How a Nurse Practitioner Discovered Her Real Roots

With the Trump administration moving to reclassify nursing so it no longer counts as a professional degree for federal student aid, this episode couldn’t land at a more urgent moment. Nursing organizations warn that limiting access to funding threatens the very foundation of patient care, and in our household, where nurses are family, this news hits hard.

Today’s guest, Lisa, is a nurse practitioner, an adoptee, and someone who has lived through more than one life-changing twist thanks to DNA testing. Her story blends caregiving, identity, trauma, reunion, and that beautiful mix of nature and nurture we explore so often on Family Twist.

Lisa grew up in a loving adoptive home, always knowing she was adopted but never knowing the medical history she desperately needed. As a nurse practitioner and later a mother, the absence of that information became impossible to ignore. When she finally began searching for answers, she uncovered a story that feels like fate.

If you want to go even deeper into Lisa’s story, you can find her book here:

The Adopted Nurse (Amazon):

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+adopted+nurse

How a Nurse Practitioner Discovered Her Real Roots

Her journey includes:

• A neighbor who recognizes her immediately

• A grandfather she may have unknowingly cared for as an ICU nurse

• A birth family who lived down the street from her adoptive parents

• Birth aunts who welcome her with warmth, memory, and long-held truths

This episode explores the way caregivers are shaped by their histories, how adoptees carry both gratitude and grief, and how discovering your roots can transform everything.

Next week, Part Two goes even deeper with a second DNA discovery that completely reframes Lisa’s understanding of identity and safety. But first, this is where her story begins.

Transcript

Nursing Crisis and Why This Episode Matters

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey everyone, welcome back to Family Twist. It's Kendall here, and today's episode is landing at a moment that feels heavy. If you've been watching the news, you've probably seen the uproar over the Trump administration's decision to reclassify nursing so that it no longer counts as a professional degree for federal student aid. Nursing organizations across the country are warning that cutting off access to funding doesn't just hurt students, it also threatens the very foundation of patient care. And honestly, as someone who has nurses in my family and nurses in my heart, it feels personal.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Yes. We're a very pro-nurse household. Between Kendall Tap sister, the nurse friends we've adopted, and the nurses who've cared for us in our own medical moments. We owe nurses everything. So when we heard this news, we were like, seriously?

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Exactly, and that's part of why today's guest, Lisa, is showing up at a perfect time. Lisa's a nurse practitioner, an adoptee, and someone who's lived through more than one life-changing twist thanks to DNA testing. Her story blends caregiving, identity, trauma, reunion, and this beautiful mix of nature and nurture that we love talking about on the show.

Meet Lisa: Nurse Practitioner and Adoptee

SPEAKER_00 1:13

She starts this episode exactly the way we start every video call. Hunted by animals, so she fits right in.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

She really does. Lisa grew up in a loving adoptive home, always knowing she was adopted, always wondering who she came from, and always wanting the medical history she didn't have. And like so many of us adoptees, she went searching not because of curiosity alone, but because she needed answers for her own health and for her daughter's health.

SPEAKER_00 1:41

And what she finds is like something out of a novel. A neighbor who knows her, a grandfather she very likely unknowingly cared for, and relatives who lived down the street from her adoptive parents. Fate, coincidence, DNA, whatever you want to call it, it's pretty incredible.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

This is part one of Lisa's story, and we cover the caregiving, the family discoveries, the grief, the gratitude, and the complicated way adoptees learn to hold all those things at once. And part two goes even deeper, so make sure you're subscribed. But for now, let's jump in. Here's Lisa.

SPEAKER_00 2:19

Lisa, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_02 2:21

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00 2:23

We're thrilled to have you. We were talking a little bit about this before the recording. Kendall and I adore nurses. Kendall's half sister is a nurse, and we've made two new besties through her nurse friends. So actually, one of their birthdays is today. So shout out to BJ. Happy birthday.

