If you’re reeling from a DNA surprise, you may be no stranger to confusion, anger, and sadness. If you’re searching for family or have been in reunion, you might tumble through emotional highs and lows. If you’ve felt rejected, it may be hard not to believe you’ve done something wrong—that you are wrong. And if you’re suffering from trauma associated with genetic identity issues, you may have moments of soul-crushing anguish and criticize yourself for what seems an inability to cope. Others, you think, might handle this better. No one else, you believe, is suffering in quite this way, and so you conclude you’re flawed, incapable, unworthy. You might feel ashamed, embarrassed, even guilty.

Although your distress is real, some of these responses may not be rational since you aren’t the cause of the turmoil in your life. But they’re also not uncommon. They’re human. But in the midst of it, it may seem to you that only you react this way.

If someone you know were in such distress, you’d likely open your heart and be gentle with their emotions, counter their hard feelings with softness, assure them they’re not alone in their suffering, that it’s not a reflection of them. Rather than deliver judgment or harsh criticism, you’d offer kindness and support.

But what do you do for yourself? Many of us know how to show compassion to our loved ones who are going through difficult times or are beset by sorrows, but when it comes to offering ourselves the same gentleness, we often fall short. It doesn’t even occur to us that we can be kind to ourselves.

Mindful self-compassion, as the name suggests, is a skill and practice that merges mindfulness and self-compassion to help you build resilience and develop the ability to respond to negative emotions in the same supportive, compassionate manner as you would to another’s troubles. Developed by an expert in mindfulness and a leading researcher of self-compassion, Christopher Germer, PhD, and Kristin Neff, PhD, it relies on the synergy of the two components, both of which derive from Buddhist teaching and psychology. Mindfulness allows us to be in the present moment, aware and without judgment, noticing our emotions without evaluating them, while self-compassion—an attitude of kindness toward oneself and an appreciation of one’s own suffering—is a practice that can be used to soothe ourselves in difficult times.

For Neff, who describes herself as a self-compassion evangelist, these ideas percolated more than 20 years ago when she hit a rough patch in life. In a YouTube video, she explains that when she was a PhD student at UC Berkeley, she was going through a divorce and feeling overwhelmed by shame, stress, and self-criticism. She turned to meditation, but in her first lesson, her instructor drove home the importance of self-compassion. At the same time that she was working with a key researcher in the field of self-esteem, Neff became aware of the limitations of self-esteem and the greater benefits of self-compassion. While self-esteem involved judgment and placing oneself above others, self-compassion involved neither harsh self-evaluations nor the need to stack oneself up against others. It was all about self-acceptance, despite flaws or weaknesses.Mindful self-compassion isn’t a tool with which to solve your problems or eliminate unpleasant circumstances. It’s more a means by which you can take a “time out” from judgment—away from stress and rumination—to offer yourself comfort and unconditional acceptance. Neff describes it as comprised of three key concepts:

• Self-kindness: treating oneself with gentleness and understanding rather than with self-judgment and criticism
• Common humanity: Understanding that our suffering is neither unique nor driven by our imperfection, but rather is a consequence of being human, a condition of which is imperfection
• Mindfulness: a midpoint between ignoring our emotions and ruminating on them; being aware without judging

Separately, mindfulness and self-compassion have been shown to offer health and wellness benefits. Combined they can transform our reactions to hardship and help us build resilience. Research has shown that completion of a mindful self-compassion program reduces anxiety and depression and increases happiness, motivation, ease in life, and compassion to others and to ourselves. Neff and Germer’s Center for Mindful Self-Compassion offers a variety of mindful self-compassion programs and workshops, including an eight-week program and a five-day intensive. It also offers live online programs and a directory to teachers in your area. The principles and practices are also available in Neff and Germer’s book, “The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook.”We talked to Lesley Huff, PsyD, a licensed psychologist and certified teacher of mindful self-compassion at the Samaritan Counseling Center in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, about how mindful self-compassion may help individuals struggling with issues related to identity, rejection, anger, shame, betrayal, and anxiety.

Mindful self-compassion, she says, “offers practices that bring a relationship of kindness to whatever we are experiencing. If we understand that life is filled with both pain and joy, we can accept the pain as it arises and not fight against it. While experiencing pain, we can use the mindfulness practices to hold it with some curiosity and better understand its source and message. The compassion practices first support us in tolerating the pain while we sit with it and second remind us to reflect on what we need given the pain.”

