Becca's Story

In this episode, Becca Rothman, a comedian, activist, and mother shares the surprising story of discovering she was donor-conceived later in life. After years of living with a "clue" found by her sister, Becca finally used a DNA kit to uncover a biological father—a pediatrician—who shares her love of exclamation points. Becca discusses how she turned the entire journey into her 30-minute solo comedy show, Gifted.

You can follow Becca's stand-up and storytelling journey on Instagram @BeccaRothman

Resources Mentioned:

The Lost Family: How DNA Testing Is Upending Who We Are by Libby Copeland

The Sunday Story Seven IG @storyseven.al

beccarothman.com

Untangling Our Roots Conference

NPE Stories Patreon

NPE Stories facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/NPEstories

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Hello, you are listening to NPE Stories. This is a podcast where NPEs can share their story. I am your host, Lily, and I found out I was an NPE through an ancestry DNA test that changed my life forever. NPE is a term that stands for not parent-expected or non-paternal event. This means that one or more of our parents are not who we believe them to be. NPE Stories is a podcast where NPEs can share their story of what their original family was like, how they found out they were an NPE, and what their journey has been like since the day they found out. I wanted to start out today with a thank you to two people. First of all, thank you to Anne. She just signed up on my Patreon page, patreon.com slash NPE stories. Anne, thank you so much. She signed up as a devotee. You did not leave your last name, so I'm just going to say thank you to Anne. And then also I wanted to say a sincere thank you to Graham Wood. Graham, my husband Graham. Graham, thank you so much for supporting the podcast for so many years. I know this has taken our family's budget and my time away to do this. And you're just a huge supporter of me, this podcast, and your listener. So you always tell me about the NPEs that you hear come on, and you just support them and feel for them. So thank you so much for your help and for your tech help. Some people may not know this, but Graham, my husband, also recorded my theme song years ago. He came up with some stuff, and I was like, oh, I feel a little more melancholy. Oh, I want it softer. Oh, I need it. And he just listened to me explain my emotions and kept tweaking it. And he's a you know electronic music producer along with a software engineer, and he managed to come up with a theme song that embodied how I felt that first year, the first season. So thank you for doing that. Helping me with my RSS feed, my website, getting getting these podcasts out. I appreciate you so much. Okay, and now it's time to listen to our NPE story. Welcome to episode 239. Today I am speaking with Becca. Hi, Becca. Hi, thank you for having me. Thank you so much for filling in last minute. You you're I appreciate you so much for doing this. My pleasure. Let me just say that Becca just got. Do you go by Rebecca or Becca?

SPEAKER_01 3:02

I I really use both interchangeably. When I started performing stand-up, I thought that Becca would be a um, it's what my friends called me in high school. So it felt natural to me, but also it kept me a little have I do political activist work and my day job and my mom job as being a mom. So I use Rebecca in a lot of my life, and I it was nice to have a like slightly separate identity when I'm on stage.

SPEAKER_00 3:27

Got it. I love it. Okay, so you'll go by either. Yes. Mother, comedian, activist, and NPE, DCP, right? Okay, all of the above. So uh Becca filled in last minute. We had a guest that just couldn't do it. Cancellations happen. Please don't cancel you guys if you're on the wait list. Please give me a heads up. And Becca was willing to do this, and she's a comedian. So I was I'm so grateful for you. Give me a mic anytime. I will speak into it. Do you still are you still do you have a show going on right now? What are you doing for comedy?

