Family Twist: A Podcast Exploring DNA Surprises and Family Secrets

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What would you do if a simple DNA test revealed that the man you believed was your father wasn’t your biological parent?

In this episode of Family Twist, Corey and Kendall sit down with Laura Olmsted, founder of DNAngels, to talk about the moment a family history project turned into a life-changing DNA discovery. What began as a curiosity-driven test while building a genealogy scrapbook for her grandchildren quickly unraveled everything Laura thought she knew about her identity.

Laura shares the emotional journey of uncovering the truth about her biological father, confronting long-held family secrets, and learning that the answers sometimes come too late. But from that painful discovery came something remarkable. Determined to help others navigate the same confusing and emotional terrain, Laura founded DNAngels, a nonprofit that helps adoptees, NPEs, donor-conceived people, and others identify their biological families through genetic genealogy.

Today, DNAngels has helped solve thousands of cases around the world, reuniting people with their biological relatives and helping many finally understand where they come from.

Laura also shares practical insights about the DNA search process, why messaging your DNA matches matters more than you might think, and the steps people should take before beginning a search.

For anyone who has taken a DNA test and found unexpected results, this conversation offers both perspective and hope.

Learn more about DNAngels:
https://www.dnangels.org

About Laura Olmsted

Laura Olmsted is a world-renowned genetic genealogist and the Founder and Executive Director of DNAngels, a nonprofit organization dedicated to reuniting individuals with their biological families through the power of DNA. Since launching DNAngels in 2019, Laura has led the organization to remarkable success, with over 7,000 cases solved to date and thousands more people receiving answers about their origins.

Laura’s passion for genealogy began as a family project inspired by her Aunt Shirley. While creating a heritage book for her grandchildren, she took a DNA test and discovered a life-altering truth: the man she believed to be her father was not her biological parent. Determined to uncover her origins, Laura immersed herself in genetic genealogy. Within two weeks, she identified her biological father, gaining firsthand insight into the emotional complexities faced by adoptees, NPEs, and donor-conceived individuals.

That experience ultimately led her to create DNAngels, an organization that now helps people around the world uncover the truth about their biological families.

Topics in this episode

DNA surprise
 NPE (Not Parent Expected) discovery
 Genetic genealogy
 Adoptee searches
 DNA matches and family secrets
 Finding biological parents
 DNAngels nonprofit
 Identity and family history

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What happens when a family secret rewrites your identity?

In this episode of Family Twist, Corey and Kendall welcome author Gail Lukasik, whose work explores the powerful impact of hidden family histories and DNA discoveries.

Gail reads a moving excerpt from her book What They Never Told Us: True Stories of Family Secrets and Hidden Identities Revealed, inspired by the flood of personal stories she received after sharing her own family revelation. At the Untangling Our Roots Summit, one stranger approached her with a brand-new DNA shock. The man who raised her was not her biological father.

Gail knows this journey firsthand. While researching her family history in 1995, she uncovered documents revealing that her mother had been passing as white despite having African ancestry. For 17 years she kept the secret at her mother’s request. After her mother’s death, Gail told the story in her memoir White Like Her, which eventually led her to reconnect with relatives in New Orleans she never knew existed.

In this conversation, Gail shares why strangers trust her with their deepest family secrets and why storytelling can help people rebuild their sense of identity after a life-changing discovery.

If you have ever wondered how DNA surprises reshape identity, family, and belonging, this episode will resonate.

About Gail Lukasik

Gail Lukasik is an award-winning author and genealogist. Her memoir White Like Her chronicles her discovery that her mother had been passing as white despite having African ancestry. Her follow-up book, What They Never Told Us, shares true stories of people uncovering hidden family identities through genealogy and DNA testing.

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What happens when a child asks a question the adults in the room aren’t ready to answer?

In this episode of Family Twist, Corey sits down with Dr. Vicki Sanders, a psychologist who has spent decades working with adopted and foster children, and the families raising them. Her work lives in the spaces most people avoid, the pauses, the deflections, the “we don’t need to talk about that right now” moments that shape identity in ways we don’t always see.

This conversation focuses on what children carry.