If you’re trying to eliminate pain, a recommendation to let it be may seem counterintuitive and undesirable. But, says Huff, it’s a path forward. She reminds her students and clients that sitting in dis-ease is uncomfortable, but adds that it’s more beneficial than knee-jerk reactions and efforts to eradicate it. “It’s more fruitful than trying to quickly resolve it and move out of the pain,” she says. “Our methods of moving out of the pain usually include things that cause more suffering, such as looking for someone to blame (ourselves or someone else), making quick and ill-informed decisions, and numbing. It’s also important to remember that we use the practices of mindful self-compassion not to feel better, but because we feel bad. This is often hard for students to wrap their minds around since as a society we do everything to ‘feel better.’ Eventually we will feel better (since all things are temporary), but while we get through the tough parts, it’s more productive to hold ourselves with kindness and not make things harder through unnecessary suffering.”Mindfulness—nonjudgmental awareness—helps you recognize your pain, says Huff. “’You cannot heal what you cannot feel,’ as the saying goes. At the same time, there are ways in which we can cultivate compassion in all areas of our lives (physically, mentally, emotionally, relationally, spiritually) that will hopefully become more habitual (albeit still intentional). If we understand that a lot of suffering comes from walking through the world in a trance, then bringing more awareness through mindfulness helps us to see things more clearly, respond more intentionally, and reduce our tendency to create suffering.”

Self-compassion alone, while soothing, doesn’t necessarily increase awareness. Surprisingly, Huff explains, when people focus on becoming more compassionate, there may be “more of an absence of harmful behavior than really overt compassionate behavior. For example, someone may miss noticing that they were less reactive to a person/situation unless they really think about it.” The mindfulness component provides the awareness.Neff has written that informal practices are as effective as formal practices. We asked Huff about the difference between the two. “There’s a tendency to idolized formal practice over informal practice,” she says. “Formal practice is when one sets aside specific time to sit and meditate. The three core practices of mindful self-compassion, which can be practiced formally, are affectionate breathing, loving kindness toward ourselves, and giving and receiving compassion. Affectionate breathing is similar to the mindfulness practice of anchoring awareness on our breath, but with the addition of fostering a quality of tenderness toward ourselves through the breath. Loving kindness, or metta meditation, is the practice of anchoring on kind words toward ourselves. This can also be done by including wishes of goodwill to others. Giving and receiving compassion is another breath exercise that anchors using words and some visuals. Receiving on the in-breath and giving on the out-breath is a wonderful metaphor reminding us that you need to receive (inhale) in order to give (exhale). Like any activity, such as sports or playing an instrument, formal practice makes it easier to draw on these practices in daily life. I think the real practice is to use them informally. It seems like a waste to only be kind when we are sitting on a cushion meditating. It’s more about how we move about the world. Therefore, as Kristin noted, if all you remember to do is to breathe and be less reactive in the grocery store check-out line, but have difficulty making time to sit formally, then you are really making a difference in your life and the world in general.”Among the troubling aspects of learning about a change in family status through a DNA surprise is that many individuals find their friends and family lack compassion and understanding. They may be made by others to feel as if they’re blowing things out of proportion—that they’re troubled by what others perceive as insignificant. Since they already may be feeling that their concerns are invalid, might that be an impediment to embracing self-compassion?

“Humans are empathic creatures,” says Huff. “When we observe someone else in pain, our tendency is to want to fix it and make it go away since it’s causing pain for us too. Our biology motivates us to avoid pain and move toward pleasure. We have received very unhelpful messages from society that offering advice, sharing a comparative story, or giving someone ‘perspective’ are what we ‘should’ do in respond to someone’s pain. Of course, our biology aligns nicely since we don’t really want to sit with their pain anyway.”

It’s possible, Huff observes, to help others become better listeners and be more responsive to your needs. “We have a terrific exercise in the mindful self-compassion class to foster compassionate listening. Before the exercise, the majority of my students express awkwardness and discomfort with the idea of sitting silently while someone shares a story of pain. They feel they are being horrible people. However, after the practice, their perspective really shifts. The experience of talking and not having someone jump in or offer a tissue in response to tears is most often experienced as tremendously freeing and healing by the person sharing their story. When they are the ones listening, students are encouraged to use the mindful self-compassion practices to soothe their discomfort internally so they don’t disrupt the space. This still feels uncomfortable because it’s unfamiliar. At the same time, the realization of the gift of holding space for someone encourages us to work on managing one’s urge to fix. So, I encourage individuals to let others know what they need. For example, they can tell their loved ones that they just need them to listen and to not offer advice or ‘fix’ the situation. Additionally, both the individuals who have realized this new information and their family members can benefit from seeking counseling so they can have a space to air their pain, knowing the professional is trained to manage their discomfort so they can create safety for the client.”Mindful self-compassion not only soothes distress; it also empowers those who practice it. “Having compassion for ourselves allows us to sit in the pain without needing to reactively fix it,” Huff explains. “Our methods of moving out of the pain usually include things that cause more suffering, such as looking for someone to blame (ourselves or someone else), making quick and ill-informed decisions, and numbing. Additionally, when we are able to offer compassion to ourselves, we realize our own power, rather than waiting for someone else to offer it to us. In reality, everyone is just bumbling along trying our best to navigate the messiness of being human. Self-compassion is tremendously responsible because we take care of ourselves rather than look to others to do it for us. Then we can receive and enjoy what people can offer with less judgment and expectation. Last, the more we are compassionate toward ourselves, the more we can develop compassion for others. Judgment toward ourselves is a sword that cuts both ways.”If you are unable to participate in a mindful self-compassion class or workshop, you can still learn the concepts and develop your own practice. There are numerous resources available, and Huff shares some of her favorites.

