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Louise Browne and Sarah Reinhardt created The Making of Me as a platform for conversations about all aspects of adoption. But it’s a podcast with a twist. In each episode, the hosts and their guests discuss a book about adoption. In the first season they tackled Nancy Verrier’s The Primal Wound, and now just a few episodes into their second season, they’re exploring another classic, Journey of the Adopted Self, by Betty Jean Lifton.

Meet the adoptee friends who pivoted from operating an ice cream truck to ice cream to posting a popular podcast.

Can you each summarize your adoption journeys?

Sarah: My bio parents met in their first year of college but went their separate ways after the second semester ended; he went back to New Hampshire, and soon after, he was drafted in Vietnam. I’m not sure if he dropped out of college or what the circumstances were that he was drafted, but he never learned of the pregnancy. My bio mom kept it from her parents—weirdly, she was also adopted!—and on a plane from JFK (she was from Queens) to St. Louis where she was to go to nursing school, her water broke. There was no hiding that from her mother. She was not allowed to even hold me. I was immediately taken from her. I was placed with a foster mother for about six weeks and then adopted into my family. A few years later, they adopted a boy, and when he was five months old, they discovered they were pregnant with twins. They divorced when I was seven, and my brothers and I stayed with my dad (who remarried about five years later). My bio mom had four kids after me (and another she carried almost to term but lost after a terrible car accident)—all of whom were kept. My bio father, who died before I was able to meet him, had three kids, one from a second marriage. So I’m the oldest of seven biologically, and three from adoption. I also have three step-siblings. I met my bio mom and siblings in 1998 and stayed in touch with her until she died in 2009. I’m still in reunion with my sisters.

Louise: My biological mom chose to put me up for adoption in September 1968 after leaving college when she became pregnant with me. She was 18 years old. She’d known my biological father in high school in Colorado, where they dated. From what I’ve gathered, they met up again during the holidays and I was the result of that encounter. My biological father was already engaged to his girlfriend at the time who was also pregnant previous to their encounter. My bio mom took on the journey of having me on her own. My bio dad did know about me and signed off on my adoption. I believe that the decision to relinquish me was made by my bio mother “in her right mind” because I have letters from her to family members who had asked her to consider letting them raise me. She was very insistent that I have a father figure who was strong because of her missing some of that in her childhood and she did not want to see me being raised and not be my mother. She had strong convictions on having me be with an intact family. I do think it critically changed her path. From what I know from relatives, and she may have regretted it later in life. She passed away at a young age in a drowning incident so I’ve never been able to ask her. I know who my bio dad is and who many of my family members are from knowing his name and having it confirmed on Ancestry. I have not had a reunion with them. I do stay in contact with my bio mom’s sister and cousins. My parents adopted me through an agency several days after I was born in Denver. They had one biological son and had lost a baby girl a few years prior to me in delivery. My mom could not have more children of her own. I then grew up in Littleton, Colorado

Conceiving People: Genetic Knowledge and the Ethics of Sperm and Egg Donation, by Daniel Groll, is a fascinating exploration of attitudes about whether donor offspring are entitled to knowledge of their donors, but the issues and questions it raises are pertinent to adoptees and NPEs/MPEs as well. Comprehensive and academic in approach, it may be challenging to readers not well-versed in philosophical discourse, but it’s key reading for anyone with a stake in the debate over access to genetic knowledge. And although Groll ultimately stands against anonymity in donor conception, some NPEs and MPEs may take exception to some of the arguments that lead him there. Therefore, we asked him to address some of those arguments, and he readily agreed.
Severance was the target of a critical article last year in a publication called Real Life that accused it of numerous transgressions, including promoting bionormativity. It insisted that the magazine’s content poses genetic family as measured by DNA as “the norm against which all forms of family should be judged.” It further states that if we view the genetic family as something from which one can be severed, non-genetic family “will inevitably be understood as secondary, extraneous, and even pathological.” Additionally, it charges that those of us looking for genetic information are indicating that “biogenetic kinship is the most true, essential, and valid form of family” and that such a belief places queer families in “legally precarious positions but undermines the larger value of ‘love makes a family’ for all families.” The argument rejects the idea that there can be a desire to know one’s genetic history that is apolitical. Clearly, I don’t believe Severance makes any such assertions, and based on having heard hundreds of stories and experiences, it’s obvious that most of us grew up with non-genetic families. I, for example, was raised by a man who was not my father. He was my family. I didn’t wish to have another father, but I did wish to know who my by biological father was. I didn’t imagine my biological family would be a better family, or a more real family. I simply wished, as I believe most people who lack this information do, to know from whom I got my genes. My question is, how does simply wanting that information valorize traditional families or diminish nontraditional families?

