S1E31 Unraveling Dr. Syb: Dr. Syb spent 42 years feeling like something didn’t fit. Then, at a family funeral, a cousin confirmed what her body, spirit, and intuition had long known: she had been adopted. Born during the Baby Scoop Era and raised in a same-race domestic adoption, Dr. Syb grew up in a loving family—but one built around a secret she was expected to carry quietly once the truth came out. For seven years, she did not search, trying to protect the mother who raised her. Eventually, she realized the truth belonged to her too.

SHOW NOTES

In this conversation, Kara and Dr. Syb discuss:

• Learning she was adopted through a family comment
• The emotional impact of being lied to for decades
• Baby Scoop Era adoption and same-race adoption in the Black community
• Amended birth certificates and the legal fiction adoptees are forced to use
• Searching for and finding both genetic families
• The grief of finding graves instead of living parents
• Relationship, attachment, and abandonment wounds after adoption
• The power of names, voice, and reclaiming authorship of your own story
• How friends and family can support someone after a life-changing discovery

This episode reminds us that secrets do not disappear when people take them to the grave. They leave others to sort through the pieces. And sometimes healing begins when we finally say: this is my story to tell.

Everyone has the right to know the truth about where they come from. Unraveling Me speaks to those people impacted by DNA surprises, NPEs (non-paternal event), adoption, assisted reproduction, and other revelations that their parentage isn't entirely what they thought. Having experienced an NPE herself, Kara (through Right To Know and this podcast) seeks to highlight those moments when we learn the most unsettling of secret—who we really are.

At Right To Know, we encourage engagement to facilitate and create real change. As an organization, we are inclusive. We assist adoptees, the donor-conceived community, people with an NPE, birth parents, gamete providers, new genetic family, recipient parents, raising families, and significant others. In learning and growing from each other, we must put the voices of adoptees, donor conceived, and people with an NPE first.

For more information about Right To Know - or if you have a story you want to tell - please visit us at https://righttoknow.us/.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

S1 E 30 Unraveling Nick Nick was supposed to receive a DNA test for his birthday, but his parents asked that the gift be delayed. The next day, they sat him down and told him the results might reveal something unexpected. What followed led Nick to a truth he never imagined. 

Through both his book Inconceivably Connected and the "Inconceivably Connected Podcast", Nick has transformed his own discovery into a platform for connection and truth-telling. This episode reminds us that even life-altering truths can also be invitations: to understand ourselves more fully, to connect more honestly, and to realize that identity is often far more expansive than we were first told.

Kara and Nick explore identity, genetic mirroring, family, and what happens when the story you believed about yourself suddenly shifts beneath your feet. 

SHOW NOTES

In this episode, Kara and Nick discuss:

• Learning he was donor-conceived the day after his 36th birthday 
• How his parents’ honesty before the DNA test changed his discovery experience 
• Discovering 14 half-siblings 
• The surreal experience of seeing himself reflected in strangers 
• Nature vs. nurture and the power of genetic mirroring 
• Navigating new sibling relationships and redefining family 
• Why his father who raised him remains the hero of his story 

Everyone has the right to know the truth about where they come from. Unraveling Me speaks to those people impacted by DNA surprises, NPEs (non-paternal event), adoption, assisted reproduction, and other revelations that their parentage isn't entirely what they thought. Having experienced an NPE herself, Kara (through Right To Know and this podcast) seeks to highlight those moments when we learn the most unsettling of secret—who we really are.

At Right To Know, we encourage engagement to facilitate and create real change. As an organization, we are inclusive. We assist adoptees, the donor-conceived community, people with an NPE, birth parents, gamete providers, new genetic family, recipient parents, raising families, and significant others. In learning and growing from each other, we must put the voices of adoptees, donor conceived, and people with an NPE first.

For more information about Right To Know - or if you have a story you want to tell - please visit us at https://righttoknow.us/.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

S1 E21 - Unraveling Diana - Diana speaks candidly about identity, secrecy, and the emotional toll of discovering that official records cannot always be trusted. Her journey spans continents, generations, and legal gray zones. And yet, through genealogy work, writing her book Connected: Finding My Truth, and helping others uncover hidden histories, Diana has transformed her pain into purpose.

Diana grew up believing her origins were clear. Raised in a modern Orthodox Jewish home, she built her identity around faith, family, and tradition. Even when she didn’t quite look like her parents, there was always a photograph ready to explain it away. But a slip of the tongue from a family friend changed everything.

SHOW NOTES

What followed was not a simple adoption story. It was a layered, cross-border unraveling. In this powerful and complex conversation, Kara and Diana explore what it means to chase truth when the truth keeps shifting.

• Finding the truth in multiple different birth certificates, each with conflicting information
• The reality of baby brokers and the “baby scoop era”
• How coercion forced Diana to step back from her search and reunion for 15 years
• Wrestling with faith, conversion, and maternal lineage within Judaism
• Living with unanswered questions and choosing peace anyway

Her story reminds us that truth is not always neat. It does not always come with paperwork. And sometimes the unraveling is lifelong. But seeking it anyway? That is courage.

Everyone has the right to know the truth about where they come from. Unraveling Me speaks to those people impacted by DNA surprises, NPEs (non-paternal event), adoption, assisted reproduction, and other revelations that their parentage isn't entirely what they thought. Having experienced an NPE herself, Kara (through Right To Know and this podcast) seeks to highlight those moments when we learn the most unsettling of secret—who we really are.

At Right To Know, we encourage engagement to facilitate and create real change. As an organization, we are inclusive. We assist adoptees, the donor-conceived community, people with an NPE, birth parents, gamete providers, new genetic family, recipient parents, raising families, and significant others. In learning and growing from each other, we must put the voices of adoptees, donor conceived, and people with an NPE first.

For more information about Right To Know - or if you have a story you want to tell - please visit us at https://righttoknow.us/.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

S1 E20 - Unraveling Angie - In this candid and emotionally layered conversation, Kara and Angie explore what it means to live between bravery and fear, loyalty and longing, compassion and grief. Angie was a seasoned mental health therapist, international wellness presenter, and expert in stress management when she did the very thing she tells her clients not to do—she ignored the truth. After taking a 23andMe test and discovering she was 49% Ashkenazi Jewish, something that made no sense given her family story, Angie quietly deleted the app and buried the results. For years, she chose hope over certainty (it felt safer that way). But during the pandemic, a call from her sister changed everything. DNA results confirmed what Angie had tried to dismiss: she was not fully genetically related to the family who raised her.

SHOW NOTES

In This Episode, Kara and Angie discuss:

• Suppressing shocking DNA results and why even therapists avoid their own pain
• Protecting her mother’s legacy while naming the cost of secrecy
• The complexity of loving a parent and feeling betrayed at the same time
• Searching for her genetic father years after discovery
• Being rejected by DNA matches and finding the courage to keep going
• The various ways we can reach out to new family and when just showing up is an option
• Holding fear and hope in the same breath

Angie speaks with deep compassion for everyone involved: her mother, her sisters, even the family she has yet to meet. As a wellness professional, she understands that emotions aren’t binary. Two things can be true at once. Love and grief. Loyalty and betrayal. Fear and courage. Her story is about finally choosing truth over silence and deciding that uncertainty is still better than never knowing.

Everyone has the right to know the truth about where they come from. Unraveling Me speaks to those people impacted by DNA surprises, NPEs (non-paternal event), adoption, assisted reproduction, and other revelations that their parentage isn't entirely what they thought. Having experienced an NPE herself, Kara (through Right To Know and this podcast) seeks to highlight those moments when we learn the most unsettling of secret—who we really are.

At Right To Know, we encourage engagement to facilitate and create real change. As an organization, we are inclusive. We assist adoptees, the donor-conceived community, people with an NPE, birth parents, gamete providers, new genetic family, recipient parents, raising families, and significant others. In learning and growing from each other, we must put the voices of adoptees, donor conceived, and people with an NPE first.

For more information about Right To Know - or if you have a story you want to tell - please visit us at https://righttoknow.us/.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

S1 E 19 - Unraveling Linda Linda speaks candidly about fear, obligation, guilt, and the slow unraveling required to rebuild a life rooted in truth. Her story is about reclaiming agency after manipulation, breaking generational silence, and choosing to breathe again after everything falls apart. This episode is a testament to resilience, discernment, and the courage it takes to say: My story belongs to me.

SHOW NOTES

Linda always knew she was adopted. What she didn’t know was how deeply secrecy, emotional neglect, and unspoken shame would shape her identity—and how fiercely she would one day fight to reclaim it.

At 24 years old, desperate to know her origins, Linda did something few would dare: she broke into the adoption agency to retrieve her own records. That night became a pivot point—a declaration that her story belonged to her. But accessing the truth was only the beginning.

