Speaker 1: And I think with Becky, I feel like Becky has
Speaker 1: a more similar personality to me, and that is that
Speaker 1: the girl will always land on her feet, and she
Speaker 1: will get knocked down, but she will wipe herself off
Speaker 1: and get back up again. And I would say that
Speaker 1: Becky is really She's so positive, and she's so warm,
Speaker 1: and she's so loving despite all of the heartache that
Speaker 1: she has been exposed to, or maybe because you know,
Speaker 1: she had two parents who really tried hard to make
Speaker 1: her feel safe and loved. I think that she has
Speaker 1: the right to know who her father is, and I
Speaker 1: think just because her mother refused to tell her doesn't
Speaker 1: make it any less valid desire to know. I mean,
Speaker 1: any I think we all have the fundamental right to
Speaker 1: know who our parents are, And obviously I support her
Speaker 1: trying to find out who it.
Speaker 2: Is that was Elena, Becky's former babysitter, who, like many
Speaker 2: people in Becky's life, recognize that despite what she's endured
Speaker 2: in her life and some of the choices she made
Speaker 2: early on, she's ultimately become a fundamentally good person, the
Speaker 2: complete opposite of who her mother is. Whatever darkness lives
Speaker 2: inside of Diane downs and whatever that may exist genetically
Speaker 2: inside Becky Bobcock, she's pushed past it to lead a
Speaker 2: life and become a person who's nothing like her biological mother.
Speaker 3: And so I think there was this sort of this
Speaker 3: Diane shaped void inside of her that she's always trying
Speaker 3: to bring the drugs and the men and everything too.
Speaker 3: And I remember sensing she can't quite fill it with
Speaker 3: what she's trying to fill it with. And so I mean,
Speaker 3: she would talk about really sort of crying out to
Speaker 3: God and saying, please help me. I don't know who
Speaker 3: I really am I just the daughter of this crazy killer,
Speaker 3: or am I this person who's going to have my
Speaker 3: own life and my own identity and I don't want
Speaker 3: to be known as the daughter of Diane Downs anymore.
Speaker 3: And I think by the time we were done talking
Speaker 3: with her, she was pretty much it felt like she
Speaker 3: was shaking the dust of Diane off of her, because
Speaker 3: I think she makes the decision once they have some
Speaker 3: communication her and Diane, that she's not going to go
Speaker 3: She's not going to go back there, which is what
Speaker 3: Diane wanted. Please come visit me, let's talk, let's you
Speaker 3: know whatever. And so for Becky to say, you know what,
Speaker 3: I'm making the decision. I really don't want to be
Speaker 3: involved in that, and so I have some control over
Speaker 3: a few things. And this is what I'm going to do,
Speaker 3: and it's going to feel better that I got to
Speaker 3: do it.
Speaker 2: From the time he met Becky and as he got
Speaker 2: to know her, Eric Mason supported the idea of Becky
Speaker 2: searching for her father.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 3: I thought it was a really good idea, because she's
Speaker 3: looking for grounding. That's what I always felt about Becky
Speaker 3: from the day she showed up at that pizza parlor
Speaker 3: in Bend and I looked across the table and said, Wow,
Speaker 3: that is Diane's daughter. And she just had so many
Speaker 3: plans and dreams. It's like I would like to be
Speaker 3: a nurse and I would like to help people, and
Speaker 3: I have all these plans, and my Mercedes needs parts
Speaker 3: and I need to get it fixed, and I need
Speaker 3: to find a better place to live. And there was
Speaker 3: this orbit around Becky that felt a little bit like
Speaker 3: the orbit and the energy and the spin around Diane.
Speaker 3: But certainly she had a lot more control and grounding,
Speaker 3: and she understood that if she wasn't careful, the undertow
Speaker 3: of all of that could pull her under and that
Speaker 3: she'd be lost. And so I think she really was
Speaker 3: introspective and really wanted to make changes and not be
Speaker 3: like her mom. And so you know, she got involved
Speaker 3: in a church, and she really did some self examination
Speaker 3: when she would sense herself going down the rabbit hole
Speaker 3: of drugs and men and chance meetings and all of
Speaker 3: those things.
Speaker 4: And she.