Before I answer this, I just want to explain my connection to the issue of donor conception since people inevitably wonder about it. I am a known donor to close friends who have two children. The children know both who and what I am in relation to them. Our families are in regular contact. From the get-go, everyone agreed there would be no secrets and that we all need to be open to how their children understand their experience and let that guide us. Maybe the fact that I’m a donor will cause some of your readers to stop reading, but I hope not.

In 1995, when Peter J. Boni’s mother experienced a stroke after open heart surgery, the walls she’d built to hold back a secret for nearly half a century crumbled. In rehab, she began to tell visitors what she never told him—that his father wasn’t his father, that he’d been donor conceived. And so began a quest to learn the truth of his origins and the nature of the societal forces that led to the circumstances of his birth—the subject of his new book, Uprooted: Family Trauma, Unknown Origins and the Secretive History of Artificial Insemination.

Roughly halfway through his narrative Boni says, “Never doubt my resolve.” But his dogged determination is evident from the first page. Early on, it’s clear that after serving as a US Army Special Operations Team Leader in Vietnam, he was the go-to guy in his business sphere, where he was a successful high-tech CEO/entrepreneur/venture capitalist and more—and he tore into his personal mystery with the same can-do attitude—a tenacity that fueled him through the 22 years it took to solve the puzzle of his parentage.

Uprooted is comprised of four parts that add up to exceptional storytelling. It’s compelling memoir of a troubled childhood with an unwell father, a determination to succeed, and the challenges of grappling with the emotional fallout of his family’s secrets. It’s also an exhaustive and insightful account of the history of assisted reproductive technology; a cogent indictment of the flaws of the largely unregulated, multi-billion-dollar industry; and a rallying cry for advocacy with a prescription for change.

Boni’s scope is ambitious and he succeeds on every level. Donor conceived people will see themselves reflected in his moving testimony about the consequences and repercussions of the inconvenient truth of donor conception. Many will feel seen and heard as he describes genealogical bewilderment and the roiling emotions aroused by the revelation of family secrets, the shattering of comfortable notions of identity, and the lack of knowledge about his genetic information. It’s a must-read not only for donor conceived people but also for donors and recipient parents as well as fertility practitioners, lawmakers, behavioral health providers, and anyone contemplating creating a family through assisted reproduction. While the actors in a deeply flawed industry who are motivated solely by profit aren’t likely to be swayed by Boni’s arguments or embrace his suggested reforms, Uprooted may fuel a wildfire of advocacy that has the potential to give rise to meaningful legislation, transparency and accountability, and a true cultural shift.

First, if you feel called to read this essay, then you belong here. Welcome. Do you belong in the Jewish community? Are you a part of this religion, culture, and peoplehood? Are you actually technically Jewish at all? To give a very Jewish answer: yes, no, maybe. It depends. But this journey of exploration and curiosity—of questioning and wrestling—is absolutely yours for the taking. So welcome. Welcome, welcome, welcome.

Not everyone along the way will greet you with such open arms, so I want to make sure that mine are stretched extra wide.

An NPE* discovery is complicated enough, but when compounded by an ethnicity discovery—a Jewish ethnicity discovery especially—the complications are magnified. And Jewish identity is complicated enough, even for people who were raised Jewish. DNA testing may be new, but the question of “who counts as a Jew” is as old as Judaism itself. Judaism is an ethnicity, as you may have just learned unexpectedly, but it’s also a culture, a spiritual practice, a community, a set of laws, a set of holy days, and unendingly more. How many of those boxes must a person tick in order to be counted among the tribe? The answer remains: it depends.

