With extra time on her hands, Jennifer used a Search Angel to locate her biological relatives. She connected with her maternal Aunt over Facebook Messenger, simultaneously emailing her birth father using his contact info from LinkedIn. Hoping for a connection to her biological mother, the pendulum swung in the other direction after her mother rejected her. Jennifer recovered almost immediately with a loving connection to her biological father whom she has a natural bond with.

I hope you’ll remember David’s amazing story, in episode 15 “We Wish We Could Have Grown Up Together”. He remembered the day, when he was a boy, when his family brought home a baby girl. Jennifer is David’s lifetime sister.

The post 025 – I Feel So Lucky, I Got Way More Than I Bargained For appeared first on Who Am I...Really? Podcast.

Jennifer (00:00):

I feel so lucky to have formed this connection and you know, I didn't really go into it thinking that I was looking for a mother or a father. I was just looking for information to understand myself better and where I came from, but I got, you know, way more than I bargained for.

Voices (00:27):

Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?

Damon (00:38):

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 today you're about to meet Jennifer who lives outside of Los Angeles. I'm excited to bring you her story because it's the first time the Who Am I Really podcast brings you the sibling story of another guest. I hope you'll remember the journey of David in episode 15 he said that he remembered the day when he was a boy, when his family brought home a baby girl.

David (01:10):

My younger sister is Jennifer, and she was three and a half years younger than me and I actually remember going to pick her up. It was just kind of cool. Yeah. I just remember kind of getting out of the car in the parking lot and going somewhere. Next thing we know, I have a sister.

Damon (01:22):

Just like David. Jennifer used a search angel to get started on her journey. The search angels team quickly returned information about both of Jennifer's biological parents, so she sent them both introductory messages. Hoping for a connection to her biological mother, the pendulum swung completely in the other direction after her mother rejected her. However, she was able to recover almost immediately with a loving connection to her biological father who has been connected to her ever since. Jennifer's parents were divorced when she was seven years old. When her curiosity about her history first struck her parents weren't able to give her any concrete details. Her brother David's search wasn't going very well. So Jennifer kind of let it go for a while.

Jennifer (02:06):

I knew from the time I was really young that I was adopted, so when I was young I wasn't really interested in finding anything out. But like as you get older you want to know what the story was. And as my parents started to get older and then my parents kept forgetting or you know, whose story was what. And so as I became older, you know, I was more interested in, in finding that information out and I thought they would have some sort of backup, you know, but they didn't. Then I was kind of at a loss. At that time, my brother was looking, you know, before the internet and it seemed like he wasn't getting anywhere. So, you know, I just focused on finishing school, getting a job, you know, getting married.

Damon (02:46):

Jennifer had wanted to know more about her history for a long time. She had written in for her non-identifying information in 2007. She had her parents' ages at the time of her birth, their occupations, religious beliefs, and a few tidbits about some of their interests.

Jennifer (03:02):

So I knew back then that they were into sailing and my dad was a surfer, so I thought, okay, they must have met somewhere on the coast. And since I live near a Marina Del Ray and I was born in Granada Hills, which you know, is the Valley of LA, not too far. I figured maybe I'll run into him somewhere at the beach cause you know, I'm a coastal kid and grew up at the beach.

Damon (03:24):

Jennifer said she was always on the lookout for someone that could have been one of her parents. Her choice of career placed her in a position to meet a lot of folks whom she evaluated for both their professional capabilities and her own potentially personal connection to them. But it wasn't until she was unemployed that she had the time and opportunity to truly begin her search.

Jennifer (03:45):

And I went into HR as a career, so I did a lot of interviewing and it's kind of funny, I interview people almost seeing if I looked like anyone, you know what I'm saying?

Damon (03:54):

Really? You had like an investigative eye basically on everybody you tried to come across?

Jennifer (03:58):

Yeah. You know, because I knew, you know, they couldn't have been that much older than me, but it wasn't until, um, I was laid off from a job that I had time to go, okay, if I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it now

Damon (04:11):

With extra time on her hands. She evaluated her possibilities for launching a search. David had already been on an internet search journey for a while that wasn't yielding any results. She figured if she was going to get any results, she would have to pay for them.

