00:00So this is going to be my follow-up video to me meeting my biological family. I just want to say
00:04thank you so much for your DMs and for your comments. I appreciate all the support that I'm
00:08getting along this journey and I also love connecting with other adoptees. I've been able
00:14to connect with many more Romanian adoptees so that's really cool. So I think I'm going to do
00:19like a two or three part series in terms of me meeting my biological family and in this first
00:25part I'm going to say how this all happened. I went into this entire thing this entire journey
00:32me starting to figure out you know Romania visiting Romania and trying to get my passport and a new
00:39birth certificate. I went into all of this not wanting to meet them because I it just I didn't
00:45want to I didn't really care and I know many adoptees that's like the first thing they want
00:49to do is try to look for their biological family try to reconnect with them and that's not that
00:54wasn't something that I initially wanted to do. My main priority was getting a European passport
01:00because I was thinking of the long game I'm thinking about my future children if I ever have
01:05children I want them to have multiple options and not be stuck to one country so that was a whole
01:10reasoning for me even starting this entire journey to begin with. The only reason that this even
01:14happened this weekend was because of the new segment that the Romanian news did on me the last time that
01:20I was here in March. They said that they thought this was an April Fool's joke because the news
01:24segment actually came out on April 1st so when they saw it on the news they were like this is this has
01:29to be some sort of joke and that's when they found my socials and were you know kind of bombarding me
01:34with a bunch of messages and I'm not gonna lie at first the messages were very overwhelming so I had
01:40to I had to deactivate my social media because it was just getting too too much it was too much for me to
01:46kind of like take it all at once. I even made a video talking about how I felt last month. Anyways
01:53so I decided you know coming back to Romania this time around I decided to go ahead and meet them
02:00and I did it mostly for them. It wasn't even for me I did it for them. I did it because I know that
02:05they really wanted to meet me not because I wanted to and to be honest I'm kind of glad that I did.
02:11I learned a lot. A narrative that I was told growing up actually changed after this this meeting
02:19with them. I was constantly told that my mom abused you know my siblings. I learned that my mom put us
02:26up for adoption because my dad passed away two weeks before I was born and she couldn't handle taking care
02:34of her children all by herself and she made it adamant that she wanted a legal adoption which I found
02:43to be very you know kind of comforting. The fact that my mom wanted it to be legal and not an illegal
02:50adoption because as many of you guys know Romania did a lot of illegal adoptions so I was lucky enough
02:59that mine was a legal adoption which has kind of made this whole process easier. Not necessarily
03:05saying it's an easy process but it's made it a lot easier than other people that I've talked to. The day
03:11meeting them was extremely overwhelming. I felt like I was performing the entire time. It didn't feel
03:17genuine on my part. Also I'm not very emotional so they were all crying. It takes a lot for me to cry
03:26and again I felt like I was performing. It felt like an act the entire time. I also don't know
03:32the language so it's really hard to communicate with them. So again it was just very overstimulating
03:37overwhelming. I still don't know how I feel about the entire interaction to be honest. This is why I
03:42feel like this is going to be like a three-part series. This is just the initial the initial feeling
03:47of how I feel right now and another thing that I also feel is extremely blessed and extremely lucky
03:56to have been adopted. Seeing the town that I was born in was extremely depressing. Very very depressing.
04:04I wanted to get out of there as fast as possible and it just made me realize how lucky I am to have
04:10been adopted. How lucky I am to have been adopted and lived in Miami. How lucky I am for the opportunity
04:19that I had in my life. Especially seeing the people in that town. So yeah I think I'm going to stop it
04:24here. If you have any questions please you know feel free to ask and I'll answer. I think that's going
04:30to be the best way to kind of bounce off the comment sections. But yeah so that's my follow-up. My initial
04:38follow-up. Once I have more time to really decompress and really process everything I will make another
04:44follow-up video about it. But right now this is my initial reaction. Again I felt very performative.
04:50It felt ingenuine on my part. But again I think that's normal. And yeah so I guess that's it for this part.
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