080 – It’s Not About How You Got Here

Rachel is a Hispanic woman of Chilean descent, raised in a Jewish family. She shared her feelings of otherness trying to connect with other Spanish speaking children with her limited proficiency. Rachel describes her father’s blindness to her heritage, and her unbelievable luck to have strangers who went out of their way to help her meet her birth mother in Chile.

Read Full TranscriptRachel: 00:03 It took me a while to sort through it. I remember talking to my grandmother about it and she said, you know, Rachel, it’s not about how you get here, It’s about what you do with yourself once you’re here. So she was like focused less on that event that led to you being here and focus more on what you want to do with yourself and how you want to, you know, make a name for yourself. And that is something that I’ve always held onto

Voices: 00:35 Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?

Damon: 00:47 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 Rachel. She called me from right here in Frederick, Maryland. Rachel is a Hispanic woman of Chilean descent, raised in a Jewish family. She shared her feelings of otherness, her father’s blindness to her heritage and her unbelievable luck to have strangers who went out of their way to help her meet her birth mother in Chile. This is Rachel’s journey. In Rachel’s family, adoption was a fairly open topic. Her brother was adopted three years before her and they always knew they were adopted from young ages. When they got older, they understood a little bit more what that meant.

Rachel: 01:37 I feel like I was my only like person in my group of friends that was adopted growing up. And I think that kind of felt a little bit strange sometimes.

Damon: 01:48 Do you remember mentioning it to other people or did you just, you just couldn’t see other adoptees so you figured you were the only one?

Rachel: 01:56 No, I think I always mentioned it like, I feel like it was something that I talked about a lot. Um, I know that I asked a million questions. My brother didn’t talk much about his biological family or didn’t really express like a lot of curiosity about it, but I was always asking questions like, can you tell me about my biological mom or why was I given up for adoption? Or Can we talk about this? And, um, my parents didn’t ever answer questions. It was kind of always like, when you turn 18, we’ll let you know. But I still was always asking. So it was definitely something that I would mention to friends or to, you know, people within my community. Um, I was always telling everybody like, I’m from Chile and I thought that was a, a pretty cool thing.

Damon: 02:43 Yeah. That’s really interesting. So what, what do you, why do you think you were always asking about it? It sounds like you were somewhat self-aware about it from a very early age. What do you think sparked your curiosity to want to ask about it? It sounds like from even the very beginning.

Rachel: 03:01 Um, I wish I knew the answer to that question. I don’t, I don’t necessarily know, um, when I look at myself, I look at myself as a person who’s like very in touch with who I am. And I think that adoption is such a big part of who I am. And it was something that I couldn’t, I didn’t have the answers to, I didn’t have explanations about and I couldn’t, I guess I couldn’t really figure out that part of me. So I was super inquisitive about it and I always wanted to ask about it. And, and try to kind of find that out. Um, maybe that’s why I was so curious. But my parents will like looking back on everything, they’ll always say to me like, we always knew you were going to find your biological family cause you were always asking, asking, asking.

Damon: 03:47 She asked questions about her start in life, her birth mother and why the woman couldn’t take care of Rachel herself. After a few vague answers, the end of the conversation was always, we’ll tell you when you’re 18. The promise was her parents would deliver her adoption papers to her at that age. But that was a long time to wait, especially in her teen years when Rachel wondered what the difference was between knowing her history at 15 versus learning it three years later. Still, She said she was always proud to tell people that she’s originally from Chile because she felt like it was a pretty cool thing. I asked about the makeup of her family.

Rachel: 04:24 So my brother is also from Chile. Um, like I said, he was adopted three years before I was. And I’ve always said to my parents that I feel like the greatest gift they’ve ever given us, cause they’ve given us the world, my parents are great, but the greatest gift we ever got with each other. Cause growing up with someone in my family, um, who could number one relate to being adopted, but number two, shared, you know, a cultural connection with me even though we weren’t biologically related. Um, was just super awesome.

Damon: 04:54 Rachel’s parents are white and Jewish and their community was similar. She and her brother were raised Jewish as well, going to Jewish...