NPEs

First, if you feel called to read this essay, then you belong here. Welcome. Do you belong in the Jewish community? Are you a part of this religion, culture, and peoplehood? Are you actually technically Jewish at all? To give a very Jewish answer: yes, no, maybe. It depends. But this journey of exploration and curiosity—of questioning and wrestling—is absolutely yours for the taking. So welcome. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Not everyone along the way will greet you with such open arms, so I want to make sure that mine are stretched extra wide. An NPE* discovery is complicated enough, but when compounded by an ethnicity discovery—a Jewish ethnicity discovery especially—the complications are magnified. And Jewish identity is complicated enough, even for people who were raised Jewish. DNA testing may be new, but the question of “who counts as a Jew” is as old as Judaism itself. Judaism is an ethnicity, as you may have just learned unexpectedly, but it’s also a culture, a spiritual practice, a community, a set of laws, a set of holy days, and unendingly more. How many of those boxes must a person tick in order to be counted among the tribe? The answer remains: it depends. There’s a beloved aphorism: for every two Jews, you get three opinions. Judaism is far more concerned with asking questions than it is with answering them. So if you came to this article asking “Am I Jewish?” be forewarned: you won’t get a clear answer. But you will, I hope, get a solid footing for the start of your journey, should you choose to embark. The Rabbinic Answer Let’s start with the answer you’d be most likely to get if you googled “Am I Jewish?” Or, let’s say you told a rabbi: “I just found out that I’m biologically half Jewish because the dad that I thought was my dad isn’t my dad and my DNA isn’t what I thought it was—what does that mean?” First, the rabbi would probably respond the same way most people do: a polite “please slow down because I don’t believe what I’m hearing,” or something of that ilk. Then, the rabbi would likely say that, according to halakha (Jewish law), you must be born to a Jewish mother or have entered the faith through conversion. For an NPE, then, this sounds like a resounding no: you are not, by law, a Jew. A reform or reconstructionist rabbi (these are the more socially progressive and halakhically creative of the four main Jewish denominations: learn more here) would tell you that patrilineal Jews count, but only if they’re raised Jewish—so you’re still out of luck.

It’s what those of us with misattributed parentage like to call “sibling season”—the time when people who received an over-the-counter DNA test for Christmas are getting the results. When you have a DNA surprise and learn the person who raised you is not your genetic parent, you are plummeted into a world of confusion, doubt, and shock. You feel all alone in your experience. You are likely thinking it is impossible that anyone else could possibly have such a crazy thing happened to them. And so when you turn to a professional—a licensed therapist—for help, the last thing you want to hear after explaining your situation during your first session is “Wow. That’s incredible. I’ve never heard of that before!” We estimate that 1 in 20 people have misattributed parentage—that’s 16.6 million Americans who may innocently spit into a tube and discover they’re not who they thought they were. People have a misattributed parentage experience (MPE) from a variety of reasons: they discover they’re adopted, conceived through assisted reproduction or as a result of an extra-marital affair, rape, or other sexual encounter. Regardless of why someone has an MPE, the news is traumatic. “After I told my therapist about my MPE, she said she had no idea how a person should respond to being told such a story.” Lisa In Right to Know’s 2021 Survey of MPEs[1], 39% of those surveyed responded they’d sought help from a licensed therapist. Of those who saw a therapist, only 18% felt their therapists had sufficient training in misattributed parentage issues to assist them. This needs to change. “Today I had a therapy session with yet another new therapist. Every time I have to educate my therapist on what an MPE is, how we feel, how our situation is life altering, how we have an identity crisis, and how we search for family…..” Michelle Right to Know is a nonprofit dedicated to advocating for people with a DNA surprise and misattributed parentage and promoting understanding of the complex intersection of genetic information, identity, and family dynamics. To promote this goal, we now offer the first misattributed parentage education platform providing educational information on MPEs and the impacts of DNA surprises to professionals and the public. With this initiative, we aim to tackle one of the most important aspects of the MPE discovery—the need for training for licensed therapists and information for those affected by an MPE and the public at large. “During my first visit to a therapist, she admitted this was all so new to everyone and she had no experience with this specific trauma, that there was no handbook on how to handle my feelings. She told me my mother had every right to lie to me, that it was her body.” Dan