SPEAKER_03 2:37

Oh, happy birthday.

SPEAKER_00 2:38

So when we heard from you, we were excited because our love of nurses, and then we were able to tie it back to the podcast. Yeah. Just start off, at what age did you find out you were adopted?

Growing Up Adopted in a Closed Adoption

Losing Her Mother and Becoming a Caregiver

Searching for Medical History as an Adoptee

SPEAKER_02 2:49

So I don't remember not knowing that I was adopted. My earliest memory is standing in front of a closet in a room in the house that I grew up with my mom handing me a box that I want to say was almost like a shoebox. And I just remember her explaining what adoption was, that I was adopted. I was very young. Don't remember much else besides the fact that she pulled out pieces of paper and things that fit in this box. It was a closed adoption through Catholic Social Services. It was called Catholic Charities, and I think now it's Catholic Social Services. What she told me was that they knew there were no significant medical issues with the birth mom and that she was raped, but she knew the guy. I was young enough to remember that and know what that meant, but I don't remember how old I was, and I don't remember ever not knowing. She said they had no other identifying information. It was a closed adoption. She loved you so much, she wanted to give you a better life. Which in the adoption community has become kind of a problematic narrative. But at the time, it's the narrative, and to no fault of my adoptive parents, they were amazing. They're both gone. But they were amazing. I had a really beautiful childhood. I was very loved, middle class, you know, suburban neighborhood and Catholic education all the way up, you know, paid for my first four years of college. And then I put myself through graduate school. And fortunately, when I got my doctorate, it was on a grant. Gave me every tool, every opportunity. I felt very, very loved. But you do grow up always wondering where you came from, always wondering why you were given up. As I have gotten older and had more experiences, they're both gone. My mom passed away when I was 32 five days before my daughter was born. Which was horrible and sudden. She was declining, but it was very vague. We didn't really know what was going on. She had lost her leg. I was in my 20s, I was in graduate school, after a knee replacement surgery that resulted in a blood clot behind the knee. And she had significant pain and really wasn't listened to. And I, of course, blamed myself for a long time that I wasn't a stronger advocate. I tried, but people weren't listening to her level of pain, found out 24 hours later. And by that point, too much blood loss to the leg and damage to the tissue and resulted in an above-knee amputee eventually. But she and I continued to travel. I think it was about eight years before she passed away. But because of that, and she had other comorbid conditions, hypertension, probably some heart failure, diet developed diabetes, and just basically collapsed in front of me. I was eight months pregnant and passed away right in front of me at her garage floor. So very traumatic. And then Izzy came five days later. So that was when I was 32 and my dad passed when I was 40. He passed away of esophageal cancer, and I was able to care for him and stayed with him his last two and a half months of his life. I've lived close to my parents, probably 10 minutes away my whole life. Fast forward to later on, if we go back to my 30s, my dad was still alive when I did start to search. And initially in my 30s, I searched because I wanted to know medical information because I had a daughter. And becoming more aware as a nurse practitioner how important family history is, and continues to become very important. And unfortunately, how our guidelines are shaped for screening and recommendations. A lot leans on family history, which is where a lot of my advocacy work now with adoption competent healthcare is coming in, you know, kind of blending my experiences, what I do for a living, and the unfortunate circumstances of how many times, no matter what the circumstances are, folks not knowing their family history, with adoptees being, of course, a large group of those folks. So I initially contacted Catholic Social Services and was able to get non-identifying information, more heritage type information. And then about three weeks later, got a message on my phone while I was in clinic, went and checked my phone. I was on my lunch, sitting in my office, and had a message from a social worker that said, We have the information on your birth mother's family. So my heart's racing. My dad's mom and dad grew up in, and the address was down the street from them.

SPEAKER_03 8:09

Wow.