Books: Those by Kristin Neff, Chris Germer, and Brené Brown. Additionally, “Real Love” by Sharon Salzberg; “Radical Acceptance” by Tara Brach; ‘Hidden Wholeness” by Parker Palmer;  “When Things Fall Apart” by Pema Chödrön; and poetry by Mary Oliver, John O’Donohue, David Whyte, and Tony Hoagland.

Podcasts: There are several episodes of the podcast “On Being with Krista Tippett” that touch on topics of mindfulness and compassion.

Apps: Insight Timer; Stop, Breathe, Think; Headspace; Calm; Chill.

As the new network television season begins this week, adoptees, NPEs (not parent expected or non-parental events), and donor conceived individuals are among the casts of characters on primetime programs. But will the series’ writers and producers bring a level of reality and depth to the depictions or simply exploit their experiences for dramatic purposes without accuracy, nuance, and sensitivity?

ALMOST FAMILY: L-R: Megalyn Echikunwoke as Edie Palmer, Brittany Snow as Julia Bechley and Emily Osment as Roxy Doyle in Season 1 of ALMOST FAMILY premiering Wednesday, October 2 (9:00-10:00pm PM ET/PT) on FOX. ©2019 Fox Media LLC. CR: Elisabeth Caren/FOX.

On October 2, the first show with a high-concept premise about donor conception premieres on Fox. The plot of “Almost Family” unfolds as it becomes known that renowned fertility doctor Leon Bechley boosted his clinic’s success rate by using his own sperm to help clients conceive—a practice that led to the conception of dozens of children.

While it would appear to be a plot line ripped from recent headlines, the show is based on the Australian Network 10 series “Sisters,” which premiered in October 2017 and may have been inspired by an earlier headline concerning an Indiana fertility doctor who in 2016 was sued for using his own sperm more than 50 times to inseminate patients. The show began streaming as a Netflix Original Series in September 2018.

As in “Sisters,” “Almost Family” focuses on the effect this bombshell has on Bechley’s daughter, Julia, and two women who discover that they were conceived from his sperm. One, Edie Palmer, has been a longtime friend of Julia. The other is a former Olympic athlete, Roxy Doyle.

Both shows purport to be about the redefinition of family and the issues that surface as these sisters face the facts of their conception, navigate the challenges, and encounter an ever-increasing number of siblings.

ALMOST FAMILY: L-R: Timothy Hutton as Dr. Leon Bechley, Brittany Snow as Julia Bechley, Megalyn Echikunwoke as Edie Palmer and Emily Osment as Roxy Doyle in Season 1 of ALMOST FAMILY premiering Wednesday, October 2 (9:00-10:00pm PM ET/PT) on FOX. ©2019 Fox Media LLC. CR: Elisabeth Caren/FOX.

“Sisters,” with 7 episodes, begins promisingly enough. Dialogue suggests that feelings, experiences, and concerns arising from the characters’ discovery that they not only were donor conceived but conceived with the sperm of a fertility doctor will be on point. One of the sisters, for example, wonders if this secret has been the root cause of her lifetime of distress—if it explains why she’s never felt right, why she doesn’t resemble her father. Another sister tangles with a narcissistic mother who tells her she “didn’t miss out on anything” and insists that her life hasn’t changed as a result of this new knowledge. When her daughter tries to make her understand that it has everything to do with who she “is as a person,” the mother dismisses her feelings. Learning of the fertility clinic debacle, Julia Bechley feels as if it’s “just me in a car driving into a tidal wave of shit.” Another feels “shaking, spitting, fury.” One, looking on the brighter side, says, “we’re going to be the people we never knew we were supposed to be.”

