246 – Everyone Is Doing The Best They Can With The Skills They Have

246 - Everyone Is Doing The Best They Can With The Skills They Have

[00:00:00]

Cold Cut

[00:00:03] Jean: my parents genuinely deserve the appreciation for doing their job well, as flawed as they were.

[00:00:11] Jean: And they were flawed. They also genuinely tried their best. I mean, my mother for all of her screwed up this. for all of her trauma I know she loved me, she did her best, that's the thing, it's like, they did the job, they raised me, I love them,

Show Open

[00:00:24] Damon (2): I'm Damon Davis, and today you're going to meet Jean. She called me from her home in Boulder City, Nevada. Jean told [00:01:00] me her raising parents had their flaws, from addiction to enablement, but she knows they loved her and they did the best they could with what they had in their toolbox. Searching for her birth mother, the woman was found quickly.

[00:01:13] Damon (2): Her resemblance was shocking, and after discovering some disturbing facts about the woman's past, maternal reunion remains an unmet need for Jean. However, when she learned there would be no reunion, Jean could not have been in a better place than among other adoptees.

[00:01:31] Damon (2): This is Jean Journey.

[00:01:33] Damon (2): Jean's birth mother gave birth to her in the 1960s in Spokane, Washington, at a Salvation Army hospital for unwed mothers. After two months, her raising parents took her home to Yakima, Washington, where she was raised as an only child.

[00:01:49] Jean: I was that lovingly indoctrinated four year old who would toddle right up to an adult and go, Hi, I'm adopted. I mean, that [00:02:00] was me. I was that kid,

adopted, but I knew what it meant. And I knew that I was so yeah, no, I was the only special chosen child.

[00:02:11] Damon: Yeah, that's really fascinating.

[00:02:12] Damon: What kind of child were you growing up? What kinds of things were you into? What'd you like to do?

[00:02:16] Jean: I was a human springboard. I was a human ticker. I swam, I danced, I did gymnastics, I was literally just boing, boing, which was funny because both of my raising parents were relatively, I mean, I won't quite call them sloths, but they were definitely not the more mobile athletic type.

[00:02:36] Jean: I was definitely different. Which they unfortunately embraced and never discouraged. So, I think they just had, they realized they had a lot of energy that they needed to control. And so I think they tried to funnel that at least into positive things. So

[00:02:50] Damon: when did you first realize that you guys were just different?

[00:02:53] Damon: Like I'm this bundle of energy, I'm rolling. And these folks are just happy right where they are. When did you really pick up on [00:03:00] that difference?

[00:03:00] Jean: Probably a little bit more so in upper grade school, when you're nine, 10, 11, and you really start to manifest your own energy into the world.

[00:03:07] Jean: Right. I mean, I am one of these kids who always knew I was adopted, again, raised with all that loving indoctrination, but I would have been medicated in like the current era. Um, then I was just, Oh, you're a hyperactive child. Now I would have been diagnosed, I'm sure, with ADD, ADHD or something like that.

[00:03:27] Jean: And I do remember there was a period of time where my parents kept being drug into the school and, parent teacher conferences and tense whispers and things like that, that I think they wanted to medicate me. And my father was a school psychologist and my raising mother was a nurse and they were having none of it.

[00:03:44] Jean: So, that was one of the things that I started to realize where. Okay, I'm apparently different, and I needed to maybe settle down or behave better.

[00:03:55] Damon: Did you? Did you find that you were able to do that? Or was that a struggle for you to really [00:04:00] rein it in so that you met the expectations of others?

[00:04:03] Jean: I learned because I knew that, as an only child, I had to make friends, right? I have no default older sibling or younger sibling to go with me to go places, right? If I wanted to go to the mall or the movies, I'm the one that had to call a friend. So it really was that social pressure. I think that I learned that I needed to know how to behave a little bit better and make friends more easily so that I could go do things that I wanted to do.

[00:04:36] Jean: And so I think it was really actually social pressure that just brought me in line, if you will.

[00:04:41] Damon: It's funny how that happens too, with teenagers, right? We, as parents. try to tell them, you shouldn't do that. And you try to give them all this guidance. But it's not until they go out in the world and they realize that, not showering for two days, not cool for the girls you want to get next to or something the social pressure just changes the dynamic and you don't have to [00:05:00] deliver the message.

[00:05:00] Damon: It just comes naturally from whatever it is that your child is exposed to. And some of them are very hard lessons. But in Jeanral, they get a lot of stuff from just navigating their lives. It's really interesting.