There’s a beloved aphorism: for every two Jews, you get three opinions. Judaism is far more concerned with asking questions than it is with answering them. So if you came to this article asking “Am I Jewish?” be forewarned: you won’t get a clear answer. But you will, I hope, get a solid footing for the start of your journey, should you choose to embark.

The Rabbinic Answer

Let’s start with the answer you’d be most likely to get if you googled “Am I Jewish?” Or, let’s say you told a rabbi: “I just found out that I’m biologically half Jewish because the dad that I thought was my dad isn’t my dad and my DNA isn’t what I thought it was—what does that mean?” First, the rabbi would probably respond the same way most people do: a polite “please slow down because I don’t believe what I’m hearing,” or something of that ilk. Then, the rabbi would likely say that, according to halakha (Jewish law), you must be born to a Jewish mother or have entered the faith through conversion. For an NPE, then, this sounds like a resounding no: you are not, by law, a Jew. A reform or reconstructionist rabbi (these are the more socially progressive and halakhically creative of the four main Jewish denominations: learn more here) would tell you that patrilineal Jews count, but only if they’re raised Jewish—so you’re still out of luck.

It’s what those of us with misattributed parentage like to call “sibling season”—the time when people who received an over-the-counter DNA test for Christmas are getting the results. When you have a DNA surprise and learn the person who raised you is not your genetic parent, you are plummeted into a world of confusion, doubt, and shock. You feel all alone in your experience. You are likely thinking it is impossible that anyone else could possibly have such a crazy thing happened to them. And so when you turn to a professional—a licensed therapist—for help, the last thing you want to hear after explaining your situation during your first session is “Wow. That’s incredible. I’ve never heard of that before!”

We estimate that 1 in 20 people have misattributed parentage—that’s 16.6 million Americans who may innocently spit into a tube and discover they’re not who they thought they were. People have a misattributed parentage experience (MPE) from a variety of reasons: they discover they’re adopted, conceived through assisted reproduction or as a result of an extra-marital affair, rape, or other sexual encounter. Regardless of why someone has an MPE, the news is traumatic.

“After I told my therapist about my MPE, she said she had no idea how a person should respond to being told such a story.” Lisa

In Right to Know’s 2021 Survey of MPEs[1], 39% of those surveyed responded they’d sought help from a licensed therapist. Of those who saw a therapist, only 18% felt their therapists had sufficient training in misattributed parentage issues to assist them. This needs to change.

“Today I had a therapy session with yet another new therapist. Every time I have to educate my therapist on what an MPE is, how we feel, how our situation is life altering, how we have an identity crisis, and how we search for family…..” Michelle

Right to Know is a nonprofit dedicated to advocating for people with a DNA surprise and misattributed parentage and promoting understanding of the complex intersection of genetic information, identity, and family dynamics. To promote this goal, we now offer the first misattributed parentage education platform providing educational information on MPEs and the impacts of DNA surprises to professionals and the public. With this initiative, we aim to tackle one of the most important aspects of the MPE discovery—the need for training for licensed therapists and information for those affected by an MPE and the public at large.

“During my first visit to a therapist, she admitted this was all so new to everyone and she had no experience with this specific trauma, that there was no handbook on how to handle my feelings. She told me my mother had every right to lie to me, that it was her body.” Dan

I 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 MPE/ NPE*—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 late 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.

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett is not the first, and certainly won’t be the last, to pose abortion as a problem and adoption as its solution. The adoption argument has become a pillar of the anti-abortion movement’s platform. Each time the words abortion and adoption appear together in headlines, there’s a rapid and robust response from adoptees and others to counter the fallacious proposition. This time, however, Barrett’s comments have roused ire not only for their essential, objectionable content with respect to adoption, but also for the cavalier language she used to dismiss the impact giving birth has upon a woman’s health, her career, and her life.