SPEAKER_01 4:05

So I have been, I developed a solo show about my experience of being a is being a NPE, being a DCP. I I don't use those letters like in my day-to-day life so much. So I it took me several years to figure out how to tell the story and how I wanted to tell the story. And I ended up, I had started doing stand-up comedy a little bit like a few months after I had found this experience out. And I talked about lots of other parts of my life on stage, but I didn't really talk about this just because I wasn't sure how I wanted to frame it and it was still evolving. But then a little more than a year ago, I took a storytelling class. And then I knew, well, okay, if I'm going to tell a storytelling class, this is the story I want to tell. So first I took a five-minute storytelling, like the end product of the class was to have a five to six minute story, like moth style. And then I was invited to participate in a class called Develop Your Solo Show. And I thought, well, now I I know the story and I like being on stage. And I was really glad that I took the class because it gave me a chance to really write it and edit it in over time and to work with the director. And then this show that I created was the finished product. So it took about four months to write, about three months to rehearse and practice how I wanted to do the performance element of it. And then I've been touring it around. I've toured it to, I've performed it eight times so far. What is the name? It's called Gifted. And I don't have any current, I performed in Chicago a week ago, uh last Friday night. And I don't have any more scheduled right now, but I will, of course, I keep my Instagram updated of if I have any, if I end up doing it again. And and then I perform stand-up in different places. I have a I'm doing a stand-up show in Birmingham, Alabama, where I live, on May 16th. And I participate in other comedy shows as I'm invited, and sometimes I produce my own. I host a storytelling show in Birmingham once a month called the Sunday Story 7. And I get other people on stage and I host the show. And sometimes I talk about this, but my because my show is so long, it's 30 minutes, I don't just like pop up with it. I mainly just do it when like that's the one show that I'm gonna be doing.

SPEAKER_00 6:27

That is so cool. Okay. Yeah, that's a lot. I asked this at the end, but I feel like it makes sense to ask right now as well. For people listening, how could they find you on Instagram?

SPEAKER_01 6:40

Instagram is the best way. I am at Becca Rothman, R-O-T-H-M-A-N.

SPEAKER_00 6:46

I will put that down below in the show notes, the your your Instagram handle. And Becca, let's get an idea of your family of origin. So let's see, who was in your family of origin, your raising family. Tell me a little bit about who was in it, what your relationships were like with them, and kind of what your childhood was like.

SPEAKER_01 7:11

Sure. So I am the oldest of two girls. I'm very close with my sister. Um, I have grew up with my parents, and I had, I talk about this in my show that this is actually the very beginning of my show, is that we grew up within four miles of both sets of grandparents. And we used to see my grandparents and on my dad's side, my cousins and my aunts and uncles quite a bit. When we would see my mom's one brother lived out of town, so but when we would see my mom's parents, we were the only grandchildren and we saw them a lot. When, and I say this exact word in my in my show, when we were with my dad's family, I there was like maybe a tiny thing in the back of my mind that like they would tease us that like we didn't my sister and I like didn't have hearty appetites, like other people in the family. Like we might get teased about being just like a tiny bit different. And I don't know if like now I'm looking back and noticing that or if that was like really a thing that happened when I was little. I don't know, because like now it's all blended together in my brain. But my sister and I have always been very close. And really, there was nothing unusual in my childhood. It was like my parents are still married. I'm 50 years old, my parents are still married, and we there was nothing like particularly remarkable about anything. So I mean, it was lovely. I felt you know very lucky to have a lovely, pleasant childhood in suburban outside of Baltimore, Maryland, and um in a pretty tight-knit family.

SPEAKER_00 8:46

Did you ever have any signs that you were an NPE?