Jennifer (04:25):

I went online and started searching for like private investigators out there and I thought, okay, I have severance. Maybe I'll pay someone finally to do it. Cause I figured that was the only way it was going to happen to pay somebody. In the meantime, I had found these search angels and I thought, what's that? And I thought, really they do it for free? I saw this woman and she, you know, she had a LinkedIn profile. She seemed to be very involved in the community. So I reached out to her and said, hey, you know, I have this non-identifying information. You know, I've also contacted these agencies that charge you, these detective agencies, what do you think? Can you help me? And she immediately was like, yes, I can help you. You know, you don't need to pay these folks to do it. Apparently there were a lot of agencies out there that will just take your money and not even find your family.

Damon (05:14):

Jennifer provided her non identifying information to the search angel and the angels team went to work. Jennifer was amazed at the results the team achieved using their access to resources and social media sites.

Jennifer (05:27):

She has like a team of people who do this throughout the country. You know, I don't know what they have access to, but they have access to a lot of stuff because within a day, you know, they thought they knew who the parents were, the names and they had identified who was probably my first mother's sister who was like, you know, 18 months younger. They found her Facebook account and I was able to contact her on Facebook by essentially paying a dollar to make sure that my email was seen and it wasn't, it didn't go to a junk mail folder or anything.

Damon (05:59):

What did you say? If you don't mind, just, just pause for a second. Like you're reaching out to this aunt and you have no idea if she knows that you exist. If she doesn't know if she wants to meet you, if she doesn't like what did you even say?

Jennifer (06:11):

Yeah. So I kind of struggled with that and you know, read some blogs and looked online to see what I should do. And I ended up just saying, this is my name, this is where I live. I'm looking for this person, which is the birth mother's name. You know, I knew her in and I gave that year that I was born and she actually responded fairly quickly. She had contacted her sister, my birth mother, and gotten back to me and said, she doesn't know who you are. And so when she said that, I said, okay, I have a confession to make. I believe I'm her daughter who she gave up for adoption and when I said that to her, she, she basically really opened up and she did know about me and she started really sharing stuff about the family and what was going on. You know, one of the things she also made clear though was that my mother did not want to talk to me. Maybe she would in the future, but you know, she wasn't really interested in having a relationship.

Damon (07:10):

What did you think? It sounds like she was, she was fairly declarative about that. What did you think?

Jennifer (07:14):

Oh yeah, I was definitely shocked cause I'm like really? Like you don't even want to talk over the phone?

Damon (07:21):

Even though her mother wasn't interested in having a relationship. Jennifer's biological aunt was still very helpful to her. She gave Jennifer some details about the family, medical information and pictures of the sisters at about the time that Jennifer was born.

Jennifer (07:35):

Right then I could see the resemblance of me to that family.

Damon (07:39):

Wow. What did that feel like for you?

Jennifer (07:41):

I mean really it's the first time, like here I say, you know, I'd be interviewing people and trying to figure out if I look like anyone. And that was one of the shockers when a search angel sent me a picture and we exchanged them to see if this was the right family. They were like, Oh yeah, you totally look like you know your dad or, or your mom. And I'm like, do I? Because I had never, um, look like anyone in my family, you know, my brother and I are both adopted from different families. So you know, people used to say we looked alike but we just laugh cause we're like, yeah, that's not possible.

Damon (08:12):

I know that trick very well. I wondered about Jennifer's connection back to her adopted parents. She said she and David didn't look like their family, which is pretty common with adoptees, but I wanted to know what their connection was and what they had in common. How about, how about just in general, if you don't mind, just going back to you like your mom and how did you get along with her and did you have commonalities between your personality and hers or were you different? What was your sort of family like back then?

Jennifer (08:39):

Well, I would say my mother is great. She's always supported me, my adopted mother. However, we don't have any interests pretty much that are similar. You know, my body type was much, you know, like bigger boned and she was, you know, always very thin. So when I was growing up, you know, I'm, Oh my God, I feel like an Amazon compared to her. And really I wasn't that much of an Amazon. It's just compared to her at that age, when you're going through those changes and everything that you're like, Oh,

Damon (09:07):

You look at every inch of your own body as compared with every person around you.

Jennifer (