Dr. Vicki shares what she has witnessed again and again in therapy rooms:

• The questions adopted and foster children want to ask but are afraid to
 • How silence, even well-intentioned silence, shapes identity
 • The difference between protecting a child and protecting adult comfort
 • What ambiguous loss looks like in children and teens
 • How shame and secrecy can quietly impact attachment
 • What it sounds like when a child tests whether it’s safe to be curious

We also talk about how adoptive and foster parents can respond differently, not perfectly, but openly. Dr. Vicki challenges the idea that love alone resolves identity tension. Instead, she offers practical ways to stay present when uncomfortable questions arise.

This is a conversation about courage, on both sides.

Catch Dr. Vicki at Untangling Our Roots

Dr. Vicki will be speaking at the upcoming Untangling Our Roots conference, where she’ll go deeper into:

• How to create emotional safety around hard conversations
 • Supporting adopted and foster youth through identity exploration
 • Recognizing trauma responses tied to secrecy and silence
 • Practical language parents can use when biological family questions surface

If you’re attending UTOR, her session will offer tools you can take home immediately, whether you’re an adoptee, parent, clinician, or advocate.

If you’ve ever sensed there were things you weren’t allowed to ask, or if you’re raising a child who is beginning to ask them now, this episode is for you.

Family secrets are the ultimate plot twist.

About Dr. Vicki

Dr. Vicki is a licensed psychologist with decades of clinical experience working with adopted and foster children, adoptive families, and youth navigating attachment disruption and trauma. Her work centers on identity development, ambiguous loss, family systems, and helping children find language for experiences that often go unspoken.

She has supported foster youth transitioning into permanency, trained parents in trauma-informed care, and helped families move from silence and defensiveness to openness and emotional safety.

Through her clinical practice and public speaking, Dr. Vicki advocates for honest conversations that allow children to explore their origins without fear, shame, or secrecy.

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What does adoption feel like for the person who never had a choice?

In this episode of Family Twist, Corey and Kendall talk with Leslie Pate Mackinnon, LCSW, a birth mother, therapist, and one of the most respected voices in the adoption and donor conception space.

As a teenager, Leslie placed her two firstborn sons for adoption during a time when young women were often given little say in the outcome. That experience didn’t fade with time. It shaped the course of her life and her work.

For more than four decades, Leslie has maintained a private psychotherapy practice, helping adoptees, birth parents, and families navigate the lifelong emotional impact of adoption, identity, and family secrets. She presents nationally and internationally on issues affecting families formed through adoption and third-party reproduction.

Leslie has been featured on Good Morning America with Robin Roberts, appeared on CNN discussing the impact of the internet on adoption, and was part of Dan Rather’s investigative report Adoption or Abduction. She also appeared on The Katie Couric Show alongside her oldest son, Pete. Her story is included in the book The Girls Who Went Away and the documentary A Girl Like Her.

This conversation goes where many don’t.

Leslie shares what it was like to lose her children without having a real choice, how that experience stayed with her, and what she’s learned after spending decades sitting with others navigating similar truths. She also talks about what therapists still misunderstand about adoption, and why education in this space matters more than ever.

This is a conversation about adoption stories, family secrets, and the emotional reality behind DNA discovery and identity.

If you’ve ever been part of an adoption story, an NPE discovery, or a donor-conceived family, this episode will hit close to home.

Listen now to hear Leslie’s story, and the truth she’s spent a lifetime helping others understand.

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What if your father’s childhood was a handful of strange fragments, a “castle,” a room with 25 beds, hunger, silence, and a single forbidden question.

Filmmaker David Quint grew up sensing his dad was different, but nobody explained why. His father, Urban, had been raised in a 700-year-old Swiss castle that served as an orphanage, then at age 12 received a letter that changed everything: “You’re not an orphan. I’m your mother. You’re coming to America.”

He arrived in Philadelphia alone, not speaking English, looking for a woman in a pink scarf, and learning in real time what a mother even was. When he asked about his “real father,” his mother shut it down, and the subject became off limits for life.

Decades later, David made one decision that changed his relationship with his father forever. He emailed the castle.

What came back was proof, records, a name, and a path that led David and his dad back to Switzerland, with an old iPhone recording every moment. The trip brought long-buried memories to the surface, reunited his father with the boy who slept in the bed next to his, and ultimately uncovered answers that no one saw coming.

