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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By B.K. Jackson

Until recently, most people likely haven’t encountered someone who’s been knocked off balance by a DNA test result, so it’s understandable they might not appreciate the magnitude of the impact. But it’s just a matter of time. Mind-blowing DNA revelations are becoming so common that some DNA testing companies have trained their customer service staff representatives to respond empathetically. While those employees may know the right thing to say, here in the real world the people around us often haven’t got a clue how it feels — like a punch to the gut.

If you’ve become untethered from your genetic family, you might get a second surprise: some of your friends and loved ones may be remarkably unsympathetic, often infuriatingly judgmental, and sometimes even hostile. It’s clear that although DNA surprises have become ubiquitous, social attitudes haven’t kept pace, and a stigma remains.

When you’re in a free fall and looking for something to grab hold of, negative reactions can set you spinning off your axis.

It shouldn’t be surprising that people may not know what to say to someone who’s received shocking DNA results. After all, few know how to comfort someone who’s experienced the death of a loved one, even though grief is a universal experience.

If your world has been rocked by a DNA surprise, let those around you know what helps and what doesn’t. And if you haven’t been so affected but want to help and support someone who has, it’s worth trying to put yourself in their place and imagine what the experience has been like. Or better yet, simply ask. But think twice before adding to their distress with one of these unhelpful yet commonly heard responses.

This well-meant platitude isn’t comforting to those who didn’t feel loved and nurtured by the dads who raised them. It’s like pressing a bruise. They wonder whether their biological fathers would have given them the love their dads didn’t or if the dads who raised them loved them less because they weren’t true progeny. And those of us lucky enough to have had precious relationships with our dads don’t need that reassurance. It’s like telling the bereaved their loved ones are in a better place. It’s what people say when they don’t know what to say. It doesn’t soothe our roiling emotions or patch the holes in our origin stories.A more cynical take on the same idea, this attempts to make light of those roiling emotions. If we were lucky, we know our dads are the men who loved us, bandaged our knees, held us, worried about us, sacrificed for us. Our love for them and theirs for us is ineffable, immutable, inseverable. But it doesn’t make us any less curious about the men whose not insignificant sperm gave us life and gifted us with half our genetic makeup.This tries to mollify us and discount our feelings at the same time. Blood is exactly what makes family, consanguinity being the first definition of kinship. Certainly there are also families of affinity, but the familial love we feel for them doesn’t alter the fact that our blood relatives exist and they matter to us.Of course we’re the same people! And yet we’re not. We may feel diminished, less of who we thought we were, or, if we always knew deep down something was amiss, more at ease, more authentically ourselves. All the cells in our bodies are different than we thought they were. Each contains the DNA of someone unexpected that encoded the traits that are the foundation of who we are.No, we can’t. But missing is akin to longing. We can wonder what we missed and long for what never was. “What you don’t know can’t hurt you” — the flip side of this comment — is equally untrue. It’s precisely what we don’t know that does hurt us. We don’t know where we came from, what genetic landmines could detonate our health, or the biological relatives who may be out there, somewhere, not even realizing we exist.Letting loose the family skeletons tends to be frowned upon. But just as grief is too heavy to be carried alone, keeping secrets is a lingering burden that feeds isolation and loneliness. It’s a comment that whispers, “You’re a dirty little secret.” It’s not our shame, but it is our truth to tell. As Anne Lamott famously wrote in “Bird by Bird,” “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”Wonder and longing often fuel a desire for reunion with biological relatives, which may be perceived as an affront by our families or as a threat by biological relatives who fear the shame exposure of their long-kept secrets would arouse. Discouraging a search for biological family sends the message that our need to know fundamental truths is insignificant compared to others’ needs to protect their secrets.That millions take DNA tests to see where they come from and millions more trace their lineage seems evidence enough that knowing about one’s pedigree matters. But tracing a family tree isn’t an option for NPEs (non-parental events or not parent expected) who can’t establish filiation, nor is protecting themselves against collateral damage — invisible health risks. For example, I worried my whole life about birth defects, cancers, and other genetic diseases that were the legacy of my Russian ancestors. Fortunately, I discovered I descend from robust Sicilians who lived long, healthy lives. Not so lucky is the ticking time bomb of a 40-year old NPE who doesn’t know he has a father and four half-brothers who all died of heart disease before 45. We simply want the same knowledge everyone else has.Having a good life doesn’t make us immune to despair, confusion, or grief. Ask anyone who’s lost a parent. Comments such as these disregard the sense of dislocation we feel after having been unceremoniously severed from our family trees. And lack of ceremony is key, because when something is lost, even if it’s something we didn’t know we had, there’s grieving to be done, whether the unknown father is dead or yet living. But there are no ceremonies, rituals, or social supports for this particular bereavement.We likely won’t get over it unless we’re able to grieve our losses and gain answers to the questions that others never have to ask about the things they take for granted — knowledge that is their birthright, but, they believe, not ours.Understand it’s complicated. The issues and feelings a DNA surprise give rise to are numerous and diverse. The most meaningful thing you can do is listen and acknowledge the feelings, but withhold judgment. Sometimes a willing ear and kind silence is the best response. Consider how you might feel if you learned you’ve been a secret for decades and what it’s like to see your family tree pruned by half. Erase everything you know about your father: his name, appearance, forebears, and medical history. Erase everything you share with him: his surname, religion, ethnicity. If you didn’t know all this, would you still be who you are? Would you not feel stripped bare and dispossessed? As Michael Crichton wrote in “Timeline,” “If you didn’t know history, you didn’t know anything. You were a leaf that didn’t know it was part of a tree.”Return to our home page to see more articles about NPEs. And if you’re an NPE, adoptee, donor-conceived individual, helping professional or genetic genealogist, join Severance’s private facebook group.BEFORE YOU GO…

• Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts.
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• Tell us your stories. See guidelines at https://severancemag.com/submission-guidelines/
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By Kevin GladishOn May 26, 2015, thanks to a change in Ohio law, I received a copy of my original birth certificate in the mail. That day, I finally learned a truth that I had long suspected but denied my entire life — that I was adopted. I was 43 years old.

Six weeks later, I began writing and speaking publicly about it. And I haven’t really stopped.

I had no idea then how writing and storytelling would save me. In those first days, my words were raw and filled with both a newfound freedom and a newfound grief. Learning that I was, in fact, adopted, was like putting on prescription glasses for the first time after years of not even knowing I couldn’t see. But it also meant seeing how long I’d been lied to and what believing those lies had cost me.

I posted my blog to Facebook and waited. At first, my confessional ramble felt like a selfish act of rebellion. Until then, I’d only told a few people what I’d learned. I knew that the news would come as a shock to most — not so much that I was adopted, but that I had only just now found out.

It was embarrassing, like finally admitting that I’d been pretending to laugh along with a joke that I never got, a joke that was on me the whole time. And yet there was also a relief. Despite how I felt, I knew it was not my fault. I simply could not fathom that the father I loved and trusted my whole life, a man I still today sometimes miss terribly despite everything, could look me in the eye when we were both grown men and lie. But that’s what he did. Having seen one too many clues, I’d finally gotten the guts to ask him if I was adopted.

“No,” he said. “You’re not.”

I had a decision to make, and I did what I think a lot of people do when confronted with whether to believe someone they love. I chose to ignore the growing mountain of evidence: photos and timelines that made no sense, memory fragments, and my own reflection in the mirror. I chose to believe my father.

None of this changed what I’d always felt inside. I’d spent a lifetime averting my eyes and changing the subject whenever the conversation turned to family ancestry, a topic that inexplicably made me uneasy. I’d say I was mostly Slovak (I know now I’m mostly Irish) and taught myself to repeat lines like, “I take after Mom. My sister takes after Dad.” In truth, I looked like neither, and deep down I’d always felt like a fraud playing badly at a game of charades.

That first blog post was read by hundreds of people and passed on. I got calls asking if I was OK. People connected me with online support groups of other late-discovery adoptees, with whom I shared more. And for the first time, I felt a layer of loneliness I never even knew existed begin to fall away. I began to relate to people, for the first time, as me.

Of course this was also frightening. At times I was seized with sudden irrational panics squeezing my throat and chest. I imagined losing everyone, being rejected and abandoned for telling the truth. I was sure that somewhere a meeting would be called to decide that I had stepped out of line and needed to be punished. And though my father by this time was gone, and my mother was in the grip of severe dementia, I still believed there would be dire consequences for exposing the truth.

None of this happened, of course. It was all in my mind. But such is the power of deeply held shame.

Until I began telling my own story, I’d been a character in someone else’s made-up tale. It may have been a nice story, but it wasn’t mine. And it wasn’t true. And just as I had been putting my health at risk each time I walked into a doctor’s office and wrote down someone else’s family medical history instead of my own, I was making myself soul sick every time I repeated it.  Now, I could finally start to get better.

It would be a while before I could begin to trust myself. My first instinct, to this day, is to assume that I am always wrong. “You need to listen to your gut,” I’ve been told, and it’s good advice. But what if you’d spent a lifetime convincing yourself that your gut was telling you lies? Journaling and meditation help, along with honest friends I trust. But I’ve got a ways to go.

Years later, I am still new at this. Every word I write and speak of my truth is a battle against self-doubt and uncertainty. But that’s precisely why I keep doing it, long after some would prefer I “get over it.” Again and again, I am saying: “This is me. This is true.” And every once in a while, someone will say, “Thank you. Your story helped me.” I hear not only from other late-discovery adoptees but also from those who are healing from their own family secrets and inherited shame. I listen, and our stories become a conversation, one that saves us both.

Of course there’s always a risk in telling a true story. Not everyone will want to hear it. But someone, somewhere, will need to hear it, just as badly as you need to tell it. I hope you will. I’m listening too.Kevin Gladish is a late-discovery adoptee, writer, and storytelling performer living in Chicago. He started documenting his discovery and search for birth family soon after finding out he was adopted at the age of 43 and is working on a full-length solo performance piece that is yet unnamed. He’ll take suggestions. Check out his blog, A Story with No Beginning: A Late Discovery Adoption Journey.

Look for more essays on various aspects of genetic identity here. Do you have a story to share? We want to hear from you. Find our submission guidelines here.