S1E13 Unraveling Jennifer - This is a story about identity, betrayal, resilience, and the hard-earned strength it takes to break cycles—especially when the people who caused the harm refuse to own it. Jennifer’s honesty is fierce, her humor is sharp, and her perspective is a lifeline for anyone who’s had a long-held secret kept from them.

Jennifer thought she was taking a DNA test “for fun”—a simple curiosity sparked by a school project and a desire to learn more about the man listed on her birth certificate, the single dad who raised her. But when her results came back, she knew instantly something was wrong.

Zero Italian.

In one click, Jennifer lost the cultural identity and family narrative she’d carried her whole life and gained a truth her mother had kept buried for decades, even while living in Jennifer’s backyard for 15 years. What follows is a raw, deeply relatable conversation about secrecy, addiction, family rupture, and the long road back to safety after everything you thought you knew becomes uncertain.

SHOW NOTES

In this episode, Kara and Jennifer talk about:

• Being raised by a single father in the 1980s and what that meant culturally and emotionally
• “Weekend/holiday mom” parenting, and the grief of never getting the mother you needed
• The moment her DNA results confirmed she wasn’t Italian, and why she’ll never forget the exact time and date
• Why she searched for answers before confronting her mother
• How family secrets intersect with addiction, shame, and generational silence
• The ripple effects of discovery: siblings who welcome you, siblings who can’t
• Losing connection with parts of her raised family, and choosing to set boundaries anyway
• Why reunion (and healing) requires going slow and leading with grace

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.

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/.

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

S1E11 - Unraveling Laura & DNAngels - This is a story about identity, truth, secrecy, grief, and grit. It’s about what happens when one woman refuses to stay in the dark—and builds an entire movement to help thousands of others step into the light. Laura never set out to shake up the world of DNA surprises. In 2017, she just wanted to build a legacy tree for her grandchildren. As a longtime genealogist, she took a DNA test expecting to confirm her English–Irish roots. Instead, she opened her results and felt the bottom drop out: her matches didn’t align with the man who raised her.

What followed was a cascade of realizations—family rumors resurfacing, memories unlocking, grief for the dad she adored, and the dawning truth about her and her siblings she grew up with. That discovery sent Laura into the “fetal-position phase,” three days in bed, a crash course in centimorgans, and then the decision that would change everything: to get up, get answers, and pick up the phone.

That phone call led her to the man who might be her genetic father…or her uncle—her “uncle-daddy.” It also led her to a widow who had known about Laura her entire life, a family she never knew she had, deep medical implications, and a new understanding of what secrecy costs a child across decades. From that unraveling came her mission: help others find the truth. And with that mission came DNAngels, a non-profit organization that has now helped identify more than 8,000 genetic parents.

SHOW NOTES

In this conversation, Kara and Laura talk about:

• Why she took a DNA test, and the moment it all fell apart
• How centimorgans actually work (explained the way real people understand it)
• The “uncle-daddy” phone call that changed everything
• Grieving her raising dad twice—once when he died, and again when she learned the truth
• The emotional fallout with her four siblings 
• How secrecy, ownership, and family mythology shape identity
• The medical consequences of not knowing your genetic parentage
• How all of this led to founding DNAngels, and what she wishes every MP parent understood

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 E10 Unraveling Renee - This episode is about truth-telling, family preservation, and what happens when we finally look critically at systems built on silence. Renee speaks candidly about the emotional toll of relinquishment, the lifelong consequences of secrecy, and the uncomfortable truths many would rather avoid. Her story challenges the dominant narrative of adoption as a simple good and asks listeners to confront the ethical, legal, and human realities beneath it.

Renee’s unraveling didn’t begin with a DNA test. It began with an unplanned pregnancy, a vulnerable moment in a new relationship, and a series of pressures that led to the unnecessary adoption of her child. What followed wasn’t closure—it was awakening. As Renee began to understand what had happened to her, she found her purpose: questioning an industry that too often operates behind rose-colored narratives and without critical scrutiny.

In this episode, Kara and Renee unpack the realities of infant adoption in the United States and the ways crisis, misinformation, and power imbalances shape irreversible outcomes for mothers, fathers, and children alike.

