Articles

I was not a K-pop fan, so as a tired parent of a two-year-

Through my lived experience as an adoptee

My husband, Martin’s, midday phone call jolted me out of my usual routine.

Actress, producer, and screenwriter Lisa Brenner has reimagined her DNA surprise story

Kimberly Warner’s Unfixed is a wonder. Beyond a mesmerizing story

When I look in the mirror, what do I see?

What happens when the story you’re told doesn’t match the one you feel in your bones?

Healing is a non-linear and subjective journey. What feels and looks like healing to me is going to be very different for someone else.

On September 28, 2018, at 3 p.m., I opened an email from Ancestry.com notifying me that my DNA results were ready.

By Michael G. O’Connell I’m an artist, a writer, and a native Floridian. I’m also a second generation native to this country by adoption, but my birth family goes back to some of the first white people in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. I’ve uncovered some great stories from my bloodline, but this isn’t about that. As a writer, I like to spend my day writing, but that rarely happens. I am too easily distracted. It’s the research that takes me on another information-addled adventure. On one particular day, not too long ago, I had far too many windows open on my computer screen. Two hundred? Three? More? A normal day then. I also had an email from one of the genealogy companies with a pitch telling me Sam Gamgee and I were cousins. Actually, they were referring to Sean Astin, the actor who portrayed the long-suffering Hobbit friend of Frodo Baggins in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. And we are distantly related. So I was down another rabbit hole. Or Hobbit hole, since this was the case. And like Sam Gamgee, I found myself in a deep, dark wood of twisted family trees. My own Fanghorn Forest. I have been using FamilySearch recently because it’s free. Ancestry was getting far too expensive, and I was spending far too much time adding the minutia and discovering more and more distant relatives. The “free” part of FamilySearch is a little misleading. True, it doesn’t’t cost you any money, but it does cost you your immortal soul. Well, that’s what I’ve been told. You see, it is owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And what I’ve heard is that after I’m dead, some of their church members might just baptize me as a Mormon, making me forever be one of theirs. Distractions. Let’s get back to my Hobbit Hole. At this point, it was more like a snipe hunt or, if I want to keep my nerd cred, the “search for ‘The One Ring to Rule Them All.’” This particular great hunt had me looking for distant relations. I was adopted and had recently found my biological family using my DNA, which is an entirely different story. While looking into my newly found biological family, I discovered my maternal great-grandmother was named Lela Magdelaine Gates. G-A-T-E-S. Her father was William Gaetz. G-A-E-T-Z. Yes, THAT name—the name we often hear in the news these days. Without getting political, I am not a fan. So, I had a dilemma. Should I look? I mean, how many people could have that name? With that spelling? I found Congressman’s family tree online and then found his grandfather on Family Search and, just like that, I had everything I needed to make the search. I could quickly confirm, one way or the other, something I dreaded. The only upside to a positive confirmation would be I could criticize him with a little more authority because we would be family. This had been chewing at the edges of my brain like a rat for months. And I had to know. I input the ID codes and then I clicked the button and in less than a second, I had an answer. The answer. I could breathe again. No relation. And that was going back at least 15 generations. Much more than that and we are all related in some way or another. Click on the image to read more.

