world series part one

here you go, you freaks

I’ve debated releasing this newsletter because it ultimately feels a little too personal but I’m sharing it in hopes that people can understand adoption better, that there is a very heavy side of adoption that adoptees will carry forever. I’m also writing this because there’s so many people I care about that are invested in me and this story and I want to be able to give 100% because the more I tell this story, the more robotic it feels but the meaning has never diminished behind the words. It feels weird because this story is still happening and I’m nervous about the people involved reading it but then I remind myself that this is staying true to who I am as a writer.

If you’ve known me for longer than a single minute you know how passionate I am about the Los Angeles Dodgers. And yes I grew up in South Florida and yes I loved the Florida Marlins very much. My house was exactly one mile from Joe Robbie Stadium, which I refuse to call by any other name. I remember begging my mom to get a newspaper on the corner of Pembroke Rd and 441 when the Marlins won the 1997 World Series and then 6 years later I would drive myself to that same corner to get a newspaper when they won again in 2003. I loved the Florida Marlins but when they became the Miami Marlins that is when I slipped away and became the fervent LA Dodgers fan I am today. For most of my adult life I’ve felt very Angeleno- the Florida girl in me disappearing a little more each year I add a punch to my LA card. So much so that I even had to google the intersection of Pembroke Rd and 441 to make sure I was right, the Broward county street names becoming fuzzy remnants of my childhood.

At the end of September, my phone pinged with a message from someone on Substack. I haven’t written in awhile (sorry!) but I had posted a Tiktok a week earlier seeking out other adoptees who have reunited with their birth parents and how that worked out for them. I still hadn’t texted or called the number I had for my birth mom but I knew that moment was closing in. I needed some sort of kick to make it happen and I was less looking for people to share their feelings and more looking for people to list cold hard facts about the reunification experience. Instead I quickly got overwhelmed by a bunch of extremely well meaning adoptees trying to share their entire adoption story with me and I bailed.

I thought the message on Substack had something to do with my Tiktok- someone found my adoption newsletter and wanted to talk. I opened it up to find someone wanting to talk about adoption, but specifically wanting to talk about my adoption. The sender was my biological first cousin and she found me through 23andme. Her name is a name that I’ve glanced at on my relatives list every time I’ve opened the app. A name who’s profile I’ve clicked a dozen times but never reached out to. A name that first made me joke that maybe I’m a Jersey girl because her profile put her hometown somewhere in that state. I had completely forgotten that a few months before this name appeared in my inbox that this name had asked to connect with me on 23andme. I was going through a slight depression at the time and had clicked yes and then never gave it another thought because all my thoughts at the time were wrapped up in something else. Something else that is now so insignificant in comparison.

My cousin found my Substack (which if you’re reading this, hi) and wanted to reach out to connect and offer any information I wanted to know while also respecting any boundaries I had. Little did she know in this instance, I had not a single boundary to be found anywhere. It was a moment, a message, a connection I’ve been hoping to happen my whole life. I wanted someone, something, literally anything to do this work for me. I needed a bridge between me and the phone number sitting idly on my phone. It was the final sign that it was time.

I responded and we took it to email. I would spend the next week sitting at coffee shops devouring every single word she wrote that revealed new details about my birth family. Her words unlocking a cypher written specifically for me that I finally was given the chance to decode. I did come from somewhere, I did have birth parents. They were and are real people existing in the same world as me. It felt like I finally saw Bigfoot in 4D. I would read and reread every word of her emails as if it they were birthing a new person inside me. It was lore related to me for the first time in my life. Lore that was my lore. I was floating.

We emailed throughout the Dodgers versus the Padres National League Division Series. I am a long time certified Padres Hater and this was my own World Series. Two years ago the Dodgers lost to the Padres in this same series and initiated a reputation for being the best team in the league to suffer a first round exit. The morning after the Dodgers were eliminated by the Padres in 2022, I saw a man in a Dodger hat kneeling in front of a church, an image I will simply never forget or recover from. So two years later I needed the Dodgers to beat the Padres. I needed these reputation rumors to go away. And I also needed them to go to game 5 because I had been gifted free tickets. I was filled with anxiety over a game of baseball at the same time I was receiving some of the most crucial emails of my life.

The Dodgers won the series and I did get to go to game 5. I watched Tatis Jr. get out at first (hell yeah) by a throw from Kiké Hernandez at third to seal the series win. I yelled so much my chest felt like I smoked one thousand cigarettes. I didn’t sit for the last two innings and I was drenched in sweat. During the game I talked here and there with my friend about how I was Facetiming with my cousin, my biological one, that Sunday. But then we beat the Padres. My priorities were scattered.

