TrueLife - Adrian Jones - Tragedy, Sacrifice, & Surrender

Episode Date: April 18, 2023

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/https://adrianjones.me/https://open.spotify.com/show/42UDRxSUrSbePpty4746oiAdrian Jones is an amazing individual. He is a Survivor, an Author, a Podcaster, a Storyteller and I’m only beginning to scratch the surface.Today he shares a personal story about a tragic event that leads him down a road of sacrifice…where the only thing left to do is surrender.You will not want to miss this one! One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. Hears through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Seraphini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast. I hope the birds are singing. I hope the sun is shining. I hope you're in the arms of someone you love, and the world is treating you fair.

because that's sometimes the best we can hope for. I'm here with an amazing guest, the one and only Adrian Jones. He's an author, a survivor, a podcaster, a storyteller, and I'm just scratching the surface. He's, if you get a chance, everyone, it will be in the show notes, but check out his podcast called Profound Awesomeness. It's like a giant spotlight in search of stories that inspire others to live a more meaningful life and to seek out the important answers about what makes them who they are. Adrian Jones, thank you so much for being here today. George, thank you for having me. And I love that introduction.

Thank you so much. And since we've started talking to kick off the podcast, some of that Hawaiian sun is making its way here in the Northern California. So it was really cloudy earlier today. And the sun is starting to shine. And who knows, throughout the course of this podcast, may we have a lot more of that Hawaiian sunshine basking down on us here in Northern California. It's so well said. You have such an amazing story. And it's a beautiful and enveloping story. But before we get into that, Adrian, I have some questions that I kind of wanted to use to

break the eyes to set the story up and maybe help people understand who you are and understand the foundation of this podcast. So that being said, I'm going to say something. And I want, I'm going to say something. And I would love to hear your reflections on what I say. say. So let me say it. When I say the word relationships, what do you think about? I think about the most important aspect of my life. Okay. When I say the word meaningful, what do you think about? Things that I like to do with my time. And when I say the word values, what do you think about? Things I hold on to dearly.

I love it. I don't know if I passed the test. I have no idea. But that's what I was thinking about when you ask me. Well, there's no test. It's just this thing that I like to ask people sometimes to kind of give you an idea of what they're thinking at the time you talk to them. And since we're doing a podcast, it's a great way for people to remember some of the things you hold dear and how you define these things. And so, you know, I know that both you and I in our life have gone through some some really challenging moments. And I would think that maybe we've learned a lot from them. And as we begin talking about them, you speak a lot about meaning in some of the stories that you write and in your podcast and the people you seek out to tell stories. Why do you think people should be

looking for meaning in their life? Some people go through their life and they have this, they get up, they go to work, they come home, they do their dinner, and they get in this weird routine. But for some people, they don't seem to really be looking for a meeting. They may feel like they're okay doing what they're doing. Why is it that people should be looking for a deeper meaning in their life? Because I think from my perspective, seeking a deeper meaning is finding our true identity and living our best selves is what I think. And I'm by full caveat, I'm not a therapist. I'm not a psychotherapist by any stretch. But from my own experiences, which I think we'll start talking about here shortly, is one I found greater, I'll put it to you this way.

I was living my life a certain way and doing the thing and living married with children, having the job and the cars in the driveway and all that kind of stuff. And then what happened to me coming out the other side, I realized that, oh, my gosh, as much as I thought I was in the moment and living a life filled with meaning, I wasn't. I mean, I was, but I wasn't going all the way to where I could go. And I discovered this whole next level of meaning in my life that I could explore. And when I found it, things became so much more enriched in my life, how I was living, what I'm doing, where I'm doing it, who I'm doing it with.

Things started to change pretty dramatically for me. And I thought, my gosh, I don't know what I was doing before, which was pretty great and where I was at the time. But coming through what I went through and coming out the other side, it was like, no, that was pretty cool. but where I'm at now is so much deeper, so much more, it's cooler. And as I like to say, you know, thank you for the plug on profound awesomeness. It's profoundly awesome to live a life full of meaning. Yeah, it's well said. It's well said.

I always like to tease the audience a little bit before we jump into the story. I like to set it up like that and get some people's perspective on there. But you have an incredible story. And I've found a good place to always start is at the beginning. So let me turn it over to you. And maybe you can set it up and begin to tell people what it was that allowed you to live a more meaningful life. Well, yeah. And I want to be sensitive to our time here on the podcast because I can go for a while on the story.

But I'll try to tell it as succinctly as I can. And you know, it all start, I guess where it really starts for me is in the fall of 2016. I live in northern California, just north of San Francisco, in an area called Marin County, which is the birthplace of mountain biking. And there's a lot of great mountain biking trails. The terrain is very hilly. If you're going to go mountain biking, invariably, you're going to be riding straight up a hill. I mean, it's just the way the terrain is here.

And you're going to go up, up, and then you're going to get to ridge lines, and then you can explore the ridges around the area. I think approximately 80% of Marin, County is protected open space. There's a lot of trails for hikers and horseback riders and mountain bikers to explore are a beautiful, beautiful part of the world. Well, for me, one morning, it was October 8, 2016, I went mountain bike riding with three friends of mine on a trail that I had ridden several times before. And like I just described, it was a trail that required you riding up two stages of a sense to get up to more of where the things flattened out. And we

were riding to a reservoir called Lake Laginitas. And going up the second stage of the climb, I lost all the strength in my legs in a snap of a finger. Like I'm pedaling up. It's a laborious climb as it is. It's called Shaver Grade for any listeners who are in the Northern California area. And you're a mountain biker. You may know it. Going up Shaver Grade, I lost all the strength in my legs and my three friends continued to pedal on ahead of me. And all I could do is gasp and gather myself and figure out what was wrong. And I concluded that I had had too much sushi the night before and too much sake and not enough water and I was dehydrated. So I drank a lot of water out of my camelback, got back on my bike and did everything I could to muscle my way with no strength in my

body to catch up to them climbing up this hill. I eventually caught up to them. They were fortunately waiting for me in mountain biking etiquette. When you get split up as a group, you wait at the next trail juncture. Everybody stops and waits until you get back and collect yourselves as a group. And I caught up to them. They're waiting for me. And it was all I could do, George, to get off my bike. The world started to spin in the most terrifying and frightening way.

It was as if I was on a roller coaster spinning in a merry-go round. It was just this crazy crazy. experience. And so I got off my bike. It crashed to the ground and I ran over as best I could to the side of the trail and started to, and forgive me for the TMI bomb here, but started to throw up all the contents of my stomach all over the place. And again, all I could think about was, oh my gosh, I had sushi, but not only did I have sushi, I have food poisoning from sushi. And that is why I'm being sick and I have all these. I lost my strength and I'm feeling dehydrated. I had sashimi with a side of bacteria.

That's what happened. So I stopped throwing up. I felt a little better. And my friends looked at me and said, Adrian, we can't keep riding. Like, something's wrong. And I said, no, guys, I feel great. Let's keep charging up ahead.

Let's do the intended ride around Lake Laganitas. To a man, they said, nope, no one's a hero today. Something's wrong with you. So we agreed to go down the trail, but just a different way, down the hill, rather, down a different trail. And it was going down that trail that I started to experience. chest pains. And I was riding my bikes or moving myself around, moving my chest around, moving my

shoulders around, trying to evacuate, which I thought was a burp or acid reflux or something to do with food poisoning. And I got off my bike. The pain bothered me so much. I got off my bike and I lay spread eagle to cross the trail. No joke. And I lay there pounding my chest like King Kong and start pounding my chest, wailing away at myself, thinking I could evacuate this burp or acid reflex that was causing me so much pain and discomfort. And it really hurt. It hurts so much to breathe, George. It just is so hard to describe. Think of a million needles in your chest, just pricking your internal chest cavity as you take sips of breath. I got back on my bike. My friends were waiting for me at the next trail juncture. And at this point, I'm so weak, I can't control my

bike anymore. One of my friends got on his bike and went tearing down the trail to his house to get a car where he would meet us at the bottom of the trailhead. And myself and my other two friends, we walked down the trail. I was using Strava, the exercise recording app that's pretty popular. And it took 40 minutes to walk down from where we were to where my friends met us with his car. he threw me in his car and he raced with me to the hospital and we drove to go to the hospital you had to drive literally right by my house i mean i could throw a stone from his car window and hit my front porch and my kids were home alone my wife was in colorado on a work trip and i just didn't want to go to the hospital with with my screenager kids as i like to call them they were 12 and 14 at the time

and i said to my first and i said to my first and friend, his name is Brad, I said, Brad, take me home. He said, nope, no way you need help. I said, and I'm laboring to breathe, just like all I could do to breathe without any chest pain at all. And I said, look, I don't have my driver's license. I don't have my insurance card. Just take me home. I will have Pepto-Bismol and Alka-Seltzer, drink some bubbly water. I'm sure I'll be fine. He's like, nope. And he's driving like barreling down the boulevard with his hands at 10 and 2 on the steering wheel, right? like white knuckling and holding onto the wheel like someone's going to rip it out of his hands, so to speak.