By Alethia Stern Decades ago, when I was a young girl of four or five, my mother won a free family portrait session from a local grocery store. One Saturday afternoon, she decided to cash in on her winnings. There was a whirlwind of activity around the house, and everyone was putting on their finest. Hair, makeup, and accessories were coordinated too. I was off to the sidelines in observation mode. Eventually, my mother made her way toward me. I sat motionless wondering how I would get the royal treatment. She looked at me, looked at my hair, looked at me again, looked at my hair (which was referred to as the Brillo pad), and shook her head. She quickly left and returned with a pair of scissors and began cutting away at my Afro. I immediately started to resist, squirming in my seat. “Sit still damn it!” she shouted. I obeyed the order, but one by one the tears began trickling down my cheeks. I hated the fact my hair was different from everyone else’s. It was coarse, unmanageable, brittle, without beauty, and vilified. Still, it was my hair. And it was short and now being made even shorter. I wanted long hair like everyone else. When I was growing up people often mistook me for a boy on account of my short hair; this completely annoyed me. I wanted to shout, “I’m a girl damn it!” Perhaps that’s why I get offended in this age of political correctness when someone asks me what pronouns I use or identify with; it triggers the memory. During the photo shoot, the photographer made two attempts to get me to smile for the camera; in retaliation for getting my haircut I refused. I was both flaming mad and simultaneously depressed. The family portrait no longer exists, it burned in a house fire. People often take for granted genetic mirroring in birth families, but that’s not always the case. I can’t emphasize enough the importance of having someone at home whose physical features resemble your own, who understand your plight. It was certainly lonely for me being the one and only NPE (not parent expected). No, I didn’t need a consumer DNA test to enlighten me; I have known all my life just by looking in the mirror. I had an Afro and tan complexion, unlike anyone else in the home. I grew up in an isolated community deprived of my culture and identity. Birth families and foster and adoptive parents are obligated to acknowledge the genetic differences, including race and ethnicity, of the infants or children they bring into their care. These differences should be celebrated and not ignored. Nor should families superimpose their own preferences with respect to hair textures and styles. I remember reading about Colin Kaepernick, when his adoptive mother reportedly told him his chosen hairstyle, cornrows, made him look like a thug. This insensitive comment reminded me of my Brillo pad days. In the television series This Is Us, Randall was the minority in the household. His experiences were different than those of his adoptive parent’s biological children. Had he been adopted with another Black infant or child, his issues with anxiety and self-perception may have been lessened. Click on image to read more.

By Heather Massey On January 6, 2025, Congressman Rob Wittman (VA-01) announced the re-introduction of his Adoption Information Act. According to a press release, this act “…would require family planning services to provide information on nearby adoption centers to anyone receiving their services. A family planning services’s eligibility to receive federal grants or contracts through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) would be contingent upon providing this information.” An adoptee, Congressman Wittman also shared his perspective about adoption: “A lot of people say they would not be where they are today without their parents—for me, that is the absolute truth….When I was eight months old, my mom and dad adopted me. My birth mother’s decision to choose adoption gave me more opportunities than she felt she could provide, and my parents’ decision to adopt instilled in me a passion for public service and a desire to give back. That’s why I’m proud to reintroduce my Adoption Information Act so that all mothers know what options are available to them. This legislation is a simple step that can make a world of a difference.” In addition to being a constituent of Congressman Wittman, I’m also an adoptee who believes the Adoption Information Act would cause more harm than good. I was born in 1969 and adopted nine months later. I was part of the Baby Scoop Era, the period between 1945 and 1973 when infants born to single white mothers were plentiful as were couples desperate to adopt. About four million babies were placed for adoption during that period. My parents’ infertility prompted them to adopt. They told me my first mother was a nineteen-year-old college student when she became pregnant with me. She relinquished me because she couldn’t afford to raise me. My parents emphasized that my birth mother had chosen relinquishment for my best interest—an act of love. Sound familiar? That’s because my story is eerily like Congressman Wittman’s adoption narrative. My adoption was closed, which meant the state forbade contact between my birth families and me. I always wanted to meet my first mother, but reunification with her seemed forever out of reach. Until it wasn’t. In 2022, my first mother reached out to the agency that arranged my adoption. Soon after, the agency informed me that a letter from her was waiting for me. Excited beyond belief, I couldn’t read it fast enough. Then we had a glorious reunion. As we became acquainted, I learned some shocking details about my relinquishment. One part of my adoption narrative was technically true: my first mother had no money or resources to raise me by herself. However, her parents certainly had enough money for the job. Furthermore, my first mother would have kept me if not for their lack of support. Ironically, I was adopted by a couple whose socioeconomic status resembled that of my maternal grandparents. My adoptive father was a professor at a college in the same city where my biological grandfather lived (they worked three miles apart, no less). My adoptive mother juggled employment and being a stay-at-home parent, just like my biological grandmother. Click on image to read more.

