From Only Child to One of Twelve

What happens when you go from being an only child… to one of twelve overnight?

In this episode of Family Twist, and Kendall sits down with Elizabeth Barbour, an adoptee, adoptive mom, and reunion expert who has spent more than two decades living the reality so many are just beginning to face.

Elizabeth shares her story of searching in a pre-DNA era, making that life-changing phone call, and hearing the words many adoptees dream of: “I’ve hoped and prayed for this day.”

But this conversation goes far beyond the moment of discovery.

Together, they explore what happens after reunion. The emotional complexity. The shifting identities. The joy that exists right alongside grief. And what it really means to build relationships with people who are suddenly family.

Kendall opens up about his own ongoing experience with rejection from his birth mother, leading to one of the most honest and emotional conversations we’ve had on the show.

Elizabeth brings a rare perspective. She has lived reunion as an adoptee and as a parent. Through her work as a coach and practitioner, she helps others navigate this exact terrain with intention, care, and grounding.

This episode is about more than finding family.

It is about what comes next.

WHAT YOU’LL HEAR IN THIS EPISODE

•  The moment Elizabeth found her birth mother and how it changed everything 
•  What it was like discovering 11 siblings after growing up as an only child 
•  The emotional reality of reunion after the initial excitement fades 
•  How Kendall continues to process rejection from his birth mother 
•  Why “family is addition” is more than just a comforting phrase 
•  What adoptees, NPEs, and donor-conceived people need most in reunion 
•  How to navigate identity, belonging, and grief all at the same time 

WHY THIS EPISODE MATTERS

With more people discovering DNA surprises every day, reunion is no longer rare. But understanding how to navigate it still is.

If you are:

•  An adoptee 
•  An NPE (Not Parent Expected) 
•  Donor-conceived 
•  Or someone supporting a loved one through discovery 

This conversation will help you feel less alone and more prepared for what comes next.

Elizabeth Barbour, M.Ed. is an author, speaker, life coach, and shamanic practitioner who helps people navigate life’s most complex transitions with grounding and intention.

An adoptee reunited with her birth family for more than 26 years, Elizabeth is also an adoptive mother whose family is in reunion with their daughter’s birth family. Her lived experience, combined with her professional work, gives her a rare and deeply informed perspective on the emotional realities of adoption reunion.

Elizabeth supports individuals moving through grief, identity shifts, and relationship-building after discovery, using self-care, storytelling, and ritual as tools for healing.

She is the author of Smart Self-Care for Busy Women and Sacred Celebrations: Designing Rituals to Navigate Life’s Milestone Transitions, and is currently writing a book focused on adoption reunion.

She lives in Asheville, North Carolina with her daughter and two cats.

Transcript

From Only Child to 12 Siblings, Elizabeth Barbour’s Adoption Reunion Story

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, it's Corey. And before we jump in, I need to call out something right away. Kendall was so eager to get into this conversation that he completely skipped introducing our guest, just went straight in. And if you know him, that makes a little sense. So I'm gonna fix that. Today we're talking with Elizabeth, whose story goes from being an only child to discovering twelve siblings. Yes, twelve. And once you hear how that unfolds, the phone call, the silence, the moment everything changes, you will understand exactly why Kendall couldn't wait to get into it. This is one of those conversations where you think you're prepared and then something hits a little too close to home. We talk to a lot of people on this show. There's a lot of incredible stories. But every once in a while, if there's one that catches you off guard, this is one of those. Okay, let's get into it. Welcome, Elizabeth.

SPEAKER_02 0:46

The interesting part to me about your story is that you moved to be with your family. When I reunited with my birth family, I found 11 half-brothers and sisters. And so eight in New York State, and then three in Florida at the time because they were all really young. And then I actually I was just listening to your first two podcast episodes to kind of hear more about your backstory. And I was like, oh my God, they moved. Like that never even dawned on me to move, which is amazing.