And we pull into the hospital. I got out of the car and just walked right to the triage desk and said, my name is Adrian Jones. I'm 46 years old. My chest hurts and I'm having trouble breathing. And that is the hack to get into the emergency room really, really quickly. Because I had a nurse next to me in seconds with a gurney. and they had me on that gurney and took me into the emergency room where they wheeled into a room

full of monitors and they put me on a on another bed and attached leads to my chest and did an EKG which measures the the rhythms of your heart and I'm talking to the technicians that are doing this procedure and I'm telling them that I have food poisoning through my labor breathing and the pain the absolute crushing pain in my chest and they didn't talk to me they barely looked at me They looked at the monitors. They ripped the leads off my chest. And they ran down further into the bowels, if you will, of the emergency room where they swung those blue curtains around me so I could have my privacy. And nurses descended upon me and started to put, no, IV lines in my veins and oxygen reading meters on the tips of my fingers.

And a nurse came in and put a defibrillator on my chest. And right behind her was a cardiologist. a doctor who walked into this little space and said, Mr. Jones, I'm the cardiologist on staff today. I'm here to tell you you're having a heart attack. And I got to tell you that was a really powerful moment for me. I had several thoughts all at once. One of those thoughts was, thank God and thank goodness, I'm in a hospital. And I'm no longer out on the trail right now. I'm somewhere safe where I can be cared for. I also thought that I had this premonition, if you will, not even a premonition,

but it's almost out of body experience that I'm looking at myself, looking at my mortality in the mirror. And that was very, very crazy and surreal. The nurses were moving really, really fast, doing all sorts of things to prick my arms. They were trying to draw blood. put an IB in my, I mean, there was a lot of action around me. It was all a blur. I'm laboring and laboring and laboring to breathe. It hurts so much to breathe. And a nurse came, came running over to me,

and she held two forms that were waivers. One was to do open heart surgery, and the other was to do an operation for a step procedure. And I was so weak, they put a pen in my hands, and I'm so weak that I couldn't sign the waivers. I had just no energy, no strength in my body whatsoever. So I held the pen as tightly as I could. And she took the contracts and just swept them. So the ball tip of the pen just left a mark, you know, just a line across the documents.

And they're like, good enough. And they ran with me to the cath lab, which is the operating room for the heart. And 45 minutes later, I was told after the procedure, It took 45 minutes. I had a new stent in my left anterior descending artery, also known as the Widowmaker artery, and I had a whole newly sound life. And the pain in my chest went away, and I could breathe again.

And as far as I was concerned, I had made it. So that's probably the chapter one of my story, but But yeah, so, and I have to tell you, as they were, I forgot to mention, as they were running with me down to the cath lab in the hospital, I'm on the gurney, there are probably two or three nurses that are pushing IVs and the gurney. And I'm laying there in the ceiling tiles or racing by overhead. And I had three thoughts. My first thought was, and this was before going into surgery, of course, my first thing. thought was, I do not want my wife to fly home a widow. She was in Colorado and I did not want to put this at her feet. If I was going to check out, I really wanted to have a proper goodbye. Two, my second thought

was, why, oh, why did I leave the house and not tell my kids I love them? I ran out of the house to go meet my friends to go mountain bike riding and I didn't tell my kids, you know what? I love you. I'll be back in two hours. Instead, I just said, I'll be back in two hours. And I vowed in that moment, that's never going to happen again. When I say goodbye to my kids, they're going to get it. I love you from dad. They're going to know where they stand. And then my third thought was, this is not going to freaking happen to me today. This is not my time. I'm not checking out of here. What's going to happen is I'm going to walk out of this hospital of my own two feet, of my own volition. That is exactly what's going to happen today.

So those were three thoughts that really steeled me, if you will, going into surgery and framed a lot in terms of who I am today and how I orient my life. So there I was going back to after the surgery in the cath lab. I'm breathing without pain. I'm breathing these huge gulps of air that just were so lovely to not have pain and just to be breathing.

breathing again. And to know, even though no one had verbally assured me that I was going to be fine, in my heart, sorry for that, in my heart, I felt that I would be fine. And they wheeled me into the ICU recovery wing, and the cardiac recovery wing,

and the nurses attached me again to more lines and more monitors, and I had leads on my chest. And I think I had a, blood pressure cuff on my arm and other things. A lot was going on. I was the only person in the, the only patient in the room. And the last nurse walked out of the room and swung the curtains to effectively close the door, the curtain door behind him. And I was left alone with my thoughts for the first time since I entered the hospital. And I know this is really hard to fact check. But what happened was so supremely powerful. I heard a voice in my right ear that said, find your birth

parents. And I knew right then and there, well, let me just clarify for your audience, I'm adopted. And all my life growing up, I'd known I was adopted. I'd had open conversations about ultimately doing a search for my biological family, my first parents, my birth parents, my natural parents, however you want to say it, had thought about it, but was never something that I had ultimately wanted to do or was ready to do. But right there, fast forward to the hospital bed, this voice in my right ear said, find your birth parents. And in that moment, I said, yep, that's exactly what I'm going to do.

I'm going to go find my biological family because, you know, I'm 46. six years old, I almost checked out of here, and maybe, maybe they wanted to know how I turned out. Maybe they were waiting for me to come find them. Maybe I had siblings who ultimately wanted, that knew about me or knew of me and wanted me to show up in their lives. And I wanted to find out if heart disease runs in the genes, because I led up until that point a pretty healthy, well-balanced, led a healthy life and had a well-balanced diet. So why did it this plaque?

What ultimately happened to me was a plaque rupture in my left anterior descending artery that was 100% blocked when they started to work on it in the hospital. So I'm very, very, very lucky to be here. It's not lost on me how lucky I am. But going back to what I was saying, I needed to figure out if heart disease runs in the family for me, but especially for my children and their children, my future grandchildren whenever they, I'm blessed to become a grandfather.

which hopefully not anytime soon. Not ready for that yet. Yeah. So there we are in the hospital. And I'm a heart attack survivor. And I'm an adoptee who's got this compulsion from a power greater than me telling me to go find my biological family. Wow.

It takes a moment just to try to let that sink in. I can't imagine being in a situation where it almost sounds to me like, like a death and a rebirth. Do you feel like part of you died when you were on that hospital gurney or on that bed? 100% in a way. Yes. And I love this question because I'll add a little more context to my story. So I was born. Now I grew up in Colorado, in Massachusetts, went to college in L.A. In the early days of my career, I lived in Hong Kong and Brussels. But I was born in Marin County, where I'm talking to you from now. And I was born in the very same hospital in which I had the heart attack surgery.

And more interesting in terms of this rebirth or being born again, if you will, is that I was discharged from that hospital. It used to be called Marin General Hospital. It's not called Marin Health. But anyways, at the time, it was Marin General Hospital. I was discharged after my heart attack on my birthday. So effectively, I was born in 1969 at that hospital. And I like to say I was reborn at that very same hospital on my birthday, 47 years later at the time.

So yeah, in many ways, in many ways, this was like, holy cow. And when I did ultimately, I didn't walk out of the hospital the same day. that wasn't quite possible. I was in there for a couple of days. But when I did leave the hospital, when I was discharged, they offered me a wheelchair. And I, fortunately, I had the strength and the capability to walk out of my own two feet of my own volition, which I was very excited about.

But when I walked out of the hospital, I'd looked around. It was another beautiful fall day. It was October 10th in 2016. And I just was like, oh, my God, what are the odds that, I had a heart attack and in the same county in which I was born and I was at the same came out of the hospital on October 10th, 47 days apart. I don't know. There's something there was again with the voice in my right ear and this happening to me.

I'm like, what is what is going on? There's something bigger happening here. Yeah, I don't believe in coincidences. I think a coincidence is what you get when you put together a poor theory. And so, you know, there is something bigger going on there. And, you know, I think that what you're tapping into is the meaning of life is there for people if you're willing to listen to it. And, you know, why do you think it is that people don't really get to taste the full flavor of life until they have a tragic experience like this? What is it about that?

I don't know. I don't know if we're hardwired and pre-conditioned. to just charge forward and and tackle what's right in front of us. And that is how we live. I'm not sure. You know, it's a great question. It kind of reminds me of sulfur.

