What Happens When You Finally Look Like Someone?

Julie Ann Brumley expected a DNA test to answer a few questions.

She didn't expect to find a sister, a 100% Italian biological father, or an entire family where she could finally see herself reflected in someone else's face.

In part one of our conversation, Julie and Kendall compare reunion stories and talk about the moments that don't always make it into the movies: sitting through family stories you weren't there for, wondering what you missed, and discovering that joy and grief can show up at the same dinner table.

Along the way, they discuss:

•  Finding biological family through DNA 
•  The first time you realize you actually look like someone 
•  Walking into a family that already has decades of shared memories 
•  Why reunion is a beginning, not an ending 
•  Building relationships with biological siblings later in life 

Julie is an adoptee, trauma-informed coach, speaker, and creator of the Belonging Blueprint, helping adoptees reconnect with themselves through self-belonging and body-based healing.

Next week: Julie explains why she believes adoptees carry their stories in their bodies, and Kendall opens up about the health, anxiety, and identity struggles that finally started making sense after reunion.

About Julie Ann Brumley

Julie Ann Brumley is an adoptee, trauma-informed coach, speaker, and founder of Coming Home to Self. After finding her biological family through DNA, she shifted her work to helping adoptees understand identity, belonging, and the lasting effects of early separation through somatic and self-belonging practices.

Transcript

Corey 0:00

Hey everyone, it's Corey. Every once in a while, we record an episode where I can tell Kendall is talking to somebody who just gets it. And that's Julie Ann Brumley. Within about five minutes, they're swapping reunion stories, talking about finding biological family, and comparing notes on things they've both felt for years but never had anyone to compare them to. There's even one moment where Julie talks about sitting at a family gathering, listening to everyone tell stories from a childhood she wasn't there for. And I think a lot of adoptees are going to recognize that feeling immediately. So here's part one of Kendall's conversation with Julie.

Kendall 0:32

Julie, welcome to the Family Twist Podcast. What is your connection to our DNA surprise platform?

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Well, my connection is that I personally am adopted, obviously. I was seven weeks old when I was adopted. So I was in foster care for that amount of time. My DNA surprise is I call myself Mama Mia because my birth mother hitchhiked from California across a couple of states on semi-trucks, ended up at a party where my dad was, hooked up with him, and then he left the next morning to go to work, came back and caught her in bed with his two roommates. So she basically slept with three men in one night. It was the 70s. This is what she said to me, and had no idea which one it was. And so I found her in 2010 and she has since died. She actually died in 2020. And right after she died, I realized I have unfinished business that I feel like I need to deal with, having to do with her. And now that she's not here, I feel like I can do that. And so I asked my husband at the time for 23 and me for Christmas. And not with the intention of thinking that I would even find anybody because she told me that my birth mother was more than likely dead. But how would she know that?

Kendall 2:27

That's odd.

SPEAKER_00 2:28

I got the the results back and it said that I had a sister, and that definitely freaked me out. And it took me a minute to actually allow that to set in because I had a sister from my birth mom's side. And so I was like, well, I already have a sister. And my husband at the time was like, Julie, I think this is a different sister. And so we found out that I'm 52% Italian, that I have a biological father who is 100% Italian, still alive. And it definitely was a shocker, not something that I was expecting at all. But I was thrilled that I finally knew what my heritage was and where I come from and all of that. It was just wonderful. And so it took about two days for my half-sister to get back to me. But she was quick because she saw a picture of me and she knew immediately. She was like, You look exactly like my younger sister. Like I have her face. And talked to my dad, and he was like, That's a blessing. Tell her she can email me. Let's have a conversation. So that's where it started. And that was in January of 2021. So it's been five and a half years. And amazingly, Kendall, I actually am living in his basement right now.

Kendall 4:12

Wow. That's cool.

SPEAKER_00 4:14

Yeah.

Kendall 4:14

Corey and I moved, you know, like we were just talking about, all the way across the country. And when we met my dad, he was so sweet. He was like, oh, I have an extra bedroom and an extra bathroom. You guys could stay with me if you needed a place to be. And I'm like, Dad, I think you're forgetting that we have a multitude of animals. Like that would not be fun for any of us. But he would, he meant it. I mean, if if I needed him to do that, he would have let me, you know. Just couldn't have been sweeter. Same thing. The whole my dad, my but my biological father's family has all been just so great. And just getting to know them has been, I don't know, I've been so fortunate.

