Singer Song writer Jenni Alpert, commonly referred to by her birth name, Cami had a wonderful life supported by her adoptive parents as she pursued the performing arts. After her adoptive father passed away, she learned that her biological mother had too. Her maternal connections went well over time, but her paternal side remained a mystery. Locating her birth father was one thing… doing reconnaissance, ensuring her safety, and tapping into over a decade of her various volunteer experiences with people who’s lives were in the streets was something different. In their story you’ll hear the dedication of a daughter who found her birth father down and out, accepted him as he was , and worked hard to find a pathway for them to reunite and share their love of music. This is Jenni’s journey.

Photo:Cami (aka Jenni Alpert) and her birth father Don

Photo credit: Jeff Fasano 

Here’s a link to the news story I referenced: https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/father-and-daughter-duo-reunited-in-song-62059077604

The post 096 – The Safe Space That’s Don’s Place appeared first on Who Am I...Really? Podcast.

Damon (00:10):

[inaudible]

Cami (00:10):

[Show you good love in so you know you're mine. one of these days it wouldn't be long. all of the shadow you will be gone. Want you to see deep in my heart. Show you the truth from the start? one of these days it wouldn't be long. (song) ]

Cami-Jenni (01:08):

Okay. For all of the times that I worked with those that were in the prison system, it was like everything I had ever done, everything I had ever saw. All of a sudden now it made sense to me. Now I was staring at my birth father who had encompassed all these little details in his own very life, but he was a person and he was a musician and it was just really thrilling.

Damon (01:53):

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

Damon (02:00):

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 singer songwriter Jenni Alpert, commonly referred to by her birth name Cami. The song you just heard is called one of these days. Jenni had a wonderful life supported by her adoptive parents as she pursued the performing arts after her adoptive father passed away. She learned that her biological mother had to locating her birth father was one thing. Ensuring her safety and tapping into over a decade of her various volunteer experiences was something different. You will hear the dedication of a daughter who found her birth father down and out, accepted him as he was, and worked hard to find a pathway for them to reunite and share their love of music. This is Jenni's journey. I was at home one night when my wife Michele called me to the television to hear an incredible news story of a woman who found her biological father and he was homeless. I was so intrigued. I immediately found Jenni online and invited her to be my guest and she agreed. Jenni's life started out in foster care and she moved to many different homes and had several different names. Listen here as she describes her beginnings, the protective re-identification she went through and how she's arrived at her identity today.

Damon (03:33):

I was in the foster care system at the time I was born. I was placed there and I was in several different homes until I was almost four. And I ultimately, um, was able to land a forever home around age four and was catapulted from inner city Los Angeles named baby girl Morantz first the first foster home then named me Jennifer. Then I was given away to a second foster home without the state knowing. Then I was found a little after a year and a half later placed into a couple of emergency holdings, moved around so they could figure out what to do with me and ultimately at the same time that was happening, my future adoptive parents had wanted to ensure that they would get a girl and so they had placed a request in with the adoption agency to try to adopt girl about a year previous. And finally they got a phone call when I came available and they said, are you still interested? There's a girl that you can pick up tomorrow. So my parents got in the car, they got a doll they got, well actually they got a bunny rabbit cause it was around April around Easter. Even though we aren't observant in any religious context, we happened to be a culturally Jewish family. They still brought a bunny to pick me up. And um, they, they gave me this bunny at which I still have to this day and uh, and I got the name, the last name, Alpert as my final component from baby girl Morantz to Jennifer to then I shortened it to Jenni a little bit later to Alpert, always knowing that none of those names were my intended name, but a name really is reflective of how people identify themselves and build their relationship to you. So I was always a name for someone else, but as it turns out later on in life though, I knew I had some birth name and I couldn't really remember or no one really told me like what was, I just knew it was something else. Ultimately it turned out with the court papers that I was given later that my name was actually intended to be Cameron. And so later on in life I've shortened it to Cami. So I have like a personal birth name that I go by Cami in certain circles and my music name. Also my adoptive name, Jenni Alpert is more like the online. And my adoptive family circles. So it's kind of neat to have identities connecting to different circles, making a huge community and seeing the value of a name really being important for other people, how they see themselves in relationship. To me,

Damon (06:45):

that is absolutely fascinating. Wow. And you know what's interesting to me as you were talking, I couldn't help but focus in on the part where you said that you were renamed in the foster homes. I didn't know that the foster homes one had any sort of legal ability to do that, but two, I've, I don't think I've ever heard anybody say that before. Have you heard that before with other people?

Damon (07:09):

I don't know. But I do know that my story has a couple of twists and turns that would explain why a lot of different things happen that were unique to my story. So the first piece is because my birth mother had really wanted to keep me and had intended to name me Cameron, but my birth grandparents were concerned about my wellbeing related to how I was conceived and the connection to my paternal family members at the time. It was very scary. For a lot of people that they erased my name and my birthday and just kind of made it ambiguous so that they couldn't find me. So pretty much from being born they put me in a safe space and called me baby girl and kind of pushed back the birthday a day cause I was born on the cusp between September 11th and September 12th and I just, I really didn't have a defined identity until the first foster home.

Damon (08:19):

That is fascinating. Wow. When Jenni arrived at her family's home at the age of four years old, life and their family with other children was well underway. Her adopted parents had each been married before. Her father had two biological boys in their early teens and her mother had adopted a boy around their same age. Jenni showed up to a home with three older brothers, but they're all family. Her adoptive mother's mom, her adopted father's dad and her brothers are just her brothers. Later you'll hear Jenni make the distinction between her by referring to her maternal and paternal sides respectively. Jenni said that while she grew up with a lot of only child experiences, she still had the protective older brothers who picked on her and taught her to defend herself. So you had some older brothers who were looking out for you as you grew up and by the time you're four and you come into someone else's home, you know you're an adoptee whether they talk about it or not. How, how was adoption portrayed in your home?