Kendall 1:15

Yeah, it's funny that you say that because we had been in San Francisco for nine years. My joke is that I helped Corey escape St. Louis because Corey had born and raised there and loved it. And I lived there for 10 years. And but he and I moved out to San Francisco together in 2008. We would still be there if I hadn't made this discovery. But I don't know that you just instantly click sometimes with people. And when I came to meet my dad and two of his other three kids, it was just instantaneous. I knew that we would stay connected, but I just was looking at my one niece and three nephews were much younger. This is 2017, and I was like, I've already missed a lot of time with them. I want to be around them. You know what I mean? Because we instantly started going to every holiday party that my family put on. In fact, my dad's ex-wife, who is the mother of my local half-brother and half-sister, we go to her family's Christmas party every year. And I'm not related to those people, but they treat me just like I'm one of their cousins. I missed that. Adoptive parents, I lost them when I was 10 and 16. So, you know, I didn't feel alone per se, but you know, it had been 30 years since I lost them. I was ready for connecting with more family. And it isn't all lollipops and unicorns. I mean, there are moments where you're like, oh, okay, I guess I have to deal with this now. Because I was very delusional about how great, you know what I mean? I think because I didn't really have any siblings. I grew up with a stepsister that I stayed really in good contact with as an adult. But, you know, it's all good. It's family, right?

The Emotional Complexity of Reunion, “It’s Not All Lollipops and Unicorns”

SPEAKER_02 3:02

It's family's complicated no matter how you slice it.

Kendall 3:06

Right. I was very delusional about things, but that's I was really coming into it like we're gonna make this happen and this is gonna be great. And I'm so glad they found me, and blah, blah, blah. We like not knowing a lot of about people's stories before we start speaking because I feel like it's more organic.

SPEAKER_02 3:25

Have you been to a roots conference before? You just weren't at this one?

Kendall 3:29

The first time that we really even knew about it was the one that Corey was able to go to two years ago. Two years ago, I had work things going on and I couldn't really make it happen. And this year I was supposed to be there, but we have a very he's getting better, but we had a very sick dog. Our little 10-year-old Dachshund had two major surgeries in the span of like eight days.

SPEAKER_03 3:54

Oh, that's cool.

Kendall 3:55

He's doing really well, but he's probably gonna be permanently disabled because you had to stay. Yeah, I couldn't put that on any of our friendly dog sitters to to be that intense with him. And I felt like he needed me.

SPEAKER_02 4:08

In fact, I missed one of my brothers, one of my half-brothers' weddings, because our dog had had a vestibular event that kind of looks like a stroke.

SPEAKER_03 4:17

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 4:18

And I had to call him and I was like, John, I loved you and you might want to be there, but we we cannot leave this dog.

Kendall 4:24

No, I hear you.

DNA Surprise Community and Untangling Our Roots Conference Insights

SPEAKER_02 4:25

What I was gonna say about the roots conference is just the power of the storytelling, you know, that every time you would sit at breakfast or lunch or dinner or be in a session and you'd hear somebody's story for the first time, and it was like, I thought I'd heard it all. And then, like, wait, there's what? And and what yeah, so yeah, it's fun.

Kendall 4:47

I'm not like overly emotional in life, but these stories touch me in a way that never expected. I needed it. I don't think I understood what range of emotion I was gonna have after having my own discovery. Spoiler alert for anybody who doesn't usually listen, but I've never spoken to my birth mother. She doesn't want to be in communion, and I still struggle with that. I won't say every day, but it's weird because I never felt rejected ever by my adopted family. And then to find my mother when I was 47 years old and have her not want to connect with me was surreal. I never in a thousand years thought that that would be the way that this would happen. It really was shocking for me and still is at some level, just because that's not who I am. If I found my baby that I was forced to give up when I was 15, the moment I found that baby, I I would just have to be, you know, on the phone that day. That's just who I am. I wish it I hope someday she and I can have a moment. I don't need anything from her, except I've never spoken to her, and I find that bizarre.

SPEAKER_02 6:02

Yeah, I can only imagine. So are your six half siblings then all from your birth dad's side, or are some of them birth mom too?

Kendall 6:11

Three from my dad and three from my mom.

SPEAKER_02 6:13

Three and three. Okay. So they're all in connection with your mother.

Kendall 6:18

My mother's other son and the two daughters are they're constantly in contact. And so I know that my mom has heard things, you know, about me, and I'm really close with the sister, because I'm the oldest on both sides, and the sister right under me in age, my mother's second born, she and I are really close. We talk all the time. She's a travel nurse. She's based in Arkansas, but she's actually been in Connecticut for a year, and so it's been great because we've been able to see her. And and my baby sister is very tactful, but I get it. She and my other my brother physically live like really near our mom. And I think it's the, oh, they're betraying her if they have much to do with me, you know. So I can't tell them to be adults. If you want to have a relationship with me, that's up to you, not her, you know. But I I can't understand, you know, that disconnect. But that's on them. I've done everything I can do. You know.

