Short Takes

In 1993, when he was 48, Jim Graham learned a secret that turned his whole world upside down

Adoption: The Making of Me podcast comes to life in Washington, D.C. this September

Gina Cameron was always aware that something in her family wasn’t quite right. Her relationship with her father was volatile—

Michelle Madrid, now an adoptee empowerment coach, was adopted by an American couple when she was a baby in the United

In 2024, Hiraeth Hope & Healing, Inc. (HH&H) will celebrate its fifth year of bringing together people from all walks of life who’ve been affected by adoption trauma and surprise DNA test results revealing that one or both of their parents are not biologically related to them—typically referred to as NPE (not parent expected). In these five years, it’s served more than 300 people on their DNA journeys, primarily through the hosting of three small group in-person retreats each year (with a maximum of 30 attendees), as well as bi-weekly Zoom meetings, weekly Book Club Zoom meetings, and several Facebook groups and group chats. After another successful retreat in April 2024, in Surf City, New Jersey, HH&H is preparing for its next gathering, to be held in Scottsdale, Arizona July 2024. As always, attendees will gather in a fully appointed luxury home for five days and four nights of laughter and tears as they meet new friends and old and participate in sessions with a team of facilitators to heal in a welcome and safe setting. During the retreat, attendees will take part in both small and large group sessions with licensed clinicians and therapists to learn how to recognize and reconcile the trauma, confusion, and upheaval of both adoption and shocking DNA discoveries. As one of the HH&H founders, Erin Cosentino, always says, “Nothing has changed, yet EVERYTHING has changed.” But it’s not all serious. Attendees also heal in the mundane moments, such as a morning cup of coffee with a new friend or while helping prepare dinner. They spend evenings together playing games like Cards Against Humanity and Jenga or split off in small groups chatting by the pool or gathered around the fire pit enjoying adult libations. HH&H’s motto, Togetherness Heals, shines in these day to day activities attendees enjoy with each other. Click on image to read more.

Second Annual DNA Surprise Retreat June 1, 2024 Following the success of last year’s event, the second annual DNA Surprise Retreat is set to take place from September 19-22, 2024, at the picturesque Saguaro Lake Ranch outside of Phoenix, AZ. This retreat is designed for those who have experienced life-altering discoveries through consumer DNA tests, providing a supportive and healing community. The inaugural retreat was met with overwhelmingly positive feedback, with participants finding solace, understanding, and camaraderie among peers who shared similar experiences. At the 2024 retreat, attendees will benefit from expert-led sessions on topics such as generational trauma, parts work, and betrayal trauma. In addition, the retreat will offer rejuvenating yoga and breathwork sessions led by seasoned facilitators, ensuring a holistic approach to healing. Co-founder Alexis Hourselt, who faced her own DNA surprise in 2021 upon learning that the man who raised her was not her biological father, expressed the transformative impact of these retreats. “My DNA surprise completely upended my sense of identity,” said Hourselt. “Navigating new family relationships and feeling a profound sense of betrayal was incredibly isolating. But through this community, I found that I was not alone.” Hourselt co-founded the retreat with Debbie Olson, who discovered in 2019 that her estranged father was alive after being told he had died. “We’re thrilled to continue creating spaces where people can come together, share their stories, and heal,” said Olson. Hourselt and Olson are committed to continuing this vital support network. “No one expects their world to be turned upside down by a DNA test,” said Hourselt. “It’s essential for people to know they are not alone and that there is a community ready to help.” For more information and to register for the retreat, visit www.dnasurpriseretreat.com.

From Right to Know’s Kara Rubinstein Deyerin, My Re-Birthday Book is an ingenious workbook for adoptees, NPEs (not parent expected), and donor-conceived people—anyone who’s had a DNA surprise or a shift in understanding about family ties. As a birthday book celebrates a new life and forms a record of identity, this Re-Birthday book does the same for those who’ve had to reimagine their families and their identities after experiencing a shocking disconnect. It’s a space to process the changes and challenges and document the journey—a creative means of affirming and documenting a profound transformation. Filling in the pages is certain to be an exercise in self-reflection, leading to a deeper understanding of oneself. For people who may have felt like life had rewritten their stories, this workbook is a tool to take the narrative into their own hands and rewrite their own stories. Click on image to see more.

