Award-winning journalist Mary Beth Sammons has collected the accounts of people who’ve explored their ancestry, whether through family history, genealogical research, ancestry travel, or DNA testing, and she’s discovered a common denominator among the ancestor seekers. Overwhelmingly, the storytellers find in the discovery and sharing of their stories an experience of healing, a greater sense of wholeness, and a broader understanding of the threads that run through all humanity.

In Ancestry Quest: How Stories from the Past Can Heal the Future, Sammons takes as her subject the growing phenomenon of DNA testing and the passion for genealogical research. She describes the journeys of seekers tracing their bloodlines—their quests to solve known family mysteries, to grapple with unexpected revelations, or to look for knowledge with which to better understand their health. For many of these seekers, she writes, “this process has recast entire lives with surprises including shocking lineages, long-lost siblings, and family secrets that might have been buried for decades. For many, it has opened questions about heritage, ethnicity, race, culture, and privacy.” And for others, she demonstrates, it validates both vague intuition and long-held suspicions.

Among the story tellers are those who’ve made incidental and accidental discoveries and those who deliberately traced family connections in an effort to solve known puzzles or satisfy a nagging suspicion. Sammons discovered that for most, no matter how shocking the discoveries may have been, individuals move past surprise and even trauma to recognize transformative life lessons.

Excavating the past, Sammons reveals, not only helps people to reconstruct their own family stories, but also to redefine the nature of family and open a new window on the political, historical, and cultural environments that formed our ancestors’—and thus our own—identities.

Throughout, Sammons tells the stories of people who find answers to the questions “’Who am I?’ and ‘Why am I who I am?’”

The answers, almost without except, point to positive, even joyful, responses. Says one of her interviewees, “I always felt like I was such an oddball, but now know the truth.” One seeker observed that having found her biological father filled gaps in her self-knowledge, while one who found a biological sister said the discovery “filled a hole I didn’t even know existed.”

Another describes the experience of unexpected relationships “freeing.” Case in point: Elizabeth Garden, author of the novel Tree of Lives, which features a character drawn to Jewish people in her community who discovers after taking a DNA test that she’s part Jewish. It’s an experience that happened in the author’s own life. After taking the test in search of a Jewish thread running through her distant ancestry, Garden said, “The result was a lot more than a thread —it was  whole new warp and weft in the family tapestry.” The discovery, Sammons writes, “brought her a sense of rootedness within a culture she’d always been drawn to without understanding why.”

There are stories about individuals who discover their older sisters are in fact their mothers, whose fathers aren’t their fathers, whose beloved cultural identities are not theirs through bloodlines, and whose research reveals a cascade of trauma through generations.

Throughout, Sammons affirms the transformative power of storytelling. “Yes,” she says, “so many family secrets are rooted in shame about issues that define our common humanity, such as infidelity, hidden sexuality, abuse, racial or religious origins, or infertility. But the best antidote is to tell our stories. By doing so, we can heal the wounds for our entire lineage—wounds that have been holding those who came before us captive for years.”

Family stories, she insists, can break the inherited cycle of trauma; foster forgiveness, acceptance, and understanding; shatter stereotypes; and lead to a reexamination of assumptions about race.

The exploration of ancestry, Sammons illustrates, is vastly more than mere hobby. It goes to the heart of our shared humanity. “Our ancestors need us to connect some dots,” Elizabeth Garden told Sammons, “and only those of us who listen to their voices can do that.”

—BKJMary Beth Sammons is an award-winning journalist and author of more than a dozen books including Living Life as a Thank You: The Transformative Power of Daily Gratitude and The Grateful Life: The Secret to Happiness, and the Science of Contentment. Her latest is Ancestry Quest: How Stories From the Past Can Heal the Future. She’s a cause-related communications consultant for numerous nonprofits and healthcare organizations including Five Keys Schools and Programs, Cristo Rey Network, Rush University Medical Center and more. She’s been the Bureau Chief for Crain’s Chicago Business, a features contributor for the Chicago Tribune, Family Circle, and Irish American News, and a daily news reporter for Daily Herald and AOL News. She lives in the suburbs of Chicago.

By Aimee Rose-HaynesDirect-to-consumer DNA testing via Ancestry, 23andMe, and other companies has rapidly replaced the arduous tasks of hands-on library research, grave searching, and contacting strangers for the purposes of finding long-lost relatives—a tremendous advance since just a decade ago, when locating biological family or records to validate family lineage was a near impossible feat.

While these tests—which rely on saliva samples—are simple, quick, and affordable, interpreting the results is often a confusing and time-intensive process.

An International Case

In November 2019, I took on a special challenge that illustrated the tenacity needed to solve cases. The case involved a search for records from Panama and Columbia to help determine the client’s origins. Bob called on DNAngels to help him find his mother’s biological father. Ann, his mother, was born in New York in 1961 and raised by an Italian-American mother and stepfather. Her mother refused to tell her who her biological father was and took his name to the grave. Ann thought that was it—that she’d never know her paternal family—and gave up on the thought of trying to find him.

Bob, wanting to help his mother in any way possible, ordered Ancestry DNA tests for her, himself, his sister, and a few other relatives. Once he received the kits, he mailed them back immediately in hopes of finding the man Ann had spent decades wondering about and answering her questions. Was he tall? Was he a nice man? Where was he raised? What were his parents like? What did he look like?

Bob found the results that arrived a few weeks later both exciting and confusing. Ann’s ethnicity report had significant amounts of Spanish, Panamanian, and Columbian heritage. This gave them their first clue about where her biological father could be from. For Bob, looking at the numbers and trying to figure what it all meant was like trying to read a foreign language. He needed help.

The Search
Bob contacted DNAngels in the autumn of 2019 for help solving his mother’s DNA parentage puzzle. I requested access to his family tree and his mother’s DNA and went to work. I started by sorting his matches and separating Ann’s maternal and paternal lines. This was very easy to do since Bob had gotten tests for so many people in the family.

I looked at Ann’s matches and anticipated that the matching process would be difficult. Ann had six matches in the range of 108 centimorgans (cM) to 184 cM. A cM is a unit of measurement representing the length of DNA shared by two DNA matches. Testing companies use an approximate range of roughly 8 cM to  3,700 cM to determine relationships. The higher the cM, the more closely one is related to a match, with 3,700 indicating a parent/child relationship. I began by looking at the trees of all of Ann’s matches to try to isolate a most recent common ancestor (MRCA). Unable to get very far, I updated Bob, with whom I was in daily contact at this point in the process.

Bob informed me that some additional family members had also taken a 23andMe DNA test, and with their login information in hand, I hoped to locate a missing puzzle piece. I had handwritten charts, sticky notes, and highlighted names all over the living room table and floor for nearly two months for this case!

I was able to build a tree based on Ann’s 186 cM match and discovered that Ann’s great grandparents and second great grandparents were the same couple. This indicated that Ann’s 186 cM match was inflated due to endogamy—the custom of marrying only within the limits of a local community, clan, or tribe. So that became another puzzle to work through. Complicating things still further was that two matches on 23andMe were uninterested in helping.

Nonetheless, I persisted, finally finding an MRCA and building the family tree, which included 9 children. I then began linking Ann’s DNA matches to the familial lines that were slowly coming together and soon was able to eliminate three lines, leaving five lines left to trace.

I began researching, reading through US, Columbian, and Panamanian newspaper clippings—obituaries and public records including port arrivals and departures—as well as social media, searching for anything that might help expand this family tree. Bob was also relentless in helping to track and contact anyone in these family lines.

I never imagined I would ever use what I’d learned in Mr. Flores’ high school Spanish class; if I had, I’d have paid more attention back then. Bob sent me messages and voice recordings from potential family members, most of which were in Spanish. Using Google Translate much more than I’d like to admit, I learned a few important things necessary to solve this case.

Bob had discovered that the MRCAs had taken in and adopted two sons. A week later, I discovered that another son had never left Panama. This narrowed the search from five family lines to two and the details finally started to come together.

Now left with two brothers as potential candidates for Ann’s grandfather, Bob and I were excited as we got closer to solving the case. By this point, I’d worked on this daily for about 10 weeks and refused to give up. I continued digging even deeper into these two men, John and William, trying to place either man from Columbia in New York, where he might have met Ann’s grandmother.

William was born in Columbia, and I located a record of him having lived in New York. He actually married someone who was related to Ann’s maternal line. This union proved he had been in the same area as Ann around the time she was born. William had 2 daughters and a special needs son who was eliminated as a suspected biological father. Bob, who had been in contact with one of William’s daughters at this time, had William’s granddaughter tested, which revealed that she shared 236 cM with Ann. This excluded William, because if he’d been Ann’s paternal grandfather, his granddaughter would be expected to match Ann at a half niece relationship (Ann and the granddaughter’s mother would be half-sisters), or about 600 cM to 1,300 cM.

John, the other potential grandfather to Ann, was a soldier in the U.S. Army who was killed in action in Korea. I found a port arrival record showing he came to New York in 1928. I also found a record indicating he married in New York a year later. He would go on to have daughters as well as three sons—Manny, Greg, and Jake.

Manny died in infancy, and Greg couldn’t be located, so Jake was the only possible relative to search for. If Jake were still living, he’d have been roughly 90 years old. Fortunately, one of the cousins Bob had contacted knew that Jake was still living and was in New York. That cousin helped Bob get in touch with Sam, one of Jake’s sons, who was shocked when Bob told him DNAngels had discovered his father might have been Ann’s biological father. He was intrigued and willing to help. Bob sent him a DNA test in late January 2020 to confirm the suspicion.

While Bob waited on pins and needles for Sam’s test to come back, I stayed busy and continued to research and build the family tree. Sam’s test came back on March 6, 2020, revealing that Ann and Sam matched at 1,455 cM, confirming a half sibling relationship. Jake was her biological father. Bob sent a DNA test to Jake, the results of which showed a 3,299 cM—an amount signifying a parent-child relationship. I’d solved Ann’s case after nearly five months.

Ann went from knowing nothing about her paternal line to not only knowing her father’s name but also being able to meet him. She now has 9 half-siblings as well as several aunts, uncles, and cousins. Jake’s family has welcomed her and her family into their lives with open hearts.

Never give up!If you have a question you’d like to see answered in a future column, send it to bkjax@icloud.com.Aimee Rose-Haynes is a lead genetic genealogist for DNAngels and a member of the International Society of Genetic Genealogy and the National Genealogical Society. She has 20 years of traditional genealogy and 6 years of genetic genealogy experience.