SPEAKER_01 8:52

No, but I I say that with like the caveat that I knew that my sister and I were a lot alike, and when when I found out later, and I I say this in my show, this is like an exact line from my show that after I found out, I was able, like I knew in the ways in which I was like my grandparents, my two grandmothers who both of my grandmothers were my mom's mom is one of four girls, and my dad's mom is one of five girls. And I always remember thinking, like, I really want, I love having a sister. I wish I had more sisters, like all of my grandmothers. I by the way, I'm sitting outside and there are birds chirping in the background. I don't know if you can hear them, but like hopefully I can. I like it though. Okay. It's a beautiful day here. It's like 75 degrees and the birds are chirping. So I always knew that I wanted more sisters and I wasn't gonna have more sisters. It seemed unlikely. I mean, I was my I was the oldest. And then, you know, by the time I was old enough to even articulate, like, oh, I wish I had a bigger family. I wish I had more sisters. It was that was ship had probably sailed. So I there were there was a clue when I was an adult. My sister found, and I talk about this in the show, my sister found a clue, a receipt that led us to from the clinic that led us to believe to take a pretty good guess that one or both of us was conceived by sperm donor. But my parents were very private. And oh, I'm I'm gonna jump back just a second when I said I know that I was like my grandparents, my grandmothers, especially. The line in the show is I worry a lot like my mom's mother, and I like to host and entertain a lot like my dad's mother. So I could see elements of myself in both sides of my family, but also once I had this clue, I was able to identify that, like, yeah, I'm different in some ways. My mom is very organized, I'm very, I'm a bit of a tornado, and my dad is very reserved, and I'm like very enthusiastic. And the exact line from the show is I overuse exclamation points, and both of my parents really dislike disruption to their routine, and I really thrive on excitement and novelty. And I just like I filed those things away, but it wasn't like because everyone had a warm relationship, it wasn't like, oh, I feel so different or anything like that. But after my sister had found this clue, then we suspected, and then I didn't do anything, there was nothing to do, and my sister and I didn't really talk about it very much. We did start, and this is a line from the show, we did start signing off from our text messages 100% sister, even knowing that we might not be 100%. So we like suspected, we were, we like it, we had the clue, it made sense, but there was it was like a little bit before testing was available. So it wasn't something that I was just gonna jump right in and do. And my mom had told me when I was before I got pregnant, she had really encouraged me to get genetic testing before I got pregnant. And that was also a clue that later gelled in my brain that you know, Jewish people worry about tay sex, which is a very bad genetic disease. And it's so bad that anybody who is has tay sex dies before when they're a baby, like immediately after being born. And so if two tay sex carriers have a baby, they have to they you have to be very aware if both members of a couple are carriers of tay sex. So it's just something that Ashkenazic Jews know about and worry about. And before I got pregnant, my mom said you need to do genetic testing because of tay sex. Or she didn't even say, I was like, okay, right, tay sex, of course. Like it's very bad. I will, I will do that. And I just kind of rolled my eyes and agreed to make the appointment, but I didn't like think about it that intensely. And then when we did the genetic testing, nothing came up. And we had a baby and he was great, and then we had another baby, and years pass, and in 2012, around the time that the New York Times magazine wrote an article about Anne Wajitsky, I read the article and thought, oh, um, this is available to do genetic testing for at home for people who want to find out their hidden health history and like hidden health history, it always kind of been in the back of my mind and long lost family. And I didn't know if there was long lost family, but I, because the clue that my sister and I had found, I was like, you know what? I think I'm gonna do this. So I ordered the kit. And when the kit arrived in my house, like I remember it showing up in my office, and I looked at it and like I felt like the kit was looking back at me, and we looked at each other in my office for months and I didn't do it. And then I put it in a drawer, and then a year goes by and I'm not doing it. And then we moved to a new house and I put it in a different drawer. And then there's the pandemic, and then I legitimately forget about it. And during the pandemic, I attended a women's leadership, it was like a seminar or it was like a convention, but it was on Zoom because the entire thing was on Zoom because it was 2021. And