I am the daughter of an adoptee. My mother, adopted from an orphanage when she was nine months old, was raised by parents who were loving, protective, and kind people. They raised my mother, a second adopted son, and their third and only biological child in a pastoral, rural setting where the kids rode horses to their one-room schoolhouse, kicked around in the surrounding woods and pasture, and lived a pretty idyllic existence. When my mother was 18 years old, she became pregnant with me. In a whirlwind of impulsive action, she married my birth certificate father, moved 2,000 miles away from home, and six months later gave birth to me. By the end of the year, she had packed me up, returned to her parents, and essentially disappeared the man I believed to be my father. Within the next twelve months, she remarried, gained two more young children, and, four years later, she and my stepfather had a daughter of their own. Amidst this chaos, I immediately began to identify myself as an outsider in the family: a sensitive and insecure child, an interloper among the three children of a man with whom I lived but hardly knew. In just a few years, I was both born of and made into a fatherless child. The psychological construct known as object relations theory has shown us the cruciality of early childhood relationships to identity formation; that is, the origins of the self emerge from exchanges between the infant and others. Originally theorized by Austrian psychoanalyst Melanie Klein, the essential idea is that the infant’s bond to the parents shapes future relationships. What this means is that the mother as a physical object is invested with emotional energy from the child and the psycho-emotional impression of the mother, the internal object, comes to represent what the infant holds in her absence. If the object formation is disrupted early in life—as, I would argue, it is with virtually all adoptees and MPE/ NPE*—the failure to form these early relationships leads to problems later in the child’s life. Object relations theory also points out that situations in adult life are shaped by and mirror familial experiences during infancy. My mother’s own adoption unquestionably caused for her a failure of identity formation leading to problems in late relationships. No doubt and with good reason, the sense of attachment and security that adoptees can, and likely do, feel carries over into adult relationships in all kinds of ways. The question is how this manifests itself. Adoption is not, by any means, the only way that this attachment disruption occurs. In fact, biological children may suffer the same disruption for a variety of reasons. The lack of attachment demonstrated by my mother in her adult relationships is not necessarily a reflection of her relationship with her adoptive parents, and not all adoptees develop in this same way. In our case, whatever the disruption my mother experienced as a child, whether the result of her late-infant adoption or some other barrier to her attachment, it severely affected her identity formation. This affected identity formation is where the intergenerational disruption of object formation can be seen most clearly.

It was winter up North. I was four, riding shotgun with my dad in a car on the highway. The naked trees scarred the grey sky, and now and again, birds flocked and dipped in the wind like shards of glass slicing the clouds. My cheeks burned hot. My dad had rolled the driver’s side window down an inch and the whistle of the cold wind sucked his cigarette smoke out the crack. Every time he took a drag, the tip of his cigarette glowed orange underneath the grey of the ash. When it got low, he lit a fresh one from it, then tossed the butt out the window. The inside of the car smelled like Kool menthols, sedan vinyl, and drugstore aftershave. I was unbuckled because we all were back then, and I fidgeted in my seat, uncomfortably eager to reach a bridge I would be able to see from the driver’s side window. I didn’t know why I felt nervous, only that I had a knot in my stomach that periodically lurched into my throat. When we got close to the bridge, I slid across the bench seat, grab my dad’s arm, and peered down the divide between the two sides of the highway into a gully that led to a tunnel, where I got a quick glimpse of a black hole framed by the arch of the bridge. I could never quite see what was inside that little hole, but I kept trying. I needed to see it, but I didn’t know why. I suppressed a thrill of fear whenever I saw it. Mostly I feared missing the opportunity to look inside the hole, because I believed I must look inside it, or else the day would go wrong. The hole bothered me then, and the memory of it bothering me has bothered me for most of my life, with the kind of prodding nag you feel when you are on a 46-year hike and there is a pebble in your shoe. You can ignore it for a while, but eventually it rubs, then blisters, then becomes infected. Then it festers and begins to rot, and you worry about it possibly killing you. For years I didn’t remember where we went on those rides, so I didn’t know what to make of the memories, or of my fear of seeing that bridge, so I banked them alongside hundreds of other memories that made no sense, like the time I was awakened from sleep by yelling and the shattering of the storm door glass, and the next day, after the doctor had stitched up my mother’s hand, I broke the household silence by asking what had happened and my parents said, “Nothing.” Or when I once got up the courage to ask my dad why he was always so mad at me, he told me to ask my mother, and the bitter way he said it made me afraid of the truth. Or that time when, after several years of chasing his love and not catching it, I asked my mother if he was my real father and she said, “Shame on you.” Years later, while visiting my dad, I brought up that morning drive and the bridge and he said, “That was when I used to take you to daycare.” “I went to daycare?” “You don’t remember? It was a home daycare. Run by a guy. You cried every time. Every day for a year you cried, and I never knew why.” “And you kept dropping me off there? To a home daycare center run by a guy? To a place that made me cry every day?”

