111 – This Is What I Hoped You’d Be Like

Ginger who lives in Los Angeles, began her reunion journey as a teenager who found her birth mother, saw her picture, emailed her, but never made the leap to meeting the woman. In adulthood Ginger had given birth to twins who emotionally impacted her and reminded her of the story of her own birth shared by her birth mother via email many years before, so she resurrected their relationship. This episode is unique because we captured Ginger’s story in the lead up to her cross country reunion, then we followed up shortly after to see how things were in the aftermath of hours spent face to face with her birth mother. This is Ginger’s journey.

Ginger (00:05):

And I sent it to her and she wrote back and said, you have no idea what you have done for me. You have just uncapped 34 years of guilt and shame and made me feel so much better. And she asked me, would you be willing to, to meet and I said, Oh yeah, I definitely would.

Damon (00:31):

Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? 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 Ginger who lives in Los Angeles. Her reunion started as a teenager who found her birth mother emailed her, but never made the leap to meeting the woman in adulthood. Ginger had given birth to twins who emotionally impacted her and reminded her of the story of her own birth shared by her birth mother many years before. So she resurrected their relationship. This episode is unique because we captured Ginger's story in the lead up to her cross country reunion. Then after to see how things were in the aftermath of an hour, spent face to face with her birth mother. This is Ginger's journey.

Damon (01:37):

Back in the summer of 2019, I was sitting on a plane ready for takeoff. When I checked email one last time before setting my phone on airplane mode, I found an email from Ginger who said she was meeting her birth mother in a few days. And she knew there was only going to be one chance to capture herself in the version of who she was before reunion. So she hoped we could record before and after interviews. I immediately recognized that she was absolutely right. We are different people before reunion, then we are after. So I emailed her back to say, yes, she admitted she had been listening to who am I really a lot in the days leading up to her reunion,

Ginger (02:21):

I was listening to it thinking, Oh my gosh, all these things are going through my mind about like, what's about to happen. And this is like an interesting spot to be in like that I'm in right now. And I won't have this spot anymore after this weekend. It's like, my life is going to be like before and after this weekend, it's going to be like, I'm a, I'm going to be a different person with different views. So I'm like, I shouldn't, I don't know. I just want to record and like tell the story like, as it happens so that, uh, the emotions are raw.

Damon (02:55):

Since I was traveling, I didn't have my normal recording setup. So I spoke to Ginger

Damon (03:00):

Through my laptop with ear buds and their terrible microphone while sitting in the lobby of a library in Sacramento, California. So I hope you'll forgive me for the sound quality of part one of this episode, as we traded in for the experience of hearing Ginger's story, as she packed her bags for her reunion day. So what you're about to hear is Ginger's perspective before reunion in August of 2019, then her recount in September, 2019 of her reunion, two weeks before our call Ginger celebrated her 35th birthday. She said she felt like she was living in an alternate universe, given the surreality of what was about to happen in her life. Ginger admitted that her main thought was concerned that she would fly to Kentucky. Then her birth mother would back out of their meeting. So this was an interesting interview because we could only record the first half without any knowledge of how things would turn out. So like I always do. I asked Ginger to describe her life in her home and in her community as an adoptee, Ginger grew up in a small coal mining town called Harlan, Kentucky way down in the Southeast corner, near Virginia and the Northern border of Tennessee. She said, it's a place that's unlike the rest of America. Ginger's parents were trying to have children for 10 years before the call came for her parents to pick her up.

Ginger (04:30):

She said she ran right out to Belks. That was her store that she liked to go to. And she bought the prettiest little baby clothes and bottles and all this stuff. And she drove, um, the requisite hours to come and pick me up. And she said, she, she went into the hospital, she and dad, and they looked into this window with little bassinets of all kinds of little babies. And she said, she looked at me and she didn't know which was her baby, but she said, Glen, I hope it's that one. And she said, I was the prettiest little baby in the bassinet room. So she, she, um, said that they took her into a little room, um, and said, get ready for your baby. And they brought the baby in and it was indeed me. And so with that story, um, she tells it with such love and she, she just, uh, has always made me feel like adoption was a really special thing rather than like a thing that I should be self conscious about or anything.

Damon (05:37):

So since Ginger felt special, she flaunted her adoption for how special she was to have been chosen. But every once in a while, as she expressed her pride for being adopted, the person she was telling would respond apologetically as if she had admitted something with pride that she should have been ashamed of. It hadn't occurred to her that there might be a sad story to be told about being adopted. Still her mom and dad were wonderful parents as is often the case after a child is adopted Ginger's birth parents had a biological child three and a half years after her adoption. So they lived a bit of a nature versus nurture experiment. Seeing how her sister developed in contrast with her own development being raised by the same parents. I asked Ginger what she noticed in their family.

Ginger (06:28):

According to my own case study, I would have to say that nature and nurture are both very viable factors in how we turn out, like what our morals and our, our goals and, and our like, values are. Um, but like certainly nature is a huge, huge part of it. You, you can not deny it.

Damon (06:56):

Ginger says her family are very quiet people, not big talkers, very kind and loving. They're dark haired, not super tall, not particularly adventurous. And generally by the book kinds of people.

Ginger (07:10):

And I, on the other hand am like the Flamingo, uh, just crazy tall, um, blonde, blue eyed, uh, loud artistic person who, um, uh, I, I was, uh, I was just the multicolored sheep of my family, I guess you could say. And luckily my mom and dad, they, they nurtured this side of me. My mom put me in like every, she put me in piano lessons and all the different sports and all the different, um, singing, acting, all that stuff. And it was cool because though my sister and I are worlds apart when it comes to personality, we we're still just best friends to this day because we, we just get each other. And I wonder sometimes like if we were, uh, a lot closer in personality, if we would be as, as close, because we, we never like experienced competing or anything at all, my mom was so attentive to like,...