A review by Michèle Dawson Haber In What They Never Told Us: True Stories of Family Secrets and Hidden Identities Revealed (Skyhorse Publishing, December 2024) Gail Lukasik picks up where her 2017 best-selling memoir, White Like Her: My Family’s Story of Race and Racial Passing, left off, describing how telling her mother’s story of racial passing catapulted Lukasik into the public spotlight and transformed her into a spokesperson for others encountering sudden genetic surprises. Strangers began approaching her looking to share their stories. and it was this experience that convinced her to write What They Never Told Us. “The first step toward understanding the impact of family secrets is to give them a voice.” Lukasik does so with respect and care in this fascinating collection of interviews with adoptees, donor conceived people, and individuals who have uncovered previously hidden genetic histories. The book is divided into thirds, with each part focused on a different grouping of people affected by sudden identity shocks. The first group consists of those who, like Lukasik, discover their racial or ethnic identity is not what they thought it was. In 1995, while looking up census records of her family, she discovered the grandfather she’d never met was Black. She realized then that her mother had been passing as white, never telling her husband or her children about her racial background. Abiding by her mother’s wish not to reveal the truth to anyone, Lukasik waited until her mother died to begin exploring what this new information about her ancestry meant to her. Thirty years later she’s still exploring, asking questions, and challenging perceptions of racial identity. The second part of What They Never Told Us is devoted to stories of adoptees whose parents withheld crucial information about their identities. In some cases, their parents withheld the very fact of their adoption and in other cases the ethnic origins of their biological parents. In part three, Lukasik talks with donor conceived people, including four half-siblings who meet after discovering they were conceived with the same sperm donor. Click image to read more.

By Julie Ryan McGue My twin sister and I were adopted during the Baby Scoop Era—post–World War II through the early 1970s—when closed adoption was the only option available to birth moms. Back then, adoption agencies matched babies with adoptive parents without any input from birth parents. Birth parents were promised anonymity, and future contact with their birth child was prohibited. This arrangement granted adoptive parents’ full autonomy to raise their adopted children as they deemed fit. But what all parties––birth parents, adoptive parents, adoption agencies, state lawmakers, and even civil liberties organizations––failed to do was provide for the long-term health and well-being of the adopted child. For most of my life, I gave little thought to the fact my twin sister and I were adopted, something we seemed always to have known. Did I ponder the “big three” questions–– who are my birth parents, where are they, and why was I adopted––details about which most closed adoption adoptees admit to ruminating? You bet I did. But as much as I dwelled on the big three as a child, I did not consider how my lack of family medical history would affect me as an adult. I also didn’t understand that adoption meant I had two birth certificates: the OBR (original birth record) that was sealed with my closed adoption, and a redacted one that contained my adoptive parents’ details. It would be years before I comprehended the difference, and a lifetime until I appreciated the role my OBR played in my long-term health. In our formative years, my adoptive parents would periodically bring up our adoption, quizzing my sister and me about whether we wanted to seek information. “No, we’re fine” was our standard reply. In truth, we were quick to dismiss our folks because we feared our curiosity would be misinterpreted as disloyalty. As an adult––and a parent myself––I wish that instead of asking how we felt about searching, that our folks would have taken a proactive role, advocating and securing information that might keep us healthy as we aged. Besides those adoption chats with my parents, the only other time I was confronted with the realities of closed adoption were during routine doctor appointments. When asked to fill out my medical history, it was with deep shame that I admitted my status. “I’m adopted. I don’t know anything.” Even as I child, I was aware that if a doctor was asking about ailments, medical conditions, allergies, and sensitivities that ran in my bloodline, it wasn’t good to come up lacking. As I matured, I developed a burning anger around what closed adoption had denied me. I’d sit in a doctor’s waiting room, the stack of intake forms filling my lap, and scrawl in large letters across the entire form, “Adopted. N/A.” As a young woman going into marriage, I was athletic and healthy. I was blessed with four normal pregnancies. Then at forty-eight, suddenly I wasn’t fine. “Six areas of concern” appeared on a routine mammogram. I was sent for a biopsy. My twin sister and I agreed it was time to claim what everyone else who isn’t adopted has the right to know: family medical history. Click on image to read more.

