Lucy Greenwell
๐ค SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
And just like Jess, up pings a close DNA match.
It's a brother, Dean.
And it turns out he's also a foundling.
But that's not all.
A third sibling crops up shortly afterwards, also a foundling.
So, three babies, same mother, all abandoned within hours of their births.
When the three of them appear on TV, a professional genealogist gets in touch and offers to help, the same way Michelle did with Jess's DNA results.
She pieces together the wider family jigsaw and delivers extraordinary news that Joanne Hauser, the woman who found Janet, is either the three siblings' aunt or their mother.
Janet and her adoptive mother look back at a video her friend filmed, footage of the moment she met the woman who had found her.
This is where the similarities end.
I've been living with the guilt for so long.
The big reveal for Janet happens in front of the cameras and it later goes out on a popular American TV show.
Joanne admits it all to Janet.
She apologises and she goes on to tell Janet about her birth.
It's not a complete explanation, but for Janet, it's a reason, and that's enough.
Now 10 years on from that emotional reunion, Janet feels sorry for the young woman her birth mum was back then.
It wasn't that her birth mother didn't love her.
It's that the circumstances somehow short-circuited her maternal instinct.