Please tell us a little about yourself—what was your life like before your DNA surprise?

I was born in 1965 in a state where I’ve never lived—Iowa. Our home was across the river in Illinois, but our doctor and hospital were in Iowa. I have lived in Los Angeles for over half my life, since I was 27. My wife and I are small business owners in the entertainment industry, and we are almost empty nesters. Our youngest will be starting his senior year of college in the fall.

Can you summarize as much as you’re comfortable sharing of your personal story of when and how your DNA surprise came about?

Rumors have swirled around my family in regard to my older sister for decades. She and I grew up thinking we were full siblings. Every ten years or so, someone would get drunk and angry and bring up that she wasn’t my father’s child. Then a few years ago, she found out it was true. My parents finally came clean. My mom was already pregnant when she met my dad. He was fully aware and agreed to raise her as his own. Two years later I was born.

That sister spent over a year and a half looking for her bio father but to no avail. I asked her if she needed help. I also did a 23andMe test so we we’d have something to compare. But when I received my results, I discovered I had two half-sisters I never even knew existed. And in fact there weren’t just two, there were four. It turns out my mother had a one-night stand with their father in 1965. My new siblings welcomed me into their family with open arms. My bio dad drank himself to death in 2010, which in a way has actually made the bond with my new siblings stronger. In telling me stories about him so I could know who he was, they realized there was a lot of good about their father that they hadn’t been focusing on. And I fit in with them way more than I ever did my in original family.

How are you absorbing or exploring this knowledge?

As my wife says, I am “all NPE all the time.” I dove in deep and read a lot about NPEs. In the beginning, I devoured all the NPE podcasts and in doing so found a way to place my feelings into perspective. Someone once told me there are two types of people in this world, those who want to find out what’s behind that closed door and those who don’t. I especially think this is true in our NPE world. I am definitely one who wants—actually who needs—to know what’s behind that door. So eventually I started my own podcast.

What aspect of your own experience was most difficult for you?

My dad grew up on a farm in NE Iowa. He’s 100% Scandinavian. When I was 16, I saw a family tree in which someone traced our Norwegian side of the family back to a couple who came over on the boat from Norway in 1855. I was hooked. I dove into my Norwegian heritage. (No one else in my family was into it like I was.) I’ve gone to Norway twice, and I found the farm that my ancestors sold to come to America. For Christmas dinners, I make Norwegian meatballs. I have a Norwegian flag on my office wall. On the day I found my new half-sisters, I also found out I’m not Norwegian at all. It’s heartbreaking for me.

What helped you most?

Listening to NPE podcasts, especially NPE Stories, helped me process my feelings a lot during those first few months after my discovery. Hearing others talk about the same feelings I was having was huge. And finding out I wasn’t alone took so much of the shame away. Severance Magazine and certain Facebook groups (not the big one) help in that regard too. I was in an NPE group therapy for three months or so. That helped me quite a bit. Nowadays, I also see an NPE therapist (she is an NPE) and I am seeing a lot of benefits from that.

How and why did you decide to do a podcast?

I’m in the film business, have produced and edited a feature length documentary, and have been working on my own documentary for six years. (It’s about kids who grew up in a cult.) It’s a labor of love for sure. So right after I discovered my dad wasn’t my dad, I knew I wanted to do something creative. Matter of fact, my steps in finding out about the NPE world were:

• I googled “my dad isn’t my dad” and somewhere amongst those results I found the term NPE
• I thought I wanted to do an NPE podcast, so I googled NPE podcast to see if there were any being produced already. That’s how I found Lily’s podcast, NPE Stories.
• And actually, as a side note, I emailed one of Lily’s guests, and she’s the one who told me about the Facebook groups.

There are a number of NPE/DNA surprise podcasts—how do you describe yours?

I’ve been a huge fan of This American Life for decades, long before the word podcast ever existed. I am heavily influenced by that show/podcast. But I try to make every episode like a documentary. I really like to use archival footage when it’s available and appropriate. I add music to enhance the listening experience. I often have more than one person telling a story. Whereas some podcast creators will have an NPE telling their story, I want their mom and their brother to tell their side of the story too. I think there’s room for all of our podcasts because they are different with different styles and content, which is good for the listener to have plenty of variety. I also make sure the audio is high quality. I often have my guests purchase microphones. I can’t handle bad audio.

What’s been the reaction? What are you hearing from listeners?

So far, people have reacted positively. I had contacted an NPE I found on Severance actually and asked him to be a guest. I sent him episode two of my podcast, which is about me and my four new half-sisters. He loved it and said, “Have you ever heard of This American Life? Your podcast reminds me of that.” I told him thanks and that you could not bestow a better compliment on me than that. I felt like a million bucks.

What if anything has most surprised you in the course of interviewing?

How often I bump my table and microphone has surprised me a quite a bit. Also, I think everyone I have interviewed, other than the “Unsolved Murder” episode, has cried, which I think is a wonderful thing. I wish there wasn’t a need for them to cry but I am grateful that they feel safe enough with me to let it out. It’s powerful.

Why do you think it’s important for people to share their stories? Why is it important for the storyteller and why is it important for others who receive the stories?

As I alluded to earlier, listening to others tell their story has helped me process my feelings better than anything else. It’s magic. And I think someone telling their story to someone who has been in their shoes is magic squared. There’s this old song I recall from my teenage years and the lyric was something like…“what would touch you deeper, that tears that fall from eyes that only cry, would it touch you deeper, tears that fall from eyes that know why?”

When we tell our stories it helps us heal. Full stop.

Based on the podcasts you’ve done so far, what would you say are the most universally difficult aspects of the experience?

Finding out your dad isn’t your dad hurts. It just does. And it changes lives, one way or another.

A heard someone in a self-help group say, “If it ain’t one thing, it’s your mother.” As NPEs, I think most of our relationships with our mothers is, at best, complicated. The reasons for that are both obvious and complex. And the severity is, of course, different amongst us, but all in all this seems to be the most difficult aspect. I could go on and on about why I think that but a couple things that stand out are that the majority of NPE people I’ve heard interviewed say their moms have narcissistic traits. I don’t know if that’s because those are the type of women who are more likely to have an NPE or if it’s that children of narcissist mothers are more apt to go on podcasts and tell their stories. Either way, it seems to be a thing.

On episode four of my podcast I interviewed four women who are pillars in our NPE community: Eve Sturges, a therapist and host of the podcast Everything’s Relative with Eve Sturges; Erin Cosentino, co-founder of Hiraeth Hope & Healing and founder of NPE Only Facebook group; Lily Wood, host of NPE Stories; and Gina Daniels, PhD, of Graystone Mental Health and Wellness Group. I asked them all four questions, one of which was, “what is your relationship like with your mother nowadays?” Their answers were all of course different but so amazing and complex and just full of pain and hope all rolled into one. They took the discussion to another level.

But also I have to say that as a society, we have such double standards when it comes to women cheating vs men cheating. I am not condoning anyone cheating but I think that creates a lot of shame in our mothers. And shame is a horrible thing, so I try to have compassion. I have forgiven my mother. Her “mistake” 56 years ago created a pretty amazing person. I’ve forgiven her for her past. However, her reluctance to discuss it today really puts a damper on our relationship.

Are you looking for participants and if so, how should they contact you??

I’m always on the hunt for good stories, especially those with a twist. I’m drawn to stories where I can weave multiple interviews from different people into one narrative. If someone has old footage/recordings of their bio dad that’s pertinent to their story, by all means, get in touch with me. Also, I often look for people who don’t even know what NPE means. My most popular episode by far is about a woman who was switched at birth in 1958. She’s known for over 20 years but did not know what an NPE was until I contacted her. Since then she’s been on the Facebook group Togetherness Heals getting support and giving support to others. That fact alone, that I was able to help her find us, the NPE community, has been one of the amazing outcomes of doing my podcast.

If someone thinks their story would be a good fit, the best way to contact me is on Instagram. I don’t really have an email set up yet…who needs another email. And if you aren’t on the gram…ask your kid to send me a message on your behalf.

By Jennifer CarraherI am the daughter of an adoptee. My mother, adopted from an orphanage when she was nine months old, was raised by parents who were loving, protective, and kind people. They raised my mother, a second adopted son, and their third and only biological child in a pastoral, rural setting where the kids rode horses to their one-room schoolhouse, kicked around in the surrounding woods and pasture, and lived a pretty idyllic existence. When my mother was 18 years old, she became pregnant with me. In a whirlwind of impulsive action, she married my birth certificate father, moved 2,000 miles away from home, and six months later gave birth to me. By the end of the year, she had packed me up, returned to her parents, and essentially disappeared the man I believed to be my father. Within the next twelve months, she remarried, gained two more young children, and, four years later, she and my stepfather had a daughter of their own. Amidst this chaos, I immediately began to identify myself as an outsider in the family: a sensitive and insecure child, an interloper among the three children of a man with whom I lived but hardly knew. In just a few years, I was both born of and made into a fatherless child.

The psychological construct known as object relations theory has shown us the cruciality of early childhood relationships to identity formation; that is, the origins of the self emerge from exchanges between the infant and others. Originally theorized by Austrian psychoanalyst Melanie Klein, the essential idea is that the infant’s bond to the parents shapes future relationships. What this means is that the mother as a physical object is invested with emotional energy from the child, and the psycho-emotional impression of the mother—the internal object—comes to represent what the infant holds in her absence. If the object formation is disrupted early in life—as, I would argue, it is with virtually all adoptees and MPEs/ NPEs*—the failure to form these early relationships leads to problems later in the child’s life. Object relations theory also points out that situations in adult life are shaped by and mirror familial experiences during infancy.

My mother’s own adoption unquestionably caused for her a failure of identity formation leading to problems in later relationships. No doubt and with good reason, the sense of attachment and security that adoptees can, and likely do, feel carries over into adult relationships in all kinds of ways. The question is how this manifests itself. Adoption is not, by any means, the only way that this attachment disruption occurs. In fact, biological children may suffer the same disruption for a variety of reasons. The lack of attachment demonstrated by my mother in her adult relationships is not necessarily a reflection of her relationship with her adoptive parents, and not all adoptees develop in this same way. In our case, whatever the disruption my mother experienced as a child, whether the result of her late-infant adoption or some other barrier to her attachment, it severely affected her identity formation. This affected identity formation is where the intergenerational disruption of object formation can be seen most clearly.

I found out about my NPE status one year ago today. While reeling from the news for many months, I had not a single thought about my mother as a child—let alone as a daughter. I was too busy contemplating the questions, “Who is my father? Where has he been? Where can he be?” Over time, I began to ask myself questions about my mother’s own history, her fractured parental bonding as an adoptee, and how this object formation may have influenced her as a new mother in the NPE scenario. How does the attachment become so fragmented that the next generation could be subjected to suffering in this way?

The foundation of the relational object is one in which, as the infant grows, she naturally wants to consolidate the work of managing her most basic needs, which are described by Klein as drives; she does this by forming an attachment to an adequate caregiver who can contain these drives. For example, how the caregiver responds to the baby’s need to eat, comforts her if she cries, and meets her most fundamental needs. If these drives are met, then a good object relationship is developed. The caregiver, usually the parent, is the “good object.” To soothe herself, the infant eventually must be able to internalize that good object.

Conversely, if the caregiver cannot accommodate the infant’s drives, then the infant will experience the drives as being out of control and instead of developing a positive attachment to the mother or caregiver, the infant may develop a negative attachment. If the caregiver herself has inadequate object relations, if her drives have not been met and she is identified with a bad object (her absent parent), then it’s possible that in order to cope, the mother will project that identification onto the baby. This defense mechanism arises so that the mother may defend herself against unbearable feelings; it also works to defend the internal object against rage, which can destroy the internal object. The mother copes with the unbearable feelings and rage by externalizing those feelings. This is called projective identification. Because of this projection, the mother may begin to see the baby’s experience as the embodiment of her own bad object and perceived reality. For example, a mother may witness the baby crying uncontrollably and in that crying she will see the manifestation of the experience from which she has tried to distance herself. Because of this, her identification with a bad object is affirmed through her projection onto that child’s crying, and the child is left carrying that projected reality.

But how does this play out in the NPE experience? In my case, the object formation disruption seems to be about the attachment with the father. If the NPE’s mother is enacting her own loss of the father object by projecting it onto the baby, the NPE child may grow to identify herself with this negative experience. This means that the child suffers the mother’s perceived losses (fatherlessness in this case) because the mother’s own drives are disorganized. Instead of nurturing and helping the child to consolidate her needs, the mother continually and repeatedly projects chaos onto the child.

Because I was born to my young mother, perhaps in the midst of this object disruption, no doubt in part due to her experience as an adoptee, she exercised her projective identification on me. This allowed for an erasure of my father, or the man I understood to be my father—the exact experience she imagined for herself. She did this not only by removing me from my birth certificate father almost immediately after my birth, but also as I grew and developed, I was told in both explicit and subconscious ways that my step-father/father figure, with whom I had lived since the age of three, could not belong to me either. When I learned in my adult life that my biological father was someone else entirely, the projection further solidified.

It is not hard to envision that—because my mother was in an orphanage, was adopted, and expressed throughout her life massive levels of alienation—she continually saw herself as severed from her family, regardless of any external reality. Every detail of her experience as an adoptee could have triggered this alienation; for example, the birth of a biological son to her adoptive parents when she was 10 years old manifested as a catastrophic event for her. So many experiences of the adopted child can contribute to this perception of severance from the family.

All of these experiences, in turn, influenced how she saw me as a child. My mother was experiencing the absent father. By enacting a dramatized reality, she was able to facilitate her projective identification as a fatherless child onto me. She played this out by running from her own (adoptive) father, disappearing my biological father, and sticking my paternity on a non-father/stranger she almost immediately abandoned. In both subtle and overt ways, I was continually reminded that my step-father was not a legitimate parent either; he could never belong to me because I didn’t “come from” him. Ultimately, though, it was all a futile effort because the enactment and projection did nothing to contain her own distress. As an example of how this played out, when I discovered my biological paternity and asked her who she thought was suffering most in this situation, she simply replied, “Your father.” Like many other NPE mothers, there’s no ability for her to imagine the suffering of the child because she is so resigned to her own suffering.

Another developmental psychological theorist and psychoanalyst, Donald Winnicott, theorized that the role of the father is to temper the ambivalence between the mother and the child. Ambivalence arises when the needs of the parent and the needs of the child are in conflict. Maternal ambivalence, specifically as theorized by Freud, is a universal maternal experience in which the feelings of love and hate for the child can exist side by side. When the father is absent, there is what Freud calls an ever-present “third” in the mother’s unconscious mind. For the NPE, the role of the father to modulate the mother-child relationship does not exist. This may be why so many of us have long-standing conflict with our mothers and spend years saying things like, of all of the children, I was always the outsider, or I never understood why I didn’t fit in, or asking why did she dislike me, what did I do wrong, and, eventually, why could I not have known my father? The answer to all of these questions lies quite simply in the projective identification of the mother onto her child: “If I can’t have a father, neither can you.”

While my mother may have subconsciously or otherwise attempted to make me into a fatherless child, I do not see myself that way. In fact, I don’t actually believe that my mother perceives me as without a father. She sees it only in herself, and she projects her own suffering as an internalized, fatherless child onto me. I have come to understand over the protracted and immensely heavy year since my misattributed parent discovery, that even as NPEs, even through all of our intuitions and suspicions, detachments and alienations growing up, we do have fathers. We should never diminish the significance of this fact because if we continue the pattern of projection of the fatherless child in our own lives, the cycle can never be broken. The gift of the NPE discovery is the acknowledgement of what has been lost to us, the chance to discover ourselves anew in order to protect our own children by offering them our solid and unwavering belief in their fathers. The only way to do this, I am afraid, is to begin to forgive our mothers.

*MPE/NPE: misattributed parentage experience/not parent expected or nonpaternity eventJennifer Carraher lives with her family in Sebastopol, California, where she’s an advanced practice public health nurse in the areas of women’s health and forensics. She’s also a medical sociologist who has worked extensively over the past 20 years in assisted reproductive technologies, kinship, and the social studies of science. Her current research is dedicated to promoting harm reduction as medical practice.   

Since her misattributed parent discovery in December 2020, she has established The Mendel Project, which will provide DNA testing and genetic support at no cost to patients in the hospital setting. She also continues to collect narratives from other adoptees, NPEs, and those affected by genetic surprises for the podcast Unfinished Truths. Find her at themendelgeneticproject@gmail.com & unfinishedtruths@gmail.com.

By Kara Rubinstein DeyerinThe advent of over-the-counter DNA testing has unlocked the closet where many family secrets were kept. While many learn one (or both) of the parents who raised them are not their genetic parent from a DNA test, sometimes people find out in other ways. A mother with a 104-degree temperature might let it slip that she had a son as a teenager. A family friend may tell someone mourning his dad, possibly at his funeral, that the suffered from infertility and had used a sperm donor. And sometimes having a child of their own prompts individuals to search for their biological family because they grew up with a vague idea of who their fathers were. Regardless of how one learns about misattributed parentage, the process of coping with such an experience is daunting and life-changing.

Right to Know is a non-profit founded on the principle that it’s a fundamental human right to know one’s genetic identity. We believe in inclusivity and embrace anyone who facing misattributed parentage. To that end we use the term misattributed parentage experience (MPE) to describe the phenomenon of coping with the fact that you did not grow up knowing your genetic parent. It’s a term used by mental health professionals for decades. We believe the word experience best describes the long-term effects we all have, as opposed to “event,” which is a one-time occurrence. The ramifications of an MPE last a lifetime to some degree.

An MPE belongs to one of three primary communities:

• Non-paternity event (NPE): those conceived from an extramarital affair, tryst, rape or assault, or other circumstance
• Assisted conception: those conceived from donor conception (DC), sperm donation, egg donation, embryo donation, or surrogacy; and
• Adoption: those whose adoption was hidden, orphans, individuals who’ve been in foster care or are who are late discovery adoptees (LDA), etc.