David’s documentary, Father Unknown, will be screened at Untangling Our Roots, and in this conversation, he shares the real story behind the film, what it meant to watch his father become fully human in front of him, and how discovery can heal what decades of silence could not.

Also, full transparency, we recorded this episode during an emotional week at home. Our beloved 11-year-old mini Dachshund Frankie was hospitalized and undergoing two surgeries, he is deeply bonded with Corey, and you’ll hear how tender this moment was. David met that reality with kindness and grace, and we’re grateful.

In this episode, we talk about

• Growing up with “fragments” of a parent’s past, and no context
• A Swiss orphanage inside a 700-year-old castle
• The letter that sent a 12-year-old alone to America
• The forbidden question, who is my father
• Returning to the place it all began, and what it unlocked
• Reunion, revelation, and the relationship shift that followed
• Why stories like these land so hard, even when you know the ending

If this episode hits home
Please share it with someone who’s navigating adoption, donor conception, NPE discovery, or any kind of identity rupture. And if you’ll be at Untangling Our Roots, add David’s screening to your must see list.

Guest Bio: David Quint

David Quint has worked in the film industry for 30 years as a director, cinematographer, and aerial cameraman, filming projects for Netflix, MTV, NBC, ABC, CBS, and other networks, along with feature films, documentaries, and commercials. He discovered his passion for storytelling as a boy growing up in Western Colorado, and after decades of working with state-of-the-art motion picture cameras, he never imagined he would unintentionally capture his most personal film on an iPhone 3. That film became Father Unknown, a deeply human story of family, identity, reunion, and the questions that echo across generations.

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Reunion is not always soft.

In Part Three of this powerful late discovery adoptee story, Alicia Sharon Denise Williams steps into the aftermath of truth.

After learning she was adopted, after uncovering sealed Michigan adoption records, after discovering both biological parents had passed away, she begins reaching out to siblings.

The first response is rejection.

A phone call to a biological half brother’s mother ends with harsh words and a door firmly shut. But that is not the end of the story. It is only the first chapter of reunion.

Soon, another connection appears. A name that had shown up repeatedly in her DNA research suddenly becomes a real voice. A nephew. A sister. A family that had known about her all along and never stopped searching.

Within hours, Alicia finds herself walking into a townhouse filled with siblings, nieces, nephews, a stepfather, and decades of stories about her. They knew her birthday. They celebrated her existence. They had promised their mother they would find her one day.

This episode explores:

• DNA sibling rejection and acceptance
• Discovering biological half siblings through AncestryDNA
• The emotional complexity of adoption reunion
• Faith, forgiveness, and generational secrecy
• Medical history revelations for late discovery adoptees
• What healing looks like after decades of silence

Alicia speaks openly about secrecy in adoptive families, the cost of silence, and the difference between adopting to give a child a life versus adopting to complete an image.

She also shares how her own late discovery changed the way she parents her adopted children today.

This is not just a DNA surprise story.

This is a story about identity being rebuilt. About faith being tested. About whether truth can redeem what was hidden.

And Alicia’s answer is yes.

About Alicia Sharon Denise Williams

Alicia is a NAAP Board Member, speaker, storyteller, and adoption truth advocate. As the founder of From Hidden to Healed, she shares her late-discovery adoptee journey marked by silence, spiritual awakening, DNA revelation, and the sacred work of untangling identity after truth emerges.

Her message is not about blame, but about belonging. Not about shame, but about healing. She reminds us that what was hidden can be healed and what was silenced can be spoken.

Hear Alicia Live at Untangling Our Roots

Alicia will be speaking at Untangling Our Roots, the national conference for adoptees, NPEs, donor-conceived individuals, and families navigating identity discovery.

After hearing this three-part series, experiencing her story in person will land differently.

Learn more at untanglingourroots.org.

This concludes the three-part Raised on a Lie series.

If Alicia’s story resonated with you, share it with someone navigating a DNA discovery, misattributed parentage, or adoption reunion.

Truth changes everything.