When Julianne Mangin was young, her mother, Pauline, would recite these meager facts of her own family history: that her mother ran a delicatessen, a business set up by her uncle; that when Pauline was six, her mother was sent to a mental hospital; and that the girl was then taken from her “good father” and left to grow up in a county home. Over time, Mangin came to wonder why these memories, recalled without emotion or elaboration, came to summarize the family history. How accurate they were, and what wasn’t being said? Secrets of the Asylum—a decades-long endeavor to answer these questions, points to the limitations of family lore and the power of denial. In 2012, after her mother moved to an assisted living apartment, Mangin took possession of boxes of her photo albums and—though she had little interest in them—her genealogy files. But several weeks into retirement from her career as a librarian at the Library of Congress, she became curious. What she found was a haphazard collection of records, with duplicate and misplaced files and great gaps in research—surprising since her mother had also been a student of library science. Mangin took up the task of organizing the materials but had no desire to pick up where her mother left off. But as anyone who’s jumped into genealogy rabbit holes knows, once you start, even if reluctantly, it’s nearly impossible to stop. Mangin became curious about the gaps in her mother’s records, wondering if they were intentional and whether they existed because additional information might upend the stories Pauline told herself. Click on the image to read more.

On Saturday November 4, 2023, The Benevolent Society, Post Adoption Resource Centre presents the Adoption Literary Festival to showcase a range of adoption stories in an Australian context.  The presentations will amplify the voices of lived experience and highlight the lifelong nature and complexities of adoption. The first Adoption Literary Festival took place in the United States in February 2022. This will be the first of its kind in Australia. The online event takes place from 9:30 am to 2:30 pm Australian Eastern Daylight Time (15 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time.) Click here for more information and to book free tickets.   Click on image to read more.

Contribute to IRB-approved research about people who receive surprising not-parent-expected findings on ancestral DNA tests.

Two women in the DNA surprise community are offering a healing retreat for people who have experienced DNA surprises, May 4-7 in Tucson, Arizona. The inaugural DNA Surprise Retreat was created to increase community and support for people who have uncovered shocking information about their families after taking a DNA test. Co-founder Alexis Hourselt, host of the DNA Surprises podcast, experienced her DNA surprise (also known as an NPE or non-paternal event) in 2021 when she learned that the man who raised her is not her biological father. In addition, she discovered that she is white and African American instead of white and Mexican, as she’d once believed. “My DNA surprise caused a complete upheaval of my identity,” says Hourselt. “I was navigating these new family relationships, feeling betrayed by my raised parents, and discovering an entirely new part of myself. It was very isolating, but this is actually quite common.” DNA surprise facts It’s estimated that 1 in 20 people have misattributed parentage. 82 percent of DNA test takers learned the identity of at least one genetic relative. It’s estimated that 3 percent of adoptees do not know they are adopted. After Hourselt met co-founder Debbie Olson, owner of DNA Surprise Network, at a retreat for adoptees, donor-conceived people, and NPEs, they decided to create a retreat specifically for people who have experienced DNA surprises. “The DNA surprise experience is so unique,” says Olson, who experienced her DNA surprise in 2019 when she learned that her estranged father was alive after being told he died. “We’re excited about increasing opportunities for people who have been through these shocking events to come together and heal.” About DNA Surprise Retreat The DNA Surprise Retreat is for adults experiencing the grief and shock that can only be felt following a DNA discovery. The four-day event offers expert-led sessions and community for NPEs, conceived people, and adoptees who have experienced a DNA surprise. The retreat will feature six sessions led by experts on trauma, grief, self-compassion, and more. All meals are included. Attendees can opt to stay on site at a local retreat center or register for the retreat-only portion. Hourselt and Olson hope to continue offering DNA surprise retreats in the future. “No one imagines that their world will be turned upside down when they send off a DNA test kit,” said Hourselt. “People need to know that they aren’t alone and there is help.”

HBO is developing a new documentary about unexpected DNA discoveries and is seeking participants willing to share their stories. The film is to be produced by an award-winning team and directed by an Emmy-nominated filmmaker who is herself an NPE. Described as “a deeply humane exploration of the seismic shocks that home genetic testing has brought to so many families, and how people are navigating these emotionally-charged journeys of self-discovery,” the project intends to “give voice to people whose lives have been upended by these long hidden truths, and to de-stigmatize some of the shame associated with them.” If you are interested in participating or finding out more, please visit their website at https://dnasurprisesdocumentary.castingcrane.com.