Speaker 3: Would pull herself short and say, you know what, I
Speaker 3: can't go down those roads because for my she's in
Speaker 3: prison for the rest of her life. So I think
Speaker 3: she wanted to make contact, some limited contact with mom,
Speaker 3: but really did want to find out who her real
Speaker 3: biological father was. And that made sense and it was
Speaker 3: a good thing. I thought it was a great thing.
Speaker 2: Michelle Leonard, the DNA detective who was key in helping
Speaker 2: Becky confirm that she was, without a doubt, Diane Down's
Speaker 2: biological daughter, reached out again, and this time with news
Speaker 2: about Becky's paternal side.
Speaker 5: It's been several weeks since we all convened with Michelle
Speaker 5: at the DNA detective and Becky and now Michelle had
Speaker 5: some breakthroughs in your case, Becky, So I wanted to
Speaker 5: have this meeting so we could go over her findings
Speaker 5: and I'll turn it over to you, Michelle.
Speaker 4: Okay, Hi, Melissa, Hi, Becky H. So last time we
Speaker 4: had a session where we talked about my first impressions
Speaker 4: of your DNA results, and there were some important clues
Speaker 4: that I was able to share with you at that
Speaker 4: time about your recent immigrant ancestry coming from areas like Poland,
Speaker 4: Ukraine and perhaps the Netherlands. But this time, what we're
Speaker 4: going to do is much more of a deep dive
Speaker 4: into your actual DNA matches and their ancestry, and I'm
Speaker 4: going to go through the research I've been doing and
Speaker 4: talk you through how I've come to certain conclusions about
Speaker 4: your paternal ancestry.
Speaker 2: Jumping off from the jackpot match she previously discovered, Michelle
Speaker 2: was able to narrow down the relationship of the match.
Speaker 4: You've spent you know, most of your life wondering about,
Speaker 4: and to see it in black and white is a
Speaker 4: big thing. It really is. And of course you have
Speaker 4: what I named the jackpot match, a paternal match sharing
Speaker 4: around the same amount of DNA as your maternal uncle. Therefore,
Speaker 4: this is a very close paternal relative. And I had
Speaker 4: worked out the last time that it has to either
Speaker 4: be a paternal half sister because this is a female match,
Speaker 4: or a paternal full aunt. The other option was grandparent,
Speaker 4: but that doesn't work because this person is matching to
Speaker 4: all of the different clusters of matches that I'm seeing
Speaker 4: on your paternal side, so that means she's matching to
Speaker 4: both your paternal grandparents. Therefore, she can only be a
Speaker 4: paternal half sister or aunt. But of course she doesn't
Speaker 4: have a name. She just has a user name with
Speaker 4: a set of letters and numbers that aren't easy to decipher,
Speaker 4: and she doesn't have a tree, So we need to
Speaker 4: look at other matches to try to get to the
Speaker 4: bottom of this and try and work out who she
Speaker 4: is and who your biological father is. So if we
Speaker 4: scroll down your match list, the first thing you're going
Speaker 4: to know is exactly what I'm saying about all of
Speaker 4: these maternal matches. I have been grouping your matches into
Speaker 4: color coded clusters, if you like, So I've been putting
Speaker 4: all the maternal matches into one group, and the maternal
Speaker 4: matches are here, and you'll see that as you scroll down.
Speaker 4: It's maternal, maternal, maternal, maternal, maternal, and the first useful
Speaker 4: match that doesn't match to your maternal matches is this one.
Speaker 4: And we're going to call this man Hugo Kowalski.
Speaker 2: Just to note, Michelle isn't using any real names in
Speaker 2: order to make sure the identity of Becky's paternal relatives
Speaker 2: stay private.
Speaker 4: So Hugo Kowalski is a pseudonym of my making, and
Speaker 4: he is the first interesting paternal match. Now he's sharing
Speaker 4: much less DNA than your massive jackpot match, of course,
Speaker 4: only one hundred and thirty eight centi morgans. But if
Speaker 4: we look at the probability chart for that, we'll see
Speaker 4: that it tells us it's fifty percent likely that this
Speaker 4: is a second cousin, once removed a half second cousin,
Speaker 4: a first cousin, three times removed a half first cousin Dwight.
Speaker 4: He's removed lots relationships there.
Speaker 2: In order to start untangling the complicated web of potential relationships,
Speaker 2: Michelle has to dive into the relationships and start putting
Speaker 2: together a family tree. Sometimes the information is geographical, so
Speaker 2: the work Michelle is doing requires more than just the
Speaker 2: ability to analyze d and A results.