In this powerful and layered conversation, Kara and Linda explore the long arc of identity, trauma, manipulation, and healing. Kara and Linda discuss:

• Growing up in an alcoholic, authoritarian household where adoption was never openly acknowledged
• Being treated as a “blank slate” and expected to erase her history
• The danger of power imbalances in therapy—and surviving a deeply abusive therapeutic relationship
• Isolation, grooming, and the long road back to autonomy
• Rebuilding identity through sobriety, somatic healing, research, and education
• Why “good therapy” matters—and how to protect yourself when seeking help
• The ongoing process of integration and self-trust

Everyone has the right to know the truth about where they come from. Unraveling Me speaks to those people impacted by DNA surprises, NPEs (non-paternal event), adoption, assisted reproduction, and other revelations that their parentage isn't entirely what they thought. Having experienced an NPE herself, Kara (through Right To Know and this podcast) seeks to highlight those moments when we learn the most unsettling of secret—who we really are.

At Right To Know, we encourage engagement to facilitate and create real change. As an organization, we are inclusive. We assist adoptees, the donor-conceived community, people with an NPE, birth parents, gamete providers, new genetic family, recipient parents, raising families, and significant others. In learning and growing from each other, we must put the voices of adoptees, donor conceived, and people with an NPE first.

For more information about Right To Know - or if you have a story you want to tell - please visit us at https://righttoknow.us/.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Everyone has the right to know the truth about where they come from. Unraveling Me speaks to those people impacted by DNA surprises, NPEs (non-paternal event), adoption, assisted reproduction, and other revelations that their parentage isn't entirely what they thought. Having experienced an NPE herself, Kara (through Right To Know and this podcast) seeks to highlight those moments when we learn the most unsettling of secret—who we really are.

At Right To Know, we encourage engagement to facilitate and create real change. As an organization, we are inclusive. We assist adoptees, the donor-conceived community, people with an NPE, birth parents, gamete providers, new genetic family, recipient parents, raising families, and significant others. In learning and growing from each other, we must put the voices of adoptees, donor conceived, and people with an NPE first.

For more information about Right To Know - or if you have a story you want to tell - please visit us at https://righttoknow.us/.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

1E17 – Unraveling Melanie - This episode is a powerful reflection on identity, race, motherhood, and resilience—and on what it takes to keep going, even when the road home is one you have to build yourself.

Melanie was adopted at birth into a white, religious family in the segregated American South. Raised as a transracial adoptee in a household shaped by silence, fear, and rigid expectations, she learned early that survival often meant obedience—and that questions about identity, race, and origin were not welcome. In this candid and powerful conversation, Kara and Melanie explore how adoption, religion, racial isolation, and secrecy intersected to shape Melanie’s childhood and sense of self. 

SHOW NOTES

Kara and Melanie discuss:

• Growing up transracially adopted in the Jim Crow South
• Religious trauma, saviorism, and adoption as status
• Living in a home where fear replaced safety
• The impact of growing up without genetic mirroring
• Teenage motherhood without protection or guidance
• Experiencing abandonment by systems meant to help
• Finding survival and belonging through the support of other women
• Using DNA testing to search for answers and connection
• Navigating reunion, rejection, and loss
• Reclaiming identity, education, and voice later in life
• 
  

Melanie speaks with honesty and clarity—naming harm without minimizing it and holding complexity without excusing silence. Her story reminds us that unraveling is rarely a single moment of discovery, but a lifelong process of learning to belong to yourself when belonging was never made safe.

Everyone has the right to know the truth about where they come from. Unraveling Me speaks to those people impacted by DNA surprises, NPEs (non-paternal event), adoption, assisted reproduction, and other revelations that their parentage isn't entirely what they thought. Having experienced an NPE herself, Kara (through Right To Know and this podcast) seeks to highlight those moments when we learn the most unsettling of secret—who we really are.

At Right To Know, we encourage engagement to facilitate and create real change. As an organization, we are inclusive. We assist adoptees, the donor-conceived community, people with an NPE, birth parents, gamete providers, new genetic family, recipient parents, raising families, and significant others. In learning and growing from each other, we must put the voices of adoptees, donor conceived, and people with an NPE first.

For more information about Right To Know - or if you have a story you want to tell - please visit us at https://righttoknow.us/.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

S1 E16 – Unraveling Cassandra - This episode is a powerful meditation on truth, belonging, and the slow work of integration. She reminds us that identity isn’t rebuilt overnight—and that learning who you are is often a lifelong process, especially when the truth arrives after everything else is already in motion.

Cassandra’s story begins on what she calls her “re-birthday”—the night a DNA test revealed the truth about her origins and quietly dismantled everything she thought she knew about herself. What followed wasn’t a single moment of realization, but years of unraveling, re-integration, and learning how to live honestly inside a body that suddenly held a different history.

In this deeply reflective conversation, Kara and Cassandra explore how donor conception, secrecy, and late discovery reshape identity—not just intellectually, but emotionally, relationally, and culturally.

SHOW NOTES 

Kara and Cassandra discuss:

• The shock of realizing the story of her conception was never disclosed
• Navigating parental secrecy and the emotional aftermath of planned silence
• Meeting her genetic father and donor-conceived siblings
• The life changing impact of learning she is half Ashkenazi Jewish
• Grief for a cultural inheritance hidden from your childhood—and the pull to reclaim it
• Rebuilding identity after truth arrives late

Cassandra speaks with care for everyone involved, even as she names the cost of secrecy and delayed truth.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

S1E15 Unraveling Athena - This is a story about identity, patience, accountability, and what can happen when honesty finally replaces silence. Athena’s journey is a reminder that rejection doesn’t always get the final word—and that healing can unfold slowly, imperfectly, and still be real. Athena grew up without a father, raised by a single mother who told her the truth early on: she didn’t know who her genetic father was. As Athena built her own life, marrying her high school sweetheart and becoming a mother herself, the questions she’d carried since childhood became impossible to ignore. Who did she come from? Why did she look the way she did? And where did she truly belong?

After years of unanswered questions, rejected paternity tests, and the exhausting search for truth, a DNA test finally provided a name and opened the door to a family that didn’t know she existed. What followed was a complicated journey marked by secrecy, fear, courage, and, ultimately, connection.

SHOW NOTES

In this conversation, Kara and Athena talk about:

• Growing up without a father and being told “we don’t know who he is”
• Searching for genetic truth through paternity tests and DNA
• Being asked to remain a secret and the toll that silence takes
• The emotional weight of carrying shame that doesn’t belong to you
• Meeting siblings and extended family while navigating secrecy
• The profound role a supportive spouse can play in healing
• Learning to belong without erasing the pain that came before

Everyone has the right to know the truth about where they come from. Unraveling Me speaks to those people impacted by DNA surprises, NPEs (non-paternal event), adoption, assisted reproduction, and other revelations that their parentage isn't entirely what they thought. Having experienced an NPE herself, Kara (through Right To Know and this podcast) seeks to highlight those moments when we learn the most unsettling of secret—who we really are.

At Right To Know, we encourage engagement to facilitate and create real change. As an organization, we are inclusive. We assist adoptees, the donor-conceived community, people with an NPE, birth parents, gamete providers, new genetic family, recipient parents, raising families, and significant others. In learning and growing from each other, we must put the voices of adoptees, donor conceived, and people with an NPE first.

For more information about Right To Know - or if you have a story you want to tell - please visit us at https://righttoknow.us/.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

UM Special Edition – When Adoption Is Framed as a Solution - This conversation is not about debating politics. It is about lived experience, accuracy, and accountability. It centers the voices of those most affected by adoption—and asks what the public deserves to understand when adoption is elevated during moments of national influence.

SHOW NOTES: 

A Super Bowl commercial titled Adoption Is an Option ignited strong reactions among people connected to adoption. Positioned as a “third choice” in the abortion debate, the ad presents adoption as moral workaround to the question of abortion. But for many, the message felt incomplete—and deeply unsettling.

In this special edition of Unraveling Me, Kara convenes birth parents, adoptees, therapists, and advocates to examine what happens when adoption is framed as a solution rather than a lifelong reality. Together, they unpack the distinction often overlooked in public messaging: abortion is a decision made early in pregnancy; adoption is a permanent legal outcome to an often temporary problem—a choice that should only occur after carrying a child to term and giving birth.