During the recent Supreme Court oral arguments concerning Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban, Barrett, an adoptive mother, not only posed adoption as a substitute for abortion, she further suggested that if the consequences and obligations of motherhood are deleterious to some women, they can simply sidestep the “problem” by taking advantage of safe-haven laws, as if dropping off a baby to a police or fire station has no repercussions to a mother or her baby. As if there were no career reverberations and no health risks. As if the wellbeing of the child were of no concern. As if it doesn’t matter that adoptees may be weary, enraged, or traumatized by having again and again to field a question that should never be posed: Would you rather have been aborted?

Sonia Derory spent the first six months of her life in a hospital in a Parisian suburb while her parents reflected on whether they could raise a child with what they perceived as a disability. She was born in 1983 with dwarfism, a medical or genetic condition characterized by short stature. Ultimately, her parents concluded it would be too great a challenge to raise her and placed her for adoption. After spending another six months in a nursery, Derory was adopted by a couple from a small town in the St. Etienne region in center of France into a family with other children, some also adopted.

Derory had always known she’d been adopted—a fact that otherwise would have been evident because her Algerian heritage set her apart in appearance from her French Caucasian adoptive parents. But she always wanted to know who she looked like and where she came from. Early on, she was afraid to discuss with her adoptive parents her desire to know about her origins. “They weren’t particularly open-minded about my search,” she says, and she felt guilty and conflicted. But in 2006, when she was 23, she searched for her birthmother—not a challenge since her birth parents’ names and identities were listed on her birth certificate.

After several months, she located her birthmother, who at first seemed pleased by her appearance in her life. They were in contact for more than a year and a half, and Derory welcomed her mother into her home. She even wore an identity bracelet engraved on one side with her original birth name and on the other with her adoption name, to demonstrate the depth of her connection. “I did everything—in fact too much—in order to be acknowledged as her daughter because I had this deep-down need to build a relationship with this mother who could help me discover my cultural origins.” After those months, she says, her mother decided to cut ties and all contact, but by that time, Derory had already become very attached to her, so it was deeply difficult to accept—another devastating rupture.

“In her mind she had given me away as a baby many years ago and so felt nothing for me emotionally as an adult woman.” She didn’t want to have any type of relationship, and and they never met again. A few years later, Derory met her birthfather, who told her he’d searched for her when she was very small but was unsuccessful because her name had been changed. He, however, was also unwilling to engage in a relationship with his daughter.

Derory had grown up near her birthplace in Saint-Etienne in east-central France, where she went to high school and developed a love of theater. She took acting and circus classes and workshops but, daunted by the difficulty of earning a living as an actress, she turned to another career. For ten years she worked as a communications and media officer in Clermont-Ferrand, a city in Massif Central, a highland region in Southern France. But in 2014, drawn back to her love of theater, she boarded a train to Paris, intent on becoming an actress. She studied in a theater school and won some small roles in a few classical plays, a television show, and many short movies. She also nurtured an interest in directing and taught herself the necessary skills, learning from trial from trial and error and by being inquisitive on set. Soon she’d use those skills to tell her own story.

As a professional coach* working with donor conceived adults, parents, and donors, I’ve observed a common issue among many donor conceived clients seeking support: feelings of anger or disappointment that their parents kept the truth of their conception secret from them for so many years. Because there may be disruption in the relationship between these adults and their parents, one or both parties seek coaching to help them work out their differences and adjust to the newly challenging reality. My donor conceived clients of all ages typically discover the truth of their conception either from their parents or from having taken a DNA test. Less commonly, they find out from a person other than a parent.

Donor conceived people are often confused as to why their parents didn’t think such information was vital enough to share with them much earlier on. Indeed, many donor conceived people feel that knowing the identity of both biological parents is a basic human right for multiple reasons (psychological, cultural, and medical); they therefore feel violated and betrayed by their own parents for denying them this right to their complete family heritage—information that most others take for granted.