By Moses Farrow When people ask me about adoption, I tell them the truth. The best conversations start with what they know and believe about adoption. These days, people bring up the abandonment and loss issues, the human rights violations, or the moral dilemmas of how children are being taken from their parents and given to others willing to pay for them. Many others also ask me what the solution is for children in need and for people who want to raise a family. Let’s first understand what the word “adoption” means as we believe it to be today. As an adoption trauma therapist and educator I help people arrive at this realization about adoption. My trainings and presentations address three main issues aimed at getting to the truth. Deprogramming For years, I’ve written about connecting the right dots in framing our experiences and the issues common among those impacted by the adoption industry. At this point, there’s no denying an industry exists that drives the process of adoption. Defined as “the act or fact of legally taking another’s child and bring it up as one’s own”—Oxford Languages, adoption has been readily accepted as such by people around the world for generations. I admit I didn’t question it until a few colleagues presented a different definition. Thanks to Arun Dohle, executive director of Against Child Trafficking, and Janine Myung Ja and Jenette Vance, aka The Vance Twins, who have authored and curated books, most notably Adoptionland: From Orphans to Activists, and Adoption: What You Should Know, I now ask people what does “legally taking” mean? That’s when the topic of the industry comes up in the conversation. The issues of supply and demand, costs, policies that legalize the practices of taking children from their parents and families then monopolize our minds for the next hour. By the end, we’re left scratching our heads—“are we even talking about adoption anymore?” This is how we deprogram ourselves from the industry’s propaganda. Coming to the realization that we have effectively been brainwashed all the while industry leaders maintain and profit from a child supply market. The question remains, where are these children coming from? And perhaps more accurately, how are they being sourced? A key part of the deprogramming process is learning of how the industry has conflated the act of taking children (in questionably criminal ways) and calling it a child welfare solution. Social justice advocates have been saying adoption is “legalized child trafficking.” Today, there are a number of investigations, documentaries such as One Child Nation and Geographies of Kinship, along with testimonies of victims that are providing such evidence of children (and their mothers) being trafficked through adoption (TTA). How can this be considered an acceptable child welfare solution? It presents a conundrum, a moral dilemma that needs immediate rectification and redress. To start, trafficking mothers and their children needs to stop. Their rights must be protected. Child trafficking is not a child welfare solution. Click on image to read more.

By Cindy McQuay For decades, the guiding principle of child welfare systems was family preservation—keeping children within their biological families whenever possible. This goal was rooted in the belief that children thrive best when raised in stable, loving, and supportive environments. However, in recent years, that principle has been systematically eroded, replaced by a disturbing trend: child welfare has morphed into a multi-billion-dollar industry where children are treated as commodities—bought, sold, abused, and even killed for profit. The prioritization of foster care placements and adoption has shifted the focus away from keeping families intact, with devastating consequences for both children and parents. The initial goal of child welfare systems was to prevent the unnecessary separation of children from their families. Family preservation programs, such as family counseling, in-home services, and parent education, were intended to help families overcome crises and remain together. These programs, when properly funded and executed, have been proven to reduce the number of children entering foster care and improve long-term outcomes. However, the focus on family preservation has been overshadowed by a systemic drive to maximize profits, with children being treated as expendable products within an increasingly corrupt system. The child welfare system has become deeply entangled with financial incentives that drive decisions about family separation. Agencies receive funding based on the number of children they place in foster care or the number they adopt out, creating a perverse incentive to remove children from their biological families. This has transformed what was once a compassionate system into a profit-driven machine, with little regard for the devastating consequences of these separations. Children are placed in foster homes, where they are often moved between multiple homes, sometimes subject to neglect and abuse, with few legal safeguards to protect them. Foster parents, too, have become pawns in this system. While many are well-meaning, there are countless cases where foster care becomes a lucrative business for those willing to exploit the system. Foster parents are compensated more than biological families in crisis, creating a financial incentive to take children into care rather than supporting families in need. This has led to a culture where the idea of preserving families becomes secondary to the financial benefits of fostering and adopting children out of the system. Click on image to read more.

