Janet spoke to me from her home in Nantucket, Massachusetts. She grew up with an adoptive mother who presented to the outside community as a saint whom everyone loved. But at home she was unkind to her family. Janet said she spent her whole life wanting to know her birth mother when she finally found the woman. Janet's birth mother didn't want to know her and only met her after her other children forced the issue. However, her birth father welcomed her with open arms and compassion, the kind of welcome every adoptee hopes for. This is Janet's Journey.

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241 - Abandoned at Birth: Searching for the Arms that Once Held Me

[00:00:12] Janet: And they said to her at one point, is this baby even real to you? And she said, quite frankly, no. I She just completely dismissed me completely from her life from the get go. I'm Damon Davis and you're about to meet Janet. She spoke to me from her home in Nantucket, Massachusetts. Janet grew up with a mother who presented to [00:01:00] the outside community as a saint whom everyone loved, but at home she was unkind to her family. Janet said she spent her whole life wanting to know her birth mother when she finally found the woman.

[00:01:29] Damon: Janet was the second adopted child in her family of four adoptees. She said she always knew she was adopted, but it wasn't something the family discussed, despite the fact that the family had so many adoptees. Janet said adoption was part of their bedtime stories, but any discussion of adoption was limited to then.

[00:02:00] Janet: A needy baby was given into the loving arms of strangers and lived happily ever after.

[00:02:42] Janet: But I remember, when I was a little girl, I had brown hair and it was cut in a style at the time that was like a little bob with little short bangs. And I have this brown face and when I smile, my eyes are pretty small. And I remember about five years old reading my golden book of children around the [00:03:00] world and seeing the illustrations of the little Chinese girls.

[00:03:33] Janet: And that's such a strange thing because I loved my parents and I actually was overly dependent on them. And yet, I had this profound feeling of when I'm found and returned to my authentic home, I will be at peace.

[00:03:57] Damon: that sees your face

[00:04:03] Damon: but also the complexity of the lack of language that you had to be able to express that you felt different, other, whatever disconnected, right?

[00:04:22] Damon: at the same time.

[00:04:48] Janet: There's something chemical, there's a smell, there's scent, there's, and I have decided that belonging and identity is so biological and that our cells must [00:05:00] recognize each other or our blood must recognize our kin, because all my life, there were four children, four adopted children, my parents, and we'd sit around the table at night and.

[00:05:39] Janet: an instant never felt more connected, more grounded, more at peace and more of a sense of belonging. Like I had been wandering my whole life and I had just come back to my people. It was and the only way I can describe it is There must be something chemical, there must be, my cells must recognize this is my family and my clan going [00:06:00] back through history.

[00:06:15] Damon: I suspect you're probably right. I you alluded to what we don't know. And I'm thinking about, I had a similar immediate rapport and connection with my birth mother when I met her. but I'm thinking more meta, more on a larger scale. Like the, there's some kind of energy between us that I am far from being able to explain, but just that thing where you've been sitting like you, you're standing at a party and you're staring at someone across the room.

[00:06:47] Janet: Yeah, Yeah,

[00:07:07] Damon: And I want to get to your reunions shortly, but you said something really interesting. You said, Adoption was part of our bedtime stories. Can you tell me a little bit more about what does that even look like for parents and children?

[00:07:40] Janet: And then when my youngest sister is seven years younger than me. And so I remember going to the agency with my parents and brothers to pick her up. So I was then witnessed that experience with my little sister. but that was all that was said, a fact of how you came to being.

[00:08:13] Janet: But then I don't know if they knew that, closed records, everything sealed. There was not really any information traded in, in those days.

[00:08:36] Janet: was the second child and the oldest daughter. There were two boys and two girls. And we were the classic adoptees. Two of us were rebels, pushing the boundaries and testing the safety in the waters. And two of us were, tried very hard to be the perfect Children. So myself and my younger brother both tried to be, not do anything wrong and be [00:09:00] perfect.

nowadays people will say, Oh, I know some adopted Children and they're just perfect there. They don't act out and they're just, I said, that's not always a good sign. That could really be a sign of greater insecurity for me. And stress on them than otherwise, if they're free to act out normal range of human emotions.