[00:05:11] Jean: Yeah. I think I did definitely have to learn how to tamp down some of my energy and my personality and not have to be the center of attention all the time.

[00:05:21] Damon: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:05:22] Jean: So

[00:05:23] Damon: tell me about your adoptive parents, the folks who raised you. You've said that you've already indicated you had different energy levels than them, but I'm interested to know more about them. What kind of mom did you have and what kind of dad was your dad?

[00:05:36] Jean: Yeah. So here's where we're going to have.

[00:05:39] Jean: Good cop, bad cop. Okay. So good cop is my dad, school psychologist, wonderful man, a good daddy by anyone's standards, a good man and a good father. I think he very much wanted to be a father and he was fearless about the fact that they had adopted me and it was because it was [00:06:00] his infertility. My father, my raising father was born in 1931.

[00:06:05] Jean: He very nearly died of mumps when he was about four years of age and sustained an extremely high fever over several days, which has the sided effect of killing sperm. And so when he went into the army in the 1950s and it's like put it in a cup, son, they came back with a well. You're not going to be a dad.

[00:06:28] Jean: So he knew that. So when he was courting my mom that would have been something that would have been just known and disclosed. And so of course it being by that point, the early 1960s, if you couldn't have your own child, what did you do? You adopted. So that became a part of their game plan.

[00:06:45] Jean: And so what that made for the dynamic of my family was, there's a lot of shame in adoption, right? There's a lot of shame about infertility. My dad had none of that. He had none of that. That was not present in [00:07:00] my family. So I'm grateful for that. That was one of the things that I think my parents got right.

[00:07:05] Jean: In raising me to the other side of the equation, my, my mother she unfortunately did not have a good childhood on her end and had crawled inside of a bottle of pills. by the time she was an early young adult herself. And so my mother was pretty thoroughly addicted to prescription medication and alcohol by the time I even came on the scene and she was a registered nurse.

[00:07:33] Jean: So she was really good at hiding that. so, It's hard for me to unpack if you will, the psychological impact of being raised with addiction in addition to the impact of being adopted. So both things are always present in me and I'm always having to sort that out. And yeah, so,

[00:07:52] Damon: yeah, no, it's a lot.

[00:07:54] Damon: Let me ask about what your first [00:08:00] inclination was that addiction had a hold over your raising mother? What did you what do you recall where you were just like, Oh, something's not right here.

[00:08:10] Jean: She was so inconsistent from one day or from one morning to one evening to the next. I literally never knew which mommy air quotes would be waiting for me.

[00:08:22] Jean: I could wake up to mommy singing a happy tune. and come home after school to crying, raging, screaming mommy. And I wouldn't know why. And my solution to that was I just left. I just stayed gone from the house as much as I could until my dad was there at, at home over dinner to then be the buffer for the rest of the evening.

[00:08:45] Jean: So that was how I coped with that. So

[00:08:49] Damon: when did you start that escapism?

[00:08:52] Jean: Oh gosh. I mean, young, six, seven, as soon as you were, as soon as I was allowed to like, [00:09:00] come home, change out of my school clothes and into my play clothes and be gone, you know, you're out of

[00:09:04] Damon: there.

[00:09:05] Jean: Absolutely.

[00:09:06] Damon: Wow, interesting. That's really fascinating. I can't help wondering, you've talked about being this tigger and few human form sort of bouncing around from thing to thing, but you've also got escapism. Right. And I'm wondering if one fed the other that you had the natural inclination for this, interest in everything.

[00:09:27] Damon: But then you also didn't have the foundational security at home that might have anchored you potentially a little bit more. And there, I just, I'm no psychologist and I don't know what I'm saying, but it just feels like

[00:09:38] Jean: very well on TV right now. I would say peg Boom in the slot.

[00:09:46] Damon: I mean, it just, it feels like for a six year old to recognize, even if you didn't have the language to express it, that place over there doesn't feel good.

[00:09:56] Damon: I'm out of here. And automatically you've just, that's your first bounce [00:10:00] is I'm bouncing on to the next thing so I can find something that feels a little safer, a little more, secure.

[00:10:05] Jean: Yeah, no, that's exactly right. And it is strange to, Look back at myself through these adult eyes who have started to awaken to all of these complexities both things were always in play.

[00:10:17] Jean: And we talk a lot about, attachment, right.

[00:10:20] Damon: And

[00:10:21] Jean: I would say to you, honestly, my mother was not available for me to attach to.

[00:10:27] Damon: She's an addict. Right.