You know how sulfur has like multiple burning points? Like it'll, for people that don't know, sulfur, you can melt it. And then at a certain pressure, it gets hard again. And then in another higher heat,

it'll melt again. And it almost feels like, like these idea of this depth. and this rebirth, like a melting point and then a solid. And I think of, they say history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. And if you think of your life moving up in a helical pattern, catching this new sort of information, understanding and becoming this new version of yourself, that is a better version of yourself that can love more, that can feel more. It sounds to me like that's what happened to you. 100%. 100%. Like I, I tapped into some really, really cool stuff that would

unbeknownst to me, I didn't know it existed. And I'm that person that you were just alluded to earlier, just moments ago. Like, why aren't we tapping into this? Like, I thought I, I genuinely thought I was. And I was trying to practice that, you know, that be here now, you know, that phrase, be here now, be in the moment. Like, I was actively working on that. And being a father of two young kids and watching them grow up, like doing everything I could to be present and in the moment. But what I realized, to your point, coming through this heart attack and my adoption, which ultimately I think we'll talk about, my search and reunion, it led me to discover that I had holes in me that I never knew needed filling, which brought me

once I started to fill these holes, I started to experience such greater meaning, such greater fulfillment, such greater intention in my life, which was, which I didn't know was available to me because I wasn't looking for it. And I just didn't have the time to invest in seeking that, seeking that out. So, you know, what happened to me is, so I'm discharged from the hospital, right? And I have no idea how the heck I'm going to find my biological family. The first things first is I got to get home. I got to get back on my feet. I've got to like figure my stuff out. So, you know, my, I got home. My wife had flown home from Colorado and we got home from the hospital. And what they do once you go through a cardiac event like that is, it is highly recommended that you go through what's called cardiac rehab.

Cardiac rehab is a three-month program where you go into a specific facility that has various workout machines like treadmills, rowing machines, exercise bikes, reclining bikes, you name it, are in these facilities. And they being nurses attached leads to your chest so they can monitor your heart rhythms, and they check your blood pressure periodically. And over the course of these three months, and you go there three days a week for one hour each session, you slowly work your way back. So when I first went to cardiac rehab in the fall of 2016,

I walked gingerly on the treadmill for an hour. And that was all I could do. By the time I graduated out of cardiac rehab, I was running on the treadmill. I was a sweaty, laddery mess just like, but I had physically made my path, I'd gone down the path to recovery, not only physically, but also psychologically,

that I had proven to myself that I could work out again and really push my body and my heart, my aerobic capabilities to push it and to get to a sweaty state. Sorry for the TMI. And that was very good psychologically. And then the first time I went out socially in town, so I was kind of a hurt. permit for those first few weeks out of out of the hospital. I just wanted to focus on myself and hunker down with my wife and kids and just deal. But in the middle of November of that year, I went to a costume fundraiser, which was a lot of fun. But it was interesting to go out in

public after you've gone through something as traumatic. And I wasn't sure how the community would, you know, how people would come up to me, what they would say. And I didn't want it to be about me. that just wanted to go to the event and have a good time. But anyways, the couple came up to me and said, oh my gosh, Adrienne, we heard what happened. And I gave them the 30-second version of what I shared with you earlier. And the wife of the couple leaned into me and she said, hmm, is this genetic?

And I said, well, I don't know. I'm adopted. She leans in a little closer and she said, have you ever wanted to find your biological family? I said, not until now, but now I really do. And then she leaned in even closer and she said, well, where were you born? And I said, well, right down the street at Marin General Hospital, I'm beginning to wonder why she's, and I knew her loosely, but not very well. And I'm wondering why she's asking me all these questions.

She leans in even more and says, what's your birthday? Thinking to myself, why is she wanted to ask all these questions? Why is my birthday relevant? But I answered, and I said October 10th, 69. And she said, and mercifully, our conversation was broken up as other people, other guests came up and sort of broke up conversation, which was great as far as I was concerned. That night, she brings her phone up to me later, and she shows her phone and she's like, it has a table on it of all the children that were born in Marin County on my birthday, October 10, 1969. There were five kids that were

born. Four of the five had traditional names like John Doe. Jane Smith, whatever. And there was one listing for a baby that was born. It didn't have a traditional name. And it just listed the last names of the biological parents, Kyle and Kelly. And in this email, they're sorry, in this. So she showed this to me.

And I said, this is too much for me to process. It's midnight of this night. I need to go home. So the next day, she emails it to me. I did give her my email that night. And she's like, presumably this could be, you because that that that strange listing of the baby without a name is how California lists unwed births to unwed parents in their California birth index and

presumably these could be the last names of your biological parents Kyle for my birth mother's last name and Kelly for my birth father's last name and she's like do you want to know more and I replied back right away yes I absolutely want to know And so a couple days later, we went for a walk. And at this point, I'm able to walk the trails. I took our dog. And it turns out this woman, her name is Christina, who is now a very good friend of mine. Christina is a genetic genealogist.

And she helps adoptees find their biological families. And she asked if I would like her help. I'm like, heck, yeah, love your help. Like when I was ready to start searching, I thought I would just Google. how to find your biological, I didn't even know where to start. And here I've got this woman who I effectively met two days earlier, three days earlier at this party, who's a genetic genealogist, and this is what she does for a living. So she's like, okay, well, so tell me what you know about your biological parents. And I said, well, I don't know much, but I do

know that my biological mother, at least what I think I know, what my adoptive parents had told me, was that she was Norwegian, had brothers, and was Catholic. And she's like, great, that's a ton of information. And she goes, what about your biological father? And I said, all along, I thought he was Italian, but this last name is Kelly. And Kelly is Irish. So maybe there was something goofed in the paperwork. So I don't know. No, I said, and I remember my parents had told me he was a real estate title officer in real estate. And she goes, great. Okay, that's a lot of information. So we finished our walk. And as I guess all genetic genealiener, or want to do.

She had an ancestry DNA kit in her car. She's like, I need you to spit in this vial. So I spit in the vial and gave her, you know, the vial back. And I drove home going, what have I done? I've just met this woman, Christina, and I've given her my DNA. And there's no contract. There's no paperwork in place. Like, what the heck?

But then I rationalize that I need to lean into this. The universe is doing weird things to me right now. It's something really powerful is working and presenting things to me. and I just need to lean into it and see where this takes me. So two days later, I'm out on the trails again with my dog. She sends me a text. She goes, where are you, Adrian? I said, well, I'm walking the dog.

And she said, I got something I want to show you. At this point, I know where she lives. And I said, great, I'll be by your house in 20 minutes. Show up at her house. She sits me down at her kitchen table. And she says, I've been doing some research. I go, okay, what's that? And she goes, well, presumably you're, there's a,

a child of unwed adopt of unwed parents, excuse me, a child of unwed parents whose birth mother's last name was Kyle. And she said, so what I did is I went through all the counties in the Bay Area, Marin County, San Francisco County, Alameda County, Contra Costa County, looking for women of childbearing age with the last name Kyle, K Wiley. She found two. One of them, she explains to me, gave birth in September of the same year I was born. I was born in October. So that eliminated that particular woman. And then that left one other candidate. And Christina asked me, can you guess where she lived? This was finding women of childbearing age in 1969, right? She was, can you, can you guess where she lived in 69? I said, I have no idea. And she said,

just take a guess. I said, I can't. Just tell me. She lived, I'll give you a hint. She lived in Marin County. I'm thinking of myself, well, I guess that's not surprising. I was born in Murdoin General if this is, in fact, my birth mother, maybe that makes sense. She goes, can you guess what town? I'm like, I don't, how can I guess what town she lived in? And she goes, just take a wild guess. I'm like, I can't. She goes, okay, I'll tell you.

I'll help you out. She lived at the time you were born. She lived in a town, a little town here, the center of Marin County called San Anselmo. And I flip out because that's the town that my wife and I moved to in 2006. where we lived at the time. I'm like, how's that? And she goes, yeah, and guess what? I did even more research.

I built her family tree and ancestry, followed the hints and all this sort of stuff. And it turns out that her grandparents were of Norwegian descent. And I could see that she had two brothers. So that checked out what you told me on our hike a couple of days ago that she had. A couple of brothers was of Norwegian descent. I'm like, okay. Wow.

Okay. this is really interesting. And this woman, her name, her full name, was Sharon Kyle, and she was 24 years old in the middle of 1969. She could figure all this out. This is what genealogists and DNA sleuths can do. They can find all this crazy information. And she goes, so I did even more research.

I'm like, okay, what did you find? And she goes, well, she was 24 in 1969. I rolled her age down to when she would have graduated from high school. So when she would have been 18, would have been around 1961, 1962, 63, somewhere in there. And I looked at all the local public high schools in southern Marin County looking for the Sharon Kyle. And I didn't realize this at the time, but yearbooks are public record.

And they're available. And so she was perusing through those. And in the public high schools found no Sharon Kyle that graduated from any of the local schools here. And she explained all this to me, and I'm nodding. And okay, fine. and then she goes, but then I remember you said she's Catholic. And at this point, George, I start to lose my mind.