Speaker 4: If you look at a tree and you say, okay,
Speaker 4: here's me, here's my parent, here's my grandparent, here's my
Speaker 4: great grandparents. So that's that number of generations removed from
Speaker 4: the common ancestors. And then you say, okay, here's a cousin,
Speaker 4: there's their parent, there's their grandparent, and there's the same
Speaker 4: great grandparents. Okay, so we're on exactly the same level.
Speaker 4: It is so much easier when you look at it
Speaker 4: visually than when you're trying to explain it in words.
Speaker 4: But it is all to do with the number of
Speaker 4: generations away from the common ancestors between the two people.
Speaker 4: And that's so so important in this case because we've
Speaker 4: got all these relationships to look at, but how do
Speaker 4: we narrow them down? So Hugo is a great match
Speaker 4: to get on his own, but as you can see,
Speaker 4: there's only one shared match with him, and that shared
Speaker 4: match also has ancestry that goes back to Ukraine, but
Speaker 4: also an area that a lot of people call Galicia,
Speaker 4: the Galicia area of eastern Europe. So when people immigrated
Speaker 4: from this area to the United States or other countries
Speaker 4: in the eighteen and nineteen hundreds, often they would say
Speaker 4: they're from Galicia, but sometimes they would say they're from Poland.
Speaker 4: Sometimes they'd say they're from the Ukraine. Sometimes they'd say
Speaker 4: they're from Austria. Sometimes they say they're from Hungary. It
Speaker 4: was part of the Austro Hungarian Empire at one point.
Speaker 4: So that's why you might see in summer older records
Speaker 4: someone says they're from Austria when an actual fact, they're
Speaker 4: from the Ukraine as we would know it now. So
Speaker 4: this is the area that you have strong ancestry from,
Speaker 4: and very recent strong ancestry from. Found a cousin, if
Speaker 4: he is perhaps a first of one of your grandparents,
Speaker 4: then I want to know who his parents and grandparents were. Well.
Speaker 4: I could only get as far as his parents because
Speaker 4: they were both immigrants and they came from the Galicia
Speaker 4: region to Canada.
Speaker 2: Once Michelle has names and backgrounds, she starts doing a
Speaker 2: deep dive on social media accounts and even obituaries in
Speaker 2: order to find potential relationships. Michelle continues to unpack the
Speaker 2: relationships that unfall from this discovery, naming cousins, grandparents, aunts,
Speaker 2: and uncles down the paternal line. The lions cross and
Speaker 2: get somewhat complicated, but thanks for a visual buildout, Michelle
Speaker 2: is able to keep everything together.
Speaker 4: And I do a lot of Facebook slothing to try
Speaker 4: and work these things. So that is a good way
Speaker 4: to go. So I built a few lines out and
Speaker 4: I looked at Vadim and Ella in particular, and I
Speaker 4: found that they had a door. Melissa was the act
Speaker 4: or of the eighteen eighties, and I traced Melissa's line
Speaker 4: forward and she married a man named Walter have Lenko. Now,
Speaker 4: this is one of these moments that I call a
Speaker 4: Eureka moment because we've seen that name before. And I
Speaker 4: call it a Eureka moment because it's that moment where
Speaker 4: while we're building this large jigsaw puzzle and we're putting
Speaker 4: these pieces on the board, two of the most important
Speaker 4: pieces have come together.
Speaker 2: And then Michelle's one step closer to Becky's father.
Speaker 4: And I also was able to source John and Esther's obituaries,
Speaker 4: and those obituaries told me that they only had those
Speaker 4: two children. They only had those two daughters. Now, looking
Speaker 4: at this, I was convinced at this point that these
Speaker 4: two people are your direct ancestors. You descend directly from
Speaker 4: Esther and John. You have DNA to both their of ancestors,
Speaker 4: and they come together in Canada. So I believe you
Speaker 4: descend from one of their children. Yes, okay, So looking
Speaker 4: at these people Esther and John, if you descend directly
Speaker 4: from them, they were born in the early nineteen hundreds
Speaker 4: in the Ukraine. They emigrated to Canada, and they had
Speaker 4: these two children in the nineteen thirties. You're born in
Speaker 4: the nineteen eighties. We're looking for a biological father for you,
Speaker 4: born around the nineteen fifties. Perhaps, therefore, this next generation,
Speaker 4: the daughters of Esther and John, this has to be
Speaker 4: your grandparent generation. One of these two women is almost
Speaker 4: certainly your grandmother.