[00:10:30] Jean: Sh He was not emotionally available to me.

[00:10:32] Damon: Yeah.

[00:10:34] Jean: And so. You add in this already pre verbal separation trauma into that. And so, what I think about is that I learned very early that I couldn't rely on anyone else.

[00:10:49] Jean: And I had to rely on me.

[00:10:52] Damon: That's really interesting. I could see how you would get that lesson. Do you recall having a conversation with your dad, like, what's going on with [00:11:00] mom?

[00:11:00] Jean: Yeah, this is where his flaws do come into play. He ignored the fact that he had a pharmacy in his own medicine cabinet and just didn't want to see it.

[00:11:09] Damon: So what was their interaction like? Do they have the same mercurial, up and down that you were exposed to?

[00:11:17] Jean: I think my dad tried to do his best. to manage the emotional stability of a woman that he knew there was no managing. I think he just did his best to try to placate her, to just keep the waters as calm as he could.

[00:11:37] Damon (2): As a teenager, already living with imbalance at home, Jean experienced the classic evolution of hormonal and emotional maturity all teenagers go through. she said she learned as a lot of young women do about the easy approval that comes from the attention of boys. Jean started to experiment with alcohol and some drug use at an early age. It wasn't [00:12:00] exactly a rebellious stage because she never cut school or acted out.

[00:12:04] Damon (2): Jean went to school, put her head down and studied, was in the band and on the drill team, and Jeanrally played the good little girl, but she was also in the late night partying crowd and having her fun. Jean said it was an interesting time because that was also the time in her life When her raising mother began her journey towards sobriety.

[00:12:25] Jean: I didn't understand it to me. It was just one more way that my mother was crazy. because I had long since given up on there being any kind of emotional safety there I had just given up I mean, this was a memory that I forgot about until just a few years ago.

[00:12:43] Jean: And I picked up a steak knife at one point when I was about 16 or 17 years old. and carve the words F U C K the world into my right forearm. I don't know why I did that. It [00:13:00] fortunately did not evolve into something more significant in terms of an actual self harming pattern of behavior. I look back at myself and I have so much sadness for that young woman back then. I just felt like I had no one to release My pain to there was no person in my life that felt safe, and I think about how sad that is and how much I deserved so much better than that.

[00:13:31] Damon: Yeah, absolutely. Every child, regardless of adoption, right?

[00:13:35] Jean: Right.

[00:13:35] Damon: This

[00:13:36] Damon: is one of the challenges that kids have is finding the safe space for that expression, that ability to lean on someone else in their own emotional times, right? Where is their rock? And it doesn't sound like you had. Much of one, even though your father was a school psychologist, which is actually interesting as you put that together, right?

[00:13:56] Damon: One might think that you could have been quite literally in the best place that [00:14:00] you could have, but because he was in that relationship with that particular woman it put his own burden on him. And therefore he wasn't able to perform the duties that he would perform for strangers, the other children in his school for you, his daughter.

[00:14:14] Damon: It's really fascinating.

[00:14:16] Jean: Yeah, I mean, that's a dynamic that just is it lives there and it sits in my back pocket and it's a truth that I know

[00:14:23] Damon (2): yeah. And you actually, you answered the next question I was going to ask was whether you sensed it. in reflection, any sort of inner turmoil.

[00:14:30] Damon (2): And that's clear that there was. I've heard that cutting what they call it when are carving like that is a means by which for a person to at least feel something for lack of better words. Again, I'm not clinically trained, but my daughter used to cut. And because folks don't feel like they're feeling what they want to feel.

[00:14:52] Damon (2): They inflict pain among themselves to have some kind of control over some kind of feeling is Jeanrally what I understand. So it's interesting [00:15:00] to examine the painting that you've drawn out here and of your life and understand why you might have been cutting in the absence of any real and foundational love, right?

[00:15:11] Jean: Yeah. I mean, first, I'm sorry that, your family's, been through that. And it's like, we, as human beings, I think, do not know how to get our own needs met unless we get that behavior modeled for us. And so, if no one is successfully laying out for us from a very young, intuitive age, right?

[00:15:36] Jean: We don't know how to ask for help.

[00:15:39] Damon: Most

[00:15:39] Jean: of us don't.

[00:15:41] Damon: That's right. We don't have the language for it. And there's so many signals in society that suggests that you should just know how to do stuff, right? That you're supposed to be strong and independent and how come you don't know by now and all this other stuff.

