Unraveling Me

S1 E40 –  Unraveling Dee - At 23, while grieving the death of the mother who raised her, Dee learned another life-changing truth: she was adopted. For her entire childhood and young adulthood, Dee had believed the story she was given. She never questioned whether she belonged to her family and had no reason to investigate what her parents told her. Suddenly, she was mourning her mother while also trying to understand an identity and history that had been hidden from her.

Within months, Dee found her genetic mother and entered reunion carrying enormous hopes for connection. But reunion did not unfold as she had imagined. Thirty years later, a DNA test intended to fill gaps in her paternal medical history revealed yet another surprise.

SHOW NOTES

In this thoughtful conversation, Kara and Dee discuss:

• Learning she was adopted at 23 after the death of her adoptive mother
• Entering reunion with high expectations and learning why moving slowly matters
• The difference between longing for connection and building an actual relationship
• The emotional and medical consequences of carrying incorrect family health information
• Navigating new family roles, including becoming the oldest sibling after growing up as the youngest
• Reparenting the inner child who emerges during discovery, reunion, grief, and rejection
• What's it like to be an LDA with an NPE
• Turning pain into purpose through speaking, mentoring, and supporting other adoptees

Dee’s story spans late-discovery adoption, reunion, grief, medical uncertainty, and a second parentage discovery. It is a reminder that finding the truth does not restore what was were lost, but it can give us the freedom to decide what happens next. She’s transformed her experiences into a source of support for others.

We may not be responsible for the choices made before we had a voice, but we can take ownership of our healing, reclaim our identities, and create lives rooted in 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.

S1E39 – Unraveling Bill & Priscilla - This episode is a testament to persistence. Sometimes the truth takes decades, thousands of names, and one final piece of evidence to uncover—but being able to say “I know” instead of “I wonder” can bring a profound sense of peace. Bill was one of the earliest people to take a Y-DNA test, but for more than 20 years, one question remained unanswered: why didn’t he match anyone from the Sharp family whose name he carried?

The answer arrived when his brother tested. At 72 years old, Bill learned they were half-siblings and that the man he had known as his father was not his genetic father. But identifying the truth would take another decade of research.

Fortunately, Bill was married to Priscilla—a genealogist, search angel, author, and adoption advocate who has helped solve more than 2,000 cases. By tracing generations of DNA matches, abandoned marriages, military records, name changes, and a divorce filed in the right place at the right time, Priscilla finally uncovered the identity of Bill’s genetic father.

SHOW NOTES

In this thoughtful and wide-ranging conversation, Kara, Bill, and Priscilla discuss:

•    Recognizing that Bill’s Y-DNA did not match the Sharp family line

•    Growing up feeling like a guest in his own family

•    Carrying the name “Junior” after learning he was not genetically related to the man he was named after

•    How small clues—and a genealogist’s eye for detail—can unlock long-buried answers

•    Finally seeing yourself reflected in family photographs

•    The medical consequences of relying on the wrong family health history

•    Family estrangement and losing the opportunity to ask his mother what happened

•    Finding compassion for a parent’s trauma without excusing secrecy

•    Why people deserve the truth about their origins much earlier in life

Priscilla also shares her own experience as a mother who relinquished a daughter during the Baby Scoop Era. She describes being told to hide the truth, being misled by an adoption agency, searching through newspaper archives before the internet existed, and reuniting with her daughter nearly 40 years ago.

Together, Bill and Priscilla’s stories reveal how the loss of genetic continuity can ripple through adoptees, parents, siblings, and people with misattributed parentage. Their journeys are different, but both are shaped by secrecy, separation, unanswered questions, and the enduring need to know.

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 E38 – Unraveling Lynne - Lynne’s story exposes what can happen when fertility practices operate through secrecy, misinformation, and little accountability. Her parents were told to treat their children as genetically their own and never speak of the circumstances surrounding their conception. But silence did not erase the truth. It left Lynne without an accurate medical history, a coherent understanding of herself, or the information she needed to make sense of why she sometimes felt different within her own family.

Lynne grew up knowing her parents had sought help from a fertility specialist. But shortly after her father died, her mother revealed that donor sperm had been used—and that the doctor had mixed the donor’s sample with her father’s, leaving them uncertain about who had genetically fathered Lynne and her sister. This was long before consumer DNA testing and online records.

But Lynne needed to know who she was. She began a search that would take more than 20 years. What she eventually uncovered was far larger than one hidden identity: a donor who had helped conceive children over three decades and a sibling group that has now grown to 86 known members—with potentially hundreds more.

