search and reunion

Everyone who’s had a DNA surprise will recognize themselves in the pages of Leeanne R. Hay’s NPE* A Story Guide for Unexpected Discoveries. Hay, a freelance journalist who’s earned certificates from the University of Florida College of Social Work, has crafted a memoir/guidebook hybrid, drawing substantially from her own NPE story and those of others to illustrate common experiences and issues that arise when family secrets are revealed and individuals learn that the families in which they were raised may not be their families of origin. In 2017, on a whim, Hay purchased a DNA test, the results of which were shocking. Not only did she learn that the man who raised her was not her father, she discovered at the same time that her biological father was a man she’d known and loved since she was a child. And there began a quest to learn as much as she could about her origins, her ethnicity, and how such a monumental secret could have been kept from her. She felt rage toward her mother, by then deceased, bewilderment about her ethnic identity, and, soon, an overpowering sense of anger and helplessness. If you’ve had a DNA surprise, these feelings likely will be all too familiar, and Hay offers the much-needed comfort that comes from knowing that you’re not the only one whose ever had these experiences and emotions or the only one who doesn’t know which way to turn. She offers gentle guidance about the range of situations and complications that may arise, from how to communicate an NPE discovery to others, how to use DNA to search for family, how to communicate with new relatives, and how to contemplate and make a name change, as well as the steps needed to move forward. She addresses the emotional pitfalls, including isolation, loss, and grief, and the repercussions for others who are affected by an MPE’s discovery. In addition to noting helpful resources, Hay also advises readers about the need to carefully assess resources to determine if they are truly helpful, expert-based, and reputable.

When a letter arrived in my mailbox saying, “I think you might be my grandma,” it dredged up shattering memories of a campus rape 52 years earlier. I threw the letter on the floor of my car and drove erratically in a state of high anxiety and angst. My body went rigid at the thought of reviving that story from my past. All would be revealed. Would I want to go down that path? To relive scenes and open sores from episodes long buried, the chilling details of an incident that began with rape on a college campus in 1962? How would this grandchild ever understand that repressive period I lived through after WW II and before the birth control pill? Society then held single unmarried pregnant women in their grip. Rape or unplanned sex led to blistering consequences as unplanned pregnancies made women face the scourge of illegitimacy, undergo illegal and dangerous abortions, or carry a child to term only to sever that extraordinary bond between mother and child with separation. It’s estimated that as many as 4 million mothers in the United States surrendered newborn babies to adoption between 1940 and 1970.* I had had no choice but to carry my child to term. At the time, thoughts of motherhood were tearing at my moral senses. After all, I’d been raised with the idea that motherhood within marriage was the shibboleth in our society. I was facing the dilemma of my life. Would I dare keep a child under these circumstances and bring shame on me and my family or allow the baby to be adopted? Opting for adoption, I faced the deep sadness of that very moment you hand over your own child. That final act of severance between mother and child caused a quake deep in my soul. I can recall that moment with crystal clarity but mostly I keep it compartmentalized, forever afraid to revisit that devastating moment. The deep shame I felt should not have been mine but the rapist’s who drugged me and took me to his fraternity for his pleasure. After that sorrow of an unplanned pregnancy and what I had put my family through, the anger and resentment were knotted together and locked deep inside.

“Dad had the same color green eyes,” my brother said as he slid into the booth across from me. I was meeting him and my sister for the first time, and as much as we were trying to keep things light, it was awkward. I took a deep breath, willing myself to relax, and smoothed the navy sundress I chose to wear for an occasion that was casual yet monumental. I smiled and looked at my new brother’s face—the face of a stranger—yet one in which I saw a whisper of familiarity. Squirming in my chair, I realized I could be talking about my own face, one I barely recognized anymore. How did I get here? I’d taken a DNA test for fun, never imagining it would change my life and my identity. Finding out that my dad—the man I grew up thinking was responsible for my thick hair and long skinny feet—was not my biological father rocked my world and led me on a journey of tearing myself apart and putting myself back together again. Stumbling across the word ecotone recently, I learned it is the area between two biological places with characteristics of each. A marsh, the boundary between water and land, is an ecotone. Like a marsh that is part this and part that, I too, am an ecotone. Finding out the truth of my paternity was a gradual process; I was like an archaeologist painstakingly cleaning layers of dirt from an artifact. First were the DNA test results with unexpected heritage. This led to examining my existing family tree, each climb up it leading to dead ends. DNA testing companies notify you when your DNA matches someone else in their databases, and as I began to receive these notifications, the names of the matches were foreign. I realized something was out of place, and my gut was telling me it was me. I began receiving messages from my DNA family, each one kind and inquiring, as they too were trying to make me fit. Eventually, suspicions turned to proof, and my biology shifted. I was out of place. Unlike tectonic shifts that move the Earth’s plates either toward or away from each other, finding out that I biologically belong somewhere else, simultaneously moved me away from one place and toward another.