Donor conceived people sometimes point out their parents’ hypocrisy in having chosen gamete donation over adoption for the purpose of establishing a biological connection to at least one parent and later complaining when their adult child shows interest in the typically anonymous biological parent. Should biological relatedness only matter to parents but not to children? The parents may say things like, “It shouldn’t matter. Love is all you need, and you received that.” Yes, but we also need to make sense of our traits and know where we came from so we can form healthy adult identities, not to mention our need for an accurate family medical history. Equally hypocritical, some parents enjoy doing genealogical work on their own family trees but criticize their adult donor conceived children for also valuing and investigating their true and complete heritage.

Parents’ explanations for their failure to disclose the manner of their children’s conception are often confusing. For example, they may say, “We couldn’t find the right time,” or “We thought it would be better for you not to know.” They may state that they didn’t want to layer on additional challenges when their children were going through difficult life events, such as going to college, or when there was trauma, loss, or divorce in the family. These justifications may or may not be excuses to avoid the difficult “telling conversation.” Sometimes, donor conceived people recognize their parents’ good intentions, but the problematic secret, which they consider a major lie, may overshadow those good intentions. Many feel there were numerous opportunities over the years for their parents to tell the truth.

There are several psychological reasons why parents may keep such secrets. Recipients of donor sperm may experience denial, as some may have lied to themselves for years by believing that the donor sperm didn’t “take,” while theirs (or their partners’) did. (Egg donation doesn’t afford the same opportunity for denial, since in vitro fertilization is necessary.) And in the past, fertility professionals encouraged such denial by mixing the sperm of two men—donor and intended father—or by telling heterosexual couples to have sex the night of the artificial insemination. Even today, most fertility professionals aren’t well informed about secrecy’s negative effects on donor conceived people and their family lives, being only concerned with running their businesses and achieving results.

Adoptees are used to others telling our adoption stories—to us and for us. This makes sense to some degree, considering many of our adoptions took place at a preverbal time in our lives. And it takes time, developmentally, to grasp the concept of adoption—let alone make sense of relinquishment’s effects on us.

But at a certain point in our growth process, it becomes essential that we, as adoptees, take the lead with our stories. We’re the survivors of relinquishment. We know adoption from the inside. We alone have experienced the complicated mix of emotions swirling inside—many of which we’ve hidden or pressed down upon out of overwhelm, denial, peacekeeping, shame, fear, or because we prioritize our feelings last. Our voices matter—for our emotional health and for that of the adoption narrative.

Sometimes we don’t fully understand our emotions, or their depth, until we put pen to paper and our unconscious feels free to flow. But organizing our thoughts into story form—through journaling, memoir, essay, fiction, or poetry—can help us make sense of the past with an eye toward future growth.

What’s more, others in the adoption constellation need our perspectives. Fellow adoptees need to know they’re not alone. Each time we write and share our stories, we’re helping normalize dynamics that others may be struggling with in isolation. Historically, adoptive parents’ voices have taken center stage. But without adoptee voices, adoption-related literature falls flat (and very often gets it wrong). Our words can and do make a difference.

The 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.

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.

If you’re willing, could you summarize your own adoption experience?

I was adopted as an infant in a closed domestic adoption. I searched in my early twenties for my first mother and had a brief reunion before she chose secondary rejection. I reunited with my biological father when I was 27, and we are in a decade-long reunion, including my three siblings who are now young adults.

On your website you describe yourself as an introvert, which probably would come as a surprise to anyone listening to you for the first time. You seem remarkably at ease conversing with everyone and did from the start. Is that a great challenge for you or does it come as easily as it appears to?

I have always loved having deep, in-depth conversations about meaningful topics with one person at a time. If you put me with a group, even with ten of my closest and dearest people, I will be awkward, uncomfortable, and questioning my life’s choices. One-on-one feels natural, and being in the role of interviewer gives a permission that I would love to have in everyday life: ask any questions that pop into my head, even if they’re invasive.

I find you describing yourself as an introvert also surprising because you stood on a stage and did stand-up comedy. That’s not something many introverts can do. Tell us about stand-up comedy—what was your experience and what has it done for you? How if at all does it relate to the experience of adoption?

