Reuniting With My Family 34 Years After Being Adopted

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This woman has shared her emotional and deeply personal experience of meeting her biological family in Romania for the first time, in a journey she says she never intended to take. The reunion was not something Marissa Gonzalez, from Miami, Florida, USA had planned. In fact, when she first began the process of reconnecting with her roots, her goal had nothing to do with family. Her intention was simply to secure a European passport. Thinking long-term about future opportunities for herself - and possibly her future children.

Transcript

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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