The advent of over-the-counter DNA testing has unlocked the closet where many family secrets were kept. While many learn one (or both) of the parents who raised them are not their genetic parent from a DNA test, sometimes people find out in other ways. A mother with a 104-degree temperature might let it slip that she had a son as a teenager. A family friend may tell someone mourning his dad, possibly at his funeral, that the suffered from infertility and had used a sperm donor. And sometimes having a child of their own prompts individuals to search for their biological family because they grew up with a vague idea of who their fathers were. Regardless of how one learns about misattributed parentage, the process of coping with such an experience is daunting and life-changing. Right to Know is a non-profit founded on the principle that it’s a fundamental human right to know one’s genetic identity. We believe in inclusivity and embrace anyone who facing misattributed parentage. To that end we use the term misattributed parentage experience (MPE) to describe the phenomenon of coping with the fact that you did not grow up knowing your genetic parent. It’s a term used by mental health professionals for decades. We believe the word experience best describes the long-term effects we all have, as opposed to “event,” which is a one-time occurrence. The ramifications of an MPE last a lifetime to some degree.

Did your upbringing influence your desire to be a social worker and if so, in what way? I expected to become an elementary teacher growing up and had no idea what social work was until I was in my 20s. However, once I discovered social work, I knew that was what I needed to do. My upbringing was full of moments when I was a little social worker (counseling, advocating, and educating) but I did not know it until later. I was raised by a single father who worked hard to be sure we could pay the rent. All the moms in the neighborhood helped to raise me. You were already a social worker and well into your doctoral studies when you decided to change the topic of your dissertation. Can you explain why you chose to align your scholarly interests with your NPE experience? I was. That was quite the detour. I trust my gut with most everything I do. I could not find a way to study school social work (my profession) in a way that felt interesting to me. Once the NPE event happened, I brought it to my committee and they helped me determine that this was the path that fit better for me. Knowing there was little to no scholarly research at that time was a huge attraction to me as well. I agreed and was willing to do the extra work. How, specifically, did you design your thesis—what were you looking to discover and how did you propose to accomplish that? I knew I would do interviews for qualitative research. The idea of secrets kept was fascinating. Also, the impact that this discovery had on me and how off balance I felt at middle age got me interested in the impact on identity. The obvious path was discussing the impact on family of origin relationships—living or deceased and on the new family relationships—living or deceased. You interviewed 51 people. Can you describe those interviews—how you selected subjects and what the interviews involved? I was a part of one of the private NPE Facebook groups that agreed to work with me then backed out. Another Facebook group offered assistance then stalled. Finally, a woman who was starting another NPE Facebook group offered to assist. I was a member but did not participate for a long time. The process was an advertisement of the study and a link for those interested. The criteria for interviews included having discovered paternity through a direct-to-consumer DNA Ancestry test, living in North America, being over 18. The first round of interviews was in the fall of 2019, the second round of interviews was in the fall of 2020. Unfortunately, the first round interviews were not used in the final study. It’s a complicated story but every one of those interviews mattered significantly to me and, interestingly, my findings were the same. The interviews were incredible. People were so willing to share their personal stories, so interested in helping other NPEs, and were so vulnerable and lovely. I feel incredibly lucky to have shared some time with all of these amazing individuals.