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Want more Corey and Kendall? Join us on Patreon for Family Twist: After Hours, our weekly unfiltered bonus show with personal stories, behind-the-scenes conversations, family chaos, and plenty we wouldn’t normally share on Family Twist.

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She logged back in.

After months of denial, after accusing AncestryDNA of switching samples, after trying to shove the results back into the box, Alicia Sharon Denise Williams opened her DNA account again.

The first cousin matches were still there.

This time, she did not look away.

In Part Two of this three-part late discovery adoptee story, Alicia takes us into the moment curiosity turns into confirmation. What starts as online research becomes a drive to Detroit. What feels like suspicion becomes documentation. What felt like a joke her whole life becomes a yellow card inside a government office that changes everything.

She was not who she thought she was.

This episode walks through:

• Reopening AncestryDNA results with new eyes
• Searching Michigan adoption and vital records
• Navigating Wayne County post-adoption services
• Discovering she was born under a different name
• Learning she had been placed in foster care
• Finding out her adoption records were sealed
• Calling her husband from the parking lot in shock

By the time Alicia leaves that building, she does not know how to get home. Not because she lost her car. Because she lost her identity.

She describes going home and staying in bed for three weeks.

Part Two is the emotional collapse. The unraveling. The moment when suspicion becomes documented truth.

And this is still not the end of the story.

In Part Three, Alicia begins the search for her biological parents and siblings. What she finds includes rejection, unexpected acceptance, and a family that had been waiting for her.

About Alicia Sharon Denise Williams

Alicia is a NAAP Board Member, speaker, storyteller, and adoption-truth advocate. As the founder of From Hidden to Healed, she shares her late-discovery adoptee journey, one marked by silence, spiritual awakening, DNA revelation, and the sacred work of untangling identity after truth emerges.

With compassion and faith at the center of her message, Alicia speaks to adoptees, NPEs, and anyone navigating misattributed parentage, reunion, and the lifelong impact of secrecy.

Her message is clear: what was hidden can be healed.

See Alicia at Untangling Our Roots

Alicia will be sharing her story live at Untangling Our Roots, the national conference for adoptees, NPEs, donor-conceived individuals, and families navigating DNA discoveries.

After hearing Part Two, you will understand why experiencing her story in person carries weight.

Learn more at untanglingourroots.org.

This is Part Two of a three-part series.

If you are a late discovery adoptee, questioning your identity, or sitting with unexplained childhood clues, this conversation will resonate.

Part Three drops next.

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Want more Corey and Kendall? Join us on Patreon for Family Twist: After Hours, our weekly unfiltered bonus show with personal stories, behind-the-scenes conversations, family chaos, and plenty we wouldn’t normally share on Family Twist.

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She thought she knew her story.

In 2021, a casual AncestryDNA test reopened questions Alicia had quietly carried her entire life. Why did she never see her original birth certificate? Why was her birthday often forgotten? Why did her brother feel like he belonged in a different way?

Then a first cousin match appeared.

And everything started to unravel.

In Part One of this three-part series, Alicia Sharon Denise Williams shares the early clues that something was off long before DNA confirmed it. From childhood inconsistencies to reopening her DNA results with new eyes, she walks us through the moment suspicion turned into action.

This episode ends at the turning point, when Alicia decides she has to start at the beginning and find out where she was really born.

What she discovers next will change her life.

Part Two takes us inside a government building in Detroit and the yellow card that confirmed the lie.

In This Episode

• Subtle childhood signs of secrecy
• Revisiting a DNA test with new perspective
• Birth certificate inconsistencies
• Spiritual wrestling and awakening
• The decision to search for the truth
• What late discovery adoptees often feel before they know

About Alicia Sharon Denise Williams

Alicia is a NAAP Board Member, speaker, storyteller, and adoption-truth advocate whose voice carries both compassion and courage. As the founder of From Hidden to Healed, she shares her late-discovery adoptee journey, one marked by silence, spiritual awakening, DNA revelation, and the sacred work of untangling identity after truth emerges.

With grace and faith as her compass, Alicia speaks to those navigating hidden histories, misattributed parentage, reunion, loss, and the lifelong impact of secrecy. Her message is not about blame, but about belonging. Not about shame, but about healing.

She reminds us that healing does not erase the past. It redeems it.