And I had a visceral explosion within my body. Like, things started to just spin. And I had butterflies and stomach flips and goose bumps and chills racing up and down my arms, up and down my spine and legs like, whoa, no, no, no. And she goes, yeah, so I went and looked at the local, our one and only Catholic high school. in Marin County. And I start, I start grabbing onto the kitchen table and holding it really hard. I'm like, oh, no, don't tell me what I think you're about to tell me. And I literally said, don't you dare. You're about to tell me something. She goes, yeah, I found out that Sharon Kyle graduated from

Marin Catholic High School in 1962. I'm like, I lose my mind. I'm like, how is this possible? Our daughter was a freshman, was two months into her freshman year at this very same high school. She was unwittingly walking under her maternal or paternal grandmother's senior year photo when my friend Christina made this discovery. She'd been walking every day in the administrative building because she had classes nearby. I'm just like, oh my. goodness what is happening um and christina said yeah i thought you might have a reaction like this and she goes i want to show you something now okay what do you got i got nothing like tears are blowing

right right right i'm like how said the san an insombo thing this we're in catholic thing i stand up and look over christina's shoulder at her laptop scream and she's got a picture of a a girl and i the instant i saw it i jump up and i said, that's her. That's her. I know that's her. And what I was looking at was a quite kind of grainy black and white photo of a sophomore year girl in high school taken in 19, well, it would have been 1960, I suppose. It was her sophomore year picture in the yearbook. And I knew instantly that that was, I said to Christina, I've looked at that picture or sorry, I've looked at that face rather in the mirror for 47 years. I know those eyes. I know that smile. Like that has to be.

be her. And Christina said, well, I thought you might have that reaction. I think looks are pretty compelling here. And I drove home from her house, just tears exploding out of my eyeballs. It was uncontrolled, but this powerful release of all this pent-up stuff that I didn't even know I had within me just was flowing out of my body. And like, holy cow, like, we don't know for sure it's her because we don't have DNA proof, but everything checked out about what we knew about her and what my new friend Christina, my genealogist, was able to find. And the picture was a no doubt of my mind kind of situation. But we need DNA. And so we had to wait for DNA, which came in in December of that year. And in the meantime, she went looking for my biological father with

the last name Kelly and that he was a title officer. And so that's all we knew. We went searching. Well, I say we. That's she went searching. And lo and behold, she digs up somebody by the name. And she's looking through microfiche files at the local, the county seat here of people who've been from the late 60s, people with the last name Kelly, who were title officers. She was looking at hirings, promotion announcements, wedding announcements, obituaries, just trying to find anything I hit. And she found one for someone named Ron Kelly, who graduated from one of the local high schools here. And I'm not with Christine at this time. She sends me a text. She texts me. She goes, are you sitting down? I'm like, oh, no, now what?

And I take a seat and she sends me in come. I see the little squiggly lines or whatever, the circles in the text thing. And she's sending me something. And then boom, a picture, black and white picture, a headshot of someone's senior year picture in high school. And it was a picture of this Ron Kelly. And once again, I'm like, oh. gosh, that's my nose, that's my jaw, that's my smile. That is me.

That's the other part of me. No doubt about it. That's got to be him. And he was a title officer in 1969, one of the local title agencies. But we didn't have DNA for any of it. So it was all just our assumptions and it felt really, really, really right. And in December of that year, DNA came in from ancestry, which mapped me into their families. into ironically first cousins of Ron and first cousin of Sharon.

And so DNA into the family and we knew beyond a shadow of a doubt. These are my biological parents. Man, you're making me cry over here. That is, it's, it's, I'm still trying to process how that, how, how that can happen after such a traumatic event. And so what do you do with that information once you get the DNA? Like, what's going through your mind? And before you talk about what you do, like what's going through your mind at this point in time?

You know, what's going through my mind is, no idea. No idea. What's going through my mind is I am determined, like I am in a light, I'm in an inflection point in my life that everything is changing. I just survived a heart attack. I'm a survivor. I'm living a life as a survivor like that in and of itself and like regaining my life, reclaiming myself, my confidence, my physical abilities, my psychological abilities with my body. I'm reclaiming all that.

And the inflection point is just massive because I'm also now chasing down my biological truth and my history and how I came to be. And I was hell bent on getting those answers at this stage. Now, all my life growing up, I knew I was adopted. I knew there were parents, biological parents, are out there somewhere. I assumed I had brothers and sisters, siblings.

I didn't know anything about them. whatever I knew I shared with Christina with you guys on the podcast. But I was going to get answers. Now I was determined to get answers. And I was once and for all going to get going to figure some things out. And what we also knew and the powers of social media, namely Facebook, is really good for doing some sleuthing work. We were able to ascertain that both my biological parents are alive. We're alive and frankly still are. and live within an hour drive of where I live now. And by further sleuthing and just Googling and Facebooking and you name it,

we were able to determine that I have three sisters, two paternal and one maternal. No brothers, but three sisters. And once I knew I had sisters, I was like, I was raised with my, I was raised. raised with a younger sister. And so I was like, oh, this is wonderful. These biological sisters, they're all younger than me. But boy, I was like, do they know about me? Are they waiting for me to show up in their lives? Is their big brother? Like, do we have the same senses of humor? Do we walk alike? Do we laugh? Like, do we have commonalities? I've got to figure all this out. So all this was going through, is to say, this is what's going through my mind at the time. Okay. So if we add another

dimension was like in my mind I can see your kids and your wife like rallying around you like yeah we figured this thing out like what was going on can you share a little bit about what was happening in your family life as you were figuring this out yeah so I think for my kids this was a lot to process right because they had just seen dad yeah I mean they knew I was adopted it was no secret to my wife or my kids that I'm adopted it's all very open it's part of who I am but I think all of this in the fall of an early winter of 2016, like they were watching their dad or husband just go through this metamorphosis. Like I lost a ton of weight coming out of the hospital from a heart attack survivor. Like you get scared straight.

And I changed my diet and I'm working out religiously. And so I'm shedding pounds and just eating and try to obey all the rules of the road for my diet and all the stuff. They're seeing this. And then they're watching dad go through this, this discovery process, which I would share with them at the dinner table. Every time Christina and I had a new finding, a new aha, found something else that's to do. I would at the dinner table share that with my kids and my wife to keep them up to speed. So there was nothing that's that I wasn't like, you know, I'm an open book. I wear everything.

My emotions on my sleeve. I just put it all there. So I wanted them to keep pace. And I think for them, they were like, oh, my, what is happening? Yeah. Yeah, like, dad's going through an awful lot right now. Yeah. I wonder, did your kids have some of the same questions about like,

oh, I wonder if these are my grandparents or my aunts and uncles. What were they? Were they thinking along the same lines? You know, they were and they weren't. I think they were both young and old enough all at the same time. They were young enough where, I mean, It was all relatively new and they were open to it. They were old enough in that.

And I was very, very clear with them going through the process that your grandparents that you know that you've been around for 12 or 14 years, those are your grandparents. Those are my parents. And my sister is your, your, your Aniseri. Like, that doesn't change. Whatever we find here is going to be,

additive to your lives. We're going to make sure that it's additive. And so they were pretty excited about, they were excited about that. And when we kept sleuthing and doing our homework, and we found out that my maternal sisters also live about an hour drive away from where I live, and my paternal sister lives about an hour drive from where I live. So everyone's basically, everyone's an hour drive from where I live. And what we did found out, however, is that there were no kids next generation down that were my kids age. So that really bummed them out. Like, we don't have cousins that would be our same age that we could hang with.

I'm like, no, they had very, very, very, very, very young cousins who were, you know, at the time ages not yet born to probably five or six or something like that. I'm trying to remember. But so very young relative to my kids. So they were excited for a moment, like, oh, we could have. Cousins are aged to like sort of deflated like, oh, well, we have cousins. That's great. But no, we can run around with and play with. So they're hang out with, I should say they were at the age of hanging out.

They were beyond play dates. Right. As you were learning all this stuff, you know, sometimes emotions come in pairs with the good and the bad. And I'm wondering, was there any like resentment that you were feeling at the same time? You were feeling this amazing like awe or anything? I felt no. It's a great question. And I felt no resentment.

I harbored no ill will. I went into this with an open heart. And I just literally, again, I don't mean to play off my heart of the metaphor, whatever. But I literally just opened my heart to this whole process and just wanted to take it all in. Because I knew this was once in a lifetime material. Yeah. And I guess the only relationship we really haven't covered, what about the parents that raised you? Were they aware of what was happening?

They were. Just similarly, so ultimately my main plan coming out of the hospital, going back to when I was discharged, and I had that compulsion in my ear to go, you know, that voice saying, go find your birth parents. What I was, my big plan was I was supposed to see my adoptive, my parent parents around the holidays. And at that time, I wanted to sit down with them over a cup of coffee or whatever, a glass of wine, name it. and just have the conversation, hey, I think I need to go find my biological parents. And do that in person, face to face, really chat through so I could read their body language. We need to hug anything out.

We could hug it out on the spot. But instead, because I met Christina who just shot us out of a canon with this rapid fire research right out of the gates, I had to call my parents early on in the discovery process. Like basically the day after I saw that picture of Sharon as a sophomore in high school, I called my parents and said, okay, guess what? I hope you both are sitting. I had them both on the phone. I said, I hope you're sitting down.