SPEAKER_02 7:28

The one thing I've learned in almost 27 years in reunion is that it changes over time. But people's life circumstances change and their experiences and their perspectives. So you never know. And as long as you just keep your door open, who knows what happened.

Kendall 7:44

I'm more rude than I think I would ever like be if I actually got to speak to her. You know what I mean? It's that built-up frustration and not understanding. Like she knows that I know that she was forced to give me up. So what's the deal? I was born in 1970. There was shame. It wasn't cool. I understand the stories that she was made to go to one of these unwed mother homes. So I don't even know that many people even knew that she was pregnant. You know what I mean? It was frowned upon very heavily, and I get it, but it's like it's also 2026. You know what I mean? Right. But anywho, I I should be asking questions about you. Did you know you were adopted?

SPEAKER_02 8:27

Yes, I did. I grew up knowing. I was raised as an only child in Connecticut, like you, born in 1970. Mom and dad always told me, I don't ever remember a point in time of being told. What was interesting for me is that my adoptive mom was raised in an orphanage. So she was one of eight kids. And then after their mother died when she was a little girl, the dad took them all and kind of put them in the orphanage and said, good riddance. So she had stayed connected with her siblings as much as she could over the years as everybody got adopted out to different homes. So she really understood my need to search for my birth family. So she was real supportive. So I did not search for my birth family until after my dad had died. And I was 24 when my adoptive dad died. And then I married my high school sweetheart when I was 25 and woke up about six months later and was like, I have to search.

Searching Before DNA Testing, Private Investigators, Closed Adoption Challenges

Kendall 9:29

So well, that's amazing. I'm so glad, A, that your mother was supportive. I had the same experience. Both of my adoptive parents were raised by families, but they knew A, how inquisitive I was, and B, that they always were going to support that. The moment I could start searching, I did. It's just tough. My mine was a private adoption, so it was sealed. And I petitioned the court multiple times. And the funny thing is, the guy that was my parents' attorney while I through my adoption, he had since gone on to be a prominent judge in our county. And he was a family friend. He came to our parties and all that stuff. And after my parents had both died, I remember being 17, 16, 17, went to his office one day and I was like, You're such a great family friend. Can't you help me out a little bit? You know, and he's like, Kendall, no, I can't, no. I loved the ape, I cannot do that. I will be disbarred. So I get it, but I feel like the answers were always so close to me. Which was frustrating because I had some minor health things in my 20s, and I just really wanted to know some history. And that's always a fear, I think, for adoptees. But it was more than that. It was my parents are both gone. I'm an only kid. I've got to have people out there. Like they find me under a rock. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 11:00

That was what was interesting about listening to your story, is that you really had a fixation on there might be siblings out there. And I remember when I was searching in the late 90s, of course, before the internet, before DNA testing, all of that, I was solely focused on finding my mother. And so when I found her, and that would have been 1999, and I actually ended up hiring a private investigator. Actually, this is kind of a a quick, fun story, but I I just shared it actually at the Untangling Our Roots conference when I was doing my presentation. So if you remember back in the late 90s, the television show ER.

Kendall 11:43

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:44

I think everybody watched ER back in the day.

Kendall 11:46

Loved it.