By Cindy Shultz Dakota “Levi” Stevens deserved a long life. He had a family that loved him and wanted him. In April 2024, he was suffocated in his foster home. No charges have been filed, and Levi’s family is calling for change in a petition. The state of Indiana failed Levi and his family. The Indiana Department of Child Services claims that prospective foster families go through “intensive training and education,” yet Levi’s death is not an isolated incident. Throughout our country a crisis is unfolding that demands our immediate attention. It’s a crisis that sees our most vulnerable—our children—subjected to unthinkable horrors. The torture and murder of foster and adopted children is ongoing. These children are more than just victims; they’re human beings who deserve love, care, and protection, not death. A few current murder cases include those of 4-year-old Bryan Boyer (FL), 11-year-old Arabella McCormack (CA), 6-year-old Isabella Kalua (HI), 3-year-old Sherin Mathews (TX), 14-year-old Grace Packer (PA), and 6-week-old Lucas Birchim (NC). The stories of Asunta Fong Yang and Aundria Bowman—both murdered adoptees—are garnering attention in two different Netflix Series: “The Asunta Case” and “Into the Fire: The Lost Daughter,” respectively.” These stories are horrifying but not unique and stand as irrefutable evidence of an industry failing children and their families. Can you imagine losing custody of your children because a government agency says you are a danger to them only to find out they were victims of torture and murder under watch from that same agency? According to a 2019 study, children in foster care have a mortality rate 42% higher than that other children. This number is not just a statistic; these are real human beings, real children, real lives, and real suffering. Imagine the fear and confusion a child must feel when the very people who are legally responsible for protecting them become their abusers. These children, already vulnerable due to their adoptive and foster care placements, are further victimized by a system that fails to safeguard their lives. Click on image to read more.

By Amy Ebbeson, LCSW Since the beginning of recorded history, people have been misled about their parentage and origins. This is a foundational story in Christianity. And even in a galaxy far, far away. In Star Wars, Darth Vader’s declaration, “Luke, I am your father,” is probably the most quoted line in science fiction history. In 2024, it’s not an epic battle that brings people this information, but rather a computer screen. People of all ages and stages of their life can now discover by spitting into a tube a hidden truth about who they are genetically. Being able to find out a long-held secret from an inexpensive and widely available commercial DNA test is a completely novel trauma. Never have we had the ability to find this truth without the consent, knowledge, or genetic material of both parents. When people find out that their genetic content is not what they thought it was, it can lead to a crisis of identity, fraught with confusion, disillusionment and the pain of disconnection. For people to recover from this trauma and emerge as healthy, well-adjusted individuals, they must take time to process the implications and make sense of their new origin story. Since 2020, I have been leading twice monthly therapeutic support groups for this population and have built my understanding from direct experience. Prior to my knowledge of my own misidentified parentage, I sought healing through many means and modalities, as I felt the internal conflict before understanding it. DNA journeys are often talked about as if they are puzzles: Where do I fit? Who am I connected to? In my own healing, I’ve been excited by the accelerated insight gained by psychedelic plant medicines. These substances can alter your sensory perceptions, giving you a new perspective. They allow you to see things from a different angle—like being able to flip the puzzle sideways. The new view allows for a reinterpretation of the events. This reassessment can bring greater peace in the knowledge that you are one piece in the much larger picture of the whole puzzle of humanity. Discovery is Often Traumatic NPE is a genealogical research acronym for non-paternity event that’s been expanded to mean not parent expected to be more inclusive in a modern context. The affordability of testing, and the marketing of it as entertainment, has led to an unexpected upending of family life. Discovering that one has no genetic connection to one or both parents is traumatic, it maps to the definition of trauma accepted by the American Psychiatric Association. The event is sudden or unexpected, as many people affected took the test for recreational purposes, not knowing it could reveal unknown relatives. The experience is perceived as overwhelming and/or uncontrollable. It can result in feelings of helplessness, a lack of a sense of safety, and a lack of control. Unknown paternity, for any reason, brings social judgment, distress, and shame. Individual situations may result in additional stigmas, such as those related to perceived illegitimacy, having a single parent, infidelity, rape, incest, adoption, infertility, donor insemination, and/ or being in the child welfare system. This judgment, distress, and stigma happens at all levels. The individual themselves may experience emergent mental health symptoms. Within families, the person making this discovery is typically blamed for causing the family shame and for their ensuing symptoms of anxiety and depression. Like every other trauma, it often generates secondary adversities, life changes, and distressing reminders. Click on image to read more.