Stephanie Leslie and Margaret Renner also contributed to this article.DNAngels, an organization dedicated to DNA results interpretation and more, was founded by Laura Leslie-Olmsted in February 2019 with the goal of helping not parent expected (NPE), adopted, and donor-conceived clients find their biological families. Seven months after being founded, it became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. In 2019, the team solved approximately 550 cases; in 2020, it solved 697 cases, and it expects to continue to increase those numbers in 2021. DNAngels has a 92% case solve rate, which means the majority of its clients find the answers to their parentage mysteries. In 2021, it is dedicating every month to a specific theme. The theme for January is “Never Give Up” to highlight DNAngels’ dedication to finding answers for the 8% unsolved or “on hold” cases. Learn more about DNAngels at its website, and find it on Twitter @Dnangels4 and on Instagram @Dnangelsorg.

It was a movement waiting to happen. It only needed a catalyst. Enter Dr. Laura Schlessinger, an unapologetic bully and “infotainment” therapist masquerading as a helping professional. Host of the Dr. Laura program, heard daily on SiriusXM Radio, Schlessinger bills herself as a “talk radio and podcast host offering no-nonsense advice infused with a strong sense of ethics, accountability and personal responsibility.” A Los Angeles marriage and family therapist, she’s no stranger to controversy. For example, there was criticism when it became known that in the early days of her television program her staff posed as guests, and outrage when two decades ago she declared that homosexuality was “a biological error” and made racist comments that temporarily derailed her radio career. Now, her SiriusXM program, with an audience of eight million listeners, doesn’t shy away from the sensationalism that ratchets up the ratings.

Recently, she directed her venom at NPEs (not parent expected.)

In the program’s July 7 Call of the Day, “My Mom Never Told Me the Truth,” Torri, the caller seeking Dr. Laura’s help, stated she wasn’t sure how to continue on in her relationship with her mother after recently learning her dad wasn’t her biological father. Schlessinger asked if the man who raised her was nice. After Torri responded that he was, Schlessinger launched into an assumption-filled toxic diatribe. She berated Torri, asking “What in the hell is wrong with you?” When Torri tried to explain she was upset by her mother’s lying, Schlessinger responded by saying, “So what? So what? Who gives a shit?” She continued to defend Torri’s mother while dismissing and disparaging the vulnerable caller, leaving Torri barely able to speak. “I seriously would rather smack you across the head than anything else right now, you ungrateful little twit. You insensitive, ungrateful twit.” When Torri, after a stunned silence, tried to respond, Schlessinger interrupted. “You’re a twit for saying that. You’re a twit for repeating it.” She continued for several excruciating minutes to bully and berate her caller.

Word of the episode spread quickly among adoptees, donor-conceived people, NPEs, and others affected by separation from biological family. As more and more people listened to the podcast, outrage surged from one Facebook group to another like jolts of electricity. Soon, members responded to Schlessinger on her website and on social media, many demanding an apology, some clamoring for a boycott of her program, and others calling for the radio host to be stripped of her license to practice psychotherapy. The complaints appeared to fall on deaf ears as the complainers were quickly blocked from Schlessinger’s social media accounts. A post on her Facebook page overrun with comments about the episode, however, was quickly shut down.

Therapists soon weighed in as well. Jodi Klugman-Rabb, LMFT, wrote an article about Schlessinger’s breach of provider ethics, and Eve Sturges, LMFT and host of a podcast, “Everything’s Relative,” released an “emergency” episode to bring awareness to the issue.

I grew angrier by the day, says DNAngels’ search angel Ashley Frazier, “and on July 1, I put out a call in all the groups I’m in that it was time to speak up and let our voices be heard. Torri’s call was a rallying cry for members of our communities, who are often faced with rejection and the judgment of people in their lives who share the views of Dr. Laura, simply for wanting to know the truth about their genetic identity.”

When a friend shared with her a link to the show, Erin Cosentino, of the Facebook group NPE Only: After the Discovery, couldn’t bring herself to listen at first. “It took me a few hours to work up the courage,” she says. Reading the comments first inspired her to move ahead. “So many people were in support of Dr. Laura’s comments, and I was sickened by that, so I listened.” She and her friends spent days discussing the podcast and debating about what to do and how to educate the people who supported Dr. Laura. Then she saw the post written by Ashley Frazier. “It was so in line with everything my friends and I had been discussing that I asked permission to share it. I was meant to see it. It was meant to be. Within minutes we were planning.”

“We spent the evening messaging about strategy,” says Frazier. “Our plans quickly evolved into the two of us starting a group together, and by morning we had a group chat with more than 30 people discussing bigger plans than we could ever have imagined. Within 24 hours, we had our own private group formed with nearly 100 members brainstorming and offering to help achieve our mission.”

What they created that evening is the Coalition for Genetic Truth, which has united 27 NPE, adoptee, late discovery adoptee (LDA), search angel, and donor/surrogacy conceived support groups with combined memberships totaling more than 105,000 people.

The coalition now has both a public and a private group on Facebook whose 400 members include individuals from the various communities as well as their allies. Frazier and Cosentino quickly assembled a team of friends and fellow advocates to moderate the groups and represent all of the various communities with a stake in issues related to genetic identity—Laura Leslie, Emily Ripper, Kayla Branch, Annie Persico, Cindy Olson McQuay, Cassandra Adams, and Kathleen Shea Kirstein.

“The initial goal of the coalition was to raise our voices to speak out against Schlessinger’s abusive treatment of Torri,” says Frazier. “But we very quickly realized there were more effective ways to spread our mission in a positive manner,” adds Cosentino.

At first they focused on sending email messages, making phone calls, issuing a press release, and creating a petition that’s now been signed by more than 1,300 people calling for an apology from Schlessinger. “Realistically, we know we’re not going to get an apology. This step was simply a springboard to get to our greater mission, which is to be a united voice that gets the community and the public talking and recognizing that there’s a need for education about the importance of knowing one’s genetic identity,” she adds. It’s important, she says, for the burgeoning population of identity-disenfranchised people to be able to find their way to these communities “and know that there are tens of thousands of people in our support groups who can truly understand what they’re going through, give advice based on experience, and support them without judgment. As hard as our friends and families try to be supportive, they can’t put themselves in our shoes and often make hurtful and dismissive comments, such as ‘This doesn’t change anything,’ or ‘Your dad’s still your dad.”

Equally important as connecting community members to resources, says Frazier, “is to educate our known and newfound family members and friends about how they can better support us during this difficult time. There’s also a huge need to educate mental health professionals about this important issue and enable them to provide resources to their clients.”

Join the public or private Facebook group and follow the coalition on Twitter @GeneticTruth and on Instagram at #coalitionforgenetictruth.Among the members of the Coalition for Genetic Truth are the following.*

ADVOCACY

Right To Know On Twitter and Instagram @righttoknowus and on Facebook 

COUNSELING/THERAPY

Eve Sturges, LMFT: a licensed marriage and family therapist in Los Angeles. On Twitter and Instagram: @evesturges

NPE Counseling Collective: group of therapists specializing in best therapeutic practices for the NPE community.

Jodi Klugman-Rabb, LMFT: a licensed marriage and family therapist and creator of Parental Identity Discovery (see NPE Counseling Training below). On Twitter @JodiRabb, Instagram @jkrabbmft, and Facebook

FACEBOOK GROUPS

Note: Not all groups are open to everyone. Check the “About” section of each group for restrictions and to determine whether you are eligible to become a member.

Adoptees, NPEs, Donor Conceived & Other Genetic Identity Seekers

Adoptees Only: Found/Reunion The Next Chapter On Instagram @adopteesonly

Adoption Search & Support by DNAngels — Adoptee/LDA

DNAngels Search & Support — NPE/DC

DNA Surprises

Donor Conceived People

Donor Conceived People in/Around NY

Friends of Donor Conceived Individuals

Hiraeth Only: Longing for Home

The Mindful NPE On Twitter and Instagram @TheMindfulNPE

MPE Cross Cultural Connections

MPE Jewish Identity Surprise

NPE Counseling Collective

NPE Only: After the Discovery On Twitter @NPEsOnly1

Pacific NW MPE Life

GENETIC GENEALOGISTS/SEARCH ANGELS

DNAngels On Twitter @DNAngels4 and Instagram @DNAngelsorg

Enlighten DNA: Email: Truth@enlightenDNA.org

MEDIA

Severance Magazine On Twitter and Instagram @Severancemag and Facebook

NPE COUNSELING TRAINING

Parental Identity Discovery

PODCASTS

NPE Stories, hosted by Lily Wood

Everything’s Relative with Eve Sturges

Sex, Lies & the Truth, hosted by Jodi Klugman-Rabb and Christina Bryan Fitzgibbons

Find more resources about adoptees, NPEs, donor-conceived people, and others with genetic identity concerns in the “Resources” tab top right here.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 Jodi Klugman-Rabb, LMFTThe DNA discovery situation is unique in several ways. It’s unique to our time because of our access to science, and it’s unique in mental health because of the combination of issues triggered throughout the experience. Those who experience an unexpected DNA discovery may include adoptees, NPEs (not parent expected), and donor conceived individuals. Although they take different paths to their DNA discoveries, the emotional issues they experience along the way are quite related and, in some cases, identical. Yet, the mental health community isn’t at all well-prepared to deal with the DNA discovery experience.

Astonishingly, there are practicing therapists who cannot engage their empathy when facing a DNA discovery client. I hear stories of NPEs leaving sessions feeling worse than they did going in because the therapists dismissed their pain, just as their known families did. After seeking help to sort out their feelings and cope with their confusion, these clients leave with guilt added to the cornucopia of emotional turmoil, being told by therapists “he’s still your dad” or “it really hasn’t changed anything about you.”

In fact, much has changed for NPEs, but as in any case of grief, it often isn’t apparent to the outside observer. I counsel as many bereaved clients on how to engage support from loved ones as I do NPEs, and that’s because we as a species are not good at dealing with emotional pain. We want it to go away, to be as short lived as possible and be something someone else deals with. The DNA discovery experience rivals most traumas—with sudden grief and loss, unwanted changes in family dynamics, and profound identity confusion, all condensed in a short period of time.

As a licensed marriage and family therapist, I’m trained in all the areas triggered by the DNA discovery so I know to treat the discovery as a trauma that’s complicated with grief, identity crises, and the breakdown of interpersonal relationships. As a therapist, I’m skilled at the techniques and have the ability to recognize when something has crossed the threshold of normal to become clinically significant, and I have cultivated empathy as a general rule in the art of my field, because that’s the most important quality.