United, our communities have a stronger voice to effect change in society—to promote laws to protect our rights and encourage a better understanding of our experiences.

Right to Know focuses on three pillars to support people with an MPE: education, mental health, and legislation. Adoptees are trailblazers in many of these topics, but there’s still much work to be done. Many people with an MPE feel powerless, and through our work, we hope to empower them. Advocacy and helping others often facilitates healing.

People with an MPE often are not represented in lawmaking in the U.S. In fact, some of us clearly have no rights in the eyes of the law. Right to Know advocates for changes in laws to ensure people with MPEs are represented and our fundamental right to know our genetic identity is established legally. Our legal advocacy starts with your participation at a grassroots level. We are working to pass broad-based fertility fraud legislation with criminal penalties for all types of fertility fraud along with a civil cause of action allowing for both parents and offspring to bring a lawsuit. We also encourage an additional criminal penalty and a loss of licensure for doctors who use their own sperm to inseminate patients. We’ve teamed with legislators in Iowa, Michigan, New York, Oregon, and Washington to pass such legislation, with Nevada and Georgia soon to follow. We also partner with adoptee rights groups to see how we can help enact laws to ensure access to original birth certificates.

As part of RTK’s mental health initiative, we hold a monthly Community & Connection event on the first Sunday of the month at noon pacific time with a licensed therapist to discussed issues pertinent to MPEs. Past topics have included “A Look at Loss and Grief in MPEs,” “The Importance of Finding your Tribe and Feeling Supported,” and “Reaching Out to Bio-Family and Coping with the Response.” The next Community & Connection is “Identity and MPEs,” with Jodi Klugman-Rabb on Sunday, July 11. To register, send an email to RSVP@RightToKnow.us.

RTK also operates a hotline number, 323-TALK-MPE, to help people find resources to process their MPEs and pair them with someone who’s had a similar experience. To facilitate access to licensed professionals who have experience working with people with an MPE, we provide a directory so you can find a therapist to help you. We also work closely with DNAngels to help people find their genetic family.

Each month, usually on the third Sunday at noon Pacific time, RTK sponsors a webinar with world-class speakers on a topic related to MPEs. Past topics have included “Interacting with Narcissistic Moms” and “Family Members’ or Societal Perceptions of Ancestral DNA, Race, & Identity.” Find Information about upcoming webinars on the website.

RTK strives to educate the public on the complex intersection of genetic information, identity, and family dynamics through various media projects. In the fall it is launching an MPE Education website that will offer a variety of classes related to misattributed parentage.

Due to the newness of DNA testing and the surprising consequence of discovering misattributed parentage this way, there’s very little data available about MPEs, the rate of occurrence, demographics, and what we need to heal. Right to Know is excited to partner with Anita Foeman, PhD, and Bessie Lawton, PhD, from the DNA Discussion Project to gather information on MPEs through an online Institutional Review Board (IRB)-approved survey that aims to understand how MPEs affect individuals,  their family relationships (both preexisting and new), and their health and determine whether sufficient recourses and access to resources exist to cope with such a discovery. Your voice matters. Please participate in this groundbreaking research to ensure people with MPEs receive the help they need in the future. If you’d like to help or need more information about Right to Know’s initiatives, send an email to info@RightToKnow.us or find us online. Find us as well on Twitter and Instagram @righttoknowus.Deyerin is a non-practicing attorney and co-founder of Right to Know. She discovered three years ago that the man named on her birth certificate was not her biological father. With the click of a mouse, she went from being half black to half Jewish. She’s a mom, wife, writer, cook, knitter, and connoisseur of all things human. Follow her blog about her own journey, Unexpectedly Jewish. BEFORE YOU GO…

Look on our home page for more articles and essays about NPEs, adoptees, and genetic genealogy.

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Severance speaks with Gina Daniel, DSW, LCSW, whose personal experience—her discovery that she’s an NPE (not-parent-expected)—has redirected her professional goals, putting the spotlight on the challenges and needs of individuals with misattributed parentage experiences. She recently earned her doctorate, her dissertation a study of the NPE experience, and she’s working to help create awareness among mental health professionals and improve their knowledge about the specific needs of people who’ve discovered misattributed parentage.Did your upbringing influence your desire to be a social worker and if so, in what way?

I expected to become an elementary teacher growing up and had no idea what social work was until I was in my 20s. However, once I discovered social work, I knew that was what I needed to do. My upbringing was full of moments when I was a little social worker (counseling, advocating, and educating) but I did not know it until later. I was raised by a single father who worked hard to be sure we could pay the rent. All the moms in the neighborhood helped to raise me.

You were already a social worker and well into your doctoral studies when you decided to change the topic of your dissertation. Can you explain why you chose to align your scholarly interests with your NPE experience?

I was. That was quite the detour. I trust my gut with most everything I do. I could not find a way to study school social work (my profession) in a way that felt interesting to me. Once the NPE event happened, I brought it to my committee and they helped me determine that this was the path that fit better for me. Knowing there was little to no scholarly research at that time was a huge attraction to me as well. I agreed and was willing to do the extra work.

How, specifically, did you design your thesis—what were you looking to discover and how did you propose to accomplish that?

I knew I would do interviews for qualitative research. The idea of secrets kept was fascinating. Also, the impact that this discovery had on me and how off balance I felt at middle age got me interested in the impact on identity. The obvious path was discussing the impact on family of origin relationships—living or deceased and on the new family relationships—living or deceased.

You interviewed 51 people. Can you describe those interviews—how you selected subjects and what the interviews involved?

I was a part of one of the private NPE Facebook groups that agreed to work with me then backed out. Another Facebook group offered assistance then stalled. Finally, a woman who was starting another NPE Facebook group offered to assist. I was a member but did not participate for a long time. The process was an advertisement of the study and a link for those interested. The criteria for interviews included having discovered paternity through a direct-to-consumer DNA Ancestry test, living in North America, being over 18.

The first round of interviews was in the fall of 2019, the second round of interviews was in the fall of 2020. Unfortunately, the first round interviews were not used in the final study. It’s a complicated story but every one of those interviews mattered significantly to me and, interestingly, my findings were the same. The interviews were incredible. People were so willing to share their personal stories, so interested in helping other NPEs, and were so vulnerable and lovely. I feel incredibly lucky to have shared some time with all of these amazing individuals.

Can you summarize your overall findings?

To summarize my research, there appears to be a significant psychological blow to participants discovering paternity/family secrets through a direct-to consumer (DTC) DNA ancestry test. There’s a struggle to incorporate the new information. Half of the participants in my research sought mental health counseling in order to cope. Personal identity is changed as a result (incorporating new family, concerns with previous family, health issues, and ethnicity changes); resemblance to family is a significant component within this experience; participants prefer the truth over not having the truth (despite the emotional difficulty); and social supports (e.g. Facebook groups) are helpful and after a certain point appear to become a ‘pay it forward’ place. In my research I called this ‘healing through helping.’

You’d already had an NPE experience, and although it was relatively new, you’d had some time to process your emotions. Was there anything revealed in the interviews that surprised you?

I had time to process and discussed with a therapist as well. The similarities in the emotions that most people shared mirrored my experience. I was surprised at the sense that some of this felt universal—deception, lies, shock/surprise, understanding, hurt—and all mostly at middle age.

What, if anything, would you describe as universal in the experience of your interviewees?

Similar emotions that erupt suddenly when the discovery is learned and then occasional eruptions of the same emotions, maybe less intensely, over time. Also, the idea that almost everyone feels alone at the beginning of this process—as if they are the only ones going through this.

If you had to choose the top three most difficult challenges or most difficult emotional issues experienced by NPEs what would they be?

Shock/surprise, anger, and feeling alone. Also the rejections from new family that happen for many.

Can you give an overview of the kinds of issues NPEs have with respect to identity and what are some strategies for dealing with them?

To be completely honest, I don’t feel I went as deeply as I should have for the identity questions. When I asked questions about if identity changed, the vast majority said yes. When I pressed the “yes” responses further with “how,” I was often met with pause in thought. However, ethnicity and health information were the most often described areas where identity shifts occurred. Seeking information about new family was necessary in order to understand more about self. I included resemblance into this section as this topic came up so often in interviews as related to not looking like family of origin, then looking like new family, children looking like new grandfathers, etc.

As far as strategies, I don’t think I have any to offer based on what was provided through the research outside of have a professional genetic counselor or mental health professional to talk with while processing these complex shifts.

This is a complex, multi-part question. I’ve noticed that for many NPEs, this experience seems to become central, becoming almost the centerpiece of their identity and front and center in their lives in an ongoing way. Is there a danger in that—in lives being overtaken in a sense by this experience?

Like with many things, it depends on how much it impacts your functioning in your typical life. I’m not sure how it can not become a central feature of a life when so much of what you’ve known about yourself is upended while doing a recreational activity. For some, how do you reconcile trust again after this occurs?

What can individuals do to help integrate the experience so it’s not overwhelming and doesn’t come ultimately to define them?

So, it can be overwhelming and create a new definition of themselves. However, the idea is that it is now an expanded definition. You are what you were and what you now know. It’s realizing that piece, I think, that’s helpful as people process the losses and grievances along the way with this experience.

Is there an end goal of assimilating this experience, or will it always be front and center? 

In my opinion, assimilating is the goal. What we cannot control, we cannot control. People may not choose to have us in their lives, and we have no option but to accept that. People may be deceased, and we get no answers to the questions we have about our existence. We again have to find a way to accept that. These are not easy tasks, but to remain in a place of anger and sadness only steals your life from you.

Many NPEs belong to support groups on Facebook and perhaps elsewhere. Can you comment on the benefits and also the limitations?

There are significant benefits belonging to a healthy group of people sharing similar experiences with something brilliant to offer us in the way of hope, support, or suggestion when needed. This is what it is to be a social human finding your ‘tribe.’ However, the limitations are when professional help is needed and people use Facebook—or when people on Facebook want to be professional mental health professionals doling out advice and are not qualified.

You wish to help educate mental health professionals about how to better treat NPEs. What are the biggest needs in that education?

Awareness of this experience to start with.

Therapists are trained to work with clients with issues related to grief, loss, shame. What are they lacking that prevents them from being able to better help NPEs?

We all hope the therapists we work with understand how to work with grief, loss, and shame, but judging from my research, many NPEs seeking mental health help were met with flippant comments minimizing their experiences. That tells me that perhaps they are not viewing this experience from the lens of grief, loss, and shame. The impact of secrets on families is an area to understand more, as well as all the ways an individual can become an NPE. This isn’t as simple as ‘mom had an affair’ in a lot of situations. I also think we are still learning the best ways to help NPEs therapeutically, so I am not in any way indicating this answer as a full and complete response to your question.

Until therapists are better trained or until there’s truly a network of therapists specializing in these issues, what advice do you have for individuals who are seeking mental health care?

Just meet with a professional you’re comfortable talking to, who is listening and seeking to understand and help. If the first one doesn’t fit, move on until you find one that clicks for you.

What should people look for in a therapist and how might they be able to tell when a therapist will not be right for them?

Someone who is not minimizing your experience. It’s completely ok to interview a therapist prior to meeting them. Ask them if they have heard of NPEs, ask if they have worked with someone who has been adopted, ask about their experience with family therapy and family secrets in therapy. If you don’t like them on the phone, move on. I suggest if you’re on the fence with a therapist (after meeting once), try them three times. If after three times it’s not helping anything, move on.

I understand you’re interested in doing research on siblings who are discovered by NPEs. I’m wondering if you have a sense yet of what reasons might keep those siblings from being accepting of NPEs?

So this is personal. I did not indicate my interest in this in my research study and am not 100% I am going to do this, but I think about it a lot. Siblings, at this age, are typically peers and have information that can help us better understand the new parent and health information. We can potentially grow old with them and have that extra layer of familial connection. However, they’re not always willing to accept the new sibling no matter what the situation was, and this can be very difficult for an NPE to cope with. Inheritances, sibling positions within the family, and loyalties to other family appear to be reasons to keep away. Like I said, this is a personal one for me so I will tread lightly as I move forward. It may also be a challenge to find siblings willing to open up unless I were to go through an NPE, so I imagine the information would be skewed toward acceptance. Still, it could be interesting to get their perspective. Maybe I am totally off base and am taking my rejection of two younger siblings too hard!

 Can you tell me about the support guide you’re working on and your hopes for it?

Well, it’s currently evolving into a blog I believe. Perhaps the blog will develop into the support guide in paper form one day. Another NPE and I are working on it currently. Our hope is that it is a helpful tool for everyone—NPEs new and existing, family members, mental health professionals. You’ll hopefully be hearing about it soon. We hope to get it really moving this summer.

 What are the most important aspects of this experience that researchers need to explore?

Well, I just completed someone’s study questionnaire from West Chester University in Pennsylvania that looks like quantitative research, so that makes me excited thinking we can get some of that info out there. Within my study, I suggest future research considerations to include qualitative research with biological mothers, longitudinal studies with NPEs, and consideration of if/how the new medical information changes behavior once misattributed paternity is uncovered.

What haven’t I asked you that you think people should know either about the NPE experience or about the work you’ve done related to it?

This experience has a spectrum of response. NPEs are many in our world, always have been, and will continue to occur. Learning about your NPE status through a direct-to-consumer DNA ancestry test is perhaps an unintended consequence to a recreational test for a most popular hobby. This is also a first world issue accessed primarily by Caucasian individuals who can afford to test for fun. The impact on identity is significant.Gina Daniel is a licensed clinical social worker. She has worked in public education as a school social worker for more than twenty years and also works in her private practice in central Pennsylvania primarily focused on individual and family work. Daniel discovered her NPE status in June 2018 and subsequently completed her doctoral dissertation with a focus on unexpected paternity discoveries through direct-to-consumer DNA ancestry testing.BEFORE YOU GO…

Look on our home page for more articles and essays about NPEs, adoptees, and genetic genealogy.

• Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts.
• Let us know what you want to see in Severance. Send a message to bkjax@icloud.com.
• Tell us your stories. See guidelines. 
• If you’re an NPE, adoptee, or donor conceived person; a sibling of someone in one of these groups; or a helping professional (for example, a therapist or genetic genealogist) you’re welcome to join our private Facebook group.
• Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Instagram @Severancemag.

By Jen CarraherThere are moments in our lives when the coincidences of being a human in an often-discordant world can feel overwhelming. In the early 2000s, as a young graduate student, I examined the (then-new) assisted reproductive technologies and ideas of relatedness: how material (flesh and blood) and information (genes) are used to help define different anthropological kin structures. In short, I somewhat blindly argued that the primacy of the biological part of relatedness could be surmounted through “different” ways of relating to define family. In hindsight, it was complacent to exclude the biological from my anthropological study of family. Little did I know that almost 15 years later my life would collide with these notions, head-on.

In late December 2020, I discovered through an at-home DNA test (gifted to me by one of my kin, nonetheless!) that I share no biological or genetic link with the man who, for 47 years, I believed to be my father. What’s more, the man with whom I do share half of my genetic material—and a remarkable physical likeness—has, for my entire life, been living with his family just miles away from my hometown and from the group of people I have always called my kin.

There’s an idea in anthropology that kinship is a mutuality of being: kin are intrinsic to one another’s identity and existence. The relational nature of kinship, traditionalists argue, lies in the fact that all those who are “related” are connected through the lineage of the mother and the father and, therefore, share traits and qualities that can be traced through these parental origins: biological, cultural, communal, genetic. Such ideas of relatedness, which were once seen as fundamental, came under scrutiny in the 2000s as deterministic. Cultural critics argued kinship as outmoded altogether, particularly in light of assisted reproductive technologies such as invitro fertilization, intrauterine insemination, gamete donation, and surrogacy. Today, however, the centrality of kinship to relatedness has been brought back to life, likely influenced by DNA testing. I’ve wondered lately whether this is because understanding ways of relating has come full-circle and we now recognize that while kinship and relatedness can be all-encompassing, the “intrinsic” nature of biology is still fundamental to a person’s identity? As an adult who inadvertently uncovered her misattributed parentage, I would argue that this is absolutely the case.

It is the nature of our progressive and progressing society to believe that we can surmount such simple notions as biological relatedness. But the fact that social, cultural, and biological ties are intricately woven together into the fabric of our selves is crucial to understanding our essence as human beings. We are social animals, but we are closely tied in both familial and biological ways to those with whom we share our DNA. That’s not to say that other forms of relating are not of equal significance; but when I speak with other NPEs about our fundamental nature, I’m struck by the way in which every single person describes the gap between the familial/cultural/social identity and the biological/genetic self. It is remarkably common, in fact an almost universal sentiment, for NPEs to express a feeling of growing up with a lack of connectedness, a feeling of otherness, a clandestine identity as an outsider looking in … even in the happiest of families.

There’s a misconception that discovering the parent by whom one was raised is not one’s biological parent is simple. The argument goes something like: “The parent who raised you did so because he loved you like his own child, regardless of his relatedness to you.” I don’t know how many times since my DNA discovery I have been faced with the “What’s the big deal?” response. Such fallacies, that one’s relationship to the person who raised you somehow supersedes the absence of the person who made you is a painful mistake I, too, made so many years ago. Because the nature of having a misattributed parent means, by default, the relatedness to the person responsible for our being has been erased, we forever live with the knowledge that the person responsible for our creation may not even be aware of our existence. The psychological effects of that erasure permeate all aspects of a life, even before we understand why.

Obviously, a large part of this feeling of erasure cannot be separated from the fact that the relatedness (or lack thereof) has been kept secret. It’s hard to tease out whether the intrinsic biology of kinship or the underlying secrecy is the culprit for the loss-of-self articulated by so many NPEs. Who we imagine ourselves to be and who were are come into stark contrast when our true biological and genetic roots are revealed and we are brought right back to the traditional idea of kinship: kin are intrinsic to each other’s identity and existence.

