144 – Gullah Girl

0:00Hey, it's Damon. I just wanted to take a moment to say thanks and express my heartfelt appreciation to some new contributors to the Who Am I Really Podcast on Patreon. If you don't know, patreon.com is a place where content creators, that's me, can accept support from the community we serve, that's you. You probably know creating the Who Am I Really Podcast takes some time and work, like recording, editing, and so much more. So I'm always appreciative when someone steps up to support the show because your contributions help to keep the show going. If you'd like to support the show, please go to patreon.com slash wai really. This week I'd like to thank Dirk, Karissa, Jonathan, and Yvonne for their support. Now, here's this week's adoptee story. How did that land when you heard that she was an addict? It made sense. Intellectually, it made

1:01sense. But still was something I'd be used to because you know when you're an adoptee, you have these kinds of ideas of your natural family was like, you know, okay, that hardships. Which is true, she did have hardships. But finding out that she did have addiction problems made a lot of sense in my own life. Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? This is who am I? Really? A podcast about adoptees that have located and connected with their biological family members. I'm Damon Davis, and today you're going to hear from Brandy who called me from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. She's an inquisitive person adopted into a family with a history of scholars, which is rare for a black family in the

2:04South. DNA led Brandy to a cousin who was determined to help her figure out their biological connection and which of two men were her birth father. Coincidentally, Brandy studied the music of a uniquely East Coast Southern diaspora of African people, only to learn she was studying the music of her own roots. This is Brandy's journey. When I started chatting with Brandy, she opened with Brandy. I am ready because my story is a little weird and I've been a little weird. So, by her own account, Brandy's an interested character. She was born in Columbia, South Carolina, but she grew up in East Sumter. Brandy was adopted into a family of educators, which she later found out her biological mother wanted for her daughter. So interesting, because when I was going to school later on, they were like, are you first generation? I was like, no, my adopted family, my grandmother had been to college. I'm African-American, black. I'm black,

3:11I'm black, I'm black, I'm black, black, black. So, black, but it was uncommon for the area and my grandmother was born in like the 20s, but she went to school. She went to college and she had children and her children were in education and here I came years later into her family and yeah, I was adopted and wanted to be educated. I took that very far. So, let me pause you for a quick second before you tell me about your education. What I think I hear you saying is you were adopted into a black family of educators, which was not common in the South in South Carolina. So, when you went to college, folks were not really expecting you to have been part of a multi-generational family of people with education. They thought maybe you were a first generation college attendee.

4:12Is that what I'm understanding? Yes, but they didn't expect that when I was a graduate in postgraduate school. Brandy's mom couldn't have children, so a short while after her parents put their feelers out about adopting a child. Brandy was born and was offered to the couple. She was unexpectedly available for adoption as she was born one month early. Her non-identifying information said her birth mother was eight months pregnant instead of nine. She learned later in reunion from her brother that her maternal siblings were all born early to use his words. Brandy also learned that her brother is her cousin. We're getting ahead of ourselves in her story. She grew up in a middle-class black family with several different kinds of siblings. I have two steps and a half. So, my parents got divorced when I was four. And my dad got remarried and my stepmother already had children. She had two children already

5:18and then together they had another child, which is my half. So, I said two steps and a half. Yeah, that's complex. Wow. Yeah, oh, let me tell you, we have diagram. It's diagram for my family, diagram. Did that sort of amalgamation of multiple families and different children from different places? Did that help you to get acclimated in your own family, do you think? Because everybody was from a different place than nobody was different kind of thing? Yes, yes, absolutely. I actually am a person that I'm very comfortable with everyone. And a lot of my friends, they freak out, they say like, how can you deal with this? And I'm like, everyone has a place and everyone is in that place, but they love me. I think if they didn't love me, it wouldn't, it would be a bigger deal, but everyone loves me. So, my adopted family, my mother and her family, my father and his family,

6:22he got married and my stepmother already had children and they had children and so it's just layers of love. I asked Brandy about her desire to search for her biological family. When she wrote to me, her story read like she didn't really want to search, but when we talked, she said that wasn't so. She said being in reunion has altered her sense of identity and that she did want to search. I did. And when I write it, it feels if I didn't, but I really did, because the more I've been accustomed to my biological family, the more than I'm finding who I am. Because, you know, there's this whole idea of native versus nurture that I've grown up with in education and like science and everything, that is not the case. That's pretty much that thrown out the window because I'm very much attached to my adopted family, but I'm not like them.