I recognized the need for a curriculum to organize how mental health professionals would respond to our fast-growing DNA discovery population, to help them access the skills they already had but didn’t know how to combine, so I created Parental Identity Discovery,™ a first of its kind treatment protocol dedicated to DNA discoveries. In more than 18 years of clinical practice, I’ve cultivated expertise needed for informed treatment of DNA discoveries: EMDR for trauma, grief counseling, and family systems and cognitive-behavioral theories. Living through the NPE discovery showed me how little I knew about identity, so I’ve set out to research everything my field has to offer and include it in the protocol, finding space for me to contribute to filling the gaps. Each aspect of the treatment relies on proven techniques to inform a new way of addressing generally individual issues.

Peer support is important in our large cohort to help people feel less alone and provide a more tolerant ear. But some people need more than peer support can offer, and for them, therapy can make all the difference. But it requires proper training and licensure. Finding a good therapist is harder than it needs to be, but they’re out there, and hopefully those who get adequate training specifically in the needs of NPEs will combine that special knowledge with the skills they most likely already have so they can truly be of service to people affected by DNA discoveries.Jodi Klugman-Rabb, LMFT practices in California. She writes about the NPE experience in the “Finding Family” blog for Psychology Today and hosts and produces the “Sex, Lies & the Truth” podcast. For more information on her work with DNA discovery go to her website or register for the training through Eventbrite.BEFORE YOU GO…

Look on our home page https://severancemag.comfor more articles about the experience of NPEs, adoptees, and donor-conceived individuals.

• 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

Our fellow adoptees are in need. The COVID-19 pandemic has severely disrupted many aspects of life across the world. Many people are struggling to obtain basic necessities while countless others are hurting due to lack of job security. During these hard times, we want to recognize and support our community members who are without citizenship, and thus have limited/no access to unemployment benefits, healthcare, housing, food, COVID-19 testing/treatment and will not receive a stimulus check. 

Cindy’s story: Cindy is an adoptee, and like many of us, she is struggling because of COVID-19. She doesn’t have support from her adoptive family, and as a single mom, she has to take care of her young daughter while still working to pay for basic necessities like food and utilities. Because of Cindy’s current situation, she can’t receive any type of benefits. 

Cindy: “As a single mother, working minimum wage 7 days a week is difficult, but you have to survive.”

But Cindy is one out of what is estimated to be thousands of adoptees without citizenship. Many who would most likely be excluded from relief packages like the CARES Act even though she would otherwise be eligible. In response, Adoptees For Justice has established the A4J COVID-19 Emergency Relief Fund to provide financial assistance to adoptees without citizenship.

Will you join us and help support adoptees like Cindy? Support fellow adoptees. Donate to the A4J COVID-19 Emergency Relief Fund now.

Are you an adoptee without citizenship who needs financial assistance? Apply NOW

**100% of donations given to the A4J COVID-19 Emergency Relief Fund will go to adoptees without citizenship

By B.K. Jackson

Libby Copeland

Just over a decade ago, when autosomal DNA tests first hit the market, offering consumers a new tool for advancing genealogical research and a way to discover genetic cousins, few imagined how popular these tests would become. In this short span, more than 30 million Americans have traded a hundred bucks and a spit or swab sample of DNA for a backward glimpse into their ancestry.

The majority of testers get precisely what they pay for—a pie chart indicating their ancestral heritage and a list of DNA cousin matches. They learn from whence and from whom they came—information that makes them feel better connected to their forebears and more knowledgeable about themselves in some essential way. Countless others, however, get much more than they bargain for and—sometimes—more than they can handle. For these consumers, DNA testing leads to a genetic disconnect from their families and the erasure of an entire swath of their self-knowledge. They discover that they’re genetically unrelated to one or more of their parents.

Even more shocking than the existence of these genetic disconnects is their sheer numbers. Although no one knows exactly how many testers have discovered misattributed parentage—and estimates within the general population are likely overstated—headline after headline and the swelling ranks of secret Facebook groups devoted to supporting those disenfranchised from their families suggest the numbers are significant.

These genetic seismic events are only part of the reason many view direct-to-consumer DNA testing as a Pandora’s box. Just as no one could have guessed how many genetic identity crises might arise in the wake of testing, the depth and breadth of the potential repercussions were unimaginable, as were the contours of the ethical and moral dimensions.

More than anything, the widespread availability of DNA tests has created a nation of what Libby Copeland, in her extraordinary new book, calls seekers. Although rigorously researched and dense with information, “The Lost Family: How DNA Testing is Upending Who We Are,” is a page-turner. The author, an award-winning journalist, crisscrossed the country talking to industry leaders, educators, and influencers. She immersed herself in the wide world of DNA testing, followed debates on social media, and attended conferences, and yet she wondered whether the velocity of change in the industry was so great that even she couldn’t keep up. And at the same time, she worried that the media saturation about DNA testing was so thorough that what she’d learned was already old news. “But then I would remember that I was in a bubble,” she writes. “The people who were getting DNA kits for Christmas had no idea what was coming for them. And the ramifications of what they might find would not be short-lived; rather they amounted to a fundamental reshaping of the American family. It was something they would deal with for the rest of their lives and pass on to the generations that follow.”

I thought I knew a great deal about DNA testing and had a reasonable grasp of its myriad ramifications until I read “The Lost Family,” in which Copeland expertly drives home how much bigger the subject is than most of us—even those of us deeply affected—realize. She takes readers through the history of genetics and all of its promise, then explores equally its dark side—eugenics and the dangers of genetic essentialism—and considers the broad range of ethical minefields planted by present day DNA testing. “One of the central conundrums of spitting into a tube is the way one person’s rights so often collide with another’s after the tube is sealed and sent in,” Copeland observes. And so many rights are at stake—from the right to privacy with respect to genetic data to the right of offspring to know who their parents were and what their health risks might be.

As she delved deep into her research, Copeland came to believe “we are embarking on a vast social experiment, the full implications of which we can’t yet know.” But what follows suggests that the boat left the dock some time ago and is churning in choppy waters. While the full implications are beyond imagining, the author does a stellar job of exploring the implications that have become apparent. She dissects DNA testing and explores it from every aspect, mapping the perspectives of all involved—the test makers and takers, the lawyers, the genetic and forensic genealogists, the ethicists who ponder the ramifications, and the people who are on the receiving end of contact from test takers—and shows what the stakes are for each.

As intriguing as all that is, Copeland is nowhere more captivating than when she’s telling the stories of the seekers—the “people obsessed with figuring out just what’s in their genes”—and follows them down the rabbit holes that swallow them as they try to figure out where they come from. She categorizes seekers into three groups: avid genealogists for whom DNA testing is just an extension of their research; those propelled by suspicions that something is off-kilter in their families or who know they have biological family to find, such as adoptees, donor-conceived people, and other NPEs; and the hapless folks who tested for “recreational” purposes and were rocked by a finding they never saw coming.

Copeland spoke to more than 400 such seekers during the course of her research, and she braids many of their stories throughout the text to illustrate why and how people seek and the ways their lives are changed by the pursuit of truth. There’s the geneticist who found that the man she believed was her father was not genetically related. There’s the foundling who had been placed in a basket and left in front of the home of a pastor. There are the seekers who search and are shut out by their biological relatives. There’s the woman in her fifties who developed symptoms that might have been related to ovarian cancer. She’d recently been given information suggesting she was half Ashkenazi Jewish, which meant she might have a BRCA1 or 2 variant, increasing her risk of breast and ovarian cancers. A medical grade DNA test didn’t suggest that she had the variants, but her doctors thought a radical hysterectomy was still warranted by her Ashkenazi heritage. She took a DNA test to learn more about that heritage, and the results showed she had no Ashkenazi ancestry. She discovered she’d been adopted. The worst part, perhaps, was that others in her family knew and didn’t stop her from having the surgery.

But the anchor of the book is the story of Alice Collins Plebuch, a super tech nerd who used her exceptional skills in a two-decades’ long quest to learn more about her family history only to stumble on a spectacularly thorny family mystery. “It is a strange thing to look in the mirror at the face you’ve grown old with and find you don’t quite recognize it,” she told Copeland.

And through Alice’s efforts to understand her unexpected DNA test results, Copeland, weaving her story throughout the book, traces the genesis of a seeker. “Even if you didn’t mean to ask the question, once it’s asked, it will be answered. And once it’s answered—well, for many people, there’s something pretty compelling about knowing there’s a mystery man out there who gave you half your genetic material. How do you not open that box? How do you not want to see your face in his, or to hear the timbre of is voice? How do you not wonder: Would he like you? Would he be glad you came into his life? This is how seekers are made: One question lead to another.” But, she’s quick to observe, there’s no telling how the objects of one’s quest will respond to those questions—an uncertainty that drives an enormous amount of anxiety and, potentially, trauma, for which, she adds, there’s a dearth of supportive services.

These stories involving DNA testing, Copeland says, reveal “how it can delight—and how it can disappoint.” And through them she’s able to pose the big questions:

Is it better to know the truth a test reveals?

Who owns a secret?

What does it feel like to have been lied to?

What is it that forms identity? Is it cultural or biological?

What is it that makes family? Is it blood or care?

Oddly, one of the book’s numerous strengths is that it raises many questions Copeland can’t answer but that provoke thought and debate. “The rise of consumer genomics poses questions about the emphasis we put on genetic identity and what we do when DNA test results come into conflict with the narratives we’ve long believed about ourselves,” she says. “How much of your sense of yourself should scientists and algorithms be allowed to dictate?” And further, “Who decides what story we get to tell?”

Legions of test takers will nod in recognition when Copeland acknowledges the fundamental pain many seekers experience. “Secrets, we are all discovering, have a propulsive power all their own, and time and complicity only make them more powerful.” She manages to look at the toxicity of secrets from all sides. “DNA testing has brought the past forward to the present, forcing us to grapple with decisions made long ago in different, often desperate, circumstances. If forces us to think about the people whose truths have been hushed up for decades—the teenager consigned to a home for unwed mothers, the medical student who contributed his sperm, never dreaming that sperm would become a person knocking on his inbox five decades later.”