The fundamental conundrum of who we are should never be denied by “objective” academic observers or obscured by insensitive assumptions like those I made years ago. We actively seek kinship narratives to define who we are. When the biological understanding and the social construct of the family come in direct opposition to one another, we are forever changed. All of the stories we have told ourselves about who we are, how we were made, where we come from, and who we hope to be are altered forever. There’s a new kinship forged through a knowing that was lost to us long ago. There are stories we have told ourselves that make us who we are, and we have to find new ways of relating, new stories to tell ourselves, as Joan Didion famously wrote, in order to live.

*NPE = not parent expected, or non-paternal eventJen Carraher lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she is an advanced practice nurse in a busy community hospital. She is also a medical sociologist who has worked extensively over the past 20 years in women’s health, assisted reproductive technologies, and the social studies of science. With her sisters and brother, Carraher grew up in northwestern Montana; she uncovered her misattributed parentage in December while helping her mother, who is adopted, find her own biological father. After her DNA discovery, Jen began a podcast entitled Unfinished Truths and hopes to use the stories she is collecting to reimagine kinship through the NPE experience. Connect with her at unfinishedtruths@gmail.com and read her previous work on kinship through ResearchGate.BEFORE YOU GO…

Look on our home page for more articles about NPEs, adoptees, and genetic genealogy.

• Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts.
• Let us know what you want to see in Severance. Send a message to bkjax@icloud.com.
• Tell us your stories. See guidelines. 
• If you’re an NPE, adoptee, or donor conceived person; a sibling of someone in one of these groups; or a helping professional (for example, a therapist or genetic genealogist) you’re welcome to join our private Facebook group.
• Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Instagram @Severancemag.

By Brad EwellIn Facebook groups for people with not parent expected (NPEs) or misattributed parentage experiences (MPEs), there’s a consistent large difference in the ratio of men to women. If you were a man looking to meet women, this would be a place to be. There are typically a handful of men and thousands of women. Where are all the guys? Percentage-wise there couldn’t be that many more women than men having DNA surprises. So what’s going on here?

Looking at the bigger picture, this is a fairly common phenomenon among individuals with depression, anxiety, stress, and other mental health concerns. Several studies indicate that men are typically much less likely than women to seek professional help when facing psychological distress. The study authors suggest a number of factors for the disparity, such as the fear many men have of being judged as emotionally vulnerable or weak. Researchers also point to the fact that because men are trained from an early age to compete with other men, it makes them less likely to trust each other and reveal what they may perceive as weakness.

I posed the question to several individuals who not only are behavioral health practitioners but who also have personal experience with misattributed parentage. Their thoughts generally mirror the finding of the studies, but they offered additional insights.

According to Jodi Klugman-Rabb,* a licensed marriage and family therapist and licensed professional counselor, “Sometimes it’s as simple as the gender role conditioning specific to cultural norms that men are not manly if emotional. So expressing emotions is then seen as weak, making group process emasculating. On a more micro level, emotional process can have a lot to do with the family of origin dynamics and whether kids were allowed or encouraged to explore emotions safely, how cultural gender norms influenced that, and, to take it back out on a macro level, how these expectations were transmitted intergenerationally.”

Eve Sturges,* also a licensed marriage and family therapist, agrees. “Men,” she adds, “generally are taught to look for solutions; without a direct path, they often don’t understand the benefit.” Men view support groups as a place to talk about things, but they fail to see the benefit of the emotional burden that’s released when feelings are verbally expressed.

Men also fear that a vulnerable disclosure might disrupt the peace in their relationships, whether with their mates or family members or at work, according to Cotey Bowman,* a licensed professional counselor associate.

In order to make support groups more appealing to men, these professionals say, the stigma that prevents men from seeking support and expressing emotions must be addressed at a cultural level. Until this cultural change, the best option is to allow and encourage men to see other men model vulnerability and acceptance of emotions.

After reading the studies and talking to professionals, I can see myself and the culture I was raised in fairly accurately reflected in their comments. At 50 years old, I’ve been a police officer for half of my life. Police and other first respondors are notoriously emotionally restricted at work because the job demands it, explains Jodi Klugman-Rabb. It’s very difficult, she adds, “to ask first responders to compartmentalize at work but share at home. Most cannot walk both lines because our brains are not wired for that level of compartmentalization.” It’s an apt assessment of the people I work with daily.

I was raised in an environment where the expression of emotions was an indicator of weakness. As a result, I’ve grown into a person who is self-reliant to a fault. I try to avoid having people to do things for me because I don’t want to bother them or draw attention to myself. My dad taught me the importance of being self-sufficient and tough. When you get hurt, he said, you just “rub some dirt on it” and move on.

I vividly remember several instances in my childhood when my father imparted these lessons. Once, while building a fence, he accidentally nailed the palm of his hand to a picket fence with a nail gun. My job was to go to the other side of the fence, pull his hand off the nail, and get some duct tape so he could tape his hand up and finished the fence. Another time, he lost his balance while using a chain saw on a ladder and sawed through part of his thigh. Again, I was assigned to get the duct tape so he could tape himself back up and finish the job. (I think he got some stitches, but only after we finished the job). Finally, and most memorable, was the day he broke his leg. We were riding horses in a pasture when another horse came up alongside him. The horse tried to kick my dad’s horse, but instead kicked my dad in the shin. My dad grimaced. “We need to go back,” he said. “I think my leg is broke.” We rode back a couple of miles without him making a sound; he just wore that same grimace on his face. Once we got to the stalls, we tied up the horses, got in the truck, and started to the hospital. I was in middle school and had driven a few times around where we kept our horses but never out on the street. When we got to the road, my dad stopped and said, “If I feel like I’m going to pass out, I’ll just pull over to the side of the road and switch seats so you can drive me to the hospital.” He managed the 10-mile drive to the hospital, where he allowed me to grab a wheelchair to get him into the emergency room. Inside, I watched blood pour out when the nurses pulled his boot off. It turned out he had a compound fracture.

Clearly, reaching out to others for help is not something I was taught to do.

You may be wondering, then, how have I come to be writing an article about being emotionally vulnerable in groups? Given the way I was raised and the culture I grew up and work in, this is the last place in the world I’d want or expect to find myself. I don’t consider myself particularly weak or vulnerable. My job requires the opposite of me; I have to show courage and be strong for others. I had been in therapy once several years ago for help with some anxiety and stress issues, but my therapist had moved away and I felt better, so I didn’t take the time to find another one. I addressed it more as a strategy session than as therapy. I believe this is because, as Eve Sturges explains, I was looking for that step-by-step strategy to fix my problem and I didn’t view talking about my feelings as a useful part of the steps. I also told only a handful of people in my life that I had gone to therapy. This was intentional—a decision based on the fear of being emotionally vulnerable. I simply didn’t want to be viewed as weak and I believed that would happen if people knew I was struggling with my emotions.

So what went so wrong (or right) to bring me to the point that I’m sharing personal struggles and fears out in the world for other people to see? The answer is nothing. I finally realized no matter how much I wanted to believe I could deal with everything on my own, that’s not realistic. When I discovered that I’d been adopted, I was absolutely lost and felt totally alone. My wife was supportive, but there was no one who could really relate to the depth of loss that comes with such a discovery. My wife suggested I look on Facebook and see if there were groups formed by people who had experienced something similar. It sounded like a good idea, but I thought there would only be a handful of people at best who’ve gone through this. Instead, I found a community of thousands who have all experienced the same thing. So I lurked, devouring everyone else’s stories but not sharing my own. Over time, I observed more people sharing and receiving helpful and empathetic responses, which made me start feeling safe. And that feeling of safety finally led to me being comfortable enough to participate in the groups. I told my story to strangers who shared my experience and in return they gave me good advice and empathized. And I’ve taken it farther. Now I write about my experiences to a wider audience beyond the safety of private Facebook groups. In doing so, I’ve learned that sharing my stories has been deeply cathartic and healing. Every story I tell feels like a weight lifted off my shoulders.

As I talked to other men who have joined and participate in groups, I noticed their stories were similar to mine. They grew up learning to be self-sufficient and kept their emotions under wraps. I also noticed a common theme—a duty to keep family secrets private. I know there are many other men just like me trying to navigate their way through this NPE/MPE journey, many of them trying to go it alone. While there are likely a handful of people who can make this journey alone, I believe everyone can benefit from finding a community and experiencing its benefits.

My hope is that sharing this article and my other stories will let men know there’s a direct benefit from participating in Facebook and other support groups and sharing their stories. Cotey Bowman explains that when he works in group settings with men and is vulnerable himself, this modeled behavior is then reflected back as men in the group learn it’s safe to display emotions and vulnerability as sessions continue.Brad Ewell lives in Texas with his wife and three children. In 2019, he became a late discovery adoptee after taking a home DNA test. He feels he’s still very much in the middle of this journey and enjoys writing to help organize his thoughts and better understand his own story. Brad volunteers with Right to Know, a non-profit group dedicated to supporting people’s right to know their genetic identity. He’s told his story on two podcasts, NPE Stories and Sex, Lies, and the Truth. You can connect with him on Instagram @Brad1407, on Facebook, or email him at mpebrad@gmail.com.

Read more of his articles and essays: An Unexpected Abandonment, Dear Mom and Dad, and Watching and Waiting. *Eve Sturges is the host of a podcast, Everything’s Relative with Eve Sturges. Jodi Klugman-Rabb is the developer of Parental Identity Discovery and the co-host of the podcast Sex, Lies & the Truth. Cotey Bowman is the creator of the MPE Counseling Collective.BEFORE YOU GO…

Look on our home page for more articles about NPEs, adoptees, and genetic genealogy.

• Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts.
• Let us know what you want to see in Severance. Send a message to bkjax@icloud.com.
• Tell us your stories. See guidelines. 
• If you’re an NPE, adoptee, or donor conceived person; a sibling of someone in one of these groups; or a helping professional (for example, a therapist or genetic genealogist) you’re welcome to join our private Facebook group.
• Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Instagram @Severancemag.

Recognizing the challenges facing individuals who experience DNA surprises, Adoption Network Cleveland (ANC) has launched the DNA Discoveries Peer Support Group, a virtual peer support program focused on the emotional impacts of the journey. It kicks off with a special panel on February 2 facilitated by ANC’s search specialist, Traci Onders, that will feature an individual who’s discovered misattributed parentage, a donor-conceived person, and adoptees who have found birth family. Onders spoke with us about the program and the personal journey that led her to working with ANC.

How did you come to Adoption Network Cleveland and how did you become interested in this work?

I started as program coordinator for adult adoptees and birthparents in 2016. I’d begun volunteering at Adoption Network Cleveland (ANC) prior to that because its mission was personally important to me. Adoption Network Cleveland advocated for adoptee access to records in Ohio for more than 25 years, and finally in 2013 Ohio passed legislation that opened up original birth certificates to adult adoptees. It’s hard to imagine this would have happened without the steadfast determination of ANC, and as an adoptee, I wanted to give back to the organization that made it possible for me to request and receive my original birth certificate. ANC is a nonprofit organization and has a reputation for advocacy rooted in understanding, support, and education—a meaningful mission to me.

I was born to a woman who had been sent to a home for unwed mothers to hide the shame of pregnancy from the small town in which her family lived. There was no counseling available for the grief of relinquishing a child, and she was told to go on with her life and forget about it. These homes no longer exist; we know now how awful and hurtful this practice, rooted in shame, is.

My birthfather died a year later in a tragic accident. He was also an adoptee, raised as a son by his maternal grandparents. I will never know if he knew who his father was, but thanks to DNA, I do.

I first searched for my birthmother more than 20 years ago after my children were born. Pregnancy and childbirth made me want to know more about the woman who carried me and gave me a deep understanding that she made decisions that had to be extremely difficult and painful in a way that I had not previously appreciated. I had complicated pregnancies and no medical history for myself or my children. As a mother, I felt compelled to know and understand more about both my history and my beginning. At that time, I discovered that the agency that handled my adoption, Ohio Children’s Society, had destroyed its records. I had no information at all to work with, and my search hit a brick wall. It was important to me that I connect with my birthmother in a way that was respectful. I didn’t know if she had told anyone she’d relinquished me, and I was concerned that if I hired a private investigator, the PI might use tactics that I wasn’t comfortable with or make a possible secret known to others, and that this somehow might hurt my birthmother or her family. Until I could request my original birth certificate in 2015, I didn’t have many options. In 2015, adoptees were finally able to access their original birth certificates in Ohio, and when I did this, it named my birthmother. I also discovered that I have a maternal half-sister. My birthmother and I reunited very shortly after that. I was finally able to learn her story and to gain a more complete and ongoing medical history. Knowing these things and my relationship with her have been blessings in my life that for many years I did not imagine would be possible. A few months later I met the extended family, and their warm welcome touched my heart.

My search for my birthfather led me to test my DNA at Ancestry and 23andMe. I‘d been told who he was, but since he died very young, I did not have the opportunity to connect with him or understand his story. Using DNA, I was able to confirm what I’d been told, which allowed resolution that I might not have been able to find in such ambiguous circumstances. He was a kinship adoptee, and I was able to determine his parentage.

I learned that although he died when he was twenty-three years old, he’d had three children with 3 different women—that I have two paternal half-brothers, both born to different woman. The first died as an infant. The second brother took a DNA test to learn his ethnicity. He discovered misattributed parentage—that the man who raised him and is on his birth certificate is not his biological father and that I am his paternal half-sister. We don’t know if his father knows, or even if his mother knows for sure. He doesn’t want to discuss this with them, and that’s his decision.

At ANC, we use DNA to help adoptees solve for unknown parentage, and my own search made me acutely aware of how much in recent years DNA was tearing down brick walls and helping connect people who might otherwise never find each other. It also made me particularly sensitive to the fact that some of these discoveries can be quite earth-shifting for people.

As my work in this area grew, I was promoted to search specialist to greater focus on assisting those in search, utilizing both traditional methods and DNA. ANC provides support and guidance throughout the journey of search—before, during and after—and has for more than 30 years. I came to appreciate how many people outside the adoption community were also  touched by DNA discoveries.

My own personal history of search and reunion give me an important connection with the people I work with because I can truly understand how these questions can consume one’s thoughts and time. I can relate to the frustrations, the joys, the sadness, the loss, the quest for knowledge when one doesn’t know their “chapter one,” the feeling of having to write “medical history unknown—adopted” every time one fills out medical forms or sees a new healthcare provider. Having reunited with my birthmother, I know the roller coaster of emotions that reunions can bring. I have a deep respect and understanding of the birthparent’s experience because of my work with many birth families and also my connections to my birth family.

Through my own journey, I have come to realize many things about adoption. It’s a lifelong journey, and not a one-time transaction. My work helping others separated by adoption to find each other—whether it is adoptees searching for birth family, birth family searching for adoptees, or more recently people that have DNA surprise discoveries—has revealed many complexities and similarities. When we shine a light on these discoveries, we find the impacts of secrets, shame, infertility, racism, money, power, privilege, mental health, abuse, neglect, domestic violence, trauma, addiction, grief, loss, religion, social class—to name a few. For me, it’s important to advocate for progressive practices and reform in adoption and child welfare.

The DNA Discovery Peer Support February 2 panel discussion is a joint endeavor by Adoption Network Cleveland and Adoption Knowledge Affiliates. Can you describe the nature of the collaboration?

Adoption Network Cleveland founded in 1988 and Adoption Knowledge Affiliates founded in 1991 have a lot in common. Both organizations were founded by adoptees with a vision to bring together adoptees, birthparents, adoptive parents, and professionals in an effort to increase knowledge, service, and understanding. Both have been impactful organizations over the years. With the pandemic and our world going virtual, ANC and AKA partnered to host a joint virtual conference in October 2020, combining conferences each organization had planned and been forced to cancel in the spring.

At ANC, we had been discussing how to better meet the needs of people who were coming to us with DNA discoveries—not only adoptees but those with misattributed parentage, individuals who are donor conceived, and others. Adoption Knowledge Affiliates started its DNA Discovery Peer Support Group in Sept. 2020, and ANC planned to start one in 2021. Adoption Network Cleveland and AKA are collaborating for the panel discussion on Feb. 2, and from there each will individually hold its own DNA Discovery Peer Support groups. People who might find more than one meeting a month helpful might like to have options.

How was ANC’s DNA Discoveries Peer Support group developed and conceived and why it was felt to be necessary?

At this point the majority of searches we assist with have a DNA component. In addition, we’d like to increase engagement of people with DNA discoveries beyond adoption-based situations. We have expertise in this area and would like to be a resource in a broad variety of situations. People are finding biological family or are being found; and they’re finding new information about their core identity, such as ethnicity, birth order, unexpected relatives, and more. There can be a wide range of reactions by those being found and those searching.

Many of the issues that folks are working through with a DNA discovery are the very same core issues experienced by the adoption community, such as loss, rejection, guilt and shame, grief, identity, intimacy, and control.

We felt uniquely positioned to offer support and guidance in a manner similar to what we have been doing through our General Discussion Meetings, which are open to anyone touched by adoption and/or foster care. Adoption Network Cleveland started holding these meetings more than 30 years ago, so we bring deep knowledge and the meetings evolve to meet current needs. More information about those meetings can be found here.

Adoptees who are using DNA to make these discoveries are excited to find new information and new relatives. It can be important to remember that we don’t know what this discovery might mean for the person on the other side, such as in the case of misattributed parentage for example, where someone might be learning that the man that raised them isn’t their biological father.

We wanted to create a safe place for people to speak about the emotional impact of these discoveries, in a confidential environment with people who have walked a similar journey and truly understand.

Are the groups being held via Zoom? Are they virtual as a consequence of COVID-19 or will they remain open to people from any location when virus restrictions lift?

We will be using Google Meet, which is a lot like Zoom. The DNA Discovery Peer Support Group and our General Discussion Meetings are free, but advance registration is required so that one can receive the link for the meeting. The meetings are the second Tuesday each month, 8-10 PM Eastern Time. Registration can be found on our calendar. We plan to assess and see once it’s off the ground if the meetings will remain structured virtually. Personally, I see this continuing as a virtual group if there is a demand.

How do you envision how these groups will go? Will each group meeting be facilitated? By you? What’s the goal and desired outcome?