I got to catch you up on some stuff. So, yeah, I shared with them what was going on. And, you know, it was interesting because all those, as I alluded to or mentioned earlier, growing up, like we had the occasional conversation about finding our biological parents and they would be fully supportive of it, but be careful what you find out. It may not be all that you hope for and all this sort of stuff. But when I'm, now they've got a child, me, who's doing the search, I think for them it became very real.

And like, oh my gosh. And it's a crot happening. parents live on the East Coast. So their son is now doing the search for his biological family on the other side of the coast and other side of the country, excuse me. And I think that was hard for them. So they were tender. And they were emotionally tender, supportive, but tender, I would say. So you get, you, you, you are reborn. You, you have this incredible, I call it a miracle to be able to find things so fast like that. Right. Totally. You get the DNA. You've got people around you. What's the next step? What do you do?

Well, it's, so I got the DNA. It's December of 2016. I know for a fact, I route into it. So then there's like, then what do you do? That's the ultimate question. As there are, I suppose, I never looked. I suppose they're books about what to do. I googled what do you do when you find your biological parents.

Like, I could call them. I knew their addresses. I knew where they lived. We found their addresses online. I could go knock on their door. I knew where they were on social media. I could send them a DM through social media. I knew their email addresses.

I could send them. That's amazing what you can find if you put your mind to it out there. But ultimately what I decided to do and what I thought was most fair for them and their circumstances is I decided to send both Ron and Sharon letters, delivered the same day as close to the same time as FedEx would allow. in January of 2017. And I would surrender myself to fate. I would put it out there. I wrote them three-page letters that I, you know, the search started as a result of a heart attack,

and I'm seeking medical answers and any congenital risks that may run in my genes now, not only for me, but for my kids and their kids. And I proceeded to explain that I have a big heart of. I'm willing to share it with you in any way possible that you're open to if you're open to it. And I don't harbor any ill will or anything like that. I'm not angry or resentful or bitter.

Like, I just, I'm ready to meet you. And here's all my contact information. And here's a picture of me and my family. And I sent the letters. They were sent delivered at the end of January 2017. And a few days later, I got an email from Sharon. And the subject line was, thank you. And in this email, she said,

that she had been, she'd never changed her last name in the hopes that I would come find her. Isn't that crazy? She, you know, she got remarried, turns out, in the early 80s, and she hyphenated her last name because she wanted to keep Kyle as a last name. And she would later explain to me that friends, at the time, it wasn't common for women to hyphenate last names. And so friends would ask her, like, why are you? doing that. And she said in her mind very privately, it was so that the son I gave birth to could

come find me. But she outwardly said, so she could remember what her name was growing up. It was sort of how she played it off apparently. But anyway, so in this letter was like, thank you. I've been waiting. I didn't change my last name, the hopes you'd come find me. You have a sister. You have two nephews and a niece. Of course, all this I knew because of the sleuthing we'd done. And I replied right away and we talked the next day. And I have to tell you, George, hearing her voice for the, we talked on the phone the next day, hearing her voice the first time was incredible. I don't even know how to describe it. I could probably try to write a book about just that moment hearing that voice that I had heard a long time ago in utero.

I heard that voice and here I was hearing it again. And it hit something. so deep inside of me. I don't even know where it was, but it was super duper powerful. And we talked for probably two and a half, three hours, super emotional. She told me all about her relationship with Ron, my biological father, that they had been engaged. They were in their 20s, and they had been engaged in a long eye came. And when she realized she was pregnant with me, she came to the realization that she was not supposed to be marrying Ron and that she would put me up for adoption in a family that has a loving mother and father and does have, it would have some Catholic upbringing elements to it.

So I thought at that point, well, I'm probably not going to hear from Ron because I'm sure they were engaged and she ended the engagement of put their unborn child up for adoption. It's probably a very emotional, dark period for him. So I was like, oh gosh, poor guy. I may not ever hear from him. But we agreed we'd see each other a couple days later. And as we wrapped up the call, I made a joke. I said, first she said, when I see you, can I hug you?

And I said, Sharon, that's going to be the first order of business we do. And then I said, I followed that up. And I tried to just, we had such a deep, intense conversation about so much of each other's lives. I wrapped up the call by saying, I can't wait to see you again. Sort of thing, trying to be a little fun and irreverent and flip it or whatever. And she said, she goes, I've never seen you. I asked her, I said, what do you mean by that? And she goes, well, in those days, if you were giving birth as an unwed mother,

you were giving up a child for adoption, rather, you were sedated. And I don't know how this whole thing works, but she was sedated when she delivered me. And she explains to me on this phone call, she said, your grandmother, my mother was there when I gave birth to you. And she was, when I came to, after my sedation wore off, she was sitting next to my bedside and she said that she got to hold you. And you had the, you meet me, you had the face of an angel. That's all she had to hold on to all these years, all these decades was,

and I'm not saying that I do have a, that, I'm just relaying the story. I don't know if I have a face for a podcasting and radio. I don't know. But anyways, that's beside the point. The point is like, that's what she held on to all these years. And we saw each other. We met each other two days later. And the first thing we did is the first order of business was we hugged.

And that was like, again, like hearing her voice for the first time. It's ethereal. You can't describe it. It was being lost in the moment. It was probably the best way I could describe it. Wow. I don't even know if I have any words to say there. I've got some tears, but I can't.

I can't imagine, you know, in some ways it seems like it's the ultimate theory to replace a broken heart. Yeah, more than one broken heart. Yeah, yeah, I know. Maybe that's God's way or this bigger power's way of thoroughly healing a heart, is finding, allowing you to find a way to mend the life that, I don't even, I don't even, know any words for it, Adrian. I can't even say anybody, man. I get it. Oh, man. Oh, gosh. Well, I get it. I get it. And, you know, you said earlier that there are no coincidences. I used to be the guy that would, you know, Liz, my wife would say from time to time, oh, everything happens for a reason.

I'd be like, what do you mean? It can't happen for a reason. That's impossible. You know, for all of us, like all us, eight billion people on this planet, everything happens for a reason. How is that, how could that be? But going through this, having the heart attack, surviving the heart attack, going out with the intent to find my biological family, being introduced, like being gifted, this introduction, so to speak, to Christina, the genealogist, who was willing to help me, who did the research, found my biological, the fact that I was raising my kids in the same town in which I was in her belly when she was carrying me. Like blows, I had no information about that in any of the files that I had or whatever my parents had shared with me.

Like, no. Like how is that positive? And she went to the same private Catholic high school. I don't know. I mean, it doesn't make, it, it, everything does happen for a reason, I suppose, is what I'm getting at. You know, and I'll just, I'll just, I'll, I'll just sort of keep going a little bit more and sort of bringing things, bringing things home. But we, so Sharon and I met and we hugged.

And the first time we met, we sat and talked for six hours in a hotel lobby in Berkeley, California. And I had brought a childhood photo book that my mother had given me at my wedding. is like one of the one of the present she gave us for when we got married and I thought it was very suitable and appropriate to bring that as to share with Sharon like here's the my childhood through the eyes of my mom and let's share it together and so we went through that we went through all the photos and Sharon is just really interested in details we went through all like picking apart photos and who's this and what's that and when were you how old were you for this and that And so she and I for the next several weeks would see each other that we would meet for coffee, meet for lunch, you know, sorts of things.

But she told me that she'd never told her daughter that I existed or that she had previously been engaged. But she had told, she did tell her husband that she had been, there was a previous engagement and an adoption situation. Thank goodness. So he knew all along before they got married that I was out there. presumably, but their daughter did not. So I said to share and I said, I will work with your timing, but I am compelled to meet her, my sister on that side. She goes, you will. Just give me a little time. I got to find the right time to break the news to her who heretofore had been raised as a only child, right? And now she's about to find out the big surprise, the big reveal.

Ha ha, hello, here's a brother in your life. You're not the only child, so to speak. So I said, fine. You just tell me when and I'll be there, but I am compelled to meet her. On Ron's side, Ron, I never heard back from Ron. And I was starting to wonder, it's been weeks. And I'm like, gosh, maybe it was really upsetting for him to get my letter. I know he got it because I sent things through FedEx and I knew it had been delivered. Well, it so turns out, through the powers of sleuthing and just getting lost in Facebook,

this is how this happened. It turns out that his oldest daughter had, this is going, I'm going back to 2017 now. His oldest daughter had recently been dating the first cousin of a friend of mine in town. If you follow that bouncing ball. Yeah. Yeah. So I sat down with that friend and I said,

I don't believe this. I've got to tell you a story. And you know this, her name is Katie. I go, you know, you know, and I had a picture from her Facebook that I showed a picture of Katie. I said, this is Katie. And he goes, wait a minute. You know Katie? And I go, yeah.