I was not the dream son my adoptive parents envisioned I’d be. I was a clumsy, overweight kid with Coke-bottle thick glasses and learning disabilities who couldn’t seem to do anything right— couldn’t even throw a ball. Father-son relationships can be challenging enough in biological families, but I learned early that they’re even more complex for an adopted son. I was adopted in 1956. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that at that time unwed mothers faced ruin if they didn’t relinquish their infants—but my adoption was a lifelong event. It was a closed adoption, meaning that all genetic connections were severed when a new birth certificate was issued. This separation from my birthmother was the first trauma I experienced, and it influenced every aspect of my life. It diminished my self-esteem, disrupted my identity, and left me unable to form secure and satisfactory attachments. My adoptive parents made a crucial mistake in waiting until I was eight to tell me I was adopted. I have no idea why they waited so long. I had already established a strong bond with my parents, and it confused and shattered me. When I said, “You’re not my real mother, then,” my mother’s face contorted. She looked possessed when she came at me and screamed in my face, “How dare you to question my motherhood, you selfish boy.” My father just stood there and let her rage. It took a moment, but the damage was permanent. I never trusted her after that. Not only had I lost my mother at birth, but now I had a mother who didn’t love or like me. I’d bonded with my dad early on, but after the adoption talk, my relationship with him, too, changed. I had a younger brother, also adopted, and a younger sister—my parent’s biological child—but since I was the oldest son, there was more pressure on me. I was expected to be of blue-ribbon caliber. He forced me to play catch with him and he had no patience. “Pay attention and keep your eye on the ball,” he’d holler. No matter how hard I tried to concentrate, I always dropped the ball. When he and the kids on the block called me Charlie Brown, it stung. My efforts to understand geometry were equally dismal. Late nights at the kitchen table with my dad doing homework, we were both stressed. He’d throw back another shot of Cutty Sark whiskey, yelling “pay attention” and cuffing my ears. I’d get debilitating stomach aches. I still hold those memories in my body, especially in my hunched shoulders. I felt broken and internalized the shame of not being enough for my dad. An alcoholic with a violent temper, my dad was as unsafe as my mother was hot and cold emotionally. He would often say that how I turned out would reflect on him; I had to be perfect, and he was an unrelenting perfectionist. He needed me to be an extension of him, but  I couldn’t. I was the antithesis of him. Perhaps he felt I would become like him as if by osmosis. It pained me that I couldn’t be more like my dad, but I couldn’t; I was another dad’s son. The more he pushed me, the more I shut down and retreated into my inner world of remote islands.

Growing up as an adoptee, I frequently fielded questions from friends and strangers alike. “Do you know who your real mother is?” “Do you think you look like your parents?” “What [ethnicity] are you?” The first two questions were easy to answer: My mother is my real mother.  No, I don’t look like either of them. But the third question hounded me my whole life. It speaks to a universal quest to identify with a group. And it speaks to the need of others to figure out who we are. For an adoptee, another question swirls around in the mix: Are we valid? On one hand, our identity is who we believe we are, and on the other it’s who others believe us to be. In essence, the identity question is two-part: ‘Who am I?’ and ‘Who do you think I am?’ Adopted or not, we work to reconcile our personal vision of who we are versus who others believe we are. Yet when you’re adopted, there’s an added layer. For me, and I imagine for many adoptees, there’s a struggle to answer the question ‘Who are you?’ When others challenge our identity because of our adoption status, it’s difficult enough; but it’s further complicated by the fact that we have incomplete information about our genetic roots and, therefore, we can’t answer. And even when we get that information, we’re still left wondering how others view us. I was adopted at birth and didn’t know my birth ethnicity until I was an adult. Of course, I had the ethnicity of my adoptive family, but even that was muddled. Muddled, in part, because my parents were somewhat non-traditional in the way they raised me—without strong traditions, based on ethnicity or religion. My parents were raised Jewish, but did not consider themselves religiously Jewish. My mother explained that while we were not religiously Jewish, we were “ethnically Jewish.” What does that mean exactly? I love brisket and knishes. I know what a seder is (a Baptist friend corrected me on a few details). I picked up some Yiddish words listening to conversations between my grandmother and her friends. But does that make me Jewish? From a religious standpoint, it does not. In fact, according to Jewish law, adoption alone doesn’t make you the religion of your adoptive mother. As an adult I learned that my birth mother is Protestant, and children born to non-Jews and adopted by Jewish parents must go through rituals of conversion before they are considered Jewish. I did not.