Speaker 2: And from the grandparents, Michelle is able to narrow down
Speaker 2: the connection even more.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, so Katia, I've called her Katia Pavlenko, born
Speaker 4: in the thirties in Canada. And guess what she went
Speaker 4: to the United States. And guess what she did in
Speaker 4: the United States. She got married to a man who
Speaker 4: came from the Netherlands.
Speaker 6: Oh.
Speaker 4: I found they got divorced in a particular state in
Speaker 4: the United States in the nineteen seventies. And later I
Speaker 4: found that they had married in the fifties and they
Speaker 4: had three children. I have used the surname Jensen for
Speaker 4: your paternal grandfather. So I've called him Yan Jensen. He
Speaker 4: was born in the twenties in Northern Holland in the Netherlands.
Speaker 4: He immigrated to Canada as an infant, and in the
Speaker 4: nineteen fifties he came to the United States permanently. But
Speaker 4: I have found a great document from the nineteen forties
Speaker 4: where he's crossing the border, and it actually gives us
Speaker 4: some information on his description, a description of his appearance.
Speaker 4: It tells us he's six foot three inches in height,
Speaker 4: got a fair complexion, very tall, blonde, blue eyes, quite
Speaker 4: typical Netherlands male description.
Speaker 6: There. So a really interesting fact when I was young
Speaker 6: and started asking questions about who my biological mother and
Speaker 6: father were, I was actually given that exact description for
Speaker 6: what my biological father was.
Speaker 2: And from this description of Becky's grandfather, she understands that
Speaker 2: the description that's been given of her biological father is
Speaker 2: most likely accurate.
Speaker 4: So at this point I found that Katia Pavlenko married
Speaker 4: this Dutch Man, Yan Jensen, in the United States and
Speaker 4: they had three children. Now, Yan passed away a few
Speaker 4: years ago, and I did find his obituary as well,
Speaker 4: which confirmed that he had immigrated to Canada as an
Speaker 4: infant and had come to the United States in nineteen
Speaker 4: fifty and that he'd lived in Oregon. Wow, and that's
Speaker 4: where he had died. So Yan and Katya had three
Speaker 4: children during their marriage between the nineteen fifties and the
Speaker 4: early nineteen seventies when they divorced, and those three children Matt,
Speaker 4: Richard and Louisa. Now, at this point I was fairly
Speaker 4: certain on who had to be your biological father.
Speaker 2: And now with Becky's father identified, Michelle takes a somewhat
Speaker 2: careful approach of identifying him to Becky, starting with some
Speaker 2: of the questions she's had.
Speaker 4: First off, I remember that it says that he was
Speaker 4: a little younger than Diane. That's true, he was slightly
Speaker 4: younger than Diane. Another thing is, of course, the appearance,
Speaker 4: the description. And I'm just going to sharing for a
Speaker 4: second and read a couple of things here.
Speaker 6: I just saw in there it says he's still living.
Speaker 4: He is still alive.
Speaker 5: Yes, Becky, how do you feel right now? I'm looking
Speaker 5: at you on the screen.
Speaker 2: Your face is blank. What are you thinking.
Speaker 6: I'm trying not to cry.
Speaker 5: Let's just take a moment.
Speaker 2: This is really monumental, really monumental, and I don't want
Speaker 2: this to be trivializer dismissed.
Speaker 5: This is really massive.
Speaker 6: He's alive, which means that he's most likely known about me,
Speaker 6: And that's what's pretty hard for me right now. If
Speaker 6: I remove all emotion from it, I'm super curious what
Speaker 6: his name is, because you know, Diane had given me
Speaker 6: a certain name, and I'd heard names over the years
Speaker 6: and stuff. So it's I mean, there's that curiosity of
Speaker 6: who he is with the emotional part removed, but there's
Speaker 6: also the emotional part that's just flooding right now.