Our group will be focusing on the emotional impact of DNA discoveries. This is something that all discoveries have in common, and this will be a place where people can really connect and provide understanding, another perspective, and support. Our DNA Discovery Peer Support Group and our General Discussion Meetings are facilitated by experienced volunteers who are supported and overseen by our staff. I will be assisting with the DNA Discovery Peer Support Group as needed, and, as a search specialist, I am available for individualized guidance, one-on-one search assistance, and support. The experienced volunteer facilitation team members chosen for the DNA Discovery group are both adoptees with their own personal DNA discoveries. The group they lead is shifting from being one of ANC’s six monthly General Discussion Meetings to meet this specific need.

Our goal with the DNA Discovery Peer Support Group is to provide a safe and supportive environment where people feel open to discuss a major life event—finding out new information about themselves and their identities. One does not need a connection to adoption to attend these meetings. We will be focused on supporting people throughout their journey and helping them to connect with others who truly understand how earth-shifting this can feel, how others have worked through their own discoveries, and the accompanying emotions. We understand these types of discoveries are not a one-time event, they are lifelong journeys. Connecting with others who have walked a similar path can help to normalize what can be an overwhelming experience.

What do you believe are the most significant issues, the most pressing concerns, for which people need support after a DNA Discovery?

Every situation is individual and unique, so it’s hard to generalize. However, the core issues that arise are very much the same that we know from adoption and permanency: loss, rejection, guilt and shame, grief, identity, intimacy, and control.

DNA testing has the power to unravel decades old secrets and can make individuals question their ideas of family, or religion, or even morality. I am a firm believer that everyone has a right to know their genetic heritage, but that does not mean anyone has a right to a relationship, as that is something for both parties to determine. Many people who take a DNA test do not think they will receive a result that might include a surprise such as a different ethnicity, or a new sibling, a different parent, an unknown child, a niece or cousin. Discoveries can also include learning one is adopted (late-discovery adoptees) or donor conceived. These can be a very powerful experiences and can upend long held beliefs.

In what ways do you believe peer support makes a difference? How does it help?

Connecting with others who have been there and understand can be normalizing and healing.

We have followed a peer support model for our General Discussion Meetings for more than 30 years with great success. We’ve welcomed those with DNA discoveries to these meetings as technology has evolved. It can be extremely valuable to hear the perspectives of other individuals who have walked a similar journey and truly understand. I’ve seen people make wonderful connections with each other and learn insights that might not have happened anywhere else. Peer support offers a place to work through some of the core issues such as loss, rejection, grief, identity, shame and guilt. Hearing how other’s work through their journeys provides a variety of options as we consider connecting with relatives and offers a chance to see how people have gained a sense of control over the experience of discovery, and not have it control them. Peer support also offers an opportunity for people who are farther along in their journey to give back.

What limitations are there, if any, to peer support? 

Peer support is not meant to take the place of therapy, and individual therapy can be a very powerful and healing experience. Accessibility can be a limitation for some.

In addition to the peer support group, ANC also offers a Monday evening speakers group. Can you tell us more about that?

Adoption Network Cleveland is a leader in bringing the adoption community together to create a network of support and advocacy. In this critical and uncertain time for all of us, we are pleased to offer a Monday Evening Speaker Series full of topics that are of interest to a broad audience impacted by adoption, kinship, and foster care. More information and recordings of past presentations can be found here.

Learn more about the DNA Discovery Peer Support special February 2 panel and the ongoing group here. And for information about other programs and events, click here.

Look for Adoption Network Cleveland on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter @adoptionnetcle. Look for Adoption Knowledge Affiliates on Facebook and onInstagram @aadoptionknowledgeaffiliates.Traci Onders is a search specialist at Adoption Network Cleveland (ANC). An adoptee herself, she’s facilitating ANC’s new DNA Discovery Peer Support Group special panel on February 2. 

By Andromeda Romano-LaxThe gossip reaches me on New Year’s Eve, two days after my birthday—worth mentioning only because birthdays often put me in a reflective state that can easily turn to melancholy, and this year is no different. I’m in Mexico City, on vacation, about to go to dinner with my husband, mood beginning to lift. Then I receive the email from my sister.

It reads: “Considering that Mom could pass any day, I thought I should tell you a.s.a.p. in case you don’t know about it, which I assume you don’t.”

The news she shares is second-hand gossip from an old family “friend” who showed up to visit my mother—then dying of brain cancer—to reminisce, burn private letters and relive the good old days. The friend, who played little part in any of our lives for decades, revealed to another family member that my father wasn’t really my father. That person told the sister who emailed me. Now I’m the last in the four-person chain to find out.

As for my mom: she’s not talking, and never will, which isn’t surprising given her love of secrets and lifelong fear of being judged for parenting errors. Her fears are valid. I do judge her, most of all for not keeping my sisters safe when we were all younger.

Before leaving our hotel room to go to dinner, I reply to my sister: “That’s a big surprise! How lucky I don’t feel especially attached to ‘Dad’ or his side of the family or it could be upsetting.”

I take pride in my stoic response and the fact that I severed relations years ago with our late father—an undeniably “bad man.” But that stoicism is really only disorientation. I have no idea, at this time, that my identity and much of what I’d thought about both my parents will have to be recalibrated.

I never would have imagined that my mom, a self-identified, non-practicing Catholic with an affinity for the Virgin Mary, probably had multiple affairs when she was still married to her first husband, who came from a large Sicilian-Polish family. But there was a lot about our family I never suspected until each bomb dropped: for example, when, at age 14, I learned that my two older sisters, then 16 and 19, had been molested for years by the sweet-tempered, funny and charming man we called “Dad.”

The truth came out in jarring bursts. I remember a confusing scene in our living room when my sisters, in some argument with my mother, summoned the courage or rage to tell her what had happened to them. I can’t recall any words from my mom’s side, only my oldest sister’s repeating howls: “Oh no, oh no, oh no.” Until that point, she’d thought she was the only one. The knowledge that she hadn’t managed to stop the predator she knew well from seeking a second, even weaker prey—our middle sister—shattered her.

I remember a second confusing scene later that year, when our middle sister was locked in a downstairs bathroom. Her boyfriend called to tell me I needed to break down the door. Inside, she was trying to take her life. The boyfriend—bless his bravery and candor—told me why. It was Dad, again. I don’t know who made the 911 call. I do know I found my sister’s unconscious body. While everyone else converged at the hospital, I was left home alone to clean up the blood.

My parents divorced when I was three. The last time I saw my dad I was fourteen. I have no memory of him ever touching me. I find it incredible, even now, to think about the lengths he went to abuse my sisters—using not only emotional manipulation but also drugs and travel across international borders to conceal what he was doing. In other words, he was not only giving in briefly to unhealthy urges—as if that isn’t bad enough. He planned his molestation. He took steps to avoid prosecution.

After connecting the dots between his strategic, predatory behavior and my sisters’ exceptionally difficult teen years, I refused to see our father again, and he made no effort to ask why I’d stopped calling or hadn’t attended his father’s funeral. I think he felt a cold wind blowing. I think he knew there was at least one person—and maybe more—who had seen under his mask. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that he retired to Mexico not too many years later. He died when I was in my late thirties.

And now, in my mid-forties, I’m being told that he wasn’t my biological father after all.

***

After the surprise settles and the DNA swab test results are returned, I look for the silver lining. He was a sick, morally bankrupt person. Isn’t it better to think I share no genes with him or any of his ancestors? Not that I believe pedophilia or an inclination to abuse is passed along genetically. No doubt his actions were a result of his environment. I have every reason to suspect my grandfather sexually abused his own daughters (my father’s sisters) as well. It’s even possible that my father was himself abused. Perhaps—the thought evolves in my mind as time passes—it was even condoned.

“Better to keep it in the family,” is the horrible phrase that comes to mind.

For a long time, I’m tempted to blame heritage, poverty, or lack of education for the practices that seemed accepted—though never openly talked about—in my father’s family. Even now I can cite recent news from Italy, where in some parts of the country, incest and sexual abuse are condoned. (In Italy, incest is illegal only if it “provokes scandal,” which sounds terrible, until you consider that in Spain, France and Portugal, it isn’t illegal, period.)

But any quick survey, like easy finger-pointing at priests or coaches or other groups, overlooks the fact that sexual abuse is discouragingly common everywhere. Writes Mia Fontaine in a story called “America has an incest problem” in The Atlantic, “One in three-to-four girls, and one in five-to-seven boys are sexually abused before they turn 18, an overwhelming incidence of which happens within the family.” Those figures are underestimates, due to underreporting.

If incest was preferable in my father’s family to affairs with grown women or molestation of children outside the family, then I have one answer to the question of why a non-biological child would be left alone. But did my father know I wasn’t his child? He never deprived me of appropriate affection. I felt loved, even when, at the age of 13, I cut off my hair and went through a punk phase that would last years.

Maybe that punk phase and my insistence on androgyny—or my manner, a “don’t FUCK with me” vibe that I mastered well before I had any reason to suspect my father of being a child molester, was one reason I was left alone, completely apart from blood relations. That’s what I would have said, as a young adult.

It’s comforting to think we have agency. It’s even more reassuring to think we can fashion the right armor for ourselves, and that perhaps some of us know, subconsciously, that such armor is needed. But it would be dangerous—as well as self-serving—to assume that one can so easily guarantee one’s own safety by acting or dressing a certain way. Life teaches us otherwise.

There are other possibilities, like birth order or simple opportunity, to explain why I wasn’t violated—or not violated yet—in the time before I broke off contact. (And note: I made that choice at the age of 14. My mother registered no opinion or even said a negative word about my father, as I can recall—clinging to her belief that it’s better not to judge people. She was frighteningly consistent, if nothing else.)

In any case, I was lucky—at least once, and maybe twice. Lucky because I was left untouched. Lucky again, because I was, and still am, free to imagine my biological father was a better person than the first man my mother married.

*

After my DNA surprise, a cousin reaches out and offers to help find my bio-dad. I’m reluctant. My own family history has convinced me to beware fathers, generally. There’s a good chance I’ll leave one “Dad” behind only to find a new one with his own character flaws or criminal background—someone who might want to take advantage of me. Even as an adult, I feel emotionally vulnerable.

My “amateur detective” cousin keeps sending messages—she enjoys these kinds of searches and excels at them—and I finally relent. Less than a month later, she introduces me to the identity of my bio-dad. His photo and other details provided by his living siblings leave no doubt. I experience the shock of seeing my own features, as well as that of my adult son, in the face of a stranger. I experience the double-shock of realizing this matters to me, when I thought it wouldn’t. I can’t stop clicking on the digital photos sent to me of his face at three ages—young boy, adolescent, twenty-something man—and finding them both familiar and somehow comforting.

More details emerge. My biological father is no longer alive, having died in an accident just a week before my birth. His long-ago passing was both tragic—not only for him and his family but probably for my late mother, who must have spent that final week of pregnancy in deep grief. But in a strange way, in addition to sadness and belated sympathy, I feel relief. I have nothing to fear from this new biological relative. I can accept without wariness or doubt the good details I hear: that he was a kind brother, for example.

Even with a new father to think about, I spend more time mulling the old one—trying to find consolation in knowing that we aren’t related. Given the frequency of DNA surprises, how many people are at first relieved to discover they aren’t related to a parent who was a murderer, or carrying some heritable disease, or simply unlucky in life? Especially if we are the children of someone who did something heinous, the ground shifts. We struggle to regain our footing, hoping to land in a better spot than we were before.

And yet, that’s not the whole story, either. As the news continues to sink in over the next year, I realize I’ve lost a lot. Anyone who has experienced a DNA-testing surprise may understand. Now, my sisters are only half-sisters, and my mother has been proven to be not only a person who hid the truth, but someone who wouldn’t relent even when asked directly, smiling in response to my sister’s questions. If she’d become upset, I would have sympathized. But a Cheshire-cat smile, tickled by the power of what she had to withhold? That’s harder to forgive.

My already-small extended family is further diminished. I can no long claim the great grandparents—one of them, a polyglot—on my father’s side. When my mother and aunt die in the same year, I’m without older relatives altogether, aside from my sisters. The family tree I thought I knew, already pruned by divorce, has been hacked to pieces and carted away.

I lose any sense of connectedness with living cousins—people I barely knew anyway, because we all mostly stopped talking when I stopped seeing my father. He refused to explain why we weren’t in contact, leaving them to assume that he was the puzzled victim of some conflict initiated by me and my sisters. Now, through social media, a few of my cousins send tactful messages, saying I’m still “family.” It doesn’t feel that way to me, especially given how little we all interacted for decades, but I am grateful for their kindness.

The biggest loss—and the one I’ve least anticipated—is how deeply sorry I am to have lost my Italian-American heritage. For most of my life, I’ve looked in the mirror and imagined that my calves were Roman calves, my nose an Italian nose, my stature and dark coloring and love of wine and Italian food all explicable, and meaningful, because it connected me to a rich heritage. By the time I find out Dad isn’t my bio-dad, I’ve traveled to Italy twice—the second time to write a novel set there.

Now, that novel and all the emotions attached to it seem distant. But another fictional representation of my family angst takes its place.

This month will mark the publication of the most personal novel I’ve ever written, called Annie and the Wolves. It’s the story of a modern-day historian who finds her life intertwined with that of her subject, Annie Oakley. In both historical and modern storylines, characters struggle to recover from abuse. As it happens, one of America’s great icons, an 1800s sharpshooter who took the world by storm, she was molested too—in this case, by a farm family called “the Wolves” who held her captive when she was between the ages of ten to twelve.

It doesn’t take a psychologist to imagine why I was drawn to that plot.

In my novel, which takes place across a century, characters struggle to remember, to uncover dark family secrets and deal with vengeful desires—all in the hopes of finding a way forward.

My own path includes exactly this: finding a way, through both fiction and nonfiction, to deal with my family’s legacy and my own confused feelings. I’ve been liberated from one connection. But in another way, I feel more chained to my father and his story than ever—unable to shake them off. You’ll notice I still choose to call him “Dad” and “my father.” It’s a choice I’ve made only recently, in part to be more honest with the influence he had on me, from birth at least until age fourteen. Biology isn’t everything. I’ve spent time thinking about his upbringing, wondering why he did what he did and what he, himself, may have suffered.

The man I grew up loving was almost certainly a victim who passed along his damage to others, repeating what was done to him. He wasn’t really a monster, of course. But he was a predator—someone who hunted his prey with cunning.

Regardless of any blood connection, he’s a wolf I’ve had to confront—one who still prowls the dark corners of my mind.Andromeda Romano-Lax is the author of Annie and the Wolves (Soho, Feb. 2, 2021) as well as four other novels. She lives in British Columbia, Canada. You can visit her website and find her on Instagram.

Tell us about your own NPE story to the extent you’re comfortable sharing it.

Seeing only 1% French was the red flag in my initial 23andMe DNA report. I was raised to believe I was significantly French and Norwegian. A few months later I took the Ancestry DNA test to compare from the same database that my sister had used. Those results produced the most shocking and traumatic day of my adult life. I had a half brother appear on my DNA results, and I didn’t have a brother as far as I knew. A trip over to my mother’s house an hour later produced more confusion, dismissal, and a host of secrets started to come out. Apparently, my mother and BF worked together in the 80s and had a one-night stand. My mother never told him she got pregnant and never saw him again, or at least that’s what I’ve been told. My mother still claims she didn’t know to this day. I think the most painful part of finding this out is how my mother, birth father, and newfound family have treated me in the aftermath.

How far into your own journey were you when you started your podcast?

Six weeks after I had my DNA shock I published my first trailer for the podcast calling for NPEs to share their story and giving a launch date of July 2019.

What compelled you to start the podcast?

The only comfort I had in those first few weeks of shock was reading other NPE stories on the forums online. I was nodding along with their written stories and scrolling for hours and hours. I would read aloud parts of other NPE stories to my husband at all hours of the day and night. I wanted to be able to listen to these stories as I walked around the house and did my errands. I knew I couldn’t continue to sit in front of a computer the rest of my life but I wanted to bring the comfort of finding others like me everywhere I went. I searched “NPE” on the podcast platforms and at the time did not find anything like it so decided I would produce my own. I realize now I could have used other terms and certainly found other podcasts with these stories on them, but with my limited knowledge at the time I was unable to find other podcasts.

Did you initially find NPEs very willing to speak out, or did you have to coax people to share?

I have only ever asked one guest. My first one I had to search for on reddit; I was too afraid to ask anyone on the DNA sites because I didn’t want to break the rules and get kicked off if they considered it “self-promotion.” After that I’ve had a pretty steady stream of people who reach out. I’m booked for 22 weeks out. I can only handle about one guest a week at this time because I do everything myself including scheduling, recording, and editing. I’m only a hobbyist—I’m literally learning everything as I go.

I believe stories benefit the teller as well as the audience. From your experience sharing people’s stories, can you talk a little about the ways the stories help the listeners, and the ways telling the stories helps the storytellers?

I know every story I record is sacred. Somebody out there is listening and nodding along in relief. A lurker, or perhaps a new NPE bingeing on stories all night long when they can’t sleep from the overwhelming grief they are experiencing. I get emails from listeners saying they have been listening or bingeing all night long to some of these episodes.

As for the storytellers, I wish I could explain the relief, giddiness, and joy I hear in their voices after I sign off. Some of what they tell me afterwards is pure gold, but of course off the record after I’ve stopped recording. They all sound like a weight has been lifted off their shoulders; sometimes they’re exhausted and yawning. I leave every recording session feeling filled with empathy and love for my fellow NPEs.

Why do you think storytelling and sharing is so important for NPEs?

I don’t think most NPEs receive true understanding and empathy from people. We get it. We can empathize with each other’s heartbreak, confusion, anger, and, sometimes, joy. Finding a community has been life-saving for me in this journey.

In one episode you mentioned that you sought therapy after your NPE discovery. Can you talk about how you chose a therapist and whether it was difficult to find someone who understood NPE issues?