one of the breakout sessions was a book discussion with Libby Copeland, who I'm sure some of your listeners and you may know about, who she wrote an article. She wrote a book called The Lost Family and like D about unraveling DNA family secrets. So I hear Libby talking about her book. I didn't know who she was until that Zoom. And I, as I'm listening to her talk, I order the book. And I wanted to order from like a signed copy from the local bookstore where she it was in upstate New York. So it didn't arrive overnight. So, like as I was ordering the signed copy of the book, I also went on my library's reserve hold page and I like reserved it and I went and I picked it up at the library the next day. And then like by the three days later, I had read the whole thing. I stayed up reading until three o'clock in the morning. And that book is so good. And I devoured it. And I emailed Libby. And because it's a really small world, it turns out Libby and I were one year apart from the same college. So we knew people in common. So like Libby and I started emailing with each other. And between the book and Libby, I knew all of this. All of a sudden, I was like, I have to find out more. I'm like, now I really want to find out. So I had been dragging my feet for a long time. Like this kit had been sitting in my drawer for at this point, like two and a half years. So I go to get the kit out of the drawer and it was expired. And I, the line from the show, which your listeners will know, it's like partially a joke and also partially not a joke, is the company sent me a, they were so happy when I called them to say, like, will you send me another kit? They were like so happy to send it because they were really excited to have my hackable personal information, which is a joke because I have never been hacked and I was like totally happy to put my information, my DNA out there. But like it's that joke always gets a big laugh in my show. And I got a new kit and I also sent a new kit to my sister because we were gonna do it together, but I did it first. And three weeks, like I spit into the tube and I sent it off. And then three weeks later, I get an email. It was actually five years ago this week, because it was April 21st. I got an email that said, Welcome to you. And I opened the email and it said, Here is your half sister. And I was just stunned, but I I I wasn't stunned because I wasn't surprised that this was a thing, but I was stunned that I got an definitive thing so quickly and it was so definitive. Like, there's her name. And I looked her up on Facebook and we had two mutual friends. The Jewish world is really small. And I immediately turned off my profile so that she couldn't see me because I didn't know if I I didn't know what I was gonna do. I I looked her up and I thought I I don't know if she's on the site because I because she knows that I exist. I I I I had no idea. Maybe she was just on there by accident. So I didn't I wanted to like assess this for a long time. So I look her up on Facebook and I see that she also has a sister and the the who's a younger sister, and I realize that the younger sister and I look like twins, which was a little alarming, but exciting. And they said they seemed great. They seemed like people I would want to know. And then I was able to identify who their father was. He did not have any active presence on Facebook, but I was able to like sleuth out what his name was, and I was able to see that he was a pediatrician. And I, when I was growing up, wanted to be a pediatrician. So that felt very close to home. And then I was able to find his blog and I was able to see that what by reading his writing, that I felt like I was reading my own writing with like a lot of exclamation points. And all of a sudden, I just like I just felt very it was curious, but also like it felt really cosmic. Like, oh, this is a person who I'm a lot alike. And I couldn't tell as much with the sisters, but with him, I was like reading his words and seeing all those exclamation points. And I thought, yeah, that's definitely. I mean, the the DNA evidence was more than enough confirmation, but like seeing the his writing was a little bit mind-boggling. But then I just froze and I didn't know if his daughters knew. I I could tell that he was married. I didn't know if his wife, like I didn't know who knew what. I didn't want to be the one to spill it to if it wasn't, if it had been a secret in any way. And I really didn't know what to do. So I took about a year to sit on this information and to do nothing. And I thought about it a lot. And I sometimes looked at them on the internet, but I didn't do anything. I didn't tell my parents what I had found. My sister knew, but my parents did not know what I had found. We had never confronted our parents about this. And about a year later, I sent him a message on Facebook. And he I found out now I know he doesn't use Facebook. Like he just had a profile, but and he never, ever, ever looked at it. So I never heard back from his Facebook message, from my Facebook