[00:09:19] Janet: That's a great point.

so I fit in really well, but that's because I was obviously so scared and so insecure. I just wasn't going to do anything to rock the boat. I had a very loving father who I was very close to and adored and a mother who was Someone admired by the communities that she served. She was a professor and then she became an ordained minister and she did a lot of nonprofit work.

[00:10:07] Janet: But again, there was that duality of the, I understood the wider world's opinion of her was just a saint. And yet in the house, it was tense and uncomfortable and not a loving, warm household.

[00:10:27] Janet: yes, yeah, she closed. And yet I, when I got older I, Understood more of her story, which was that she was a surprise child back in 1922 came 10 years after her other siblings, three of them, which were much older and before she was one, her older sister, who was 10 died of diphtheria and scarlet fever.

[00:11:13] Janet: of the more rebellious sort of Hellions. And I think she was very disappointed that he wasn't as academic as her and wasn't the perfect child. And she once said, overheard her saying to a friend when Eric was a teenager and acting out at least we can take comfort in the fact that he's not really ours.

[00:12:11] Janet: My father on the other hand was just, I adored him. He was kind and gentle and generous and I loved him very much and as a therapist once told me, you just need one parent to save you. And I think he saved me.

[00:12:27] Damon: And it's absolutely right because the one parent that is, for lack of better words, good good at the job, good and loving, good and supportive, is a safe space to go,

[00:12:45] Damon: right? When they are supportive, they can mean everything to you.

[00:12:55] Janet: you?

[00:13:19] Janet: And why they adopted four of us, I don't really know. Cause again, mom didn't really like the job. Her mother lived very close and her mother, my grandmother really did a lot of the childbearing and was there a lot for us back to work and to teach. But I think it was just social pressure and the desire to mom wanted to be a plus in everything she did.

[00:13:47] Damon: Yeah.

[00:14:16] Damon: The people that they're closest to, they're terrorists to, and people who are outside where the image quote unquote counts, they are pillars. And I recommend for anybody who is in this community and is interested and thinks that , their adoptive or some other person in their life is a narcissist. It was an enlightening episode for me So that was the reason

[00:14:55] Janet: She's mean, and she's yelling all the time, and she wasn't even yelling at me. She was mostly yelling at my brother, [00:15:00] but we're brothers, but it scared me, and it upset me too. And and so I couldn't resolve that my knowledge of my mother and the communities. And it wasn't until my parents were in their mid nineties and my, they were both really dying.

[00:15:31] Damon: So he had been living under

[00:15:38] Janet: yeah, he just ignored it. He just passively, aggressively, probably, but he just ignored her when she was like hurricane she was. But and I remember about 12 years old choosing, deciding that I was going to pattern myself after my father and not my mother. That it was the first time I felt relief in knowing that I wasn't, [00:16:00] Made from those people because I wasn't going to have to be like my mother and I could choose to be by like my father and so it was a real conscious decision and the first glimmer of an advantage in that situation of not being

[00:16:38] Damon: Because you and all of the other adoptees that you said have lived in their own microcosms, but all in there in a unit as a family. That's really interesting that you chose the word finally having the advantage. That's really

[00:17:06] Damon: It's also interesting too that you pointed out that we can sometimes choose what we want to be or what we do not want to be. You've said I've modeled myself after I don't, I do not want to be like that. Therefore I will model myself more after my father. That's also an interesting thing that

[00:17:45] Janet: And I said in a normal quote unquote family, you don't get to choose. Who the people are and what troubles they might have and what personality they might have, but you incorporate that into yourself, your formation of yourself, the things you learn to avoid or [00:18:00] accept, or, push away from or become part of.

[00:18:22] Janet: I could just saying, oh, I must be in a mood today or something. And when I met her and it was just a real cautionary tale and I was grateful. I think we can't truly know ourselves unless we know the good and the bad and what's really in us. And we have to make choices. Just don't see how you can be a whole human being if you're not willing to take in the good and the bad and make it work for yourself and make choices in your life.