If any of that resonates for donor conceived individuals and forecasts a sober exploration of the reality of the situation, what follows may be disappointing. “Sisters” takes a downturn after the first episode, steers away from reality, and devolves into silliness; the drama begins to seem more like an extended sit-com, with the premise as little more than a device for preposterous scenarios in which characters behave unrealistically as they become involved in complications that have little if anything to do with the ramifications of donor conception.

Will “Almost Family” handle the premise more seriously? At the Television Critics Association summer press tour, reporters, according to “TV Guide,” posed hard questions to the new show’s executive producer Jason Katims and writer Annie Weisman. One reporter questioned both an entertainment premise based on “insemination fraud” and the show’s depiction of Bechley as a sympathetic character. Katim asserted that the show focuses on the daughters more than on Bechley’s transgression and on how they connect after the public revelation of his wrongdoing.

Weisman assured reporters that the ramifications of Bechley’s actions and his breach of trust would be taken very seriously. The show, she insisted, will explore questions of identity and what makes a family while exploring the moral and ethical implications. At the same time, Weisman noted that more siblings will emerge over the course of the season, which she describes as “part of the fun of the premise.” Donor conceived individuals understandably might not only take issue with the premise being described as fun, but likely also will bristle at Weisman’s characterization of fertility doctors who broke the rules as outlaws with a visionary sense. It remains to be seen whether “Almost Family” will present a realistic depiction of donor conceived individuals, but the creators’ language doesn’t bode well for a nuanced presentation.Adoption is far from a new topic in network television, but what seems fresh is a departure from the stories in which adoption is the perfect, unblemished solution to babies in need and parents who desire them.

“This is Us”—a wildly popular tearjerker drama—follows Rebecca and Jack Pearson and their three children through flashbacks and flashforwards. It begins in the 1980s as Rebecca and Jack have conceived triplets. Rebecca delivers two healthy babies but the third doesn’t survive. By coincidence, another baby born the same day and whose mother died of an overdose has been abandoned at a firehouse by a drug-addicted father. The Pearsons adopt the child after overcoming obstacles in the legal system; a black judge refused to sanction the adoption of a black baby by white parents because the child would grow up deprived of his racial identity—this taking place decades before transracial adoption had become relatively commonplace and the adoptees’ unique needs were more widely recognized.

The child, Randall, grows up to be a big-hearted, anxious, highly emotional over-achiever. He’s torn between his love for Jack and Rebecca and his longing to know about his biological parents. In his thirties, he discovers his biological father, who’s nearing the end of his life, and learns that Rebecca knew who he was from the start yet kept that knowledge to herself. Plot lines are devoted to Randall’s fury over this betrayal and his ultimate joy in getting to know his biological father—joy tinged with anger about all the years they weren’t able to be together and the sorrow of knowing their time will be short. Oddly, Randall’s biological mother, so far, has been essentially absent from the drama’s flashbacks.

In later episodes, Randall and his wife, Beth, foster and hope to adopt a troubled black adolescent, Deja. Randall, thinking his experience will allow Deja to relate to him and holding firm to a belief that his love will conquer all, comes to learn that good intentions aren’t enough. Deja, seething and self-protective, educates and challenges him at every turn. The story lines highlight conflicted emotions—those of the characters and the audience—about whether the girl best belongs with Beth and Randall or her own mother who loves her.

“This is Us,” the new season of which premieres September 24, has inspired devotion among legions of viewers who believe the adoptee experience portrayed aligns with their own and has scored criticism from a smaller number who find the depiction too simplistic or unrealistic.

Across more than a decade, “Grey’s Anatomy” has highlighted issues related to adoption with a view that’s far from rose-colored. Throughout the seasons of the show—the 16^th of which premieres September 26—conflicts related to adoption are featured frequently. Early on, lead characters Derek Shepherd and Meredith Grey adopt Zola, a six-month old orphan whom Derek had treated at a clinic in Malawi, a process complicated by upheavals in their relationship.

In season 10, a brilliant new cardiovascular surgeon, Maggie Pierce, comes to work at Seattle Grace Hospital. She’s learned that her birthmother, Ellis Grey, a world-famous surgeon, had worked there years ago. What she doesn’t know is that Ellis’ daughter, Meredith, is her half-sister, or that the chief of surgery, Richard Webber, is her father. Webber figures it out first and, to keep the affair he’d had with Ellis from becoming common knowledge, he fails to inform Maggie. As the truth emerges, Maggie’s reunion with her biological family is anything but idyllic. It’s fraught at every turn with issues of trust and betrayal. As Maggie becomes a more prominent character in the drama, her loneliness and lifelong struggles to fit in, her awareness of having missing pieces, and her difficulty with relationships become apparent.

