Podcast Appearances
Jess and her sister Laura roam free, surrounded by love and affection.
Jess has always known that she's adopted, but she tells me that until she's 11, she never really thought to question why.
Until this one day...
For her birthday, her parents had given her a TV for her bedroom.
But the screen kept going fuzzy, so she and her dad are out shopping for a new aerial.
There they are, just parking up outside B&Q.
Laura is Jess's older and also adopted sister.
A few weeks earlier, Laura had found out about her own birth parents.
Then and there, in the car, he tells her that she was found abandoned and that no one knows who her birth parents are.
Most of us have an origin story, how we arrived into the world, who was there, what was said.
Jess has assumed that she has one too, just like her sister, Laura.
But from this moment on, she's aware of a void, a complete blank where her beginning should be.
And that not knowing, it's tough.
Do you want to pause for a bit?
For me, it kind of, it did, it broke my little world of this perfect little family that I'd been brought up in.
Jess tells me her parents reassure her that nothing's changed, that she's still the same person.
They were constantly trying to tell me, you know, you're a good person, you know, and as much as anyone tells you that, you don't feel like you are.
Like, you feel like your roots are bad.