Ep. #179 | My Adoption Story

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Stitcher 

Listen on Spotify

Welcome back to The Simplicity Sessions, I’m delighted that you’ve joined us today. My name is Jenn Pike, your host, registered holistic nutritionist, medical exercise specialist, the best-selling author of the Simplicity Project and the creator of the women’s revolutionary health program, The Hormone Project.

This is a special episode today because it is my birthday. I have a unique birth story as I was adopted at birth; I was raised by my wonderful adoptive parents and met my birth parents when my daughter was 10 months old. I wanted to tell you this story because it made me into the woman, mother, and wife that I am today. 

My birth parents had me when they were 15 (mother) and 16 (father) years old. My mother didn’t even know she was pregnant until she was 5 months along because she was having irregular periods due to her young age.

My adoptive parents already had a daughter, Wendy, but decided to adopt another child after tragically losing my older brother Christopher at 19 months old after recovering from surgery to repair five holes in his heart. Soon after I was born and my adoptive parents took me into their care, they found out they were pregnant with my younger brother, Matthew (younger by 8 months).

Life as a child within my adoptive parents’ family was wonderful. I always felt loved and supported by my parents who told me I was adopted at a young age. I took pride in my adoptive status. I gave an award-winning speech in grade three on my adoptive story.

My parents gave me the forms to find my birth parents at the age of 17. I was excited; however, I didn’t fill out the forms right away because I had the opportunity to finish high school early to move to Japan and work as a model. I went away to school when I got back from Japan.

It wasn’t until I was married and pregnant with my first child, Emerson, that I decided I wanted to find out more about my birth parents to find out the family health history. After filling out a series of forms and a lot of patience, I finally got the chance to meet and speak to my birth mother.

I discovered that my birth parents stayed together, got married, and had three more children: Matt, Spencer, and Emma. A fourth child, my parents’ second pregnancy, was lost (another boy), which was similar to my adoptive parents’ experience.

I was very nervous when I first met my birth parents, but I was fortunate that my adoptive parents prepared a number of pictures when I was a baby to show my birth parents. I discovered that my birth siblings did not know about me. My birth parents never told them about me because my birth was a secret due to the nature of the times and how people would react to a young teenage pregnancy.

It took me a long time to figure out how I felt about gaining an entire family that I did not know well. I would spend a lot of time with my birth parents and my birth siblings, but it was difficult to accept that my daughter would call them grandparents. Over time, I was able to get over the emotionally draining times and grew a bond with my birth family.

I am forever grateful that I have this big extended family from which my husband, kids, and I interact with on a regular basis. Meeting my birth family and being raised by my adoptive family with such love and support throughout my life has shaped me into the person I am today, and for that I am eternally grateful.

If you have a question for me and my team, send it over to hello@jennpike.com or via Instagram at @jennpike and I’ll do my best to share helpful insights, thoughts and advice. 

Here are the main topics of today’s episode:

• Life changes and update
• The Beginning of Jenn’s birth story
• The reason why Jenn’s parents decided to give her up for adoption
• How Jenn’s older brother Chris led to her adoption
• Jenn’s birth
• Jenn as a baby being held by nurses because neither mom was present at the moment
• The arrival of her younger brother, Matthew
• The search for Jenn’s birth parents
• Marriage to Jenn’s Chris and her first child
• The adoption disclosure bill
• Discovering the government found her birth parents
• Jenn’s first conversation with her birth mom
• Jenn’s first meeting with her birth parents
• Discovering how her birth parents mourned the loss of their daughter
• Adjusting to the new family
• The unknowing connections between Jenn and her birth family over her lifetime
• Grateful for a big beautiful extended family 
• Pay attention to the signs

Connect with us – 

Thank you for joining us today. If you could do me the honor of hitting the subscribe button, leaving a review and sharing this podcast with a friend or on social media tagging me when you do @thesimplicityproject on Facebook, @jennpike on Instagram, @simplicityjenn on Twitter, I would be forever grateful.

You can connect to this episode on iTunes, Spotify, or Stitcher by searching The Simplicity Sessions, or visiting www.jennpike.com/podcast.

Online work with Jenn –

Register for my signature program The Hormone Project and work with me 1:1 to support your health, hormones, and more via the following link www.jennpike.com/thehormoneproject. You can get $250 off until September 8th. 

Sign up for The Synced Program to learn how to tune your body to the lunar cycle and acquire a multidisciplinary approach to balance your body in less than 30 minutes a day! 

