*Permission was granted to share this part of her story through my eyes.
I first met Whitney on 2/25/2020, a referral from one of my “Lifers” who has given me so much business I’ve had to tell her to slow her roll 🙂 Here’s what stood out to me regarding Whitney:
- Adopted and never seeing how she belonged
- PTSD due to infancy loss and so many puppy losses in the animal rescue world
- Divorce & blended family
- Mama of three feeling so overwhelmed: online schooling, founding a new rescue, & trying to feed ‘em all (human and dog alike)
- Needing a time out to figure out what’s next
- Avid dog rescue mom
- Calls herself “The Feral One”
- HUGE LOSS, BIGGER Heart
- Former competitive skier
- Addiction to rescue mode and nicotine
- Wanting more for her children
- Questioning how to keep living
Our first lessons included a lot of
- Where do you want to belong?
- How do you take better care of you?
- What do you dream of each night?
- How come you keep trying to do it all?
- What does love look like and FEEL like?
- Did they say that or do YOU say that? “I’m all alone.”
- What do you do for fun?
- Caring FOR YOU is Caring for YOUR KIDS
- How do we create safe space?
- Aren’t friends as family a good thing?
Whitney had been looking for her biological family for years, her spouse told me he’d looked every day for 8 months. My other client bought her AncestryDNA to see if genetically she could find family that way. And she did however she got overwhelmed by the whole complicated cousin tree and not having a ton of information about her biological family and only snippets of facts here and there.
One day I was sitting there listening to her talk and I asked – can I look at the AncestryDNA to see what I can find? Can I call around on your behalf? What stood out to me was no matter what I’d done to support her self confidence, empowerment, and learning about assertive communication, the heart of the matter was she wanted to know the story of why, why and how she came into this world.
She gave me free range to search however I wanted. She was nervous about making those first calls to see, was this the woman? Did they really want to know who she was? I got tired of AncestryDNA and stepped back and thought- here in the revolution of Social Media let’s tackle Facebook and Classmates.com. Within days I’d found her biological mother’s brother and was on the phone with her.
Here’s what we both wrote simultaneously:
September 14, 2021: Today was one of the highlights of my career~ finding the biological mom of a client of mine. She had been looking for her biological mom since she was around 18; she is in her 30s now. I took on this project 8 days ago. Today I got to tell her how excited her bio mom is to talk to her; that she had wanted an open adoption but that wasn’t really welcomed early on. Hearing her tears of joy, the fears of not being wanted put to rest…my heart is bursting. #counselor #parttimedetective #adoption #families #permissiongranted
Whitney:
Literally, your life can change in an instant.
Today, mine did. In a spec of a second my life will NEVER be the same.
I never allowed myself to dream big because the thought of encountering denial was unbearable.
I belong. I am wanted. I am loved more than I ever even imagined. Holy shit, this is really happening!!!
My therapist found and connected with my biological Mom!!!
Our text exchanges included:
Whitney: Yes! We talked for almost 2 hours last night. Cried together, laughed alot and I know healed a little bit of both of us on the inside. You have given me a whole new life
Me: Do you want/need phone call?
Whitney: I’m feeling really good, a peace I have been hoping for my whole life. Take the hour for yourself- in your famous words
It has been a true honor, to be a human doing what I do. ~Jasmine
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