S1E12 Unraveling Brenna - Brenna’s story shows that unraveling doesn’t always begin with discovery. Sometimes it begins years earlier, in care, conflict, and quiet endurance, so that when the truth finally arrives, you’re prepared to hold it. Brenna was 54 years old, married, and raising two children when her mother, who had been living with dementia and in Brenna’s care for years, revealed a life-altering truth. For more than a decade, Brenna cared for her mother as dementia slowly took hold. Their relationship had always been complicated, marked by favoritism, resentment, silence, and unanswered questions. Caregiving didn’t resolve those wounds. Instead, it stripped away pretense.

That long, difficult season forced Brenna to confront grief, anger, compassion, and exhaustion all at once. It also quietly expanded her emotional capacity long before she knew why she would need it. So when her mother finally revealed the truth, the disclosure didn’t shatter her. It freed her. Brenna explores how caregiving through a fraught relationship became the unexpected groundwork that allowed her to receive a life-changing truth without collapsing—and how unraveling and rebuilding is often a slow process, not a single moment.

SHOW NOTES:

In this conversation, Kara and Brenna discuss:

• How a strained parent–child relationship shaped her response to the truth
• Growing up without genetic mirroring and being labeled a “fluke”
• Discovering her sister shared the same truth—and navigating that revelation carefully
• Family secrecy, silence, and the long-term cost of “don’t ask, don’t tell”
• Accessing original birth certificates within an uneven legal landscape
• Using DNA testing to search for answers
• Meeting genetic family as “intimate strangers” who quickly felt familiar
• Relief, grief, freedom, and the slow rebuilding of identity after 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/.

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