Speaker 4: So we're at the point now where one of the
Speaker 4: sons of Jan Jensen and Katia Pavlenko must be your
Speaker 4: biological father. And I believe it is their son that
Speaker 4: has been named Matt Jensen. And I'm going to go
Speaker 4: over some of the additional evidence for that that isn't
Speaker 4: just the DNA. I have found a description of him
Speaker 4: which tells us that he has six foot three inches
Speaker 4: tall and has brown hair, which completely matches the description
Speaker 4: already given.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Additionally, there's location. This Matt Jensen is on a US
Speaker 4: index with an address in Cottage Grove, Oregon. Now, the
Speaker 4: date of this address isn't given, but it is prior
Speaker 4: to nineteen ninety three, and I have tracked where he
Speaker 4: was in the nineteen seventies. Therefore, he has to have
Speaker 4: been living in Cottage Grove in the nineteen eighties, which
Speaker 4: means he was in the right place at the right time.
Speaker 2: Becky also learns that she has a half sister. Michelle
Speaker 2: reveals this information to Becky and explains this could be
Speaker 2: another potential point of contact.
Speaker 5: How does that make you fail, Becky? Hearing you have
Speaker 5: a half sister.
Speaker 6: Hopeful Christy and Danny didn't want a relationship with me,
Speaker 6: which I completely respected, it understood, But I mean maybe
Speaker 6: this person might or you know, maybe it would just
Speaker 6: be nice to know them. I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 6: It's all a lot, it's overwhelming right now, but I'm ready.
Speaker 4: You know, it's very hard to take such news like
Speaker 4: this in and it takes time. It takes time to
Speaker 4: take it in and to understand it and to come
Speaker 4: to terms with it.
Speaker 2: With Becky's mother being who she is, Michelle is ready
Speaker 2: with the background information of Becky's father, confirming that he's
Speaker 2: nothing like Diane.
Speaker 4: I have not been able to find anything for your
Speaker 4: biological father. Other than he's a successful man. He runs
Speaker 4: a business. There's no criminal record. Rather than a speeding fine,
Speaker 4: I think nothing of any That's where I got the
Speaker 4: description of his physical features. A thirty dollars speeding fine
Speaker 4: is the worst thing I can find for him. He
Speaker 4: is educated, he comes across as intelligent. His daughter is
Speaker 4: a high flying person in her chosen profession. I can't
Speaker 4: find anything about the family that gives me any concerns
Speaker 4: as to who they are. There's no news clippings of
Speaker 4: him having done anything wrong at all. That's good.
Speaker 6: So I have a question. Was he a reporter? Yes,
Speaker 6: that's what we all thought.
Speaker 2: And now the only step that remains for Becky is contact.
Speaker 2: Michean and Becky avoided contacting the jack Pop Match previously
Speaker 2: in order to prevent jeopardizing any chance Becky may have
Speaker 2: and making contact.
Speaker 4: Now you remember, I was very reticent contacting the Jackpot
Speaker 4: match because I thought, if it's a half sister, we
Speaker 4: could be opening that can of worms and taking away
Speaker 4: his chance to tell her himself if he wanted to.
Speaker 4: And so it's a good thing that now we know
Speaker 4: for sure that that is who she is, that we
Speaker 4: didn't go take that route.
Speaker 6: I agree, because if she doesn't know, that would be
Speaker 6: kind of a scare awakening exactly.
Speaker 4: We could have blundered in with a message, Hey, you're
Speaker 4: a close match, who are you? Blah blah blah, and
Speaker 4: we might have got the answer much quicker and easier,
Speaker 4: but we could have taken away your chance of having
Speaker 4: any meaningful contact if that upset your biological father and
Speaker 4: he decided he didn't want to know because we had
Speaker 4: blundered in and told his daughter something that is Yeah.
Speaker 2: What begins to dawn on Becky is that he's been
Speaker 2: near her the entire time and has likely known as
Speaker 2: relationships for this entire time.
Speaker 4: In general, it's often said, especially in the United States,
Speaker 4: that it's better for something personal to come in this situation.
Speaker 4: That might be true, and it might not. I don't
Speaker 4: know for sure, but I wouldn't want you to send
Speaker 4: a letter that outlines everything. If he and his wife
Speaker 4: are people that open each other's male and his wife
Speaker 4: opens it, and that's how she finds out, and that's
Speaker 4: that's then a big problem. If you decided on a
Speaker 4: letter to his address, then it would have to be
Speaker 4: something much more general to begin with, until you could
Speaker 4: get some way of being able to communicate with him
Speaker 4: that you were one hundred percent sure is private him
Speaker 4: and him only.
Speaker 6: Yeah, most definitely. I mean, I'm curious about so many things.