Kara sits down with a powerful group of birth parents, adoptees, therapists, and advocates:

• Leslie Pate Mackinnon: birth mom, therapist with decades of experience, and board member of Concerned United Birthparents
• Dr. Abby Hasberry: birth mom, adoptee, therapist, and author of Adopting Privilege
• Jennifer Fahlsing: adoptee, birth mom, and co-founder of the National Association of Adoptees and Parents
• Renee Gelin: birth mom and founder of Saving Our Sisters

Together they discuss:

• Why adoption and abortion are not answers to the same question
• What gets erased when adoption is reduced to a “third option”
• The lifelong realities of relinquishment for birth parents and adoptees
• How public messaging shapes cultural understanding of adoption
• Who benefits when adoption is framed as a solution—and who is left out
• What support, resources, and family preservation conversations are missing

Everyone has the right to know the truth about where they come from. Unraveling Me speaks to those people impacted by DNA surprises, NPEs (non-paternal event), adoption, assisted reproduction, and other revelations that their parentage isn't entirely what they thought. Having experienced an NPE herself, Kara (through Right To Know and this podcast) seeks to highlight those moments when we learn the most unsettling of secret—who we really are.

At Right To Know, we encourage engagement to facilitate and create real change. As an organization, we are inclusive. We assist adoptees, the donor-conceived community, people with an NPE, birth parents, gamete providers, new genetic family, recipient parents, raising families, and significant others. In learning and growing from each other, we must put the voices of adoptees, donor conceived, and people with an NPE first.

For more information about Right To Know - or if you have a story you want to tell - please visit us at https://righttoknow.us/.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

S1 E14 Bryan - This episode is a deep dive into the science of stress, identity, and connection—and a compassionate challenge to rethink how we parent, partner, and relate. Bryan grew up adopted in Oklahoma, raised in a home shaped by love, trauma, and silence—where no one yet had the language to understand how early separation, in-utero experiences, and generational stress shape a child’s nervous system. Decades later, that lived experience became the foundation for his work helping parents and professionals understand what children actually need to heal and thrive.

In this wide-ranging conversation, Kara speaks with Bryan Post, a trauma-responsive parenting educator with over 30 years of experience working with adopted, fostered, and trauma-impacted children and families. Together, they unpack why so many well-intentioned parenting approaches fail—and what actually helps when identity, attachment, and regulation are disrupted.

SHOW NOTES

In this episode, Kara and Bryan talk about:

• Being adopted as an infant and growing up in a home shaped by unresolved trauma
• How in-utero experiences influence regulation, attachment, and later behavior
• Why siblings raised in the same home can have radically different outcomes
• The difference between trauma-informed and trauma-responsive parenting
• How stress—not “bad behavior”—drives emotional reactivity in children and adults
• Why attachment cannot form without regulation and co-regulation
• How early relational trauma becomes woven into identity and personality
• The role of grief, breath, and nervous-system awareness in healing

Everyone has the right to know the truth about where they come from. Unraveling Me speaks to those people impacted by DNA surprises, NPEs (non-paternal event), adoption, assisted reproduction, and other revelations that their parentage isn't entirely what they thought. Having experienced an NPE herself, Kara (through Right To Know and this podcast) seeks to highlight those moments when we learn the most unsettling of secret—who we really are.

At Right To Know, we encourage engagement to facilitate and create real change. As an organization, we are inclusive. We assist adoptees, the donor-conceived community, people with an NPE, birth parents, gamete providers, new genetic family, recipient parents, raising families, and significant others. In learning and growing from each other, we must put the voices of adoptees, donor conceived, and people with an NPE first.

For more information about Right To Know - or if you have a story you want to tell - please visit us at https://righttoknow.us/.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

S1E13 Unraveling Jennifer - This is a story about identity, betrayal, resilience, and the hard-earned strength it takes to break cycles—especially when the people who caused the harm refuse to own it. Jennifer’s honesty is fierce, her humor is sharp, and her perspective is a lifeline for anyone who’s had a long-held secret kept from them.

Jennifer thought she was taking a DNA test “for fun”—a simple curiosity sparked by a school project and a desire to learn more about the man listed on her birth certificate, the single dad who raised her. But when her results came back, she knew instantly something was wrong.

Zero Italian.

In one click, Jennifer lost the cultural identity and family narrative she’d carried her whole life and gained a truth her mother had kept buried for decades, even while living in Jennifer’s backyard for 15 years. What follows is a raw, deeply relatable conversation about secrecy, addiction, family rupture, and the long road back to safety after everything you thought you knew becomes uncertain.

SHOW NOTES

In this episode, Kara and Jennifer talk about:

• Being raised by a single father in the 1980s and what that meant culturally and emotionally
• “Weekend/holiday mom” parenting, and the grief of never getting the mother you needed
• The moment her DNA results confirmed she wasn’t Italian, and why she’ll never forget the exact time and date
• Why she searched for answers before confronting her mother
• How family secrets intersect with addiction, shame, and generational silence
• The ripple effects of discovery: siblings who welcome you, siblings who can’t
• Losing connection with parts of her raised family, and choosing to set boundaries anyway
• Why reunion (and healing) requires going slow and leading with grace

Everyone has the right to know the truth about where they come from. Unraveling Me speaks to those people impacted by DNA surprises, NPEs (non-paternal event), adoption, assisted reproduction, and other revelations that their parentage isn't entirely what they thought. Having experienced an NPE herself, Kara (through Right To Know and this podcast) seeks to highlight those moments when we learn the most unsettling of secret—who we really are.

At Right To Know, we encourage engagement to facilitate and create real change. As an organization, we are inclusive. We assist adoptees, the donor-conceived community, people with an NPE, birth parents, gamete providers, new genetic family, recipient parents, raising families, and significant others. In learning and growing from each other, we must put the voices of adoptees, donor conceived, and people with an NPE first.

For more information about Right To Know - or if you have a story you want to tell - please visit us at https://righttoknow.us/.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

S1 E 29 Unraveling Monica H Monica was adopted as an infant and raised in Alaska rough-and-tumble 1970s oil boom in a home where much was left unbroken. From early on, she learned to navigate instability, dysfunction, and sexual, emotional, and physical abuse – without the language or support to make sense of it. At 15 after experiencing a sexual assault, Monica became pregnant and was pressured to relinquish her daughter. That loss followed her everywhere, shaping how she understood herself, her relationships, and her place in the world. And then she did the work to understand what happened, reclaim her story, and begin choosing herself.

SHOW NOTES

In this conversation, Kara and Monica discuss:

• Growing up adopted and navigating identity without clear roots
• A home shaped by dysfunction, addiction, and silence
• Discovering her Métis identity
• The lasting impact of that loss across her life
• The emotional complexity of reunion with her genetic family as well as with her daughter
• Boundaries, self-worth, and learning to choose herself

Monica shares her story with directness and honesty, naming both what she lived through and what it has taken to keep going. There are no easy resolutions—just the reality of carrying loss, making meaning of it, and continuing forward.

Everyone has the right to know the truth about where they come from. Unraveling Me speaks to those people impacted by DNA surprises, NPEs (non-paternal event), adoption, assisted reproduction, and other revelations that their parentage isn't entirely what they thought. Having experienced an NPE herself, Kara (through Right To Know and this podcast) seeks to highlight those moments when we learn the most unsettling of secret—who we really are.

At Right To Know, we encourage engagement to facilitate and create real change. As an organization, we are inclusive. We assist adoptees, the donor-conceived community, people with an NPE, birth parents, gamete providers, new genetic family, recipient parents, raising families, and significant others. In learning and growing from each other, we must put the voices of adoptees, donor conceived, and people with an NPE first.

For more information about Right To Know - or if you have a story you want to tell - please visit us at https://righttoknow.us/.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

S1E12 Unraveling Brenna - Brenna’s story shows that unraveling doesn’t always begin with discovery. Sometimes it begins years earlier, in care, conflict, and quiet endurance, so that when the truth finally arrives, you’re prepared to hold it. Brenna was 54 years old, married, and raising two children when her mother, who had been living with dementia and in Brenna’s care for years, revealed a life-altering truth. For more than a decade, Brenna cared for her mother as dementia slowly took hold. Their relationship had always been complicated, marked by favoritism, resentment, silence, and unanswered questions. Caregiving didn’t resolve those wounds. Instead, it stripped away pretense.

That long, difficult season forced Brenna to confront grief, anger, compassion, and exhaustion all at once. It also quietly expanded her emotional capacity long before she knew why she would need it. So when her mother finally revealed the truth, the disclosure didn’t shatter her. It freed her. Brenna explores how caregiving through a fraught relationship became the unexpected groundwork that allowed her to receive a life-changing truth without collapsing—and how unraveling and rebuilding is often a slow process, not a single moment.

