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real person anytime, day or night. Yep,

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you heard that right. my

8:00

sister who I had thought, you know, died when

8:02

she was nine days old. And I just looked

8:04

at the photo and I turned it over and

8:07

saw the date was a few months before I

8:09

was born. And

8:11

I said to her, mom, I thought Jodi was

8:13

like a year and a half older, but this

8:15

says this date. And she just

8:17

got really quiet. And in hindsight, she probably

8:20

could have said, oh, someone wrote it wrong.

8:22

But she just got really quiet and she

8:24

says, well, there's something I've been

8:26

meaning to tell you. I think

8:29

maybe you've suspected this, but

8:32

you're adopted. And I'm like, what?

8:35

It feels all over my body right now. Well,

8:37

you know, it's wild. It's like, that's the person

8:39

who's closest to me in my entire life. And

8:43

it almost felt like I was

8:47

in total shock. Of course. But it kind of

8:49

felt like- Did you suspect? No. Yeah. She

8:52

was like, maybe that made her feel

8:54

better. Like you probably knew all along,

8:57

but- Yeah, no, I never suspected. And

8:59

it was wild. And so I went

9:01

on a like multi-year search. Were you

9:03

mad at her? I

9:06

was shocked. I felt like, what else don't I

9:08

know? Yeah, that's what I would think. Who am

9:10

I? Who am I? All

9:13

of it, you know? And in

9:15

hindsight, I think that I had

9:18

like some rebellious years as a teenager. And

9:21

I think maybe it was a blessing I didn't know.

9:24

Because who knows what I would have disappeared

9:26

and done going to look for. I have

9:28

no idea. Sure. Did you ever seek out

9:30

your birth parents? Yeah. By the way, I've

9:32

never even talked about this. I'm so fascinated.

9:35

I haven't shown anything. Yeah. Yeah.

9:40

I started watching all

9:42

of these adoption shows where you'd see like

9:44

the parents run through the wheat field, the

9:46

music playing and reunite. And so I thought,

9:48

that's going to happen. And then

9:50

I was working as a journalist at the time. I

9:54

know you are, yeah. And so I thought,

9:56

I could find out anything. So I would

9:58

just go down these rabbit holes for

10:00

a hours and hours and hours trying

10:02

to find her. And

10:05

year after year went by, I started,

10:08

my mom had given me some paperwork that had her,

10:12

a little bit of info, but I didn't know if it was real and

10:15

it had like a first name and a last

10:17

name that I learned later was not real, but

10:19

I called thousands of women of variations

10:21

of that name over years, just trying

10:24

to see, is this her, is this

10:26

her? And many years later,

10:28

I actually found her through an

10:30

agency, search agency, found her.

10:33

And so now she's in my life, my

10:35

birth mom's, I still don't know my birth

10:37

dad, but yeah, she's in my life and

10:39

I have two brothers and I met her

10:42

in my thirties. Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's amazing.

10:45

Yeah, yeah. Was

10:47

your relationship with your mom, the

10:52

woman who adopted you when you were a baby, was

10:55

that altered forever or were you able

10:57

to get some kind of footing or?

10:59

Yeah, it was tricky. My

11:01

dad who passed away, never wanted me to

11:04

know and they had

11:06

just decided not to tell

11:08

me. And here's what's

11:10

tricky, Hoda in our lives, a lot of

11:12

us go through where we start to parent

11:14

our parents, like everything switches and

11:17

my mom's health is not super great and

11:19

she just passed this last year, but

11:22

she was the closest person to me and I had

11:25

to kind of make this decision of

11:27

do I want to carry resentment? Do

11:29

I want to forgive and

11:32

just love in this remaining

11:34

year she's here in this

11:36

earth? The other thing

11:38

that it taught me that I will keep

11:41

with me forever, I love

11:43

my mom, my mom who passed away, I

11:46

love her Hoda, like

11:48

more than I can ever imagine. Loving's

11:51

like, I love her and

11:54

she is the person that like was by my

11:56

side learning to believe I was worthy. She was

11:58

the person that when days of school, by

40:00

the way. I just have to say, you're just

40:02

like so full of light. I get

40:04

why you and Oprah are friends. I

40:06

get why I'm going to be on your

40:08

podcast. I get all of it. So I

40:11

just want to say congratulations on everything and

40:13

everyone pick up Worthy. It's a great book.

40:15

It's by Jamie Kern Lima. It's Worthy, How

40:17

to Believe You Are Enough and Transform Your

40:19

Life and Again, Simple Steps and Life Changing

40:21

Results. And it's a beautiful book just to

40:23

cover itself. Jamie, thank you so

40:25

much. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. You're

40:27

so good. God, this is so good. This is

40:29

so good. I want to like go run a

40:32

marathon or something. Making

40:39

Space is produced by Alison Berger and

40:41

Alexa Kasavecchia along with Kate Saunders. Our

40:44

associate audio engineer is Juliana Mastorilli.

40:46

Original music by John Estes. Bryson

40:48

Barnes is our head of audio

40:51

production. Missy Dunlop Parsons is our

40:53

executive producer. Libby Leist is the

40:55

executive vice president of Today and

40:57

Lifestyle. Earning

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