My brief foray into stand-up comedy came from a desire to add to my interviewing toolkit (and reduce my public speaking nerves). The Adoptees On podcast covers challenging topics, often with a heaviness that can feel unbearable. I need to occasionally add levity into our conversations. I took a stand-up class with maybe a half a dozen others for six weeks. I loved my teacher. He asked us to lead with our story and personal experiences vs. “telling jokes,” which was much more in line with what I wanted to do. The class finished with a public performance of our comedy sets. It was fully one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever done. Generously, the audience did indeed laugh at my set. I’ll always be proudest of my first joke, “The best part about being adopted is never having to think about your parents having sex.” For the adopted people that listen to my podcast, finding good things to think about our adoption experience can sometimes be hard to come by.

In 1961, a New York couple sent their seventeen-year-old daughter Margaret to Lakeview Maternity Home on Staten Island, where she gave birth to a boy she named Stephen. In love with her eighteen-year-old boyfriend, George, she was determined to keep the child, but was pressured by her parents as well as social workers at the home and the personnel of the Manhattan adoption agency—Louise Wise Services—to relinquish the baby for adoption. Margaret and George planned to marry, and during the many months when she was separated from Stephen, Margaret held out hope that she and George would prevail against a system that was cruelly stacked against them and regain custody of the child. Ultimately, she was coerced into giving up her parental rights. The boy was adopted and his name changed to David.

Margaret had been advised to move on, to forget about her baby. She never did. She went on to marry George and have a family, and all the while her son was never far from her thoughts. Through the years, as health problems emerged in her family, she contacted the Louise Wise agency to provide medical updates for the boy’s parents. The response was always curt. In the early 1980s, inspired by the rise of adoptee activism, Margaret began to search for her son, both for reassurance that he was well and also so he could know she’d never forgotten him and had always loved him. At one point, after her son’s 20th birthday, she gathered her courage, made elaborate preparations to make herself appear undeniably respectable, and knocked at the door of Louise Wise Services, hoping at most for information about her son, and at least for the opportunity to leave her contact information so that he could find her if he wanted to. Four times she rang the bell and tried to plead her case, and three times she was ignored. When she rang for the fourth time, the receptionist advised her that she’d call the police if Margaret didn’t leave. Devastated, Margaret collapsed to the floor and sobbed.

Once upon a time a little girl was born in a charity hospital in Hell’s Kitchen to an unwed mother.

Her name was Gabriella Herman and she was adopted about six months later. Her name was changed and her identity was erased. Her birth certificate was dated two years after she was born.

By the time she was six months old she’d had three mothers: a birth mother, a foster mother, and an adoptive mother.

_____

My reunification with my birth mother began via a letter from Catholic Charities followed by another by Air Mail from my birth mother. To me it felt like a new beginning. Perhaps then it is fitting that our relationship would end with a letter. This time it was sent 25 years later and by certified mail.

_____

The Guild of the Infant Saviour: An Adopted Child’s Memory Book is my attempt at unwinding the story of my birth and identity through the lens of stories told to me by my birth mother. The book was accepted for publication on Mother’s Day 2020. The synchronicity was not lost on me. My debut! My first-born! My book baby! My mother––dead for decades––wasn’t here to celebrate my happy news, so I called my birth mother to tell her my book was about to be born.

She was excited for me on the phone. She mailed me a congratulatory card. Inside she wrote; “You did it! Congratulations on getting your book in print in 2021. How wonderful! XOX.”

She was fond of using the USPS and had a habit of sending me envelopes stuffed with news clippings, Harper’s articles she’d torn out of the magazine, and typed letters that contained sternly worded directives even though I hadn’t asked for her advice. I called these her “lectures.” I shrugged them off in the interest of maintaining a relationship with her. After all, she was the only mother I had left.

_____

I use dolls as a window into my story by recreating photos from my baby book in my dollhouse. Doing this allowed me some distance from my fears. By playing with dolls I could examine those fears through a different lens. Dolls are used to understand trauma in myriad ways––“show me where he touched you,” or “point to where it hurts” or “can you show me where she hit you?”

Memory born from trauma is full of dead ends. Shame is spring-loaded. My birth mother’s stories circled back on themselves: they were versions of a truth.

