We Went to See Mon Rovîa.
A couple of weeks ago, Zoë and I stood in a room full of strangers and felt something we don't often get to feel out loud: recognized.
Janjay Lowe, who goes by the name Mon Rovîa, was born in Liberia, adopted at age seven and raised across the Southern, US, eventually settling in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His musical journey started as a teenager, as a healing and emotional outlet, rather than a career path. He describes his music as Afro-Appalachian folk, a fusion of his biological and adoptive family roots, which is palatable from the audience of one of his shows.
Janjay believes in the healing power of music. He writes and sings about displacement, memory, grief, and the work of becoming someone on your own terms. The importance of feeling a sense of belonging and community..
The foundation of Unfolding.
We stood in that crowd and felt the floor tilt a little. We wondered if people who weren’t adopted understood the gravity of his words; the way they made us feel.
Because here's the thing about being adopted: most people around you have never had to ask the title of one of Janjay’s leading songs, “whose face am I?” while looking in a mirror. They've never sat with the specific ache of not knowing what they come from or longing to go back to a place they once knew.
When Mon Rovîa spoke about his story between songs, Zoë and I looked at each other more than once. We didn't have to explain what we were feeling. All it took was one look or a squeeze on the shoulder. That was the whole point.
We've talked a lot, in building Unfolding, about ambiguous loss; the kind of grief that doesn't resolve, that you don't get to close the book on. Pauline Boss's framework says you can't solve for it, only acknowledge it. We watched Mon Rovîa do exactly that and turn it into something the size of a concert venue in Boston, MA. He wasn't resolving his story for anyone's comfort. He was just telling the truth of it and trusting that the truth would land. I can confirm: it did.
This is, in a lot of ways, what we're building with Unfolding. A space where the specific weight of being adoption-connected doesn't need translating first. Where you don't have to explain the ache before someone gets why it's there. Mon Rovîa gave a room full of strangers a few minutes of that, through nothing but honesty and a guitar (and a really beautiful voice).
We left grateful, a little raw, and more convinced than ever that this work — the daily, unglamorous work of naming what you feel and giving it somewhere to go — matters.
If you haven't listened to Bloodline, start with “Whose Face Am I.” Sit with it. See what it moves in you.
And if it moves something you don't quite have words for yet, that's exactly what Unfolding is for.