Speaker 6: I mean about who he is and his life and
Speaker 6: how he knew Diane, and you know, if he really
Speaker 6: thought about me, you know, all that stuff. But it's
Speaker 6: just been a really long time that I've had those questions,
Speaker 6: and now I have the chance to ask them, and
Speaker 6: I'm I'm scared.
Speaker 2: After Michelle revealed Becky's father's identity to her, including his
Speaker 2: immediate family location, and other details including biological information in
Speaker 2: some online and public information about him, she did, in
Speaker 2: fact reach out. He has declined to participate in the podcast,
Speaker 2: so this information is being left out in order to
Speaker 2: preserve his public autonomy. Becky reached out carefully through a letter,
Speaker 2: explaining very generally what her purpose was and locating him,
Speaker 2: and gave her number. He contacted her through what appeared
Speaker 2: to be a burner phone, and after confirming her identity
Speaker 2: and purpose, he declined to speak at length with her
Speaker 2: or answer any of her questions, with the lingering promise
Speaker 2: that he would reach out to her after the holidays.
Speaker 2: Becky took some time to absorb this information, to reconcile
Speaker 2: her thoughts and feelings, and what we leave you with
Speaker 2: now is an end to Becky's journey.
Speaker 6: In her own words, he's known that I've been who
Speaker 6: I am for at least ten years. I've been in
Speaker 6: the media, and he's chosen to stay out of my
Speaker 6: life and continues to choose. So I respect it. That's
Speaker 6: all I can do. I don't know, but he made
Speaker 6: it extremely clear that he is not interested. I mean,
Speaker 6: he used a burner phone to contact me, and the
Speaker 6: only reason I think that he even contacted me was
Speaker 6: because he knows I was looking for him, and I'm
Speaker 6: assuming he knows that I wouldn't stop until I found him.
Speaker 6: But more so, I think that he contacted me to
Speaker 6: guarantee that I would not put his information out there.
Speaker 6: And as soon as I promised him I wouldn't, he
Speaker 6: didn't want anything to do with me. So that sucks.
Speaker 6: I mean, that's hard. I don't understand it. You know,
Speaker 6: my son out there, when he looks for me, I'm
Speaker 6: going to be so excited and so ready for him
Speaker 6: to be a part of my life and answer any
Speaker 6: questions that he may have and just embrace him into
Speaker 6: my life fully. My biological father, I think is scared.
Speaker 6: He and it's understandable. I mean, he slept with an
Speaker 6: infamous killer and it produced a child that's now gone
Speaker 6: into the media and been pretty out there. So if
Speaker 6: I were him, I guess I'd be embarrassed. Maybe I
Speaker 6: don't know, or it would just be a secret that
Speaker 6: I would want to keep, and I think that that's
Speaker 6: what it is for him, as a secret he wants
Speaker 6: to keep, which means that that secret is me and
Speaker 6: I have to remain at a distance. I guess he
Speaker 6: had said that maybe around Christmas he would contact me,
Speaker 6: but honestly, I am not holding my breath. I think
Speaker 6: that what I did get from him was probably all
Speaker 6: that I'm going to get from him, and it was
Speaker 6: just a bunch of promises to answer questions in the
Speaker 6: future and then telling me to never contact him again.
Speaker 6: So I got no real answers. I sought out to
Speaker 6: find him I did. It was disappointing, but it just
Speaker 6: reconfirms how amazing my parents are and how grateful I
Speaker 6: am that I have such loving parents. My dad would
Speaker 6: you know, my dad would do anything to see me
Speaker 6: happy and to see me smile and to know that
Speaker 6: I'm loved and that's important. Not a biological father and
Speaker 6: not hanging on his every you know promise, But my
Speaker 6: real father, my adopted father, is my real father, because
Speaker 6: he is the one who has been there for every
Speaker 6: scrape me, every broken heart, every challenge my life and
Speaker 6: to celebrate all of the good as well. He has
Speaker 6: always been there and he is a very very good man,
Speaker 6: and I am grateful to have him as just the
Speaker 6: same as my mom. I mean, she's amazing and she
Speaker 6: was always there for me and she still is. And
Speaker 6: I have amazing parents and if nothing else from this journey,
Speaker 6: it has confirmed that they are all that I need.
Speaker 6: I don't need Diane Downs in my life. I don't
Speaker 6: need this new biological father in my life. I need
Speaker 6: my real parents, my adopted parents, the ones that love me,
Speaker 6: the ones that chose me, the ones that would do
Speaker 6: anything to see me safe and happy and left. What
Speaker 6: were my thoughts on the journey? Good and bad? It
Speaker 6: has been And it's been a wild ride for sure.
