Hannah Jennings’s birth parents were young high schoolers when they had her, back in 1999. At a tender age themselves, they kept the pregnancy a secret. The teen parents did what they felt was best for their baby: placing her with adoptive parents, and hoping they’d give her the life she deserved.
Eighteen years later, Hannah was able to meet her birth parents, Megan and Brent, in two wonderful and heartfelt reunions. Hers was a “semi-open” adoption, and Hannah always knew she had not one, but two sets of parents.
Hannah grew up with her adoptive parents, Leanne and Wayne, in Walla Walla, Washington. Wayne is a pharmacist, while Leanne was a preschool teacher before retiring a few years ago; their other daughter, Katelyn, now 26, was also adopted. The couple approached their family situation with love and sensitivity.
“As babies, my mom would tell us that we had not one, but two mothers that loved us,” Hannah, 22, told The Epoch Times. “She had several children’s books that she would read to us about adoption, and regularly told us our stories and welcomed any questions we had.”
Hannah and Katelyn are now married with their own families, but both sisters remain close. Katelyn, a software engineer, has three children, while Hannah currently lives in Eastern Idaho with her husband and is a new mom to “the most calm and beautiful baby girl, Maren Olivia.”
“I have been married to my best friend, Nicholas, for almost three years,” Hannah said. Nicholas graduated from college in July with a degree in horticulture, setting out to become a landscape gardener.
When Hannah met her birth parents five years ago, she instantly felt close to them, forming a great, positive bond. But she says that having her own little family has made setting boundaries easier.
“Growing up knowing that I was adopted never felt like a negative thing,” Hannah explained. “My parents approached our adoptions as just a fundamental part of our being as our eye color or favorite foods.
“There was no shame in our adoption, and I remember being eager to share my story with anyone and everyone that would listen.”
One of the reasons Leanne and Wayne took their stance was Leanne’s own experience of finding out she herself had been placed with adoptive parents, following her mom’s divorce to her biological father at a very young age.
“She hadn’t known she was adopted until she accidentally stumbled upon that information when she was 13,” Hannah said. “She was stunned to find out and remembers feeling blindsided. She had to go through a process of finding out who she was again.”
Because of her own history, Leanne decided before she adopted Katelyn that she would never hide the truth. Her first daughter didn’t feel a desire to delve into her own story until she finished high school, but Hannah received annual letters from her birth mom right through her childhood and teens.
In August 2017, Hannah, then 18, finally met the person she knew loved her, who had always sent her bracelets. The family traveled to Megan’s home to spend the weekend with her and her four children, then-husband, parents, and siblings.
Describing herself as never having been a physically affectionate person, Hannah was anxious leading up to meeting her birth mom, because she assumed there’d be lots of hugging, and she would feel uncomfortable. But when Megan opened the door and wrapped her in the tightest hug, it instantly felt natural.
“I felt such peace as we stood there embracing in her doorway,” she recalled.
That same feeling of peace came back when Hannah’s birth father hugged her at the next heartfelt reunion two weeks later. “He squeezed me so tight, it felt like my eyes might just pop out of my skull,” she said.
When Hannah was born, her birth mother had just graduated high school not long before, and her birth father was just starting his senior year; the pair split shortly after the birth, going on to make separate lives for themselves. Hannah says her birth mother had told her how they tried to find a family that resembled what she hoped for her future family: a loving couple, preferably with a sibling, musical, and spiritual.
“They didn’t feel that they were in a place in life to be the parents they wanted for me. They actually kept the pregnancy a secret until the day I was born,” she said. “An adoption agency was called from the hospital room. With me in one arm and a stack of hopeful adoptive parent profiles in the other, they chose my family.
“I think if they were a little older, and if they had wanted to build a future together, they might not have placed me. But as it were, they were still so young and recognized that a family that already had a foundation would be ideal for my upbringing. They wanted everything they weren’t ready to give me, and they found the family that was able to provide that.
“I am really close with both sets of parents. My parents are 100 percent my mom and dad. My birth parents fit in a category that I don’t know how to label. They are just some of my best friends. I also consider my birth father’s wife to be one of my absolute best friends. My birth father’s home feels like home to me.”
Describing Megan as a lot like an older sister figure, Hannah says both of them message regularly, telling each other just about everything. “She is in a lot of ways what I hope to be someday: confident, charismatic, kind. I’m so blessed that she has let me into her home and her life and that I have been able to build relationships with my younger half siblings,” Hannah added.
Later this year, Hannah and Nicholas plan to relocate to the city where both her birth parents live, a place her adoptive parents have also just moved to. Most of her family will then be living within 20 minutes of each other, and she says she can’t wait to see them more.
Since growing into adulthood, moving out, and getting married, Hannah is thankful to have been able to work through a lot of her emotions around adoption. She talks with great love for her parents, who always supported her endeavors. Hannah asserts she is so grateful to Wayne and Leanne, and so grateful to Megan and Brent. She communicates regularly with them, but her priorities have shifted now that she’s married.
“I still consult my parents and birth parents for big decisions, but the opinion I consider the most is that of my husband,” she said.
“I have my little life with him, and all the relationships outside of the two of us and our new baby are just sweet icing and a cherry on top of the slice of cake we call life.”
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