baby's for adoption.

Because everything you had done for the months before was that you were gonna relinquish me. So that's, these are these dips. But that helped me understand that I don't, that doesn't matter anymore how I got here or what the circumstances was for Jeff being here on earth.

However, it was, there was something more important called the universe that wanted me here. I don't care if it was my birth mother and it was kidnapping, or she had to relinquish 'cause her parents are Catholic or. I'm going past that. I'm, I don't need any of this to, I don't need her to conspire in my healing.

But it's those ups and downs can, you know, I kind of made a dig at her. I said, well, it looks like you had a son 10 years after me. You know, I've met him. And if he had been kidnapped, would you have again, just driven home and just said, oh boy, I don't know what happened. Or, I mean, somehow I. He didn't get kidnapped.

'Cause she never talked to the doctors. She, I said, did you make a phone call to the police that I was kidnapped? She said, no, my parents didn't let me use the phone. I was like, well, you know, you were 22. You can make a phone call if that's the case. so , I understand that it's not, you know, it's easier to tell yourself these things, to look in the mirror and to say these things so that it makes that the digestion of what you've done a little easier.

Damon: Can I just ask one more quick thing about her and then I want to, you've used the word project several times and I wanna make sure that I get to that, but I can't help thinking that.

Part of her approach has some sympathy seeking in it. I'm sitting here telling this story to this periodical and I'm telling it in a way that makes it seem like I relinquished him, but then he abandoned me. Right. And then that's a good point. Good point. I was I was, I had every intention of keeping you but years into our reunion, I'm gonna change the story and make it seem like you were kidnapped.

Do you, have you ever thought about that? Does that sound right? You know what?

Jeff: I hadn't, and I think I need you to be my therapist, but thank you. No I really hadn't thought of it at that angle, but there definitely, that is a big possibility. Yeah, that's very much what could be at stake because I do know it was very hard for her.

Sure. She was very pressurized. Being a unwed Catholic girl, 22 years old you're not coming home with that baby bump. Everybody knows you're not married. And if you do keep it, we're not going to help you with rent of an apartment after you get outta college. And by the way, we're not gonna pay for your last semester of college.

So good luck. So you're kind of forced. I totally get it. That would be heartbreaking to give birth to a child and then hand it to a stranger.

Yeah, for sure. Be heartbreaking.

It's, the story is less important than the fact that I am here. And I do have a lot of things that I can work with that can. Help myself, help others get to know myself better. And yeah, really understanding my chapter one was huge. And yeah, for sure. Sometimes wisdom takes age, and that's where it, that's where it came.

Damon: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So again, you mentioned the word project more than once, and you have a phenomenal one. I would love for you one to name it and two, gimme the backstory. I don't know how you started this. So tell us about your work.

And I said my birth mother's kind of the hippie. It brings good energy to the house. And he said, you just said the magic words. You're adopted. So am I. And we just started talking. We were kind of blown away and we kept shooting. And then we got in the car and I had some locations all scouted out. We did that at the end of the day.

I was like, that was an amazing day, Ray. Thank you for that. And it was purely a story I shared with other people for the next like six years. Then one day I was talking with my wife and I realized, you know, there's more of these stories and I feel like every time I share this story, it hits people in a way.

There are stories to Instagram. It first started, I was trying to photograph an adoptee with a adoptive mother and a birth mother. That proved to be very hard. Some people don't live in the right, you know, so that was, and then Covid happened. So during Covid, I was like, let's just go straight to the source, straight to the adoptee.

I'm gonna take this to the photo world. And so I've been. Photographing and sharing these stories of we're all adoptees here, we're all innocent bystanders of ourselves that got here, , how we got here and the circumstances, no choice of our own. And we all have something to say.

And a lot of times we didn't feel like we could say anything because there is that I should just be grateful 'cause I'm at least got a roof over my head and I'm not out on the streets. So it's really hard to bite the hand that feeds, so to speak. So it, you end up finding a lot of adoptees.

Don't feel like they can really share their story due to the nature of our, of how we became part of this family through adoption in the first place. So,

Damon: yeah.

