084 – There’s A Certain Sense of Completeness

Neal’s search didn’t take off until he was 66 years old! He got a DNA kit for his birthday and within months he was in touch with his paternal family. Ohio’s open original birth certificate help him learn his birth mother’s name, but he couldn’t find a single maternal connection during his search. This episode was just about to be wrapped up to go live, when Neal circled back to share some big news.

Read Full TranscriptNeal: 00:01 He didn’t really remember very much about my biological mother and that’s a, that’s a search that continues to this day. Um, and sort of like, uh, everything that was fast and relatively easy about finding my genetic father and his family has been difficult about trying to find my genetic mother.

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 Neal. He called me from right here in Rockville, Maryland. Neal search didn’t take off until he was 66 years old. He got a DNA kit for his birthday and within months he was in touch with his paternal family. Ohio’s open original birth certificate policy, helped him learn his birth mother’s name, but he couldn’t find a single maternal connection during his search. This episode was just about to end when Neal circled back to share some big news. This is Neal’s journey. Neal was raised in bay shore, New York on Long Island. He figures his parents must’ve done a good job with helping him to feel okay with his adoption because he always knew and his parents openly pointed out friends in the neighborhood who were adopted too. He had one younger sister also adopted and his parents selected a special day to commemorate their adoptions.

Neal: 01:50 Valentine’s Day became sort of our day to commemorate uh, our adoption of me and my sister. And uh, we just kind of, they just kind of made a big deal about it and uh, they were actually greeting cards at the time that, uh, I had a message about being accepted as an adoptee.

Damon: 02:15 Oh really? That’s interesting. I didn’t know that. That’s kind of cool.

Neal: 02:19 Yeah, it is.

Damon: 02:21 Neal says he and his sister got along fine when they were kids, but they kind of realized in adulthood that they were different people and they went their separate ways. In terms of inquiring about their adoptions Neal said his sister was much more into peppering their parents with questions about her adoption than he was about his. We agreed that sometimes young men just aren’t as interested in their adoptions as young women are. So that begs the question, when did he take an interest in understanding his roots?

Neal: 02:50 Things, things moved along? Uh, college marriage, kids and that whole thing. And uh, my mother died in the year 2000. My father passed away in 2012. And uh, my youngest sister died last year in 2017.

New Speaker: 03:18 Oh I’m sorry.

Neal: 03:18 and at that point I realized, Oh wow, I’m like the only person left from my immediate family. And it just, you know, the feeling was different and that’s, that’s when I started to think about it. And a, a friend of ours who had gone to a, a little bit ahead of me, had gone through and was going through a similar experience, uh, and it was positive for him and he told me about it and he urged me to have my DNA tested.

Damon: 03:56 So you were just generally curious. It wasn’t even, it wasn’t even, doesn’t sound like a burning passion for you at that moment, right?

Neal: 04:04 Not really. But I was curious and being the only member of my immediate family, my, it definitely got stronger.

Damon: 04:16 What did you think about that in terms of being the only member of your immediate family? I mean, that’s a a fairly solitary feeling, I would...