028 – Working Out The Puzzle Pieces Helped Me Feel Whole

Elise has always been into genealogy and loved looking at family photos & records when she was a child. As a child of adoption, she wondered where her family of origin was? Reunion has had its ups and downs for Elise. The experience with her birth father’s family has been great over the last 20 years. She’s used her genealogy skills to solve a mystery about her paternal grandfather. Elise keeps a door open for communication if her mother or maternal family want contact, yet she understands and accepts that her mother may not be in a position to have a relationship.

Elise says, “I am so appreciative of my journey, the good and the bad parts because getting to work out some of the puzzle pieces of my story and my paternal grandfather’s has been a gift and has helped me have a better sense of self and wholeness.”

Read Full TranscriptElise: 00:00 I will say the most important thing I found out about after meeting both of them is that you can truly appreciate having the entire puzzle put together because I could totally see like what I got from my mom and dad and what I received from my mother and father and you can appreciate what came from the nature side and what came from the nurture side.

Voices: 00:30 Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?

Damon: 00:41 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 Elise from Minnesota. She always wanted to search for her birth family and her interest in genealogy from a young age turned into a life’s passion to support adoptees after she found her own parents. After years of searching, Elise found her birth mother who located her birth father for her almost immediately. The reunion started off really well, but then it stalled when her mother closed the door. Thankfully her father still wanted to know his daughter and they fostered a long distance relationship before meeting in person. He told Elise that she had paternal roots in Fargo, North Dakota, but trying to connect to those roots revealed they had originated hundreds of miles away at a place, Elise was very familiar with, here’s Elise’s journey.

Damon: 01:39 Elise had one younger brother in her family, whom she remembers bringing home when he was adopted too. They had a large extended family with 16 first cousins. They were all so close in age they seemed almost like siblings. As time marched on, they grew up and had families of their own and over time it became more obvious how biological families kind of look and act similarly to one another, but Elise says she had an innate curiosity about the differences in herself and her family and the ultimate question of what she learned from them that had shaped her and what traits have been passed down to her.

Elise: 02:13 I always from a very early age, wanted to know where I came from, like what was the connection? How did I fit into the world? You know, that whole did you pop out down from a spaceship kind of thing?

Damon: 02:23 Yeah. Yeah. What kinds of things did you think about when you wanted to know more about yourself?

Elise: 02:28 Um, I didn’t really look like a lot of people in my family because most of the people in my family could go to the beach and not fry. I would go to the beach and turn into a lobster. So you know, I wanted to, and I kind of just wanted to know like where, you know, my interest came from and my personality and you know, what was nature and what was nurture and just where did l come from?

Damon: 02:50 Yeah. Yeah. I could imagine. You had one younger sibling who was also adopted. Did you guys talk about adoption at all as you got a little older?

Elise: 03:00 my parents and I talked about adoption a lot. My brother never really, I mean every once in a while he would talk about it, but it wasn’t, he and I didn’t talk about it a lot. I spoke about adoption with, I had some cousins that were very close in age to where I am and you know, I would speak to them about it.

Damon: 03:19 And did they get it? Did they understand it? Did you fit in with them? Were they at arms length? What did you get from them?

Elise: 03:26 No, we were, we were very close growing up. I mean most people in the town where we grew up, some people thought that my cousins were like my brothers, they didn’t, they were like, oh wait, are you brothers or cousins? Like how are you all connected? Because we were always together because there was this whole little clump of kids in the same age group. I’ve always wanted to search. I always knew I was going to search, but it wasn’t until like my older cousins started getting married and having children. And then you could see like how everything fit in their family. You could see like my grandparents and their parents and then my cousins and then their children. And you could kind of see how they all fit. And I was like, wait a second, where’s my fit? You know, and not taking anything away from my adoptive