I chose a therapist by pure panic. I literally had a panic attack at 3 a.m. a few weeks after my DNA discovery and thought I was going to be hospitalized. The next morning I called my clinic and got in with the first available intake appointment they had. No research went into it, and I happened to be paired with a cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) practitioner. I gained tools, but I don’t know what the “right” therapy is for anyone. I literally had to take it a moment at a time and fill my entire world with NPE everything, including reading articles on Severance Magazine, and joining online support groups.

You mentioned at the end of the episode in which you tell your own story that you’re not an expert. That’s something I feel strongly about—people, even other NPEs, trying to speak for everyone, wanting to be spokespersons for NPEs. I believe each of us is an expert on our own experience, but none of us can speak for everyone. Can you address that, whether you agree or disagree and why?

I don’t know anything. I joke with other NPEs that I’m waiting for someone to write the handbook on how to guide us through our DNA discovery. I get skeptical when I hear anyone opine on what I should do with my family members or what I should be feeling. Especially the online threads on forgiveness, or forgiveness-shaming as I like to call it. We can each only share our own personal experience, and I agree that none of us can speak for everyone. Sometimes we share experiences, and in that moment of understanding and empathy we can all nod along with each other. Those are the moments I like.

Have you seen many commonalities as you hear more and more stories? What issues resonate most?

Yes, the mothers. I hear the same mother being described in so many NPE stories. Self-centeredness sometimes appears in many of their stories. Actually many of the parents involved, including birth-fathers, have a thread of self-centeredness woven in. I realize this is rooted in shame and self-protection, but all the same it exists in so many NPEs stories.

What has surprised you in the stories you’ve heard?

I still get surprised every week. I actually have to take notes the whole time to keep up with all the family members and timeline. I have been surprised by the violence I find out about. It makes me a little sick with the rape, murder, and child abuse I have heard and read about. My heart breaks whenever I imagine an NPE as a helpless child in some of these circumstances.

Is there anything else you’d want readers to know about NPE Stories?

I merely consider myself an organizer for the podcast NPE Stories. It’s a safe space where NPEs can share audible versions of their stories. I may help them along with a few questions, but I try to leave room for them to fill the space in their own words. It’s not live, is completely editable, and can be anonymous if the guest prefers.

Are you seeking NPEs to tell their stories, and if so, how would you like them to contact you?

I have a rather long waitlist, but if someone doesn’t mind scheduling 6 months in advance, I go in the order of emails received. I record everyone’s story who is willing, and I can be reached at NPEstories@gmail.com for scheduling. I have a Facebook page, NPE Stories, and I’m on Instagram @lilymwood.Lily Wood, host of NPE Stories, is a 39-year-old stay-at-home mom of three children. When she and her husband, Graham,  were in their twenties, they started an app development company that’s since been acquired by Buzzfeed. In addition to raising her family and hosting the podcast, she volunteers with the American Red Cross as a disaster worker. BEFORE YOU GO…

Look on our home page for more articles about NPEs, adoptees, and genetic genealogy.

• Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts.
• Let us know what you want to see in Severance. Send a message to bkjax@icloud.com.
• Tell us your stories. See guidelines. 
• If you’re an NPE, adoptee, or donor conceived person; a sibling of someone in one of these groups; or a helping professional (for example, a therapist or genetic genealogist) you’re welcome to join our private Facebook group.
• Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Instagram @Severancemag.

Don’ t miss the latest in a series of webinars from Right to Know (RTK), a nonprofit organization that advocates for the rights of MPEs (misattributed parentage experiences)—including adoptees and those conceived through assisted reproduction—and NPEs (not parent expected).

On Sunday, October 18, from 4pm-5:30pm EST, the webinar will address mental health issues experienced by MPEs. Moderated by DrPh candidate Sebastiana Gianci, the panel will include Jodi Klugman-Rabb, LMFT, therapist, cohost of the podcast Sex, Lies & The Truth, and creator of the innovative training program Parental Identity Discovery; Cotey Bowman, LPC associate, creator of the NPE Counseling Collective; and Lynne Weiner Spencer, RN, MA, LP, a therapist specializing in donor conception, adoption, and the experiences of NPEs and MPEs.

Among the topics to be explored are trauma, identity, grief, ambiguous loss, anxiety, and rejection.

In November, the series’ presenter will be Libby Copeland, award-winning author of The Lost Family: How DNA Testing is Upending Who We Are. (Look for our Q & A with the author here.)

And in December, RTK’s webinar features the DNA Geek Leah Larkin, an adoptee and genetic genealogist. If you’d like to attend the upcoming webinar, request the Zoom link at RSVP2RightToKnow.us and check out RTK’s event page to stay in the loop about upcoming presentations.

If you missed the last webinar, “Understanding the Medical Ramifications in Your DNA Test,” you can watch the recording.

Right to Know, created by Kara Rubinstein Deyerin, Gregory Loy, and Alesia Cohen Weiss, aims to educate the public and professionals about “the complex intersection of genetic information, identity, and family dynamics.” It works, as well, to change laws with respect to related issues, including fertility fraud. Find it on Facebook and on Twitter and Instagram @righttoknowus.BEFORE YOU GO…

Look on our home page for more articles about NPEs, adoptees, and genetic genealogy. And check out our articles on the topics that will be discussed in RTK’s webinar: disenfranchised grief, stages of grief, ambiguous loss, rejection, and trauma.

• Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts.
• Let us know what you want to see in Severance. Send a message to bkjax@icloud.com.
• Tell us your stories. See guidelines here.
• If you’re an NPE, adoptee, or donor conceived person; a sibling of someone in one of these groups; or a helping professional (for example, a therapist or genetic genealogist) you’re welcome to join our private Facebook group.
• Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Instagram @Severancemag.

Tell me a little bit about your background, how you came to be interested in creating DNAngels, and how you educated yourself about genetic genealogy?

18 years ago, my aunt researched our Tippa family roots back to 1804, when these ancestors first sailed to America from Germany. My father surprised me with a beautiful bound book of this research as a gift, along with the story of how our last name was Americanized to Tippy. I loved sharing this history with my brothers, nieces, and nephews, relishing the sense of identity and family unity it brought me. I guess this is where my interest in genealogy really began.

In the Fall of 2017, I decided to create a similar keepsake of family history for my grandchildren as a Christmas gift. I already had an account with Ancestry and became familiar with using their data to access all types of records, such as birth, death, census, military, and marriage. It occurred to me the Ancestry DNA tests would include specific information regarding the actual regions of one’s ancestors, so I thought this would be a nice addition to include in their family tree book.

Nothing could have prepared me for what happened next.

Six weeks later, my test results arrived. As someone who loves family research, it was exciting to see so many relatives listed from first to fourth cousins! Searching for familiar names on my father’s side, I was confused as not one could be found. I decided to call a few Tippy family members who I knew for certain had also tested. They logged into their Ancestry account but did not see my results either.

In the back of my mind, the distant memory of a comment made by my uncle surfaced. He once told me my daddy could not father children, so none of his kids were biologically his. I brushed the comment off at the time, as my brown eyes were certainly the same as my father’s, making me confident I was his. Suddenly, my world turned upside down as I feared there may be some truth to what my uncle said.

The barrage of emotions I felt is still indescribable. As my entire identity was now in question, my world imploded. If I was not a Tippy, then who was I? Who is my biological father? What about my medical history? Does he know I exist? The questions were endless.

Luckily, due to my decades of interest in genealogy, I quickly located a genealogy group that taught me the science side of DNA. I learned to read centimorgans, interpreting the probable relationship between matches. They taught me to create mirror trees, linking matches to find grandparents. Since then, I’ve learned through doing and also networking with other genealogists for new ways to approach the more complex cases. The personal story of my being an NPE (not parent expected) was unknowingly grooming me to help others.

After the initial shock over my NPE status, the frustrations began. My mother refused to admit the truth to me or answer questions about my biological father. I now know this is an all too common occurrence within the NPE community for a variety of reasons.

Ultimately, through my genealogical skills, I was successfully able to determine who my biological father was. However, he passed when I was only 13 years old. Thankfully, my biological father’s widow welcomed me with open arms, paving the way to meet my six new-found brothers and answering many questions about him as a person and my new medical history. My relationship with these six men is still forming as we get to know one another. Even though we biologically share a father, we are still strangers in a way.

You began DNAngels fairly recently. How many people have you helped thus far?

We have accepted more than 1,000 cases and solved more than 900, so our ratio is a solid 9 out of 10 cases solved. Included in those numbers are our current year totals. We have accepted 400 this year and solved 333 year to date.  Our goal is to find an answer for every client. However, there are times when someone may not have very many high matches, meaning we hit a brick wall. We must have at least a baseline in matches to even begin researching. We do ask many of our clients to upload their existing Ancestry DNA to three other “free” sites to maximize their matches. This often brings us a few new matches to consider. Other companies such as 23andMe can provide valuable insight but can also be cost prohibitive for some individuals. DNAngels hopes to eventually stock additional tests for our clients who may be financially struggling.

How do you describe the services you offer and what tools you use to help clients?

First, we provide a safe haven for those struggling with their NPE or adopted status. Once someone has been screened, we place them into our Facebook Client Room which is 100% closed to anyone other than our clients, angels, and support staff. Here, we encourage everyone to share their stories, offer support, and ask questions. It truly is a safe haven community where we all genuinely care for one another.

We are in the process of building a smaller, more intimate group for those who are truly hurting or have specific issues they are dealing with. DNAngels feels a strong sense of supporting our community and is ever evolving to meet those needs. We have a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW)—Mary McIntosh—on our team who can guide us should a client have an intense need. On occasion, we have found a client in urgent need of mental health services and she has intervened.

For tools, we use Ancestry as our foundation to begin our research. From there, we have a multitude of subscriptions to maximize our searches and provide contact information for potential family members to help clients prepare to contact biological families.

Do you help everyone who asks or do you have criteria?

We do have baseline requirements. Our requirements include the following: the  presumption the parents reside in the United States; that the client has tested with Ancestry; that the client is willing to take an active role in the research process; and that the generally client must have matches that meet a certain number of centimorgan matches—three matches of at least 200 centimorgans with at least one tree—our starting point for research. Unfortunately, if someone only has very distant matches, it doesn’t offer us much to research. However, we do advise them of ways to help increase their odds and return if they discover new matches.

How many are you able to help relative to demand?

We turn very few away from DNAngels. I think the majority that don’t qualify are from another country or have yet to test with Ancestry.

How do you work with clients? Your website notes that it’s an interactive process. Can you describe that—what do you expect from clients?

Our search angels are volunteers. Many have full time careers and families, so we ask our clients to respond in a reasonable, timely manner or let our angels know if they need a temporary pause for a variety of reasons. Our team is spread out all over the US, allowing us to be respectful of various time zones and work schedules. We try to match angels up relative to client schedules and share information as we verify facts. In certain cases, some angels may have special interests or talents in specific cases.

While not required, nothing makes us happier for clients to check in once they’ve contacted their biological family. We genuinely want to remain a part of their journey as they bond with new relatives. We’re also mindful that not every ending is happy and we welcome all clients to continue being a part of our NPE and adoption community.

What kind of questions do clients typically ask when they’re interested in your services?

The first question is typically how much our services cost. DNAngels is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, and we work entirely on a donation basis. We truly believe everyone deserves answers, regardless of their ability to pay. They also ask why we do what we do. Every member of the DNAngels team has been affected by DNA test results in some way, and we believe everyone deserves to have answers about their biological origins, regardless of their ability to pay. The work we do is so rewarding and also helps us all heal from what we’ve been through ourselves, and that’s what motivates us on a daily basis.

Are there reasons other than a lack of close matches that make some cases difficult to solve?

Definitely! The most common typical obstacle is when the biological mother is either deceased, forgets details, or refuses to divulge information and when there is more than one man who may be the potential father within a family. An example would be if a family had four sons relatively close in age and proximity to the mother during the time of conception and only 1-2 cousin matches are showing. Sometimes you need additional tests to confirm the biological father or siblings. We also commonly find a biological father may turn out to be an NPE as well, making the matches even more difficult to read. It is not uncommon for a cold case to have either multi-generational NPEs or the biological parent is a first-degree immigrant and records are slim and matches are few.

Are you ever able to find parents based on 4^th cousin matches or more distant?

Yes, we can. If there are really good trees and multiple matches at the 4^th cousin level, with excellent trees. We have special angels that can solve those. Laura is one. She is our lead angel and solves more than 50% of all cases at DNAngels.

In what ways do you provide support to your clients?

We understand that this is often a difficult time, and we never let our clients walk this journey alone. Our angel team is with the clients every step of the way, and providing an answer is just the beginning. We have a private client group on Facebook that is exclusive to our clients, where they can share their experience and support one another. We also offer 2 private support groups for our clients or anyone searching or in need of support. Our groups are DNAngels Search & Support, and Adoption Search & Support by DNAngels.

In what ways do they most need support? What are the most common issues you see?

Every client is different. Some are elated to finally find answers, while many have just had the shock of their lives and are devastated by this news. While family and friends often try their best to be supportive, they’re not able to understand how this discovery affects so many aspects of their lives. Just knowing that they’re not alone, and that every one of their feelings are valid, is so important during this difficult time. In addition, the LCSW on our angel team offers private sessions with our clients at no cost. We also have a pastor who is available for clients who need spiritual support.

Many of our adopted clients have grown up knowing they were adopted, so I would have to say the NPE community’s most common emotional need is overcoming the shock of finding out their identity isn’t really what they thought. This affects each person differently. Some people take it in stride; others it shakes to their very core. Many feel anger over being lied to, while others discover hurtful secrets and must work through this. Again, this is why we stress staying active within our community. Every person has something in common with another, and we don’t ever want our clients to feel alone.

Do the angels ever act as intermediaries?

We strongly encourage our clients to make contact with their biological family, but we review this on a case by case basis and will support the individual to the best of our ability.

Do you advise clients about how to make contact?

Absolutely! Making that first phone call or writing that first letter can be a daunting task. We offer support and guidance every step of the way and are there for the client regardless of the outcome.

What’s the rough breakdown of your clients by adoptees, NPEs, and donor-conceived people, and has that changed over time?

The majority of our clients are NPE, I’d say roughly 60%. Adoptees account for the majority of the remaining 40%, with only a handful of donor-conceived individuals needing ours services this year.

Are you looking for additional volunteers? If so, what criteria are there to be a DNAngel?

As we grow, we do look for additional volunteers. We are very selective with our angels and accept new volunteers on an as needed basis, and, occasionally, if someone really wows us with their passion and commitment. Not only do we require certain genealogical skills, we also have a set methodology we use for consistency. Angels also must work well with our team, and if they have a unique skill or passion, we try to incorporate it into our research.

Our team also consists of individuals who do screening, fundraising, web development, graphics, content writing, research, and provide emotional support, as well as several other functions. We value the many talents of our volunteers to help our vast community and meet a multitude of needs.

What else would you want readers to know or understand about DNAngels?

The overwhelming necessity for NPEs and adoptees to know where their biological roots originate is deeper than most can ever understand. We are committed to helping these individuals find their answers and offer dedicated support throughout their journey. We never require payment to accept a case, as we feel this is a basic human right for each person to know their biological roots. However, the resources required to sustain these efforts cost thousands of dollars each year. Eventually, as demand increases, we hope to support a very small staff for continuity in addition to meeting the cost of our yearly subscriptions, software, additional DNA tests, training opportunities for our volunteers, website maintenance, and office supplies.

Providing Additional Support

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

DNAngels

5920 Giant City Road, Unit A, Carbondale, IL 62902

Info@dnangels.org

Follow on Twitter @DNAngels4, on Instagram @DNAngelsorg, and on Facebook. BEFORE YOU GO…

Look on our home page https://severancemag.comfor more articles about the search and reunion, NPEs, adoptees, and genetic genealogy.

• Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts.
• Let us know what you want to see in Severance. Send a message tobkjax@icloud.com
• Tell us your stories. See guidelines athttps://severancemag.com/submission-guidelines/
• If you’re an NPE, adoptee, or donor conceived person; a sibling of someone in one of these groups; or a helping professional (for example, a therapist or genetic genealogist) you’re welcome to join our private Facebook group athttps://www.facebook.com/groups/402792990448461
• And like us on Facebook athttps://www.facebook.com/severancemag and follow us on Twitter and Instagram @Severancemag

By Jodi Klugman-Rabb, LMFTLife changing events such as grief and trauma have a way of changing relationships, too. Discovering a DNA surprise known as non-paternal event or not parent expected (NPE)—such as an adoption not previously disclosed, donor conception, or misattributed or falsified paternity—has been shown to have serious effects on family relationships, often pitting families against one another as secrets are uncovered and motives are questioned. The prevalence of commercial DNA testing in the last ten years has made possible the revelation of these secrets and contributed to a surge in grief, identity crises, and conflicts within families. Psychotherapy is catching up to this phenomenon, poised to be a source of support and skill building as clinicians gain training on the unique constellation of conditions these discoveries present. However, recently I heard this play out in the worst way imaginable on a podcast I never listen to. It was forwarded to me by a shocked friend who wondered what my response would be given my own experience and expertise on the subject.

Dr. Laura Schlessinger is a radio personality well-known for her “no nonsense” style, per her marketing. She’s been dispensing advice in a sensational manner for decades, touting her ability to save marriages. But surprisingly, her professional help is delivered in a style akin to that of Gordon Ramsey or Simon Cowell. The last time I listened to anything from Dr. Laura I was in college 20 years ago; it was a curious foray with a friend into one of her local presentations. We were intrigued by her “tell it like it is” style, which, at the time, didn’t seem bullying or hostile. This episode, however, is shockingly abusive and appallingly unprofessional, reflecting poorly on the mental health care field.

In an episode of her podcast “Call of the Day” that aired July 7, 2020, Dr. Laura took a call from Torri, who stated she was unsure how to carry on a relationship with her mom after she discovered her NPE status in the fall of 2019. Before Torrie had spoken more than three sentences to describe her problem, Dr. Laura shut her down with rude, demeaning assumptions about the case and commentary about her as a person, telling Torrie “I would rather smack you across the head than anything else right now, you ungrateful little twit.” It was difficult to listen to this five-minute podcast, let alone imagine how Torri felt after hanging up.