SPEAKER_02 11:46

And they had a storyline about Carrie Weaver, the doctor, and she was an adoptee. And there was a woman who had come into the hospital and she thought that it was her birth mother. And she said, I'll never forget it. She said, I always thought that if I had if I met my birth mother, I would have time to get to know her. And now it appears that she's dying. And that it turned out that that woman was not her birth mother in the storyline. But it was that episode that made me pick up the phone and call this private investigator who I had had her name for almost a year, who had helped a friend of mine because we were born in the same tiny little hospital in Elmira, New York, which is kind of, you know, south southern New York. At any rate, and when I called the PI, she called me back within 48 hours and she said I found him up. Wow. I had to send her my money. I did, and it was the best money I've ever spent. So I got my birth mother's name and her phone number and her address. And I came home from work that day and was talking to my then husband, which was my high school sweetheart. He had known my whole story and had known my family and everything. Sure. And he said, Well, what are you gonna do, Elizabeth? And I said, Oh, you know, I'll just, I don't know, maybe I'll write her a letter this weekend or something. And he said, Well, why don't you just call her right now? And I was like, you know what? That's a good idea. And so I did. I I'll never forget it. I got up out of my chair. We were eating lunch, and I went, I went and used the restroom, I brushed my teeth, I combed my hair, I grabbed a box of Kleenex, I grabbed a little journal, like a pad and paper, and sat down in the chair and I said, Okay, let's do it. And I picked up the phone and I dialed and I hung it back up. I was like, I can't do this. And he's like, You've got this. I called again and I just said, Hi, I'm looking for Kathleen Walker. And she said, Oh, it's me. How can I help you? And what's interesting is at the time, my married name was Becker. I had taken my first husband's last name, which is a good German name. And so I said, You know, my name is Elizabeth Becker, and I'm doing research on my family history, and I'm wondering if you can help me. And she said, Oh, sure, yeah, what do you need? What I didn't know is that she was German and had a whole had all these relatives who were Becker. So she just thought I was some peasant.

SPEAKER_03 14:17

Yeah.

The Life-Changing Phone Call, Finding Birth Mother and Siblings After Adoption

SPEAKER_02 14:18

So then I went on and I said, This is when I was born, and this is the hospital, and I think you're my mother. And she didn't say a word for probably a minute. And I finally, I was the one who had to speak again. And I said, Did you give birth to a baby girl? And she said, I've hoped and prayed that this day would go. Wow. I still get choked up 27 years later. One of the best days of my life, I was listening to your story about the first time you spoke with your brother. And it's like that was how I felt with my mother. It was like, best day of my life, life-changing in every way. So we talked for just about 20 minutes, that first phone call. And she said, Well, I have to get back to work. I said, Well, me too. She said, Well, let's talk tonight. So we talked on the phone that night for about two hours. Wow. And she put my sister, one of my sisters, on the phone, and she said, Dina, listen to her. She sounds just like me, which I do. I sound like her, I look like her. And so during that time, we got to know each other a little bit. And I said, Are you married? And does your husband know about me? She said, Yes. And I was like, Okay, good, because I want to make sure she had support. I'll tell them about you tonight. So she told them like right away. Right. Um, and then I met her, drove from, I was living in North Carolina at the time, drove to Florida. Interestingly, she only lived an hour away from my adoptive mom. Um, all those years I had been going to Florida to see my mom, who had retired there after my father passed away many years prior. And here, my birth mom and my siblings were just an hour down the road. So we went down and I met her in person two weeks later and met her and her husband and then my three siblings. And then she showed me her high school yearbook and she said, Well, that's your birth dad. And I said, Well, have you talked to him? And she said, Nope, not since you know, 29 years ago when I told him about you. And I said, Do you know how to get in touch with him? And she said, as a matter of fact, I do. He works for my cousin. So she said, Well, you just let me know. And so the next day I said, I want you to call him. And she was like, But you just met me. And I said, if we're gonna do this, like, let's do it. She called him, and it took him about two or three weeks to call me. And then eventually he called and we had a great talk. And he said, I don't know what you want. And I said, I don't either. Let's just take it one day at a time. And I said, Are you married? Does your partner know about me? Yes. Great. I said, Do you have any children? Only eight.

Kendall 16:43

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 16:44

I went from being an only child to the oldest of 12 in less than two months.

Kendall 16:48

That's crazy. And did you get to meet all of them?

SPEAKER_02 16:53

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. We've been in reunion for 27 years. I've been to as many high school graduations, college graduations, master's degree graduations, weddings, funerals. I was doing the math the other day. I think I have 16 or 17 nieces and nephews, and we've got two more on the way. Wow. We've done occasional holidays, occasional trips. Yeah, it's just been it's been a wild ride.

Kendall 17:18

So do you have children yourself?

SPEAKER_02 17:20

I'm actually an adoptive mom to a daughter who is 15. And we are actually, thanks to DNA testing, in reunion with her birth dad and his family.

SPEAKER_03 17:33

Oh, great.