When I brought up the shame and the trauma I felt as an adoptee, she said they were useless emotions.

It’s not news to donor conceived individuals that they have feelings about the manner in which they were conceived—feelings that may never occur to, or be acknowledged by, others. According to a new study published in the Harvard Medical School Journal of Bioethics and discussed in a recent article in Psychology Today, not do individuals experience significant distress upon learning they were donor conceived, they think about the means of their conception often.

The authors of the new study reviewed existing literature and recognized a dearth of research concerning how donor conceived people feel about learning of their status, about the ethics of assisted reproduction, how their sense of identity is affected, how they’ve coped, and more. Rennie Burke, Yvette Ollada Lavery, Gali Katznelson, Joshua North, and J. Wesley Boyd developed a survey with questions about these issues and Dani Shapiro, author of the Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love about her own discovery donor conception discovery, to help them recruit respondents. The response rate was 96.6, with 143 demographically diverse respondents, most from the United States, and the majority of whom were conceived through anonymous sperm donation.

Among the findings:

86.5% believed they were entitled to non-identifying information about their donors
84.6 experienced a “shift in their ‘sense of self’” after learning they were donor conceived
48.5% sought psychological support
74.8% wished they knew more about their ethnicity
63.6% want to know more about their biological parent’s identity
Highlights of the researchers conclusions are that increased attention to counseling is important, anonymous donation should be discouraged, and donor medical history should be provided to offspring, and the full potential implications of DNA testing should be considered before individuals proceed.

J. Wesley Boyd, MD, PhD, took time to discuss the research.

If you’ve ever spent time in what is known as “Adoption Land”—various communities that exist to support people with emotions and struggles particular to adoptees, first/birth parents, and adoptive parents—you’ve likely noticed an array of fiercely held perspectives on adoption.

While Adoption Land helps normalize and heal, there can be a danger in looking at adoption dogmatically or in an echo chamber.

Adoptive parents who sing the praises of adoption tend to lead the narrative that’s most familiar in mainstream culture: adoption is a beautiful thing, children are gifts, adoptive parents are selfless, orphans and unwanted children abound, and the best way to help them is through adoption.

This perspective, which elevates adoptive parents to saint-like status, misses the profound nuances of adoption and excludes important perspectives from other key players—adoptees and first/birth families (for simplicity, from here on referenced as birth families)—whose voices are critical to serving the adoption community.

Adult adoptees who speak out often focus on the trauma of adoption. Losing a mother is one of the greatest separations imaginable, and yet adoptee mother-loss is often diminished, ignored, or equated with other kinds of losses. Adoptee pain is not the happy, “positive” story of adoption that mainstream culture usually takes interest in, but it is scientifically proven: from the moment of relinquishment, adoptee brains are wired to protect from further loss. This can manifest as people-pleasing, perfectionism, anxiety, aggression, depression, addiction, suicidal ideation, or other self-harm. These are critical, life-saving dynamics to shed light upon, and it’s important that adoptees continue to speak up about the effects of attachment loss.

But while unpacking the emotional turmoil that goes hand-in-hand with adoption, adoptees can get stuck in darkness and hopelessness. It’s easy to lose the “forest for the trees,” straying into the “Trauma Olympics,” or forgetting about the plasticity of the human brain and our enormous capacity for resilience. What’s more, over time adoptees may disengage with, or even block, adoptive parents, together with a large swath of society, after becoming fatigued or retraumatized by constant microaggressions, gaslighting, and flawed information. But engage they must—especially if they feel a calling to support other generations of adoptees and work toward industry reform.

Birth parents’ voices are still desperately needed in Adoption Land. When birth parents remain silent, adoptees miss out on their perspectives, which can serve as a balm for the scars of relinquishment. Also, when birth parents remain quiet, adoptive parents may be prone to carry on as if first bonds don’t matter (out of sight/out of mind), when those first roots are deeply significant to most, if not all, adoptees and must be honored for everyone’s emotional health.

There 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.

In 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’s 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.”

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 and  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 was 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.