There are many stereotypes of therapists, and there are many types of therapists spanning the spectrum of good vs. bad. I’m a marriage and family therapist (LMFT) licensed by the State of California and I have also discovered my own NPE status, also now being referred to as “not parent expected,” an attempt to soften the title. Even if I weren’t able to relate to this life-changing experience Torri has had, I still could have responded as a compassionate and ethical clinician, something Dr. Laura didn’t do. Unfortunately, Torri is not protected by the traditional terms of the therapeutic relationship because she willingly gave up that privilege when she applied to be a caller on the show. Worse, she may never feel safe to seek professional mental health help again because she, like others, may mistake her experience with Dr. Laura for real therapy.

The ethical obligations of practitioners in the mental health field exist to protect consumers from ill-trained and harmful clinicians, the worst example of which is the reckless sort of abuse presented as help from Dr. Laura, who’s listed as an licensed marriage and family therapist in various websites but who doesn’t list the licensing state. Rather than displaying a professional demeanor consistent with the ethics of our field, Dr. Laura’s unbelievable behavior toward Torri is equivalent to the sort of disgust with which family members often treat NPEs, using shame, extreme defensiveness, and threats to protect their secrets. I can imagine if Torri had been allowed to speak, she might have described a situation where her mom responded as Dr. Laura did, confusing her about her rights and the validity of her feelings, which triggered her need for advice to begin with. The reason for this reaction from the mothers of NPEs is a narcissistic shame many of them feel for offending cultural or religious dictates, especially if their pregnancies were the result of sexual assaults. What was confusing was why Dr. Laura reacted with such hostility; did the severity of her reaction suggest she was hiding something herself?

Wikipedia suggests that before her mother’s death, Dr. Laura had been estranged from her for 18 to 20 years. If true, it might help explain her unforgivable lashing out at Torri. Could she have been projecting her own issues onto a caller and used them to act out her own frustrations about unresolved personal issues?

I discovered my own NPE story in 2017 and it has played out in both good and bad ways, a fact I have been very forthcoming about in my journey. I utilized my professional knowledge to build a first of its kind curriculum especially for the DNA discovery population, but as a therapist I didn’t need the personal experience with it in order to access my compassion and ethical training. I use my personal experience to help train other clinicians on how to combine skills to appropriately treat this unique population—an approach I call Parental Identity Discovery™. 

The overwhelming majority of therapists are skilled, ethical, supportive professionals who could never imagine harming a person the way Dr. Laura harmed Torri.

NPEs and adoptees can learn how to make sense of their overwhelming feelings and their grief and discover how to rebuild their identities. They can learn communication skills to work with family dynamics and create a plan of action as their journeys continue. There will be people to support them—new and existing family as well as friends they haven’t met in person but who are there in support groups to listen and lift them up.

If you or someone you know has discovered a surprise DNA, help is available. If your life has changed, please seek help and be assured you are valued. See the sidebar for sources for help in coping with DNA discoveries.Jodi Klugman-Rabb, LMFT, is a licensed marriage and family therapist and licensed professional counselor in California. She sees NPEs in person in her private practice and via teletherapy throughout the state. She also offers virtual coaching for those living outside California, including a virtual support group for NPEs. She cohosts a podcast, Sex, Lies & The Truth, for NPEs and their families so they can feel connected to a larger community and learn about themselves as they go. In her Finding Family blog on Psychology Today, she writes about the unique aspects of being an NPE—what she now calls Parental Identity Discovery,™  the term she uses to title her certificate curriculum.RESOURCES

Adoptees, NPEs, Donor Conceived & Other Genetic Identity Seekers

Adoptees Only: Found/Reunion The Next Chapter

DNA NPE Fellowship 

Jodi Klugman-Rabb, LMFT

NPE Only: After the Discovery

Right To Know 

Severance MagazineBEFORE YOU GO…

Look on our home page https://severancemag.comfor more articles about the NPE experience

• Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts.
• Let us know what you want to see in Severance. Send a message tobkjax@icloud.com
• Tell us your stories. See guidelines athttps://severancemag.com/submission-guidelines/
• If you’re an NPE, adoptee, or donor conceived person; a sibling of someone in one of these groups; or a helping professional (for example, a therapist or genetic genealogist) you’re welcome to join our private Facebook group athttps://www.facebook.com/groups/402792990448461
• And like us on Facebook athttps://www.facebook.com/severancemag and follow us on Twitter and Instagram @Severancemag

By Kara Rubinstein DeyerinUsually, when we think about people opening a Pandora’s box by taking a direct-to-consumer DNA test, we’re thinking about NPEs (not parent expected)—people who learn through such a test that their parent(s) is not genetically related to them. But now donor-conceived (DC) people are wondering if when they test they’re opening a different sort of Pandora’s box.

The decision in a legal case called Teuscher vs NW Cryobank in January 2020 caused some members of the DC community to pause before spitting into that little vial. If you’re considering a test for your DC child (under the age of 18), it’s important for you to know the ruling should not affect your decision.

First, let’s talk about terms. NPE is used here to broadly to include anyone who learns their parent(s) is not their genetic parent(s). This can be due to donor-conception, adoption, a tryst, or an assault. The term DC is used here because it’s the most widely used, even though the term “donor” conceived is very problematic. Most DC people were not conceived by a donation. Assisted reproduction is an industry. People were paid for their sperm or eggs. A better term hasn’t emerged yet. “Donor” disguises the complex issues that arise from creating a human in this fashion. Maybe “dealer conceived” is better if we try to stick with the DC initials. But I digress.

A short overview of the facts of the Teuscher case: Danielle Teuscher gave birth to a daughter after conceiving with the use of sperm (Donor #2744) purchased from NW Cryobank. She specifically requested an open ID donor so her child at 18 years old could know who her genetic father was. When her daughter was four, Teuscher purchased a direct-to-consumer DNA test with 23andMe to learn about her daughter’s genetic health factors as well as her ethnicity. While men who sell their sperm to fertility clinics are asked questions regarding their genetics (health and ethnicity), there are plenty of examples of misinformation or omission of information. In today’s legal climate, there are no consequences for such actions. As a mother, Teuscher should be allowed to have access to all of her daughter’s medical information to make informed decisions about her daughter’s health.

When the results arrived, her daughter matched with a close relative, likely a grandmother, who indicated she was open to contact by her matches. When Teuscher reached out to the possible grandmother, the match responded that she was unaware of Teuscher’s daughter’s existence and requested no further contact. Teuscher did not contact the grandmother again.

Shortly thereafter, as reported here previously, Teuscher received a “cease-and-desist” letter from NW Cryobank. The company demanded she stop reaching out to the donor and his family, as this was in violation of her contract. To add insult to injury, it also informed her she would no longer have access to its sibling registry and the other vials of sperm she’d purchased for future use. NW Cryobank seized Teuscher’s stored sperm because it believed she had violated the terms of the contract by connecting with Donor #2744’s family and, therefore, the remaining terms of the contract were void. Teuscher sued NW Cryobank to ensure Donor #2744 remained classified as an Open ID, since that was the term under which she purchased that specific sperm. She also wanted to regain access to the stored sperm, to Donor’s #2744 medical updates, and to the sibling registry. This case was brought in Spokane, Washington in Federal Court because that’s where NW Cryobank is physically located.

On January 31, 2020, Judge Thomas Rice ruled on the case. He dismissed Teuscher’s claims for emotional distress and violation of the Washington Consumer Protection Act for changing Donor #2744’s status after use of his sperm. However, the judge did not rule on claims for violations of the contract due to the seizure of the sperm Teuscher purchased for future use as well as all claims for wrongdoings against her daughter. This leaves the case open for Teuscher to argue for her daughter’s rights under the Consumer Protection Act and against what essentially is the seizure of her property. This case still is in the beginning stage and has many rulings to come. Once the judge has ruled on all claims made by Teuscher and her daughter, Teuscher may decide whether to appeal any of the rulings.

An appeal of the Consumer Protection Act ruling would benefit the DC community since NW Cryobank acted outside the scope of the contract by adding a penalty—the seizure of the stored sperm—that was not specifically outlined in the agreement. Leaving the verdict as is may embolden fertility clinics to add additional penalties for any similar breaches in the future.

Our legal system in the US is a common law system and, therefore, relies on court precedent in future decisions. When a person brings an action for breach of contract because one side added a penalty that was not enumerated in the contract, the judge will rely on previous judicial rulings with similar facts. Each side will cite prior cases to bolster its argument on why it should win. Both sides will also try and differentiate their cases from prior cases where the ruling does not support their arguments.

While there are many ways to differentiate this verdict, going to court is expensive. If Teuscher appeals her case and wins, this would let fertility clinics know they must remain strictly within the terms of the contract. In addition, NW Cryobank changed the donor’s designation after the contract was signed. If a seller in any other type of business acted in such a manner, it would be considered an unfair business practice.

So why did the judge’s ruling lead people to wonder whether DC children younger than 18 could still legally take a direct-to-consumer DNA test? Many are afraid of repercussions from the fertility clinic if they purchase tests for their DC children. The heart of the ruling is the judge’s discussion of whether Teuscher’s contract was unconscionable. A contract is unconscionable if it is so one-sided that one party has no real bargaining power or if some part of the contract is so unjust that it shocks the sensibilities of the court and society. Right to Know believes a contract such as that offered Teuscher is unconscionable.

Here’s what the judge had to say.

First, consider the bargaining power side of the discussion. The judge indicated that while Teuscher may have lacked bargaining power, the contract was simple, she had time to review it, she didn’t have to purchase the sperm, and she could purchase sperm elsewhere. Because she had a “meaningful” choice, could have consulted an attorney, and chose to enter into the contract, the judge found the contract was not unconscionable due to one-sided bargaining power. His discussion of the issues shows how little he understands infertility and the fertility industry. This could be pointed out in future cases to differentiate his ruling.

Those who are unable to conceive but who desire to have children may go to great lengths and spend thousands of dollars to find a way to have a child. Teuscher didn’t have a choice about whether to use fertility services because she wanted to have a child and was unable to do so without such services. Most, if not all, fertility contracts utilize the same language, restrictions, and penalties in their contracts. If Teuscher indeed had purchased her sperm from another fertility clinic, the contract likely would have been the same. This means consumers/buyers have no real choice when deciding to use the services of a fertility clinic. We must educate our lawmakers so they have a meaningful understanding of these issues.

If any part of Teuscher’s contract is so unfair that we as a society would say it goes against the public good, it would be considered unconscionable and, therefore, void. We are making humans here. A person has the right to know their genetic identity and history. In the world of adoption, over the years we’ve come to understand it’s in the best interest of children to know they are adopted as well know their genetic identities. Why should this be any different for DC children? The judge does not understand the psychological ramifications of not knowing where you come from.

The judge states, “The promise to honor the donor’s privacy interests is clearly reasonable given the contact.” But is it? Anyone who’s taken a direct-to-consumer DNA test knows you can figure out who matches are with little effort because even if your father hasn’t done a DNA test, it’s likely his uncle’s cousin has. With this information, you can determine your own matches. The court obviously does not understand this shift. And neither do fertility clinics. For the health and well-being of the child, we must move toward “open” use of sperm and eggs, because it is no longer possible to remain anonymous—that cat’s out of the bag.

The ruling states a DC child can discover genetically relevant medical information without seeking ancestry or other information that would destroy anonymity. Clearly, the judge does not understand how these tests work. You cannot separate medical and ancestral information. What is ancestral information? Teuscher’s daughter’s ethnicity? Clearly she should be entitled to this information. It’s likely the judge meant knowing who her relatives are when he referred to “ancestral information.” If a fertility clinic tries to rely on Judge Rice’s opinion here, opposing counsel should be able to easily differentiate the new case from Teuscher’s, since the judge’s language and use of terminology is not clear.

The judge’s ruling finds that Teuscher should not have reached out to the grandmother match since she agreed to not contact Donor #2744 directly or indirectly, but she had every right to the genetic information available. This means if you have a DC child, you can use a direct-to-consumer DNA test for your child. However, you cannot reach out to their relative matches. Remember, it’s only the parent(s) who are parties to fertility contracts, not the children. When a child is younger than 18, the parent is legally responsible for the child’s actions. When DC children become 18, they can reach out to any matches.

If we think Teuscher should have the right to reach out to her daughter’s relatives, then we need to change the laws to reflect this. At this time, the fertility industry remains relatively unregulated. There are no consequences for donor or fertility clinic fraud, which leaves DC children and their parents—as well as anyone seeking services from a fertility clinic—vulnerable. If someone lies about the color of a car they are selling, it’s not that big a deal. But if a seller lies about a medical problem and then sells his sperm and creates a child who develops a medical issue, that is a big deal. Parents using fertility services must have access to accurate information and all of the information our technologically advanced society can provide regarding donors and assurances they are receiving the agreed-upon goods.

Let’s not forget what we are talking about—the creation of human beings. We must do better as a society. We must work to change our laws to ensure the DC community has access to all relevant information and that there are consequences for failures to disclose, for providing false information, and for improper handling of specimens.

So, go ahead and open a Pandora’s box. See if you should be wearing lederhosen or a dashiki and find out what those health reports have to say.By Kara Rubinstein Deyerin, co-founder of Right To Know, a nonprofit organization that educates the public and professionals on the complexities of the intersection of genetic information, identity, and family dynamics. It advocates for people whose genetic parent is not their supportive parent—not the person who raised them or their legal parent.

By B.K. JacksonIf keeping a secret—or being a secret—feels detrimental to your physical or mental health, it’s not your imagination. The expression “toxic secrets” is neither hyperbole nor a figure of speech. Researchers increasingly are learning that secrets place a profound burden on mental and physical health.

It appears it’s neither the secret itself nor the act of concealing it in social situations that contributes to the burden, but rather it’s the psychic energy secrecy requires. It’s a pain that plays out in private. Researchers at Columbia University who have been studying the effect of secrets found that the degree to which secrets affect well-being is related to the frequency with which the mind wanders to them, suggesting that it’s the ruminating about secrets that’s damaging. This was true regardless of the significance or importance of the secret. Any secret that’s preoccupying—frequently turned over and over in the mind—researchers discovered, diminishes wellbeing. In other words, it’s not keeping secrets that hurts, according to Michael Slepian, PHD, lead researcher of the Columbia studies, “it’s having them.”

And what most causes people to obsess about their secrets? In a study called “Shame, Guilt, and Secrets on the Mind,” published in the journal Emotion, Slepian* and his colleagues surveyed 1,000 participants about feelings of shame and guilt associated with their secrets. They also asked survey respondents how often they thought about and concealed their secrets each day in the prior month. Perhaps surprisingly, study participants spent less time concealing than they did dwelling on their secrets, and it was shame rather than guilt that caused the greatest amount of daydreaming about secrets.

When it comes to family secrets brought to light by DNA testing, there may be shame on both sides of the equation—on the secret keeper and the secret discoverer. And the secret discoverer often is pressed to become a secret keeper. NPEs who have uncovered family secrets through DNA tests frequently feel consumed and shamed by those secrets, making them particularly vulnerable to the ill-effects of secrecy. Many of us have been asked, or feel obligated, to keep secrets surrounding our conception. In most cases, those who ask us to keep secrets do so out of shame about actions they took many years ago and fear that exposure of those actions will deepen their shame and bring it into the light. And those who feel obligated not to expose another’s shame often have been made to feel shame themselves. Further, feelings of worthlessness, smallness, and powerlessness and a history of a traumatic experience, say researchers, make people more likely to feel shame. It’s a perfect storm for NPEs, pointing to the need to address the harm that may be associated with secrecy.

“It hurts to keep secrets,” Slepian writes in Scientific American. “Secrecy is associated with lower-well-being, worse heath, and less satisfying relationships. Research has linked secrecy to increased anxiety, depression, symptoms of poor health, and even the more rapid progression of disease,” he continues. In addition, attention to one’s secret can cause diminished attention where it’s needed, such as on one’s work tasks, resulting in reduced efficiency and performance. And a study by Ahmet Uysal and Qian Lu found that self-concealment is associated with chronic and acute pain.

It’s not surprising, Slepian concludes, that it’s exhausting to maintain secrecy. He and his colleagues looked at the way in which secrets are experienced as physical burdens and how that affect perception of physical tasks. They found that people preoccupied with secrets feel as if they’re being weighed down. They perceive hills to be higher and distances to be longer than they are. In another study, his team looked at the link between secrets and fatigue. “Thinking of one’s secrecy serves as a reminder that the secret conflicts with one’s social goals, highlights one’s social isolation with regard to the secret, and results in an unpleasant subjective experience of fatigue,” they concluded. “Thus, secrecy—the commitment to conceal information from others—can be fatiguing even during moments when one is not engaging in active concealment.” Much of that fatigue, they found, was linked with social isolation.

And ruminating about secrets, Slepian adds, providers a constant reminder of one’s complicity in secrecy, causing the secret holder to feel disingenuous, inauthentic, and socially isolated.

It’s probably safe to say there’s a cost both to keeping and revealing secrets. When pondering whether to keep a secret concerning your origins, a strong argument is that it’s your story to tell. Keeping it to yourself not only prevents you from feeling authentically yourself, but also may diminish your self-esteem. Living inauthentically is associated with reduced life satisfaction. A second compelling argument is that not telling may be damaging to your health. Relieving yourself of the burden of the secret is likely to cause you to ruminate on it less, thus relieving the strain.

If you’re weighing whether to reveal a secret or are debating with yourself about whether you’re entitled to reveal it, it’s important to consider the effect it’s having on your physical and emotional health. But while sharing one’s secrets may be a boon to mental and physical well-being, it’s also necessary to be mindful of, and work to mitigate, the potential damage revelation of secrets can cause. It requires planning and sensitivity to avoid rupturing relationships—a consequence that can have still further repercussions to your mental and physical health—and you might benefit from the help of a counselor before broadly revealing your secret.