SPEAKER_02 17:34

It was originally an open adoption, and then her birth mom closed it when Riley was about two years old. We held out hope that someday she will come back to us. The door is always open. But then we did DNA testing one Christmas and got the results back and saw a name. And we're like, wait a minute, who's that? That's not who we thought it was. We had not met the other person who we thought was her biological father. So yeah, so we just let it sit in Ancestry. And a couple months later, they reached out and said, Can you help us understand the relationship? And we said, Well, we think that this is Riley's dad. So he lives in Atlanta. We've had a great relationship. He and his wife just had a little boy about two years ago. So Ryan has a half-brother. And we try and see them a couple of times a year as much as we can. Once she turned 13, I said, you know what, you can have his number now. But before, from ages nine to thirteen, we supervised all of the communication. But once she turned 13, we said, You guys can just kind of work on your own. So we still, her dad and I still talk with him, but we really let Riley and her broke dad develop their connection.

Kendall 18:47

And I think for her, so important to know that you've you had these revelations in your own life and that it was positive, right? And so why not go for it?

SPEAKER_02 18:59

Part of the healing journey for me was learning. I worked with a family constellations facilitator in Asheville. It would have been back probably 20 years ago. And he said to me during a session, he said, Elizabeth, you don't have two parents, you have four parents. And the light just went on. Like the truth has been spoken, and no one had ever said it to me that way. So now in raising our daughter, we just say, you know what, Kenny, you've got four parents. You know, you can have mommy and daddy who are raising you, and you have your birth mom and birth dad, and we're all part of your ancestry and we're all part of your lineage.

Kendall 19:41

I feel very confident because I knew I had their support. I feel as if if my adopted parents were alive, they would be so happy for me to have found both sides of the family. I do worry that my adopted mother would have been very forceful with my birth mother to say, Hey, this is your kid, be nice. You know what I mean? But I guess but at the same time, I I really do know that, know that I have their support. And yeah, I even when I was 15 and I was like talking to my dad, my adoptive dad, I was like, help me find people. This is 1985. There weren't many options, but we were doing crazy things like scouring phone books and calling people when I was 18. And I wonder if my birth mother's parents ever saw this, but I put out a half-page ad in the Little Rock newspaper saying my birth name was Scott White. I was born in Little Rock. I didn't know, of course, that my biological maternal grandparents still lived in Little Rock. So I always wondered if they saw, could have seen that ad saying, if you know me or if you know who I am. So I was doing as much as I could do. Every registry that was out there, whether it was paid or free, I was on. Ironically, my half-brother that I first connected with in 2017, he and I figured out that we both had submitted my details to a couple of the same registries. So it's so crazy that we didn't find each other in the late 80s. But these places were being run on a shoestring budget. They were nonprofits. I don't fault anyone. I just wish that connection could have been made back when both my brother and I were looking for each other. I didn't know who I was looking for, but he was looking for me.

SPEAKER_02 21:44

I think the explosion of social media and the explosion of DNA testing, now people are finding so quickly. I have to say, just personally, my search took three and a half years from the time I decided to search for my birth family and when I actually found them. And as hard as it was to wait, and it was long and frustrating, and I know your journey also took many, many years, but I'm also grateful because I had that time to get, I think, somewhere emotionally prepared. But, you know, just having come back from the Untangling Our Roots conference in Atlanta, which was so fantastic for any of your listeners who are listening, please join us in two years in Seattle. Untangling Our Roots is a fabulous organization. And I learned so much and met so many great people. But a lot of the stories that I heard were people literally finding relatives in hours. They get the information and then they they find search someone on Facebook and then they're sending an email and then they're on the phone. It's like, what would that do to your nervous system? Okay.

Kendall 22:47

Corey gave me my kit for my DNA kit, my birthday in July of 2017. I got the result on August 23rd via email.

SPEAKER_03 22:58

Yeah.