[00:15:55] Damon: I have a dear friend that I've been emotionally supporting and she was telling me [00:16:00] recently that she was starting to give herself space for some of the experiences that she hadn't had and she just felt so badly that she hadn't had these life experiences and I was telling her you need to forgive yourself.

[00:16:15] Damon: for this. This isn't about you. You can't blame yourself for emotions. You were not given nor validated for experiences you didn't have in your life. You can't blame yourself for not knowing things that nobody taught you. And so I just I would encourage anybody listening who's thinking about these kinds of things, especially with your own kids.

[00:16:38] Damon: They need you to teach them the stuff. And you need to let them know it's okay to ask for help and they shouldn't blame themselves for not knowing things. None of us is born knowing everything. And then this applies here,

[00:16:50] Jean: right? I mean, my mantra, that I try to live by is everyone is doing the best they can with the skills they have available to them at [00:17:00] the time.

[00:17:00] Damon (2): The mother who raised Jean had passed away in 2004. In 2017, the father who raised her passed away as well. Jean told me that throughout her life, whenever someone asked her if she wanted to find her, quote, real parents, she always said no.

[00:17:16] Damon (2): She didn't want to disturb her birth mother. So she never searched for her birth family. Jean didn't feel like she had the right to interrupt the woman's life. It wasn't until 2020, when Jean got an email that said she had matches in her ancestry DNA that things began to change. She hadn't logged into the platform for years since she submitted her DNA test on a lark with her husband and her mother in law.

[00:17:43] Damon (2): Jean didn't find any matches back then, and she was content with the results because she still wasn't feeling like she actually wanted to search. But that Thanksgiving weekend in 2020, when the whole world was shut down, Jean logged into Ancestry, where she verified she had [00:18:00] two cousin matches on her tree.

[00:18:02] Damon (2): But the two matches were not related to one another. Each was a hint about her maternal and paternal connections, respectively.

[00:18:11] Jean: so I was sitting there and I'm talking to my husband and I said, am I going to actually kick this door open?

[00:18:17] Jean: And I, at that point in my life, And he's like, babe, if your mom is out there still and alive, she's already well into her seventies, probably. It's like, no one in this scenario is getting any younger. So if you want to do this, you'd better get after it.

[00:18:32] Damon: Yeah. He ain't wrong.

[00:18:33] Jean: Nope. He isn't. So that kicked it off and, Because I was born in Washington state, unbeknownst to me, I could have access to my birth certificate based upon the year that I was born.

[00:18:44] Jean: So I sent away for it and then it went really fast.

[00:18:49] Jean: I mean, all I got was that thankless piece of paper in just a regular envelope from the state of Washington.

[00:18:55] Jean: No other records with it. I did eventually get non identifying information [00:19:00] from the Salvation Army. which painted its own sad story, but I'm unnamed on my birth certificate. So is my father. But I do have her name. I mean, I'll always remember this.

[00:19:11] Jean: It was like a Friday, the first Friday in April of that 2021 we're into now. so I have the place where she was born, the year she was born, and then, which is in the Dakotas. Upper Midwest and her name. And so I called my mother in law who's really good in ancestry. And I said, mom, will you do this for me?

[00:19:36] Jean: Because I'm just, I'm too close to it. I'm too emotional. Can you at least start the process, figuring who knows how long this is going to take, right? That's Saturday morning at eight 30. It's like 11, 1130 that morning. She calls me and she says, I need you to go to your computer and I need you to sit down.

[00:19:55] Damon: My gosh, for real.

[00:19:57] Jean: She'd found her senior high [00:20:00] school photo. And it was like looking in a mirror.

[00:20:05] Damon: Really? Wow. What was that like for you to see this reflection of yourself before your eyes?

[00:20:11] Jean: Staggering. Staggering. I mean, we know the word for it now, Jeantic mirroring. That thing we don't have as adoptees.

[00:20:19] Jean: one of my best friends said it's genie with a perm, which I just had to laugh at. But yeah, I mean, it's like, I mean, there, there are not words when you've never seen it, it just drops you.

[00:20:32] Damon: Yeah. It's astonishing. I remember, In my story, I sent my birth mother a letter and in it I had inserted a picture of myself so she knew what I looked like.

[00:20:43] Damon: I had no idea what she looked like. But when I saw her for the first time, we were face to face because I surprised her at her office and the immediate second of seeing her face, I could see my face on her face. Just I didn't stop to process. It [00:21:00] happened instantaneously, and it was indescribable how quickly I recognized, holy crap, that's my face on that woman.

