During Thursday’s new episode of the MTV reality series, Snooki, now 37, was connected to her birth mother with the help of a genealogist … and, through a translator, she was able to communicate with her for the first time, and learn why she was put up for adoption.

Snooki was joined by Jenni “JWoww” Farley, who was there for comfort and support. The translator brought up a video Snooki’s birth mom sent, translating what she said, in part, as, “I never forgot about you, and I love you.” Snooki immediately burst into tears.

“To hear her say, I love you, oh my god,” she said in a confessional. “She just looks so sad. I feel like she’s been waiting for this moment to reach out to me. I never realized that I actually cared about hearing my birth mom’s voice.”

The translator communicated with Snooki’s birth mom through a messenger, with the woman saying she was to answer any of Snooki’s questions.

“Why was I put up for adoption?” Snooki asked, to which the translator then typed out the message. “That’s a heavy question,” JWoww noted.

“For 36 years, I’ve been thinking about this question, and now the answer is going to pop up any second,” Snooki added in a confessional. “This is insane.”

The group then received a response, with Snooki’s birth mom said, per the translator, “She said when she realized she was pregnant, she told her partner, your father, and he just disappeared, leaving her by herself.”

“She didn’t have any support at that moment so that was the only option that she had,” the translator told Snooki. “Even [though] it was painful, she had to let you go.”

Snooki asked the translator to tell her birth mother that she “has an amazing life.”

The group received another message, with Snooki’s birth mom asking her if she was “angry with her.”

“What a sin!” Snooki said, to which she and JWoww agreed that she needed to speak with her on the phone. When her birth mom answered, Snooki froze, and initially couldn’t even greet the woman.

“Oh my god. I’ve never been so nervous,” she admitted in a confessional. “I’m trying to speak but the voice isn’t coming out.”

JWoww struggled to hold in her laughter, before Snooki finally said hello to her birth mother, in Spanish.

“‘Hola!’ You sound like Dora the Explorer,” JWoww joked.

The awkward beginning aside, her birth mother then shared a touching message for Snooki, telling her, per the translator, “She said, ‘I’m sorry for putting yourself in that situation, and that you were adopted.'”

The woman could be heard crying on the phone, adding that it was a “very difficult time” in her life when she had to place Snooki up for adoption.

“She never forgot about you,” the translator added, to which Snooki instructed her to tell her birth mother in Spanish, “Say, ‘Don’t cry, I have a beautiful life,'” and that she “was adopted by loving parents,” “grew up in New York,” and was “spoiled.”

“Obviously, I wouldn’t even be here if she didn’t put me up for adoption. I have amazing parents. I had a great childhood,” Snooki reflected in a confessional, as past footage was shown on screen. “And then meeting my roommates. And them meeting Jionni. And then having my kids.”

“I want her to know, you literally gave me the best life you could,” added Snooki, who shares Lorenzo, 11, Giovanna, 10, and Angelo, 5, with husband Jionni LaValle. “And I have the best fricken’ life.”

The mom of three asked the translator to tell her birth mom that she married a “handsome Italian man” and has “three beautiful children.”

“She’s happy to know that you are a family now, and she’s very happy knowing that you were okay,” the translator said, relaying the woman’s message. “She’s really happy she talked to you, and she loves you.”

Snooki replied that she’s “excited to talk soon,” before reflecting on the moment in a confessional.

“I had no idea starting this journey that this is where I was going to end up,” she said. “I’m so happy that I did this, but she’s still a stranger to me.”

When JWoww asked if she’d ever want to meet her birth mother someday, Snooki replied in a confessional, “I’m just so content with my life and who my parents are, I don’t know where to go from here. My emotions are everywhere.”

Jersey Shore Family Vacation airs Thursdays on MTV.