Kendall 22:58

And connected with my brother five minutes later. And then on Labor Day, so what, a week and a half later, it's when my brother called me. We were both off work because you know it was a holiday. And he calls me and he says, Well, you know, I've been hounding dad every day since we found you to give us details about how to find your birth mother. She had a very common name that would have been really difficult. And he gave me the details that helped me literally, like you said, while I'm on the phone with him, I'm on Facebook, and I in five minutes I found the right woman because my dad had remembered he knew my mother's family, and he remembered her younger sister who who had a very unique nickname that even the teachers called her. And Chris, my brother, had already done this, but he said, I just Googled your mom's name, your auntie's name, and he's like, And they came out find her online. And I did, I it was crazy. And that day I reached out to one of my half-sisters on my mother's side on Facebook and said, You might not even know I exist, and she didn't, because my mother had never been honest about the fact that she had given me up. It was traumatizing for my sister to say, because the way the story goes is that I text I instant messaged her on Facebook and said my name was I was born with the name Scott White. I was born on this day in Little Rock at this hospital, and I think I'm your older half brother. And she said that she was out shopping with our mother, and she said, K Kendall, I didn't even have to ask whether it was true because I just turned my phone around and was like, What is this about? And she almost had to catch our mother because she almost fainted. Because you know, yeah, so I accidentally brought some drama, but you know hi, here and so it was startling for them, of course, because they didn't know about me. My dad's side is the exact opposite. He had always wanted to find me the moment I met my stepmother. She hugged me and said, Oh, you were the baby we always wish we could have found. You know what I mean? Like it was just the complete opposite reaction.

SPEAKER_02 25:21

Right. Right.

Kendall 25:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:24

Everybody's story is so so different and so unique. You know, and we don't know what their life experiences were. Like I think about what the times were like, you know, especially in you know, 50s, 60s, early 70s, the pressure that they faced.

Kendall 25:42

The way that my family m got moved to Arkansas is interesting because my both of my grandfathers were stationed on Otis Air Force Base in Cape Cod. And when the my mother's pregnancy was discovered, the story goes that both my grandfathers were brought into the base commander's office and they said, Well, one of you can stay, but one of you will have to accept a transfer because we're not allowing this. Now, whatever, but that's the reason that my mother's father accepted a transfer from Cape Cod to Little Rock, Arkansas, while my mother was pregnant with me. And that's why born in Arkansas never knew I had a connection to New England because my father's family stayed out here. My father's family never left. My mother and father never saw each other from the time she was six months pregnant with me. He did know that I was born. He got that message somehow, but he didn't know how to find me. And he was out here on the East Coast and she was in the middle of Arkansas, so it wasn't simple like it is today.

SPEAKER_02 26:51

Well, I don't know, I don't know that simple is a word that we would ever use to describe Danny and Mark stories, you know.

Kendall 26:57

But I just mean even though distance, you just didn't have easy ways to connect with people. Yeah, I'm so happy that you got to go to the conference. You had the support from your adoptive mother for so long, and that you're supporting your own adoptive child in helping her get through it because you know that you go through a range of emotions and your daughter's gonna need that support.

SPEAKER_02 27:21

And we talk openly about it, and I think a lot like you, we think of family as addition, it's just expansion. It's both and it's all of the above. And you know, family is just it there doesn't have to be one particular definition of how we look at who people are. I remember when we were in reunion with Riley's birth dad in the early days, and I shared some stories on Facebook, uh, you know, with his permission, lots of friends were like, Oh, wow, you know, you guys are are so generous to support your daughter with that. And I was like, What? I was like, No, we're not. Like, this is the truth of who she is. This is her family. Like, we're thrilled that she knows her family, her first family, her family of origin. Because that's gonna help her, but she's a teenager now and eventually as a young adult, to hopefully be spared some of the, you know, really challenging identity stuff that those of us who grow up not knowing any family and just being able to talk openly about it too, I think is important.

Kendall 28:24

Yeah, because I remember it was really well accepted when I was adopted in the town. My town's as big as the room that I'm in. You couldn't keep a secret if you tried. But my parents were so happy to have gotten a baby and that it was so so commonly known. Thankfully, I just never had any of those weird moments that I've had, I've heard other people have telling me stories about how they were kind of teased at school about being adopted. I never had anything like that. And I feel so fortunate because that's hard. I didn't particularly look like either of my adoptive parents.

SPEAKER_02 29:02

Right, right, yes.

Kendall 29:04

Yeah. So I have such positive memories of all those things. So I'm happy to tell those stories because people who didn't have those happy stories need to hear that it can be that way, right? That it can be really positive when you're a child if you're told the truth.

