Jennifer had a very happy childhood and always felt special because she was an adoptee; she knew her parents really wanted her. Their family was heavily involved with the Children’s Home Society in Los Angeles where her mother did fund-raising work. Jennifer so appreciated her loving parents for their lifetime of love and support, but as she got older, she had a feeling that she would be close to her birth mother and that she was likely more like her than her adopted mother. After her own son had a positive reunion experience with a daughter he fathered years ago, Jennifer decided she would make an an attempt at reunion herself. On pure luck she was given year’s worth of microfiche data that had her family tree’s information. Jennifer’s mother had always hoped for their reunion, and even welcomed Jennifer’s adopted brother into their family too.

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Jennifer (00:03):

I personally feel like my contract with her as a soul was to get her out of that situation and her to give me a healthy body, which she has done.

Voices (00:18):

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

Damon (00:30):

This is, Who Am I, Really? A podcast about adoptees that have located and connected with their biological family members. Hey, I'm Damon Davis and on the show today is Jennifer. She says she grew up perfectly happy as an adoptee and never really had a desire to search for her biological family. Jennifer says that her own children kind of pushed her to search because they were interested in their own biological heritage, but it wasn't quite enough to propel her forward. Then their family experienced the separate reunification that had been such a positive experience. Jennifer began to think perhaps she should seek out her own biological family too. She didn't think she'd have much success in her search because she had a closed adoption in California, but going online proved to be a highly efficient way to find way more than she bargained for. And very quickly too. Jennifer starts us off in the beginning of her journey. She always knew she was adopted and her family was heavily involved with the children's home society. So adoption was a comfortable topic in their home.

Jennifer (01:38):

I always felt like, Oh, I'm adopted, I'm special. I felt very positive about it, you know, I know a lot of people don't, my brother didn't feel that way, but for me I was always, always fine with it.

Damon (01:51):

So what happened for you that made you decide to search. I mean you sound like you had a great upbringing. You are perfectly comfortable in adoption. So it wasn't as though there were some ringing alarms that were saying, Hey, you need to go look for somebody. What, what changed your mind or, or how did your mind develop into wanting to search?

Jennifer (02:11):

Well, initially, um, my kids wanted to know their biological background and any medical things that, that, that might go on that they just didn't know about. And I said, Oh, well, all right, I guess I'll kind of make an effort. So I wrote a letter to the children's home society and said, if my mother ever wants to get in touch with me, please put her in touch with me. And of course, come to find out much later, my mother had written a similar letter, but they never put us in touch with each other.

Damon (02:40):

Oh no.

Jennifer (02:41):

That was before the time of internet. So you know, time went by. That was in my thirties, late twenties, early thirties, that I did that. But really I didn't have a big inclination to do that. But for some reason I had to call LA County records or something. And I called and this woman says, you have a sister that's looking for you. And I said, what? I just didn't really believe her because they can't tell you that stuff. So, um, I wrote down her name on a little scrap of paper and lost it. So I didn't, it just wasn't the right time in my life. I didn't really want to have to deal with all that, but it actually was my sister that did try to get in touch with me and she died before I met her. So it was unfortunate. But she was the next youngest sister and she did think she saw me once in San Diego cause she, I guess cause I look like the family.

Damon (03:43):

Is that right?

Jennifer (03:43):

Its entirely possible cause that's where I lived and she lived at that same time. Anyway. Yeah. That's interesting. That's an aside story.

Damon (03:51):

The next time Jennifer really thought about reunion involved her son and his own reunion. He had fathered a child when he was a teenager and now the idea that a reunion could be a positive experience had motivated her a little more.

Jennifer (04:04):

I wasn't told for two years. And after that happens and um, you know, we all wrote letters to this child, this girl child, and put them in her attorney's office in case she ever wanted to find out more about our family. Well, the attorney's office burned down, so she never got any letters, but one of the people in her family knew the mother and she said, would you like to get in touch with your parents? And she said, when she was 19, 18, she said, yeah, I would. She got in touch with my son and I met her and I met my baby granddaughter that my son had just gotten married. I met them at the same time and it was such a positive experience. I thought, Oh my God, that's really great to know that I should maybe look for my mom again. Now the Internet's you know, functioning. So it was in, I don't know, maybe, Hmm. I can't remember. I'm bad on years.

Damon (05:00):

That's okay.

Jennifer (05:02):

In the later two thousands but it was about nine years ago that decided I'd sit down at the computer and inquire and in about 36 hours I had this whole family tree that was huge. Huge.