It’s not hyperbole to say I’ve never seen a book quite like Megan Culhane Galbraith’s extraordinary hybrid work of creative nonfiction, The Guild of the Infant Saviour: An Adopted Child’s Memory Book. Experimental in form and structure, it’s memoir, but at the same time a striking visual art project, an intellectual inquiry into the nature of memory, and a frightful window on the failures and brutalities of the American system of adoption. While each aspect is equally compelling, the emotional heart of the book is the origin story of a girl who had three mothers before she was half a year old and the experience of the woman she grew to be, who, only during her own pregnancy, was overwhelmed by need to know her origin story and learn about her first mother. It’s written in a powerful voice that can veer from playful to mournful and lingers on wonder and curiosity. The language at turns is discursive, fragmented, stream of conscious, and deeply thoughtful. Although Galbraith expresses a unique sensibility, adoptees and others who have yearned to know about their origins will see themselves here. The author’s meditations on the nature of identity, her compulsion toward self-erasure, and her fear of abandonment likely will resonate. Here, the author shares an excerpt from this exceptional book, which will be released on May 21, 2021. You can support Indie booksellers and pre-order The Guild of the Infant Saviour at bookshop.org.

Paul Kimball, a 58-year-old successful musician and actor, has wrestled throughout his life with feelings of abandonment after having been adopted. He was born to a young interracial couple, his father an Armenian immigrant from Iraq and his mother a professional cellist from California. His father wasn’t prepared to marry, and his mother may have been fearful of scandalizing her parents—this was the early 1960s, when having a baby out of wedlock was still taboo and interracial coupling still stigmatized—and they planned to abort the baby. It’s not clear what led to a change of heart, but they soon split up, and his mother relinquished Paul when he was one-week-old. He lived in foster care for the next four and a half months, and on his first birthday he was adopted by a loving couple. To examine and give voice to his feelings, he’s written a memoir, We Are All Human Beings: An Adoptee Ponders. It’s an especially apt title because, like many adoptees, Kimball has more questions than answers. He explores the joys, heartbreaks, and complications of reuniting with his birth parents and grapples with the emotional consequences. Here, he offers an excerpt, Chapter 12, which not only describes his initial connection with his birthmother, Wendy. It also expresses his passion for the cello, as evidenced by a tribute to the renowned cellist Jacqueline Du Pre. He wrote the tribute to Du Pre many years before he’d learned about his birthmother and before he’d discovered she, too, played the cello.

Searching for Mom, an award-winning memoir by Sara Easterly, pulls back the veil on adoption, revealing its harsher side—the primal wound that leaves a child desperate to feel worthy, to belong, to be good enough. Easterly was adopted at two days old, born to an adolescent girl coerced to relinquish her in a “grey-market” adoption. She had difficulty attaching to her adoptive mother and struggled with feelings of abandonment by her birthmother, which spurred an impossible quest for perfection, a crisis of faith and trust, and a battle with overwhelming emotions. She felt broken and cast off, unwanted. To protect her adoptive mother’s feelings, she suppressed her deep longing for and curiosity about her birthmother, putting her own needs and desires last to keep a peace, until finally, when she was nearly 40, she admitted her desire to search. Her adoptive mother reacted with a cocktail of emotions including fear, anger, and defensiveness. And then everything changed, when she revealed that in fact Sara had been wanted by her birth mother, causing Sara to reevaluate everything she’d come to believe. In Searching for Mom, Easterly traces her search for, and reunion with, her birthmother, the strain it placed on her relationship with her adoptive mother, and the complicated bond she shared with both women. More than a search tale, it’s a story about love, faith, and spiritual transformation. Here, the author shares an excerpt from her compelling memoir—its first chapter.