SHOW NOTES:

In this conversation, Kara and Brenna discuss:

• How a strained parent–child relationship shaped her response to the truth
• Growing up without genetic mirroring and being labeled a “fluke”
• Discovering her sister shared the same truth—and navigating that revelation carefully
• Family secrecy, silence, and the long-term cost of “don’t ask, don’t tell”
• Accessing original birth certificates within an uneven legal landscape
• Using DNA testing to search for answers
• Meeting genetic family as “intimate strangers” who quickly felt familiar
• Relief, grief, freedom, and the slow rebuilding of identity after truth

Everyone has the right to know the truth about where they come from. Unraveling Me speaks to those people impacted by DNA surprises, NPEs (non-paternal event), adoption, assisted reproduction, and other revelations that their parentage isn't entirely what they thought. Having experienced an NPE herself, Kara (through Right To Know and this podcast) seeks to highlight those moments when we learn the most unsettling of secret—who we really are.

At Right To Know, we encourage engagement to facilitate and create real change. As an organization, we are inclusive. We assist adoptees, the donor-conceived community, people with an NPE, birth parents, gamete providers, new genetic family, recipient parents, raising families, and significant others. In learning and growing from each other, we must put the voices of adoptees, donor conceived, and people with an NPE first.

For more information about Right To Know - or if you have a story you want to tell - please visit us at https://righttoknow.us/.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

S1E11 - Unraveling Laura & DNAngels - This is a story about identity, truth, secrecy, grief, and grit. It’s about what happens when one woman refuses to stay in the dark—and builds an entire movement to help thousands of others step into the light. Laura never set out to shake up the world of DNA surprises. In 2017, she just wanted to build a legacy tree for her grandchildren. As a longtime genealogist, she took a DNA test expecting to confirm her English–Irish roots. Instead, she opened her results and felt the bottom drop out: her matches didn’t align with the man who raised her.

What followed was a cascade of realizations—family rumors resurfacing, memories unlocking, grief for the dad she adored, and the dawning truth about her and her siblings she grew up with. That discovery sent Laura into the “fetal-position phase,” three days in bed, a crash course in centimorgans, and then the decision that would change everything: to get up, get answers, and pick up the phone.

That phone call led her to the man who might be her genetic father…or her uncle—her “uncle-daddy.” It also led her to a widow who had known about Laura her entire life, a family she never knew she had, deep medical implications, and a new understanding of what secrecy costs a child across decades. From that unraveling came her mission: help others find the truth. And with that mission came DNAngels, a non-profit organization that has now helped identify more than 8,000 genetic parents.

SHOW NOTES

In this conversation, Kara and Laura talk about:

• Why she took a DNA test, and the moment it all fell apart
• How centimorgans actually work (explained the way real people understand it)
• The “uncle-daddy” phone call that changed everything
• Grieving her raising dad twice—once when he died, and again when she learned the truth
• The emotional fallout with her four siblings 
• How secrecy, ownership, and family mythology shape identity
• The medical consequences of not knowing your genetic parentage
• How all of this led to founding DNAngels, and what she wishes every MP parent understood

Everyone has the right to know the truth about where they come from. Unraveling Me speaks to those people impacted by DNA surprises, NPEs (non-paternal event), adoption, assisted reproduction, and other revelations that their parentage isn't entirely what they thought. Having experienced an NPE herself, Kara (through Right To Know and this podcast) seeks to highlight those moments when we learn the most unsettling of secret—who we really are.

At Right To Know, we encourage engagement to facilitate and create real change. As an organization, we are inclusive. We assist adoptees, the donor-conceived community, people with an NPE, birth parents, gamete providers, new genetic family, recipient parents, raising families, and significant others. In learning and growing from each other, we must put the voices of adoptees, donor conceived, and people with an NPE first.

For more information about Right To Know - or if you have a story you want to tell - please visit us at https://righttoknow.us/.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

S1 E10 Unraveling Renee - This episode is about truth-telling, family preservation, and what happens when we finally look critically at systems built on silence. Renee speaks candidly about the emotional toll of relinquishment, the lifelong consequences of secrecy, and the uncomfortable truths many would rather avoid. Her story challenges the dominant narrative of adoption as a simple good and asks listeners to confront the ethical, legal, and human realities beneath it.

Renee’s unraveling didn’t begin with a DNA test. It began with an unplanned pregnancy, a vulnerable moment in a new relationship, and a series of pressures that led to the unnecessary adoption of her child. What followed wasn’t closure—it was awakening. As Renee began to understand what had happened to her, she found her purpose: questioning an industry that too often operates behind rose-colored narratives and without critical scrutiny.

In this episode, Kara and Renee unpack the realities of infant adoption in the United States and the ways crisis, misinformation, and power imbalances shape irreversible outcomes for mothers, fathers, and children alike.

SHOW NOTES

In this conversation, Kara and Renee discuss:

• How a crisis pregnancy can rapidly spiral into adoption without informed consent
• The differences between foster adoption and infant adoption, and why that distinction matters
• The pressure tactics used by adoption entities during moments of vulnerability
• Why maternal separation is a trauma for both mother and child
• The commodification of infants and the supply-and-demand reality of adoption
• How unmarried fathers can lose parental rights without ever knowing
• The myth of “saving a baby” and what families actually need instead
• Open adoption myths versus lived realities
• Sealed birth certificates, identity loss, and the long-term impact on adoptees
• Why DNA, identity, and family connection cannot be erased by paperwork

Everyone has the right to know the truth about where they come from. Unraveling Me speaks to those people impacted by DNA surprises, NPEs (non-paternal event), adoption, assisted reproduction, and other revelations that their parentage isn't entirely what they thought. Having experienced an NPE herself, Kara (through Right To Know and this podcast) seeks to highlight those moments when we learn the most unsettling of secret—who we really are.

At Right To Know, we encourage engagement to facilitate and create real change. As an organization, we are inclusive. We assist adoptees, the donor-conceived community, people with an NPE, birth parents, gamete providers, new genetic family, recipient parents, raising families, and significant others. In learning and growing from each other, we must put the voices of adoptees, donor conceived, and people with an NPE first.

For more information about Right To Know - or if you have a story you want to tell - please visit us at https://righttoknow.us/.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

S1E9 Unraveling Lorenzo: Lorenzo’s story highlights how DNA discoveries are rarely a single moment—they unfold over time, intersecting with grief, loss, and major life transitions. His experience speaks to the complexity of identity when ethnicity, culture, genetics, and family narrative collide. Lorenzo’s journey began with concern for his father’s rapidly declining health. Dementia, neurological disease, and cancer were tearing through his paternal family, and he wanted answers about what might be hidden in his genes. What he didn’t expect was that a simple DNA test would dismantle his entire understanding of his identity.

Instead of confirming family history, Lorenzo learned he was Ashkenazi Jewish—something completely absent from the story he’d been told about himself. Raised as a Black man, his results set off months of disbelief, denial, testing, and a painful confirmation.

SHOW NOTES

In this episode, Kara and Lorenzo talk about:

• Taking a DNA test for health reasons—and getting answers he never asked for
• Discovering Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry that didn’t fit his lived identity
• Navigating disbelief, anger, and the instinct to prove the results wrong
• Losing his father while still searching for the truth
• What it means when family folklore and genetics don’t align
• How a DNA test fractures your sense of identity when your ethnicity shifts
• Grief, secrecy, and the psychological toll of prolonged uncertainty
• Finding support and connection in NPE spaces

Everyone has the right to know the truth about where they come from. Unraveling Me speaks to those people impacted by DNA surprises, NPEs (non-paternal event), adoption, assisted reproduction, and other revelations that their parentage isn't entirely what they thought. Having experienced an NPE herself, Kara (through Right To Know and this podcast) seeks to highlight those moments when we learn the most unsettling of secret—who we really are.

At Right To Know, we encourage engagement to facilitate and create real change. As an organization, we are inclusive. We assist adoptees, the donor-conceived community, people with an NPE, birth parents, gamete providers, new genetic family, recipient parents, raising families, and significant others. In learning and growing from each other, we must put the voices of adoptees, donor conceived, and people with an NPE first.

For more information about Right To Know - or if you have a story you want to tell - please visit us at https://righttoknow.us/.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Unraveling Lauren: This is a story about identity, truth-telling, and what happens when the missing piece of your story finally comes into focus. Lauren brings humor, honesty, and hard-won clarity to a journey many donor-conceived people will recognize—but everyone can relate to.

Lauren LoGiudice grew up in a loud, loving Italian-American family: tall, lanky, pale, and unexplainably not Italian-looking. For decades, she fielded questions, invented explanations, and tried to make sense of the genealogical bewilderment she couldn’t name. My favorite: she was descended from Vikings.