[00:18:59] Damon: [00:19:00] I was curious about how adoption came up outside of Janet's family. Where did it appear in the community? But Janet said their method of family formation never arose outside of her siblings. She said there was only one other kid in the community who was adopted, but no one talked about adoption.

[00:19:24] Janet: When

[00:19:31] Janet: And they go, oh, I don't look like my parents. That's not important. And they'd be really dismissive. It made me feel like just retreating to myself further. It's they think it's not important. I must do something must be wrong with me, but they didn't think it was important because they had that.

[00:20:11] Janet: And anything about yourself or your lineage it's impossible. It's impossible. And I ended up with such anxiety and panic disorder and it was very difficult to live with that kind of disconnect and aloneness and sadness and loss and grief and all the things that are part of being an adoptee.

[00:20:37] Damon: have. And we do it all the, time in our lives, right? We have either a certain socioeconomic status or, material things, or, just things that we take for granted about how we interact with our friends and family and stuff.

[00:21:01] Damon: people that you're related to, it's almost unfathomable to anybody else who's not been through the adoption experience, either as a birth mother or birth father, or as an adoptee, right?

[00:21:25] Janet: And you hear it, but I don't know if you feel it. So one of the purposes of my book was to try and write the feelings and communicate and express the feelings so that someone reading it could go, Oh, yeah. I feel that and get that and take that emotional understanding with them when they're thinking and they're when their state's talking about should we open up birth records or not and they get to vote on that, but they didn't really know anything about it or when they're talking about the rights of donor conceived individuals or any of the contemporary issues that we still face with adoption.

[00:22:21] Damon: Yeah, I love that. And as you said it, I was thinking, yeah, that's what I was trying to do was dump the feelings that people would understand. It's just not, I was adopted. I want to go meet my birth family. It's I've got feelings about those experiences in adoption. And I've got serious curiosity and feelings attached to wanting to know what my genetic heritage is.

[00:23:06] Janet: Yeah, because the narrative is usually, the needs or an immorality of adopted birth and adoptive parents. And then they think as long as you've been adopted to a kind family, that's that's intact and it's somewhat secure that there's going to be a, Beautiful ending and after rainbows and pops.

[00:23:53] Janet: And I. There will always be a need for adoption. There'll always be babies that do need homes. [00:24:00] And they're always luckily be parents who are happy to raise them. But I think we have to shift our understanding to say, you can't just take a child in and pretend they're yours, give them a false identity and pretend and expect that to work out well for them.

[00:24:16] Janet: right. That's exactly right.

[00:24:35] Damon: Nada. her curiosity was part of her before the internet took over our lives. So in college, she relied on organizations like ALMA, the Adoptees Liberation Movement Association, and their registry to try to help her match with anyone who might be searching for her too. There was just no other way to make an attempt back then. During a conversation with her adoptive mother Around the year [00:25:00] 2010, when Janet was in her fifties, she asked about the adoption agency that supported her family's formation. Janet assumed that the agency was long since closed, but her mother told her that it was still open and they had a website.

[00:25:26] Janet: now I had reached out to the agency.

[00:25:48] Janet: And they gave me very little information and of course a very happy narrative. Oh, everyone's happy. Everything's perfect. You're just great parents. Everyone's healthy. Everything's great. But meanwhile, three years later, unbeknownst to me, they started doing these [00:26:00] connecting adoptees and birth parents, if both were consented.

[00:26:22] Janet: Sadly, she refused to meet me. She just said, No, I don't want to think about it. No one in my family knows. Now, meanwhile, she was on her second marriage, didn't live in the same community. She had five other children. She worked outside the home. We could have met for lunch and no one would have had.

[00:26:52] Janet: Yeah.

[00:27:05] Damon: search button on their site.

[00:27:18] Janet: Let's just do whatever we need to do. But we had nothing to go on. I didn't have a name. I didn't have a location. In fact, the information the agency had given me in college was very misleading. They said, your parents were from a distant state. When, in fact, it turned out they were from the very next state, an hour and a half from the town I grew up in.

[00:28:01] Damon: That's really wild. .