SHOW NOTES

In this conversation, Kara and Renee discuss:

• How a crisis pregnancy can rapidly spiral into adoption without informed consent
• The differences between foster adoption and infant adoption, and why that distinction matters
• The pressure tactics used by adoption entities during moments of vulnerability
• Why maternal separation is a trauma for both mother and child
• The commodification of infants and the supply-and-demand reality of adoption
• How unmarried fathers can lose parental rights without ever knowing
• The myth of “saving a baby” and what families actually need instead
• Open adoption myths versus lived realities
• Sealed birth certificates, identity loss, and the long-term impact on adoptees
• Why DNA, identity, and family connection cannot be erased by paperwork

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.

S1E9 Unraveling Lorenzo: Lorenzo’s story highlights how DNA discoveries are rarely a single moment—they unfold over time, intersecting with grief, loss, and major life transitions. His experience speaks to the complexity of identity when ethnicity, culture, genetics, and family narrative collide. Lorenzo’s journey began with concern for his father’s rapidly declining health. Dementia, neurological disease, and cancer were tearing through his paternal family, and he wanted answers about what might be hidden in his genes. What he didn’t expect was that a simple DNA test would dismantle his entire understanding of his identity.

Instead of confirming family history, Lorenzo learned he was Ashkenazi Jewish—something completely absent from the story he’d been told about himself. Raised as a Black man, his results set off months of disbelief, denial, testing, and a painful confirmation.

SHOW NOTES

In this episode, Kara and Lorenzo talk about:

• Taking a DNA test for health reasons—and getting answers he never asked for
• Discovering Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry that didn’t fit his lived identity
• Navigating disbelief, anger, and the instinct to prove the results wrong
• Losing his father while still searching for the truth
• What it means when family folklore and genetics don’t align
• How a DNA test fractures your sense of identity when your ethnicity shifts
• Grief, secrecy, and the psychological toll of prolonged uncertainty
• Finding support and connection in NPE spaces

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.

Unraveling Lauren: This is a story about identity, truth-telling, and what happens when the missing piece of your story finally comes into focus. Lauren brings humor, honesty, and hard-won clarity to a journey many donor-conceived people will recognize—but everyone can relate to.

Lauren LoGiudice grew up in a loud, loving Italian-American family: tall, lanky, pale, and unexplainably not Italian-looking. For decades, she fielded questions, invented explanations, and tried to make sense of the genealogical bewilderment she couldn’t name. My favorite: she was descended from Vikings.

At 45, a DNA test finally revealed the truth—she was donor-conceived. And overnight, her entire life—her family stories, her jokes, her career, even her face—suddenly made sense.

SHOW NOTES

In this conversation, Lauren and Kara talk about:

• Growing up as “the odd one out” in a tight-knit cultural community

• The stories families invent to explain a child who looks different

• How genealogical bewilderment shaped her comedy and her characters

• The cognitive dissonance that kept her from interpreting her DNA results

• The moment she learned she had 15+ donor-conceived siblings

• Meeting her parents’ donor “Jim” and finally seeing herself reflected

• Why secrecy, shame, and silence still surround donor conception

• How owning her story transformed her comedy and her voice

• Why she created a community of “misfits” for people who never quite fit a category

For more information about Lauren - and where to enjoy her work - please visit https://www.laurenlogiudice.com/.

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.

S1E7 – Unraveling Marcie - This episode is a profound look at identity, secrecy, reunion, and the lifelong impact of being denied your own information. Marcie’s story shows that unraveling can happen at any age, and that even those who’ve spent a lifetime helping others make sense of their origins can still be blindsided by their own. Her journey is a reminder that identity is not a fixed thing—it’s a living, shifting truth we deserve to know, and a story we deserve to claim.

Marcie’s story is unlike any other in this season because it spans every side of the adoption and misattributed parentage world. Marcie co-founded the National Association of Adoptees and Parents (NAAP), fought for nine years to change Indiana law, helped open adoption records, and eventually helped create the Untangling Our Roots conference with Kara.

And then, at 68, everything she thought she knew about herself shattered. A DNA test, one she took reluctantly for her brother, revealed a family secret. Suddenly, Marcie found herself on the very path she’d guided countless through. Socked, disoriented, ashamed, grieving, and desperate to understand where she came from.