By Lisa Coppola In kindergarten, this adoptee ran around distracted, compulsively blew kisses at other kids, and then asked those same kids if they were mad at me—far too many times. In some distorted attempt to sooth my worries, I tied the tassels on my blanket into a million knots and licked my hands raw while other kids took their naps. Other times, I would just shut my brain off, and appear blank, absent, as if I was staring off into a daydream. One week, as the big test for numbers and colors approached, I couldn’t remember what color was what, so I broke a barrel of crayons apart in frustration trying to sort it all out. I didn’t understand at the time, but I was living with a constant fear of rejection and subsequent loss. Even my dreams were infected. I was a groggy kid in the early mornings, after having recurring nightmares in which President Ronald Reagan was giving me the color and number test, and that I kept failing over and over again, disappointing him, and in turn, the rest of the country. This was the age that marked the beginning of being referred to as space cadet, clueless, and flighty. It’s when I became used to disappointed and stern looks from adults, when I grew accustomed to hearing sharp requests to pay attention! from—it seemed like—everyone. I was frustrated that I couldn’t learn like the other kids and grew to be ashamed of myself. In my little brain, I was distracted by a roaring sea of chronic worry: thoughts of my family members dying, my parents getting divorced, my brother getting sent away, my cat getting run over, or of me being abandoned or rejected in some other way—somehow. Instead of learning in class or at home, I was focused on how to make my mother laugh, or how I could help my dad quit smoking or how to fix my brother’s lying problem. By the end of that year, in 1986, I took the first of many tests for learning disabilities. I was given a diagnosis of attention deficit disorder (ADD–inattentive type) and eventually placed in a special program in elementary school where I was given guidance on how to improve my executive functioning skills. I was allowed a quiet place to take tests, a teacher’s aide to read the test questions to me, and tips and tricks for time management and memorization. I was also put on stimulant medications that changed in dose and variety until my senior year of high school. I cannot remember the medication doing much of anything for me, and my grades did not improve. My attachment issues, chronic worry and hypervigilance, ruminating thoughts, and subsequent compulsive behavior was not touched upon by professionals and in turn was left to flourish. Throughout this article I will refer to this combination of symptoms as relational trauma, which is often referred to as CPTSD or complex post-traumatic stress disorder Today, as a seasoned attachment therapist, it’s clear to me that without attachment- and trauma-informed treatment, those executive functioning interventions didn’t stand a chance. Click on image to see more.

By Sara Easterly As an adoptee who writes and speaks in adoption spaces, I’ve encountered many adoptive parents with adult-aged adoptees who are struggling because their children have created necessary boundaries, asked for distance, or cut off ties altogether. Most of these parents entered into adoption without access to adoptee-centered information in a time that lacked much, if any, post-adoption support. They may have made it through what seemed like normal years raising their children into adulthood and have been looking forward to blissful years of parenting “retirement,” only to realize that adoption has presented new hurdles to a rewarding relationship with their adult children. If you’re faced with a similar parenting challenge right now, there may be a way through. Insight into what could be going on underneath the situation points the way. Three things adoptees’ boundaries or distancing might be telling you: 1. Adoptees may be experiencing an adolescence. Adolescence is described by child developmental psychologist Gordon Neufeld, PhD, as the bridge between childhood and adulthood. For adoptees, adolescence is often delayed or we undergo a second adolescence in adulthood designed to complete any unfinished business from the first. There could be a couple of reasons for this: • Important identity tasks of adolescence can be complicated for adoptees. On a physical level and on a day to day basis, we’re without genetic mirrors that would help normalize our physical or behavioral traits and proclivities or understand our changing bodies. If we’re in a closed adoption, it can be hard to imagine ourselves 15, 30, or more years down the road when our first parents’ faces aren’t accessible to offer glimpses of our future selves. These are just some of the things that can impact the identity tasks of adolescence, when we’re meant to confidently grow into ourselves. Click on the image to read more.