(Content warning: This episode contains discussion of suicide)

SHOW NOTES

In this conversation, Kara and Lynne discuss:

·   Learning she was donor-conceived immediately after losing her father

·   The emotional responsibility of welcoming newly discovered siblings into an ever-growing family

·   Genetic mental health and substance-use histories—and the grief of losing siblings

·   Why donor conception can create a lifelong process of grief, identity disruption, and integration

·   Fertility fraud that extends beyond doctors secretly using their own sperm

·   The medical consequences of growing up with an inaccurate family health history

·   Lynne’s early research into the shared experiences of donor-conceived people

·   The importance of bringing donor-conceived people, donors, and parents together to listen and learn from one another

After decades of searching, supporting newly discovered siblings, studying donor conception, and advocating for fertility-fraud legislation, Lynne has become one of the pioneers of the donor-conceived community. Her story is a powerful reminder that creating a child is not simply about producing a baby—it carries lifelong responsibilities for everyone involved.

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 E37 Unraveling Shelli - Shelli’s story is about surviving childhood without the care every child deserves, doing the hard work to become healthy, and learning that patience is sometimes part of protection. Shelli spent much of her childhood raising herself. She grew up with a mother who could be magnetic and beautiful to the outside world, but emotionally unavailable and rejecting at home. Her brothers were much older, her raising father was largely absent, and Shelli learned early that comfort, affection, and safety were not things she could count on from the adults around her. Throughout her life, people repeatedly asked Shelli if she was part of an ethnicity she did not believe she was so she took an Ancestry test expecting only ethnicity answers. Instead, she opened her matches and saw her mother—and a man she had never met before.

(Content warning: This episode contains discussion of childhood neglect, emotional abuse, abandonment, attempted self-abortion, and sexual harassment/exposure)

SHOW NOTES

In this deeply honest and layered conversation, Kara and Shelli discuss:

• Growing up with emotional neglect and “quiet abuse”
• The lifelong impact of being unwanted, unseen, and left to raise yourself
• Being a fatherless daughter and growing up without a stable parental bond
• How painful truths can sometimes bring validation and clarity
• Why slowing down before first contact can matter
• The brutality of waiting for a response from genetic family
• The emotional complexity of joining a family system already in motion when you’ve never really had a family system of your own
• Boundaries, patience, therapy, and refusing to accept less than she deserve

Her reunion is still new, but it has already given her something she once could not imagine: emotionally available people who are kind, curious, and willing to make room. This episode is a powerful reminder that truth can hurt and heal at the same time. And sometimes the right people finally show up and say: you belong here.

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 E36 Unraveling Steve & Becky - Steve and Becky’s story is raw, funny, painful, and almost unbelievable—except it is true and documented. Their book, DNA Did Not Anticipate, takes readers even deeper into the twists, losses, discoveries, and moments of healing that followed Steve’s DNA surprise. It is part memoir, part mystery, and part roadmap for anyone trying to make sense of a truth they never saw coming. Steve thought he was taking a DNA test to explore the Native American ancestry he had always been told was part of his story. Instead, his results revealed a first cousin in Prince Edward Island, Canada, a match that made no sense with his Kentucky-based family history.

What followed was a life-is-stranger-than-fiction unraveling. With the help of his wife Becky, a part-time genealogist, Steve began uncovering hidden family secrets, a father he never knew, and pieces of his mother’s past that completely changed how he understood his own story.

SHOW NOTES

In this conversation, Kara, Steve, and Becky discuss:

• Taking a DNA test to search for Native American ancestry
• Discovering people who did not fit in your known family tree
• The moment we realize we’re not who we thought we were
• How a spouse’s support can be key in processing a DNA surprise
• Seeing himself reflected in a picture of your father for the first time
• The shock, grief, anger, shame, and eventual peace from an NPE
• How DNA surprises ripple through spouses, children, siblings, and extended family
• Rewriting how you look at family
• Writing their book, DNA Did Not Anticipate

This episode is about family, marriage, loss, humor, identity, and the kind of truth that leaves people saying, “You can’t make this stuff up.”

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 E 35 Unraveling Micelle S - Michelle’s story is layered, funny, honest, and full of hard-earned wisdom. She shows us that adoption is not a single event, but something that shapes a person across a lifetime—in identity, relationships, parenting, advocacy, and healing. Michelle grew up knowing she was adopted, and by many measures, she had what people often call a “good adoption.” She was loved, cared for, and raised by parents who told her the truth from the beginning. But as Michelle’s story reminds us, even a good adoption does not erase the trauma of separation, the ache of missing genetic mirrors, or the lifelong work of figuring out where you belong.

A Baby Scoop Era adoptee, Michelle was five days old when she was brought home by her raising parents. Adoption was known in her family, but not always easy to talk about. Beneath the surface, Michelle carried a deep fear of hurting or disappointing the parents who raised her, especially her mother, whose own unresolved grief shaped much of Michelle’s experience.