Damon (09:26):

I don't really think there was a definitive portrayal. I was definitely old enough to know that I had already been in four different environments and moved around. I can't really place psychologically at the time if I really knew much detail that because one of the foster homes I had been in stepped forward and tried to get me back when I was first placed with the outbursts. There was actually like a six month court case between that second foster home who never really should have had me in the first place. And the Alpert's having to go through a whole psychology evaluation and court case evaluation in order for them to actually secure adopting me. And that was an interesting piece that I vaguely remember happening and I remember not really knowing yet where I was going to end up, but I don't really remember associating like here or a concern. I think by that time I already had the survival skillset to just acclimate to different environments and just was waiting for the outcome like anyone else.

Damon (10:42):

That's really fascinating. Again, I don't think I've ever heard of a foster home fighting to get a child back that has been placed for adoption. That's really interesting too.

Damon (10:52):

Yeah, it's a very different story. So my birth parents were never married, but they met because my birth mother had some traumatic struggles in her late teens, which catapulted her onto what I call the mental wellness spectrum. And I would say that she was quite low functioning on the mental wellness spectrum for a long time, and her traumas triggered schizophrenic behavior. And back in those days, it was such a issue for families that she was put in a mental hospital quite young and pretty securely and really couldn't get out. And at that time the one flew over the Cuckoo's nest storyline really paralleled with a lot of experiences that are noted that she had and so she was drugged. There was a lot of things that were inside the mental hospital that she was in and I don't think that it was necessarily the most fruitful place for her to transition out of.

Damon (12:01):

While her mother was institutionalized, she met a man who had institutionalized himself as part of a separation from his wife and family. Since he checked himself in, he was probably able to check himself in an out of the hospital. So when he connected with Jenni's birth mother, he took her under his wing and was able to convince her family that he was trustworthy to supervise her leaving the facility. What the family didn't know was the man wasn't as stable as he portrayed. He had a past drug history and his mental wellness was also fairly low. Her birth mother ended up meeting a lot of new people through this man, including his family.

Damon (12:40):

But my birth mother had really wanted a child and thought it would help her free her from the circumstances that was her life, if she could just have her own family. So over the course of several years in that time frame and in that era where things were a lot more lax, even though legally they aren't and weren't, she engaged in lots of different experiences and a lot of those experiences were with underaged people. And I think part of that was her reverting back to ages where she was more comfortable to be herself. And in the product of that having happened, I was conceived, which I call invented. So I was invented, um, when she was spending time with my birth father who happened to be one of the sons of the man who helped free her from the mental hospital in the first place. So it was a very convoluted, very involved, very dynamic, detailed circumstance. And there was many details that were so concerning to so many people that it was very hush, hush. And that really was before she engaged in the drug activity as extreme as it turned out for her. But my birth father, who was significantly younger than her by maybe 15 years actually had already been in and out of juvenile halls and youth authorities already doing drugs at age 16 already stealing to have money coming from a hoarded, impoverished, very lack thereof environment. But there was intimacy there, there was some sense of connection there and at some point I was invented and there were a lot of circumstances thereafter when they figured out paternally what had happened, who it was, how this even took place. Obviously the courts got involved because my birth mother was already a ward of the state with her mental circumstances and my birth father was already a ward of the state with his impoverish and drug use and crime ridden youth background that that it was already red flag. So once this came to fruition, the police instantly and immediately took me away and put me in emergency foster home and my birth father stepped forward and took the complete wrap for having engaged in any sexual experience with my birth mother so that she wouldn't go to prison for a statutory experiences. And he was already in trouble anyway. And it was nothing to him to get thrown in the hole for a year, you know. But they knew once this was going on, he would never be able to legally have access to me for his own reasons. And in order for Mary Lou to survive, you know, any outcome of her choices, she had to admit that she wasn't mentally well to take care of me or fit to keep me regardless, regardless of if she had the potential to do that, which we would never know that she had to sign away the rights to protect herself for how I came to be. And that's why I was in the foster care system immediately. And also why I was in it for so long.

Damon (16:11):

Jenny has sifted through legal documentation that have illuminated a lot of what happened in how her own chapter. One story unfolded. There was the case involving her invention and placement into foster care. She knows that it took three years for her birth, mother's relinquishment to be completed in that time. The first foster home gave her to another family who didn't qualify to be foster parents, wanted to be parents and may have even known her biological family because she's seen pictures of herself in that home. That inappropriate placement was a second court case that Jenni examined to piece her story together.

Damon (16:48):

And then after I spent how many ever years it was with the outputs before my adoptive father passed away of cancer, my birth mother died before I had a chance to meet her. And then there was a whole court case relating to her death. And so ultimately all of those court cases have documentation of a lot of the storyline. So from what I heard a little from what I experienced, and then ultimately from what I read, I can piece together pretty well. A lot of what happened and how I kind of came to be.

Damon (17:20):

I asked for a little clarity on the relationship between Jenni's birth father and birth mother. She confirmed that her birth grandfather was the man who was checking her birth mother out of the mental facilities. It was a much looser time for love and relationships, so her birth father is the man's son. It seems that in their community, their sharing of partners wasn't uncommon. When Jenni was in high school, her adoptive father came down with cancer. She described it as an immense challenge because her older brothers had moved on to college, so it was just her and her mother at home with her dad. Jenny was also preparing to go to college, trying to make the best of her parents' support, but she;

Damon (18:04):

Always felt a little lost and disconnected with my own sense of self and...