Copeland has managed to unravel the enormous knot of a deeply complex subject—the “profound and disruptive power of DNA testing.” She’s broken it into comprehensible parts and parsed their meaning and import. “The Lost Family” is essential reading for everyone who has taken or is considering taking a DNA test, and it will be illuminating to anyone with a stake in genetic identity issues. But because Copeland’s analysis is so thorough and deeply thoughtful, and because it will humanize and contextualize genetic identity issues for those who haven’t yet been touched by them, the book should be read by everyone. No one is immune to the reach of DNA testing. Ultimately, everyone will be affected in one way or another by this phenomenon. The information contained in this excellent book will help readers make informed decisions about testing and, equally, once they’ve tested, will prepare them for the fallout when “the roulette wheel of some unexpected revelation” stops at their families.

Look for more reviews here, and return to the home page for more articles about genetic identity.

Many of us are preoccupied with the question “Who’s your daddy?” and pin our hopes on science—a DNA test—to provide clarity. According to Nara B. Milanich, author of “Paternity: The Elusive Quest for the Father,” the question has been asked for millennia, but it wasn’t until the early 20^th century that people looked to science rather than society for the answer. And while the conundrum has been debated through the ages and far and wide, it’s a far more complex matter than it appears to be, the author argues. Despite science, she insists, there’s still no consensus about who is a father or what it means to be a father.

While the need to pinpoint paternity has been driven for various reasons throughout history by a variety of stakeholders—mothers, putative fathers, potential heirs, lawyers, champions of eugenics—there are modern twists. “The orphaned and the adopted have asked this question in relation to lost identities,” says Milanich. “More recently, assisted reproductive technologies—gamete donation, surrogacy—have raised old issues in new ways.”

A professor of history at Barnard College, the author traces the history of the understanding of paternity across time and cultures and analyzes the many ways fatherhood is defined—socially, legally, politically, and biologically—and explores the consequences and implications of the different means of establishing paternity, observing that paternity bequeaths not only individuals’ names but also their identities, nationalities, and legitimacy.

Because a woman’s pregnancy and childbirth are observable, maternity historically has been undisputed. But before science developed the means to pinpoint with certainty the biological fact of fatherhood, it was well accepted that the mystery of paternity was impenetrable. And while paternity was understood to be truly unknowable or unverifiable, it could be assumed or claimed based on a man’s relationship to a child’s mother or his behavior toward a child. Paternity could be inferred from marriage. Likewise, a man’s acceptance of responsibility for a child supported the presumption of his paternity. In most cultures and throughout history, the role of father has been accorded to the men willing to perform it.

But the lack of certainty rendered claims of infidelity insupportable and legal actions to hold putative fathers accountable unprovable. At the same time, this ambiguity upheld certain social orders, for example, it gave cover to white slave owners who impregnated slaves with impunity.

In the early 20^st century, myriad methods were developed to attempt to scientifically determine paternity. They were efforts to prove the male’s body contained the evidence and to shift paternity from a social construct—a designation based on relationships and behavior—to one based in biology. These included hereditary blood grouping, crystallography, fingerprints, genetic paternity testing, and measurements of the electronic vibrations through the blood using a machine called an oscillophore. But it wasn’t until scientific testing techniques were refined and DNA testing reached a standard of reliability that the biological fact of paternity became indisputable. Paternity thenceforth would be based on genes rather than social or political determinations. Earlier notions of identity and kinship gave way to a new standard.

The use of science to yield conclusive proof of paternity, which, Milanich says, arose from eugenics and race science, had wide application and significant repercussions. It was desirable, for example, to government agencies that sought to reduce welfare spending by shifting the financial burden to the scientifically demonstrated fathers. These techniques might be used to hold a deadbeat dad accountable, shame an unfaithful woman and strip her of her rights, or uphold privilege and paternalism.

Contemporary headlines about fertility fraud and the ethical minefields surrounding assisted reproduction support the author’s argument that despite decades of efforts by scientists to determine the criteria for establishing and legitimizing paternity, the task remains as difficult as it’s ever been. Further, society has leaned back toward a view of paternity and parenthood dictated by behaviors and responsibilities, as demonstrated by the acceptance of same-sex parenting. The experience of NPEs (not parent expected), as well, demonstrates that DNA doesn’t settle the matter of paternity once and for all. Countless individuals who’ve discovered biological fathers through DNA testing have been rejected by those fathers and may have no legal recourse. And on the flip side, in many if not most cases, men who learn through DNA that they are not the biological fathers of their children continue to fulfill the social role and responsibilities understood as those of a father. They may do so through a sense of duty, because they’re legally bound to be accountable, or because all parties involved believe fatherhood is a matter the heart, not of cells.

DNA testing has made it possible for many adoptees, donor-conceived individuals, and NPEs to discover their origins—a fundamental right asserted in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. But Milanich also explores the darker side of what she terms biological essentialism, detailing the ways in which paternity science was used for baser purposes and in a discriminatory manner, for example in Nazi Germany to determine race, or in the United States during the Cold War to expose Chinese immigrants claiming bloodlines to U.S. citizens. This discussion is especially resonant in light of current events—the government’s plan to use new rapid DNA testing of immigrants in detention facilities on the southern U.S. border, for example, or the Israel High Court granting permission for the use of DNA tests to verify Jewishness.

Those who have had DNA surprises leading to genetic identity confusion may take issue with the way their experience is described as a repetitive story line in the media—”the trope of identity lost and found”—or with the author’s suggestion that what she calls “Big Paternity” has commercialized doubt and is involved in “creating and perpetuating narratives of rampant “paternal misattribution.” Nevertheless, she raises important questions that are worth examining. She concludes that DNA hasn’t settled the matter of paternity. “It was not a lack of knowledge that produced the quest for the father; the quest was always a social and political one. The truly significant question about paternity is thus not an empirical one—who is the father?—but a normative one—what do we want him to be? Which criteria whose interests, intentions, or desires, should define paternity?”

Milanich, a skilled storyteller, offers a fascinating social history, from the earliest times and across cultures to the rise of Big Paternity, as exemplified by the “Who’s Your Daddy?” truck that winds through the streets of New York City providing mobile DNA testing, and, of course, the ubiquity of direct-to-consumer DNA testing. This deeply researched and engaging exploration will likely challenge readers’ notions about paternity and shift their perspectives. As the author explained in a recent Barnard College interview, “Tracing the rise of testing illuminates changing ideas about family, sexuality, childhood, race, nationhood, and identity.”B.K. JacksonLook for more book reviews here, and find more articles about genetic identity here. Is there a book, film, or podcast you’d like to review? Check out our submission guidelines.

Complex feelings and experiences—like those associated with genetic identity—may be difficult to share through words alone. But art can get to the heart of the matter and communicate more compellingly the tangled emotions and nuances of experiences that arise from grappling with genetic identity issues. There are myriad benefits of artistic expression. Not surprisingly, art is widely known to be a therapeutic strategy, both healing the creators and engendering understanding and empathy in those exposed to it.

If you’re donor conceived and have a creative spirit and a point of view to share, there’s a new platform for your expressive projects. Donor-Conceived Voices is a website created to exhibit artistic works that express “both the joy of discovery and the hardship of rejection, the truth of our complex existence exposed in many forms for all to witness.”

The site’s curator seeks all types of submissions: photographs, paintings, drawings, cartoons, essays, textiles, ceramics, videos, music, and more. The first work showcased is a song by musician Chloe Allworthy, “The Missing Piece,” about frustrations of attempting to hurdle obstacles to locating a sperm donor.

Learn more about how to submit to DCV here.

In her new podcast, Everything’s Relative, writer and therapist Eve Sturges talks with individuals whose lives have been upended by DNA surprises.

She sits down, for example, with Joy, who was told at age 10 she had been donor conceived and who, growing up, had little if any interest in finding out about her birthfather. But when facts later emerged to demonstrate how much like him she was, she became driven to learn everything she could about him—a process she likened to dating—and thus developed a profound relationship with a man she’d never known, the birthfather who died many years earlier. As Sturges observed, Joy didn’t know she was missing pieces until the pieces fell into place.

And there’s Mesa, who, before learning that she was an NPE (not parent expected), had had a tumultuous childhood and already was no stranger to trauma. Her discovery triggered a bewildering identity crisis; suddenly she had a Hispanic heritage about which she knew nothing. Finding out that she had no connection to the family she’d grown up thinking were “her people” and wanting to connect with her biological family turned her life upside down. In situations such as these, Sturges observed, where NPEs reach out and connect with their biological families, they in some ways also must become disconnected from the families they’ve known.

One guest, who chose to remain anonymous, shared the heartache of learning that the birthfather he never knew had known about him and had always suspected that he was his father. And although “Anonymous” was able to meet a half-sister and learn about his deceased father, nothing could quite compensate him for all he’d lost. “I can’t hug him,” he said. “I can’t talk to him. I can’t look at him.”

Sturges doesn’t control the conversations, add narration, or overproduce. Rather than interview them formally, she lets them reveal their stories, prompting occasionally, chiming in from time to time, and— remember she’s a therapist—asking guests how the experiences make them feel. For the earliest episodes she found guests who lived in her Southern California locale and taped the podcasts in their homes, creating a casual, intimate atmosphere that gives listeners the impression they’re eavesdropping on a couple of friends chatting over a cup of coffee.

In these freewheeling talks, her guests let loose, acknowledging the gamut of emotions provoked by their NPE journeys. When the DNA discoveries were recent, the emotions can be raw, and when the guests have had some time to absorb, there’s reflection. Sturges and her podcast participants make no effort to tidy their thoughts or make them more palatable to those who may not understand. They say it as they feel it. These are conversations about shame, anger, betrayal, frustration, rage, grief, and even, sometimes, joy. There are tears and laughter, irreverence and profanity—all inspired by what’s described as the “mind fuck” that is the NPE experience.

Still in its first season, Everything’s Relative provides a community and platform from which NPEs and others affected by their discoveries can share their stories. People who’ve only recently learned of the change in their genetic identity may think their experiences are unique and feel extraordinarily isolated and lonely. Listening to the podcast, they quickly find they’re not alone, that their feelings and reactions are often much the same as those of other NPEs.

Sturges sums it up this way: Everything’s Relative is “where we talk about all the unexpected shit that happens when you mail in a DNA test.” And while that sounds lighthearted, these conversations fill an aching need and serve a serious purpose. As one guest said, “Listening to the podcast makes me feel normal.” It’s validating, she added, to know that someone else is going through the same craziness. Krista, an NPE and fellow therapist, tells Sturges, “The more we share our stories, the more we normalize them—as abnormal as they are—the easier it will be for those that come behind us.”

