Show Notes
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.
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.