The Birth Family Discovery Begins

The Neighbor Who Recognized Her Instantly

SPEAKER_02 8:10

So found that out, and then I asked about my birth mother, and the social worker casually said, Oh, she passed away when she was 26. And I felt my world fall out from underneath me because I had spent so many years wondering about her. And a lot of adoptees will say this that on your birthday, it you can have a lot of mixed feelings. For me, on my birthday, it always represented this must be the one day that she thinks of me. This must be the one day that she remembers. And the one day that she knows that I'm out there. And to find out that she passed away when I was, she was 19 when she had me. And to find out that she passed away six, seven years later, I was only six or seven, was just devastating. And I was sobbing so hard. Somebody who had been in near my office was like, Are you okay? And I said, Yeah, I'm okay. And the social worker just to this day, that impacted me and how I deliver difficult news. One of my roles as a nurse practitioner is I tell women their pathology results from their breast biopsies. And so I can't tell you how many women I've cared for that I've had to tell the news you have breast cancer. And I have never forgot how important it is to tell that kind of news in a very informed way. It probably led to me, I became certified as a trauma-informed care practitioner this past year because of my work now, more recently in the last few years. Needless to say, never forgot how I was delivered that news. That very night, I came home, told my husband, my daughter was probably six at the time, and we piled in the car that night and went to that address. I walked up to the door, knocked on the door, and a younger gentleman, probably in his 30s that wouldn't have matched any of this information, answered the door and I said, I'm looking for Sally Thomas. She's my grandmother. And he said, The Thomases don't live here anymore, but the next door neighbor has been here for years and she can probably help you. So I went back to the car, told my husband and my daughter what I was doing. I knocked on the next door neighbor's door. And this is the part you can't make up. So I knocked on the door and a woman answered. I recognized her, she recognized me. I looked at her and I said, Denise, and she said, Lisa. She said, How can I help you? Denise was a nurse that I worked with in the ICU at the local hospital, Window Hospital, as a brand new nurse. She precepted me and trained me. Thomas was my grandmother. And she said to me, She said, You're Judy's daughter. And I said, Yes, I am. And she said, Oh my goodness, come in, come in. So I waved my husband and my daughter in. And there we were in Denise's living room with all of this unfolding. And she said to me, The first person I'm going to call is your aunt Janice, who was Judy's sister. Janice and Jeannie are twins, and they were 13 at the time I was born. So they remembered, and she decided to call Janice, who now lives up in the upper peninsula, and left her a message. And the message said, I have news. And I was like, Yes, you do. So she went on to tell me that Judy used to come and talk to her about the situation and what to do. And talk to her about terminating her pregnancy. Wasn't sure whether or not, and at that point wasn't legal. This was 1968. And I was your typical, as I've come to learn, baby scoop baby, where Judy was actually sent away to a home for unwed mothers. As far as the rape narrative, Denise didn't really know too much about that. I found out more from my birth aunts about that story. But at the time, this was just unbelievable information. And at one point, she looked at me and she said, Oh my goodness, your grandfather was a patient while you worked in the ICU.

SPEAKER_01 12:33

Oh, wow.

