Nicole 'Snooki' Polizzi Reveals How She Found Out She Was Adopted: 'I'm Curious About My Birth Family'
Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi is opening up about when she discovered she was adopted.
TheJersey Shore star, 30, revealed details about her childhood and the curiosities she had growing up in Marlboro, New York. “I don’t really talk about it just because I just feel like my family is my family,” Polizzi admitted in her latest YouTube vlog in which she discussed her adoption story.
“I never really thought, ‘What’s my birth mother like? What’s my birth family like?’ Because I’m so content with my adopted parents and my adopted life and family. But you know I thought about it once I started getting older, like, ‘What does my mom look like? What does my dad look like?’ ” the mother of two said.
“I was adopted at six months from Santiago, Chile. And I was adopted by Helen and Andrew Polizzi. They flew all the way to Chile to come pick me up and they said right when they saw me they said I was like, ‘Mama, Dada.’ So it was meant to be, things just work out that way — it’s called fate,” Polizzi continued.
“I was always meant to be with my adopted parents, which I don’t even, ew, I hate saying adoptive parents because they are my parents, it’s weird,” she shared. “Even though my nationality is Chilean, I grew up Italian. So when people say to me what’s your nationality I say, ‘I’m Chilean but I grew up Italian.’ I feel like I’m both.”
But it wasn’t until she was a teenager that her father revealed the story of how she joined the Polizzi family.
“Anytime I did ask because I always knew, they didn’t have to tell me. They didn’t have to sit me down at 10 and be like, ‘Nicole, you’re adopted.’ I knew, we don’t look alike. I’m brown, you’re white. This doesn’t make sense but I always knew in my heart that I was adopted and I was totally fine with it,” she said. “I would say once I was 16, 17, I started to think, ‘Why didn’t my birth parents want me? What do they look like? Do I have any brothers and sisters?’ Because I grew up an only child, I always wanted a brother or sister to grow up with. I hate being an only child, it makes me a bitter bitch that I am today. That’s why I want like 10 kids so they don’t feel that way.”
Polizzi added, “Every time I ask my parents they would get upset. I could just tell they would get upset because they didn’t want to tell me the truth or they didn’t want me to think that they’re not my parents which was never the case. Eventually, when I was 21, 22, I got my dad drunk and was like, ‘Dad, can you just tell me what went on? Why was I up for adoption?’ ”
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The Polizzi’s traveled to Chile in order to bring Nicole back to the States after they learned she was given up for adoption due to her birth family’s difficult circumstances.
“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,” the MTV star 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.”
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“Would I ever want to meet them? I think I would, I would definitely want to meet my birth family,” Polizzi said.
“In the back of my head I’m always curious to meet my birth family,” she admitted, jokingly adding, “I always wonder if I never was adopted and I stayed with my birth parents would I still be a hot mess like this? Just in Spanish, probably. I feel like I was always meant to be this hot mess.”