Here, Sturges talks about how the podcast came about and what she hopes it will achieve.Professionally I am holding back on the details of my story because—trust me, it’s a good story with at least one extremely interesting character—I’d like to explore different avenues of production resources to tell my story and I don’t want to give it all away just yet. It might be a book, a separate podcast, or a film project someday. I can’t give away all the spoilers in my first season!

My story isn’t over—my life is still happening, and the layers of this discovery are still unpeeling. There are very real and alive people involved, including the mom and dad that raised me, the siblings I grew up with, and the new siblings who have appeared. As I navigate my experience, I am also navigating a lot of relationships and different emotions and reactions from the people in my life. I’m approaching the details of my story delicately because I am giving the people I love a little bit of time to catch up and process their own experience within this journey.

I talk about this here and there in the podcast, but one of the challenges of this type of discovery is the time-consuming nature of it. I would love to visit my newfound siblings. I have a lot of questions for them! They live all over the country. Organizing a trip like that costs a lot of time and money, not to mention emotional resources and the logistical organizing of school and employment. I’m not in a place to drop everything as it is and dive deep into another world. I have three children, a husband, and an active professional and social life in Los Angeles. I struggle enough to find time for my everyday existence, let alone a whole new world of people and histories that I didn’t know about. I hope that doesn’t sound cold, but I have to take care of myself and my loved ones first.In spring 2018, a man reached out to my husband with details of my early life that were eerily specific. He claimed to believe he was my biological father. Having never questioned my paternity before, I figured the best thing to do was a DNA test. It confirmed that this man was correct. A whole history I had never known was revealed to me about my parents’ early 20s and the first years of their marriage.

This affected me in all of the ways that NPEs describe: I felt shocked, confused, angry, and dizzy. I understood the phrase “walking around in a daze” more than ever before. Nothing has changed and yet everything feels different. It’s affected my relationship with my parents the most deeply. We are all struggling to reconcile our different perspectives with one another. We have tried reasoning with one another by talking, fighting, emailing, letter writing, and lots of crying. Each of us has our own journey of grief to explore. Therapy is helping each of us individually. I like to think that our family love is stronger than this unexpected variable, but time will tell.My parents and siblings have always known about the podcast; they are supportive but not exactly enthusiastic. We have never seen eye-to-eye about what should or shouldn’t be kept private.It’s true. I have not yet tested with a mail-in kit like 23andMe or Ancestry. When the man who turned out to be my biological father contacted me, I arranged a test with a company that focuses on the legality of DNA and not so much the community-building. I went to a facility where a nurse roughly scrubbed the inside of my cheeks with Q-tips and shipped them to a lab for me. I received a letter in the mail confirming our relationship 99.9999%. I then did it again with the man who raised me, and the results were 0%.

I intend to do the tests soon, though. I want to learn more about the ins and outs of what people are talking about, and I also suspect there will be more surprises in my genetics and my heritage. It seems like the least I could do, considering my podcast!The reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. I think the episodes offer intriguing stories to people who are not in the NPE world, and they offer solace to those who are. There’s no real way for me to know, but I like to think that these stories help listeners make their own decisions about how to handle an NPE reality.Every guest has thanked me for giving them the opportunity to tell their story. I think the “regular world” underestimates how much pressure there is to keep quiet about our experiences. Right now, almost everyone comes to an NPE discovery feeling isolated and confused. By participating in the movement to be seen and heard, my guests feel empowered. It feels good to be of service; they all express the hope that this project helps others feel less alone and less silenced.I strongly believe that sharing stories is a part of creating community, and a part of creating history.My biggest blind spot was the world of fertility clinics, sperm donation, and assumed anonymity. Episode five sheds some light on the subject, but I suspect it’s only the tip of the iceberg. I’m fascinated by the different players involved and the psychology behind each person’s actions. Another surprise has been the vast difference between each individual’s personal beliefs about the definition of family and what this new technology is doing to affect that. More than anything, everyone wants to feel like they belong somewhere, but the ins and outs of how that feeling is achieved is different for everyone based on a plethora of factors.More than anything I think people are struggling with the dishonesty of their parents. I think this speaks to the overwhelming belief (or misbelief) that we know exactly who our parents are. Learning that there’s a lifetime of choices we weren’t previously aware of is unsettling. Parents are the first people to shape our world; some disruption of that shape is a normal part of growing up, individuating, and developing empathy. An NPE-type discovery, however, can completely destroy the shape. It’s too much for a lot of people to handle.I imagine I’ll stick with the NPE and DNA-discovery topics for now, but I’m open to the show evolving as stories come to me. I’d really like to expand beyond the person who directly had the NPE, though, because I want to explore all the perspectives. I’d like to talk with mothers about their decisions to keep paternity a secret from their children, to men who didn’t or did know they had children out in the world, to men who contributed sperm for money in college but are now being approached by adult children asking for answers. I want to hear from every person involved.Yes, I work with genetic identity issues, and it’s almost entirely due to my personal experience. Also there are so many testimonies online from NPEs who have had bad experiences with therapists who don’t understand what they’re going through. I’m determined to be a better therapist for the growing NPE world and also to educate the mental health community about this tidal wave of need that’s headed its way.There are very few in-person support groups for NPEs, although there’s a growing need. I will start a support group this fall that I will facilitate as a therapist. I am also available for individual therapy, but the group offers people an opportunity to share their experiences and learn from each other.I started exploring the idea of a podcast within a support group on Facebook. I asked the community to help come up with a title, and I posted updates as the project came together. Throughout that process, people volunteered to participate. I kept the first handful of interviews local because I wanted to meet in person and have the experience of talking face to face. I’ve got the technology now to interview people from anywhere though, so the circle is expanding. I am always actively seeking new stories!Subscribe to Everything’s Relative on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts. And Look for Sturges on Facebook and on Twitter @evesturges.

By B.K. JacksonWhen he was only 25 years old and working as a speechwriter for Barack Obama, Adam Frankel learned a searing truth about himself—one his mother intended him to live his days without knowing.

Secrets, he says, were “something of a family tradition.” His mother, who suffered from an ill-defined mental illness and who at least once tried to take her own life, refused in his youth to tell him why she and his father divorced before he was five years old.  As an adult, he pushed back on his mother’s reluctance to share this family history, until finally the truth came out: his dad was not his biological father.

“I wanted to climb out of my skin,” he recalls. “I felt disembodied. I looked down at my legs, arms, hands. All of it suddenly felt so unfamiliar, like I was inhabiting a stranger’s body.” He was, in that instant, “undone.”

“The Survivors: A Story of War, Inheritance, and Healing” traces Frankel’s agonizing quest to find and come to terms with his truth—to heal what he describes as a rupture in his heart.

The reverberations of the revelation were shattering. His mother’s betrayal, coupled with her refusal to understand its effect on him, strained their relationship, which led to acrimonious encounters with extended family members. Unaware of the truth, they perceived his anger toward his mother as mistreatment and berated him repeatedly for being something less than a good son. Out of loyalty to them and his parents, he kept his mother’s secret from them and “took it on the chin.” More tormenting, he kept the secret from his loving dad and paternal grandparents—his fear not so much that they wouldn’t still love him, but something subtler, that they might look at him somewhat differently. All this, combined with the stress of staring down an identity crisis for which he was wholly unprepared, took a toll on Frankel, disrupting his interpersonal relationships, causing insomnia, ratcheting up rage and anxiety, and—as panic attacks and inexplicable physical symptoms arose—threatening his health.

Like Dani Shapiro’s “Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love,” Frankel’s “The Survivors” is an exquisitely wrought, heartrending memoir that lays bare the heartache generated by the discovery that one isn’t who one thought oneself to be. These books—perhaps unsurpassable yet no doubt the vanguard of an inevitable wave of literary memoirs about genetic identity crises—are aching, penetrating self-portraits of individuals overwhelmed by a sense of betrayal, whose identities were fractured in an instant, and who lived both with the agonizing pain of discovery and the unbearable weight of secrets.

While misattributed parentage is front and center in “Inheritance,” it’s only part of the larger story of “The Survivors.” Frankel takes a longer view and focuses his memoir not only on his own discovery, but also on a cataract of trauma that began in another country, in another time, and cascaded from generation to generation. He begins by writing about his maternal grandparents—his beloved Bubbie and Zayde—and their harrowing experiences as Holocaust survivors. His grandfather, who witnessed unspeakable brutality and more than once used subterfuge to save his own father from certain death in concentration camps, survived Dachau. And his grandmother spent much of the war years in the woods near Poland with a brigade of Jewish resistance fighters. They emigrated to America and settled in Connecticut, all the while guarding a secret concerning their own identities.

Years later, as Frankel struggled to make sense of his mother’s illness, her behaviors, and her treachery in light of his knowledge about the cataclysm of the Holocaust and the fraught environment in which she had been raised, he began to see the intrusion of the past into the present and followed the tender threads that stitch one trauma to another and another over decades. Looking into the eyes of his grandfather, he asked himself, “Was the trauma that he and Bubbie endured all those years ago at the root of everything? Had it in some way contributed to the troubles that had plagued my mother all her life? Somehow created the circumstances that were wreaking such havoc in my life?” He sought answers to these questions, researching and interviewing experts in the fields of PTSD, epigenetics, and intergenerational trauma, asking “Had the Holocaust left some sort of genetic stamp on my family? On me?”

Frankel’s elegant prose renders truth into beauty and elevates pain to art as he explores how we carry with us, often unknowingly, the pain, shame, and sorrows of our progenitors. He laments the fact that the stories of the elders, particularly those of Holocaust survivors, are becoming lost to time. “And yet,” he says “something of history’s witnesses remains even after they depart. Something of what they endured outlives them. Their trauma does not, like them, turn to dust. It is bequeathed to us, their descendants, a part of our inheritance.”

While we may stand on the shoulders of those who came before us, we also carry forth their wounds and scars, and we’re faced with the burden of how to integrate inherited traumas into our lives.

“The Survivors” is a curative for the notion that intergenerational trauma is inevitably crippling, that it somehow strips us of free will and tethers us to the suffering of our ancestors. Ultimately, the book is extraordinarily hopeful. Frankel assesses the cost of the secrets kept from him and the secret he kept and lands at two inescapable truths—families can be the source of both the deepest pain and the most profound relief, and the wounds inflicted by family can also be healed by family.

The book’s takeaway, particularly for anyone affected by misattributed parentage, is that forgiveness and self-expression are the twin paths to healing. Ingrained in him, Frankel came to understand, were not merely his ancestors’ traumas, but also their hope and resilience, which led him back to himself. “I’d begun to hear my own inner voice,” he says, “clear and unmistakable, whispering to me once again.”