There are moments in our lives when the coincidences of being a human in an often-discordant world can feel overwhelming. In the early 2000s, as a young graduate student, I examined the (then-new) assisted reproductive technologies and ideas of relatedness: how material (flesh and blood) and information (genes) are used to help define different anthropological kin structures. In short, I somewhat blindly argued that the primacy of the biological part of relatedness could be surmounted through “different” ways of relating to define family. In hindsight, it was complacent to exclude the biological from my anthropological study of family. Little did I know that almost 15 years later my life would collide with these notions, head-on. In late December 2020, I discovered through an at-home DNA test (gifted to me by one of my kin, nonetheless!) that I share no biological or genetic link with the man who, for 47 years, I believed to be my father. What’s more, the man with whom I do share half of my genetic material—and a remarkable physical likeness—has, for my entire life, been living with his family just miles away from my hometown and from the group of people I have always called my kin. There’s an idea in anthropology that kinship is a mutuality of being: kin are intrinsic to one another’s identity and existence. The relational nature of kinship, traditionalists argue, lies in the fact that all those who are “related” are connected through the lineage of the mother and the father and, therefore, share traits and qualities that can be traced through these parental origins: biological, cultural, communal, genetic. Such ideas of relatedness, which were once seen as fundamental, came under scrutiny in the 2000s as deterministic. Cultural critics argued kinship as outmoded altogether, particularly in light of assisted reproductive technologies such as invitro fertilization, intrauterine insemination, gamete donation, and surrogacy. Today, however, the centrality of kinship to relatedness has been brought back to life, likely influenced by DNA testing. I’ve wondered lately whether this is because understanding ways of relating has come full-circle and we now recognize that while kinship and relatedness can be all-encompassing, the “intrinsic” nature of biology is still fundamental to a person’s identity? As an adult who inadvertently uncovered her misattributed parentage, I would argue that this is absolutely the case.

DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE Are we better off forgetting the details? I started writing this memoir as a way to process my mother’s death and remember the events surrounding it as they happened before coping mechanisms settled in to destroy the memories in order to protect me. But I haven’t yet been able to write about the actual moment of her death. I’ve been avoiding it. I’ve been avoiding reliving those moments because writing them down will make them real again in my mind and bring me one step closer to a breakdown. My mother went out of this world like she came in. “The Red Menace,” as she was called by someone along the way—probably my father, made her own choice as to when to go. There was no peaceful exit, even though we were there, holding her hands and singing to her. A timebomb went off and simultaneously destroyed her body and my life. Perhaps that sounds dramatic, but I was simply not prepared for the devastation left in her wake or for the PTSD I experienced, like a soldier having returned from war. I’ll be honest: I was a little worried about my mental health in the months after she died. I was able to cope better when I was with my brothers and sister. Maybe something about being together again reminded me that, in spite of the years apart and the distance between us, we are still a family. We grew up together and got on each other’s nerves as children (and still do now as adults). When we are together, I remember I am not just an interloper to their happy little trio. Nothing has changed.

In Facebook groups for people with not parent expected (NPEs) or misattributed parentage experiences (MPEs), there’s a consistent large difference in the ratio of men to women. If you were a man looking to meet women, this would be a place to be. There’s typically a handful of men and thousands of women. Where are all the guys? Percentage-wise there couldn’t be that many more women than men having DNA surprises. So what’s going on here? Looking at the bigger picture, this is a fairly common phenomenon among individuals with depression, anxiety, stress, and other mental health concerns. Several studies indicate that men are typically much less likely than women to seek professional help when facing psychological distress. The study authors suggest a number of factors for the disparity, such as the fear many men have of being judged as emotionally vulnerable or weak. Researchers also point to the fact that because men are trained from an early age to compete with other men, it makes them less likely to trust each other and reveal what they may perceive as weakness. I posed the question to several individuals who not only are behavioral health practitioners but who also have personal experience with misattributed parentage. Their thoughts generally mirror the finding of the studies, but they offered additional insights. According to Jodi Klugman-Rabb* a licensed marriage and family therapist and licensed professional counselor, “Sometimes it’s as simple as the gender role conditioning specific to cultural norms that men are not manly if emotional.  So expressing emotions is then seen as weak, making group process emasculating.  On a more micro level, emotional process can have a lot to do with the family of origin dynamics and whether kids were allowed or encouraged to explore emotions safely, how cultural gender norms influenced that and to take it back out on a macro level, how these expectations were transmitted intergenerationally.”