Whenever I tell this story, there’s always the same reaction: “I don’t know what to say.” And who am I to blame them? How could they? I wouldn’t either. Sometimes, I still don’t. I’ve always known. From my earliest waking memories, I knew I was special; I knew that he was special too. Because he was a donor, and I was a donor child, in our unusualness I had a bond with this mystery man. But I didn’t know who he was, and he didn’t know I existed. When you’re a donor child with a single mother by choice, something can happen. There’s a certain void. An abyss. Not a crater, because that would imply something was once there. You feel empty. You feel lonely. You didn’t have a choice. In this situation, everybody but you had a choice. Let’s backtrack. It’s April 2018, and I’m lying on my stomach, stretched out on the stone-cold floor of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, on a retreat. Only three months until my 18th birthday. We were told to take some time to write and meditate. I’d been meaning to write this letter. Now I finally have time to do it. “Dear Dad.” No, that’s not right. Wait, yes it is! “I love you!” “Please love me!” “Please…want me.” Want me, goddammit. I never sent the letter. My 18th birthday arrived. Finally. I reached out to California Cryobank. The deal is that you get three tries to reach out; if the donor never responds, you aren’t allowed to facilitate contact ever again. And the donor has a right to his anonymity. Anonymous until 18. But he still has a right to turn you down when you turn 18. Such a bright age, 18. Shiny, almost. Full of promise and potential. Hope for the future.

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.

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.

Two days after I learned I’d been adopted, we met to talk about the secret you’d kept from me. Looking back, I was completely unprepared for that conversation. I was still in shock from learning you weren’t my biological parents and that you lied by omission about this my entire life. What follows is what I wish I’d have known to express then in that first conversation. I didn’t know then that would be our only conversation about this. Had I been able to say these things then, I think it would have made it easier on all of us. I don’t regret being adopted. I’ve had a great life; in reality I’ve been spoiled. You did a good job raising me to be the man I am today. You made me feel loved and supported. You taught me the importance of hard work and perseverance. You showed me the simple pleasure gained from working with my hands. You also guided me toward an honest life where I stand up for what I believe in without worrying much about the personal costs.  When I look at my life now, I don’t see how I would have ended up where I am today if you hadn’t adopted me. I’ve got a great wife, wonderful kids, and a life I love.  But none of this changes my need to know who I am and where I come from. Searching for and reuniting with my biological family hasn’t been something I did as a rejection of you or as a result of some failure in your parenting. No matter how much you ignore my need to know, it will never disappear from inside of me. I simply have to understand who I am, and because of adoption, there’s more to that story than who raised me.  As I trace my roots, I begin to understand why I am the way I am. I still see your hand in molding me, but I also see the biological foundation of my attitudes and behaviors. I also know where some of my struggles came from. You tried to shape me to be more outgoing; maintain outward appearances; and adopt a go-along-to-get along mindset at home, but biologically it wasn’t who I was, so we clashed over these expectations.  Discovering my lineage and meeting my biological relatives makes me feel more like a whole person than I ever have. I’ve seen myself reflected back to me in others—my rebelliousness and personal style; my difficulty in going with the flow; my mischievous sense of humor; and my deep introversion. Since I’ve met my biological father and heard stories about my biological mother, these traits all make sense to me now. Before, it just felt like I was doing something wrong.  While I’m not sorry I was adopted, I deeply regret that you kept my adoption secret from me for 48 years. Looking back with 20/20 hindsight, I can see the places where I was trying to force myself into a mold that was never meant for me. While for the most part I’ve made peace with the time and energy I invested trying to be someone I’m not, I likely will always have nagging questions about what might have been had I stayed truer to who I biologically was. It’s still hard to look back on the internal struggles I had—feeling like I’d failed in some way for not fitting into the family mold. It makes me sad to think about the fuller relationship I believe we could have had if I’d known the truth.

When you were but two years old, I came into being. We were unaware of one another’s presence, but we co-existed. Separated by a thousand miles, yet side by side on this planet, we grew. We were born alone, no siblings with whom to form that unique bond. We were given a name and assigned a family. But somewhere out there, just beyond reach, the other was there. I don’t know why we were allowed to live for more than 50 years without one another, and why we weren’t permitted the connection so many take for granted. Were we somehow assigned the payment for sins of the fathers? Why were we destined to miss out on the comfort, the familiarity, of another human connected by blood, intertwined for life? We will never know. We will always wonder. We will never get that time back. But from this point forward, we now know. There is another person, no longer unreachable and distant. A person with whom we share blood, and genetics, and values. Silly little things, like a preference for rice. Difficulty swallowing. And a dark, easy tan. And big, important things, like stubbornness and independence. Fierce loyalty. Refusal to follow illogical rules. And a smartass sense of humor. We will never again be without. No one can ever take this away. We have less time left to be siblings than we had to be without. So I choose to acknowledge, honor, and place immense value on this fact: For the rest of my time on this planet, I will be Finally, and forever, Your sister.