SPEAKER_02 29:22

I think one of my big takeaways from the Untangling a race conference was one of the speakers had said, you know, truth and transparency trumps secrecy and lies. Absolutely. And when we know the truth, even if it's hard and even if it's difficult, we can face what we're dealing with. But it's that unknown, that liminal space of like, what? What's happening here? And I don't know. That's what helps us to feel untethered and unmoored and confused.

Kendall 29:53

And it's funny how you reflect on things, right, as you get older. And I remember I've never been averse to going to the doctor, but the thing that always made me cringe was every time they would ask about your family history. And I'd be like, if I tell you one more time that I adopted, going to scream. Like, right, I haven't found anybody, I still don't know. I wish I knew. I want to know. And then you start thinking about your ethnicity and like, where did I come from and all of those things? And and I love that side of like looking at ancestry.com. I mean, I just love seeing, oh, yeah, my my percentage of Scottish just got higher. Because when you come from a family, you know, that you weren't born into, it you don't have that same affinity, you know. It's like great, you're Native American, I'm not. And not that I didn't love my parents' stories. I just didn't I knew not to feel terribly connected to them, you know. Right. Right. Yes, right.

SPEAKER_02 30:57

It's that belonging, like you belong to both, but you don't fully belong in either.

Kendall 31:02

There's a photograph in our dining room at home, and it's my dad's brother, and he and I look so much alike that it's shocking. And I mean my biological dad's brother. Okay. It's bizarre. Like I joked and said, Are you sure you're anyway? Yeah, because if they look so much alike. I look more like my uncle than my uncle's children look like him. So it's so cool because when you don't feel like you've ever really looked like anybody in your family, but it's like, oh, I fit there biologically.

SPEAKER_02 31:34

And I know whenever I get to see my bird family, which we live all over the place, New York and Tennessee and Florida, and I'm in North Carolina. But when we do get to spend time together, I just love even like sitting on the couch next to them. We'll kick our feet up on an ottoman or something, and I'm like, oh, look, we have the same feet. My sisters, like, we all have these really big broad shoulders. I'm like, oh yeah, like these are my people.

Kendall 31:59

Completely true. Because I I think about it now, but when I was like a kid, I I know I wasn't looking for those things. I'd hear other people say, Oh, he looks just like his father. Well, I I didn't, and it didn't bother me, but I just never knew how much that was gonna mean to me when I actually looked like somebody.

SPEAKER_02 32:21

One of the things I said in the early days of reunion, I felt like I had found the puzzle pieces that were missing, but I didn't know they were missing. Like I didn't have that awareness growing up. And then once it all goes and it all goes into place, you're like, Whoa, where has this been all my life?

Kendall 32:42

It's very difficult to explain to somebody. You have to kind of live through that to to know it. Because I never knew that I was gonna care as much as I do. Like going to hang out with my brother, my local brother, watching his mannerisms and seeing it in me. Yeah, it's amazing to me. I really get that with my nieces and nephews, just watching them grow and seeing similarities for me in them. It's amazing. I love it. I don't know why I'd hear so much, but I do.

SPEAKER_02 33:17

And I love that you move to be near your family, and so you can really embrace that that time with them. So you're making me realize I need to step up my travel game a little bit and then go see more of mine because I'm the oldest of the 12, and so a lot of them have little kids, like you know, baby, baby, babies, so it's a lot harder to travel with little kids.

Kendall 33:38

So sure. Well, and shout out to the spouses like my Corey, who were willing. It was on the plane ride back from meeting my dad and two of his other three kids, where Corey looks over at me and says, I guess we're moving to New England. He's always been that person to say he wanted me to have what he has in his eyes. And uh he knew it would mean so much to me, and he knew more than I knew. He knew as soon as we got here that it was gonna be amazing, and it has been. Yeah. I needed that extra push, you know, to say, we can do this, you know. It's never easy to move 2600 miles, but when you do, you know, you need that support.

SPEAKER_02 34:25

Shout out to those support partners, right? Because when they witness what we go through and experience and can really see it and get it, they do as much as they are able to, and it's really powerful because they're they're honoring and acknowledging our losses and our desire for the reconnection.

Kendall 34:44

And the normality of, you know, having family.

SPEAKER_02 34:48

Yeah, that's right.

Kendall 34:49

It's you everybody should expect it.