[00:28:13] Janet: I think I remember there was phone calls, but I was instructed first they said they found her. She was alive. And I should write a letter telling about my life briefly and why I wanted to meet her and to enclose three photographs, one of myself as a baby, one as a young person and one current. So I had to, prove myself to her, and I was to send that to the agency. They would forward it to, she allowed them to forward the letter to her, but she refused. To meet me. And when they said, but Janet doesn't want anything from you. And she's, a lovely woman. She had the nerve to say I wouldn't expect anything else.

[00:29:17] Janet: And there was nothing like that. They kept saying how much denial this woman was in and that they'd never had a birth mother in this much denial. And most birth mothers saw the child or health of their care until they were placed. And she just kept refusing and asking when she could sign the papers.

[00:29:49] Damon: And where did you get the original narrative from that she had been this thoughtful, pensive

[00:30:10] Janet: And they described her and my father, wrong but somewhat accurately and describe their personalities and talked about her, which was not anything that you saw reflected in the actual social workers notes that I eventually saw. But, they were just perpetuating that myth that we've done a great job.

[00:30:43] Janet: Yeah,

[00:30:46] Damon: but I just, I had in my mind that they had created And perpetuated the false narrative of positivity that you ended up disproving by [00:31:00] actually meeting her much later and then actually reading the real documents. And this is. The more I talk to adoptees about their stories, The more I realize just how false so many originating narratives are, they're just not true.

[00:31:26] Janet: right

[00:31:33] Damon: the records, about the ethnicity of the child, it's astonishing to me how many lies are fluid in adoption stories.

[00:31:47] Janet: is. And, there, I really take exception to a lot of the, the whole institution of it, especially back in the fifties, sixties and seventies what the social workers and those agencies did was, Awful, [00:32:00] to put it nicely. And it's just incredible. We've all read the real horror stories about things that happened back then, but to see it to proven true over and over again,

[00:32:12] Janet: My younger sister had to them with my mother's permission as a teenager and , said, if my birth mother ever wants to meet me, I want to meet her.

[00:32:32] Damon: Wow.

[00:32:46] Janet: And luckily we found her and they made that connection. But it was at that point. That the current social worker at that agency said, Oh my God, these things were both in your [00:33:00] file Oh, wow. to you. Yeah,

[00:33:17] Damon: And your birth mother took credit for it of course. you were like no. You don't get to take credit for this. I picked up on that.

[00:33:26] Janet: I was just like, how could she had nothing to do with me. She denied me here. She was denying me again. She wouldn't even meet me. She had never looked at me and she was taking credit for my being a good person. I was just incredulous. It's like you had nothing to do with this. that's summed her up though.

[00:34:09] Janet: She just kept her guard up and kept me at arm's length.

[00:34:25] Damon: her, which is really interesting. And I wonder if I've heard more than one adopted person say. That their birth mother said cruelly, if I could

[00:34:38] Damon: And I can't help thinking that someone who gives birth to a child and then isn't completely disinterested in touching, engaging the child, given the opportunity, I can't help thinking that may have been in the back of her mind later,

[00:35:12] Janet: That's a strong statement. That's a strong statement about the trauma that you feel. given what the outside world would look at and say is a wonderful life or a life it is, but I also say two things can be true at once. You can have a perfectly fine adoptive experience. And be traumatized by having been adopted.

[00:35:49] Damon: so much. And at the same time, very much wonder who my biological

[00:35:58] Damon: You can have those can both [00:36:00] be in your brain at the same time.

[00:36:04] Janet: Yeah. People don't understand that they always want us to be very grateful as adoptees. And Yeah. You can say you aren't but yes, I had a good family growing up and better life opportunities in life than I probably would have had with my birth mother. But at the same time, I was traumatized and I've had a life of grief because I was separated from her at birth and knew nothing about myself.

[00:36:34] Damon: In what you said to continue that thread of two things happening at once, what I just realized In you saying people often want us to be grateful is that they only

[00:36:45] Janet: exactly. Yes, it's

[00:36:47] Damon: don't want us to feel anything else. Just be grateful.