message. And I finally decided to write him a letter. And it took me a like a while to get it just right. And I finally mailed him a letter to his office. And I wanted to be really discreet. Like I was so worried about the discretion of all of it. So when I ultimately wrote him a letter, I like I put in the letter that like I'm not, I'm like financially stable and I have a parent parents that I have a good relationship with and I'm married with kids, and like I talked a little bit about things that were my interests and my life. And I included a family picture of like me and my husband and my kids. And I put it in an envelope that was addressed just to him. And I wrote like private records for him only, because he's a pediatrician, and I sent it to him at work so that if his staff opened it, they wouldn't see the letter. They would just see like the inner envelope with his name that said private records. And five days after I mailed it, I had a voicemail from him. He got the letter and he it was like a long voicemail message, like two minutes long. And I called him and we spoke on the phone. He told me to call him back and we spoke. On the phone for an hour, I immediately felt like I knew him, which was so weird. And he said he was very understanding about the fact that like my parents had no idea that I had gone down this journey. And he said, you know, take your time and we'll see what like he was open to like however much more I wanted to do. Like he wanted to tell his daughters, but he was gonna wait uh until I was like ready to like figure out what next steps. And I wanted to tell my parents, but they were on a cruise. So I couldn't tell them and like I hadn't once I knew that I who he was, I wanted to wait and make sure that like this was actually gonna be a thing, like a person I was gonna get to know. If he was gonna not want me in his life for whatever reason, which I knew was a possibility, I didn't want to like have that all conversation with my parents and then be like, oh, but nothing's ever gonna come of it. So I was gonna wait and like see how this shook out. But then once I talked to him and once he was so warm, then he I decided to like, I need to think through how am I gonna tell my parents? And because they were on a cruise, it gave me like two more weeks to talk to think it through. And then when they came home from their cruise, they had COVID. So like I had another week. I had to wait until they got better. And then I wrote them an email and I sent them the email at the same time. And I texted my mom and I was like, you should check your email. And then like 10 minutes later, she called me. And my sister, who lives doesn't we all live in different places. So my sister was in the Whole Foods parking lot where she lives, and we texted her. I was like, the conversation is happening right now. And she abandoned her cart in Whole Foods and like came out to the car to, and we like had a family call. And my mom was just like, girls, so now you know. And like, and I kind of had the feeling that it would be an ongoing conversation with my mom for a long time, and it was. My parents were amazing about it, and they were it's been a journey, but I'm gonna jump ahead like three years. You know, obviously, they hadn't told me for my whole life. So, like they were very secretive. And then later, fast forward three years after I met the new family and I told my parents, and this all came to light, because I'm a performer and I turned it into a show. I was even a little bit nervous to tell my parents that I was doing this as a show. And when the show debuted in New York City in September last year, there was a live stream version. And I wasn't even sure that I wanted there to be a live stream version. But when I told my parents that I was doing the show, they were like, Well, can we watch it? Is it gonna be broadcast online? And I was like, I don't know, do you want it to be? And they were like, Yes, we want to see it. And then after they watched it and they loved it, and then my mom asked me, she was like, Well, can we have the link so we can forward it to like everyone we know? So like they went from, you know, when I was born from this being this total secret to like they are sharing the link to the live stream, which by the way is not available online anymore because it like just it was broadcast for like a limited amount of time. And so like they were sharing it with all of these people that like it went from being not a C from being a secret to literally being broadcast on the internet to the like to to like so they there was like quite a journey there, which was, I mean, ultimately I'm very grateful for, but it's like it's pretty funny when you think about it. The like it's not just that I went through this, but also I went through it and turned it into a show where I talk about it on stage, which like Lily, you have a show that you talk about it on the air. Like that's this is how we process things. So the fact that I made it into a show is like now part of the story too.