SHOW NOTES:

In this conversation, Kara and Marcie talk about:

· Surrendering a child in the closed-adoption era

· The trauma of reunion and the beauty of connection

· How denial becomes a survival skill

· The night a shoebox of memories forced her to face her past

· The emotional freefall of discovering your genetic father isn’t who you believed

· Why even experts are unprepared when their foundation cracks

· What it feels like to belong to no one—and everyone—at once

· What adoptees, birth parents, and MP individuals share—and where their experiences differ

· How community and compassion carried her through the darkest days

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 E6 - Unraveling Lauren C - Lauren’s story is a reminder that family trees aren’t just diagrams—they’re living, shifting truths. And sometimes the truth has been whispering to us for years before we finally hear it. Lauren had been building her family tree since 1977. Cemeteries, phone calls, interviews, handwritten charts, decades of work, 68,000 names, and the belief that she knew exactly where she came from. But one DNA test changed everything. A “routine” ancestry test revealed that the cousins she couldn’t place weren’t distant connections—they were clues. And the man she’d called “Uncle Jack” her entire life wasn’t just a family friend. Hidden in her mother’s shorthand diaries was a decades-old secret that rewrote everything Lauren thought she knew about her parents, her childhood, and herself.

In this conversation, Lauren and Kara talk about:

• How a high-school genealogy project sparked a lifelong search for family truth
• The obsessive dedication many NPEs feel to family history and how it shifts after a discovery
•  How her mother’s coded shorthand diaries revealed an affair and a tangled web of secrecy
• The moment her top or her DNA surprise
• Realizing her birth certificate father had always known she wasn’t genetically his and why mumps really were a big deal
• The complicated grief of understanding her parents' marriage and the emotional toll on everyone involved
• What it feels like to discover first cousins, siblings, and relatives hiding in plain sight
• Rebuilding identity after the foundations of your origin story fall away

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 E5 – Mark Hansen - Mark’s story sits at the intersection of fertility fraud, misattributed parentage, and the long-term trauma caused by secrecy. It is raw, candid, and deeply human. This episode is about truth-telling, consent, identity, and the lifelong impact of what happens when people in power make choices without it. And how you can turn your pain into power. Mark was 47 years old, sitting beside his aging father at a routine medical appointment, when everything he knew about himself changed. In the quiet of that exam room, his dad turned to him and said: “There’s something I’ve never told you...” . What followed was a revelation that reshaped every corner of his identity. Mark learned he was conceived in the 1960s through an unethical insemination procedure. With no consent. No disclosure. And no accountability.

SHOW NOTES:

In this episode, Kara and Mark talk about:

· The exact moment his raising father disclosed the truth

· What insemination practices looked like in the 1960s—and what doctors were actually doing

· How he confirmed the truth with DNA testing

· Seeing his genetic father’s face for the first time—and seeing his own staring back

· The moral obligation he felt to notify four half-sisters living just miles away

· Why secrecy, shame, and fear keep families silent for decades

· How misattributed parentage can unravel sibling relationships

· What it means to “lose” your dad twice—once in death, and once in truth

· The ripple effects on extended family, medical history, and identity

· How he rebuilt stability and self-understanding in the aftermath

 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.

S1E4 - Unraveling Oliver: This episode is about adoption, silence, identity, and the long interior journey many adoptees walk before saying their questions out loud. Oliver’s story is gentle, thoughtful, and profoundly human—a reminder that even truths revealed late in life still deserve space, compassion, and voice. Oliver grew up in a Dutch Indonesian family, surrounded by people who looked just like him. In Los Angeles, being Filipino by birth but raised in a culturally similar community meant he never questioned his place. But when the family moved to rural South Carolina at age seven, the contrast sharpened. Suddenly, he was “the odd one out,” but for reasons he couldn’t understand.

SHOW NOTES

At 18, right before leaving for the military, Oliver's parents told him he was adopted. The revelation landed just as he was entering an institution designed to strip away identity and rebuild it from the ground up. For years, Oliver held the truth quietly inside himself, unsure how to search without hurting the parents who raised him. It wasn’t until he became a father himself that the questions he’d buried began to surface. And it wasn’t until decades later, after his mother died and his father developed dementia, that Oliver finally allowed himself to search.

In this conversation, Kara, Oliver, and Melissa talk about:

• Growing up looking like you “fit,” even when the story doesn’t fit you at all
• The shock of discovering adoption at 18
• How the military intensifies questions of identity and belonging
• Why many adoptees delay searching until their raising parents are gone
• The emotional and ethical landmines of reunion
• The fear of hurting the people who raised you
• Using DNA and genealogy to trace a genetic mother
• Navigating this journey as a couple—support, differences, boundaries
• What it means to build identity when the truth arrives decades late
• What supportive partnership looks like when one person is unraveling their identity

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.