[00:36:56] Damon: right, It's not and it's not binary. It's [00:37:00] gratitude perhaps

[00:37:34] Damon: But the agency revealed they had her birth father's name, which was unusual for that era of the 1950s, when most birth fathers had no rights. And in Janet's situation, it seemed like her birth mother just wanted to get rid of her. The agency offered to try to find the man, and Janet thought to herself, this guy has to be fairly old.

[00:38:14] Damon: Her birth father was not her main concern, but the opportunity was on the table, so Janet just kinda said yeah, why not, without a second thought.

[00:38:25] Janet: He was still living in the same hometown. And they connected us and we met a few weeks later. It was about Christmas

[00:38:50] Janet: I knew that, he, we've had a perfectly lovely conversation. I, but I also found no information about him online. I didn't realize that oftentimes law enforcement [00:39:00] have, I think, online presences, Oh, but I was like, why don't, why can't I find anything about this man? I thought, and driving to meet him with my husband, I thought, Oh my God.

[00:39:32] Janet: Like in another world and I'm thinking oh, no, I should have told us to wear carnations You're like, how are we gonna know each other? And meanwhile, my husband was looking across the lobby of this resort that we're at and he sees this old man older man sitting there and He realizes, they look at each other and he realizes in an instant, that's my father.

[00:40:16] Janet: It was just like this, like the cylinder just filled up a chunk, it just built up and I just felt complete and whole and I couldn't have answered two questions about him. But he looked into my eyes and I looked at him and I finally made sense. It was immediate and like primal. And then he had his high school yearbook with him to show me pictures of he and my birth mother who had dated for a couple of years in high school.

[00:40:58] Damon: that is surreal. [00:41:00]

[00:41:10] Janet: Oh yeah. Yeah.

[00:41:19] Janet: When they, the agency called him tell him to ask him. He was like at home watching Jeopardy and he gets this call from this agency saying you have a daughter and she'd like to meet you. And I guess the, investigator in him said call me tomorrow. And he first checked them out to make sure they were legit.

[00:41:48] Janet: so yeah,

[00:41:49] Janet: Wow. just immediate.

[00:42:21] Janet: We were with family. It just was so comfortable and we were laughing and talking and Larry and I couldn't take our eyes off each other. And I tell people that there is something extraordinary about meeting a parent in midlife because there's no baggage. It's just joy and love. No, they didn't raise you.

[00:42:55] Damon: And it made him feel like he was 18 again. And

[00:42:59] Damon: you [00:43:00] nailed it to this notion that when we get to meet our birth parents as adults, we didn't go through all of those when you, you you walked away into your room and you're like, I hope you get hit by a right? Like you've just wished them away and been so pissed with each other and all of the drama and stuff, even though they make for memories and you eventually get to be friends with your parents.

[00:43:32] Janet: Yeah. It's really a unique experience. And very lucky to have that.

[00:43:42] Janet: Very true.

[00:43:59] Janet: you [00:44:00] just said something very important. Do the work. They've done enough work. And I just really want to say that But going through this whole process, first of all, just being adopted and figuring out yourself and your life, but certainly search and reunion.

[00:44:15] Janet: I think you need people who really understand what you're going through and whether it's a social worker a therapist minister, a teacher, someone, I don't think you can process it alone. I think it's. It's a lot and nothing that I did was done without years of work on myself and my understanding of all this and continue to been writing the book dredged everything up again.

[00:45:03] Janet: And but I'd say to anybody, it's, you've got to read whatever you can or reach out to other adoptees in the community. But I think Helpfully. Going through this process, you need support. I don't think you can do it on a whim or alone.

[00:45:23] Damon: And I've spoken to enough people to know that those who parachuted in and didn't do some level of pre work they will tell you I could have done things differently, right? That they overshot in some way. They came in too hot with too many questions and too much enthusiasm or were too selfish.

[00:46:05] Damon: So there's a, you're absolutely right. There's a lot of

[00:46:08] Damon: and good work to be done.