SPEAKER_00 4:59

Yeah. I it's not common actually that that it's as good as this. And I will say there have been challenges. I mean, as as there would be with anyone, starting to enter into a family that you didn't grow up with, like you definitely can feel like an outsider initially. And I remember there was this one time I was at my niece's graduation, and everybody was like around me talking about all of their memories. And I'm sitting on this little poof ball in the middle of everybody going, I don't have any of those. And that was robbed for me. I felt robbed in that moment, and then got really sad and realized they don't know what this feels like. How could they? And so the only way for me to be able to connect with them at all is to tell them this is what's going on with me. And it was it was a real learning curve for all of us, to be honest. So I'm very grateful to have them in my life now. I wouldn't have it any other way. Like you, I mean, you you moved across country. So I've been through a lot since finding them. I've sadly gotten a divorce and had to deal with the trauma of that because I was married for 28 years.

Corey 6:36

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 6:37

And that was really hard and needed to kind of get away from from where we had built a life. So I went to California for six months and spent time in my adoptive mom's condo. She just let me go have time there by myself, first time ever, and my dog. And then with the plan of coming back here to they're in Utah. And so I am just blessed and honored that they were okay with that, you know?

Kendall 7:10

Sometimes, I mean, what a wonderful gift to be able to do that with your family. You know what I mean? Like just yeah, Corey and I weren't starting over, but it felt so surreal to move to New England where we had never lived before, and to connect with all this family. And it was like right before COVID. So then it was so let's face it, we're middle-aged, so it's still difficult to meet people now. But especially back then, you know, it was like it it it felt like the only people we really got to hang out with were our family during COVID. I feel really fortunate that way, too. Because it I think, you know, it made those moments really special, you know, when we go over for something as simple as like Easter, you know what I mean? Just it was fun and cool. And yeah, like our nephew just graduated high school last Friday, and like now they're all adults. Like it feels weird, you know what I mean? Because I've known them now since 2018, so or 2017. So it's like I've watched these kids grow up, which thankfully, you know, I got to do because I really wish I had known them when they were little, little, you know, like toddlers or something like that. But I've seen thankfully a thousand photos, which is helpful and video, you know, from back then. But they're just great. It's they're great kids, it's a great family, it's wonderful.

SPEAKER_00 8:38

It really is, and that's a blessing for me because my sister is 16 and a half years younger than me, and so she has five and seven-year-old kids now, and so they pretty much only know me as a part of the family. So that's been a really special thing for me to be able to be here and be a part of things like this last weekend. I went to my niece's first pedicure, and it was just so fun to be a part of that and memory. So yeah.

Kendall 9:17

And I think it's hard to talk to people who aren't adopted about those moments. Like you just don't know what you were missing until you hear those stories. You know, it's like, oh, I wish I had been there when that happened. I wish I had been there when that happened, you know. Although I have wonderful memories with my adoptive parents. You know, of course, they were great people. And but I lost them really young. My mother, I died, she died when I was 10, and my dad when I was 16. So yeah, it wasn't lost on me that it was 1987 when my adoptive dad died, and then 30 years later, I finally find both sides of my biological family. It was just crazy. And I'd kind of given up, you know. I had tried everything. It was a private adoption, and I had petitioned the court three times to try to get my records, you know, really just dead end after dead end after thank goodness for DNA. You know, thank goodness. Yeah. Oh god. My parents lived in Arkansas. It's such a weird story. My biological grandfathers were both stationed on Otis Air Force Base in Cape Cod when the pregnancy was discovered. This is 1969. Both sides of the family tell the story that my grandfathers were both brought into the base commander's office, and they were told, well, this is so risque that one of you can stay, but one of you will have to accept a transfer. And that's the reason that my mother's father accepted a transfer while she was pregnant with me, and she was 15, to Arkansas. Oh my god. So I was born in Little Rock, adopted through the Arkansas system, and never knew I had a connection to New England because my father's family always stayed in New England, but my mother's family stayed in the South. So it's so bizarre and crazy. But I've always loved New England, so it's funny. And I had visited here many times, so I never knew that I had a connection. So that made me really happy. And when I found that out, I was like, oh, I'm going back to Cape Cod and just, you know, living it up. You know, I'd already been there, but it took on a completely different meaning for me, thinking my parents were having sex under one of these some of these trees.