He goes, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You're telling me that this is your sister? I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And he goes, oh, my gosh, she would be so open-minded. She's like, of all the people that you would want to meet or would have this happen to, she's going to be, like, very receptive. She's great. We love her. It's too bad.

It didn't work out with my cousin. but we think very highly of Katie. And that gave me all I needed because it turns out Katie is an interior designer and she's got a website with her email address prominently displayed on her homepage of her website. Again, the powers of Googling and searching. It's amazing what you can get on people. And so I sent her an email. And I just said, hey, I'm an adoptee doing a search.

Turns out we're very closely related. it's important for me that you know I sent a letter to your dad. It was delivered on such and such date. I am out to seek answers to my biological truth, and I'm hoping that you would be open to having a conversation. Here's a link to my Facebook profile. Here's all my contact information. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Hit send. Like I said, I was compelled. Once I knew I had sisters, I was like, I am meeting all my sister. This is so exciting. And she replied, back the next day. She goes, this is a lot. I didn't say I was your brother. I just said we're very closely related. She replied back the next day. She said that this is a lot to process. Please give me a couple of days to deal with this. I'll be back in touch. I replied back to her,

take all the time you need. I've had 47 years to think about it myself. I'm here whenever you're ready. The next day, she sent me an email and she had CCed all these other people who turns out to be her mom, her dad, her sister. I would say her mom, our dad, our sister, so to speak, and saying, we've had a family discussion. It's all that on the table. We are so excited to know we have a brother and son and we can't wait to meet you. And I was like, got this email and I was so floored. I was so emotionally moved. I was at work. I had to step outside to gather myself. And I called Christina and I read Christina the email that I got from Katie. And Christina goes, go into the office, pack up your bags, cowboy.

You got to go home and meet your biological. I'm like, what do you mean? She goes, they want to meet you now. Like, what do you mean now? She goes, oh, I can tell by the tone of that email. They want to meet you today. I'm like, oh. So I applied back to Katie.

I said, do you guys want to meet today? And she goes, if we could meet today, that would be ideal. I'm like, oh, my gosh. So I raced home. I splashed cold water on my face. I put on a nice press shirt. and tried to look as presentable as I could. And I went and I met with that side of the family.

This was late March of 2017. And we had just an incredible time together over dinner. And I guess so you had asked a question earlier. And this was incredibly powerful for me around the sense of meaning as you go through these life events. So after I had dinner with the paternal side, with Ron's side of the family, both the daughters, my sisters were there. And we got along really well.

I mean, granted, we were all on our best behavior and nervous on eggshells and all that kind of stuff. But overall, it was a very good get together, a reunion dinner. And I called both of the sisters independently the next day just to check in on them. And I talked to Katie for a while. We had a nice chat. Then I called the younger one, Amy. And we had a nice conversation. And she said, I couldn't sleep last night the night after our,

we had met for dinner. I was like, oh, no, why not? Why didn't, why couldn't she sleep? And she goes, because I spent, I was up all night just crying. I'm like, oh, no, was it something I said? Like, why were you crying? She was, no, I'm just so happy. I'm crying with joy that, that I have this brother that I've always wanted in my life.

And it's you. I get you in my life. This is like, and she said, I have holes in my heart that have been, in my soul, rather, that have been filled. I didn't even know I had these holes. and they're filled now that I've met you. I'm like, oh my gosh. And I was so moved by that conversation.

And I started to think about it after we got off the phone. I'm like, I have holes that I'm getting filled now too. And putting it all together, I had this confluence of things that are just making my life so incredible now. On one hand, you've got what I like to call my survivor superpowers. I'm after surviving a heart attack, I have more meaning, more intent, more purpose, greater appreciation for what's going on around me, much more love, all these things that you would suppose.

I like to happen to survivors. I like to encapsulate into the term survivor superpowers. And then on the other hand, through the powers of ancestry, I knew my ethnicity. For the first time in my life, I was like, oh, okay. So I'm not half Norwegian and half attack. Italian, I've got all these other things, of 30-something percent Irish and a lot of Scandinavian in me and whatever.

That was really cool. But I got to meet my biological, my blood. I got to meet blood. And I got to learn how I came to be and the circumstances that led to my creation and got to look at my biological parents in the eye and hug them. And my three sisters, I got to look. And I did meet the maternal sister two around the end of March of that year. and got to hug them and none of the sisters knew I existed.

And, you know, I like to call it, I had the Holy, the Holy, no, not the Holy Trinity. That's something else, but I'll call it the Trinity in adoption, reunion situations. There's acknowledgement, acceptance, and embrace. And I had all three. They acknowledged me, like they didn't say beat it. You know, you're, you're trying to swindle us out of money or you're, you're, you're trying to swindle us out of money. or this never happened. Our parents would never do anything like this.

I never want to hear from you again. No, they didn't do that at all. So they acknowledged me. They accepted me. They said, welcome. We're so happy to have you in our lives. But all that, they embraced me. So it wasn't even just like, welcome.

You're in the family. They're like, get into the family. Like, let's start hanging out. And let's start building our own rituals and traditions. And around the holidays or birthdays or our own reunion date that we have. and start doing these special events together. And so I had all of this going. Like, I was accepted into these new families.

And I just felt this just so much greater power in me. That was just, it was profound awesomeness. Again, going back to the plug of my podcast, but, you know, not to overplay it. But, I mean, that's literally what I was feeling. And it was like, oh, my gosh, this is so great. I've survived a heart attack. I've survivor superpowers. I know my ethnicity.

I know where I came from. I know it led to my creation. I know my biological parents. I've got sisters. I know them now. Like, oh, so much felt so in place for me. So much felt so in place for the first time in my life. It was just an incredible feeling.

I will never think of profound awesomeness in any other way. Like that is the very, like, and I mean awesomeness. an awe some next. Like, you know what I mean? In the sense of the word, like, awe, it's awful. Like, man, I don't even know where to go. Like, I feel like just getting to hear the story took me on some sort of existential ride through life and what is possible and tragedy and meaning.

And I can't imagine what I only know from what you've said, how you felt. But it seems to me that everyone in your life, life, not only did you get the Trinity, but everybody in your life got a form of that Trinity. They got acceptance. They got acknowledgement. And, you know, I get goosebumps hearing the story and thinking about it. What an incredible heart attack to have. I mean, it's a heart attack in so many ways, right? Totally. No, I mean, I've been asked, you know, it caught me off guard the first time someone asked me this question um it's one of the few times it's ever been asked to me but this was the first time after my heart attack you could he asked after i shared all of this

with him he he said adrian i got to ask you like are you glad the heart attack happened to you i'm like yeah i think it may be one of the best it may be the best thing i don't you know i got married i'd kids those were the best days of my life but like this is like one of the top events of my life and look at what it's look at how it's like i'm a changed person i'm a changed person i'm a changed like in so many levels. And I've got this new family. I get a meet at the age of 47. I've got this entire new family.

And it's not just two parents and three sisters. It's aunts and uncles and cousins. And so it just goes on and on. And what a wild trip. Like you think at least I thought I was married. I've been married for a long time. And I got kids. And I'm just doing the thing.

I got my career. And then boom, here I am with this new. family and I get to meet them and we got to catch up on all this lost time which was just so cool so so cool okay so I want to take you back yeah to the to hearing the voice in your ear like hearing this you have to find your biological parents that's right do you do you think that like have you heard or do you listen to your inner dialogue have you heard that voice is it inner dialogue. But do you listen to that voice? Does it come to you more often? Or is it a relationship now that you have of moving through life? You know, I've heard it. I try to listen to it. It resurfaced again

shortly after I got discharged from the hospital. I would lay in bed and wonder why I survived. So again, when I got on the operating table, my left anterior descending artery was pretty much 100, you know, I was told it was 100% blocked. I didn't have sudden cardiac arrest. I didn't die and have an out-of-body experience. I'm not saying any of that. But I would lay in bed and wonder why I survived. Why am I one of the lucky ones when so many don't survive?

What am I supposed to do? And I would just literally lay there and look up at the ceiling and wonder just why. What am I supposed to do with the second chance? Somebody tell me, I can't. do I just, I can't go back to what I was just doing every day of the same way I was doing it. Like, everything's changed. And this was before I'd really done the adoption and reunion and all that, the adopty adoption search and reunion. I was just coming out of the hospital and starting cardiac rehab.