Damon (05:16):

How did you do that? I mean, you know, like you said, the internet is kind of immature not too long ago. How did you go about your search for them online?

Jennifer (05:25):

I went on a site called Cousin Connect and whoever I got connected with, she happened to have one year of LA County birth records on microfiche. So she said, this is your mother, these are the other people you might be related to, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, you can't know that I have a closed California adoption. You know, you have to search for years or whatever. And just that was my idea. And she said, no, no, really, here's the microfiche. And she showed it to me, I was like oh my God!

Damon (05:58):

Wow, your heart must've just been soaring. That must have been amazing for you.

Jennifer (06:04):

It was amazing. I mean, it was shocking, especially cause it wasn't just a mother. But you know, I'm the oldest of 10 children. So you can imagine this is a, an overwhelming experience to find out you have nine siblings and you know, cousins, like all of the family had like nine kids, ten kids. So, and my mother was from kids that had 10 kids. So it was really, really a huge, huge family. I'd been married a few times, so I have all these other families, you know, family that adopted me. So it was just a little, little bit frightening actually to think, Oh my God, well of course you're not going to hesitate to try to get ahold of them to some extent, you know. But it was kind of frightening.

Damon (06:52):

So Jennifer looked up her mother online then called her. She left a general message in her voicemail that sounded more like a business solicitation, not leaving any clue that she was her biological daughter. Of course her mother probably thought it was a telemarketing call. So Jennifer never heard back from her.

Jennifer (07:08):

So probably two months later I thought, well, I'll write her a letter. So I wrote her a letter and I enclosed a poem that I had written to her in 1979 and that was published in a little book. So I, you know, I copied that and sent it to her and I'll read you the poem. It's called "To Mom: Woman who cared. I thank you woman who cared. I dream of you. I feel us alike. You and I are more alike than I ever dreamed. I reached to tell you that I am and that you would be proud. I reached to show you my life, but not to grab yours. I think I know the pain you felt. I think I feel the love you gave. You made the right choice woman. Who cares? I thank you.

Damon (07:51):

Wow, that's amazing.

Jennifer (07:53):

So she got that and my sister got the letter out of the mailbox and she said, mom, I think you might want to sit down.

Jennifer (08:03):

So I, you know, I introduced, I said, you know, I figure if you don't want to get in touch with me, that's fine. I just want you to know that you know this, I'm here and this, I really appreciate you, what you did and here's this poem I wrote, but if you do want to get in touch with me, you know, here's my phone number and my address. So I guess my mom's knees buckled at the letter and sat down outside. And you know, she was just so, so grateful and so happy and she prayed every day for all of her babies to come home to her. And of course I was one of those babies and she, I was the only one she gave up for adoption. But we had other sisters that were estranged for different reasons.

Damon (08:41):

Fascinating. So you were one of 10, you were the only one that was given up for adoption, but still she had this need to connect with others because they had been sort of separated from her, from her for a variety of reasons. So she had experienced a lot of loss with her children.

Jennifer (08:55):

yes, she did.

Damon (08:57):

Oh man.

Jennifer (08:58):

But it's a very close family overall. I mean, obviously the family had tragedies and things that separated them and you know, just the traumas of growing up and the way they were raised and you know, being a nine kids and trying to make ends meet and feed everybody and supervise everybody. It was a difficult situation.

Damon (09:19):

After receiving the heartfelt letter, Jennifer's mother called her, they spoke for more than an hour and a lot in that first month and then they decided to meet one another.

Jennifer (09:28):

And so we set up a six day visits and I took off with a suitcase full of my childhood pictures and she had three boxes of pictures from all the kids. My son says, mom, you know what, if you don't like her?

Damon (09:41):

6 days is a long commitment!

Jennifer (09:45):

I said, it'll be fine. So by that time she'd given me some history on my sisters who always knew about me, my sisters, and my one brother. And uh,

Damon (09:55):

How is it that they always knew about you? What was the circumstance that allowed that to happen?

Jennifer (10:00):

Um, she told them about me and of course she told them I was adopted by a movie star.

Damon (10:07):

That's so funny.

Jennifer (10:08):

So, uh, that was kind of interesting. We both had myths on our sides of how, where I was and where they were. We were, we were actually didn't really grow up that far from each other. They were in Chatsworth and I was La Canada.

Damon (10:22):

Wow. Close to each other?

Jennifer (