At 45, a DNA test finally revealed the truth—she was donor-conceived. And overnight, her entire life—her family stories, her jokes, her career, even her face—suddenly made sense.

SHOW NOTES

In this conversation, Lauren and Kara talk about:

• Growing up as “the odd one out” in a tight-knit cultural community

• The stories families invent to explain a child who looks different

• How genealogical bewilderment shaped her comedy and her characters

• The cognitive dissonance that kept her from interpreting her DNA results

• The moment she learned she had 15+ donor-conceived siblings

• Meeting her parents’ donor “Jim” and finally seeing herself reflected

• Why secrecy, shame, and silence still surround donor conception

• How owning her story transformed her comedy and her voice

• Why she created a community of “misfits” for people who never quite fit a category

For more information about Lauren - and where to enjoy her work - please visit https://www.laurenlogiudice.com/.

Everyone has the right to know the truth about where they come from. Unraveling Me speaks to those people impacted by DNA surprises, NPEs (non-paternal event), adoption, assisted reproduction, and other revelations that their parentage isn't entirely what they thought. Having experienced an NPE herself, Kara (through Right To Know and this podcast) seeks to highlight those moments when we learn the most unsettling of secret—who we really are.

At Right To Know, we encourage engagement to facilitate and create real change. As an organization, we are inclusive. We assist adoptees, the donor-conceived community, people with an NPE, birth parents, gamete providers, new genetic family, recipient parents, raising families, and significant others. In learning and growing from each other, we must put the voices of adoptees, donor conceived, and people with an NPE first.

For more information about Right To Know - or if you have a story you want to tell - please visit us at https://righttoknow.us/.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

S1E7 – Unraveling Marcie - This episode is a profound look at identity, secrecy, reunion, and the lifelong impact of being denied your own information. Marcie’s story shows that unraveling can happen at any age, and that even those who’ve spent a lifetime helping others make sense of their origins can still be blindsided by their own. Her journey is a reminder that identity is not a fixed thing—it’s a living, shifting truth we deserve to know, and a story we deserve to claim.

Marcie’s story is unlike any other in this season because it spans every side of the adoption and misattributed parentage world. Marcie co-founded the National Association of Adoptees and Parents (NAAP), fought for nine years to change Indiana law, helped open adoption records, and eventually helped create the Untangling Our Roots conference with Kara.

And then, at 68, everything she thought she knew about herself shattered. A DNA test, one she took reluctantly for her brother, revealed a family secret. Suddenly, Marcie found herself on the very path she’d guided countless through. Socked, disoriented, ashamed, grieving, and desperate to understand where she came from.

SHOW NOTES:

In this conversation, Kara and Marcie talk about:

· Surrendering a child in the closed-adoption era

· The trauma of reunion and the beauty of connection

· How denial becomes a survival skill

· The night a shoebox of memories forced her to face her past

· The emotional freefall of discovering your genetic father isn’t who you believed

· Why even experts are unprepared when their foundation cracks

· What it feels like to belong to no one—and everyone—at once

· What adoptees, birth parents, and MP individuals share—and where their experiences differ

· How community and compassion carried her through the darkest days

Everyone has the right to know the truth about where they come from. Unraveling Me speaks to those people impacted by DNA surprises, NPEs (non-paternal event), adoption, assisted reproduction, and other revelations that their parentage isn't entirely what they thought. Having experienced an NPE herself, Kara (through Right To Know and this podcast) seeks to highlight those moments when we learn the most unsettling of secret—who we really are.

At Right To Know, we encourage engagement to facilitate and create real change. As an organization, we are inclusive. We assist adoptees, the donor-conceived community, people with an NPE, birth parents, gamete providers, new genetic family, recipient parents, raising families, and significant others. In learning and growing from each other, we must put the voices of adoptees, donor conceived, and people with an NPE first.

For more information about Right To Know - or if you have a story you want to tell - please visit us at https://righttoknow.us/.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

S1 E6 - Unraveling Lauren C - Lauren’s story is a reminder that family trees aren’t just diagrams—they’re living, shifting truths. And sometimes the truth has been whispering to us for years before we finally hear it. Lauren had been building her family tree since 1977. Cemeteries, phone calls, interviews, handwritten charts, decades of work, 68,000 names, and the belief that she knew exactly where she came from. But one DNA test changed everything. A “routine” ancestry test revealed that the cousins she couldn’t place weren’t distant connections—they were clues. And the man she’d called “Uncle Jack” her entire life wasn’t just a family friend. Hidden in her mother’s shorthand diaries was a decades-old secret that rewrote everything Lauren thought she knew about her parents, her childhood, and herself.

In this conversation, Lauren and Kara talk about:

• How a high-school genealogy project sparked a lifelong search for family truth
• The obsessive dedication many NPEs feel to family history and how it shifts after a discovery
•  How her mother’s coded shorthand diaries revealed an affair and a tangled web of secrecy
• The moment her top or her DNA surprise
• Realizing her birth certificate father had always known she wasn’t genetically his and why mumps really were a big deal
• The complicated grief of understanding her parents' marriage and the emotional toll on everyone involved
• What it feels like to discover first cousins, siblings, and relatives hiding in plain sight
• Rebuilding identity after the foundations of your origin story fall away

Everyone has the right to know the truth about where they come from. Unraveling Me speaks to those people impacted by DNA surprises, NPEs (non-paternal event), adoption, assisted reproduction, and other revelations that their parentage isn't entirely what they thought. Having experienced an NPE herself, Kara (through Right To Know and this podcast) seeks to highlight those moments when we learn the most unsettling of secret—who we really are.

At Right To Know, we encourage engagement to facilitate and create real change. As an organization, we are inclusive. We assist adoptees, the donor-conceived community, people with an NPE, birth parents, gamete providers, new genetic family, recipient parents, raising families, and significant others. In learning and growing from each other, we must put the voices of adoptees, donor conceived, and people with an NPE first.

For more information about Right To Know - or if you have a story you want to tell - please visit us at https://righttoknow.us/.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

S1 E5 – Mark Hansen - Mark’s story sits at the intersection of fertility fraud, misattributed parentage, and the long-term trauma caused by secrecy. It is raw, candid, and deeply human. This episode is about truth-telling, consent, identity, and the lifelong impact of what happens when people in power make choices without it. And how you can turn your pain into power. Mark was 47 years old, sitting beside his aging father at a routine medical appointment, when everything he knew about himself changed. In the quiet of that exam room, his dad turned to him and said: “There’s something I’ve never told you...” . What followed was a revelation that reshaped every corner of his identity. Mark learned he was conceived in the 1960s through an unethical insemination procedure. With no consent. No disclosure. And no accountability.

SHOW NOTES:

In this episode, Kara and Mark talk about:

· The exact moment his raising father disclosed the truth

· What insemination practices looked like in the 1960s—and what doctors were actually doing

· How he confirmed the truth with DNA testing

· Seeing his genetic father’s face for the first time—and seeing his own staring back

· The moral obligation he felt to notify four half-sisters living just miles away

· Why secrecy, shame, and fear keep families silent for decades

· How misattributed parentage can unravel sibling relationships

· What it means to “lose” your dad twice—once in death, and once in truth

· The ripple effects on extended family, medical history, and identity

· How he rebuilt stability and self-understanding in the aftermath

 Everyone has the right to know the truth about where they come from. Unraveling Me speaks to those people impacted by DNA surprises, NPEs (non-paternal event), adoption, assisted reproduction, and other revelations that their parentage isn't entirely what they thought. Having experienced an NPE herself, Kara (through Right To Know and this podcast) seeks to highlight those moments when we learn the most unsettling of secret—who we really are.

At Right To Know, we encourage engagement to facilitate and create real change. As an organization, we are inclusive. We assist adoptees, the donor-conceived community, people with an NPE, birth parents, gamete providers, new genetic family, recipient parents, raising families, and significant others. In learning and growing from each other, we must put the voices of adoptees, donor conceived, and people with an NPE first.

For more information about Right To Know - or if you have a story you want to tell - please visit us at https://righttoknow.us/.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

S1E4 - Unraveling Oliver: This episode is about adoption, silence, identity, and the long interior journey many adoptees walk before saying their questions out loud. Oliver’s story is gentle, thoughtful, and profoundly human—a reminder that even truths revealed late in life still deserve space, compassion, and voice. Oliver grew up in a Dutch Indonesian family, surrounded by people who looked just like him. In Los Angeles, being Filipino by birth but raised in a culturally similar community meant he never questioned his place. But when the family moved to rural South Carolina at age seven, the contrast sharpened. Suddenly, he was “the odd one out,” but for reasons he couldn’t understand.