SPEAKER_00 11:36

But you did know, your body did know.

Kendall 11:40

Because like I've always loved Boston, and I've been to Boston many times, and it makes me when I think about how many times I flew into Boston, and my brother and sister and dad were literally minutes away. You know, it's like, oh, that's crazy, you know. But you know how it is as an adopter. You look around and you're like, I don't look like any of these people, and I I wonder who I look like, you know?

SPEAKER_00 12:06

Oh my gosh.

Kendall 12:07

It's bizarre. And you it again, you can't explain it. You can't explain it.

SPEAKER_00 12:13

You can't. It's one of the things that there's a few things that came to my mind as you were talking. My boys call themselves half adopted. And part of that is because my, I guess you could say, emotional stuff that I carried into the relationship, whatever, the abandonment, the rejection, all of that, not knowing who I looked like, not knowing that that mattered to me, it did, but it was subconscious. So yeah, so they watched all of that. I mean, they're 22 and 25 now. And when they saw me see my mother, birth mother for the first time, they were oh, I think they were like five and seven. They were young and I looked like her, but she attempted to abort me twice, and so there was this lack of connection with her. I just felt a distance, which makes sense. When I found my birth father, they saw it like it was an energetic, they could feel it. And with my sisters, even like looking at them, it was like looking at a mirror, as I know you understand this. So that really impacted them, and they realized how much they had missed. And from there, we planned a trip to Italy and were able to experience that together, and it was a really emotional thing. When I was growing up, we had this house. I lived in Grand Junction, Colorado on the western slope, and I'm standing in the hallway. I've I can I feel it now, staring at a family picture, willing myself to look like these people, wanting so much to see myself reflected in them. And it I don't even I'm trying to think of how to put words to this, which is always hard for us adopted people. I knew that it bothered me, but it didn't dawn on me how much until my late 30s, early 40s. And that time I came back and remembered doing that. So it's just really interesting how these things kind of surface as we begin to uncover and come into consciousness, as it's called. And then the third thing was my biological grandmother literally just died yesterday, Kendall. And so you were talking about your dad dying in May, and I have been trying I've known her for five and a half years. She was almost a hundred years old. This is my father's mother. She was a four foot nine little Italian Spitfire, and she was amazing. And I got to say goodbye to her a couple of days ago. It was really cool. And she it looked like she recognized me, which was really cool. But one of my sons is in England right now, he's there on an internship, and I had a trip planned to go visit him, and I have to change it because the memorial service is next week and I was going to be there. So I was on the phone with him this morning, my my youngest, trying to figure that out. Like, like I need to be there, whether you know what I'm talking about. And it was breaking my heart. Like, I so I have to figure it out. I'm hoping that I can change my ticket so I can be here.

Kendall 16:23

I know. Well, I'm sure he'd want you to be too. I mean, he does. He gets it. He gets that you want to be there for your family too, you know.

SPEAKER_00 16:32

Yeah, he does. He actually brought it up.

Kendall 16:34

You made me think of something I hadn't thought of in a while, and that's the fact that I'm from a tiny, you know, my hometown was like 4,000 people, and everybody knew everybody's business, and everybody did support my my adoptive mother and dad. I never felt like ostracized, or I never, you know, I was very fully accepted into the community. But they almost went overboard. And I remember being a teenager, and the you know, the 12,000th person said, Oh my gosh, you look just like your mom and dad. And I said, Enough. Enough. It it isn't true. You can't say it so often that I'll actually believe it. Just stop with, just stop. And I got kind of bold with people and said, I'm over that. You know what I mean? Like, I it's okay that I don't. I mean, I wish I wish I knew my biological family, but these people are good to me. But stop with your fake stories that you're trying to make me believe, you know, it's like you can't take away the hurt that I have because I don't know the truth, you know.

SPEAKER_00 17:46

I do know.