Adoption is a psychological barrier. Not knowing how or why you got there, it feels like you are forced to live your life in a bubble, chained to the ground that belongs to someone else. Inside your head, your brain feels like it’s being restricted, with a thick invisible fog that’s anchored at the base of your skull with an axe. Physically your voice has been stolen from you by society and held to ransom. Your heart feels crushed with grief and loss. Your perception of life is skewed into one that others expect you to have. Your abilities and life skills are severely hampered, distorted, and delayed. Your identity is confused. When you finally see a way out, it’s like you’ve been drugged; your consciousness stumbles out of the fog while your body and your abilities hit against every obstacle imaginable. The only way out usually means walking through your adoptive family’s collective heart. Bloodied guilt drags behind you like a constant reminder of where you’ve come from. Waves of pain and guilt hold on to you, trying to pull you back in. The light ahead is blissful yet I feel lost, not knowing where to go or what to do next or even how to do it. The unknown is frightening but I feel compelled to breathe like it’s my first breath and take each step one at a time in hope that I will eventually find myself, wherever that may be.

The Faces of NPE Project was created by Carmen Dixon to help NPEs (not parent expected) know they’re not alone and to bring awareness to individuals outside the community. While reflecting on her own NPE journey, she remembered that it took time at first to find information and support. She did ultimately find many support communities and great resources, each with something different to offer. Now, she’s brought something new into the mix—The Faces of NPE Project. The idea, she says, is simple. The project amasses images of the faces of NPEs. “Every year, we’ll keep adding new submissions to the existing project, and as the number of faces get added, eventually viewers won’t see specific individual portraits but just a sea of faces—and that’s the point, to emphasize how many NPEs exist worldwide.” The images, Dixon says, will be released yearly in June through social media as a public shareable tool that can be used to help generate awareness. If you would like to be a part of this project, send your photo submission to facesofnpeproject@outlook.com. Photos submitted between June 24, 2022 and May 14, 2023 will appear in 2023. Find the project on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

If you’ve made a shocking family discovery, it likely threw you off balance, maybe even knocked you down. You may have been—may still be—bewildered, angry, hurt, confused, anxious, depressed, or ashamed. You may have experienced all of these emotions and others in succession, all at once, or in an unpredictable pattern. You may feel overwhelmed and unable to make sense of all the feelings and at a loss about how to communicate your thoughts. That’s why licensed therapist Eve Sturges created Who Even Am I Anymore: A Process Journal for the Adoptee, Late Discovery Adoptee, Donor Conceived, NPE, and MPE Community. Host of the popular podcast Everything’s Relative with Eve Sturges and an NPE (not parent expected) herself, she’s deeply familiar with the many ways the revelation of family secrets can sideline a person. It’s not a substitute for therapy, nor was it intended to be, but this first-of-its-kind journal is just the tool many need to help them on this unexpected journey; and for those who are in therapy, it can play a role, helping them think about their reactions and improving their ability to articulate their feelings. Sturges doesn’t provide answers. Instead, she offers prompts to stimulate your thoughts and kickstart self-expression. She asks questions and provides a safe space in which you can explore the answers, either privately, within a group, or with a therapist. Deceptively simple, it’s a crucial resource that’s certain to make a difference for thousands of NPEs and MPEs.

