S1E31 Unraveling Dr. Syb: Dr. Syb spent 42 years feeling like something didn’t fit. Then, at a family funeral, a cousin confirmed what her body, spirit, and intuition had long known: she had been adopted. Born during the Baby Scoop Era and raised in a same-race domestic adoption, Dr. Syb grew up in a loving family—but one built around a secret she was expected to carry quietly once the truth came out. For seven years, she did not search, trying to protect the mother who raised her. Eventually, she realized the truth belonged to her too.

SHOW NOTES

In this conversation, Kara and Dr. Syb discuss:

• Learning she was adopted through a family comment
• The emotional impact of being lied to for decades
• Baby Scoop Era adoption and same-race adoption in the Black community
• Amended birth certificates and the legal fiction adoptees are forced to use
• Searching for and finding both genetic families
• The grief of finding graves instead of living parents
• Relationship, attachment, and abandonment wounds after adoption
• The power of names, voice, and reclaiming authorship of your own story
• How friends and family can support someone after a life-changing discovery

This episode reminds us that secrets do not disappear when people take them to the grave. They leave others to sort through the pieces. And sometimes healing begins when we finally say: this is my story to tell.

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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