Jo Wilson, another surgeon at the hospital (now called Grey-Sloan Memorial) had been abandoned by her mother shortly after her birth. Story lines make evident that everything in Jo’s experience has been difficult—that her life’s beginning has created heartaches and challenges few can understand. She’s thought about her mother every day of her life and wondered about her own genetic identity. She wrestles with shame and fear of abandonment, which cause her to leave others before they leave her and fuels feelings of inadequacy and otherness. Despite a traumatic upbringing in foster care and an adolescence on the streets, she managed to become a doctor and to flee an abusive husband, creating a new identity for herself. In the most recent season of the show, Jo, having no medical history, is afraid to have children for fear of passing on genetic illnesses. To learn more about her health risks, she takes a DNA test and subsequently discovers the identity of her birthmother. She tracks her down and is devasted to discover that she’s not welcome in her life and, worse, is deeply traumatized by the reason for her mother’s rejection—that she was conceived as a consequence of rape.

GREY’S ANATOMY – on The ABC Television Network. (ABC/Eric McCandless)
CAMILLA LUDDINGTON

These programs may not deal with the full complexity of adoption and foster care and may leave viewers with much to praise and much to criticize, but the characters register emotions that seldom have been expressed in previous screen portrayals. There’s grief, anguish, fear, heartache, conflict, guilt, shame, anger, and rage. There’s acceptance and rejection and happy reunions and bitter disavowals. There are identity crises and traumas associated with the loss of biological family and genetic identity. And in each situation, adoption and foster care aren’t events characters get beyond. They’re shown, instead, to have deleterious effects that persist throughout life.While adoption has been a through line in many television shows, NPEs probably haven’t had a significant presence on a network hit since “Peyton Place” in the 1960s. Until now. With a “Big Chill” vibe, ABC’s drama “A Million Little Things,” is about the friendships among a circle of individuals linked by their relationship to Jon Dixon, the group’s linchpin who died by suicide in the first episode. While the series hasn’t yet focused long and hard on issues of genetic identity, it appears to be poised to do so in the second season. The first season episodes set the stage for the potential development of a non-parental event, depicting the way an NPE situation can arise and how the secrets and lies begin.

A MILLION LITTLE THINGS – ABC’s “A Million Little Things” stars Lizzy Greene as Sophie Dixon, Stephanie Szostak as Delilah Dixon, James Roday as Gary Mendez, Allison Miller as Maggie Bloom, Chance Hurstfield as Danny Dixon, Christina Moses as Regina Howard, Romany Malco as Rome Howard, David Giuntoli as Eddie Saville, Grace Park as Katherine Kim, and Tristan Byon as Theo Saville. (ABC/Robert Trachtenberg)

Before Jon dies, his wife, Delilah Dixon, had begun an affair with Eddie Saville. Delilah and Eddie had planned to tell Jon, but before that could happen, Jon had taken his own life. Soon after, Delilah discovers she’s pregnant. Delilah tells Eddie there’s no question she’s carrying his child—that she and Jon had drifted apart and hadn’t been intimate since before the baby was conceived. As Delilah and her two children are reeling in the aftermath of Jon’s death and Eddie is trying to rebuild his relationship with his wife, Katherine, the two agree the child “must be Jon’s.” This pact—the beginning of a family secret—is seen in part as an act of love and protection. In light of the timing, while everyone is mourning Jon’s death, these characters are meant to appear sympathetic and selfless. This agreement is made to protect Delilah’s children and Eddie’s marriage. Clearly, of course, it’s also an act of self-protection—a means of avoiding the revelation of their affair and sidestepping their shame. It’s a promise of secrecy that, by the first season finale, is on the edge of being broken. But there’s more than one NPE situation at play in this drama.

“A Million Little Things,” on The ABC Television Network. (ABC/Jack Rowand)
STEPHANIE SZOSTAK, DAVID GIUNTOLI

The finale not only teases the eventual revelation of that secret but it also suggests that Delilah and Eddie may be influenced to come clean when they encounter an NPE and become aware of the trauma he experienced as a result of not knowing about his origins. In a complicated plot twist in this pivotal episode, it becomes apparent that a troubled and possibly depressed young man named Patrick—the son of a woman who had been a friend of Jon’s—is an NPE. As this revelation unfolds, Jon, in a video, appear to foretell the struggle that will play out over whether Delilah and Eddie keep their pact or tell the truth and prevent their child from becoming an NPE. “The more you try to push away the past, the more it haunts you,” Jon says. “And sometimes, as hard as it may be, you tell the truth,” he adds. The second season premieres September 26 on ABC.In the end, what does it matter if the shows get it right? It’s just television, and no one expects reality from network programs. That may be true, but television depictions drive cultural perceptions for good or for ill and form the basis for tropes that live on indefinitely unless they’re challenged. If you’re an adoptee or NPE or were donor conceived, you can influence the way you and others like you are represented in the media. It’s a long game, but raising your voice can be effective over time. At the highest level, you can change the media and control the narrative by contributing to it—by trying to get your voice and vision out there. If you have a gift for writing, research television writing and learn how the business works. Get a foot in the door by writing spec scripts. There’s an abundance of excellent books on the process, for example, Alan Heuth’s “Scriptwriting for Film, Television, and New Media,” and courses in television writing are widely available, for example at UCLA Extension, NYU, and Columbia School of the Arts. There’s even a free course from Coursera.

