After meeting her birth mom for the first time ever at 36, Snooki reveals how her kids look like her bio-family and how they reacted to her long-awaited reunion — while JWoww recalls “literally panicking” as a witness to their first conversation.
Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi is preparing herself for the next “phase” of her relationship with her biological mother, who she reconnected with for the first time since being put up for adoption as a baby earlier this year on Jersey Shore Family Vacation.
The reality TV star was adopted from Santiago, Chile as an infant and spoke with her over the phone for the first time ever — after being linked by a genealogist — in an emotional June episode of the MTV series. The woman told Polizzi that after she told her then-partner she was pregnant, he “just disappeared,” leaving her without a support system and no choice but to put her up for adoption.
Speaking with TooFab ahead of last week’s Family Vacation finale, Snooki revealed how her children — Lorenzo, 13, Giovanna, 10, and Angelo, 6 — reacted to her learning more about her parents.
“Lorenzo understood, he was like, ‘That’s cool mom, I’m proud you did that,'” she shared. “My other two were like, ‘Wait, so you weren’t in nanny’s belly? You were in someone else’s belly?’ They didn’t understand what was happening.”
“I showed them pictures, I see Giovanna in my birth mom’s face. It’s just crazy,” she continued. “And Lorenzo looks like my half-brother, I see Lorenzo in him.”
Of reaching out to her biomom, Nicole said it was a “wild” choice and something she never thought she’d do. That being said, she knows she’s “very spontaneous” and often, “if something makes me nervous, I’m just like, I’m gonna do it” — citing both her boob job and decision to open up her own stores.
She added that she still wants to reach out again, telling TooFab that her “next phase would be a FaceTime” with her birth mother.
“But I feel like that’s so huge and I’m so nervous,” said Nicole. “[Jenni ‘JWoww’ Farley] saw, I think I had a panic attack, something was happening. I was crying, laughing, I was sweating. It was just weird, I never felt that way in my life.”
Jenni reflected on the reunion as well while speaking with TooFab, saying production really “did [Nicole] justice” with how they documented her journey.
“For me, in the moment, it felt like an eternity. It felt like a wedding, like you’re leading up to this moment and it happens, like, wait, that’s it?” she continued. “It was just full of anxiety and love and panic. This poor girl was just like, her heart was coming out of her chest. And then it happened, it was so beautiful and there was closure on both sides.”
JWoww believes the reunion was “more beneficial” to Nicole’s bio-mom, “because she had no idea where Nicole was in this world, she had no idea if she was safe, happy, healthy, and she gave her this closure that this mother did the right thing, a very selfless act. It was so beautiful. It was beautiful to watch in real time and on TV.”
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While Jenni was there for Nicole when the reunion happened, she admitted she was a “terrible” support system and was “literally panicking, pacing” in the moment. “I’m like, ‘You’re supposed to calm me down!'” quipped Snooki.
Since the episode aired, Nicole said there have been a ton of viewers in her DMs who went through something similar.
“I didn’t realize doing that whole thing, that’s what was going to happen, like helping other adoptees if they have questions, or they wanted to reach out but didn’t know and that was a sign for them to reach out and find out stuff,” she explained. “So it was crazy. I get a ton of DMs still, talking about it. I feel like we have to make an adoptee group, to talk to each other, because I didn’t think it was that big of a thing.”
The Jersey Shore Family Shore reunion airs Thursday on MTV.