Recognizing the challenges facing individuals who experience DNA surprises, Adoption Network Cleveland (ANC) has launched the DNA Discoveries Peer Support Group, a virtual peer support program focused on the emotional impacts of the journey and  It kicks off with a special panel on February 2 facilitated by ANC’s search specialist Traci Onders that will feature an individual who’s discovered misattributed parentage, a donor-conceived person, and adoptees who have found birth family. Onders spoke with us about the program and the personal journey that led her to working with ANC. How did you come to Adoption Network Cleveland and how did you become interested in this work? I started as program coordinator for adult adoptees and birthparents in 2016. I’d begun volunteering at Adoption Network Cleveland (ANC) prior to that because its mission was personally important to me. Adoption Network Cleveland advocated for adoptee access to records in Ohio for more than 25 years, and finally in 2013 Ohio passed legislation that opened up original birth certificates to adult adoptees. It’s hard to imagine this would have happened without the steadfast determination of ANC, and as an adoptee, I wanted to give back to the organization that made it possible for me to request and receive my original birth certificate. ANC is a nonprofit organization and has a reputation for advocacy rooted in understanding, support, and education—a meaningful mission to me. I was born to a woman who was sent to a home for unwed mothers to hide the shame of pregnancy from the small town in which her family lived. There was no counseling available for the grief of relinquishing a child, and she was told to go on with her life and forget about it. These homes no longer exist; we know now how awful and hurtful this practice, rooted in shame, is. My birthfather died a year later in a tragic accident. He was also an adoptee, raised as a son by his maternal grandparents. I will never know if he knew who his father was, but thanks to DNA, I do. I first searched for my birthmother more than 20 years ago after my children were born. Pregnancy and childbirth made me want to know more about the woman who carried me and gave me a deep understanding that she made decisions that had to be extremely difficult and painful in a way that I had not previously appreciated. I had complicated pregnancies and no medical history for myself or my children. As a mother, I felt compelled to know and understand more about both my history and my beginning. At that time, I discovered that the agency that handled my adoption, Ohio Children’s Society, had destroyed its records. I had no information at all to work with, and my search hit a brick wall. It was important to me that I connect with my birthmother in a way that was respectful. I didn’t know if she had told anyone she’d relinquished me, and I was concerned that if I hired a private investigator, the PI might use tactics that I wasn’t comfortable with or make a possible secret known to others, and that this somehow might hurt my birthmother or her family. Until I could request my original birth certificate in 2015, I didn’t have many options. In 2015, adoptees were finally able to access their original birth certificates in Ohio, and when I did this, it named my birthmother. I also discovered that I have a maternal half-sister. My birthmother and I reunited very shortly after that. I was finally able to learn her story and to gain a more complete and ongoing medical history. Knowing these things and my relationship with her have been blessings in my life that for many years I did not imagine would be possible. A few months later I met the extended family, and their warm welcome touched my heart.

Direct-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 came in 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.