True, getting a script out in the word is easier said than done, but it’s not impossible. And it’s not the only way to influence the media. If you believe that issues related to genetic identity are misrepresented on network television or that characters are unrealistic or lack dimension, raise your voice. Media is influenced by the public’s reaction. Write to the networks and detail your objections. Send letters to the editors of national and local newspapers or write opinion pieces for these publications. Tell them what the media are getting right and what they are getting wrong and why it matters. The more you are able to control the narrative about the issues that matter to you, the more the public will reject the tropes, see dimensional human beings, and understand their experiences.

By Jodi Klugman-RabbTwo years ago, I discovered a birth father I knew nothing about after taking a 23andMe DNA test for fun. I hired a genealogist to locate him and, against her expert advice, went to his home to meet him when he ignored my phone calls. This man’s interest eventually overcame his denial and we began a relationship as father and daughter. With him came aunts, an uncle, cousins, a brother, a sister-in-law, and a nephew—instant family! As I met each of them, in turn they welcomed me with the typical Scottish declaration, “Welcome to the clan!” 23andMe had reported I was 50% Scottish, and now it was official.

With a major life cycle transition, there’s usually an official event: a wedding shower, baby shower, baby naming, a birthday party—a welcoming of a new stage or a new person, with all the accompanying pomp and circumstance of tradition. Interestingly, my official welcome to the clan occurred over the Jewish New Year— Rosh Hashana—also a time of new beginnings and discovery. The very nature of a new year is a beginning, albeit symbolic if not psychological.

When we have a difficult year, we can’t wait for the official ending and symbolic beginning of the next revolution around the sun—almost as if beginning again acts as a type of psychological barrier, representing an end to the difficulty. Yin and yang depict the necessary opposites of light and dark forces inherent to all aspects of creation—the seasons and the cycle of life, for example. A new beginning occurs on the heels of something ending. When I took the 23andMe test, I had no way of knowing the loss at 22 years old of the father who raised me would be the ending to this new beginning.

“Welcome to the clan” took the place of a “shower event” to mark the milestone of my birthright and triggered another uniquely Jewish tradition: exploring curiosity. I came into an established family whose members are geographically dispersed from me, but we had mutual curiosity. A basic tenet in Judaism is to question and pursue curiosity. My new family’s acceptance and curiosity served as an induction of sorts—asking questions, processing it all without judgment, and showing excitement at my involvement in the family. Wondering how I would fit in preoccupied me early on, something most individuals born into a family typically don’t experience, since bonding with an infant grows as people witness their milestones. None of these people had ever experienced any of mine.

There’s usually a lot of adjustment that comes with all life transitions, and the unexpected identity confusion that comes with discovering new paternity has certainly required adjustment. In a period of three months—a sort of super consolidated lifespan—I experienced the pain of a new birth (my rebirth), toddler-like clinging to my old sense of life, the individuation of adolescence as I reset my system to allow for a new narrative, shedding the unspoken family secret that clouded my identity and emerging as a new adult. Carl Jung introduced the concept of synchronicity as meaningful coincidences that seem to have no apparent connection. I understand now that I experienced this discovery because I also had the tools to deal with it through my training as a therapist and Jewish upbringing that encourages exploration and curiosity.

I lost the father who raised me 21 years ago and have desperately missed having a father in my life. Now I have the opportunity to have a new father relationship. Having been an only child, the most exciting part is finding a brother—the older brother I always wanted. We met a few months after I met our father, inciting more transitions, more beginnings, more adjustment. Also more milestones, including his participation in my son’s Bar Mitzvah—just the sort of significant turning point that bonds family together.

I now get to be part of the clan and introduce them to the tribe too. Mazel tov!Jodi Klugman-Rabb is a licensed marriage and family therapist in Marin and Napa Counties. She specializes in connecting with clients on a humorous and practical level, helpful when specializing in ADHD, trauma/EMDR, and parental identity discovery. She is a long time Jew and new Scot. A wife of 20+ years, she’s the mom of two funny and awesome kids. Connect with her at her website or on Facebook.  

