Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi, of Jersey Shore, discussed her life as an adoptee in her video blog post “My Adoption Story.” She found out as an adult that she has biological siblings in Chile. She has always been content with her adoptive family, but that fact has piqued the star’s interest in wanting to find her birth family. Polizzi says she doesn’t have the time to search now, and her mother is still “iffy” on the subject, but there may be plans for a reunion at some point in her future.
Polizzi’s adoptive parents, Helen and Andrew Polizzi, flew all the way to Santiago, Chile to pick her up when they adopted her. She was six months old. “They said right when they saw me, I was like, ‘Mama, Dada,” Polizzi recalled. “It was like meant to be. I could tell … It’s called fate.” The couple took her home to Marlboro, New York. Although she always knew of her Chilean roots, she was raised Italian. She said they have always been her only parents.
Polizzi always knew in her heart that she was adopted because she looks nothing like her parents. Any effort to learn more about her birth was deflected. It was obvious that the topic was painful for her parents. She steered clear of the discussion out of respect, but she started to wonder about her birth parents at age 16 or 17. Polizzi wondered what they looked like and why they had placed her for adoption.
At 21 or 22 she got her dad drunk and asked, “Why was I up for adoption?” He explained that she had siblings. “Basically, my birth parents had other siblings and they couldn’t afford me. I can’t even imagine because I have two kids, putting up a child for adoption, to give them a better life,” Polizzi said. “That’s so amazing for them, that shows how much they loved me. But also I could never do that. I can’t even imagine how they felt giving me up but thank you for that.”
Having been raised as an only child, Polizzi let herself wonder about her siblings. Did they look like her, act like her? She feels like pursuing those questions may have a place in her future, but for right now she is thankful to have been given an amazing life.