Meeting Her Birth Aunts and Hearing the Truth

SPEAKER_02 12:34

And so she said, I am quite certain you cared for him. So just the thought that I at some point walked in and said, Hi, Mr. Thomas, I'm your nurse. My name is Lisa, and laid my stethoscope on him is just pretty amazing. You know, and it turns out this was a Catholic Polish family down the street from my adoptive father's Hungarian. My mother was German. I'm not exactly sure what else she was, but again, very similar demographic, literally down the street from each other. And that was the late 60s. So you didn't get pregnant and have a baby. So Judy was sent to a home for unwed mothers until she had me. Fast forward, I did eventually, not too long after that, have a conversation on the phone with my aunt Janice, which was just amazing. She's the most beautiful person, salt of the earth. And then my aunt Jeannie, who they're twins, also amazing and very different. My Aunt Janice is she calls herself a dirt lady. She's a master gardener, has a degree from Michigan State in agriculture, worked with these huge greenhouses, and then was a gardener, master gardener for folks. Just amazing. And she's been up in the UP for several years. And then my aunt Jeannie is a nurse. And she's lived different parts of the country now, lives up in the UP as well. They're very dynamic personalities, very, very different. They're fraternal twins, so they don't look alike. I probably favor my Aunt Jeannie and my grandma Sally more. But neat little things about them, my grandmother used to read tea leaves for a living. And I have always been a little bit on the witchy side. I love cards, I love getting readings, I love candles, I love oils. I was raised Catholic. I still very much identify with Catholicism as a religion. My spirituality is much more broad than that and kind of encompasses so much more awareness of the divine and the goddess. And but again, very much love my Catholicism roots. I appreciate the ritual of a mass to find out that my Catholic grandmother read tea leaves for a living and used to read palms. It just kind of fascinating to me. And I always call my aunt Janice because she is a master gardener and a house full of plants that are just meticulously cared for. And they've always been her babies. She didn't have children. I always tell her she's a green witch and she just doesn't know it. My aunt is very much into Native American culture and spirit. Interesting to me that my Aunt Jeannie's a nurse as well.

SPEAKER_01 15:18

Yeah.

Nature and Nurture: Seeing Herself in Both Families

SPEAKER_02 15:18

And they are in my life, and I am so grateful to them. My uncle JT, their brother, I met him also along the way. He has passed away a couple of years ago, but he was a professional race car driver. He raced Porsche's. He went at 18, went to Hollywood, went to LA, and worked, lived in garages and worked in garages to learn cars. He's totally self-made. Became good friends with the owner of the LA Times, who sponsored him. And the two of them became best friends. And Porsche's and my uncle taught Steve McQueen how to drive for the movie Le Mon. Wow. And just knew all of old Hollywood. Very dynamic, man. Very interesting, very meticulously organized and task-oriented. So then when I met him, we really bonded because the two of us really could relate to that whole tasks and you know, get your chores done kind of thing. And very goal-oriented. He's very driven, very self-made. And when I look at my life and how driven I've been to instill, you know, continue to do things and enhance my professional career, do everything I can to be the best nurse practitioner I can be for my patients. He and I really identify, but he passed away, but I was able to go and visit him. Interestingly, my mother passed away from leukemia. My uncle passed away from myelodysplastic syndrome, which is transforms to leukemia. So both blood disorders. And I think I have another aunt in that side of the family with the history of leukemia. So something good for me to know. So I do know more about my family history. So that's the kind of first half of my story with discoveries until my 50s with the next discovery that happened.

SPEAKER_00 17:08

One of those themes of this podcast is nature and nurture.

SPEAKER_02 17:16

It's about exactly.

SPEAKER_00 17:18

Because we definitely, I mean, through Kendall, you know, and finding his birth family, we definitely see obviously you know, physicality resemblances and things like that, but certainly like mannerisms and things like that. Like, you know, his uh I don't think they would disagree, his siblings would on his dad's side would say you know, they've all got pretty short temper. This is true. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:38

And some of us manage them better than others.

SPEAKER_00 17:41

But then, you know, going back to you know, Kendall's adoption story, I mean, it's just sounds very like similar to yours in that he's always known it's never been like a you know a negative or anything like that. It's always been treated as a positive. And I mean, we talk about his adoptive parents, I mean, several times a week, if not every day, you know, which is great because I never got to meet them. But I feel like I kind of know them through the stories, and we've got a couple like audio recordings and we've got photos and things like that. So that's been great because one of the things that always bothered me from the very beginning of our relationship, and we've been together for 20 plus years, is that Kennel didn't have that close family because he lost his parents so young. And I've always been close with my family, got a big family on both sides, and of course they immediately embraced him. Mom considers him one of hers. But something was always nagging at me, and I think it was the journalist and being like, There's gotta be information out there, you know. So and you know, fortunately we were able to find that and continue on with his part of the story. Going back to the nature and nurture thing is that I'm guessing your adoptive parents weren't in the medical field.