Look for more essays on various aspects of genetic identity here. Do you have a story to share? We want to hear from you. Find our submission guidelines here.

Researchers at the University of British Columbia’s Center for Health and Coping Studies in the department of psychology are exploring individuals’ motivations for taking DNA tests and the impact of the results.

People take DNA tests for a host of reasons, from wanting to know their ethnic backgrounds to a desire to augment their genealogical research. Increasingly often, however, individuals take direct-to-consumer DNA tests as part of an effort to discover and connect with their biological families. With these discoveries and connections often come emotional repercussions and significant challenges.

Adoptees, donor-conceived individuals, and other NPEs (not parent expected) rarely have an opportunity to contribute to research about issues that matter to them, but now they can make a difference. Researchers are seeking individuals who will participate in the UBC Genetic Connections Study by taking a survey. Although the survey is not limited to NPEs, with their contributions it could help shed light on the reverberations of learning about family secrets and increase awareness about the difficulties that can arise after one takes a DNA test. It might also answer a question that dogs virtually all testers who reach out to their DNA matches: “Why don’t they answer?” Becoming aware of others’ motivations for testing may go a long way toward understanding their behavior.

According to the study’s website, “The UBC Genetic Connection study is looking for individuals who are considering purchasing or have already purchased but not yet seen the results of a genetic test kit. The study involves completing two anonymous surveys, one before and one after receiving your genetic test results.” And if you’ve already taken a DNA test and received results, it’s still possible to contribute. While the study focuses on those in the process of testing, there’s an option in the survey to indicate that you’ve already received results.

Dr. Anita DeLongis is principal investigator of the study and Talia Morstead and Jason Zheng are co-investigators. The goal of their research is to “capture the numerous social and individual factors that go into the decision to pursue at-home genetic testing as well as the impact of receiving genetic test results.” According to Morstead, who’s also the study coordinator, one of her main interests is to look at how DNA test findings affect personal relationships.

If you meet the study criteria and would like to participate, you can find more information and a link to the first survey at the study’s website.  Share your experience!

The second season of novelist and memoirist Dani Shapiro’s riveting “Family Secrets” podcast recently launched in iTunes’ Top 10, a testament to the fact that humans have a deep desire to see what’s behind the curtain, to get at the truth of what we hide or what’s been hidden from us. The author deftly satisfies this urge, indulging our voyeuristic impulses as she unburdens guests of their long-held deepest secrets and bears witness to the lasting impact, both of the secrets themselves and of their ultimate revelations.

But there’s nothing sensationalized or salacious about these secrets or their disclosures. Even as guests detail stories we might never have been able to imagine, sometimes mournful and often harrowing, they reveal a slice of common humanity. Shapiro in each episode homes in on the core emotions from which virtually all secrets arise and which all secrets arouse—shame, guilt, fear—feelings that resonate for everyone and, thus, stir empathy and compassion.

Listening to each episode is like looking into a lighted room on a dark street—something that seems both furtive and intimate. There are moments so revealing you want to look away, yet you can’t help but linger to see just a bit more. These are, to a one, painful conversations; we listen as each storyteller presses an ancient bruise, but the pain is only prelude to the relief that comes from unleashing the story that’s been kept locked inside them or had been kept hidden from them.

Shapiro is no stranger to family secrets. She’s written about them tenderly through nine books, both fiction and nonfiction. Her tenth, the bestselling “Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love,” details her discovery that she was a family secret, that she’d been donor conceived, her father’s sperm having been mixed with donor sperm at a fertility clinic. It explores not only her anguish at learning that her dear father wasn’t in fact her father, but also the sense of betrayal and the rudderlessness she felt after learning of this genetic disconnection. There, as here, she discusses the ways in which we are formed as much by what we don’t know, what we merely suspect, and what we might intuit as by what we do know.

The podcast arose out of the author’s understanding that her story isn’t unusual. In the age of the Internet and with the rising popularity of direct-to-consumer DNA tests, it’s become increasingly difficult to hold back the truth. Secrets, she observes, have existed throughout the ages, but “are tumbling out at a staggering rate.” The goal of her conversations with her guests, Shapiro says, is to “shine a bright light into the dark hidden corners of the unspoken and discover together the power and beauty that comes with finally knowing the truth.”

She succeeds admirably. The stories move listeners to tears at the same time that they promote a deeper understanding of the traumas that all too often remain below the surface. They raise the unsettling truth that we are—all of us—both unknowable and fundamentally similar.