SPEAKER_00 26:07

What do you call your I don't biologic? Do you call him biological father? Do you call him donor?

SPEAKER_01 26:15

So I call him by his first name and I kind of colloquially refer to him as biodad. Like, like when I'm talking to people to like differentiate between my dad, who is my dad, who raised me, and who is my dad, and then I'll just say, oh, like, oh no, my new biodad or my new family. But like I refer for a while, I refer to them as my half sisters, but like they're my sisters too. And I am in touch with them frequently. And when I when I'm in New York, I get to spend time with them. And it's uh, you know, when it when it first happened, it was something that was definitely at the forefront of my brain for a while. But at this point, it's just become kind of normal. It doesn't, which, and I'm so I recognize that I'm so lucky that it's not a fraught situation. And, you know, this the my family of origin and I are it's still very much my family of origin. Like when we I go on family trips with my parents and my sister and her kids and my kids and our husbands, and like we are family of origin, and my biodad and his family, like they are their family of origin, and that is totally normal and fine. It's not the same thing. But I also do have a really like lovely and unique relationship with all of them, and I'm super grateful for it, and I recognize how lucky I am, and I recognize that it is not necessarily a normal story.

SPEAKER_00 27:47

Is he also the is your your new biodad? Is he also the donor for your younger sister?

SPEAKER_01 27:55

He is not, and he he he's so sweet that when we found out, like he just knows the right thing to say, he said, It's a good thing I wasn't, because if I was, she wouldn't be who she is today. Like she wouldn't be her, which is true. So we my sister, when she did 23 and me, uh a uh no obvious match came up with it. So she yeah, her her journey is ongoing.

SPEAKER_00 28:29

Yeah, and I'm assuming you were raised Jewish, right? Yes. Is your new bio dad is he also Jewish? Yeah, their whole family is. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 28:41

And that was actually my mom had when when she went to the clinic, she wanted a she like had asked for a Jewish donor, and the the clinic administrator said, Good, there's one here now. Like so, like because I was born in, I mean, I was conceived in 1975. So like it the sperm had to be fresh.

SPEAKER_00 29:03

Oh, oh, okay, that's how it was back then. All right. Do you anticipate more siblings?

SPEAKER_01 29:12

So I so it turned out that my half-sister who I found on the date on 23 of May, she knew they knew that their dad had donated. So that's why she was up there because she was like they were interested in seeing did anybody turn up. So she had been on there for a number of years before I turned up. And I she's probably still on there. I I don't know for sure, but I believe that she's still up there. So nobody else has connected with them. And I I turned my own profile off after this was all over just because I felt like I did it for the reasons that I needed to do it, and I just was like ready. I I it was also, I guess, like a year ago the company got sold, or like I don't know, something changed with it, and I was like, I'm I'm good. I'm like, I there was not no other reason for me to continue to be on there. So I am not on there anymore, so nobody could find me anymore. But so it is possible that there are other donor siblings out there that I've not connected with. It also has occurred to me that like the only reason that I found them that I knew for sure was because I did the test, but my parents hadn't told us. So there are probably other, I mean, not necessarily people who are related to me, but there are certainly people out there who are my generation who were born in the 70s, who in the 70s doctors told new parents, you don't need to tell, nobody will ever find out. And parents just took that advice to heart and didn't share. And in a lot of ways, I think they even forget. Like if you dig into it and ask them, they will have remembered. But like it's not necessarily at the top of mind because you've spent 50 years not talking about a thing. So there are certainly people out there, as I'm sure has been on your show many times, who were not aware that they were donor-conceived. So if you're not aware that you're donor-conceived and you're not interested in doing Ancestry or 23M8, then you may not ever find out. And I am super grateful that I did find out and I'm so happy I have these new people in my life. And it has it really enriched my life. I've learned a lot about myself in really cool ways that I'm very grateful for. Like, and it's a line from the show is that I thought I was missing one puzzle piece of who is he, and I realized I was missing half the puzzle, and it was dumped on my head all at once, and it took a while to sort out. And in the process of like the three years between finding out and making a show about it, I have learned even more. And so I am very grateful for the way it turned out. I do recognize that like there are a million other ways that this could have gone. And it would be cool if if I do connect with more people ever eventually or never at all. Like that could be too. Like I feel like it's not something you know I really have any control over.

SPEAKER_00 32:31

So who knows? So, Becca, about your show, are you going to keep touring?

