I think it’s an interesting that both girls were serious gymnasts, despite the different parents. What, if anything, does it say about the nature/nurture question?
Amazing story.
I also think it’s interesting that there’s a town called Oblong. 
you know, I don’t post much - I’m cold, poor and overworked, but this just hit my funnybone. I mean really 
Was the writer of that story paid by the word? I couldn’t finish it because of the endless repetition.
And yeah . . . Oblong.
I’d be cringing in shame if I were the biological parents. They were failures for both women.
Uh… how so?
It wasn’t that long ago that well meaning people routinely pressured the parents of disabled babies to send them away. If the two parents really didn’t have the resources to care for Jen should they have kept her anyway? If the doctors lied about the cost of raising a handicapped child then it’s at least partly on them, for giving bad information to the parents.
Sure, it’s easy to slam the bio-parents but in fact the article doesn’t really let you know what happened when Jen was born, it’s all hearsay and some of it is second hand.
I’m just glad that both women seem to be healthy and successful adults.
ETA: and if there bio-father really was the sort of overbearing jerk portrayed in the article Jen might have actually had the better childhood.
Not to mention that guys like that seem to take the credit for their kids’ success, claiming to be the driving force behind it via his behavior and semi-justifying it. In this case, that kind of discredits anything like that.
“Hi Dominique, my name is Jennifer Bricker, you have been my idol my whole life
and you turned out to be my sister … I realise this might be a lot for you to take in right now. Oh, by the way, I have no legs.” LOL! I like this chick’s style.
and now for Reel Two.
It really does sound like Jen did amazingly well with a loving, supportive set of adoptive parents who were able to deal with all the issues of providing for a special needs child. I can’t imagine that she would have been able to do as well growing up in the shadow of her sister.
I’m biased, as the uncle of two adopted nephews and one adopted niece - love is more important than biology in raising a child (though biology is pretty damn important as well, obviously.)
And yeah, the writing on that article is a fine example of the best work of the Daily Mail. The ABC News article is a lot better.
I find it a bit disappointing that Oblong is shaped like a square.
That depends on your perspective.
As soon as I saw “Oblong, Illinois”, I thought this must be a joke because - in addition to the fact that it’s the Daily Mail - the dad on “The Oblongs” had no legs (or arms). Figured it had to be a winking reference.
But I was wrong! I guess you can believe everything you read on the internet!
I’m not sure on timelines here. But, either the girl would have been born in Romania or she would have been born to uninsured parents in the US. Either situation is severely suboptimal when it comes to caring for a special-needs child, and I can’t condemn the family who decided to give her up. That’s not to say the father wasn’t an asshole–according to Dominique, he squandered her money and was a real dick. She emancipated herself at age 17, he stalked her for awhile, and they only reconciled after he started dying of cancer. But none of this makes it a horrible sin to give away a special-needs child that you can’t mentally or financially afford to raise. By all accounts, she had a wonderful life with her adoptive parents. She’s damn lucky NOT to have been raised by that dick.
Yay for happy endings