SPEAKER_02 18:50

No.

SPEAKER_00 18:51

So certainly there were things that you picked up from them that, you know, kind of carried with you through your whole life. Can you talk a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_02 18:59

Yeah. So I think the earliest I remember thinking about being a nurse was I was 10 and I don't know where it came from. I actually started off thinking I was gonna be a physician. And it was that was pretty short-lived because I decided I wanted to take care of people, not disease. And that led to wanting to become a nurse. But I watched my adoptive father always care for his family. His dad had passed away before, so I never met my grandfather. He passed away before I was around. And I was, I remember my grandmother, but she passed away, I think, when I was 10 or 11. But I remember him always being the one that took care of her, took groceries, checked on her. She lived in a senior apartment not too far from us. And then he had a brother who passed away of liver cancer. And my dad was always a caregiver, always making sure everyone was all set. And then I remember when I was. In high school, my dad had a stroke, and he ended up having no deficits, but it was it was just this crazy thing that happened. And I remember how my mom cared for him and how I felt this pull and this need to caregive. So despite the fact that they weren't personally in the medical field, they were caregivers. And I but think the way they cared for me impacted parts of me, you know, wanting to be a caregiver. My mom also cared for my grandmother. And when I say that, I don't even mean just like physically cared for, but it's that checking in, having over for dinner, going and doing things together, making sure my grandmother came over every Sunday for dinner. You know, my mom would, you know, the whole pot roast thing. You know, it was, and I remember when my my mom had lost her leg already. And it, I came home, I was on a date actually, with my husband at and, you know, boyfriend at the time. And I came home and I was in my 20s, and my mom said, I haven't heard from your grandmother all day. And I'm worried. And so that was like really unusual. And it was about 11:30 at night, and she said, I need you with to go with your father to check on her. And she couldn't go because it meant her putting her prosthesis on and just the whole thing. So my dad and I went, and I can remember talking all the way there, real nonchalant with my dad, pulling up and had a key and walking in and calling her name the whole time we were walking through the house so we didn't scare her. And I was the first one to get to the bedroom, and there she was laying on her side, and she'd passed away in her sleep.

SPEAKER_03 21:43

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 21:44

And the first thing I could think of was, how do I tell my mom? And that was before cell phones. So that was before this instant constant connection. We immediately called the police, you know, and because they had to come to the house, and then I think we even had called a funeral home because somebody had to come. And all this time didn't call my mom. And so what she must have been wondering, because I neither me nor my dad could think of telling her this over the phone. So fast forward to getting back home and walking in the door, and my mom greeting us at the door in her wheelchair and her saying she's gone, isn't she? So just lots of things that never leave you and definitely make a huge impression on you as far as you know being a caregiver.

SPEAKER_00 22:34

Yeah. Nurturing. Well, I know we're going to be telling your story a little bit out of order, but since we're on the theme of caregivers right now, and thanks for making us cry on a Saturday morning.

SPEAKER_03 22:45

Same. Same.

SPEAKER_00 22:48

Yeah, we love nurses so much, and we've had nurses in our lives, and I I just think so fondly of them because of the instinctual caregiving. So, what was the decision like for you to become sort of a caregiver for the Adopte community?