How does it feel to think you’re related to a monster—and then, decades later, to find out you’re not? The gossip reaches me on New Year’s Eve, two days after my birthday—worth mentioning only because birthdays often put me in a reflective state that can easily turn to melancholy, and this year is no different. I’m in Mexico City, on vacation, about to go to dinner with my husband, mood beginning to lift. Then I receive the email from my sister. It reads: “Considering that Mom could pass any day, I thought I should tell you a.s.a.p. in case you don’t know about it, which I assume you don’t.” The news she shares is second-hand gossip from an old family “friend” who showed up to visit my mother—then dying of brain cancer—to reminisce, burn private letters and relive the good old days. The friend, who played little part in any of our lives for decades, revealed to another family member that my father wasn’t really my father. That person told the sister who emailed me. Now I’m the last in the four-person chain to find out. As for my mom: she’s not talking, and never will, which isn’t surprising given her love of secrets and lifelong fear of being judged for parenting errors. Her fears are valid. I do judge her, most of all for not keeping my sisters safe when we were all younger. Before leaving our hotel room to go to dinner, I reply to my sister: “That’s a big surprise! How lucky I don’t feel especially attached to ‘Dad’ or his side of the family or it could be upsetting.” I take pride in my stoic response and the fact that I severed relations years ago with our late father—an undeniably “bad man.” But that stoicism is really only disorientation. I have no idea, at this time, that my identity and much of what I’d thought about both my parents will have to be recalibrated. I never would have imagined that my mom, a self-identified, non-practicing Catholic with an affinity for the Virgin Mary, probably had multiple affairs when she was still married to her first husband, who came from a large Sicilian-Polish family. But there was a lot about our family I never suspected until each bomb dropped: for example, when, at age 14, I learned that my two older sisters, then 16 and 19, had been molested for years by the sweet-tempered, funny and charming man we called “Dad.”

Christina Bryan has an impressive portfolio of skills that make her exceedingly good at her work as a genetic and family investigator, but it’s her tenacity that drives her success where others may fail. Based in Marin County, California, she helps clients across the country cope with life-altering DNA test results and shocking family surprises, untangling misattributed parentage discoveries and locating their biological family members. Whether working with adoptees, donor-conceived adults, or others who’ve had a misattributed parentage experience (MPE), she employs an array of investigative strategies and doesn’t stop until she’s solved a client’s puzzle. A Portland, Oregon native, Bryan moved to the Bay area to go to California State University, East Bay, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology and became a performance analyst in the investment banking field. But after she took an autosomal DNA test in 2014, she found herself on a new career trajectory. She learned about the science of DNA, applied it to her own family tree, and began using her newfound skills to help others solve the puzzle of their parentage or better understand their ancestry. It quickly became apparent it wasn’t merely a hobby; it was a calling, as the nickname her clients have given her suggests—Super Sleuth. In 2016, she began taking on complex cases for high profile clients and performing international and historical research. She’s in demand not only for her persistence but also for her intuition, which has helped her solve cases for attorneys and law enforcement personnel. She’s also co-host, with Jodi Klugman-Rabb, of Sex, Lies & the Truth, an entertaining and informative podcast about DNA surprises. Bryan knows her job doesn’t begin and end with solving a case. She’s likely to encounter clients experiencing stress, trauma, identity confusion, and intense emotions related to their change of status within their family and she offers comfort, humor, and emotional support. Here she talks with us about her work.