Kendall 17:47

And people weren't doing it maliciously, you know. But I was a very strong-willed teenager. Well, an annoyingly strong-willed teenager. And I'm like, no, you don't get it. I've been, you know, for 15 years, I've been listening to people say this bullshit, and I'm ready just to say, stop, just stop. I'm grown up, sort of. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 18:09

Like, you don't have to Well, I've lost my mom already. Like, I don't need you to be trying to kowtow to me right now.

Kendall 18:18

I've been in therapy, I'm gonna continue. It's all good. You know, it was and and I remember I was dating my ex-wife at the time, and she was like, tried to relate, you know what I mean? She just was good to me, and she's like, but I'll never understand what it feels like, you know. And she was right. It's like, no, and I I did have some friends. I mean, in fact, it's funny, my parents formed close friendships with three other couples who had also adopted children right around my age. Wow. Which for our tiny town was kind of surprising. It's like it was kind of an end thing to do, you know. So I did get to talk to people, but you know, it's so funny because most of the kids that were my age that I knew that were adopted just didn't want to go there, you know. And I get it. People are very personal sometimes about their stories, but to me, it's like if we can help others normalize all these feelings, that's important.

SPEAKER_00 19:17

No, it really is. I think what you just said, I think is really important to highlight, and I alluded to it earlier. The amount of adopted people that I work with, and myself included, I had to find my voice. I had to search for the language because I didn't have it. I think you understand this. When you're adopted as young as we are, even kids that are adopted at five, eight, some of the people that I've worked with, it breaks my heart the stories they tell me and the memories that they have. But in a lot of ways, we were in a lot intentionally silenced, but in other ways, unintentionally. Like they didn't know what they were doing. I mean, I was adopted in 73. You were in 1970, okay, blank slate, all of those things were what everybody had and what everybody knew was this exploration of I'm going to start speakingness because this has really impacted me. And I didn't know that it had impacted me, but I can now look back and see all of the patterns in my life that were more than likely attached to this. That was something that I speak about. I think what I've learned through this whole process, I don't expect people to understand who aren't adopted. I don't ever expect them to understand. What I accept is my lived experience. Yeah. And not tell me that I should be grateful or that I'm lucky or which that can be true, but I still hold grief. I still hold loss.

Kendall 21:12

And I mean, similarly, I mean, your story's different than mine about your mother, but you know, people that listen to the podcast know that I've never spoken to my birth mother. She doesn't want it, and that's her right. And it's taken me a long time to come to say those words because I mean, I'll just say I'm very still resentful that she doesn't want to know me, but how could you not be, right? Like, how could you not? You know, it's natural to want to know your parent or at least speak to her once. I don't need anything from her. I think the fear is that I'm after family money. Like, that isn't that she'd have to know me to know that that's I would never be interested in that. But at the same time, she doesn't even want to give it one conversation. And I have started to give her grace, but I mean it's taken me almost nine years to get there because I'm the opposite. Because she had no choice.

SPEAKER_00 22:10

She was told 15 years old.

Kendall 22:14

And I'm the type of person that if you made me give up my baby when I was 15, the moment I found that baby, I wouldn't have been able to go to sleep that night without speaking. You know, that's who I am. But she apparently is the master of stifling her emotions and, you know, just it's gone. You know what I mean? Like she doesn't ever want to talk about it. And I long ago in 2017 stopped asking my sip her other children to speak on my behalf. I said, forget it. You know, like I don't want to, I feel like I'm being mean to her by like pushing the subject, you know. I'm like, it's all good. I'm good.

Corey 22:58

I'm just doing what any person would do. You know, one thing that stood out to me is how many times Julie and Kendall laugh during this conversation. They're talking about loss, rejection, parents, divorce, grief, and then somebody tells a funny story and they're both laughing again. And that's pretty much how these conversations go around here. If you're listening on Spotify, please scroll down and tell us have you uncovered a family secret or had a DNA surprise? We read and respond to every comment. And also, please send this episode to someone who really needs it. Next week, we take a turn into the work Julie does with adoptees. She explains why she starts focusing on body-based healing instead of traditional counseling, and Kendall starts connecting some dots from his own life that I don't think we've ever really talked about on the podcast. Until then, remember, Family Secrets are the ultimate plot twist. The Family Twist Podcast is produced and presented by Mosaic Multimedia LLC.