For more about Frankel and “The Survivors,” look for a video on the homepage sidebar.

It’s surely not hyperbole to say that “A Broken Tree: How DNA Exposed a Family’s Secrets”—a new book by Stephen F. Anderson—is the mother of all NPE (not parent expected) stories. It’s hard to imagine a more epic or stranger-than-fiction tale of misattributed parentage than this.

Anderson stared down a series of family mysteries and over decades employed DNA and oral history in an attempt to solve them. He describes his family of nine children as nothing like the “Leave it to Beaver” family he grew up watching on television. He knew his was different, but it took decades to learn just how different.

Because his mother, Linda, had little interest in settling down to raise kids and clean houses, and his father, Mark, a fire truck salesman, was on the road a great deal of the time, his older sisters took on much of the burden of caring for the younger children. There were rumors and whispers among the siblings of family secrets, but they were too disjointed and fragmentary to be understood. He turned to the person he most expected to have answers, but was rebuffed. He visited his oldest sister, Holly, to record stories about the family, and she refused to share a single recollection. Both intrigued and disturbed, he pressed her to reveal what she knew, but she was determined to say nothing until both of their parents had died. Her refusal only deepened his resolve to learn more.

Anderson learned to eavesdrop, and “parked” himself so he could hear what his aunts and older siblings were talking about. It was clear the family was hiding something, but the substance of the secrets remained a mystery. When Mark died, Stephen tried once again to nudge Holly into coming clean, but she was steadfast. She wouldn’t discuss anything until their mother was gone. His hopes of unraveling the mysteries were dashed when Holly died a few months before their mother did and took the secrets to her grave.

With Holly’s death, Anderson says, they lost a part of their family history, and he double-downed on his desire to know more. What he couldn’t have known as he resolved to get to the source of the rumors and whispers, however, was just how many family secrets he’d uncover or how twisted and tangled they were.

If anyone was well-equipped to sleuth a family mystery, it was Anderson. His avocation as a family historian, education in family and community history and library science, and his long career working in one of the leading genealogy companies—Family Search, International—gave him tools and knowledge others might not have had. Still, it was a challenge even to find the puzzle pieces let alone figure out how to put them together. And none of his education or work experience prepared him for the shock and emotional upheaval he experienced after he ultimately uncovered the truth.

Anderson and his brother Tim suspected that one of their siblings was an NPE. Their suspicions arose before autosomal DNA testing had become available, but they found an ally in an employee of private laboratory that offered other forms of DNA testing. In an effort to create a baseline—a genetic standard against which to measure the family relationships—they determined to get DNA samples from their parents. Their father died before they were able to accomplish their mission, but with help from a funeral director, they obtained a hair sample and were able to have it analyzed. Their mother provided a sample without hesitation. Anderson had no doubt that he was Mark’s son or that he and Tim were full brothers. They looked alike and both, especially Tim, looked like their dad. Still, he wanted to learn about his risks for hereditary diseases that ran in Mark’s family, so he submitted a sample of his own DNA.

When the results came in weeks later, Anderson recalls, his world was turned upside in one phone call. The good news was that he had no markers for the stomach cancer and diabetes he worried about developing. The bad news was that Mark was not his biological father. “Science and technology had stripped me of whatever sense of identity I thought I had,” he recalls. “I had no clue who I was.” He felt sucker punched. He couldn’t breathe and thought he might vomit. He was overwhelmed by feelings of rage, contempt for his mother, and the sense of having been betrayed. “It felt like my whole world was coming down around me,” he writes. He thought about having worried for so many years about the wrong hereditary diseases, all his genealogical research on a family to which he was no longer tethered, the way his father might react, and who his biological father might be.

Anderson couldn’t accept the results, and at the suggestion of the DNA lab, he gathered the hair chamber of his deceased father’s electric razor and had the shavings tested. He was gutted when the test results duplicated those of the initial test. He describes himself as having been on an emotional rollercoaster, but he soon found he was only at the beginning of the ride. To avoid a full-blown spoiler, let’s just say that Anderson wasn’t the only NPE in the family and that over time he was able to get to the bottom of most of the whispers and rumors he’d heard his whole life.

Don’t expect a literary memoir from “A Broken Tree.” It doesn’t boast an artful narrative structure or strive for deep character reflection and analysis. The author doesn’t aspire to crafting elegant prose or stringing graceful sentences. The text suffers in spots from repetition, and you may find it difficult at points to locate events in time and place. And yet it’s a compelling and extraordinary story of genetic disconnect, a page-turner in many spots. Readers are likely to be enthralled by the author’s experience and amazed—even inspired—by his determination to lay bare his family’s truth and his persistence. The book reads as testimony, and those who have had their own DNA surprises will nod in recognition, commiserating with the author at the same time that he validates their feelings about their experiences.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By B.K. JacksonAuthor Dani Shapiro has explored family secrets from every angle in an exceptional decades-long writing career that until now yielded five novels and four memoirs. Revisiting those works, it’s tempting to believe everything she’s experienced and written has been prelude to her 10th book, the bestselling “Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love.” In an earlier memoir, for example, “Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life,” she describes herself in childhood as having been strangely aware unknowns were waiting to be discovered. She didn’t know what she didn’t know, but she was certain there were secrets. Already, she had an untamed curiosity, an urgent need to shed light on those unknowns, and an intuitive understanding of the ways of a writer. She eavesdropped, snooped, and struggled to get to the bottom of things. “I didn’t know that this spying was the beginning of a literary education,” she writes. “That the need to know, to discover, to peel away the surface was a training ground for who and what I would grow up to become.”

But when she grew up, one thing she never felt a need to get to the bottom of was her story of origin. Despite the blond hair and striking blue eyes that almost daily brought the same comment — “You don’t look Jewish” — she had no doubt about where she came from and who her people were. She took enormous pride in being the progeny of Orthodox Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, revered leaders in their communities. “They are the tangled roots — thick, rich, and dark — that bind me to the turning earth.” She was grounded by her Orthodox heritage, its traditions touchstones in her life that tethered her to her father, Paul, whom she adored and whose sadness captivated her. She felt no such tenderness toward her mother, Irene, with whom she had a tenuous relationship. As a child, she says, “I’d had the fantasy — a form of hope, now a staggering irony — that she wasn’t actually my mother.” She told their stories in fiction and in memoir, examining the family as one might a jewel, holding it to the light and observing both its beauty and its flaws.

Although Shapiro had no curiosity about her lineage, when her husband, Michael, who wanted to learn more about his own ancestry, ordered a test for each of them, she went along gamely. But she absorbed its results in stages, in a haze of denial. She was stunned to learn she was only 52% European Jewish and mystified by a match to a first cousin she knew nothing about. Soon after, Michael bounded up the stairs one evening with his laptop in his hands — the rhythm of his steps signaling something urgent — announcing that her half sister Susie, her father’s older daughter, had sent the results of her DNA test, the import of which he’d already gleaned. Shapiro and Susie shared no DNA. This quickly led to the unthinkable yet indisputable conclusion that Shapiro was not the child of the father she adored — the man who died many years earlier after having been in a horrific car crash, whose influence and presence in her life, even now, she cherishes every day.

Readers who’ve experienced similarly staggering DNA surprises can guess exactly what came next — a call to AncestryDNA — because surely there must have been a mistake. The vials must have been switched. But of course they weren’t. As Shapiro acknowledges, “Millions of people have had their DNA tested by Ancestry, and no such mistake has ever been made.” As denial faded, questions bloomed: “If my father wasn’t my father, who was my father? If my father wasn’t my father, who was I?”

“Still Writing” was written long before Shapiro’s life was upended by this shocking revelation. Rereading it now, I’m struck by her prescience. Her thoughts point like arrows toward a future she couldn’t have guessed would come to pass. In the opening pages she writes, “Secrets floated through our home like dust motes in the air. Every word spoken by my parents contained within it a hard kernel of what wasn’t being said.” Among the things that weren’t being said were that her parents had had difficulty conceiving and sought treatment at a sketchy fertility clinic in the shadow of the University of Pennsylvania. Its director, Dr. Edmond Farris, who practiced medicine without a license, had devised a new technique for detecting ovulation that allowed men to provide sperm for artificial insemination at the ideal window of opportunity. The clinic, as did others of that era, mixed donor sperm with the husbands’ sperm to boost the chances of conception while at the same time give the couples reason to believe it was possible the husbands’ sperm prevailed to fertilize the eggs.

The technique — aptly and understatedly — was called confused artificial insemination. The truth was easy to disguise. In those years, no one could have imagined a future in which anyone could spit in a tube, pull back the curtain on such deception, and nullify any promise of anonymity that had been given the sperm donors.

Many who’ve used DNA results to find family will be stunned by the velocity of Shapiro’s success. Within 36 hours, with the help of her journalist husband and a genealogy-savvy acquaintance, she identified her biological father, who’d been a medical student at the University of Pennsylvania. But that discovery may never have happened had Shapiro not dredged up a shard of memory — a vaguely recollected offhand comment her mother had dropped like a grenade many years earlier about a fertility clinic in Philadelphia. What Shapiro does with that information kickstarts an inquiry into the facts of her origins, the ethics of donor conception, the potential consequences of revealing her secret, and — most compelling — the nature of genetic inheritance.

Don’t worry. There’s no spoiler alert needed. The facts aren’t what drives the narrative. Rather, it’s Shapiro’s tender dissection of the fallout of those facts that make “Inheritance” a page turner. As she wonders whether she’ll ever meet her biological father, she ruminates about what actually transpired, what her parents knew, and what it meant to them. And she reaches out to elderly relatives, doctors, religious leaders, and experts in donor conception to answer the question that tortures her: had her parents lied to her or had they themselves been deceived? She withstands an avalanche of grief and emerges to dig deep into the bigger questions. Who is she now? How will it change her relationships? What are the ethical issues associated with anonymity in donor conception? What is it that makes us who we are? What does it mean to forge a new identity and craft a new personal narrative in midlife? How do we live with uncertainty? And, above all, what does it mean to be a father?

An extraordinarily skilled and graceful writer, Shapiro performs a sleight of hand. She makes the reader feel as if she’s pulled up a chair and said, “Let me tell you what happened to me.” The story unfolds as naturally as a conversation between friends over many cups of coffee. But “Inheritance” is no simple recitation of facts. It’s a careful construction, equal parts brilliant detective story and philosophical inquiry.