See Alicia Live at Untangling Our Roots

Alicia will be appearing at Untangling Our Roots, the national conference for adoptees, NPEs, donor-conceived individuals, and anyone navigating DNA surprises and identity discovery.

If this episode resonates, hearing her story in person will hit even deeper.

Learn more about Untangling Our Roots and how to attend at untanglingourroots.org.

This is Part One of a powerful three-part journey.

Part Two drops next.

If you have ever questioned your origin story, this conversation is for you.

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Want more Corey and Kendall? Join us on Patreon for Family Twist: After Hours, our weekly unfiltered bonus show with personal stories, behind-the-scenes conversations, family chaos, and plenty we wouldn’t normally share on Family Twist.

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What happens when your story begins in one country, is rewritten in another, and then calls you back decades later?

In this powerful episode of Family Twist, Corey and Kendall sit down with Sandi Morgan Caesar to explore a life shaped by early loss, international adoption, racial identity, and an unrelenting search for truth.

Sandi was born in Panama to a 14-year-old mother and spent the first year of her life with her birth family before being placed with a Black U.S. Air Force family stationed there. At just four years old, she experienced another devastating loss when her adoptive father died by suicide shortly after the family relocated to the United States.

Growing up as the only Black student in her school, navigating trauma, and always knowing she was adopted, Sandi began searching long before DNA testing made it easier. She wrote letters. She reached out to strangers. She refused to give up.

In 2004, her persistence paid off. With the help of a Panamanian government employee who believed in her mission, Sandi found her birth mother. Within weeks, she was on a plane to Panama.

But reunion is not a finish line.

In this episode, Sandi shares:

• What she knows about the circumstances of her adoption
• The moment she found her birth mother after years of searching
• The emotional complexity of reunion across language, geography, and time
• Growing up Black and adopted in predominantly white spaces
• The grief of losing parents, both biological and adoptive
• Reclaiming her Panamanian citizenship decades later
• What it means to hold multiple identities at once

This conversation also touches on immigration, race, safety, and belonging in the current political climate. Adoption stories do not exist in isolation. They intersect with culture, power, and history.

There is grief in this episode. There is resilience. There is music. And there is reclamation.

If you are an adoptee, late discovery adoptee, NPE, donor conceived, or someone navigating complicated family truths, Sandi’s story will resonate.

Remember, family secrets are the ultimate plot twist.

About Sandi Morgan Caesar

Sandi Morgan Caesar is a transnational adoptee born in Panama and raised in the United States. Adopted at 11 months old by a Black U.S. Air Force family, Sandi grew up navigating loss, racial identity, and the lifelong questions many adoptees carry.

After years of searching prior to the rise of commercial DNA testing, she located and reunited with her birth mother in 2004. In 2024, she reclaimed her Panamanian citizenship, deepening her connection to her country of origin.

Sandi is active in adoptee and transnational adoptee communities and co-facilitates a support group through Adoption Network Cleveland. She is passionate about identity, advocacy, and creating space for honest conversations about adoption, race, and belonging.

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A Netflix documentary about fertility fraud lit the fuse.

After watching Our Father, a question would not let go: how do you actually know donor conception was handled ethically, and how do you know the story you were told is true?

So a DNA test gets ordered. While waiting for the results, the question gets asked at home. The response is silence first, then the truth. An anonymous donor. A social father who knew. Years of secrecy. And the realization that many people had this information long before she did.

This episode goes deep into what happens after a donor conception secret comes out.

In this conversation:

• How Our Father triggered a DNA test and a reckoning
• The moment an anonymous donor replaced a lifelong family narrative
• Losing a genetic identity you did not know you had
• Being raised an only child, then suddenly discovering siblings
• Why secrecy and “best practices” caused more harm than protection
• Wanting connection while learning not everyone wants contact
• Using research and language as a way to survive the emotional fallout
• Why shame belongs to the system, not the child
• The therapy gap for donor-conceived and DNA surprise experiences

This is not a sensational story about fertility fraud. It is about the quieter damage that secrecy leaves behind, even when everyone thought they were doing the right thing.

If you have ever been told not to open Pandora’s box, this episode asks why it was sealed in the first place.

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