Game 5 where we beat the Padres and put the rumors to rest ;)

The day of the Facetime came and I was scheduled to work and the Dodgers were scheduled to begin game one of the National League Championship Series. My Facetime was at 9 and right before the call I answered a few texts from friends asking me the hit question of October- “where are you watching the game?” and my unfortunate answer for that day was “ahhh sorry I have to work :(” as if nothing else of importance was happening in my life that day.

Then the Facetime happened. I saw her. I loved her. For the first time ever, I'm also sort of her. There's parts of me that are parts of her. There's never been parts of me anywhere else besides on me. And now they’re on a screen. They’re real. For the first time in my life, I'm tangible outside of my own body. It’s weird. It’s good. It’s weird.

We talked for about an hour. I could talk to her for many hours. We get right into it. I tell her what I know and she tells me the rest. She tells me my mom is funny. She tells me I have one million aunts. She tells me my family is very Greek. She tells me my parents are divorced. She tells me they lived in Queens. She tells me they moved to Ft. Lauderdale. She tells me our moms are close and talk every day. She tells me everyone is from Philly and Jersey and New York. I tell her I know about my brother. She tells me I’m right. She tells me I actually have four siblings. She tells me we all have the same parents. She tells me they don’t know I exist. She tells me I look like them.

She tells me I have four full siblings who don’t know I exist.

I immediately experience grief. I didn’t make a web series about finding four siblings, I made a web series about finding one. I didn’t write one hundred drafts of a pilot about finding two sisters and two brothers, I wrote one hundred drafts of a pilot about finding one single brother. I have thought about my brother since I was 17 and now there’s three more. I was only prepared for one brother. I feel like I experienced a litany of deaths. The version of me with one brother died. The version of me growing up with four siblings dead on arrival. I hang up the phone and everything is upside down. I say their names in my head. I am so dizzy I don’t know who to call first. I’m overwhelmed. I think about Greece. I stand up and look around, my apartment dead silent and my cats staring at me. Who do I call? I have too many people to call.

There's too many people that care about me in this moment and I need to tell every single one of them immediately. I am overwhelmed again, but in gratitude. I have too many people that care about me at this moment that I need to tell. Would these people be in my life if I had four siblings? Would these people be pinned in my messages with pics from our trips together and our inside joke group chat names? Would they exist? Would I exist? The person I am would be dead without them and I would not be standing in my silent apartment. If I had four siblings, who would I be? I love who I am. I love every single thing about my life. I’m suddenly numb.

And then I remember she tells me they lived in Queens on the very day the Dodgers were beginning their championship series against New York City’s Queens Residents the Mets. It all feels insane.

I call off work. I throw on workout clothes to go on a walk to process the call and I make sure to throw on some Dodger gear as well. I head to Echo Park, the North Star of Los Angeles during October. I call a friend on my drive. I begin to text people back that actually I am now watching the game at Lowboy. But I thought you had to work? Well, I have four siblings.

I get hammered. I tell everyone. My voice cracks by the end of the night. The Dodgers absolutely rock the Mets. I won. Los Angeles beats Queens today. I needed this. Every moment of my life needed this. I wake up the next morning and take my favorite spin class with an instructor who is adamant about it being more of a cycling class than a spin class. He reminds me of Jeff Probst from Survivor. He kicks my ass every Monday morning at 8:30am. He yells at me to see the finish line in front of me. He plays EDM music so loud the neighbors complain occasionally. He tells me to make this my best 30 seconds yet. I think about my siblings. I recite their names over and over in my head. They have names but they don’t have faces. I think about how I am somehow their eldest sibling. I say their four names again. I am at my favorite spin class and they don’t know. They don’t know anything about me. They don’t know that I live in Los Angeles. They don’t know that in 2019 I ran my first marathon. They don’t know I have two cats named Penny and Nora. They don’t know I lived in Alabama for one year. They don’t know I did UCB for ten years. Do they even know about UCB? They don’t know about me and I know there are four of them. My class ends and there’s so much sweat dripping from my sports bra it feels like I dunked my body in a pool.

And now the Dodgers play game 2 against the Mets on the road to the World Series and all I can think about is the offer from my cousin to set up a meeting between me and my birth mom. An offer I accept and an offer that suddenly makes me feel like a Florida girl again. I spend the next few weeks unlocking scattered memories from the past 38 years of my life, but now with the context that they were there too. They were there this whole time. I’m a different person now, the version of me who walked around this life unaware I had this much family is now gone forever.

And now here is a very dramatic to be continued...

I am leaving the first part of this story free but the next few parts will be behind a pay wall by the insistence of my friends. I might change that but for now if you would like to read the rest you can become a paid subscriber below and I will turn off payments once this story is finished.