In a future article, we’ll look at experts’ advice about deciding when and how to reveal secrets and strategies for reducing harm. In the meantime, however, consider that even disclosing to one trusted individual may relieve you of the burden of your secret, according to Slepian’s research. “Confiding a secret,” he explained in Scientific American, “can feel cathartic and relieving. But mere catharsis is not enough. When confiding a secret, what is actually helpful is the conversation that follows. People report that when sharing a secret with another person, they often receive emotional support, useful guidance, and helpful advice.” It just takes that one conversation, he insists, to ease your mind. Consider first the consequences of sharing to even one person, and if you do share, be sure it’s to someone you believe will be discreet, understanding, and supportive.

Writing on MentalHelp.net, Allan Schwartz, PhD, LCSW, says, “I’ve always maintained that there are few secrets that are so dangerous that they cannot stand being brought out into the open, where they suddenly lose the evil and dark air that once surrounded them.”

*Learn more about research by Slepian and his colleagues at www.keepingsecrets.org. Take a brief survey in order to access the research.

Read more about secrets here.

By B.K. JacksonThe 1953 discovery of DNA’s double helix and the 2003 completion of the Human Genome Project not only have transformed medicine but also have led to the advent of direct-to-consumer DNA testing, an unforeseen consequence of which has been that many people who test unearth long-buried family secrets.

I’m one of them. When I was an infant, my parents divorced and my mother disappeared without a trace, so I’m well acquainted with the yearning for an unknown parent. I felt abandoned anew when, 50 years later, a test revealed that I’ve never known either of my genetic parents—that my father wasn’t my father. At the same time, I discovered I’m Italian, not Russian; my family was Catholic, not Jewish; and my fear of the cancers rampant in my father’s family was unfounded.

My story—at least the second chapter—isn’t unique. A 2019 PEW Research Center survey found that 27% of home DNA test users discover unknown close relatives. Of these, those whose tests reveal misattributed parentage are known as NPEs—a name referring to the circumstances of conception—a non-paternity event or not-parent-expected.

These surprising results and their ripple effects illustrate what Libby Copeland, in her new book on the subject, The Lost Family, calls the “profound and disruptive power of DNA testing.”

Devastated to learn they have no genetic connection to their kin, many NPEs, like adoptees, become desperate to identify and contact their biological families. Some are welcomed into the fold, while others are ignored or spurned. Some, shockingly, are rejected even by the families in which they were raised.

This NPE experience, often hidden in the dark and shrouded in silence, must be brought into the light and made the subject of conversation. Why is this important? Because we can extrapolate from adoption research that identity confusion, stress, and rejection can render NPEs, like adoptees, vulnerable to potentially severe emotional turmoil and increased risks for depression, addiction, and other behavioral health issues. Discussion will bring much-needed attention to the dearth of resources and trained professionals needed to help them cope. And further, because with greater public awareness of the emotional impact, families—rather than close the door on NPEs—might be better able to respond empathetically and, thus, mitigate trauma.

When we receive unexpected DNA results, boughs of our family trees break. Our heritage evaporates. We’re not who we thought we were and we don’t know where we come from. We grieve for the families we may never know, yet this grief goes unacknowledged, as if it isn’t legitimate.

Like adoptees, we may suffer from genealogical bewilderment, a condition described in 1952 by psychiatrist E. Wellish as the alienation resulting from being disconnected from biological relatives. A relationship to one’s genealogy, he said, is “an inalienable and entitled right of every person.” The right to know one’s parents is also recognized as fundamental by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. 

And yet, about our new DNA status we’re routinely asked: What difference does it make?

That roughly 30 million people have taken DNA tests to discover their heritage and millions more are obsessed with genealogy is proof that people care—deeply—about where they come from. If blood ties didn’t matter, parents would take home a random infant from the nursery; instead they choose the newborn who carries their genes. But NPEs are expected not to care about DNA.

Adding to the trauma of shattered identity may be the pain of rejection. Because most NPEs are born of affairs or donor conceptions, when they reach out to biological family members they may expose long-guarded secrets and repressed shame. Fathers may reject their offspring for fear they’ll expose their infidelities or donor status, and siblings may want nothing to do with children conceived under these circumstances. But NPEs didn’t choose how they came into the world.

It’s true that people on the other end of this experience—those approached out of the blue by strangers—may also feel blindsided. It’s understandable, but is it an excuse to deprive people of their birthright?

It raises a fundamental question about whose rights are paramount and what responsibilities come with creating a human being. Are individuals entitled to secrecy when secret keeping affects the wellbeing of others and denies their truth? When paternity is established at birth, fathers are morally and legally responsible for their children; to reject such responsibility is actionable and considered contemptible. But the passage of time gives men a pass to pretend their children don’t exist.

Before DNA tests became available, I discovered and was welcomed by six brothers and sisters—my mother’s children. When later, through a DNA test, I discovered I was an NPE, it took an agonizing 18 months to discover who my biological father was and learn he’d been survived by a son. I wrote to this half-brother, asking only if he’d share a photograph of our father, tell me about him, and advise me about any preventable risks for heritable diseases. This is all most NPEs want.

To some degree, I understand my brother’s disinterest and failure to reply. Unlike me, he had nothing at stake. Yet I wonder what it would have cost him to respond—how he could have been unmoved by my request. I find it hard to believe a grown man might be so disturbed by his father’s unfaithfulness that he’d reject a sister. Perhaps, like many, he erroneously believes DNA results are unreliable. But the science behind DNA testing is unassailable. And since I enclosed a photograph of myself, he couldn’t have failed to see an unmistakable resemblance. I know that likeness exists because I was lucky enough to find cousins willing to give me what my brother would not. Their eager embrace and kindliness were healing and lifechanging. Thanks to them, I saw a photograph of my father—my own face looking back at me. These cousins could have shut the door on me; instead they gave me the gift of my own truth.

It’s possible that the ball on what Copeland calls “the roulette wheel of some unexpected revelation” may land on you or someone close to you. If an unknown relative contacts you or your family, consider that if you’ve seen your father’s face, you can’t imagine what it means to her to never have had that opportunity. Consider, too, that she’s not responsible for the circumstances of her conception and is without shame or blame. Ask yourself, if the tables were turned, wouldn’t you feel as if you’d been sucker-punched? If you learned you had a father whose name and face you didn’t know, wouldn’t you want to find him? If your religion was no longer your religion and your ethnicity no longer what you believed it to be, wouldn’t you feel adrift? If happened to you, wouldn’t you hope your biological family would respond with empathy and grace?

This isn’t to say you owe her a relationship. But the only decent, compassionate response is to acknowledge your genetic connection and provide a medical history. It’s the least a human being should expect from a blood relative. Understand that DNA matters to her, as it does to everyone else.B.K. JacksonBEFORE YOU GO…

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Any surprise can be traumatic, but a DNA surprise raises one of life’s most fundamental questions: Who am I? Your very identity is made up of your memories, your shared stories, and experiences with family and friends. When you find out that something is not true, or not exactly true, it is a major shock to your emotional system.It is easy to tell yourself, “This is no big deal. I should be able to handle this.” But “handling something” is a process. And that process may involve feeling upset and expressing various emotions. Like any trauma, the emotional reactions can come in waves and when you least expect them. You and your family members both may minimize your experience by emphasizing you had good parents, you shouldn’t be upset, or even that you’re being selfish by looking for answers. I tell people that I don’t know what qualifies as an overreaction to news that changes your understanding of your world. Your reaction is not a sign of emotional weakness—it’s a sign that you are in touch with reality enough that you react when reality changes. I suggest you accept your reactions, your feelings, as being there. Accept that they are what you need to feel in the moment. There’s no need to try changing them—that doesn’t work anyway. You need to work through the process.There can be depression, with low mood and irritability, loss of appetite, difficulty sleeping, poor concentration, and an inability to focus on work. There might be anger. Part of what makes this kind of trauma so difficult is that you might think it’s not really that big of a deal—others have it worse. And it’s true, others have it worse. But trauma is not a contest—you can have all the emotions anyway. You are not weak.Yes. Sometimes you just can’t process everything at once and you will feel disoriented and unable to concentrate. The news can be so big that it’s like your circuits are overloaded.Yes. Research has shown for many years that stressful life events (both good stress and bad stress) have an impact on our health. It is important that you allow yourself to experience your emotions and not waste energy on fighting them. You might look at the Holmes-Rahe Stress Inventory.It’s important to accept our reactions as normal. The more we fight them or argue that there’s something wrong with us for reacting, the longer it will take to move forward, the longer it will take to heal. Journaling can be immensely helpful. Write down what you’re feeling, even if it seems extreme or overly dramatic. It isn’t. It’s the reality of what you are feeling in the moment. Meditation can be helpful, but if you can’t slow your mind down, that’s ok. Notice and accept that your mind is racing. If you’re able to exercise, that’s a great way of dealing with stress and clearing the mind. Reaching out to understanding friends is important. And there’s a large community online going through similar things. (Use the Resources tab on the Severance home page to find some of these.)I encourage people to move slowly in the process—think of yourself as writing a novel. What information do you need to make the characters more interesting, to make them sympathetic. Is there a way that you can make their behavior understandable? For example, a teenage girl that became pregnant in the past may not have been allowed much say in whether or not to keep the baby or put the child up for adoption. Going back even further in time, a single female may not have had the opportunity to earn a living wage and therefore couldn’t provide for a child. A father may not have known of a child’s existence. There are many more examples I can give. On the other hand, what you learn now becomes part of your story and, if you’re someone reading this, you’re likely the kind of person that wants to know your whole story. Being understanding and sympathetic toward others doesn’t mean you don’t have the right to experience your own emotions, though.

The most important thing is to take care of yourself. Ask yourself what you, yourself, need. Try to find a way to meet that need, but keep in mind you can’t control other people.

Therapy can be very helpful at any point in the process. A good therapist helps you reflect on who you are and who you want to be. Ultimately, you are the author of your story, no matter how many plot twists get added to that story. I would consider therapy necessary and would encourage you to seek help if you’re having symptoms of depression or trauma—low mood, irritability, sleep or appetite problems, inability to concentrate, relationship problems.Searching for answers can be all-consuming. We live in an age in which we can binge-watch on Netflix and learn the answer to a mystery on a television show within hours. When it comes to family mysteries, we have search engines, DNA, and genealogy services. There’s a lot we can learn quickly. But definitive answers can take a long time. Others may not understand our obsession—even others affected by the discovery of a family secret may not care like you do. It’s a very personal thing. It’s important to keep in mind that we can’t necessarily find answers quicker by working harder. As an example, I have spent two years searching for my grandfather’s birth parents. I found his likely father fairly quickly, but could find nothing on his mother. I gave up for a while and came back to the search and found I had earlier ruled out a group of people for some reason. This group has turned out to offer my best leads in my search. It’s important to take care of yourself. Meditate, exercise, sleep, stay in touch with your friends, get out of the house. All of these things will make your search more efficient. Taking care of yourself helps you think more clearly. All of these strategies are part of accepting our humanity, accepting that we don’t control how our bodies and minds react. This includes accepting that other people may be doing their best—we just don’t always know their stories, why they react the way they do. We need to take care of ourselves so we don’t lose ourselves in the process.Keep in mind that what you find in the search will trigger all kinds of emotions. You may find people who share DNA with you, but nothing else. A newfound relative may have no interest in a relationship, or on the other hand, may want more of your time and energy than you want to give. It’s a process, and you may not know what you want until you start finding answers to the secret, until you find these relatives. Don’t assume they’ll want the same things you do. Also, it’s important to keep asking yourself: “What is it I really want? What am I searching for? What values of mine will this search, and its possible answers, satisfy?”We are all ultimately seeking connection and belonging. Unfortunately, life is not clean. We don’t all fit into perfectly designed family trees. It’s estimated that 7% of Americans are adopted or in foster care. Add on top of that all the individuals who grew up in a “nuclear” family but were conceived outside of the marriage or through donors. That’s a huge percentage of us. It is important that we work to remove the stigma of this. We didn’t choose how we came into this world. It’s important that we not stigmatize ourselves. We are just as legitimate as anyone else.

We also need to keep in mind that we may be rejected by newfound biological parents. We need to keep our fantasies in check. These biological relatives are human beings, with strengths and with flaws, just like everyone else. Other people may not understand our need to search and they may have no desire to know the answers themselves. We need to accept that.

Greg Markway, PhD, is a clinical psychologist in St. Louis, Missouri. He became interested in genetic genealogy while searching for the roots of his grandfather, who came to Missouri from New York on an orphan train in 1896.

Read more about shock and trauma related to DNA surprises here and here, and return to the home page for more articles about genetic identity.

BEFORE YOU GO…

• Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts.
• Let us know what you want to see in Severance. Send a message to bkjax@icloud.com
• Tell us your stories. See guidelines at https://severancemag.com/submission-guidelines/
• If you’re an NPE, adoptee, or donor conceived person; a sibling of someone in one of these groups; or a helping professional (for example, a therapist or genetic genealogist) you’re welcome to join our private Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/402792990448461
• And like us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/severancemag and follow us on Twitter and Instagram @Severancemag

Three NPEs have teamed to form Right to Know (RTK), a nonprofit organization in Washington state to advocate for the rights of NPEs, which it defines broadly as all people directly affected by misattributed parentage, including adoptees, donor-conceived (DC) people, and individuals conceived during an affair, assault, or tryst.

Kara Deyerin, a nonpracticing attorney, Gregory Loy, an active duty Navy human resource manager stationed in Oak Harbor, Washington, and Alesia Weiss, a retired RN and military veteran have outlined and begun to set in motion an aggressive set of initiatives, each based on the fundamental premise—supported by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child—that everyone has the right to know one’s genetic identity.RTK, says Deyerin, has a two-pronged mission, the first and foremost of which is education—both for the public and NPEs. The organization wants to illuminate the public about what it means to be an NPE and what NPEs experience. It aims to give them a realistic picture of who NPEs are and engender understanding about the complexities of the intersection of genetic information, identity, and family dynamics. At the same time, it seeks to educate NPEs about the emotional and legal issues that may arise in the wake of a DNA surprise and help provide solutions.

When—after learning that the man she believed to be her father was not genetically related—Deyerin investigated her rights as an NPE. She was shocked to realize that she had none. That discovery drove the second part of RTK’s mission: to advocate for NPEs’ rights so that they will have what they need to heal and move forward.

The first step in setting this mission in motion is securing the funds to kickstart its initiatives, so Deyerin, Loy, and Weiss are in the process of seeking grant monies. At the same time, RTK is developing a series of conferences to be held in different locations across the country, each event, says Deyerin, designed to triage NPEs’ behavioral health issues, create a roadmap for the creation and provision of appropriate services, and build consensus about NPE rights. They’ve established four goals on which these events will focus:

1. to establish access for NPEs to their identity (heritage and medical information);
2. to safeguard access to records, specifically for adoptees and DC people, and ensure those records are held in perpetuity;
3. to enact laws based on evidence-based practices so that the rights of the child will be primary; and
4. to establish a knowledge base for NPEs that will allow them to confidently choose behavioral health clinicians.

Key to NPE wellness are increased awareness of the emotional consequences of discovering one’s NPE status, the development of adequate behavioral health strategies, and the availability of providers. Therefore, those are the cornerstones of RTK’s conference objectives. Since the number of NPEs is growing as a result of the increased use of direct-to-consumer DNA testing, the number of people seeking help will grow proportionately, says Deyerin. But there isn’t adequate information about what they should look for in a counselor or what treatment options are available. She and Weiss hope that through these conferences they can create a framework by identifying the information needed and developing connections so NPEs can find professionals to help them through their NPE journeys.

“We want to collect evidence from NPEs about their experiences as well as evidence from clinicians about their treatment options,” says Deyerin. “Then we’ll fold that into some data that can be used for real evidence-based planning rather than just shooting in the dark.”

To further develop awareness about the challenges NPEs face and build resources to assist them, RTK will also network with, and invite to the conferences, individuals from variety of disciplines—such as physicians, psychologists, and social workers—reaching out to them through their professional and credentialing associations.

Beyond the conferences, RTK will also educate NPEs and the public through grassroots outreach on its home turf in Washington, exploring one-on-one opportunities; spreading the word in group settings, for example, making presentations to local groups, genealogy societies, libraries, and medical groups; publishing articles; and creating brochures and other educational materials. Weiss, who excels in networking and developing strong personal relationships, envisions developing “coffee and conversation” meetings. “Maybe I or someone in our group would host in a particular legislative area,” she says. “It could be over lunch in someone’s home or at Starbucks, and we can use it as an opportunity to share with them and update them about what we’re doing.”

The message that weaves throughout all this outreach is that anonymity for sperm donors and parents relinquishing a child for adoption is a thing of the past, that secrets pertaining to NPEs can’t be kept in the closet, that genetic identity is an inviolable right.The second prong of RTK’s mission is to advocate for NPEs and create legislation that establishes and protects their rights. While—thanks to the efforts of adoptee advocates—it’s become well-accepted over time that adoptees should be told about their origins from the start, the need for that same transparency for NPEs and DC offspring is not recognized. Research concerning the mental health of adoptees has demonstrated that secrecy is harmful and has established best practices that need to be extended to NPEs. Therefore, RTK’s goal is to demand rights for NPEs and DC offspring through legislation. Its primary initial goal is to enact a law similar to one recently passed in Texas to combat fertility fraud. Senate Bill 1259—introduced by state Senator Joan Huffman and spearhead by Eve Wiley, who learned that her biological father was her mother’s fertility doctor—makes it a criminal offense for a fertility doctor to use his own sperm to inseminate a patient.

In order to gain traction for the introduction of such a law, RTK must spread awareness about its importance. A lot of people, Deyerin says, are unaware that it’s not illegal for a doctor to use his own sperm to inseminate patients. “When you talk to people who aren’t NPEs about this,” she adds, “their first response is ‘well, duh! Of course that should be illegal. It’s not?’” RTK is now trying to find a legislator in Washington to help introduce this fertility fraud legislation. And Weiss and Deyerin are working with a developer to create an app that identifies users’ legislators and will populate a pre-written but customizable email message with which to reach lawmakers and advocate for change.