SHOW NOTES

At 18, right before leaving for the military, Oliver's parents told him he was adopted. The revelation landed just as he was entering an institution designed to strip away identity and rebuild it from the ground up. For years, Oliver held the truth quietly inside himself, unsure how to search without hurting the parents who raised him. It wasn’t until he became a father himself that the questions he’d buried began to surface. And it wasn’t until decades later, after his mother died and his father developed dementia, that Oliver finally allowed himself to search.

In this conversation, Kara, Oliver, and Melissa talk about:

• Growing up looking like you “fit,” even when the story doesn’t fit you at all
• The shock of discovering adoption at 18
• How the military intensifies questions of identity and belonging
• Why many adoptees delay searching until their raising parents are gone
• The emotional and ethical landmines of reunion
• The fear of hurting the people who raised you
• Using DNA and genealogy to trace a genetic mother
• Navigating this journey as a couple—support, differences, boundaries
• What it means to build identity when the truth arrives decades late
• What supportive partnership looks like when one person is unraveling their identity

Everyone has the right to know the truth about where they come from. Unraveling Me speaks to those people impacted by DNA surprises, NPEs (non-paternal event), adoption, assisted reproduction, and other revelations that their parentage isn't entirely what they thought. Having experienced an NPE herself, Kara (through Right To Know and this podcast) seeks to highlight those moments when we learn the most unsettling of secret—who we really are.

At Right To Know, we encourage engagement to facilitate and create real change. As an organization, we are inclusive. We assist adoptees, the donor-conceived community, people with an NPE, birth parents, gamete providers, new genetic family, recipient parents, raising families, and significant others. In learning and growing from each other, we must put the voices of adoptees, donor conceived, and people with an NPE first.

For more information about Right To Know - or if you have a story you want to tell - please visit us at https://righttoknow.us/.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

S1E3 – Unraveling Bruce: Bruce’s story is raw, honest, and deeply human. It reveals the long shadow that secrecy casts—and the resilience required to rebuild identity at any age. This episode is about race, truth-telling, and the quiet survival strategies a child learns when the world insists he is something he cannot understand. And it is a testament to what can happen when, even late in life, we choose to face the truth head-on. Bruce grew up as one of ten children in an Irish-German Catholic family in Texas and Oklahoma. He was the only one who looked different—dark curly hair, brown skin that deepened in the sun—yet his parents insisted he belonged. Inside the home, he was simply one of the kids. Outside, he faced racism he had no language or context for. Decades later, a DNA test taken on a whim revealed what no one had ever told him: Bruce was biracial, and his genetic father was a Black man. Born in 1952 in a state where interracial relationships were illegal, Bruce entered the world as a secret his parents were convinced they had to keep.

SHOW NOTES

In this conversation, Kara and Bruce talk about:

• Growing up “the only one” in a large white family
• Experiencing racism as a child with no understanding of why
• The lifelong impact of secrecy, misattributed parentage, and identity confusion
• Using DNA testing to unravel ethnicity, parentage, and scientific truth
• Waiting four years for DNAngels to identify his genetic father
• Navigating complicated new genetic relatives
• Living as a biracial man raised as white and the emotional toll of never belonging fully anywhere
• How identity formation is shaped by context, environment, and who tells us who we are

Everyone has the right to know the truth about where they come from. Unraveling Me speaks to those people impacted by DNA surprises, NPEs (non-paternal event), adoption, assisted reproduction, and other revelations that their parentage isn't entirely what they thought. Having experienced an NPE herself, Kara (through Right To Know and this podcast) seeks to highlight those moments when we learn the most unsettling of secret—who we really are.

At Right To Know, we encourage engagement to facilitate and create real change. As an organization, we are inclusive. We assist adoptees, the donor-conceived community, people with an NPE, birth parents, gamete providers, new genetic family, recipient parents, raising families, and significant others. In learning and growing from each other, we must put the voices of adoptees, donor conceived, and people with an NPE first.

For more information about Right To Know - or if you have a story you want to tell - please visit us at https://righttoknow.us/.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

S1 E28 Unraveling Maria In this wide-ranging and deeply insightful conversation, Kara and Maria explore what happens when personal discovery intersects with law, ethics, culture, and belonging. Maria was 53 years old, standing in her kitchen, when a DNA test result upended everything she thought she knew about her identity.

Raised in a deeply Catholic family, with a Filipino immigrant mother and an Irish American father, Maria’s life had always felt coherent, until a test revealed she was half Ashkenazi Jewish.

SHOW NOTES

Kara and Maria discuss:

• Receiving unexpected DNA results and the immediate unraveling that followed
• Confronting parental secrecy and navigating a mother unwilling to engage
• The search for, and eventual relationship with, her genetic father
• How late discovery reshapes identity, faith, and cultural belonging
• The legal and ethical risks of consumer DNA testing, including privacy and insurance concerns
• Misattributed parentage and the broader policy gaps affecting NPEs, adoptees, and donor-conceived people
• Sobriety, trauma, and the importance of support when facing life-altering truths
• The tension between truth-telling and protecting family secrets

Maria brings both personal vulnerability and professional insight as an attorney, offering a perspective that goes beyond individual story into systemic impact. Her experience led her to write Before and After the DNA Test, a comprehensive guide to the legal, medical, and ethical realities many people never consider before “spitting in a tube.”

Everyone has the right to know the truth about where they come from. Unraveling Me speaks to those people impacted by DNA surprises, NPEs (non-paternal event), adoption, assisted reproduction, and other revelations that their parentage isn't entirely what they thought. Having experienced an NPE herself, Kara (through Right To Know and this podcast) seeks to highlight those moments when we learn the most unsettling of secret—who we really are.

At Right To Know, we encourage engagement to facilitate and create real change. As an organization, we are inclusive. We assist adoptees, the donor-conceived community, people with an NPE, birth parents, gamete providers, new genetic family, recipient parents, raising families, and significant others. In learning and growing from each other, we must put the voices of adoptees, donor conceived, and people with an NPE first.

For more information about Right To Know - or if you have a story you want to tell - please visit us at https://righttoknow.us/.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

S1E2 Unraveling Jodi - Kara’s first guest is Jodi, her “opposite twin” in the DNA surprise world. Raised in a tiny Midwestern farm town as the only person of color in her community, Jodi spent her childhood trying to be perfect so no one would notice how different she looked. At 45, a half-price DNA test confirmed what her mirror had been whispering for decades—and upended everything she thought she knew about her family, her past, and herself. This is a story about identity, secrecy, faith, and the unexpected gifts of an unraveling— including the found family that helps you survive it.

SHOW NOTES

In this conversation, Kara and Jodi talk about:

• Growing up as “the only one” in an all-white town
• Perfectionism, people-pleasing, and staying silent to survive
• The moment a DNA test revealed she is a different ethnicity
• Grieving a beloved dad while learning he wasn’t her genetic father
• Meeting her genetic siblings and navigating a new culture at midlife
• What it takes to rebuild belonging after misattributed parentage

Everyone has the right to know the truth about where they come from. Unraveling Me speaks to those people impacted by DNA surprises, NPEs (non-paternal event), adoption, assisted reproduction, and other revelations that their parentage isn't entirely what they thought. Having experienced an NPE herself, Kara (through Right To Know and this podcast) seeks to highlight those moments when we learn the most unsettling of secret—who we really are.

At Right To Know, we encourage engagement to facilitate and create real change. As an organization, we are inclusive. We assist adoptees, the donor-conceived community, people with an NPE, birth parents, gamete providers, new genetic family, recipient parents, raising families, and significant others. In learning and growing from each other, we must put the voices of adoptees, donor conceived, and people with an NPE first.

For more information about Right To Know - or if you have a story you want to tell - please visit us at https://righttoknow.us/.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

THE BLURB: Kara grew up believing she was half Black but learned she was actually half Jewish instead. Jodi, by contrast, grew up believing she was 100% Black only to learn she was 50% Black and 50% Ashkenazi Jew. How does one wrap one's mind around a radical re-imagining of who one is and where one came from? And why is it such a legal struggle to learn these truths about ourselves?

SHOW NOTES

Everyone has the right to know the truth about where they come from. Unraveling Me speaks to those people impacted by DNA surprises, NPEs (non-paternal event), adoption, assisted reproduction, and other revelations that their parentage isn't entirely what they thought. Having experienced an NPE herself, Kara (through Right To Know and this podcast) seeks to highlight those moments when we learn the most unsettling of secret—who we really are.

At Right To Know, we encourage engagement to facilitate and create real change. As an organization, we are inclusive. We assist adoptees, the donor-conceived community, people with an NPE, birth parents, gamete providers, new genetic family, recipient parents, raising families, and significant others. In learning and growing from each other, we must put the voices of adoptees, donor conceived, and people with an NPE first.

