Finding My Birth Mother, Then Finding a Full Sibling for My Kids

What happens after the truth comes out, when the search begins and there is no DNA test, no internet, and no clear roadmap?

In part two of this two-part episode, we continue our conversation with Marylee MacDonald as she takes us into the long, painstaking search for her birth family. This was a time before commercial DNA testing, when finding answers meant microfilm machines, legal notices buried in newspapers, and carefully rehearsed phone calls that could change your life in an instant.

Marylee shares how she searched for her birth mother after her adoptive mother’s death, navigating guilt, fear, and hope all at once. When she finally makes contact, she experiences something many adoptees describe but rarely get to feel. Mirrors. Voices that sound like hers. Siblings who feel instantly familiar.

But reunion is not a fairy tale.

Marylee opens up about being kept secret, introduced as a “family friend,” and hearing words no one ever wants to hear from a parent. She reflects on the complicated emotional terrain of reunion, where love, shame, pride, and distance can all exist at the same time.

And then comes another layer. Marylee also shares the story of finding the son she was forced to surrender as a teenager. What followed was not instant closeness, but something deeper. Time. Effort. Shared history. And eventually, a family that chose to make room for one another.

This episode lands during the holidays, and without planning it, Marylee leaves us with a powerful reminder of what connection can look like when the work is done. A full house. A crowded kitchen. Decades of memories made after years of separation.

What We Talk About in Part Two

Searching for birth family before DNA testing
 Using microfilm and legal notices to find answers
 Making the first phone call to a birth parent
 Meeting siblings and finally seeing mirrors
 The pain of being kept secret after reunion
 Why reunion does not erase grief or shame
 Finding a son surrendered in a closed adoption
 Building real family history over time
 What the holidays can look like after reunion

About Our Guest

Marylee MacDonald is an adoptee and author whose work explores adoption, identity, secrecy, motherhood, and reunion. Her writing reflects both the emotional cost of closed-era adoption and the long process of building real family connection after decades of separation.

Website

Book: Surrender: A Memoir of Nature, Nurture, and Love

Content Note: This episode includes discussion of adoption secrecy, family rejection, grief, and emotional distress. Please listen with care.

Connect with Family Twist

If this episode resonates with you, share it with someone who understands how family secrets shape identity. If you have a story of adoption, late discovery, or a family truth that surfaced years later, we would love to hear from you.

Family secrets are the ultimate plot twist.

Transcript

A Holiday Adoption Story and Why Timing Matters

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome back to Family Twist. I'm Corey. And I'm Kendall.

SPEAKER_02 0:03

And if you're listening to this when it drops, you're right in the middle of the holidays. Which is not something we planned when we recorded this conversation with Mary Lee, but as often happens on this podcast, the timing turned out to matter more than we expected.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

In part one, Mary Lee shared her adoption story, and the moment she learned the truth about her birth parents at fifteen and a half. In part two, we follow her into what came next. The search, the reunion, and something neither of us knew was coming. A holiday twist. Mary Lee walks us through finding her birth mother in a time before DNA testing, through microfilm, legal notices, carefully written scripts, and then eventually finding the son she was forced to surrender as a teenager.

SPEAKER_02 0:45

And what unfolds is not just a reunion story, it's a story about time, about patience, about putting in the work to build real family history after years of separation.

SPEAKER_01 0:55

We know this season can be complicated for a lot of people listening, for adoptees, for people with DNA surprises, for anyone who sees photos online of gatherings they're not part of.

SPEAKER_02 1:06

Mary Lee's story does not erase that pain, but it does remind us that sometimes Hume shows up later. Sometimes it shows up quietly, and sometimes it shows up around a crowded kitchen table you never thought you would get to sit at.

SPEAKER_01 1:19

Here's part two of our conversation with Mary Lee.

SPEAKER_02 1:23

Anyway.