[00:46:26] Janet: And you're unto yourself and you have to, and to take all that information and integrate it and accept it is a whole nother journey. So it's not just finding it out. There's another step after that,

[00:47:08] Janet: Nothing came in. It hurt every time. And the social worker said to me, You need to reach out to your siblings. You have five half siblings. You're all adults. They deserve to know that you exist and to choose whether they want a relationship with you or not. She doesn't get to decide that.

[00:47:46] Janet: And I was afraid she'd be mad at me. So I'm in my fifties. I've done all this work. I've thought about this a lot. I'm a smart woman. And that's how primal this hurt and rejection and fear is as an [00:48:00] adoptee. I still don't want to get her mad at me, to reject me further. And finally I I was reading Blue Nights by Joan Didion.

[00:48:25] Janet: I'm going to, I'm going to write to those five siblings. So I wrote a letter, copied it to the five siblings, put some photographs of myself in it. And. overnighted it to all five of them so they'd all get it the same day and thought. Whatever, maybe I'll hear nothing. But whatever, I certainly didn't expect to hear anything right away.

[00:49:06] Janet: And she was crying. My her sister, my other half sister, Carol's crying. They had shared with their brothers. They were all astounded. And they said, when we first started reading the letter, we thought, oh, this poor woman has it all wrong because birth mother's maiden name was Jones.

[00:49:32] Janet: Wow.

[00:49:50] Janet: It still took her some time, but they said right away, she wasn't a good mother. She was cold and and she lied and, she had a lot of very [00:50:00] denial. And and I think it was interesting because I was like older than all of them. So I think in a way they were hoping that maybe my relationship with our mother might repair something that they didn't understand, but might've been hurting her.

[00:50:22] Damon: Yeah.

[00:50:24] Damon: of being the Shirley that she was, sometimes it's hard. Some people do come to light. My, I was told that my birth mother seemed to be under a layer of clouds and that when I reappeared, inside sister told me it was like a flower had bloomed her. I thought that was so cool.

[00:50:50] Janet: that's right.

[00:51:03] Damon: And it's bad that. That wasn't the case, but as we said, her history was demonstrative of the fact that she was not likely to do that based on how your beginning was. but you know what I loved Janet was that your siblings created a united front. They

[00:51:28] Damon: How did that make you feel?

[00:51:57] Janet: much empathy, which I was actually [00:52:00] surprised at first.

[00:52:25] Janet: They certainly all accepted me and were so empathetic and so understanding. I'm just very lucky. Yeah.

[00:52:39] Damon: thinking

[00:52:41] Damon: They were probably already very much united, for lack of better words, against their mother, right?

You may remember Janet said that she met her birth mother. Given all she said about how cold and uncaring the woman was, how her siblings had shared the [00:53:00] trauma of growing up with the woman, I couldn't imagine how this meeting ever took place. When I asked about how such a meeting ever came to be, Janet said it all started with her siblings.

[00:53:31] Damon: When Janet's birth mother heard about everyone else meeting Janet, she called her out of the blue. Janet said she was floored by the call as the woman, presented only one opportunity to meet for lunch. Unfortunately, Janet's husband was out of town, so she would have to go into her maternal reunion alone.

[00:54:08] Janet: Another was more scared than I'd ever been in my life. I just falling off a cliff. I was terrified. It was fine. Met at a restaurant. I told the hostess when I got there on my meeting my birth mother for the first time, please give us a nice table and not and she got so excited and I was sitting at the table, waiting and I was like, gave left the other seat, the better seat for my mother.

[00:54:56] Janet: like,

[00:55:00] Janet: And we talked for three hours. It's like she wasn't ready to let me just leave or dismiss but the first thing she said to me the very first thing was. I don't know who you look like, you don't look like anybody in my family. And then she said, the girl said you, you look like me, but you don't.

[00:55:37] Janet: She had absolutely no reaction to them. She's pulled herself further away, but yet she kept chatting with me. She kept talking to me about her business, and conservative politics and things that were just like you talk to a colleague about.

