Unraveling Me

S1 E 42 – Unraveling Mary - Mary always knew she was adopted. She grew up with loving parents, an adopted brother, and a younger sister, and while she was curious about where she came from, searching for her genetic family was something she could put off—until a comment from her young daughter made her see that the unanswered questions did not belong to her alone. That moment eventually set Mary on a decades-long search through closed adoption records, Catholic Charities, confidential intermediaries, courthouse files, libraries, old newspaper clippings, and more than a little detective work. Then she took an AncestryDNA test.

SHOW NOTES
Kara and Mary talk about:
Growing up knowing she was adopted and the questions she learned not to ask
The conversation with her daughter that changed how she thought about searching
Navigating closed adoption records and confidential intermediaries
Discovering a brother who had also been relinquished
Seeing a photograph of her genetic mother for the first time
Unexpected DNA matches that make you reconsider what you believed for decades
Making room for the different people who have filled the role of father
Why knowing the truth about our origins matters, even when that truth changes everything

Mary’s story is a reminder that finding family does not always mean reaching the end of the search. Sometimes, the answers we find become part of the mystery themselves.

Everyone has the right to know the truth about where they come from. Unraveling Me speaks to those people impacted by DNA surprises, NPEs (non-paternal event), adoption, assisted reproduction, and other revelations that their parentage isn't entirely what they thought. Having experienced an NPE herself, Kara (through Right To Know and this podcast) seeks to highlight those moments when we learn the most unsettling of secret—who we really are.

At Right To Know, we encourage engagement to facilitate and create real change. As an organization, we are inclusive. We assist adoptees, the donor-conceived community, people with an NPE, birth parents, gamete providers, new genetic family, recipient parents, raising families, and significant others. In learning and growing from each other, we must put the voices of adoptees, donor conceived, and people with an NPE first.

For more information about Right To Know - or if you have a story you want to tell - please visit us at https://righttoknow.us/.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

S1 E41– Unraveling Ona, Nina, Christine, and Sarah This episode is a powerful reminder that family truth rarely lands evenly. One sibling may feel immediate joy while another needs distance. A parent may have been loving and present for one child while remaining absent, or causing profound harm, in another child’s life. A discovery can validate feelings carried since childhood while also creating entirely new questions and grief. In today’s episode, Kara sits down with Nina, Christine, Ona, and Sarah. Each came to her discovery through a very different door, but their stories share one central theme: unexpectedly finding a sibling later in life.

Their stories appear in Relative Strangers, an anthology edited by BK Jackson. Together, they reveal that discovering a sibling is rarely only about adding someone new to the family. It can expose long-held secrets, reshape how we understand our parents, and awaken grief for the years, memories, and relationships that can never be recovered.

(Content warning: This episode contains discussion of sexual assault and childhood abuse.)

SHOW NOTES
In this thoughtful and deeply layered conversation, Kara, Nina, Christine, Ona, and Sarah discuss:
Four very different paths to discovering previously unknown siblings
The disbelief, relief, recognition, validation, and joy that can accompany discovery
Grieving lost time, missed childhoods, and siblings who died before they could meet
Genetic mirroring, shared traits, physical resemblance, and unexpected sibling synchronicities
Why family members can respond very differently to the same new sibling
Adjusting to the language of an expanded family—from “my father” to “our father”
Cross-siblings and the relationships that form between people connected through a shared sibling
How one discovery can raise new questions about what else a family may have concealed
Deciding what to tell a sibling about a shared parent who was loving, harmful, absent, or complicated
Loving a parent while also confronting the harm caused by their choices

Nina, Christine, Ona, and Sarah do not offer a simple reunion narrative. They offer something more honest: a conversation about secrecy, truth, lost time, belonging, and the complicated work of building a relationship with a new sibling.

Relative Strangers, edited by BK Jackson, is a collection of 28 personal essays exploring the shock, longing, grief, and transformation that can come with discovering previously unknown close relatives.

Everyone has the right to know the truth about where they come from. Unraveling Me speaks to those people impacted by DNA surprises, NPEs (non-paternal event), adoption, assisted reproduction, and other revelations that their parentage isn't entirely what they thought. Having experienced an NPE herself, Kara (through Right To Know and this podcast) seeks to highlight those moments when we learn the most unsettling of secret—who we really are.