Tell us about your own NPE story to the extent you’re comfortable sharing it. Seeing only 1% French was the red flag in my initial 23andMe DNA report. I was raised to believe I was significantly French and Norwegian. A few months later I took the Ancestry DNA test to compare from the same database that my sister had used. Those results produced the most shocking and traumatic day of my adult life. I had a half brother appear on my DNA results, and I didn’t have a brother as far as I knew. A trip over to my mother’s house an hour later produced more confusion, dismissal, and a host of secrets started to come out. Apparently, my mother and BF worked together in the 80s and had a one-night stand. My mother never told him she got pregnant and never saw him again, or at least that’s what I’ve been told. My mother still claims she didn’t know to this day. I think the most painful part of finding this out is how my mother, birth father, and newfound family have treated me in the aftermath. How far into your own journey were you when you started your podcast? Six weeks after I had my DNA shock I published my first trailer for the podcast calling for NPEs to share their story and giving a launch date of July 2019. What compelled you to start the podcast? The only comfort I had in those first few weeks of shock was reading other NPE stories on the forums online. I was nodding along with their written stories and scrolling for hours and hours. I would read aloud parts of other NPE stories to my husband at all hours of the day and night. I wanted to be able to listen to these stories as I walked around the house and did my errands. I knew I couldn’t continue to sit in front of a computer the rest of my life but I wanted to bring the comfort of finding others like me everywhere I went. I searched “NPE” on the podcast platforms and at the time did not find anything like it so decided I would produce my own. I realize now I could have used other terms and certainly found other podcasts with these stories on them, but with my limited knowledge at the time I was unable to find other podcasts. Did you initially find NPEs very willing to speak out, or did you have to coax people to share? I have only ever asked one guest. My first one I had to search for on reddit; I was too afraid to ask anyone on the DNA sites because I didn’t want to break the rules and get kicked off if they considered it “self-promotion.” After that I’ve had a pretty steady stream of people who reach out. I’m booked for 22 weeks out. I can only handle about one guest a week at this time because I do everything myself including scheduling, recording, and editing. I’m only a hobbyist—I’m literally learning everything as I go. I believe stories benefit the teller as well as the audience. From your experience sharing people’s stories, can you talk a little about the ways the stories help the listeners, and the ways telling the stories helps the storytellers? I know every story I record is sacred. Somebody out there is listening and nodding along in relief. A lurker, or perhaps a new NPE bingeing on stories all night long when they can’t sleep from the overwhelming grief they are experiencing. I get emails from listeners saying they have been listening or bingeing all night long to some of these episodes. As for the storytellers, I wish I could explain the relief, giddiness, and joy I hear in their voices after I sign off. Some of what they tell me afterwards is pure gold, but of course off the record after I’ve stopped recording. They all sound like a weight has been lifted off their shoulders; sometimes they’re exhausted and yawning. I leave every recording session feeling filled with empathy and love for my fellow NPEs. Why do you think storytelling and sharing is so important for NPEs? I don’t think most NPEs receive true understanding and empathy from people. We get it. We can empathize with each other’s heartbreak, confusion, anger, and, sometimes, joy. Finding a community has been life-saving for me in this journey. In one episode you mentioned that you sought therapy after your NPE discovery. Can you talk about how you chose a therapist and whether it was difficult to find someone who understood NPE issues?

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 Sirius XM, 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, when it became known that in the early days of her a television program, her staff posed as guests or when, two decades ago, she declared that homosexuality was “a biological error” and made racist comments that temporarily derailed her radio career. Now, with audience of eight million, her Sirius XM audience doesn’t shy away from the sensationalism that ratchets up the ratings. Recently, she directed her venom at NPEs (not parent expected.) On July 7, a segment of “The Call of the Day”—“My Mom Never Told Me the Truth”—was subtitled, “Torri’s uncertain she can continue to have a relationship with her mom after discovering her dad is not her biological father.” The caller, Torri, sought Schlessinger’s help, stating that she wasn’t sure how to continue on in her relationship with her mother after learning, only recently, that her dad wasn’t her biological father. Schlessinger asked Torri if the man who raised her was nice, and when Torri said 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?”

How long did you spend researching and writing The Lost Family? Altogether, about three years. I first wrote about Alice Collins Plebuch’s fascinating genetic detective story in The Washington Post in early 2017. The response to that story, which was hundreds of emails from other consumers sharing intimate and moving DNA testing stories, convinced me the topic needed to be a book, and I started researching for the proposal soon afterward. But the bulk of the work was done during 2018 and 2019. In The Lost Family, I revisit Alice’s story and tell it much more fully. I was able to travel to Washington State and spend time with her, as well as do historical research going back a hundred years to illuminate her family’s astonishing story. And as I follow her story, I also tell many other tales from people I Interviewed—wrenching, moving stories of how this technology is changing how we see ourselves and how we talk to one another, not to mention how we think about truth and the past. What so intrigued you initially that you were willing to devote so much time and attention to this issue? Did you realize early on how complex the subject would be? I was really intrigued by the idea that questions about genetic origins and family could lead individuals, families, and the culture at large to deep explorations of essential human questions about identity, what makes a family, and how we define ethnicity. The science was indeed quite complex, and so were the experiences of people affected by this technology. I got to interview a lot of genetic genealogists about their techniques and the history of the field, and to tour a DNA testing lab and speak with a number of scientists and historians about human genetics and autosomal DNA testing.