SPEAKER_03 2:28

So it was to protect the adoptive family, not to protect the birth mother. But it it makes it extremely difficult for people who are curious or just want to know their origins. Without that original birth certificate, they have to jump through a lot of hoops. And when you asked about my birth mother, when did I think about finding her? After my mom died, I thought, okay, now I can do it without the kind of guilt that initially came up for me.

SPEAKER_02 3:02

And what year was this?

SPEAKER_03 3:03

It was like I was 30 years old. Let's just go into my twins for a second. My husband went to West Point. I went to Vassar. I got pregnant the first semester. I was at Vassar. We came back to California when I finished our college at Stanford and had four more children. By the time I was 25, I had gotten pregnant with money. Fifth child. I was six weeks pregnant when my husband was killed in a car accident.

SPEAKER_02 3:33

Oh my goodness.

Searching Before DNA Tests, Microfilm, Legal Notices, and Persistence

SPEAKER_03 3:34

In Germany. And he was a scientist. He had his PhD in engineering from Stanford. And so I was in California pregnant with all these little stairs kids. And so I wasn't really in a position to look for my mother. I was just really trying to put my head above water. But by the time I was 30, which is not that many years later, I found out about an adoption group and said, okay, I really need to know more about my identity. Because I have a son out there. And I know that when he turns 21, I'm going to find him. So I need to know how to do this. One thing that might be interesting to know is that in the old days before DNA tests, if you wanted to find somebody, you had to look in the channel sales section of the yellow pages of the newspaper, which is in the advertiser. It's in the little tiny print, chattel sales, as in cattle, meaning property. It's from old English law that adoptions are a transfer of property. So they are transferred and they appear as a legal notice in the property sales section of the newspaper. Microfilm became my friend. And I went through probably 60 newspapers in Los Angeles looking for an adoption around the time of my birth. And I found in the Culver City newspaper, I found something that seemed like it would be a match. My adopted mother had written down a name. And it was Mary Catherine Kirkpatrick, and the other one was Mary Elizabeth Poynton. And I guessed that that was my birth name and my mother's name. And it turned out to be case. Wow. So when I found Kirkpatrick in the channel sales, I thought that's probably who it is. And I called her and I said, I'm looking for Mary Catherine. I'm an old friend of hers from high school. Would you happen to have her phone number? And she did, gave it to me. She was kind of suspicious, but then I called my mom. And by that time I had a it was a woman in Phoenix who was kind of advising me on steps to take. And she said it's a good idea to call and to have this particular script written down that you can say as you're making that call and say, hello, my name is blah blah blah. And I was born on such and such a date, and I believe that you are my mother. And then before that, to also say when you call, could you please take down my name and phone over in case we get cut off? And that that's if the person faints, falls on the floor. You want him to be able to call it back.

SPEAKER_00 7:05

Right.

Meeting Her Birth Family and Seeing Herself for the First Time

SPEAKER_03 7:06

So my mom was pretty shocked to hear from me. But she did eventually introduce me to my siblings. I went out there, I met her. I'm very much like her. Our voices are identical. And for the first time in my life, I saw people in the mirror who were like me. My brother, my sisters, my three sisters. You know, they're so much like me, it's incredible.

SPEAKER_01 7:37

Oh, I love it.

SPEAKER_02 7:38

Yeah, I imagine just not only the shock of hearing from you, but then you know, meeting you a couple months later and then meeting your five grandchildren.

SPEAKER_03 7:46

Us. That was much, you know. My mom was still operating under the whole burden of shame that she felt from having surrendered me and also from having gotten pregnant. I mean, she was put in a home with nuns. You can imagine what that would have been like. It was probably 10 times worse.

SPEAKER_00 8:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:12

And I'm not a person who believes in shame. I think I've kind of shed shame like an old sneak skin. I don't think it's a helpful emotion to walk around feeling shamed by our actions. We are who we are. We're all people. So, anyway, two of my sisters are living up here in the Bay Area now. My brother lives in the Bay Area. I see them all the time. My other sister, with whom I'm very close, lives down in Culver City still in my grandmother's house.

SPEAKER_01 8:45

Oh, that's cool.

SPEAKER_03 8:46

Yeah. I have a really good relationship, but really very positive in my life.