[00:21:08] Damon: You know what I mean? It's really unreal. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. So what happens next? You've now seen her. You're blown away by seeing yourself with a perm,

[00:21:17] Jean: which I'm

[00:21:17] Damon: sure you had never expected to see in your life.

[00:21:20] Jean: I mean, yeah, no, it's, so I thought about it and I thought, okay, I know I want to reach out.

[00:21:27] Jean: I know I want to compose that carefully worded letter and all the things. So I take my time. I take a month or so to really sit down. back and wallow in this a little bit and think about what it is I want to say. And then very carefully start to put that together. And then, do send a letter with a handful of photos.

[00:21:46] Jean: And and then I hear nothing nothing and nothing And she lives now in a suburb of Denver. It's interesting to me because from what I've seen in all the other research. There's a [00:22:00] couple of really sad points that I want to back up and share about her non identifying information and also what's in the DNA.

[00:22:08] Jean: She relinquishes me in April of 1965. She's the youngest of four children. She herself is an NPE, but doesn't know it.

[00:22:21] Damon: Really?

[00:22:22] Jean: Yes. The man who's supposed to be her biological father isn't.

[00:22:25] Damon: Did you discover this along your journey to find her?

[00:22:29] Jean: Yeah, it's right there in the ancestry. It's unmistakable.

[00:22:31] Damon: Do you think that she

[00:22:32] Jean: knows this fact about herself? I have no idea. All of her older siblings are dead. And so you know how it is. Family secrets sometimes surface and sometimes they don't.

[00:22:41] Damon: Yeah, right.

[00:22:42] Jean: So, The man who's supposed to be her dad, the man who is the dad of the three older siblings,

[00:22:47] Damon: he's

[00:22:48] Jean: already deceased.

[00:22:49] Jean: He dies when she is a very young child her mother remarries when she's about 15 and all the older sibs are already out of the house and he's [00:23:00] abusive. So he's smacking them around. And he's the chief of police, so nothing's going to happen to him.

[00:23:05] Jean: Oh, no. And so when they sent her away from the Dakotas all the way to Washington State, it was for more than just, the family shame and the predicament. I think both her and her mother knew they had to get her the heck out of there before she was showing. So you've got that added in there too.

[00:23:29] Jean: So she relinquishes me in late April. She goes home. She goes back to where she was from, but less than two years later, her mother dies.

[00:23:39] Damon: And

[00:23:41] Jean: so I have to think very carefully, you know, we all know that if we're reaching out to that mother, all that she has lost and all that she may have been through, and I'm asking her to open a Pandora's box that is even more [00:24:00] painful than just me.

[00:24:01] Damon: Yes.

[00:24:02] Jean: It's all of that.

[00:24:05] Damon: Yeah. This is the thing that we always have to warn our fellow adoptees about is the notion that when you return, you bring back the memory of the moments that surrounded your own relinquishment. And it sounds like what surrounded her pregnancy with you was this larger issue of abuse at home and who knows what happened with her when she returned from the Dakotas, went back to this house and then her mom dies.

[00:24:37] Damon: If she's too young to move out on her own, heaven forbid, he actually found out that she was pregnant cause he's a cop. They, police have friends in other States. They can figure stuff out. I mean, And if he was abusive, he, I'm sure he had some, where the hell are you going and I'm going to figure it out kind of stuff to him too.

[00:24:56] Damon: I mean, that just sounds really awful. So I could see what you're saying, that [00:25:00] resurrecting those memories from her past are going to be incredibly painful beyond just your relinquishment. Wow.

[00:25:08] Jean: Right. It has, I mean, how would her pain not be tied into those other things? Absolutely those other truths, yeah.

[00:25:13] Damon: and I want to just ask too, there's some parallel between her life and yours, right?

[00:25:21] Jean: No,

[00:25:22] Damon: she doesn't have, you've clearly thought this through, but I just, it hit me that this is a woman who doesn't have a foundation at her own home. And so she potentially, if this is the scenario that she lived, could have been out in a similar way that you were escaping.

[00:25:39] Damon: Let's just say that at its very least. escaping. And you've admitted that you sought affirmation from other people and it's possible that this was her scenario. Wow, that's really wild.

[00:25:54] Jean: No, it is. It's Yeah, it's a really, it's a really sad story [00:26:00] that she has.

[00:26:01] Damon (2): Jean's initial outreach through letters happened in 2021. Over the next two years, Jean would send Christmas cards with nothing more than a simple message, quote, love Jean and her phone number stuffed in the envelope.