7:30Right. And I've always been curious and I've found out that it's actually curiosity is from my biological father's family. They're very curious people and I'm very curious and I wasn't trying to replace or trying to find a home because I've always been felt very strongly in my adopted family. I've always felt very much at home. That's exactly right. I've always been curious and I feel as if that desire to know more is not only a familial kind of tree, but a part of me intrinsically. Brandy searched for her biological family quite a bit trying to figure out who she is, but she also didn't want to hurt anyone along the way. Brandy was curious about her origins,

8:32and so was her adoptive mother. Brandy told me she didn't have a hole she needed to fill, but she had a feeling that she was different. Around the time between undergraduate and graduate school, Brandy's curiosity's bubbled up even more. She was a music major at University of South Carolina, the original USC, she said. In 2004, she wrote to the state of South Carolina to get her non-identifying information. She went through as much as she could find, which was nearly nothing. Brandy got her PhD in historical musicology in Pittsburgh, returned to South Carolina, all the while figuring she wanted to learn more about her roots. Brandy took a 23-and-me DNA test, and she got a hit. It was a cousin, 23-and-me and told me it was a cousin, the first cousin, and he called me before. I figured out what was going on. He called me, and it was a thing,

9:34because that side of the family was very inquisitive about what was going on with their DNA, and it turns out that I was a cousin to them, and it was very interesting. So you've made a connection on 23-and-me, and before you even realized there's a connection to explore, your cousin has reached out to you, so tell me about that. Was it emails back and forth? It was New Year's Day that year, it was 2017, and he was like, how are we connected? Oh, this is great. Sunshine and bunny rabbits kind of thing. And I was like, oh, I'm adopted, so I don't really know how we're connected. I'm very excited to be very close to you. He called me on the phone, and he's very excited, and he told his brothers and sisters about me, and like, oh, we have a first cousin, and you know, distant cousins are one thing, but a first cousin, you should know, right?

10:35If you're a first cousin, these are your aunts and uncles' children. And so they were like, oh, how's this happening? And they're very excited. I was very excited to be incorporating their family. They're not really understanding what's going on, but I was like, yeah, I'm down with this, because they're accepting me. And then turns out one of their siblings, the person who we shot to me, his brother was like, oh, she's my daughter. And it did line up, the time lined up, but things around it didn't. Like what? How do you mean? So he would say, okay, I was in the place where you were born around the time you were born, but things in my non-identified information didn't line up to that. My non-identified information said, oh, my biological mother said, she talked to my biological father about possibly existing. And then this person was like, okay,

11:35so I didn't know anything about you. So your understanding was that your biological mother informed your biological father that you were going to be born, but this person whom you've connected with who has said, that's my daughter said he didn't know you existed, which would seem weird. That's it. Okay, got you. All right. Yes. And he did a paternity test. He was not my father. Oh wow. How did I feel for you? Disappointing, but not at the same time. I knew he wasn't my father because I'm very academic in my approach to everything. And I had done enough research to know he may not be my biological father. And I was like, well, his brother has an DNA incomparable to be my half uncle. And so I was like, oh, he's got half uncle and going through

12:42all this process because I don't know if like the people who try to find their biological parents through DNA, it can be crazy. It can be very complicated. Right. So this guy is proven not to be Brandy's biological father. The original cousin Brandy was connected with decided he wanted to figure out who Brandy is related to in their family. At the same time, the TLC television show Long Lost Family was trying to figure things out too, but they couldn't understand Brandy's connections either. She went through two rounds of investigation with the show trying to untangle the mysteries of her past. Plus another search angel, but no one could make the links work. Her new cousin determined sifted through so much information that led him to believe one of his cousins was Brandy's biological father. After a DNA test, that guy showed up as a cousin too. Another miss, but they were getting closer. And then he was like, finally we're going to