Born a member of the Confederated Salish Kootenai Tribes on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana, Vicki Charmain Rowan was adopted at two by a white couple who renamed her Susan. Already, at two, it was as if she were a child divided. Harness has spent most of her life straddling two worlds, never having a secure footing in either, learning early that “It hurts to be an Indian” in the world in which she lives. Her extraordinary memoir, Bitterroot: A Salish Memoir of Transracial Adoption, is evidence that one can pluck a living thing from the soil in which it grew and plant it elsewhere, and though it may survive, surviving isn’t the same as thriving. Her account is a reckoning of a bitter isolation and a harsh record of a tenacious search for a sense of belonging. It’s a story streaked with a particular kind of loneliness, the kind that takes hold not in solitude but among people in whom the author can’t see herself reflected. Raised by a mentally ill mother and an alcoholic father, Harness sees herself as different from those around her, and she’s acutely aware that she’s perceived by them to be different, not only by the townspeople, but even by her father, whose lexicon is laced with ethnic slurs and who speaks derisively about Indians, describing them as gold diggers, deadbeats, “goddam-crazy-drunken-war-whoops.” She’s aware she’s not the cute little blond-haired blue-eyed girl her father says he always wanted. And at the same time that she feels hatred toward him, she’s aware of a self-loathing coiling inside herself. She encounters few people who looked like her growing up, and she’s reminded at every turn that she doesn’t fit in. She lives in a kind of a gap between cultures where a question took root early: what did it mean to be Indian if she wasn’t raised in an Indian family? “The Indians don’t want me; the whites don’t accept me. They push me into each other’s court, always away from them. I am isolated; I am in-between,” she writes.

Jan Beatty’s American Bastard, winner of the 2019 Red Hen Nonfiction Award, is a blistering, take no prisoners account of adoption that may leave non-adoptees astonished and many adoptees shaking their heads in recognition. A domestic adoptee from the Baby Scoop Era, Beatty was born in the Roselia Asylum and Maternity Hospital in Pittsburgh, adopted into a working-class family, and told when she was young that she’d been adopted. She writes about the emotional life of an adopted child—the longing, yearning, the feeling of erasure and brokenness—and her fractured encounters with the birth parents she discovered after years battling the bureaucratic gatekeepers of adoption information. Beatty’s lyrical prose sparks like a live wire. For anyone taken from a parent, her words will resonate, at times landing like a punch to the gut and other times like a balm. Adoptees will feel seen, and those who were not adopted may see adoptees for the first time after reading the memoir.

matthew charles is a poet, podcast host, and educator. We talk to him about the experience of being a transracial adoptee (TRA), his emergence as a poet and activist, and the importance of self-expression. In your bio, you use the phrase “racially marooned.” Can you talk about what that choice of words means to you and how it describes the experience of being a transracial adoptee? The popular term I’ve heard other transracial adoptees use is “racially isolated” but I coined “racially marooned” because I feel it more viscerally evokes a sense of void in regard to lack of racial mirrors. I have a poem I wrote called “Closed Transracial Adoption is | God’s Gift” where I write, “i’m the first landmass that drifted from Pangea / you don’t understand how alone i feel.” You’ve written that as a child you experienced life as if a veil covered your eyes. What did you mean by that and what happened to cause the veil to drop? As a transracial adoptee whose body was raised racially marooned, I was acculturated into whiteness, made to believe that there were my kin, and my allegiances. Yet I was also rejected daily by whiteness through micro and macro aggressions. Realizing that even though my body was literally purchased by whiteness I had no purchase in whiteness was an apocalypse, of sorts. It freed me to practice Sankofa—a Ghanaian symbol that means, “to retrieve.” I had to retrieve the Black essence of who I am in order to reorient myself in the world—not as a(n adopted) child of whiteness but as a doubly displaced African. Hip-Hop was formative for you as an adolescent and you were a performer. What happened that caused you to shift to poetry? I’d always practiced writing Haikus to sharpen my ability to say a lot with not many words, so in some senses I was already interdisciplinary. However, at 17 when I was recording music in Saint Louis I lost my voice. I’d end up not able to speak for three years. This vocal disability still affects me to this day. It was in that purgatory that I more consciously altered my craft to poetry because I was afraid I’d never be able to perform or tour again. When you began to express yourself—first in Hip-Hop and later in poetry—did you immediately take transracial adoption as your subject, or did that happen later? No, I didn’t use rap to talk about myself. I used rap to project a false image. One of the reasons I shifted to poetry was because how I engaged with the genre of Rap felt constricting. I’d felt like I couldn’t be vulnerable. Themes of adoption began appearing in my work as early as 2018 but I didn’t set out to create a body of work with adoption as the central theme until my newest and as of yet unpublished book of poetry, meet me in the clearing. Did you ever study formally or was Hip-Hop all the education you needed? I taught myself all of the forms of Creativity that I practice—poetry, rap, essay, memoir. Is poetry as much a means of survival as an artistic expression? I wouldn’t be alive today if I didn’t have my art practice. As i write in “To Pimp An Adopted Butterfly,” art is one of my most enduring and longstanding relationships, and it has helped me know myself, and in the process of knowing myself it has saved my life countless times. Similarly, are poetry and activism synonymous for you? Do you see your artistry as a form of activism? While I don’t see them as synonymous, my artistry often is laced with activist intent. But the first goal in my creative process is to create something meaningful to me. In art and in activism, who are your influences? Who are the most important voices among transracial adoptees—poets or otherwise? Who do you listen to? Who do you admire? When it comes to art I like Lucille Clifton, Hafiz, Jay Electronica, and Joy Oladukun. But I’m not sure who the most important voices are for TRAs. Voices I’ve been most impacted by are Dr. Daniel ElAwar, Rebecca Carroll, and Hannah Jackson Matthews.