For more information about Right To Know - or if you have a story you want to tell - please visit us at https://righttoknow.us/.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Join host Kara Rubinstein Deyerin as she speaks with people who, like her, are impacted by NPE's (non-parental events), DNA surprises, adoption, assisted reproduction, or other unexpected information bombs that reveal the truth about who they are and their family relationships and secrets. As anyone who's ever experienced such an event can tell you, it separates you from you. From knowing your own story. In "Unraveling Me", Kara explores the myriad ways why knowing the truth about who you are and who your family is matters.

For more information please visit righttokknow.us.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

S1 E27 Unraveling Aaron & Jess In this thoughtful and often funny conversation, Kara, Aaron, and Jess explore what happened when a long-abstract donor relationship became real—and how that reality slowly reshaped all of their lives. What begins as a donor-conception story becomes something much more unexpected: a conversation about the many ways family can take shape. Years after choosing an unknown donor because it felt like the safest legal and emotional choice, Jess’s daughter took a DNA test to learn more about her ancestry and found Aaron right away. What followed was not just a new connection for a donor-conceived child, but the beginning of an evolving relationship between two adults trying to navigate unfamiliar terrain with care, curiosity, and respect.

SHOW NOTES

Kara, Aaron, and Jess discuss:

• Why choose an unknown donor in the first place
• What donor conception looked like in the early 2000s, before photos, social media, and widespread DNA testing
• Aaron’s decision to take a DNA test
• A child’s experience of donor discovery when the truth was never hidden
• How Jess and Aaron built trust while following her daughter’s lead
• The emotional complexity of genetics, parenting, and belonging

This episode challenges old assumptions about what makes a parent, what makes a family, and how connection can grow when honesty is there from the beginning. Aaron and Jess show that while genetics matter, relationships matter too, and neither has to cancel out the other. Their story is a reminder that sometimes the families we build do not fit familiar templates, but can still be rooted in care, respect, and love.

Everyone has the right to know the truth about where they come from. Unraveling Me speaks to those people impacted by DNA surprises, NPEs (non-paternal event), adoption, assisted reproduction, and other revelations that their parentage isn't entirely what they thought. Having experienced an NPE herself, Kara (through Right To Know and this podcast) seeks to highlight those moments when we learn the most unsettling of secret—who we really are.

At Right To Know, we encourage engagement to facilitate and create real change. As an organization, we are inclusive. We assist adoptees, the donor-conceived community, people with an NPE, birth parents, gamete providers, new genetic family, recipient parents, raising families, and significant others. In learning and growing from each other, we must put the voices of adoptees, donor conceived, and people with an NPE first.

For more information about Right To Know - or if you have a story you want to tell - please visit us at https://righttoknow.us/.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

S1 E25 - Unraveling Amanda - Amanda speaks with honesty, perspective, and compassion—for herself, her parents, and the complexity of the choices made long before she had a voice in them. In this thoughtful and deeply reflective conversation, Kara and Amanda explore what it means to carry a truth for years, sometimes quietly, sometimes in pieces, and what it takes to finally live openly inside it.

Amanda’s story begins before DNA testing was widely available. At 20 years old, when her father asked her to take a paternity test and quietly revealed he had always had doubts about her paternity. What followed was not just a confirmation of truth, but the beginning of a decades-long journey through identity, secrecy, connection, and ultimately, self-acceptance.

SHOW NOTES

Kara and Amanda discuss:

• Discovering the truth before the era of direct-to-consumer DNA testing
• How honesty strengthened her relationship with her raising father
• Confronting parental secrecy, shame, and long-held silence
• Searching for, and ultimately connecting with, her genetic father
• Navigating expanded family dynamics, including siblings and stepfamily
• The emotional toll of living “two lives” and the turning point toward openness
• Grief not just for loss, but for lost time and missed opportunities

Amanda's story reminds us that The Truth doesn’t always arrive all at once. Sometimes it unfolds over years. Finding the courage to live openly within it can be its own kind of healing.

Everyone has the right to know the truth about where they come from. Unraveling Me speaks to those people impacted by DNA surprises, NPEs (non-paternal event), adoption, assisted reproduction, and other revelations that their parentage isn't entirely what they thought. Having experienced an NPE herself, Kara (through Right To Know and this podcast) seeks to highlight those moments when we learn the most unsettling of secret—who we really are.

At Right To Know, we encourage engagement to facilitate and create real change. As an organization, we are inclusive. We assist adoptees, the donor-conceived community, people with an NPE, birth parents, gamete providers, new genetic family, recipient parents, raising families, and significant others. In learning and growing from each other, we must put the voices of adoptees, donor conceived, and people with an NPE first.

For more information about Right To Know - or if you have a story you want to tell - please visit us at https://righttoknow.us/.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

S1 E25 - Unraveling Lisa - Lisa took a DNA test out of curiosity: something light, something fun. But when her results came back, they didn’t just surprise her. They unraveled everything she thought she knew about who she was. In this conversation, Lisa shares how a single test led her to uncover donor conception, connect with a half-brother, and rethink the meaning of family, culture, and self. Raised in a fully Ashkenazi Jewish family, Lisa was confronted with results that made no sense—until they did. What followed was not just a search for answers, but a profound reckoning with identity, belonging, and truth. Through it all, she brings humor, honesty, and a deep sense of compassion for everyone involved, including her mother.

SHOW NOTES

Kara and Lisa discuss:

• Taking a DNA test “for fun” and discovering unexpected results
• Growing up with a strong cultural identity—and having it suddenly questioned
• The confusion of early DNA matches and making sense of new relationships
• Navigating donor conception and the reality of medical practices in earlier generations
• The emotional complexity of truth, love, and protecting family relationships
• Turning pain into storytelling through her feature comedy One Big Happy Family

Lisa’s story holds both weight and lightness. It captures the disorientation of late discovery, but also the perspective that comes with time—how something once devastating can eventually be transformed into art. By turning her experience into One Big Happy Family, Lisa found a way to share her difficult truth with humor, heart, and humanity.

Everyone has the right to know the truth about where they come from. Unraveling Me speaks to those people impacted by DNA surprises, NPEs (non-paternal event), adoption, assisted reproduction, and other revelations that their parentage isn't entirely what they thought. Having experienced an NPE herself, Kara (through Right To Know and this podcast) seeks to highlight those moments when we learn the most unsettling of secret—who we really are.

At Right To Know, we encourage engagement to facilitate and create real change. As an organization, we are inclusive. We assist adoptees, the donor-conceived community, people with an NPE, birth parents, gamete providers, new genetic family, recipient parents, raising families, and significant others. In learning and growing from each other, we must put the voices of adoptees, donor conceived, and people with an NPE first.

For more information about Right To Know - or if you have a story you want to tell - please visit us at https://righttoknow.us/.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

S1 E24 Unraveling Monica B - In this powerful and deeply human conversation, Kara and Monica explore how meaning can emerge even from the most chaotic beginnings. Monica’s story begins with a series of events so unlikely they almost feel fictional—until they lead to a life-altering truth. After her father’s sudden death, Monica found herself entangled in an unbelievable web with the FBI, her family farm, and an international cartel. What followed was a cascade of events and a DNA test gifted before a trip to Scotland, a stroke with no clear family history, and a genetic diagnosis that didn’t match what she knew about her lineage. Piece by piece, her story unraveled. And eventually, the truth became undeniable.

SHOW NOTES:

Kara and Monica discuss:

• The chain of unexpected events that led to her discovery
• A medical diagnosis that revealed a hidden genetic truth
• The emotional complexity of loving both a raising father and a genetic one
• The role of timing, coincidence, and resilience in identity discovery
• Navigating grief, gratitude, and belonging all at once

Monica speaks with honesty, perspective, and remarkable grace. Even in the face of loss, shock, and disorientation, she chooses curiosity over bitterness—and connection over certainty. Her story is a reminder that life doesn’t always unfold in a straight line. Sometimes truth arrives through a series of unexpected turns—and when it does, it has the power to reshape not just where we come from, but how we move forward.

Everyone has the right to know the truth about where they come from. Unraveling Me speaks to those people impacted by DNA surprises, NPEs (non-paternal event), adoption, assisted reproduction, and other revelations that their parentage isn't entirely what they thought. Having experienced an NPE herself, Kara (through Right To Know and this podcast) seeks to highlight those moments when we learn the most unsettling of secret—who we really are.

At Right To Know, we encourage engagement to facilitate and create real change. As an organization, we are inclusive. We assist adoptees, the donor-conceived community, people with an NPE, birth parents, gamete providers, new genetic family, recipient parents, raising families, and significant others. In learning and growing from each other, we must put the voices of adoptees, donor conceived, and people with an NPE first.