13:48get this one guy, the person who took the DNA test for 23 of me, who could possibly be a father, we're going to get his brother to do it. Everything turns out he's my father. He was the good kid versus the guy that we tested was supposed to be the bad kid. He was like, it was going to be anybody, it was going to be this guy. Turned out, this has a brother. Turns out he didn't want to do like a 23-week test or do a paternity test. And I met him in everything. It was a paternity test from the Walmart. He did it. He did that. Wow. That's crazy. How did that feel when you made that connection? Like, oh, it's you. What was that like? Oh, good. But I knew it was him because before he took the test, like we talked to the phone and he said that,

14:48oh, she said, she named you Amanda because my biological mother told my biological father that I existed. But my biological father and the way of Maripovich said, no, it couldn't be interesting. It's very interesting in that I'm his twin. How do you mean? Very much. My sense of humor did not fit into my adoptive family at all. I'm the jokester crazy person out there. Crazy lady. That's me. But with him, it's just, yeah, it's just us. It's both of us. We're crazy. You guys are two peas in a pod. During her investigation into her past, Brandy discovered that her biological mother had lied a lot. She claimed her own mother Brandy's maternal grandmother had passed away that she was stressed out

15:52and pregnant and she needed to relinquish the baby. It sounded like she was creating a hardship case for herself. But Brandy learned her grandmother passed away in 1990. Brandy was born in 1981. Brandy's biological father told her that her biological mother had passed away in 2001. I was curious to know a little bit of what she learned about the woman from her family. I learned that I got a lot of my personality from her. But I also learned that she was an addict. Like my mom, adoptive mom, kind of gave me this. We had this kind of idea of this myth between us that maybe she was like, you know, young and doing what she could. And we couldn't blame her and then found my natural family and it was like, yes, that was the case, but she had my brother pretty much right after me and then was an addict.

17:02How did that land when you heard that she was an addict? It made sense intellectually. It made sense. But still was something I'd be used to. Because you know when you're an adopted, you have these kind of ideas of your natural family was like, you know, okay, they had hardships. Which is true. She did have hardships. But finding out that she did have addiction problems made a lot of sense in my own life. How do you mean? I do believe that I'm predisposed to addiction. I do believe that it's a struggle to not be addicted to substances. And I do believe that I don't really follow addiction as like, you know, the natural understanding of addiction, but I believe that that could happen very easily. Speaking on her feelings of being pulled toward addiction, Brandy said she's never actually

18:06battled addiction, but it was like there was something lurking in the shadows that she had to watch out for even though she couldn't identify it. When I asked how Brandy shared her journey with her adopted family, she said her dad had passed away and probably hadn't truly mulled over what Brandy's search could uncover. She said her mother was supportive the whole way trying to empathize with how the search could unfold. Even now, I'm like, it's so weird because I would go visit my biological family and they're like, okay, hi, how are you? Blah blah blah. How's your mother? They're concerned about her. And she is not very into meeting them. I think she has her own life. It's not even like battles or anything, but she's like scared. But not from any reason other than like being in the center of things. That makes sense. She's very like, hey girl, how are you?

19:07They really want to meet her and she's a little standoffish. Not that she wants to be Sandasha first say, but she's afraid, you know? Yeah, it's a lot coming at her. It's a lot coming at her. Do you keep her up to date on the relationship or do you choose to keep her at arm's length just to protect her? So she gave my father and my grandmother their Christmas gifts. She went through all my baby pictures and like from like when I was young until I'm a teacher now in public school. So now I have again your book pictures. So she put, printed everything out and put it in a book for my natural father and natural grandmother and she gave them gifts. So I'm assuming if she like did this, she'd down for it. Brandy spoke a bit more about her advanced degree in historical musicology. When she left Pittsburgh, she ended up at Coastal Carolina University where she took up

20:12Gullah Studies. The university has an institute for African diaspora studies. And according to Brandy, Gullah is a culture that spans from the eastern corridor of North Carolina down into Jackson ville, Florida. She entered the program to understand the musical underpinning of the area. Brandy had no idea about how the roots she was studying were directly related to herself. So these are African American peoples who are very closely related or not interface with the culture of the mainland. So my people are from Hilton Head, South Carolina. So my people are not really integrated with the mainland culture of South Carolina as a adoptee not knowing that I was actually a part of the culture until about two years later. That's fascinating. What did that change for you in terms of how you identify, how you see yourself, how you see the world, how you see South