SPEAKER_01 32:40

So it's a real it's a really good question. And it's one that I don't know the answer to because I don't have any shows scheduled right now. I did perform at the Jewish Community Center in Birmingham, where I live. And I have performed it at um when I was practicing, I performed it at a senior center, which was actually really fun because it gave me a chance to like, for anyone who's a performer, like, you know that you need a lot of rehearsals. So to sit to get people to sit down and listen to this for like a 30-minute show as a dress rehearsal, it's a lot to ask of friends. And I was excited to have the opportunity to do it at a senior center. And a friend of mine pointed out to me that that the show can be really helpful with to people who have, you know, struggled with like, do you want to be in touch with people who you've maybe never met, but like, do you want to meet? And like I talked about the show to a woman who I know who her kids are adopted and they had never had any interest in meeting their adopted. Like, I don't know. I think that even though my story is in some way is is obviously very lucky, and but I hope that it resonates and puts a makes people who come away from it feeling a little bit inspired or open to seeing where an adventure will take them or willing to try something different because this was a big leap when I did it. I mean, I felt like it was a big leap when it was happening. Like, I can't believe I'm sending this in. I can't believe I'm reaching out to these people who I don't know. I don't know how this is gonna go. One thing that I later learned when I started doing stand-up comedy is that, you know, being on stage and putting yourself out there and being vulnerable can be super scary. But sometimes once you do it, you realize that you can do other scary things, which like standing on stage and telling this story seemed like it would be scary. And then the more times that I've done it, it stopped being scary. And I was really glad that the performance part of it is no longer nerve-wracking for me. Although the like planning the logistics of a tour and promoting it constantly, like that that's a fair amount of work. But I will say that if you know, if any of your listeners are interested, I mean, I'm not like specifically looking to continue the tour, but it's something I would be willing to do if it was in a place that like I could logistically make it happen, I would certainly be interested in doing it. Um the show is funny because I do comedy, so it's like it's a show that people who even who don't have any experience with this particular kind of story seem to enjoy hearing, and they always ask me lots of questions. And I do the 30-minute version where I just do the whole thing, which your listeners have now heard big chunks, chunks of it, or at least like the general arc. But then I also have a 40-minute version or 45-minute version where I do a little QA about it and I talk a little bit more about my experience, and I it's a little bit more interactive. And and I love traveling and I love going new places and I I travel a lot in the summer anyway. So it is certainly possible that I might do it again. And people can find me on Instagram at Becca Rothman. You can see the flyer for my show and some of the pictures from places that I've toured. I feel very lucky that I got to do it in New York and LA and Atlanta and Chicago. And I would go back. I would, I I love being on stage and I do do stand-up comedy and open mics in different places when I travel. So if any of your people listening do comedy, I I would love to come visit you where you are. Uh, because I always love being on stage.

SPEAKER_00 36:21

I love this so much. I while you were very busy touring last month or maybe the month before, we had a summit where a whole bunch of us MPEs and donor-conceive people met in Atlanta at Untangling Our Roots. And I would have that would have been perfect for us to have heard you there. You were busy in the middle of your tour then, but we do have them, you know, every other year or so. So I will please circle back to me. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:46

But like the nice thing about the show is, and this is like an interesting thing about this kind of show, is that like it it lives on in that I it's because it's written, and it does take me a couple of weeks to like relearn the fine, like, because 30 minutes is a lot to keep stored in my brain at all times, but like right because I just did it last week. Like now I know it by heart, but you know, in six months I may not know it entirely by heart, but it's pretty easy to get it back online in my brain. And yeah, I love doing it. I like being at conferences, I love it. I actually just did a a writer's conference last uh a couple of weeks ago in Ohio, that it was there was a stand-up comedy component to it, and I got to perform stand-up comedy at a writer's workshop in Ohio, which was amazing. So I love doing events and conventions, just both in the comedy universe, and I'm very interested in the the storytelling world and also the NPE world is also something that is I I don't know a lot about this particular universe, but I would love to come to that conference next time.

SPEAKER_00 37:52

Oh, awesome. Okay, I will send you information on that. And we can find you your Instagram handle is Becca Rothman. Yes. And I will link that again down below if anyone wants to find out more about Becca. And thank you so much, Becca, for coming on last minute. You were just a joy to listen to. Oh, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 38:12

Good luck with everything. I loved being a part of it. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. I hope I get to meet you sometime.

SPEAKER_00 38:18

These stories are here for us to identify with. If you are an NPE and would like to share your story, email npestories at gmail.com. You do not have to give any identifying information. If you are an NPE and would like to share your story, I'd like to hear from you. Subscribe to this podcast to hear more. Come heal with us.