Jillian Michaels talks about her kids’ personalities
In a new interview with Ladies’ Home Journal for the publication’s July issue, new mom Jillian Michaels reveals her kids’ vastly different personalities.
The new mom, who recently adopted daughter Lukensia and whose partner Heidi Roades recently gave birth to son Phoenix, said, “[Phoenix] is the calm one. Patient. She is a firebrand. Actually, she’s incredibly shy. This was a very good orphanage, but my daughter had a hard time in that environment. It was overwhelming for her. But when she started to visit with me she would come alive and laugh and play. She’s clever and adventurous, but it’s kind of heartbreaking, because you have to understand she had been there since she was 9 or 10 months old. She’s now 2 and the only time she had left the orphanage [prior to the adoption] was when I would take her to the Haitian guesthouse where I stayed nearby. So this was a kid who had never seen the ocean, a swimming pool or a dog. She had never been to a park or a zoo or on a swing set. So she was just running around the yard of this guesthouse, picking up pebbles from gravel on the road. She had never seen gravel before. Pebbles were like gems to her.”
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Jillian also reveals her adoption process has been lengthy but her bond with her daughter was immediate: “I’ve been to Haiti on and off since I was 27. I met [Lukensia] a year ago on a trip visiting orphanages for All Blessings International, an organization I work with. I was visiting this one orphanage and the next thing I knew she jumped into my arms. She just grabbed me and clung to me and I immediately felt something. I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is my daughter.’”
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Heidi delivered son Phoenix the same week that she and Jillian welcomed Lukensia home.
Jillian mused, “I do think there’s a certain amount of fate involved. Life has a way of working out the way it’s meant to.”