At Right To Know, we encourage engagement to facilitate and create real change. As an organization, we are inclusive. We assist adoptees, the donor-conceived community, people with an NPE, birth parents, gamete providers, new genetic family, recipient parents, raising families, and significant others. In learning and growing from each other, we must put the voices of adoptees, donor conceived, and people with an NPE first.

For more information about Right To Know - or if you have a story you want to tell - please visit us at https://righttoknow.us/.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

S1 E40 – Unraveling Dee - At 23, while grieving the death of the mother who raised her, Dee learned another life-changing truth: she was adopted. For her entire childhood and young adulthood, Dee had believed the story she was given. She never questioned whether she belonged to her family and had no reason to investigate what her parents told her. Suddenly, she was mourning her mother while also trying to understand an identity and history that had been hidden from her.

Within months, Dee found her genetic mother and entered reunion carrying enormous hopes for connection. But reunion did not unfold as she had imagined. Thirty years later, a DNA test intended to fill gaps in her paternal medical history revealed yet another surprise.

SHOW NOTES
In this thoughtful conversation, Kara and Dee discuss:
Learning she was adopted at 23 after the death of her adoptive mother
Entering reunion with high expectations and learning why moving slowly matters
The difference between longing for connection and building an actual relationship
The emotional and medical consequences of carrying incorrect family health information
Navigating new family roles, including becoming the oldest sibling after growing up as the youngest
Reparenting the inner child who emerges during discovery, reunion, grief, and rejection
What's it like to be an LDA with an NPE
Turning pain into purpose through speaking, mentoring, and supporting other adoptees

Dee’s story spans late-discovery adoption, reunion, grief, medical uncertainty, and a second parentage discovery. It is a reminder that finding the truth does not restore what was were lost, but it can give us the freedom to decide what happens next. She’s transformed her experiences into a source of support for others.

We may not be responsible for the choices made before we had a voice, but we can take ownership of our healing, reclaim our identities, and create lives rooted in truth.

Everyone has the right to know the truth about where they come from. Unraveling Me speaks to those people impacted by DNA surprises, NPEs (non-paternal event), adoption, assisted reproduction, and other revelations that their parentage isn't entirely what they thought. Having experienced an NPE herself, Kara (through Right To Know and this podcast) seeks to highlight those moments when we learn the most unsettling of secret—who we really are.

At Right To Know, we encourage engagement to facilitate and create real change. As an organization, we are inclusive. We assist adoptees, the donor-conceived community, people with an NPE, birth parents, gamete providers, new genetic family, recipient parents, raising families, and significant others. In learning and growing from each other, we must put the voices of adoptees, donor conceived, and people with an NPE first.

For more information about Right To Know - or if you have a story you want to tell - please visit us at https://righttoknow.us/.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

S1E39 – Unraveling Bill & Priscilla - This episode is a testament to persistence. Sometimes the truth takes decades, thousands of names, and one final piece of evidence to uncover—but being able to say “I know” instead of “I wonder” can bring a profound sense of peace. Bill was one of the earliest people to take a Y-DNA test, but for more than 20 years, one question remained unanswered: why didn’t he match anyone from the Sharp family whose name he carried?

The answer arrived when his brother tested. At 72 years old, Bill learned they were half-siblings and that the man he had known as his father was not his genetic father. But identifying the truth would take another decade of research.

Fortunately, Bill was married to Priscilla—a genealogist, search angel, author, and adoption advocate who has helped solve more than 2,000 cases. By tracing generations of DNA matches, abandoned marriages, military records, name changes, and a divorce filed in the right place at the right time, Priscilla finally uncovered the identity of Bill’s genetic father.