Speaker 6: I mean, there's been a lot of interesting facts that
Speaker 6: have come to light and a lot of disappointing ones.
Speaker 6: I mean, it's hard to be denied by people you
Speaker 6: share blood with. Even if I don't want them to
Speaker 6: be my family, you know, it's still hurts my heart
Speaker 6: a little bit that they deny me, which is so weird.
Speaker 6: I understand. It's like I don't want to know them,
Speaker 6: but I want them to know me in a sense
Speaker 6: I don't know. I don't want to know them, but
Speaker 6: I want them to want to know me, if that
Speaker 6: makes any sense. It's just weird. I don't even understand myself.
Speaker 6: But you know, I denied by Diane, denied by her brother,
Speaker 6: now denied by my biological father. It's it has made
Speaker 6: me extremely grateful for this life that I have. I
Speaker 6: have an amazing fiance, I have parents that I would
Speaker 6: never ever ever want to change. I've got a son
Speaker 6: who makes me so proud and so happy, and you know,
Speaker 6: I have a sister, and I just my life is
Speaker 6: full of love. I will continue my journey as strong
Speaker 6: as I ever have been. I'm grateful that I found
Speaker 6: my biological father and that I got some of the
Speaker 6: answers that I've been searching for. But it doesn't change
Speaker 6: who I am. It doesn't change my presence on this earth.
Speaker 6: I'm here to be a good mother, a girl friend,
Speaker 6: a good wife, a good daughter. None of that is
Speaker 6: affected by who I came from. Diane Downs does not
Speaker 6: control who I am or who I continue to be.
Speaker 6: She was just somewhere that housed me for nine months.
Speaker 6: You know. It's that's all she was. She's not a mother.
Speaker 6: She's not someone that I care for or that I
Speaker 6: wish to have a part of my life. She was
Speaker 6: my incubator, and I mean in a sense I'm grateful
Speaker 6: for that, because if she hadn't gotten pregnant or continued
Speaker 6: her pregnancy, I wouldn't be here. So for that, I guess,
Speaker 6: thank you, Diane Downs. But other than that, that's all
Speaker 6: she's ever been for me. Never my mother. I have
Speaker 6: never once referred to dian Down's as my mother. She
Speaker 6: is my biological mother. She may be my blood, but
Speaker 6: she would never be my mother. I've met some great
Speaker 6: people on this journey. The iHeartRadio staff and Melissa More
Speaker 6: have just been godsends. They've been amazing. Some of the
Speaker 6: people that we've met and interviewed have been wonderful. It's
Speaker 6: been so great to meet kind, caring, honest people that
Speaker 6: are truly concerned about me. And in my journey due
Speaker 6: to where I came from, and they want to help
Speaker 6: and they wanted to, you know, answer any questions that
Speaker 6: they could, because they truly care and they are decent
Speaker 6: human beings, and for that I am grateful. We got
Speaker 6: a lot of answers, we found out some information. We
Speaker 6: are continuing to find out information as we go. Therefore,
Speaker 6: we are working on some projects in the FIEL. So
Speaker 6: for the listeners that want to know more, there quite
Speaker 6: possibly could be more in the future that you're gonna
Speaker 6: want to hear and you're gonna want to know. But
Speaker 6: for now, I'm content, I'm happy, I'm healthy, I'm loved.
Speaker 6: I'm grateful for this journey. It didn't go as I
Speaker 6: had hoped or planned, but it gave me the closure
Speaker 6: that I needed that I've been searching for since I
Speaker 6: was eleven years old. I can close that chapter of
Speaker 6: my life and not have to look back on it
Speaker 6: anymore or wonder or have questions. I can just live
Speaker 6: this amazing life that I have and appreciate everyone and
Speaker 6: everything in it.
Speaker 2: Ben Bolan is our executive producer. Melissa Moore is our
Speaker 2: co executive producer. Maya Cole is our primary producer. Paul
Speaker 2: Dekkant is our supervising producer, Sam Tgarnan is our researcher,
Speaker 2: and Matt Riddle is our story editor. Featured music by
Speaker 2: dream Tent Happy Phase Presents. To Phase is a production
Speaker 2: of iHeartRadio