[00:26:15] Damon (2): she was trying to be careful because There was no way to judge what was actually going on in the woman's home. It was possible that her husband didn't know about Jean, would not have been supportive of the news, or maybe her mother was at a point in her life that she was declining in some way.

[00:26:32] Damon (2): There was just no way to know what kind of environment her cards were landing in. 2024, Jean made plans to attend Untangling Our Roots. It's a summit that brings together adoption, assisted reproduction, and parent not expected, or NPE, communities together to provide education. Support community and allow healing across these lived experiences.

[00:26:58] Damon (2): In April of 2024, [00:27:00] the conference took place in Denver, Colorado. Coincidentally, I was there hosting a panel and listening and learning with everyone else. And I got to meet Jean in person, but for Jean being in Denver much deeper meaning and presented a real opportunity for her maternal reunion.

[00:27:20] Jean: about two to three weeks before I go, I again, pick out a card and pull out some stationery and just very carefully write a note that just says, I'll be in town from this date to this date.

[00:27:36] Jean: I could meet you anywhere. Would just love to see your face. Ran this past a couple of different birth parents, actually, that I know a few birth mothers who are friends of mine to just say, check my language here, with this. I'm going to send you packing or send you hopefully to meet me, both said no.

[00:27:56] Damon: How would you receive it?

[00:27:57] Jean: Yeah, it's lovely. Everything's fine. [00:28:00] So I sent it and nothing. And then I go to the conference. So getting in on Thursday night is like the opening of the festivities. Have a great time, have an amazing, wonderful time. It's wonderful to be in community which is, it's an adoption and right to know conference where you have people from all parts of the constellation and the right to know movement all coming together.

[00:28:22] Jean: So this was the second event that they'd had and it was my second time going. So I was really looking forward to being there. I had planned some extra days and had a friend who was going to stay with me to maybe go try to, meet up with her or see where she lived, depending upon what happened.

[00:28:39] Jean: Right. But she sent no response until Friday. So Friday, first full day of the conference, my husband calls me and he says, I have a handwritten letter from Denver. And I said, okay. And he's [00:29:00] like, let me open this and let me read it. And then I'll call you. And I said, okay. And.

[00:29:07] Jean: She said that she did not want to meet her, be in touch.

[00:29:11] Damon: She

[00:29:11] Jean: rejected contact,

[00:29:14] Damon: you were right there where it would have been closest.

[00:29:16] Jean: Yeah.

[00:29:17] Damon: Wow.

[00:29:18] Jean: Yeah. I mean, that was pretty devastating to me. And it was so ironic because I realized again, in just some additional searching and white pages, listings and all the things that we do, right.

[00:29:30] Jean: All the digging and the things that you do,

[00:29:32] Jean: All the sleuthing, all the online stuff. That hotel, since you were there, you remember there's that huge medical center that was right over there, right? In Aurora, Colorado. She worked there in the 70s and my adoptive aunt.

[00:29:49] Jean: lived in Aurora, and we went to visit them in the summer of 1976.

[00:29:57] Damon: Wow.

[00:29:57] Jean: So, it was in that town that my mother was [00:30:00] working in, and we didn't know it.

[00:30:01] Damon: Oh my goodness. Wow, that's crazy.

[00:30:04] Jean: Of all the

[00:30:05] Damon: places you could have gone, it was to that town. That is wild.

[00:30:09] Jean: Yeah. Damn.

[00:30:10] Jean: Didn't know that, didn't put all those pieces together,

[00:30:13] Jean: And of course, when I'm cruising in, for the conference I interpret that as being some sort of positive serendipity, but of course that isn't how that played out. I would have been the same. I would have been like, this is a sign. This conference is here in her city.

[00:30:27] Damon: Yeah. Oh my God. I'm going to

[00:30:31] Jean: go see the human resources department. I'm going to see, and I'm going to tell them the story and all the records will open to me.

[00:30:38] Damon: Yeah. Right.

[00:30:39] Jean: Tell me everything. Right.

[00:30:40] Damon: Yeah. Unbelievable.

[00:30:43] Jean: Yeah.

[00:30:44] Damon: Let me ask you, Jean, you were At this conference with aspirations for meeting your birth mother during that time frame You get this rejection and this conference is not for the faint [00:31:00] of heart There's a lot of emotional stuff there and now you're in this situation yourself amongst all of these emotional stories that are being told to, how did you manage to get through untangling our roots being that you were literally in the midst of your own personal journey, your crisis or whatever.

[00:31:18] Jean: This is where I'm going to say, thank God for this community. I mean, this community I as you figured out, I'm very recent to all of this.