SPEAKER_02 23:06

I think that really happened with this second discovery and trauma that I went through for about five or six years that I'm I can I can honestly say I am on the other side of it and probably have been most of a year. But I think that the experience that I went through over the past five years really took me down a very different road of the adoptee journey. And when I mentioned earlier the narrative, she loved you so much she gave you up. It's such a loaded narrative. And now I really understand that. Why do we equate what feels like abandonment with love? And how much does that impact us? And now looking back, which is really was the impetus for writing the book, looking back and being able to see throughout my entire life the striving to be perfect, the feeling like I had to achieve, I had to be perfect. Because what if they, what if I'm not good enough? What if I'm not what they wanted? What if they want to give me up? It never leaves you, but you also, I don't know that I saw it until later, and especially with this latest trauma and experience that I've been through, because it's the opposite of what I experienced with my aunts. So I kind of lived in this fairy tale bubble of my parents were amazing and I did feel loved. And any feelings that I have about adoption and the grief is to no fault of theirs. I think there is a lot of movement in therapists being adoption competent, and a lot of movement in adoptive parents being more adoption competent and having a lot more awareness of how loaded a lot of things can be for adoptees. Every adoptee story is different, but I think that grief can exist with gratitude in the same. And I think I grew up with so much heavy, heavy, heavy gratitude. There was no room for grief. When I lost my mom, I had a new baby, and I just immediately flipped into I've got to be a mom now. I can't grieve. And my mom, my adopted mom, was my best friend. We were incredibly close. And she would always tell me, you know, you're perfect, you're all your dad and I could ever want. And she meant no pressure on that. But again, coming from an adoptee lens, you don't even realize until later how much that impacted how you live your life. And since then, still unpacking that I feel like I have to work for relationships. I have to be enough because if I'm not a good enough nurse, if I'm not a good enough friend, if I'm not a good enough mother, if I'm not a good enough wife, will I still be wanted? And it's no one's fault, it's just part of the dynamic.

SPEAKER_01 26:16

I can completely relate to your feelings. Friends that knew me when I was a child and a teenager say that I was always trying to be an overachiever. I was always needed. It sounds stuck up to say better than I needed to be one of the best, if not the best, right? Exactly. And I agree with you completely. My parents were fantastic. And my mother used to say that my dad thought I hung the moon. That was her phrase about the way he felt about having me. It's funny when I and I've talked about this, I think, sometimes on the podcast. My adopted parents were born in 1933 and 1934. So, you know, Prussian era in my dad, he instilled this idea within me that you always have to work. My dad was always he put pressure on himself, be you know, and they both did to be great parents, and they wanted to give me things that they never had.

SPEAKER_03 27:26

Right.

DNA Surprise: Discovering Her Birth Father

SPEAKER_01 27:26

And I admire that so much, but I wonder how much of that I internalized, you know, like that you have to be great, and you put a lot of pressure on yourself when you hear those stories. And I know my parents were really proud of me, and that was my goal, you know, even after they were dead, you know what I mean? Like I wanted to honor what they gave me, you know. Yeah, because they made me who I am, honestly. And it's funny having now learned, you know, I've met my birth father, and he and I are very different people. So it makes you think in retrospect, wow, if I had been raised with him, what would my personality be like?

SPEAKER_02 28:10

Boy, can I relate to that?

SPEAKER_01 28:12

I mean, I love him and I love the children he produced, you know, other than me, but at the same time, you know, I I see myself so much in my adoptive parents.