And the answer that came back was you survived to help and inspire other people by your story. And I said, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to get out there. I don't know how I'm going to do it, but I'm going to figure out. how I can help heart attack survivors or people have gone through some serious trauma and see if I could help them work their way through it or help their loved ones who are helping you work your way through it. Or I could be an adoptee advocate and help adoptees or I could help families who are getting

this surprise email or letter from some long-lost biological family member. I could help either side of that equation, help them understand and process and what to do with it. Yeah, I could get out there. And so that led me eventually to even including podcasting. But that's the other time that really spoke very clearly to me was in the hospital and then laying in bed. So find your birth parents and then use your story to help and inspire other people. Yeah, I can't imagine anybody hearing this story and not being inspired. And to come on the heels of such a great tragedy, you know, do you think in your heart of hearts that,

people that go through great tragedies have an opportunity to become a better version of themselves? I do. I do. I do. And I've listened to those stories on profound awesomeness. The podcast is about people who've been through traumatic situations, other calamities, close brushes with death, things of that nature and how they've come out the other side, living with more meaning, intent and purpose. And I hear it over and over and over again that that, people and what I hope happens is that the wisdom that is shared through the podcast can help people either that are going through something traumatic or aren't, but are seeking to elevate their consciousness, their awareness,

and how they fit into the world with more meaning, intent, and purpose. And so that is how I've gotten out there to help people. And I think I've lost the threat of the question. I apologize to. Got on a roll there. I think I got off the topic. I apologize. Not at all.

We're just talking about, you know, in some ways, in some ways, I feel like the purpose of tragedy is that there's a force bigger than you can imagine. Yeah, that's right. It's going to take your hand and run through it and say, look, I'm going to put you through this because I think you're strong enough to come through the other side and help people. I see it since I've been doing the podcast. That's what I've seen it over and over and over again. And these people, they come back and they want to help.

they understand the urgency of life and that being in service of others is part of their greater purpose and higher calling. And when you put yourself in service of others and follow that calling, like how it just changes so much of your perspective in life and the rewards you get back by giving you get back get back so much more. I've found my own personal experience. And from what I've heard through these stories that I'm telling on the show. Yeah, I can't agree anymore.

And I really, it's so crazy to say something like this, but I'm thankful for people who find themselves in the worst tragedy of their life. You know, and I almost want to cry when I think about your story and think about some things that have happened. But I'm thankful that those are going through some of the biggest tragedies in their life because you get a chance to hear the voice whisper in years. You get a chance to be embraced by a love that you can't even, imagine is waiting for you if you're willing to do the work because even though you talked about

how lucky and fortunate you were the i can tell in the way you told your story that the way you had tears gushing through you when christina's saying hey i found somebody when your daughter's walking underneath the picture of her you know paternal grandparents like all of these things are bubbling up inside you that there's no words to explain how difficult even though on a razor's you're happy. There's got to be some fear in there too. And it's, it's that having the courage to walk that razor's edge and change will get you to where you want to go. There was some fear in there sometimes. Should I do this? Should I not do this? Are they going to like me? Are they not going to like me? Like maybe we, maybe you can touch a little bit more on, on some of the,

the thoughts you had that may have been juggling between fear and happiness or were there thoughts there that were like that? I'll tell you so the heart attack coming out of the heart attack there was definitely fear like oh my gosh is this going to happen again is the other shoe going to drop if I go like early early days like if I go for a walk two blocks away from my house if I have a heart attack like what's going to happen and so that that was like why I really like cardiac rehab made such an impact on me and really helped me psychologically get over some pretty serious hurdles. And it was, it wasn't long

thereafter that. I was on a, on a plane to Europe. And that took a little guy, when I bought that plane ticket, I'm like, oh, I'm going to be in the air for, I can't remember 12 hours or something like that from where I live like, what if it happens on an airplane? Anyway, so those what ifs are long, I don't, I don't think that way anymore. But there was definitely fear. When it, when it came to the biological family component of the story. Christina would sit me, before I sent the letter, she would sit me down and say, are you ready for this? Like, we don't know what's going to happen.

Like, they could get your letter and call you and say, pound sand. They could never respond. They could respond and they could want to get all in your kitchen about everything. And suddenly you've got this intrusive person that you were just hoping to get to know. And they just want to like be super overbearing and get involved with your life. in ways you're not comfortable, like that could happen too. Like, yep. But I'm going to do it because I need answers for myself.

And my kids need answers too. They don't know it yet, but they need answers. So I'm going to do this. And so for the adoption union part, I didn't, I didn't have fear. I was just, it was gung-ho. It was like all systems go. We're doing this. So I had written down this other point that I think is really relevant.

And I wanted to just, it talked. talks about patterns. And since you told me you were this one man who was doing these things and you had the cars, you had the time, you had the family, and then you went on the mountain biking path. And then boom, the world changes forever. So in my book I had written down here that patterns, despite what they say, people do not seek help from a therapist or counselor because they have a problem. People seek help because they realize that without intervention, the repetitive nature of certain thoughts, feelings, and behaviors will continue over and over. So do you think that the way you, you had a way of thinking that was a pattern?

And then after your accident, that pattern was erased and you were given a new pattern. You had mentioned to me that after the heart attack, you would go for a walk and you thought to yourself, what if it happens again? What if it happens again? That's a radically shift in thinking about what is important. It's a radical shift in what's meaningful. And it's a radical shift in the way you're going to. going to live your life.

So let me get your thoughts on changing patterns of thinking. Hmm. Oh, yeah. Everything changed, right? I mean, everything. Because, yeah, I mean, it's true, though. It's a, God, these great questions. The whole pattern changed.

Like, sorry to be if this is mundane or menial, but like my diet changed. like consumption habits changed. How I did, what I did with my free time changed. I started to work out more, started to blog, started to do public speaking for people like the American Heart Association, like that sort of thing changed. Then the pattern of being an adoptee with no connection to biological family or to biological roots to suddenly having the door thrown open and having access to this incredibly loving family.

And then to allow that family into our home and our hearts as much as they are allowing us into their home and hearts as well. So that pattern changed. So yeah, the patterns got blown up. And quite candidly, my. And quite candidly, my professional pattern changed. I soon thereafter left my job in corporate America and took a job with a large financial services firm and took a job with a smaller one closer to home so that I had more time

to do the adoptee advocacy work, to write the blogs, to go to the gym, to make sure I was at all my kids' school events and sporting events and all that kind of stuff. Like everything, like everything. I'm like, you know, I sat, in fact, in fact, George, I sat down with my wife after my heart attack. And I said, okay, outside of our friends, because you asked about relationships. Yeah. And they're super important to me. Outside of our relationships, they're not going to change.

Our relationships are, they might get enhanced by this new biological family, but our relationships aren't going to change. But everything else in our, in my life, how I'm living my life. how I'm living my life is up for total discussion. How I do it, where I do it, what I'm doing, when it's happening, like all of that I put on the table. So yeah, so we attack those patterns pretty aggressively. And I would say that, you know, that that expression, what's the expression to go through change or to grow? You've got to get uncomfortable. There's a lot of that.

Sure, I was uncomfortable at times, but I knew that for some, reason, maybe this is the higher power like planted in my consciousness that if you go through this, if you trust me, if you allow this to happen, you're going to come out the other side with so much more abundance, so many more gifts, so much more love in your life. Like just believe and go for it. And so that's what I did. And here we are. Yeah. In fact, just full circle. So yesterday was a Sunday. I had Ron and Sharon over at our house for lunch yesterday and they were here for one, two, three, four hours together. So we've made, they've, I've got, they never talked after they ended the engagement. They went their separate ways and

effectively never talked again. We're never in touch. And even early days in my reunion, there was concern about ever being connected again. And here we are now. We've got them back together and talking and being comfortable and working on their relationship and friendship. And it's like, wow. I mean, it's just so, so much groovy coolness that's happening. It's amazing. It is amazing. It's so profound for me to think that the world outside of us may be a direct

reflection of the world inside of us. And if you change, if you radically change the way you think and the patterns of your life, you'll radically change the patterns of the world around you, the relationships, the love, the embracement, the acceptance, the awareness. It's mind blowing, right? Yeah, mind blowing. Completely mind blowing. And for me, knock on wood, I'm not going to lie. I feel very lucky. I have adoptees that have friends and acquaintances that have gone out and done a search and it didn't go great. The reunion was not what they had hoped for. It hasn't worked out or maybe it worked out at the beginning and then things got strained later on.

We're six some years into this right now. We're still figuring it out, but it's been nothing short of a hallmark or Lifetime Channel movie so far with the acknowledgement acceptance and embrace that we've been going to. And I will say, when my mom was really tender, like early days of the search and when we found them, but we hadn't reached out to them yet, I said, mom, if this works out, you should be grateful knowing that there'll be so much more love,

not only in your son's life, in my life, but in your grandchildren's lives. Like presumably my kids will have so much more love and people looking out for them than they ever could have imagined a few short weeks ago. So not sure where that thought came from, but I wanted to loop it in because it was something that came up earlier where we were talking in terms of like, how do we think about these things. And if you, if you embrace the change, sometimes, sometimes I wish it would happen for everybody that they would get the results that they, they hope for, but you've got to go through it to get there. You've got to go through it. Yeah. And I think it's, I think it's, I think it's,

I think it's fair to say that understanding the risks of, hey, this may not work out the way you want. Like, that's such an important part. But I want to tell people that, that, and I don't know, but my opinion is that trauma is not only individual, but it's generational trauma that you're working through. And when you as an individual, find a way to break through a generational trauma, like something that you hold that maybe may not be the best pattern, you know, like sometimes children live the unlived dreams of the parents. And so when you as an adult can find a way to break through that generational trauma, it's one less thing your kids are going to have to do. And it helps to pan back and see yourself as, look, I am my

mother's son. I am my great-grandmother's grandson. And, you know, when you can understand yourself as a process that's been happening and evolving, then you can begin to understand the traumas in your life may not all be yours, but you can help move the next generation along by confronting this thing that is traumatic. And it may not get the result you want, but it'll definitely help the next generation move through their traumas because it sets the pace and it sets the path forward to to combat, maybe not combat, but to confront the very things that are that are scary to you, to confront the things that are blocking you from moving forward. What is your take on like the generational trauma? Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah. And like, what is it, what's the term?

as an epigenetics? Epigenetics. Is that it? Am I thinking of the right? Yeah, I think you're a spot on there. Is that it? Yeah. You know, the only way I can think about it is that my kids have seen it in action.