SPEAKER_02 34:52

I'll share one last thing, and then I know we need to wrap up. So I have been dating my boyfriend who lives a thousand miles away for three years now. And so we've been long distance and not living in the same state, but he came to the Untangling Our Roots conference with me. And it was just so powerful to be witnessed, obviously professionally. I gave two presentations and was talking about my specialty, which is reunion, building healthy relationships and reunion, but also personally, just him witnessing me and my story and then listening to everybody else's. So we were driving home and we we stopped in Gainesville, Georgia for lunch on the way. And he said, Elizabeth, we've been dating for three years now. I thought I had a pretty good handle on understanding you as an adopted person and you as an adoptive mom and you know, all the things that you've told me and all the stories. After this weekend, I realized that I only knew about 1% of what your life experience has been like. This has opened my completely open my mind to people who walk around disconnected from family and you have no idea because it's like it's an invisible thing. Because you you don't ask people about it.

Kendall 36:08

Well, I'm just happy. And I that to me is is wonderful because we need to encourage more supportive partners to come and experience that because they're gonna see us in a position in a good way of being extra vulnerable, hearing thankfully, my partner comes home and tells me all about them, and get to experience things like having people like you on the podcast. That's what this is all about, is uh normalizing this experience for literally it's happening every day. People are getting results every day now. And I never knew how much I needed this as a a joke and say I don't need a therapy I don't I I do have a therapist, but I'm saying I feel like this is therapy for me. It's so fulfilling. And yeah, I feel like now this is part of my reason to be on this planet is to help people feel comfortable.

SPEAKER_02 37:06

Well, you're doing it with your podcast, so thank you for the platform and sharing everybody's stories. It's been life to be here with you. So thank you.

Kendall 37:14

The very last question we didn't used to ask this at the beginning, but we started asking people because we're such music fans in our household, and music is playing 24-7. We probably only turn it off to do a podcast, but we wonder we were always curious when you were going through, and this is going back a ways for you, but when you were going through those mom first moments of revelation of finding family, was there a an artist or a song or even a genre that you that helped you through things?

SPEAKER_02 37:53

The only thing that comes to mind is like you, I was a child of the 80s. And so I always loved to listen to Boston.

SPEAKER_03 38:05

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:06

Because it's high energy. It was always like my driving music. Get on the road and just blast some Boston and drive along. And sometimes I would sing and sometimes I wouldn't. I always felt like their music, and I finally got to see them in person actually years ago when I was living in Texas and got to see them in person. I was like, they're amazing. I think just kind of sometimes turning on some loud music and just allowing it to overding me because you're processing so many emotions during that time. So yeah. What about you? What was what are some of your favorites?

Kendall 38:40

Corey and I are such 80s fans that I would have an emotional day, either had good parts of the revelation revelation happen or not so positive things, and we would always have a little mini dance party in our tiny condo in San Francisco where we would just turn on 80s music and just good old time. It was a release, you know, whether it was for positive energy or getting rid of some negative energy. It was all up and uh yeah, we we're still a sucker for 80s, like what we call dance music.

SPEAKER_02 39:16

So great to chat with you.

SPEAKER_00 39:18

Too, thank you. Wow, I'm just gonna sit with that episode for a second. Because there are some when you walk away thinking about the story, and then there are episodes when you walk away thinking about your own life, and this was one of those. Hearing Elizabeth talk about that phone call, the moment where everything changes, and then hearing Kendall reflect on his own experience, it's a reminder that there is no one version of how this goes. Some people get the I've been waiting for you, and some people get silence. And some people get both at the same time. And somehow you still have to figure out how to move forward. What I keep coming back to in this conversation is something Elizabeth said about family being addition. Not replacement, not competition, but addition. And that may sound simple until you're the one living it. Until you're trying to hold space for joy and grief at the exact same time. That's the part people don't always see. But if you're listening to this and you're in it right now, or you've been in it, or you're about to be, you're not crazy for feeling everything all at once. That's kind of the deal. And like we always say, the reason we keep doing this, having these conversations and putting this out there, is because somebody out there needs to hear it. Maybe today that somebody is you. So thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. And thank you to Elizabeth for going there with us. We'll be back next week. And remember, family secrets are the ultimate plot twist. The Family Twist Podcast is presented by SAPOF Air Marketing Communications, and produced by Mosaic Multimedia.