The first episode of the second season focuses on a secret that’s both heartbreaking and—rare among these stories—truly beneficial to those who were kept in the dark about it. Jon Mehlman details what he and his wife, Marla, judged to be a “loving choice”—to withhold from their young daughters the fact that Marla, suffering from metastatic breast cancer, had been told by her doctors she had roughly 1,000 days to live. And in the second episode, Sascha Rothchild, a Los Angeles television writer, tells the astonishing story of how her father, in the grip of dementia, inadvertently revealed his secret sexual past—how the man she and her mother thought they knew had been someone quite different.

Among the first season episodes are two involving secrets and shame circling brutal instances of violence and sexual abuse. Another involves the soul-shaking solution to a family mystery; in “Don’t Duck,” Sylvia Boorstein, famed author, psychotherapist, and mindfulness meditation teacher, tells a chilling tale of learning that she’d had an aunt who had died in childhood and whose existence no one acknowledged. At age 82, she remains profoundly shaken by the discovery. Her story, which she’d previously shared with her friend Shapiro, became the inspiration for the creation of the podcast.

The majority of the guests in the first season discuss secrets related to some aspect of misattributed parentage, genetic disconnection, and genealogical bewilderment. An early episode of that inaugural season, “The Very Image,” begins, appropriately enough, with the sound of whispers, a signifier of a truth running through many of these stories—that everyone knows the secret except the person most affected by it. Shapiro talked with Jim Graham about his discovery that his father wasn’t the gruff and distant man who raised him, but instead had been a Catholic priest. In conversation they reveal the lengths to which the church went to keep Graham from ever knowing the truth, an effort he ultimately thwarted. In a letter Graham shares with Shapiro, a particularly sensitive and perceptive nun who knew his father encapsulates the predicament of so many of Shapiro’s guests when she refers to “the pain of unknowing.”

In “Open Secret,” Steve Lickteig similarly relates coming to learn that everyone knew something about him he didn’t know—that is sister is actually his mother. In “One Drop,” Bliss Broyard recalls the moment in adulthood when she and her brother learned what everyone around them knew—that their father, literary critic Anatole Broyard, was an African-American who passed as white. “Little White Lie” is the story of Lacey Schwartz, who was raised in predominantly white Woodstock, New York in a Jewish Family in which her dark skin was essentially ignored. She knew, deep down, she wasn’t the child of both of her parents, yet that knowledge wasn’t confirmed until high school, when she was bussed to a school where the black students implicitly accepted her, and further, when, after including a photo with a college application, she was admitted as a black student. At its core, says Shapiro, this is “a story about the extraordinary capacity that we human beings have to believe what we want to believe, to bury our own secrets even from ourselves, and at the same time the capacity we also have to shed those secrets, to move past them and become wholly ourselves.”

Of these episodes about genetic identity, the one I found most resonant and shattering is “Zygote Baby”—in which Jane Mintz, a clinical interventionist, searches for and connects with her biological mother. This narrative touches on feelings that will be all too familiar to many readers—the great emptiness inside us that comes from lacking knowledge about our past and the unshakable feeling of being “other.” Mintz, by all accounts, had a good life and was highly successful. Yet, she says, “My whole life I felt like there was a black hole in my soul so deep and wide and I felt like I didn’t deserve to feel that way.” There was a sense, she says, of not feeling entitled to the pain of not knowing one’s origins. “You always feel on the outside of life, and there’s no evidence for why you should feel that way, so there’s incongruence.” Her description of finally meeting her mother is extraordinarily moving and illustrative of the highs and lows and the promises and pitfalls so often associated with reunions.

While not all listeners may agree with Shapiro’s choice at times to bring her own experience, as detailed in “Inheritance,” into the conversation, I find it to be one of the key strengths of the podcast, elevating the episodes from mere recitations of events to conversations that give and take and uncover the deeper threads that run through all the stories. Her literary skills let Shapiro set the stage for the revelation of the secrets. She adds just enough descriptive detail and context at various points, keeping the pace and moving the narrative forward. She knows instinctively when to step back and let the guest have the floor and when to interject to summarize, amplify, or invite a deeper discussion. Her commentary, rather than distracting, highlights what’s universal about these experiences. As the podcast moves from story to story, Shapiro points to the thru lines and acknowledges the echoes from guest to guest about knowing, keeping, or revealing secrets. It’s a way of saying “I see, I understand, I’ve been there.”

What every secret has in common, Shapiro says “is the silence rooted in shame, trauma, and the desire to protect.” In almost all cases, though, the secrets are toxic. “Family Secrets” is evidence that releasing these painful experiences can be both detoxifying and transformative. The telling of stories and the sharing of secrets lets others know they’re not alone.

New episodes drop every Thursday, and all of season one and the bonus episodes, including listener stories, are available now at iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow on Twitter at @famsecretspod and @danijshapiro.