So that has been something, and I've seen you in San Luis Obispo a few weeks ago. I saw you in Kansas City. I was at untangling Our Roots in Denver. I want to come see you in DC Let's go. Yeah. You know, I want to do more of this. I do want to do a book at some point. Right now it's all on my Instagram or on my jeff forney.com.

You can go to innocent people when you hit my website and every month I'll do another dump of stories. So , I keep going and I want to share more, and I want to help, and I, yeah, that's where I want to be spending a lot of my time. So it's been amazing and I'm trying to get a. Possibly a docuseries out of this.

So we're, you know,

that's, oh, that's

Yeah. And we've been hidden in plain sight for so long. I think we're finding our voice in real time right now.

Damon: Yeah, man, you hit on so much in that story. I'll tell you, and I apologize for looking away, I was looking at my phone because I wanted to see, I interviewed Camie, Jenny Alpert. Yeah. Twice I interviewed her number 96, the safe space that's Don's place. Yeah. And you know, anybody who heard her story will remember that she found her birth father living outside and that she took him into her home. Yeah. In the most kind, thoughtful, methodical way. I have never seen anything like what she did. It was absolutely incredible.

Yes. She would blindfold him from the apartment to the park in case he ever found some substances that he shouldn't be taking. He couldn't just walk home, bang on the window and upset neighbors. And so he didn't know where he lived. I mean, it's a fascinating story.

Damon: Yeah. But you know, what that says too is, , , I can't even think of too many scenarios where I'm trying to be blindfolded at all, ever.

But for him to to allow himself to be blindfolded in the circle of her trust

Yeah.

And I reached out to her to check on her to see how she was doing. And we had a really wonderful discussion thereafter too. Yeah. So two stories there. So it was really inspirational is the point to hear you say that you know her, that her song inspired your project. I was also struck by what you said that the inspiration for your project, the Innocent People Project, is basically the story of how this podcast came to be.

Right? You're going around, you're telling people your own story. Yeah. Something unique that happened to you. And as you said, there are so many of us hidden in plain sight. And I've often said, when I'm out at events and anywhere where I'm talking about this, I said, if you look around, I guarantee you there's some adopted people in this room.

Jeff: I'm totally doing that.

Damon: Right. And I, and this is the reason why I bring it up every single place I go, because I know that someone in the room has some experience or connection with adoption. And it can be, oh, my aunt adopted two kids, or the lady whom I spoke with yesterday, her name was Michelle, and she told me this unbelievable story of her own mother and , adoption in her family and all of these other sort of dramas that made her story unbelievable.

So I say it everywhere I go because I know that we are in fact hidden in plain sight. And yeah and it's like I said, in in slow. , If we were all at, you know, we were all there for an adoption conference, like a meeting with adoption, the making of me, and we were all adoptees together.

And I think that's incredibly fascinating. The same way that you and I have sat here for an hour or whatever, talking about your story, nine times outta 10. An individual doesn't get to sit and have this deep of a conversation about their own story in life. And so, it can feel good to have folks really listen, pay attention, , and give you the time of day.

It's kind. Awesome.

Jeff: Yeah.

Damon: So I think that No, absolutely. I'm with you. Yeah. Jeff Forney, this has been absolutely amazing.

Jeff: Yeah, let's just keep doing this.

Let's keep doing this. Let's build the community and there's more good times to be had. Thank you so much for having me, Damon. Really fantastic. Absolutely. My pleasure. All the best, buddy. Yep. Thank you.

Damon: Hey, it's me. Jeff's story was fascinating from his early beginnings, fearing abandonment or detachment to his teen and young adult relationships that weren't fly by night, but long-term connections that Jeff invested in. Even though Jeff grew up in a home full of love, he still carried a fear of being left behind.

what stood out to me was Jeff's assertion that the universe called him into existence regardless of who brought him into this world or how they did it. And now that Jeff is here, he wants to help others, you can check out the Innocent People project@jeffforney.com.

I'm Damon Davis, and I hope you found something in Jeff's journey that inspired you, [01:03:00] validates your feelings about wanting to search or motivates you to have the strength along your journey to learn. Who am I really? Oh, and quick reminder, if you would like to share your story of adoption and your thoughts about your biological family.

Please visit, who am i really? podcast.com/share.