SHOW NOTES

In this conversation, Kara and Michelle discuss:

• Growing up adopted while sensing there were still emotional limits around the topic
• What it means to have a “good adoption” and still be deeply affected by adoption
• Feeling othered in childhood, even in small everyday moments
• The pressure to protect a raising parent’s feelings
• Meeting her husband, who was also adopted, and building a family together
• The experience of genetic mirroring when their first child was born
• Holding relationships with genetic family while managing fear, obligation, and guilt
• Advocating for adoptee rights and helping change law around original birth certificates
• Child welfare reform, Safe Haven baby boxes, and the need for child-centered policy

This episode is about reunion, boundaries, genetic identity, and the courage it takes to stop carrying emotions that were never yours to manage. It is also a reminder that love and loss can exist in the same story, and that truth becomes easier to hold when we finally make room for all of it.

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 E34 Unraveling Jennie - Jennie’s story is about more than a DNA test. It is about secrecy, loyalty, medical truth, sibling connection, and the complicated grief of realizing that the people who loved you also kept something essential from you. Jennie took a DNA test because she wanted to know more about her father’s side of the family. Her dad had died of cancer when she was 23, and with her mother’s genealogy already carefully documented, Jennie hoped 23andMe would help fill in the missing pieces. But when her results came back, Jennie found multiple half-siblings she did not recognize. What began as curiosity quickly became a life-changing discovery.

SHOW NOTES

In this conversation, Kara and Jennie discuss:

• Taking a DNA test for ancestry and discovering unexpected half-siblings
• Her mother’s warning not to test and the missed chance to tell the truth first
• Re-examining childhood memories, family photos, and old questions through a new lens
• The grief of realizing her dad chose to be her father, but never got to share that truth openly
• The medical consequences of being given incorrect family health history
• Reaching out to a donor who refuses contact
• Building relationships with donor-conceived siblings and finding genetic mirroring later in life
• Talking openly with her own children so secrecy stops with this generation

Jennie's story reminds us that there is nothing shameful about donor conception. The harm comes from silence. And sometimes healing begins when one generation finally decides: the secret stops here.

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.

S1E33 Unraveling Joseph & Charity - Charity spent most of her life believing a painful story about her origins. Raised by her maternal grandparents after the death of her mother, she endured a childhood marked by abuse, silence, and the belief that searching for her father would only uncover more pain. For years, she was told she was conceived through violence and taught not to ask questions. After becoming a mother herself, Charity decided she no longer wanted fear, secrecy, and generational trauma passed down to her own children. A DNA test—and the courage to finally open the results—led her to Joseph.

What followed was not the story she had been told.

SHOW NOTES

In this deeply emotional and hopeful conversation, Kara, Charity, and Joseph discuss:

• Growing up under the weight of family secrecy and emotional manipulation
• The impact of childhood abuse, silence, and being taught not to search
• Using DNA testing, genealogy groups, and DNAngels to uncover the truth
• Joseph learning decades later that he had a daughter
• Navigating reunion while honoring existing family relationships
• The importance of grace, patience, and moving slowly through reunion
• Genetic mirroring, shared traits, and finally seeing yourself reflected in someone else
• Breaking cycles of silence and trauma for the next generation

Charity and Joseph’s story is about far more than finding family. It is about reclaiming truth after years of fear, learning to trust connection after surviving harm, and choosing healing over bitterness. Their reunion is honest, imperfect, hopeful, and deeply human. Together, they remind us that family stories are often more complicated than we are told and that sometimes the truth waiting on the other side is far gentler than the fear that kept us from searching.

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 E32 Melody: Melody took a DNA test for one reason: to search for the younger brother she had not seen since childhood who’d been relinquished to adoption. Instead, her results revealed a truth she never expected. Raised African American, Melody opened her DNA results and found close white relatives, no close matches on her mother’s side, and an ethnicity estimate that made no sense with the family story she had always known. What began as a search for her brother became a search for herself.

SHOW NOTES

In this thoughtful and layered conversation, Kara and Melody discuss:

• Losing her birth certificate father as a child and being raised by a beloved great-aunt
• Discovering close white DNA matches and realizing her father was not her genetic father
• Building mirror trees and doing months of genetic genealogy research
• Finding her genetic father and connecting with several half-siblings
• The complexity of being raised Black and learning her genetic father was white
• Navigating race, belonging, politics, and acceptance within a new family
• Seeking medical history and answers without wanting anything material
• The ache of never fully knowing how her parents’ relationship began

Melody’s story is about more than a DNA surprise. It is about race, identity, family stories, and the complicated work of integrating a truth that changes how you understand your past. Her journey reminds us that knowing where we come from matters not because DNA tells the whole story, but because missing pieces shape how we see ourselves, our families, and our place in the world.

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.

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/.

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