[00:31:29] Jean: When I went to the first Untangling Our Roots conference in, 2023, I was completely alone. I knew no one. I was really trying to push myself to not be a wallflower when I'm in a large crowd I tend to but I got to know a lot of people who were then there again and my circle had continued to expand.

[00:31:46] Jean: And so I was surrounded by friends, to help me in that situation. even as my husband is, reading me this letter, I mean, we're sobbing. He's sobbing, I'm sobbing. We are just so [00:32:00] emotional in that moment. But if I was anywhere other than with him and in his arms, I was in exactly the right place.

[00:32:06] Damon: Oh, that's wonderful. Yeah. Who better could understand? Cause the conference has birth mothers at it too, for anybody who doesn't know. So in, in birth parents, I should say there were plenty of birth fathers as well. Adopt these folks who are DNA discoveries. I mean, you just, you name it, the whole gamut is there.

[00:32:28] Damon: So you're absolutely right. you fell in a soft cloud in terms of being in that moment. That's really unbelievable. Wow.

[00:32:35] Jean: Yeah. I had so many friends and so much support and so many people to help me. both be buoyed and then lash out and say the stupid things that you say in those moments when someone's hurt you and know that they don't matter.

[00:32:50] Damon (2): Recall that Jean had a DNA match on her paternal side too, so I wondered what happened with her attempt at paternal reunion. Jean has gotten [00:33:00] support from a DNA detective, Who was able to help her arrive at a guy who was a solid maybe to use her ranking of his possibility to be her birth father.

[00:33:09] Damon (2): But that man passed away in 2018, so any chance of meeting him is gone. Jean has also tried to contact family members of his through social media channels. But no one, not even her closest match has responded.

I will say I've got a great third cousin that I've gotten to meet

[00:33:29] Jean: Out of that deal. On, on a couple of different sites, but we are nowhere on dad.

[00:33:35] Damon: I

[00:33:36] Jean: need a lucky break. Or someone to respond to something

[00:33:42] Jean: really close that deal.

[00:33:43] Damon: Really interesting. I'm sorry to hear that. That's really tough because that ends up being not just a rejection, but a dead end. They're very different. It's challenging because you feel like you could keep clawing away at it, but you just don't know which direction to dig.[00:34:00]

[00:34:00] Jean: Yeah. I've let it go for now. I'm focused on other projects which are about to wrap up and then maybe I'll resume. I mean, you know how it is. You have to, people who've been through long searches have told me many times they, sometimes you got to just set it aside for a few years,

[00:34:14] Damon: it's true. It's a sort of trite analogy, but it's like when you're looking for your keys, you're frantically running around, and you're looking in stupid places where your keys would never go. And then when you finally just stop and calm down, you go ahead and pick up your spare set of keys and you look down, they're like right fricking there.

[00:34:28] Damon: And you go, I needed to just pause and give this thing some space. And so hopefully something will break for you that will allow a little bit more

[00:34:39] Jean: Yeah, I'd like some clarity around who he is. I'm

[00:34:42] Damon: sure,

[00:34:42] Jean: It'd be nice to fit more pieces together

[00:34:45] Damon: for sure. Yeah, I can imagine. Wow. Good on your husband for fielding that letter for you trying to figure out like what is my wife about to get into?

[00:34:56] Damon: Because if you had said read it, that could have been traumatic. [00:35:00] At least he had some time to prepare himself for what you were about to go through and guide you through it a little bit. So wow. Let me ask you something different. You, I noticed the language that you use is raising parents don't say adoptive, which a lot of people do.

[00:35:16] Damon: And some people will say things like my adopters, right, which is a clear indication of some level of animosity towards the adoptive situation. But you've said raising parents, which doesn't signal either one favor or disdain. Tell me about the words that you use for your parents.

[00:35:31] Jean: Again, indoctrination aside, okay, about adoption is beautiful and all of that.

[00:35:38] Jean: I do believe kids need parents. I needed mine, and

[00:35:43] Jean: the world was what it was and they did what they did. And like I said, my dad was, particularly unapologetic about it. And I'm okay with that. I'm not Okay with some of what happens in, the adoption [00:36:00] industry, not okay with a lot of that. But again I feel my parents genuinely deserve the appreciation for doing their job well, as flawed as they were.

[00:36:11] Jean: And they were flawed. They also genuinely tried their best. I mean, my mother for all of her screwed up this. For all of that, for all of her trauma I know she loved me, she did her best, and so that's the thing, it's like, they did the job, they raised me, I love them, and I know a great many adoptees feel the same.

