Love, Pain, Grief, and Learning How to Overcome with Cat Partheniades

Yuliana Kim-Grant's Phoenix Tales

Love, Pain, Grief, and Learning How to Overcome with Cat Partheniades

On this week's episode, Yuliana welcomes Catherine ‘Cat’ Partheniades to the show to talk about the moment she found out she was adopted. She was 30 when this happened, and shortly after this discovery, both of her adoptive parents passed away. Today she chats with Yuliana about reckoning with her parents’ lies, experiencing resentment, and her intense periods of drinking to repress the emotions she didn’t know how to deal with or even want to deal with. It was only upon finding her biological family that she found solace in her identity and her parents’ decision to withhold information from her.

After coming into contact with her birth mother through Facebook, Cat remembers meeting her in Brazil as a blissful moment where she finally found the missing piece that she hadn’t quite been able to place in her life before. Kim and our guest go on to talk about both Cat’s birth and adoptive parents, and the pair close out the episode by talking about her experience healing from grief and complex emotions. It’s certainly been an interesting ride for Cat Partheniades, but, as you will hear, she doesn’t want this narrative to dominate her life. After all, she is so much more than that.

Episode Highlights:

• Cat finding out she was adopted at 30
• Her parents’ lies
• Experiencing resentment toward her parents
• Setting pain aside
• Feeling like she’s betraying her parents
• Finding her biological family through Facebook
• The quest for Charlotte’s birth mom
• Reunification with Charlotte’s biological family
• Charlotte’s coming out
• Identity struggles
• Healing from grief
• Ed Sheeran’s Photograph

Quotes:

“Facing the health challenges of both her parents, she finds out that she's adopted, even amid the pain of losing her parents and this life altering discovery, she finds a way toward acceptance of her life and more importantly, herself.”

“I did get into contact with my biological family, and at that point in time, I finally felt that I was at home with myself— with the universe in a sense - because when I met my biological family, that's where I belong, in a sense. It has nothing to do with the adoptive side not loving me or anything like that.”

“I knew that because growing up, my father was Greek, my mother was Brazilian. And the story that they told me was, they tried to have a baby for like, 16 years, and I was the miracle baby. And instead of having me here in the States, where my mom had no family, they decided to take my mom to Brazil to be around family.”

“I think initially, I was so overwhelmed with knowing that I was going to lose my parents, then eventually dealing with grief. I wish I didn't have to deal with the adoption part of my life. I found it to be very overwhelming, to be very honest. I did a great job in hiding those feelings from people.”

“When you look at the bigger picture, how can I be mad at people that wanted to love me and protect me so hard? That's what I kind of started to learn and that's what gave me peace with everything.”

The moment I saw my bio mom, I knew it was her. How did that feel? “Oh my god, I felt like I was floating. I felt like I wanted to throw up and cry. It was just so overwhelming, but it was so beautiful. My wife got to witness all the emotions all at once where she told me the story. She told me that everyone in the family knew about me. And she also told me that she's been waiting for me for 33 years to contact her because when she gave me away for adoption, she left me with a letter. When I wanted to, I could contact her, but my family never gave me that letter. Thank God for Facebook. ”

“Thankfully, they're both really great people, both sides of my bio family are amazing and very welcoming to me. And that's also been really overwhelming, but in the most positive sense.”

“My grief cycle, the way I remember it, was grieving my mother, grieving my father, and then grieving myself and who I thought I was.”

“I still say I'm Greek and Brazilian, because I am; that’s never going to leave me. Just because genetically I might not be those things, I was raised in that environment.”

“That documentation that I found gave me a sense of peace, because I finally figured out who I truly am.”

“This song Photograph by Ed Sheeran, resonated with me so deeply right after my mom passed. I remember specifically…I just got the news. I went out for coffee, and I actually forced myself to leave the house. I was at the deli getting coffee, and all of a sudden, I felt this overwhelming sense of grief, started crying, and the song came on.”

Links:

Phoenix Tales Homepage

Phoenix Tales on Instagram

Phoenix Tales on Spotify

Cat Partheniades on Instagram

Cat Partheniades's Homepage

This week on @phoenixtalespodacast, Yuliana speaks Catherine ‘Cat’ Partheniades, a trainer in NYC, about the moment she found out she was adopted. @catpartheniades was 30 when this happened, and shortly after this discovery, both of her adoptive parents passed away.

Even amid the pain of losing her parents and this life altering discovery, she finds a way towards acceptance of her life and more importantly, herself. Cat’s story is incredibly moving, but so filled with love. A beautiful place to land in one’s life is to know that you’ve been loved. 🌟 #MyPhoenixTalesMoment

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