And hopefully what I've been through and how I held my, conducted myself, the standards I held myself to going through the heart attack recovery process and through the adoptee, the search and research and research and research. union process. I mean, I went through borderline catastrophic trauma, right? Yeah, not even borderline, catastrophic trauma. I mean, I made it. I guess that's why I say borderline, but I mean like, yeah, catastrophic. Like, holy cow. The mortality rate on the condition that I had is close to darn near 100%.

I mean, it's way up there. So to see that and to see their dad come back and come back a fighter. and to hopefully, hopefully they saw me do it with a smile on my face and with grace. I'll let them be the judge of that. I don't know. I'm sure that I'm probably not. And then to see me go find my truth to be a person just wants answers and to not be afraid of getting there, even if the road may twist and turn a little bit, but to stay true to it and stay committed,

even when we don't know what the results may be. And my kids knew this. Like I would sit down and say, hey, I'm going to send letters, and I'm not sure what's going to happen here. Hopefully, generationally, they pick up on this and they, I've modeled something for them that they can take for them and they can model for their kids. And yeah, I think that's how I think about it from a generational standpoint. And I don't know for like being in utero with Sharon, like if I pick up. up anything from her. I probably did. You know, they say there's, there's research now, which I'm not super well schooled in, but about how babies in utero become attached to their

biological mother. I mean, we know, we know children are clearly attached to their mothers. I get that, but like the sound of her voice, the scent of her milk, the taste, like, they know this. And when you are, and I will, this is a public service announcement for people who are interested in this. And I'm going to go off on a tangent, but hopefully it's helpful. It'll be a very quick one. Adopties are four times more likely to attempt suicide than non-adopties. Adopties are overrepresented in addiction treatment settings than non-adopties. And there are many reasons for this.

And I think one of the big ones is that the PTSD that occurs when we are separated from our mothers at birth, as was the case for me in the good old olden days, where the mother was not able to hold me or care for me for any period of time. But it was like born and swept away. For the first 19 days of my life, I have no idea what happened to me. I was in some sort of baby care situation. until I was adopted by mom and dad. But, but yeah. So there is some,

there is some trauma there. And I wonder if that somehow threw up. And I'm using the term epigenetics. I've got to look it up because I probably am not accurately using it. And I might be incorrect. I probably should pull it up and look at it. But I don't know if I passed anything on through my, my genes as a result of the trauma I had at birth being separated from Sharon right away.

Maybe that something passed on to my kids in that way. I haven't seen anything surface, but potentially. I don't know. Yeah, well, I don't even know where to go. It's such a beautiful. I wish I was there to give you a hug, Adriene. I would give you a big hug right now and tell you, I love you, man. It's such a beautiful story.

And I'm thankful that you took a moment to share it with me and everybody here. And it seems as if you're kind of a beacon for light for people who may find themselves. trying to find their parents or trying to find themselves creating a better way for themselves after a traumatic event. As I'm getting close to land in the plane here, I can't possibly let you go

without you letting people know where they can find you, what you got coming up, and what you're excited about. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you, thank you so much for that. And I know we've talked about the podcast's profound awesomist,

but that's how people can find me. That's where I point them is to wherever you download your podcast, wherever you're listening to this, you can most certainly get profound awesomeness. You can track me down that way. What I'm really excited about is to take the podcast. I'm trying to get better as a podcast host and as a podcast producing it myself, just trying to get better there and to continue to grow and evolve it to get more and more of these stories from, call it from trauma to triumph type stories out there to put into to share and it is unapologetically intended to be a good news type of situation.

Like I'm sitting on my little lily pad in the universe with my little bullhorn saying, here's some positive news. Hopefully we can make a difference. And if we can hopefully help inspire and motivate one person, that's, I don't say, it's all we can hope for, but yes, we've done something really good. If it's just one person, if we can affect change and help tons of people, oh my gosh, just think of the power of that. So I'm really excited about where that's going.

I'm now starting to get active on social media. I've got a profound awesomess Instagram page. I've got a Facebook page. All this is very new. So I'm excited to just grow and keep adding to the layers of what we're doing with the show, profound awesomeness. It seems like natural progression to me. It seems like the event that happened to you was like a pebble thrown into a glassy sheet of water.

And now the rings are just getting bigger and bigger. affecting more and more people. Nice of you to say. Yeah, it's true. It's true. And that's the natural progression from, if we take it back to patterns, here you are shifting your patterns in life.

And then all of a sudden you're collecting other people that are shifting patterns in their life. And when you shift them together, you have this incredible profound awesomeness that is making the world better. And I love it. And I'm really thankful that there's people doing what you're doing. And I'm so thankful to get to play a small part

in getting to host. your story and learning from it and taking inspiration from it. Yeah. And thank you once again. It's been a thoroughly enjoyed the conversation and it's been great getting to know you. One thing I would say to the ripples and the ripple effect that I think that it was learning for me early in this process is that everybody to be successful, everybody, when I say to be successful in the adoption reunion process, everybody has to be willing to grow.

And if you're willing to grow, it could work for everybody. And I found that to be the case. In my situation, again, we talked about acknowledgement, sorry, acknowledgement acceptance and embrace. Like, if you're going through that and you're providing that, you're growing, you're willing to grow. And if we could all grow, be willing to grow and willing to embrace and to push out the ripples from the pedal to affect more people.

I just think of the power of that and what we could do to help people. If people are looking, Adrian, for help, is that like a service that you provide? Like, if people wanted some help and trying to find the right people to get them on that path, would they reach out to you? I would welcome that conversation. Absolutely. Yep. And then I have a link to your personal website that maybe that's where they would go.

If they hear this story or they, maybe you hear this story and you know someone that's been asking questions or something like that. They could maybe reach out to that link and then maybe start a conversation with you or something like that. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. I need to update a few things on that site, but 100% they can go there too. Yes. Adrian Jones. You're talking about Adrian Jones. Yes. Yes. That's exactly the one. Yeah. Oh, that little site. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I recommend everybody check it out. It's a beautiful site and it's really well worded. And if you like the story that you heard here today, then you'll, you will find a similar feeling of warmth when you go to that site and start reading through it. Thank you for that. Thank you so much. Yeah, I'm happy to do it. Is there anything else you would want to point people towards or you have anything in closing,

any kind of advice or anything else you want to give to people? Boy, I feel like I've talked so much. No, I just encourage everybody to take a minute and I'm not much into meditation. Not that I'm against it. I actually think I need to learn how to do it and to carve it into my own schedule. But what I would ask for people is to just every day, take five minutes, just stop what you're doing. And there are probably people who are very seasoned at this, who do a lot of meditative coaching and stuff like that, who would have some great advice. But just from my perspective, take the five minutes every day to sit still and take an account of what you have in your life and how utterly blessed we are to get to do things every day.

because we don't know, it's trite to say, we don't know when it's going to be gone. We don't know what our last breath is. No breath is guaranteed. So just take that time every day. Just pause, slow down. You have 24 hours a day.

You can take five minutes and just take account of how lucky you are. Wherever your circumstances, you can find luck and the blessings in your life. That would be my final thought, I think. That's beautiful. And it's true. It's very true.

Well, Adrian, I, again, That is such a profound story. And I don't know the last time I cried like that on a podcast. So thank you. Move to tears. Mission accomplished. No, I'm joking. Well, it's good.

It's everything that a good story and a good, it's just, it's everything. And I'm really thankful for you and your family and all of them. And I'm even more excited that this potential could be there for other people to to have potentially. And I think that sharing stories like that is something that is a lost art form. And I'm really proud to know that there's people doing it. So thank you very much. And hang on one second. I'm going to end the podcast for the people.

But I want to talk to you for one more moment. Sounds great. Thank you so much for letting me be here. Yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening to the story today and hanging out with both of us. I hope you enjoyed the story and the time and the lessons that we got to share and learn. And that's all we got for today.

Aloha.