Equally important is to introduce legislation to eliminate other types of fertility fraud, such as misrepresentations by fertility clinics and by donors. RTK wants to make sure there are consequences in Washington for those who commit fertility fraud, and branch out from there to push for these laws in other states. Eventually, RTK would like to have chapters in various states advocating for NPE rights throughout the U.S.

Another target for legal challenges concerns birth certificates. Deyerin’s identity crisis led her to think about changing her birth certificate. “I felt that if my kids, grandkids, and great grandkids wanted to see their heritage and know their medical information, having that documentation would be paramount.” But she had no idea how complicated a prospect that is until she began researching. According to Washington’s new Uniform Parentage Act, it may be possible for NPEs to change their birth certificates if all parties involved—the parents on the birth certificate and the biological parents—agree. “It’s a new and tentative thing under the act—a possibility but not necessarily guaranteed,” says Deyerin. On the other hand, the act denies this right to DC individuals, preventing them from ever including their genetic identity on their birth certificates—a prohibition she calls heinous.

“What prompted me [to work to change the law] was looking at the existing laws and realizing, because my birth father is deceased and his family isn’t willing to share information, that I have no rights to my medical information and heritage and no paper trail to create for my descendants to be able to find that information. So I felt that it was time to make a change in those areas.”

“We came together and had an epiphany about working together and seeing if we can get something done in Washington state, Weiss says. “We’ve given ourselves a five-year window, and we’re in it for the long haul. We’re going to keep moving forward and see what we can do.”  There aren’t many people advocating for NPEs and their rights, says Deyerin. “So we both feel it’s a hole that needs to be filled and we want to step in to make sure that—eventually—the next people who learn about their NPE status have tools to go forward and heal themselves.Weiss and Deyerin are starting small but thinking big and aiming high. Their desire, Deyerin concludes, is to set in motion the butterfly effect. “We want to make a strong change locally and have a big effect elsewhere. We’ll start in our area, gain some common best practices, and put those in a structure other chapters can open and use in their own states.” Eventually, she says, “this one snowflake can roll into a giant snowball and we can eventually see change across the United States.”There are a number of ways you can support RTK’s vision. Of course, there’s always a need for funds to support the organization’s initiatives, so donations are welcome. All money goes directly in support of promoting the main goal—ensuring the fundamental right to know one’s genetic identity. In addition, you can write to legislators, meet with lawmakers to educate them about NPE issues, and help in a variety of ways with the upcoming conferences. Visit RTK’s website and select the “Get Involved” menu item. And behavioral health professionals who wish to help the team develop the conference and contribute to data collection about NPE issues should send a message to righttoknowus@gmail.com.

Facebook groups and virtual support groups can be lifesavers, but nothing beats face-to-face time with people who know how you feel and have been where you’ve been. That’s why Erin Cosentino and Cindy McQuay have begun organizing retreats for adoptees, late discovery adoptees, donor conceived (DC) people, and NPEs (not parent expected) at which participants can get to know each other and share their experiences in a relaxed setting while learning from experts about the issues that challenge them. It’s not therapy, but it may be equally healing, and undoubtedly more fun.

Since the day that Cosentino, 44, discovered at 42 that her father was not the man who raised her, her mantra has been “Nothing has changed, yet everything has changed.” McQuay, 56, has known her entire life she had been adopted. Both married with children and busy schedules, each devotes considerable time to advocating for people with concerns related to genetic identity and helping searchers look for biological family. And each runs a private Facebook group, Cosentino’s NPE Only: After the Discovery, and McQuay’s Adoptees Only: Found/Reunion The Next Chapter.

Among her advocacy efforts, McQuay, who describes herself as a jack of all trades, helps adoptees locate the forms necessary to obtain original birth certificates (OBCs). A strong voice for adoptee rights, she strives to enlighten non-adoptees about the often unrecognized harsh realities of adoption, helping them understand that “not all adoptions are rainbows and unicorns.” Countering the dominant narrative, she’s quick to point out that adoptees “were not chosen, we were just next in line.”

Cosentino and McQuay first encountered each other when they were among 30 participants at an afternoon meet-up in Philadelphia last March. “It was an awesome experience to be able to see and hug these people with whom we’d formed deep bonds over the Internet,” says Cosentino. “We loved that we were able to meet up with others, but felt that there simply wasn’t enough time to share with each other.” Further, she says, McQuay felt slightly out of place because she was the only adoptee in attendance and the agenda was geared more toward NPEs.

After the meeting, a group of attendees went out to dinner and Cosentino and McQuay began to talk about the possibility of creating a retreat. As a special educator, Cosentino says her go-to is always to teach, so planning a retreat where people affected by separation from biological family could gather and “learn and grow while healing” seemed like a great idea. Over the course of the dinner conversation, they’d decided to plan something longer and more inclusive, and, thus, says Cosentino, “the idea for the New Jersey Shore Round Table Retreat was born.”

They designed a program that would include all people facing identity loss and address their issues. It was important to McQuay, for example, to “make sure NPEs, LDAs, and DC people knew what adoptees have been living their entire lives”—how they’ve spent their lifetimes searching for familiarity in strangers’ faces, about the frustrations associated with the laws pertaining to OBCs, and the trauma and loss they’ve experienced.

Their inaugural retreat was held in Brigantine, New Jersey in October 2019 and was attended by 18 women and one man. “We initially and quite simply wanted more time together. We felt we wanted to provide a space where we could all—NPEs, DCs, adoptees, and LDAs—be together and share our experiences,” says Cosentino. The lone man attending felt fortunate to take part but wishes more men would take the opportunity to attend. According to McQuay, “Men may be hesitant to open up, but would be surprised to learn that the retreats are not women-specific. They contain activities that benefit everyone.

At the same time, they wanted to delve deeper into the trauma often experienced in the wake of the revelation of family secrets and so invited Susannah Spanton—a Reiki master and Bio-Energy practitioner as well as a trauma trainer at Lakeside Global Institute, which provides trauma-informed training—to speak about how the body responds and adapts to trauma. According to Cosentino, “Trauma changes a person, but we all respond differently to trauma. It’s a very individual experience. So we focused on asking thought-provoking questions and sharing meals, lots of laughs, and some tears as well. We just wanted to be around people who get it.” In addition, they broke up into smaller groups where they explored hard questions and also enjoyed time for meditation and reflection.Now they’re branching out and planning additional retreats—for starters, a spring 2020 gathering in Brigantine (with half the 30 spots already booked by previous attendees) and an autumn 2020 retreat, tentatively scheduled to take place in Pennsylvania’s Poconos, where participants can enjoy the mountains and the fall foliage. “We can’t help but think of the quote (from an unknown source)—‘Autumn shows us how beautiful it is to let things go,’—and it really is the perfect backdrop to heal, grow, and maybe not let go, but move forward,” says Cosentino. She and McQuay are open to the possibility of hosting retreats virtually anywhere if there’s a desire from people in other areas. Because Cosentino sits on the board of a cancer nonprofit organization for which she plans events in states remotely, it’s a seamless task for her.

The first gathering, says Cosentino, was their ‘guinea pig.’ “We learned from that first retreat what people liked and didn’t like, what they need, and even what they are not ready to experience. The second retreat will take a more therapeutic approach. “Our trauma specialist is returning, but we’ve enlisted the expertise of art and writing therapists as well—Elissa Arbeitman, MA ATR-BC and Chelsea Palermo, MFA—and a licensed social worker, Gina Daniel, DSW, LCSW, will be there as well to educate us on therapies that work for NPEs, adoptees, LDAs, and DC individuals.The most significant benefit to attendees, say McQuay and Cosentino, is togetherness. “We heal simply by being together in a safe place where we already know what the others are experiencing. But of equal importance and value is the opportunity to have trained professionals guide us through different therapies and approaches and provide strategies and opportunities to feel whole,” says Cosentino.

“The best thing was knowing you are not alone and being able to share and talk about your own personal story without judgment or someone saying ‘don’t worry, nothing has changed,’” says one attendee, Da Rhonda Roberts, a 56-year NPE and a human resources coordinator from Cherry Hill, New Jersey. “For me it changed a whole hell of a lot.” The trauma lecture was also informative and helpful for her not only for its relevance to genetic identity, but also because she’s a survivor of domestic violence. Many people with genetic identity loss have experienced other types of trauma, which may be amplified by the distress they experience after making difficult family discoveries, so strategies for addressing trauma are essential.

Not feeling alone was also a key takeaway for Heather Resto. A 39-year-old NPE from Connecticut whose older brother is also an NPE, she also credits the retreat with reassuring her that “it’s okay to feel everything I feel as a result of this discovery—anger, grief, shock, sadness, and joy connecting with new family.” The lecture on trauma, she says, validated her emotions. “There was something cathartic about sitting in a room with 17 other people going through the same thing. While our stories are all different and we’re all at different points in our journey to discovery, we are all connected as NPEs. We all get ‘it,’ while many people in our daily lives just don’t see how a discovery like this is traumatic and life changing,” Resto says.Learn more about the retreats at Hiraeth Hope & Healing, and join pertinent communities on Facebook: Cosentino’s group for NPEs, McQuay’s group for adoptees, and Severance’s group for anyone experiencing genetic identity issues.

Check back soon for more on how to start a retreat or symposium in your area.

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 B.K. JacksonWhen family secrets are unveiled by DNA tests or otherwise revealed, the secret discoverers and the secret keepers are faced with thorny decisions about whether to come clean about their secrets or double down on them. For each, the stakes are high. And with secrets related to genetic identity and origin stories, there may be many stakeholders and a ripple effect on many others individuals who might be deeply affected by the maintenance or divulgence of inconvenient truths.

If you’ve discovered, for example, that your mother has kept to herself the fact that you were conceived during a clandestine relationship, uncovering her affair is likely to trigger shock waves not only for you, but also for your social or birth-certificate father, your biological father, and all of their families. It might even affect your relationships with your significant other and your children. This is equally true if you’ve found that you’re a late-discovery adoptee or were donor conceived, the latter widening still further the ripple effect since the size of your biological family is potentially large and the revelations may be ongoing.

You may wrestle continually with whether to “come out” with your story knowing that in doing so, you will “out” someone else and there will be consequences. But because secrets pertaining to your origin story—to your truth—are fundamental and foundational, you may feel you have no choice. To not reveal your genetic identity may make you feel inauthentic or mired in a shame that isn’t yours.

Setting aside the issue of whose secret is it to tell and who has the right to open these hornets’ nests (we’ll get to that in another article), it may be in your best interest—in fact it may be essential to your well-being—to set the record straight. But unshrouding long-hidden truths is likely to trigger a cascade of reactions, including guilt, anger, shame, and feelings of betrayal, among all the parties involved. Whether families will withstand the impact or crack may depend on how the family skeletons are let loose.

The truth, it’s often said, will set you free, but there are ways of allowing the truth to come to light without leaving you with—as the song goes—“nothin’ left to lose.” Being mindful of the potential repercussions and talking about them may help reduce collateral damage.

There’s no right way to go about unburdening oneself of a secret, and when it comes to the consequences, every family is different, says Katy Barbier-Greenland, who studies family secrets as part of a PhD program based in sociology and psychology—Family Secrets, Secret Families. Inspired by the discovery of a major family secret of her own and a resulting fascination with the ways in which identity, secrecy, silence, stigma, taboo, knowledge, and power function in and around families, the project aims to explore how reproductive family secrets—those involving conception and birth—affect people’s lives. These include secret or hidden children, siblings, and half siblings; secret adoptions, surrogacy, donor conceptions; children conceived in ways seen as taboo; and misattributed or unanticipated parentage.

As part of her research, Barbier-Greenland interviewed adults about their secrets to “shed light on what these immensely personal and transformative life experiences mean for people, their identities, and their perspectives on families.” This research will provide a base that professionals can use to support individuals going through these difficult experiences.Barbier-Greenland sketches the two sides of the issue. “The adult child might think, ‘I don’t want to be dishonest anymore. I want to tell my story and begin to create my new identity. I want to search for my biological father and any siblings. I want to tell my kids the truth about our ancestry. I want to start to move on from the harm that secrecy has caused. I don’t want to lie about who I am anymore.” The parent, however, may think, “I don’t want to be exposed. I don’t want things to change. I don’t want to face negative reactions and judgment from others. I don’t want aspects of my private life made public.”

How is it possible to bridge the distance or meet in the middle?

It won’t be easy to move from secrecy to honesty after decades of suppressing the truth—even when there hasn’t been a “web of lies or active deceit and dishonesty,” says Barbier-Greenland.

All of her interviewees expressed the wish that they’d learned about family secrets earlier, “mostly so they could have developed relationships with family members earlier on in their lives and because their lives would have unfolded differently.” Still, they agree, it’s best not to rush into decisions. Preparation and support are key. It’s necessary for both sides to communicate with each other and work through the repercussions of revealing or keeping the secret. Each needs to know what’s at stake for the other and what needs to be overcome.

When debating disclosure of secrets, the determining factor should be more than merely “honesty is the best policy,” says Barbier-Greenland. It’s more complicated, she says, with much more to consider. “Some of my interviewees have spoken with their parents or family members immediately in sensitive and empathic ways and they’ve been able to find a positive way forward; some have tried to do the same but have had families completely shatter and relationships crumble.” It’s difficult to strike a balance, she adds, advising that it’s wise to take time to consider your way forward carefully and avoid making hasty decisions or sudden disclosures.

If there’s a positive relationship, for example, between an adult child who wants to be open about their origin story and a parent who doesn’t, she advises not rushing to disclose the secret. Although she acknowledges that everyone’s story is theirs to tell, she recommends proceeding cautiously and with patience and deliberation. “Given some time to get use to the idea, the secret keeper might be willing to be more open, and together you can find a way to understand each other’s needs and preferences and navigate this difficult time together.”

It would be helpful, she says, for the adult child who wants to be open to consider what’s gone into the secret-keeping—“how many years and how much of the parents’ identity may be wrapped up in this secret—and that unravelling it and sharing it with the world could have an immense impact on the parent.”

Take into account both how much their lives might be changed by opening this secret and be mindful of what the circumstances were in which the truth was hidden. Although sometimes secrets are kept for selfish reasons, says Barbier-Greenland, there are other reasons. “In doing this project, I’ve learned that compassion for secret keepers is of the utmost importance. People keep secrets for so many reasons, and it’s complex. Sometimes they keep secrets out of love, because they were obliged to, or they wanted to protect themselves or someone else.”

Further, societal taboos, stigma, and behavioral expectations might have been very different then than now, she observes.

On the other hand, the secret keepers must recognize that times have changed.

Decades of work concerning adoptees and donor conceived individuals have shown that understanding one’s biogenetic origins is essential to understanding oneself, says Barbier-Greenland. “It’s not everything, but it’s central. Since the 1990s, the literature globally has turned toward and recommended openness rather than secrecy in families and legislative and policy trends have shifted in response.”

Parents need to be aware of the reasons for this shift in understanding and realize that not knowing one’s origin story, or knowing it and not being able to share it, may be devastating. Learning that you aren’t quite who you thought you were and having to create a new identity will be an enormous and often painful hurdle, Barbier-Greenland observes. “Anger, anxiety, sadness, frustration—all these emotions are common, and the effects can be traumatic,” she says. “Discovering a family secret about your birth or conception is a transformative life experience and forces people to rewrite their life stories and reframe their identities and definitions of family. It impacts family relationships and can be utterly profound,” she says. It not only changes how you think about yourself and your future, she adds, but may even change how your children think about themselves and their future.

“People have to deal with the fact that close family members kept a major family secret from them as well as deal with the actual secret itself. This is huge.” Thus, there almost certainly will be trust issues to work through and your relationship can’t help but be affected in some way.

Parents need to be aware, too, that your discovery of a secret surrounding your conception may have been shattering. It’s essential, she says, that they understand both why you need to know the details of the secret and why you may need to share the secret.

“It’s important to acknowledge that the relationships will be affected in some way. It’s quite possible that relationships between other family members will also be affected, and that some families can come together and some will splinter and fall apart after such disclosures. To reduce the possibility of the latter outcome, seek support. A therapist can help you and your parent work together to understand each other’s feelings and viewpoints, to understand the possible repercussions, and talk about how to proceed with dignity and sensitivity.

“You’re not alone,” says Barbier-Greenland. “I encourage everyone in this situation to seek support.” In addition to therapists, genetic genealogists are especially well suited to help, she says, because they have a deep understanding of all sides of these issues. “There are also some great online groups where people can chat with others in similar situations and those who are at different stages in their journey, which can be immensely valuable.”It might be worth considering, Barbier-Greenland says, “that disclosure doesn’t mean shouting it from the rooftops or making a big announcement on social media or at a family gathering.” Instead, you can disclose in stages, giving people time to adjust, telling first a few family members and friends, and then over time others as it seems appropriate or necessary.

Reassuring your parent that you would only ever reveal the secret to appropriate people in sensitive ways is important, she says. While some may disagree with the need to restrict the nature of the revelation or be unwilling to be anything but fully forthcoming, being as sensitive as possible can help preserve relationships and reduce harm.

The parents, says Barbier-Greenland, “would also benefit from some strategies for having a conversation with people if they get approached by family members or others that the adult child has disclosed to. This would help develop their capacity and equip them better,” she says. “It also might help them feel more confident about shifting toward openness and honesty.”

Taking the time to work through things, says Barbier-Greenland, “gives everyone time to process the experience for themselves, ensuring that no one reacts in the moment without considering each other and others in the family. There’s the possibility that with time and work, and professional support, the parent will eventually feel able to support you in revealing the secret to the world.”

She mindful that’s a best-case scenario. In many cases, the discussions can’t be broached because the secret keeper is adamant about maintaining the status quo. And in others, discussions breakdown, resulting in an impasse. In such cases, says Barbier-Greenland, “maintaining secrecy or colluding with deception is not an option for the adult child.” Still, a meaningful conversation and a meeting of the minds, she says, is something to strive for.

To learn more about Barbier-Greenland’s research, see her website and follow her on twitter @KatyBeeGreen.