I radiate a warm glow in the photo—a farmer’s tan from hours of playing outside in the Texas sun. A neighborhood friend had documented the moment via disposable camera. It’s hard to remember what occasion we were marking—an eleventh birthday party, perhaps, or the end of the school year. Whatever the event, my smile is wide, genuine, and my brown eyes are scrunched into happy almonds in a heart-shaped face. This photo never meant anything special to me then, but now I wonder how could I—how could my family –not have questioned my true heritage? I’m 34 years old and I’ve just discovered by way of an at-home DNA test that I’m 25% Japanese. This revelation launches me into a frenetic investigation— activating an old Ancestry.com account, sending cryptic text messages to my parents and brother, and diagramming possibilities on the back of a napkin. After all, my maiden name sounds like a type of sausage and Mom is a freckled redhead, clearly the offspring of Scottish-Irish farmers. Growing up, I’d never been questioned about my whiteness, although there were comments that I tended to tan in a more olive tone than did my younger brother. Since we played outside for 6 hours a day in the southern heat, no one thought twice about it. After hours of frantic speculation, I get a text message from my mother, with whom I have shared the surprising ethnic breakdown. She says, “Can I call you later?” It’s on this phone call that she shares the truth—there was an ex-boyfriend who was half-Japanese just before she and Dad got married. She’s Googled him to find an obituary from 2012. He’s survived by a brother, a wife, and his Japanese mother. Mom sends me the link. The need for information consumes me. Through the names and locations in the obituary, I

Life changing events such as grief and trauma have a way of changing relationships, too. Discovering surprise DNA  revelations like an adoption not previously disclosed, donor conception, or misattributed or falsified paternity—known as non-paternal events or not parent expected (NPE)—have been shown to have serious effects on family relationships, often pitting families against one another as secrets are uncovered and motives are questioned. The prevalence of commercial DNA testing in the last ten years made possible the revelation of these secrets, contributed to a surge in grief, identity crises, and conflicts within families, Psychotherapy is catching up to this phenomenon, poised to be a source of support and skill building as clinicians gain training on the unique constellation of conditions these discoveries present. However, recently I heard this play out in the worst way imaginable on a podcast I never listen to, but was forwarded by a shocked friend who wondering what my response would be given my own experience and expertise on the subject. Dr. Laura Schlessinger is a well-known radio personality  for her “no nonsense” style, per her marketing.  She’s been dispensing advice in a sensational manner for decades, touting her ability to save marriages,  but, surprisingly, her professional help is delivered in a style akin to that of Gordon Ramsey or Simon Cowell. The last time I listened to anything from Dr. Laura

Mom’s stories about her family history were like bursts of steam from a pressure cooker—brief, tantalizing, and at times, disturbing. She started telling me her disconnected anecdotes when I was about eleven years old. The most frequently repeated story in Mom’s canon went something like this:       My mother had an uncle who set her up in business running a delicatessen. During the Great Depression, the business failed. When I was seven years old, my mother became mentally ill and was sent to a mental hospital. I was taken from my father and put into the county home. In just a few sentences, Mom would sum up a family tragedy that was Dickensian in proportion:  a girlhood weighted down by financial disaster, her mother’s insanity, and separation from her father.  When she finished telling the story, Mom would evade the inevitable questions her story prompted with facile explanations and the occasional shoulder shrug. Although she admitted that her father had divorced Grandma while she was in the mental institution and that he had never tried to get my mother out of the county home, Mom professed that Grandpa had been the most wonderful father ever. It made no sense to me. Mom became interested in genealogy a few years after Grandpa’s death in 1966. Over the years, she worked on it intermittently while she and Dad raised six children. Genealogy didn’t interest me.  Looking at the pedigree charts and family group sheets filled out in Mom’s distinctive scrawl, I was unable to make any more sense of the past than I had by listening to her stories. After all the work she’d done, I expected that they would have become more detailed and connected. But Mom continued to tell the same old tales, which were unaltered by anything that she might have uncovered in her genealogical research. What I wanted was a more coherent narrative of Mom’s childhood. A lifetime of listening to her brief and disjointed stories hadn’t given me that, so I had no expectations of getting it out of genealogy.  It wasn’t until I was in my fifties that I gave her genealogy a closer look.