[00:55:56] Janet: You wouldn't acknowledge me as any part of you. [00:56:00] But you're also not letting me leave. It was very strange and exhausting. And and then she didn't want me to take a picture at the end. I got her to, we took one together. It didn't come out well, but

[00:56:15] Janet: there. Yeah. And it was just a, it was a painful experience.

[00:56:25] Damon: You try to convince yourself

[00:56:27] Janet: But I just, I, as I drove You collapsed and I was, she was denying me to my face the whole just, and every time we met, three times, and every time she was polite. we were at, lunch and often the last few times my sister, both sisters were with us.

[00:57:01] Damon: Wow.

[00:57:07] Damon: rough.

[00:57:29] Janet: And she just didn't want to reintroduce me to her life. So it was really it was really hard.

[00:57:39] Damon: her would you rather just not knowing

[00:58:03] Janet: But I, like I said earlier, you have to take the good and the bad to really know yourself. And it hurt it still hurts. Someone asked me after all this, if you could say one more thing to your birth mother what would it be. And I hadn't thought about that before. I just answered just from spontaneously from the heart.

[00:58:48] Janet: Yeah.

[00:59:01] Damon: I just spoke adoptees about this very issue and as you said, no matter what your age is. The fact that you've been away from each other for decades, you just want to know that person ultimately wanted you.

[00:59:59] Damon: I'm wondering [01:00:00] how you reconcile seeing pieces of each individual person, either by experience or biology and saying, I don't want to do that. How do you check that? Or what do you see that you want to hold back?

[01:00:32] Janet: And you're right. And we were just a distraction. And so she just was impatient and mean and impatient. Not cruel though. I think my birth mother, from what my siblings have told me was cruel and verbally cruel to them. And I. I've said to others that had she raised me, she would have devastated me.

[01:01:19] Janet: And and again, my adoptive mother, there's just nothing about us that's similar. We didn't have the same interests. We didn't have the same personalities. So there's I want to say there's nothing I took from her, but that's probably not true. She was a very accomplished woman. She led many advanced degrees and a lot of volunteer work.

[01:02:10] Damon: If I could ask a final question,

[01:02:19] Janet: I just wanted to be there You know, I didn't work outside the home. I had the privilege of staying home and being a full time mother. And I, that's what I wanted to do more than anything. I just wanted to be a mother and I wanted to be there and I wanted to be understanding. And open and loving and kind and I wanted to be the kind of person my dad was and not the kind of person and I think that and I've talked about this with with my sister as well my biological sister and way she wanted to parent having been raised by Shirley you want to do the opposite we just wanted to be you know the kind of mother we wished [01:03:00] we'd had.

[01:03:23] Janet: I know that there are things that held me back and I know I wasn't the perfect mother, but I have a great relationship with my sons and can't wait to have grandchildren and loved being a mother. It is still the thing that brings me the greatest joy in life. And, would drop anything in a heartbeat.

[01:03:46] Damon: That is the problem with kids. stay young and cute. They all grow and move out and all that

[01:03:52] Janet: Yeah.

[01:04:09] Damon: They, we often parent how we were parented

[01:04:15] Damon: and some people are not able to extract themselves from their own parenting experience and we carry forward trauma, which is partially how it ends up being generational. And it's to

[01:04:26] Damon: your kids. in the ways that you wanted well

[01:04:32] Damon: Excellent. Janet, what's the name of your book for everybody who wants to read?

[01:04:36] Janet: at birth searching for the arms that once held me.

[01:04:47] Janet: Thank you. Thank you for care conversation. I really enjoyed speaking with you.

[01:04:52] Janet: You as well.

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[01:05:20] Damon: I can't imagine the feeling of jumping up from the lunch table to meet the woman whose body you came from only to be met with an emotionless individual who didn't want to be there but wouldn't let you leave. Thankfully, Janet's paternal role models, her adoptive and biological fathers were loving.

[01:06:19] Damon: com slash share. You can follow me on Instagram at Damon L. Davis, and follow the podcast, WAI Really. If you like the show, take a moment to leave a 5 star review in your podcast app or wherever you get your podcasts. Ratings really do help others to find the podcast, too. And, if you're interested, you can check out my story in my memoir, Who Am I Really?,