Rebecca Carroll, author, cultural critical, and podcast host, was adopted at birth by a white couple and raised in a predominantly white community in rural New Hampshire, where, as the only black resident, she’d see no one who looked like her until she was six years old. Her father was a high-school art teacher and her biological mother, Tess, had been one of his students. When Tess became pregnant by her older boyfriend who lived in Boston, the teacher and his wife adopted her daughter. Growing up in this white family in this white community, she had no touchstone for what it meant to be black, no mirror of her own blackness to reflect and illuminate who she was. And worse, no one cared. Her only point of reference as a child was Easy Reader from The Electric Company, whom she fantasized was her father. When she first encountered a black person in real life—her ballet teacher—she wondered, “Did she know Easy Reader from The Electric Company? Did she go home at night to live inside the TV with him and the words and letters he carried around with him in the pockets of his jacket?” As she grew older, Carroll was aware of being seen by this teacher in a way her parents did not, yet she was also aware of the differences. “I felt small pangs of fragile awareness regarding who I might be, what my skin color might mean. There were days when I wanted to be, or believed I was, black just like Mrs. Rowland, but it also seemed as though I would have to give something up in order for that to remain true.” She was increasingly aware that unlike her teacher, she moved through the world with the “benefits afforded by white stewardship.” As a transracial adoptee, Carroll had to hurdle barrier after barrier merely to become authentically who she was always meant to be. And considering that the most formidable obstacle to her ability to truly recognize and finally claim her identity as a black woman was her family—both her adoptive parents and her white birthmother—it was an extraordinarily lonely struggle carried out by a force of one. How, isolated in an overwhelmingly white world, could she know what it meant to be black? While Carroll’s adoptive parents were largely oblivious to her need to understand, absorb, and assert her racial identity, her birthmother, Tess, aggressively denied her daughter’s racial and cultural heritage. When they began a relationship, 11-year-old Carroll was curious about and soon enamored of her mother, but learned there was a cost to the relationship. She carried that burden for a long time, making excuses and ignoring her intuition as her birthmother did everything possible to torpedo her growing attempt to construct an understanding of herself as a black woman—gaslighting her, subjecting her to blatantly racist comments, and effectively dispossessing her of the right to her own blackness. She straddled two worlds, ill-fitting in one and made to feel like an imposter in the other.

In Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative, prolific essayist Melissa Febos, author of the memoir Whip Smart; Abandon Me; and the bestselling essay collection Girlhood, blends memoir with insight and guidance about the art of writing, primarily for an audience of memoirists. Why highlight a book about the craft of writing in a magazine for adoptees, donor conceived people, and others who’ve experienced misattributed parentage? What does it have to do with you? Possibly everything. You needn’t be a writer to be inspired and educated by Body Work. The author’s razor-sharp insights are pertinent to anyone who wants to excavate their own truths; interrogate their traumas and their shame; and, especially, take ownership of their narratives. To be adoptees or NPEs* means that part of our stories—the most foundational parts—were taken from us before we could ever know them. They were stolen for a host of reasons, but typically to keep others from facing uncomfortable truths—a theft that not only deflected shame from them but projected it onto us, suggesting that we are its source. Secrets were kept from us, and our stories were rewritten to better fit others’ narratives and preserve their integrity at the expense of our own. Our stories may be hidden behind closed doors, guarded by gatekeepers who insist we have no right to try to open them. If we persist and manage to unlock the doors, those for whom secrecy was in their best interest may tell us that what we discover is not ours to share. Sometimes we tell ourselves these lies.