One doesn’t need to have had a similar shock to be moved to tears by Shapiro’s sorrow and distress. Those who have traveled a similar path, however, may read breathlessly, with a lump in their throats. They may feel, as I did, that Shapiro eavesdropped on their conversations, got inside their skin, echoed their words, channeled their every emotion. “Inheritance” will linger in the minds of all who have yearned to belong and resonate with anyone who’s struggled to answer the question, “Who am I?”

Amber van Moessner, Aubrey Smyth, and T.J. Raphael, Alison Luntz Photography

When Amber van Moessner was 29 years old, she was shocked to learn through taking a 23andMe DNA test that she’d been donor conceived and that the father she’d grown up with was not her biological father. To try to make sense of this bewildering and distressing news, she took a deep dive into the research on the subject. “I was doing a ton of reading and interviewing anyone I could talk to about this issue — doctors, medical historians, other donor conceived folks.”

At the same time, filmmaker Aubrey Smyth was casting about for subject for a new film. After her short film about surviving cancer, “The Bout,” won the grand prize at the Moët Moment Film Festival, Smyth was given tickets to the Tribeca Film Festival, where she learned that Tribeca Studios and DNA testing company 23andMe had partnered to make “Identity” — a series of short, impactful stories about journeys of personal discovery.

van Moessner mentioned her story and her research project to T. J. Raphael, a journalist and producer at Slate, who knew that Smyth was in search of a documentary subject that might be a good match for the Tribeca-23andMe project. After Raphael (a consultant on the film) connected the two women, van Moessner invited Smyth to her support group for donor conceived people, where Smyth was shocked to learn that some donor conceived people had inherited genetic disorders from their donors and had no legal ability to access information about their donors’ medical history. “Almost all of the support group members had been lied to by their parents about their conception,” recalls Smyth, who was inspired by the way van Moessner and the other group members were advocating for change at the state and federal level. “It made a big impression on me because the only stories I heard on the news were about the big, happy family reunions and how everyone looked alike — end of story. I wanted to give Amber the platform to reveal the realities of being a donor conceived person and raise awareness about the lack of regulation in the fertility industry,” she says.

The result of this serendipitous connection is “The Need to Know,” a powerful documentary film that premiered on Vimeo during the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival. Filmed in a total of 5 days in Brooklyn, Chicago, and Sacramento, the documentary, which took six months to complete, manages in a mere 11 minutes to express the range of complicated emotions experienced by donor conceived people and the messy web of issues arising from ethically dubious fertility industry practices.

In the film, van Moessner recalls her surprise when a DNA test reveals that she’s primarily Jewish, yet no one in her family is Jewish. In an emotional phone conversation, she confronts her parents, who acknowledge the truth, telling her they chose to believe it was her father’s sperm, not the donor’s, that resulted in her conception. “How do you think about who you are,” van Moessner asks, “when you don’t know who you are?” At 23 weeks pregnant and concerned about the health of her future child, van Moessner, along with her newfound half-sister, Kaitlin Thompson, begin to act on their need to know who their father is. What unfolds is a striking synopsis of the costs of donor anonymity. Smyth follows van Moessner to Chicago, where she meets Nick Isel and his attorney, Michelle J. Rozovics, to discuss Isel’s FDA Citizen Petition requesting an end to donor anonymity, increased duration of record retention, and record redundancy. As Smyth interviews several other donor conceived individuals, advocates, and an egg donor, their stories speak to the need for ethical oversight and regulation of an industry that’s almost entirely ungoverned. More than their words, van Moessner’s expressive face communicates the pain and frustration of finding herself in an untenable position over which she has no control.

Smyth, who at 21 created her own production company, Gingersnap NYC, has been a film and commercial director for nine years, with a background in narrative filmmaking and documentary-style branded content. “I was so moved by Amber’s story that I decided to direct my first documentary, and I wanted to tell Amber’s story with strong intention.” She describes the narrative techniques she used in the composition and framing to symbolize and accentuate the content of a scene and tell van Moessner’s story:

“In a scene in which Amber’s biological father tells her and her half-sister that they have 75 siblings, we frame only half of their faces and leave negative space between them. This is juxtaposed with an angle on the father, who is centered and fills the empty space. Later, the camera lingers outside his house on a charm of hummingbirds he cares for, symbolizing in an unforeseen way the 75 children he’s fathered. The group scene shows each person stationary and centered in the frame so the audience must concentrate on what they’re expressing. When Amber is interviewed, she’s placed against a black and white background to convey how this issue is not one-sided. The prisms and distorted faces at the end symbolize the donor conceived people who discover the truth and question their identity, many of whom told me they would stare into the mirror and not recognize the person looking back at them.”

“Documentary film,” Smyth says, “has the unique ability to change minds. ‘The Need to Know,’ she adds, “treats conflicting perspectives fairly, and we were able to reach people with emotion and logic. We cover the ethical and legislative issues that donor conceived people have with the business of creating people, and it was important for the film to uphold integrity. We relied on facts while simultaneously conveying very difficult emotions.”

It wasn’t easy for van Moessner to speak so candidly and publicly about something so new, shocking, and painful. “I think a lot of people wonder why I would share something so personal and really drag my family through that. But, ultimately, if I can stop one family from lying to their child, or make someone reconsider being, or using, an anonymous donor, it will all be worth it,” she says. “I don’t want anyone else to go through the pain I went through.” Because a lot of people in her family didn’t know her story, she describes the film as being a “bit of a coming out. I was able to rip off the Band-Aid of ‘telling’ without having to individually tell dozens of people. My parents were hesitant about being involved, but they were ultimately supportive as well.”

However difficult it was to tell her story, van Moessner believes it also proved to be healing. “It was a way to process my grief, confusion, anger, and frustration,” she says. “It made me feel like I could manage all of that if I could do something about it.” Doing something required increasing awareness, and she remembered well how little aware she had been about these issues until the subject hit home. “Before I found out I was donor conceived, sperm or egg donation was never something I thought twice about,” she says. “I had friends who’d considered being egg donors, and I knew sperm donation existed, but I had never thought about the implications or the industry behind it. And now that I’m telling my story, so many people have said to me, ‘I never thought about this!’ So I really wanted to raise a flag and say, ‘hey, have we as a society really thought this through?’” She points to a meme that turns up often in the donor conceived community — a quote from “Jurassic Park”: “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

The response to the “The Need to Know” has been overwhelming and positive. Not only was the film viewed 2,000 times in two days, but van Moessner received an outpouring of positive response from individuals in the donor conceived community. One person told her they posted the film on social media as a way of coming out to friends about having been donor conceived. Smyth believes the facts presented in the film offer a compelling argument for the need to know about family medical history. “I hope the film proves why it’s important for donor conceived people to have access to their medical information and to know who their biological parents are and shows the actions donor conceived people are taking to change the system. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine, Smyth observes, has acknowledged that anonymity of sperm and egg donors is no longer sustainable due to the advent and popularity of genealogical DNA testing. “This conversation urgently needed to happen because the law has not kept up with modern technology.”

Smyth hopes to extend the conversation by developing a docuseries that looks at the ethics of donor conception and the fertility industry and examines pertinent legislation. “There are many sides to this topic, and I want to explore the variety of perspectives.”

And van Moessner, though encouraged by the reception and pleased and proud to have raised so many important issues, acknowledges that there’s more work to do. “The struggle with creating a short film is that there are so many issues we left on the cutting room floor. I want to talk about donor fraud. I want to talk about the complicated ethnic/race/class issues that abound in the donor conceived world. I want to talk about older donor conceived people who have fewer resources when they find out and discuss the implications of that. I want to talk about LGBT issues and how they fit into this conversation. There are so many layers to this issue — we really just scratched the surface, but I hope it’s enough to pique people’s interest and let them do their own investigating.”“The Need to Know” is one of 23 equally compelling films that all explore feelings arising from a DNA journey. The project began, says Tracy Keim, VP of brand and consumer marketing at 23andMe, when the company was invited to be a sponsor of the Tribeca Film Festival. 23andMe suggested something a little different —  a more branded integrated sponsorship that would tap into Tribeca’s community of filmmakers for ideas about films concerning DNA stories. “They were excited,” Keim says, “because they’d never done anything like this and it was a cool challenge for the next level of cobranding and sponsorship.”

The project came together quickly. “We flew out last year to the Tribeca Film Festival and spoke to a group of filmmakers, took submissions, and looked at more than 50 treatments that were amazing.” They were looking for tension-filled stories with raw subjects that illustrate what’s at stake in these DNA journeys. They selected and commissioned 23 filmmakers — insisting that at least half be women — and set them loose with virtually no guidelines or restrictions except a requirement to show a rough cut and permit editing. “We were very light-handed,” Keim says. “We didn’t tell them how to make the films or what to do.”

Anticipating 3- to 5-minute films, 23andMe was surprised when many came in at closer to 13 minutes. “The filmmakers loved it because as they got into it they felt so passionate when they realized the humanity behind the science, so they wanted to do more.” To celebrate the launch of the films, the 23 filmmakers and their subjects were invited to the Tribeca Film Festival, and five of the female filmmakers took part in a panel moderated by filmmaker Dylan McGee, who runs Makers, a platform that aspires to assemble the largest collection of women’s stories.

What these extraordinary filmmakers captured are diverse stories of birthparents on quests to find the children they’ve longed for their whole lives, children looking for the parents they’ve never known, adoptees searching for siblings, NPEs (non-parental events or not parent expected) rocked by surprises, transracial adoptees exploring their lost cultures — all people reaching for the pieces of the puzzles of their lives, each seeking to understand how their past has influenced their present. These rich, captivating stories skate across issues of culture, ethnicity, race, human rights, shame, and truth. Each in its own way addresses how we make meaning of our histories and DNA connections and how we define or redefine ourselves.

Embracing knowledge of the past can be empowering, says Keim, whose aim is that the films serve as a platform that will embolden viewers and let them “look into their past to heal their pain, move forward, or discover something new that can lead to a more fulfilling life.” She hopes the films give viewers courage and help them realize they’re not alone.

View the trailer here and watch all the films on Vimeo. In addition, on YouTube you can view films about 23andMe customers created by documentarians from Transient Pictures, a NYC documentary production company. You can also watch customer-submitted stories — and submit your own — at the company’s Stories Page.

Has rejection by family members hurt your feelings? Neuroscience suggests that the language we use to describe emotional distress is more accurate than we imagine.