Interested in registering for the upcoming Audacious Women program? Send us a message via our website at https://jennpike.com/contact/ 

To learn more about the products mentioned in this episode, visit the link i’ve shared on my Instagram @jennpike. There you can discover where you can purchase these products and how you can start to make them part of your everyday simplicity approach. 

Learn more about the products and supports I recommend from some of our amazing partners – 

• Saint Francis Herb Farm education includes webinars, blogs and articles on important topics including the plant medicines that they create to promote women’s health by targeting digestion, allergies, immune support, heart health, brain health, and sleep. I use and recommend their products and you can use the code JENNPIKE15 at check out to save 15% off your order.
  • I have been under stress lately with my life changes, so I have been using ashwagandha to decrease stress. It helps me stay aware and increase my body’s resiliency and it acts as an anti-inflammatory. Ashwangandha comes in a tincture form. Other benefits include increased strength, endurance, and sex drive.
• Eaton Hemp is my favourite CBD and Hemp based company. They are a hundred percent organic, they’re unfiltered, and they are third-party tested. To experience Eaton Hemp, use the discount code JENNPIKE to save 20% off all your orders on their site.
  • I take their CBD oil to help my body relax by supporting my nervous system.
• GoodJuju makes all-natural, plastic-free home & body products that are good for you and good for the planet. If you use the code 75FREESHIP when you spend $75 or more on any of their products, you get free shipping.
  • Their scalp care products are great to use during tough workouts in the late summer heat.
• Skin Essence is Canadian-founded, organic, non-GMO, and does not test on animals; this company is one that we love and have around the house. You can even talk to the company to get advice on which products may be right to try first. If it’s your first time ordering from Skin Essence, use my code JENNPIKE20 for 20% off. Use code JENNPIKE15 at check out and save 15% off your order for every order after that.
  • I use soothe oil on my skin, which has calendula, vitamin E, sage, and galbanum, which have anti-inflammatory properties. I put the oil along my hairline.

Quotes –

• “…until she was sitting in class one day and actually noticed that she had lactated through her shirt through her bra and her shirt.”
• “He was born with five holes in his heart and he lived until he was 18 months old with that heart, then underwent heart surgery. He survived the surgery, but then didn’t make it through the recovery. And so my mom and dad lost him at 19 months old. And my sister lost him.”
• “I have a baby coming in September and I have a baby coming in October. Would you like one of these babies? This is the conversation that happened back in 1979. 
• “I, in fact, was the final private adoption done in Ontario before CAS came in and took over.”
• “…here’s what I want you to know throughout this whole journey of me sharing this. There has never been a moment in my life where I have not felt loved from inception.”
• “I am so grateful to my mom and dad for being the home that my soul and my spirit needed in order to become the young girl, the mother, and the woman that I am today, because they’re responsible”
• “…now I think I’m ready to fill out the forms because I want to know more about my health history. I want to know more about things that I need to understand in my own body and if I’m susceptible to anything. Now that we’re starting to have children, I want to know it for them.”
• “…she says, hi, can I speak with Jennifer? And I said, yep and start crying. She says ‘hi, my name is Leslie. I am your birth mom’”
• “But at the same time, it was so emotionally draining and exhausting. Now we are at these points in our life where we have a really great relationship.”
• “I believe that I have had such a healthy relationship with my whole adoption story and with all of these new things happening and meeting my whole birth family, because my mom and dad were honest with me from day one.”
• “And that we may not arrive here in the family that we are going to be raised by, but we can most definitely end up in a family that we are meant to be loved and raised by. And that is my story”

Additional Information About Jenn –

Jenn studied and graduated with honors in Human Anatomy and Physiology with such a passion that it propelled her to continue her education over many years. Jenn is a Registered Holistic Nutritionist, Medical Exercise Specialist, Registered Yoga Instructor and Faculty of the Toronto Yoga Conference, Pre & Post Natal Yoga Expert, STOTT Pilates trained instructor, Twist Sport Conditioning Coach, Spin Instructor Crossfit Level 1 Coaching, among other certifications she got along the way. She is also a guest Holistic Expert for Breakfast Television, Global, CHCH, Rogers Tv and writes columns for STRONG Fitness Magazine, iRun magazine, Savvy Mom and contributes to Inside Fitness Magazine, The Toronto Star, and Sun. She is also a proud educator and ambassador to Genuine Health, Nature’s Emporium, and Juice Plus.

Jenn is a proud mama to two beautiful souls and her best teachers of life. She resides on Lake Simcoe in Keswick with her husband and two children.