SPEAKER_02 28:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:26

I see myself in them and I see myself in my aunts. It's probably a good time to segue to the last few years. So my daughter bought all three of us ancestor DNA kits for Christmas, and really thinking this would be really cool to find out heritage, especially because at this point I didn't know anything about my birth father. And there were rumors and comments about who it could have been. There was, you know, from my aunts, they really, especially my one aunt, really did not want to buy the narrative that Judy was raped. My other aunt felt that she probably was. So, and if it was, and this by no means minimizes rape or no rape, that it was perhaps a date type rape situation, but just kind of more of the circumstances that possibly could have happened. So, because of that, my daughter bought it will be just to get more information, she bought these DNA kits. I have a really bad chronic dry mouth, and I had no interest in spitting in this tube. My daughter and my husband did, and they did it. And about three weeks later, my daughter and I are it's like 11:30 at night. My husband gone to bed, and she's on her phone and she's already got the app downloaded. She's ready. And she says, Oh, our DNA results are in, my DNA results are in hers. And I go, Oh, really? What are we? I mean, you know, what what do we what do we turn out to be? So she's looking at this, oh, we're this, we're this, and then all of a sudden she says, Who's this guy? And she pulls it up and it's high, high match, and she looks up the amount of the match, and it says, Probable uncle or grandfather. And we're sitting there, and all I can think of is, well, I already know Janice and Jeannie and JT, and I already know who my grandparents were just a few minutes, so perplexed. And finally it hit both of us at the same time. And I said, Oh my God, it's my birth father. And so this is the first hint of knowing anything, and there's a picture. So ran upstairs, woke up my husband. I said, Oh my God, I think I found my birth father. So the next day, you know, really looking this over, I did a background check that I actually paid for, like, not just one of the cheesy ones. The background check came back really clean. He had a pilot's license. He lived like four states away. He was married, and lo and behold, I had a brother.

SPEAKER_03 30:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 30:51

So I didn't know what to do with this information. And so I finally spit in a tube for further verification, and it came back paternal match, super high. And I thought, you know what? I don't want to disrupt someone's life. He's married. Although I would love to know my brother, maybe I'll reach out to him at some point, but I don't know what to do with this information. So about nine months went by. It was December of 2019. And I'll never forget, sitting in my family room, snow was falling. My husband and I were going away out of town that night for like a date night thing. And I thought, I better go get ready. I looked down at my phone and my stomach dropped. Like the thought that he had actually seen it and reached out was just, I mean, it was if it would have been a movie, it would have just been like this whole no. I immediately clicked on the message and it said, It's it appears that we are have a close relationship on Ancestor DNA. Here is my, I would like to talk to you. Here is my email and my phone number. Please let me know when we can talk. So I messaged him back right away. Yes, we are related. It appears you are my birth father. I'm adopted. And then I didn't hear, but then I went ahead and emailed him. And immediately the emails for the next 24 hours were very intense.

SPEAKER_00 32:13

Did you skip your date night?

SPEAKER_02 32:15

No, but that whole, you know, I can remember we were we were in a store walking around, and and Bruce was like, What did he say now? What did he say now? And one of the emails said, Perhaps we'll be friends, and my husband got all choked up. But looking back, the emails were so intense, and knowing now what I didn't know then, he was a master storyteller, and the stories began.

SPEAKER_01 32:44

Lisa, thank you for sharing all of that with us. Your story hits so many layers, not just adoption reunion, but the role of caregiving in shaping who we become. And hearing it today when nurses are literally fighting just to be recognized as professionals, it hits extra hard.

SPEAKER_00 33:01

Yes, nurses definitely deserve better. We're talking about the people who sit with families on the hardest days of their lives. The idea that we would make it harder for anyone to join that profession is just unbelievable and really disgusting.

SPEAKER_01 33:14

And Lisa is such a clear example of why nurses matter. She brings compassion to everything she does, even when she's carrying her own grief, her own questions, her own trauma. Nurses hold so much for the rest of us.

SPEAKER_00 33:29

And this first half of her story reminds us how much adoptees carry too. Gratitude and grief can live in the same heart, and Lisa's story makes that so clear.

SPEAKER_01 33:39

Trust us, it's powerful. A second DNA discovery later in life changes everything she thought she understood about adoption, identity, and safety. You don't want to miss it.

SPEAKER_00 33:49

And if Lisa's story brings up your own, we'd love to hear from you. What Family Twist matters too. Your story deserves to be heard.

SPEAKER_01 33:57

Thank you all for listening, for supporting the show, and for supporting the nurses in your lives. We'll be back with part two next week.

SPEAKER_00 34:04

And remember, Family Secrets are the ultimate pop twist. The Family Twist podcast is presented by Sabwash Fair Marketing Communications and produced by Hal Batawi Akavich LLC.