If you’ve learned that a parent isn’t a biological parent, there are multiple points at which you might be vulnerable to feeling rejected. Perhaps you search for and reach out to biological family, full of hope and enthusiasm, only to be disavowed. You find that your family doesn’t wish to communicate with you at all, let alone to have a relationship with you. Or you may enter into reunion, only later to be rebuffed. Even if you haven’t been rejected in these ways, you might be preoccupied with the fear that you will. And if you have experienced early life trauma, as may occur with adoption or other disconnections from biological family, you may have lived your entire life with feelings of being unvalued or cast out.

Everyone knows rejection hurts. If you were ever chosen last for a team in grade school you remember that being excluded is painful. But most of us believe the pain is in our head. It turns out it is, but not in the way we think. Hurt feelings isn’t a figure of speech. Scientists have theorized that the pain of rejection, also called social pain, travels on the same neural pathways in the brain as does physical pain and produces the same release of endogenous brain opioids — natural painkillers.

When she was a doctoral student at the University of California, Los Angeles, psychologist Naomi Eisenberger was inspired by the language we use to describe rejection, such as having hurt feelings or being brokenhearted. She wondered if it were more than a matter of linguistics. In a now famous experiment known as Cyberball, she and her research team had participants play a virtual ball tossing game at the same time their brain activity was being measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). When participants perceived that they were being excluded — that other players were failing to toss them the ball — the regions of the brain where physical pain is processed lit up on their MRIs, indicating that the neural circuits that cause injury to be perceived as pain are the same circuits that cause social rejection to feel like physical injury. It appears our brains process emotional and physical pain in the same way.

These effects were replicated by other research. In one study, for example, when individuals who had a recent romantic breakup were shown photos of their former lovers, the regions of their brains associated with pain fired up. In addition, the mere memory of rejection also activates those neural circuits — a phenomenon that doesn’t occur when we remember physical pain. When study participants were asked to recall an experience of having been rejected, the same pain processing centers of the brain fired up, as shown by MRI.

If rejection causes actual pain, Eisenberger and her colleagues wondered if it could be treated in similar ways. In a follow-up experiment, they gave one group of participants Tylenol twice a day for three weeks and gave another group a placebo. Participants recorded their feelings in daily self-reports during the test period, and those taking Tylenol noted fewer feelings of rejection than did those taking a placebo. Their brains showed less activity in the pain centers as recorded by MRI.

Eisenberger and other researchers theorize emotional pain due to rejection is a holdover from evolution. Individuals, like most animals, have always depended on social relationships for safety and survival. Being cast out of one’s tribe left a hunter-gatherer vulnerable. Experiencing emotional pain came to serve as an alert that one was drifting from the tribe, a warning to do what was necessary to stay within the fold and survive. At all times in history, individuals have depended on others to meet their needs, and even today, those who lack a social safety net struggle for survival and those who lack adequate social connections experience depression and negative health outcomes.

Because the need to belong is fundamental and foundational to our existence and ability to thrive, it drives a great deal of our behavior. The need for inclusion is inextricably linked to many of our aspirations. We seek love and acceptance. We join clubs, teams, and fraternities. We network. But for many people, the family is the primal source of a sense of belonging.

Wanting to be received, valued, and accepted by our biological families is a natural desire driven by this universal need to belong. It’s little wonder, then, that meeting an immovable obstacle to the fulfillment of such a primal, fundamental need — being spurned by family, for example — may lead to especially acute feelings of rejection.

This vestige of evolution affects our neurobiology and can have a detrimental effect on our health. Just as physical injury results in inflammation, so too, it appears, do psychic injuries. Eisenberger and colleagues, studying neural sensitivity to social rejection, observed a significant rise in markers of inflammatory activity in response to exposure to laboratory-based social stressors. Their research suggests that social pain may make individuals more susceptible to the development of diseases to which inflammation contributes, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, chronic pain, certain cancers, and Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias.

Rejection has also been shown to increase such negative emotions as anger, sadness, and jealousy. It can result in aggression, lack of concentration, impaired decision-making ability, and diminished thinking performance. Social pain erodes self-esteem and self-perception, which can negatively affect other relationships. When we experience social pain, it seems we can’t think straight, and research has shown that, in fact, we can’t. Participants in a study at Case Western Reserve University demonstrated a significant drop in both IQ and the ability to reason after being subjected to rejection.

When rejection continues — as when, for example, months and years go by when you don’t get a response from biological family or you feel ostracized by your social family — your ability to recover from the emotional pain may diminish, and not only may you be at increased risk of illness, but you also may feel depressed, isolated, even helpless. And, counterintuitively, for some it results in an emotional numbness, as if the mind’s ability to cope simply shuts down.

Further, when we experience rejection we tend to blame ourselves, even when at some level we know we’ve done nothing wrong. Still, we take rejection as a personal failure and believe it’s a response to our behavior or to some inner flaw in our character. And while that may sometimes be true, in many cases — as when a birthparent refuses contact —it has nothing at all to do with who we are or how we behaved. Nonetheless, we may internalize it, which only intensifies the pain and depletes our ability to withstand it.

If this weren’t challenging enough, others may not offer the same empathy and compassion for your social pain as they would if you suffered from a broken leg, possibly leading you to feel still more isolated.

If this paints a grim picture, consider this. Understanding the very real nature of pain that results from rejection and the potential detrimental influence it may have on your health can motivate you to take steps to eliminate or minimize the pain, just as you would with the pain from a physical injury. It’s not necessary to live with acute pain from rejection. Look for articles coming soon on a variety of strategies, including self-compassion and mobilizing resilience, that can help soothe social pain.

Most podcasts in existence today owe a debt to “This American Life,” a public radio program and podcast aired weekly, each week’s episode a selection of stories on particular theme. On the air for more than two decades, it’s a stellar model of narrative journalism, created, produced, and hosted by Ira Glass and about everything and anything, from national politics to the smallest of stories about people you’ve never heard of.

The theme of a 2005 show was “Go Ask Your Father,” stories about children who find out something they’ve always wanted to know about their fathers — although not necessarily something they ultimately want to know. In each case, the subjects confront (or wish they could confront) a parent about a nagging concern. In a heartbreaking prologue, we hear from a child named Aric Knuth, whose father, a Merchant Marine, was gone from his life for six months at a time in Aric’s youth. Over the years, the boy records audiotapes, sends them to his absent father, and pleads for tapes to be returned in kind. He’s shattered when all he gets in return is radio silence.

It’s Glass’s way of jumpstarting the conversations with a provocative dilemma — one that’s likely to resonate with anyone who’s been hurt or lied to by their parents. “I know this is the saddest tape in the world that we’re starting the show with this week, and I’m just doing it so I can talk about this choice,” he says. “As adults, we have this funny choice. Are we going to sit down with our parents and talk about the stuff that hurt us and didn’t make sense to us when we were kids? And it’s hard to know if it’s worth it sometimes, if it’s just going to make your parents feel bad. And what are they going to say, anyway?” No spoilers here about Knuth’s conclusion, but he raises an intriguing question that might cause listeners to think differently about dissatisfying heart-to-hearts with parents about events that happened long in the past.

In the next story, Glass turns his attention to a man whose question for his father is one many of us have asked: are you really my father? In the episode, “Make Him Say Uncle,” Glass talks to Lennard Davis, a professor in the English Department in the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois in Chicago, about his quest to determine whether his father really was his father. It’s a story Davis later explored in his 2009 memoir, “Go Ask Your Father.”

In his signature style, Glass lets you in on the story from the beginning, with the tale told as if it’s unfolding as you listen. It’s set in motion in 1981 by a bizarre phone conversation between Davis and his Uncle Abie, a man his father warned him all his life not to emulate. Whatever Abie did — deeds as simple as reading in bed — Davis was instructed not to do. Whoever Abie was, Davis was urged not to be. The message was clear: Uncle Abie was the black sheep of the family and everything he did was bad or wrong. Davis’ father encouraged his son to be like him and more like his brother in all the ways Davis felt different from both of them.

When Davis was 31, his mother had already died and his father was hospitalized with cancer. Uncle Abie showed up and said he had a secret to tell him, but he couldn’t reveal it until his father died. After his father’s death, when Abie called to discuss furniture that belonged to his brother, Davis reminded him about the secret, and his uncle tried to evade the question. But Davis pressed him. “I kind of nudged him and finally he said, OK, I’ll tell you the secret. And I said, what is it? And he said, I’m your father. And there was just this — this was just completely out of the blue. There was no clues in my upbringing. There was nothing. And my father had just died, and I’m in the process of mourning him and thinking about my connection to him.”

Abie then told a story Davis found preposterous: Abie’s brother — Davis’ father — came to him with a jar and told him he needed semen. Abie went in the bathroom and returned with the semen. Then Abie added a wrinkle: the semen was mixed with semen from Davis’ father. “I was in a complete, total state of shock,” said Davis. “And I just thought, wow, whose movie am I in? The whole thing was completely bizarre.” Surely, he thought, artificial insemination hadn’t been performed as early as 1949, and if it had been, they couldn’t possibly have mixed the semen. But his research told him it had been, and they did. Glass describes the mixing of sperm as being like a firing squad in reverse, where “each person would choose to believe they weren’t the one who hit the prisoner. And in this, everybody would choose to believe they were the one.”

After his father’s funeral, Davis confronted his cousin, Abie’s son, and told him the strange story. His cousin both startled and relieved Davis when he revealed that Abie had been delusional at the time, had even been committed to an institution because he’d been hearing voices. Given this new information, and influenced by his wife’s encouragement, Davis set aside the whole matter and got on with his life, until 15 years later, when it began to preoccupy him. He talked again to his cousin, who admitted that he’d lied all those years earlier — that his father told him the same story when he was very young.

Glass and Davis explore the feelings this strange story evokes — Davis’ recollections of never feeling as if he belonged in his family, his thoughts about the possibility his father isn’t his father and the dreaded Abie might be, and about who he hopes his father will turn out to be. The conversation is raw and moving, with painful pauses and tense moments of suspense — as when, for example, Davis opens an envelope from a DNA lab that contains the answer to his questions — that leave you guessing, along with Davis and Glass, about what will be discovered.

It’s a fascinating conversation about what it means to be family, about how we respond to family secrets and reckon with shifting identities. It reveals how individuals can respond to these questions and revelations in ways that seem universal and in others that are unique and surprising.

The show’s entire archive is available on iOS and Android and at the show’s website. Tune in to find out what was in the letter from the DNA lab.