For more information about Right To Know - or if you have a story you want to tell - please visit us at https://righttoknow.us/.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

S1 E23 - Unraveling Donna - In this powerful conversation, Kara and Donna explore what it means to survive a traumatic upbringing, uncover a hidden genetic story, and rebuild a life rooted in truth. Donna speaks with honesty, grit, and hard-won clarity. She does not soften the truth of what she lived through, but she also makes space for joy, connection, and healing. Her story is a reminder that truth can be painful—but it can also be liberating. And sometimes, finding out where you come from is part of finally understanding how you survived.

(Content warning: This episode contains discussion of child abuse, sexual abuse, and suicide.)

SHOW NOTES:

Donna’s story is one of survival, truth, and the long shadow of childhood trauma. Raised in a deeply abusive and chaotic home, Donna grew up knowing something didn’t fit. That sense of being “different” stayed with her long before she had the language—or the evidence—to understand why. After finding the courage to leave home as a teenager, Donna began the long process of healing and rebuilding her life. But the question of where she came from never fully left her. When she eventually took a DNA test, the results didn’t just provide answers—they revealed an entirely new reality.

Kara and Donna discuss:

• Growing up in an abusive home and finding a way out as a teenager
• The lasting impact of childhood trauma and the work of healing
• Discovering she was donor-conceived after years of searching for answers
• The shock of unexpected DNA results and finding a large network of siblings
• Navigating connection, rejection, and the complexities of genetic family
• Why regulation and accountability in the fertility industry matter

Everyone has the right to know the truth about where they come from. Unraveling Me speaks to those people impacted by DNA surprises, NPEs (non-paternal event), adoption, assisted reproduction, and other revelations that their parentage isn't entirely what they thought. Having experienced an NPE herself, Kara (through Right To Know and this podcast) seeks to highlight those moments when we learn the most unsettling of secret—who we really are.

At Right To Know, we encourage engagement to facilitate and create real change. As an organization, we are inclusive. We assist adoptees, the donor-conceived community, people with an NPE, birth parents, gamete providers, new genetic family, recipient parents, raising families, and significant others. In learning and growing from each other, we must put the voices of adoptees, donor conceived, and people with an NPE first.

For more information about Right To Know - or if you have a story you want to tell - please visit us at https://righttoknow.us/.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

S1 E22 - Unraveling Kirk and Randi - In this episode, Randi and Kirk share their deeply human, nonlinear journey of welcoming Kirk’s newly discovered daughter, Athena, into their family. What began as a destabilizing revelation became an ongoing process of reckoning, repair, growth, and choice.

At its heart, this episode is about commitment—the kind that says: we will face this together. We will make room. We will grow. Because sometimes family isn’t defined by how it begins, but by how people choose to show up when everything changes. This story is not tidy. It is layered, evolving, and real.

SHOW NOTES

When truth arrives unexpectedly, it rarely unfolds in a straight line. There were hard conversations. There were moments of grief and disorientation. There were questions about loyalty, identity, and what family really means. And alongside all of it, there was intention.

Randi’s strength is not loud, but it is steady—marked by tenacity, empathy, and a willingness to sit inside discomfort without shutting down. Kirk’s willingness to grow in real time, to hold complexity, and to lead with love even when it would be easier to retreat is equally powerful.

Together, they show what it looks like to stay engaged when life gets complicated.

In this episode, Kara, Randi, and Kirk discuss:

• The emotional shock of unexpected parentage
• What it takes to expand a family after trust is shaken
• Navigating loyalty, grief, and new relationships simultaneously
• The courage required to support one another through identity shifts
• Choosing connection over defensiveness

Everyone has the right to know the truth about where they come from. Unraveling Me speaks to those people impacted by DNA surprises, NPEs (non-paternal event), adoption, assisted reproduction, and other revelations that their parentage isn't entirely what they thought. Having experienced an NPE herself, Kara (through Right To Know and this podcast) seeks to highlight those moments when we learn the most unsettling of secret—who we really are.

At Right To Know, we encourage engagement to facilitate and create real change. As an organization, we are inclusive. We assist adoptees, the donor-conceived community, people with an NPE, birth parents, gamete providers, new genetic family, recipient parents, raising families, and significant others. In learning and growing from each other, we must put the voices of adoptees, donor conceived, and people with an NPE first.

For more information about Right To Know - or if you have a story you want to tell - please visit us at https://righttoknow.us/.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

S1E33 Unraveling Joseph & Charity - Charity spent most of her life believing a painful story about her origins. Raised by her maternal grandparents after the death of her mother, she endured a childhood marked by abuse, silence, and the belief that searching for her father would only uncover more pain. For years, she was told she was conceived through violence and taught not to ask questions. After becoming a mother herself, Charity decided she no longer wanted fear, secrecy, and generational trauma passed down to her own children. A DNA test—and the courage to finally open the results—led her to Joseph.

What followed was not the story she had been told.

SHOW NOTES

In this deeply emotional and hopeful conversation, Kara, Charity, and Joseph discuss:

• Growing up under the weight of family secrecy and emotional manipulation
• The impact of childhood abuse, silence, and being taught not to search
• Using DNA testing, genealogy groups, and DNAngels to uncover the truth
• Joseph learning decades later that he had a daughter
• Navigating reunion while honoring existing family relationships
• The importance of grace, patience, and moving slowly through reunion
• Genetic mirroring, shared traits, and finally seeing yourself reflected in someone else
• Breaking cycles of silence and trauma for the next generation

Charity and Joseph’s story is about far more than finding family. It is about reclaiming truth after years of fear, learning to trust connection after surviving harm, and choosing healing over bitterness. Their reunion is honest, imperfect, hopeful, and deeply human. Together, they remind us that family stories are often more complicated than we are told and that sometimes the truth waiting on the other side is far gentler than the fear that kept us from searching.

Everyone has the right to know the truth about where they come from. Unraveling Me speaks to those people impacted by DNA surprises, NPEs (non-paternal event), adoption, assisted reproduction, and other revelations that their parentage isn't entirely what they thought. Having experienced an NPE herself, Kara (through Right To Know and this podcast) seeks to highlight those moments when we learn the most unsettling of secret—who we really are.

At Right To Know, we encourage engagement to facilitate and create real change. As an organization, we are inclusive. We assist adoptees, the donor-conceived community, people with an NPE, birth parents, gamete providers, new genetic family, recipient parents, raising families, and significant others. In learning and growing from each other, we must put the voices of adoptees, donor conceived, and people with an NPE first.

For more information about Right To Know - or if you have a story you want to tell - please visit us at https://righttoknow.us/.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

S1 E32 Melody: Melody took a DNA test for one reason: to search for the younger brother she had not seen since childhood who’d been relinquished to adoption. Instead, her results revealed a truth she never expected. Raised African American, Melody opened her DNA results and found close white relatives, no close matches on her mother’s side, and an ethnicity estimate that made no sense with the family story she had always known. What began as a search for her brother became a search for herself.

SHOW NOTES

In this thoughtful and layered conversation, Kara and Melody discuss:

• Losing her birth certificate father as a child and being raised by a beloved great-aunt
• Discovering close white DNA matches and realizing her father was not her genetic father
• Building mirror trees and doing months of genetic genealogy research
• Finding her genetic father and connecting with several half-siblings
• The complexity of being raised Black and learning her genetic father was white
• Navigating race, belonging, politics, and acceptance within a new family
• Seeking medical history and answers without wanting anything material
• The ache of never fully knowing how her parents’ relationship began

Melody’s story is about more than a DNA surprise. It is about race, identity, family stories, and the complicated work of integrating a truth that changes how you understand your past. Her journey reminds us that knowing where we come from matters not because DNA tells the whole story, but because missing pieces shape how we see ourselves, our families, and our place in the world.

Everyone has the right to know the truth about where they come from. Unraveling Me speaks to those people impacted by DNA surprises, NPEs (non-paternal event), adoption, assisted reproduction, and other revelations that their parentage isn't entirely what they thought. Having experienced an NPE herself, Kara (through Right To Know and this podcast) seeks to highlight those moments when we learn the most unsettling of secret—who we really are.

At Right To Know, we encourage engagement to facilitate and create real change. As an organization, we are inclusive. We assist adoptees, the donor-conceived community, people with an NPE, birth parents, gamete providers, new genetic family, recipient parents, raising families, and significant others. In learning and growing from each other, we must put the voices of adoptees, donor conceived, and people with an NPE first.

For more information about Right To Know - or if you have a story you want to tell - please visit us at https://righttoknow.us/.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.