[00:36:29] Damon: Yeah.

[00:36:30] Jean: That's right.

[00:36:31] Damon: Given the situation that we are in, that you find yourself in, that I am now here in with you, we're all doing the best that we can, right? And that's all you can do.

[00:36:42] Jean: Right. Okay. you can't walk things back 40 years and cast shade on the value system such as they were.

[00:36:50] Jean: I can say they shouldn't perpetuate and they shouldn't continue. And adoption maybe needs to be re envisioned in new ways and we [00:37:00] need to get rid of shame and secrecy that all needs to go. But things were what they were. And our parents said they did just like yours did. Mine did. So many others did.

[00:37:10] Damon: That's right. Final question for you, Jean. You've talked about your mother's journey to sobriety. . And this was at a time when you were a teenager and you had. You're like, I'm done with it. I don't need this. But as an adult woman, I assume, did she maintain her sobriety? Tell me about your relationship with her as an adult.

[00:37:29] Jean: Oh, there were some good years. There were some good years there. She did, I mean, she did maintain her sobriety. She was 40 years, clean and sober. And it was a rock tree. And I did have to really, Learn and come to understand first as just a young adult and then as an adult, I mean, let me tell you her mother was a truly mean spirited Narcissistic alcoholic piece of work, so [00:38:00] she didn't get raised.

[00:38:00] Jean: Well, She didn't have a good opportunity And so of course that perpetuated, right? The cycle, right? We talk about trying to break the cycle. And so eventually I went through adult children of alcoholics, which helped me immeasurably because it helps you harness your agency in terms of your own healing and your own journey.

[00:38:26] Jean: And I will always be grateful to the tools that I learned in that they've helped stead me now. But I mean, in terms of my journey with her, the end was rough because she got Parkinson's and then dementia. that sucked ass. It

[00:38:39] Damon: does. I'm telling you. That was awful.

[00:38:41] Jean: That was awful.

[00:38:43] Damon: My mother had paranoid schizophrenia and dementia.

[00:38:45] Damon: I'm with you. It sucks ass.

[00:38:47] Jean: Yeah. So, but there was a good 20 years in there where I really got to enjoy a relationship with a woman who I called mom and who I knew adored me and who I adored. And [00:39:00] so that was good. And I'm grateful

[00:39:01] Damon: for that. Awesome. That's really cool to hear. Well, Jean, thank you for sharing so much of yourself with me.

[00:39:08] Damon: This was really wonderful. I know it was a rough journey and I'm hopeful that one day your birth mother will turn around and say, you know what? I have a child out there that I don't know. And I hold out hope for everybody who finds themselves in these situations because you just never know what is going to eat away at someone's spirit.

[00:39:25] Damon: in there when they're facing their mortality or whatever it is. So I will hold out hope for you that you will eventually get to meet her one day. So thanks. All right. Jean, take care. It was wonderful to meet you. All right.

[00:39:39] Jean: Likewise. Thank you so much, sir.

[00:39:45] Damon (2): Hey, it's me. Gene grew up in a home where adoption was perfectly well accepted with her raising father who was trained in the science of mental health support, but was challenged to manage his own wife's addiction and his adoptive [00:40:00] daughter's needs. It must have been incredibly gratifying for Jean to see the picture of her birth mother at a younger age, resembling herself so much.

[00:40:09] Damon (2): But I know it was also incredibly tough to be right there in Denver, where her birth mother lives, and not be granted the opportunity to meet her. However, as Jean said, other than in the arms of her husband, What better place could there have been for her to receive her maternal rejection news than among her friends in the Untangling Our Roots community?

[00:40:32] Damon (2): Only they could truly empathize with her. And were best equipped to support Jean at such a tough time. I'm Damon Davis, and I hope you've found something in Gene's journey that inspired you, validates your feelings about wanting to search, or motivates you to have the strength along your journey to learn, Who am I really?

[00:40:53] Damon (2): If you would like to share the story of your adoption and your attempt to connect with your biological family, please visit [00:41:00] whoamireallypodcast. com slash share. You can follow me on Instagram at Damon L. Davis and follow the podcast. At W a I really, of course, if you like the show, please take a minute to leave a five star review in your podcast app or wherever you listen.

[00:41:17] Damon (2): Your ratings truly do help others to find this podcast too. And if you're interested, you can check out my story in my memoir. Who am I really available on Amazon, Kindle, and audible. I hope you'll add my story to your reading list.