21:16Carolina? Tell me more about being identifying and understanding your Gullah roots. It explained a lot. Number one, when I got my DNA results. And I was only about 7% non-African. When the normal person from America is at least about 10 to 15% non-African, I didn't know because it was uncommon. Then finding out that I was not just American, but I was very African. And then I actually had a friend who was from Sierra Leone. And we had so much in common. I didn't know that we had so much in common. You know, just the understanding of nature versus nurture? Yeah, I mean, this is the adoption journey. Yeah, and then I have my siblings. Now I look at my brother,

22:19who's not just my brother, but he's my cousin, my sister, and I'm just like trying to reach out to them because I'm the oldest. Which is weird for them because one of them was the oldest at one point. Now it's you. Yes, now it's me, but my brother knew about me before my mother died. And like apparently she told him you have a sister. Really on her deathbed? Wow. On her deathbed, she told me you have a sister. And so when I reached out to him, she was like, oh, I knew about you. Oh, okay, you know about me. What did you think of when you learned that he knew about you? Because that's some interest. That's your biological mother on her deathbed has revealed a long-held secret to one of her children. Her children, yes. How did that land with you? It landed good, but not understanding. Like he was holding this secret and like he didn't,

23:23I do believe he told our sister about me, but he was incarcerated. I was going in and out of incarceration. So like, do you believe him? It was awful to think about, but it's true. Brandy's not very close to her maternal side. Her biological mother has nieces and nephews that Brandy would like to find one day. She knows who they are. Most of what Brandy talks about is related to her paternal side of the family, which she admitted was odd for her because her documentation suggested he didn't want anything to do with her. Brandy admitted that when her birth father wanted to be involved with her, she was like, okay, cool. As we started to close, I asked Brandy how she was doing navigating it all. She said she's doing really well. Then she explained why she's sharing her story. I really want more people, especially like Black Americans, to understand that even if we are adopted, we do have this simultaneous

24:30culture. Yeah, I hear you. I think what you're saying is like as adoptees and as African-Americans, we have a shared identity as adoptees, but we have an entire global history to discover as African Americans. Absolutely. I really do want to go back to the motherland. I really want to go back and understand African diaspora, just like an understanding of the kind of western African diaspora, where we are, what we're doing is just very, very important. Agreed 100%. Well, I really appreciate you taking time, Brandy, tonight to tell your story. This has been really amazing to hear. I just wish you all the best and you're continued outreach to your cousins and everybody else that you're learning about. I wish you luck. Thank you so much. Yeah,

25:31take care. Thanks for sharing. I'll talk to you later, Brandy. Hey, it's me. It was fascinating to hear Brandy's story as a Black woman in South Carolina, whose birth mother wanted her to be adopted by an educated family, who was not expected to be in the halls of higher education she had earned her way into, and who ended up studying in the music of the gala heritage she is descendant from. She told me she didn't have a hole in her heart to fill, yet she found so much that has explained a lot of who she is, like her birth mother's addiction that she can feel ties to within herself, her inquisitive nature, and her own self-described weirdness. When it works out, one of the best parts of reunion with other people is you end up learning a lot about yourself. I'm Damon Davis and I hope you'll find something in Brandy's

26:33journey that inspires you. Validates your feelings about wanting to search or motivates you to have the strength along your journey to learn. Who am I really? If you would like to share your adoption journey and your attempt to connect with your biological family, please visit whomirallypodcast.com slash share. You can follow the show at facebook.com slash wai really, or follow on twitter at wai really. If the show is meaningful to you, you can support me with a contribution to keep it going on patreon.com slash wai really. Please subscribe to who am I really on Apple podcasts, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts. It would mean so much to me if you took a moment to leave a five star rating there. Those ratings can help others to find the podcast too. And if you're interested, you can check out the story of my adoption journey. Who am I really and adopt the memoir on amazon.com, on Kindle, or as an audiobook, on

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