SHOW NOTES
In this thoughtful and wide-ranging conversation, Kara, Bill, and Priscilla discuss:
• Recognizing that Bill’s Y-DNA did not match the Sharp family line
• Growing up feeling like a guest in his own family
• Carrying the name “Junior” after learning he was not genetically related to the man he was named after
• How small clues—and a genealogist’s eye for detail—can unlock long-buried answers
• Finally seeing yourself reflected in family photographs
• The medical consequences of relying on the wrong family health history
• Family estrangement and losing the opportunity to ask his mother what happened
• Finding compassion for a parent’s trauma without excusing secrecy
• Why people deserve the truth about their origins much earlier in life

Priscilla also shares her own experience as a mother who relinquished a daughter during the Baby Scoop Era. She describes being told to hide the truth, being misled by an adoption agency, searching through newspaper archives before the internet existed, and reuniting with her daughter nearly 40 years ago.

Together, Bill and Priscilla’s stories reveal how the loss of genetic continuity can ripple through adoptees, parents, siblings, and people with misattributed parentage. Their journeys are different, but both are shaped by secrecy, separation, unanswered questions, and the enduring need to know.

Everyone has the right to know the truth about where they come from. Unraveling Me speaks to those people impacted by DNA surprises, NPEs (non-paternal event), adoption, assisted reproduction, and other revelations that their parentage isn't entirely what they thought. Having experienced an NPE herself, Kara (through Right To Know and this podcast) seeks to highlight those moments when we learn the most unsettling of secret—who we really are.

At Right To Know, we encourage engagement to facilitate and create real change. As an organization, we are inclusive. We assist adoptees, the donor-conceived community, people with an NPE, birth parents, gamete providers, new genetic family, recipient parents, raising families, and significant others. In learning and growing from each other, we must put the voices of adoptees, donor conceived, and people with an NPE first.

For more information about Right To Know - or if you have a story you want to tell - please visit us at https://righttoknow.us/.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

S1 E38 – Unraveling Lynne - Lynne’s story exposes what can happen when fertility practices operate through secrecy, misinformation, and little accountability. Her parents were told to treat their children as genetically their own and never speak of the circumstances surrounding their conception. But silence did not erase the truth. It left Lynne without an accurate medical history, a coherent understanding of herself, or the information she needed to make sense of why she sometimes felt different within her own family.

Lynne grew up knowing her parents had sought help from a fertility specialist. But shortly after her father died, her mother revealed that donor sperm had been used—and that the doctor had mixed the donor’s sample with her father’s, leaving them uncertain about who had genetically fathered Lynne and her sister. This was long before consumer DNA testing and online records.

But Lynne needed to know who she was. She began a search that would take more than 20 years. What she eventually uncovered was far larger than one hidden identity: a donor who had helped conceive children over three decades and a sibling group that has now grown to 86 known members—with potentially hundreds more.

(Content warning: This episode contains discussion of suicide)

SHOW NOTES
In this conversation, Kara and Lynne discuss:
· Learning she was donor-conceived immediately after losing her father
· The emotional responsibility of welcoming newly discovered siblings into an ever-growing family
· Genetic mental health and substance-use histories—and the grief of losing siblings
· Why donor conception can create a lifelong process of grief, identity disruption, and integration
· Fertility fraud that extends beyond doctors secretly using their own sperm
· The medical consequences of growing up with an inaccurate family health history
· Lynne’s early research into the shared experiences of donor-conceived people
· The importance of bringing donor-conceived people, donors, and parents together to listen and learn from one another

After decades of searching, supporting newly discovered siblings, studying donor conception, and advocating for fertility-fraud legislation, Lynne has become one of the pioneers of the donor-conceived community. Her story is a powerful reminder that creating a child is not simply about producing a baby—it carries lifelong responsibilities for everyone involved.

Everyone has the right to know the truth about where they come from. Unraveling Me speaks to those people impacted by DNA surprises, NPEs (non-paternal event), adoption, assisted reproduction, and other revelations that their parentage isn't entirely what they thought. Having experienced an NPE herself, Kara (through Right To Know and this podcast) seeks to highlight those moments when we learn the most unsettling of secret—who we really are.

At Right To Know, we encourage engagement to facilitate and create real change. As an organization, we are inclusive. We assist adoptees, the donor-conceived community, people with an NPE, birth parents, gamete providers, new genetic family, recipient parents, raising families, and significant others. In learning and growing from each other, we must put the voices of adoptees, donor conceived, and people with an NPE first.

For more information about Right To Know - or if you have a story you want to tell - please visit us at https://righttoknow.us/.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.