Show Notes
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.
More from Unraveling Me
S1 E51 - Unraveling Chris & Mary Chris grew up knowing he was adopted—and knowing his genetic family. His parents shared celebrations, built relationships with one another, and made room for everyone in his life. He calls it “integrated adoption.” But even with that openness and connection, Chris struggled with feeling slightly different everywhere he went. Recognizing the grief connected to his adoption brought a question he hadn’t known how to ask: “Is it okay that I feel this way?” His raising mother, Mary, answered without hesitation: “Of course it’s okay.”
S1 E50 - Unraveling Corey & Kendall Kendall always knew he was adopted. His parents welcomed his questions, and when his adoptive mother died, his father showed him the name he’d been given at birth. Kendall was ten. He searched through phone books, library records, and adoption registries, and petitioned the court three times for his sealed records. Years of dead ends left him believing he might never find his genetic family.
S1 E49 - Unraveling Stephanie Stephanie’s story is about what happens when a lifelong search for roots finally begins. It is also a reminder that success does not always mean finding every answer. Sometimes it means discovering where you come from, building relationships along the way, and finding the courage to keep searching. Stephanie was adopted at three years old from a Mother Teresa orphanage in India and raised in a white Catholic family on Long Island. She always knew she was adopted, but for most of her life, she gave little thought to the identity, culture, and history she had lost.
S1 E48 Unraveling Tom J Tom Junod has spent much of his career investigating other people’s lives. His profile of Fred Rogers inspired the film A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, and his essay The Falling Man became one of the most recognized pieces of writing about 9/11. But in his memoir, In the Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man, Tom turns that investigative lens on his own family.
S1E47 Unraveling MP MP grew up feeling like the odd person out. He looked different from his brothers, struggled to connect with the man he believed was his father, and was repeatedly reminded that his interests, personality, and appearance did not fit the rest of his family. At 13, he unexpectedly learned that his parents had married after he was born. That first crack in the family story left him wondering what else he had not been told.