S1 E20 - Unraveling Angie - In this candid and emotionally layered conversation, Kara and Angie explore what it means to live between bravery and fear, loyalty and longing, compassion and grief. Angie was a seasoned mental health therapist, international wellness presenter, and expert in stress management when she did the very thing she tells her clients not to do—she ignored the truth. After taking a 23andMe test and discovering she was 49% Ashkenazi Jewish, something that made no sense given her family story, Angie quietly deleted the app and buried the results. For years, she chose hope over certainty (it felt safer that way). But during the pandemic, a call from her sister changed everything. DNA results confirmed what Angie had tried to dismiss: she was not fully genetically related to the family who raised her.

SHOW NOTES

In This Episode, Kara and Angie discuss:

• Suppressing shocking DNA results and why even therapists avoid their own pain
• Protecting her mother’s legacy while naming the cost of secrecy
• The complexity of loving a parent and feeling betrayed at the same time
• Searching for her genetic father years after discovery
• Being rejected by DNA matches and finding the courage to keep going
• The various ways we can reach out to new family and when just showing up is an option
• Holding fear and hope in the same breath

Angie speaks with deep compassion for everyone involved: her mother, her sisters, even the family she has yet to meet. As a wellness professional, she understands that emotions aren’t binary. Two things can be true at once. Love and grief. Loyalty and betrayal. Fear and courage. Her story is about finally choosing truth over silence and deciding that uncertainty is still better than never knowing.

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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