SPEAKER_02 8:52

Um at what point did you tell your birth mother that you also got pregnant at 15 and a half and had to give up a child?

SPEAKER_03 8:59

I think probably in our first conversation. Yeah, she didn't.

SPEAKER_02 9:03

Did she encourage you to look for him?

SPEAKER_03 9:06

No, she didn't. She didn't. He was only, when I found her, he would have been maybe 15 or so. And I think, you know, she really wanted to keep me secret. I went to a family wedding, my youngest sister's wedding, when my mother introduced me as a family friend from Illinois. Anywhere I sat in the back of the church holding my sister's twins, while the rest of them were all up there as bridesmaids. She didn't didn't want any of her friends to know I existed.

SPEAKER_00 9:48

Wow. How did your siblings feel about that?

SPEAKER_03 9:53

Each of them had a different reaction, different response to that. Initially, I think they felt like I mean, they were really happy to meet me. There was no problem between me and my siblings. But they were kind of angry that they hadn't known about me and that my mom kind of sprang me on them suddenly, like in the middle of their work day. Like, oh, I'm come bringing over somebody to meet you. And if they're in the middle of their work day, and all of a sudden there's this person who shows up, the missing sister. I think the fact that she felt so conflicted about this. You know, one thing that happens is that you feel this rush, this bond with people, but you don't have a common history. And so my mom didn't know what to do with that. She would say to me things like, I don't feel about you the way I feel about my other kids. And yet, when I wasn't there, all the time she'd be bragging about Marion Lee works for Sunset Magazine, Marion Lee works, you know, rights for better homes and gardens. Mary Lee went to Stanford, Mary Lee did this and that. And so they would feel this new person's getting all this attention. But on the other hand, what I was feeling was these threat statements from her. She wrote me a letter saying, I would rather take a long walk off a short here than tell anyone you exist. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 11:38

I mean, no one wants to read that. Right. You know, because because you're not you've gotten it from two sets, you know, two two sets of parents, like the, you know, the dirty little secret.

SPEAKER_00 11:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:51

You know. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 11:55

Yeah. It's that's what I suspect my birth mother uh feels as well. But it I admire the fact that you don't seem that angry about it. I get it was a completely different era, right? Yeah. When she was living through what she was living through. And I try to give people grace because of that, but at the same time, it just like it feels so personal, you know, when you're told that. You know?

SPEAKER_03 12:33

Well, my mother is dead, so I'm not struggling with it anymore. We can forgive people at a certain point when they're not around to say more hurtful things to us.

SPEAKER_02 12:46

Right. No, it's true. It's true. Something popped into my head a few minutes ago, and uh, and I hope I mean this as a compliment, not an insult at all, but Mary Lee, you're a tough cookie. So I mean, just to everything you've told us so far, like to to come through that. And then, you know, to have five children under the age of 10, you know, meeting your the birth side of you know, your brother's side, and uh, I don't even know where you would have time to start looking for your son.

Finding the Son She Was Forced to Surrender as a Teenager

SPEAKER_03 13:14

Right. Well, I eventually did have time to look for him, and of course it's very hard as a birth parent to you have no records at at all. And I actually ended up hiring a searcher and paying a lot of money. I don't know what this person did, but he found, I mean, I went up to Seattle. I knew he was raised, but the Children's Home Society gave me non-identified information. I knew he had graduated from college in the Northwest. He had been raised in the Northwest. I went up to Seattle to look for him, but it turned out he had skipped a grade. So I looked through numerous yearbooks, you know, looking for his yearbook picture. Well, it turned out he was already in college by that time. Super smart guy. He was valedictorian of his college class. Wow. Uh he later went on to become head of Microsoft Asia. You know, now he's 63. And he's completely integrated into the family. When I found him, he was 21. He flew back to Habana, Illinois, where we were living. He met his four full biological siblings. I have one daughter and uh four boys. So the boys were on the horse sitting around on the floor like puppies, you know, put it on the lengths of their toes, yeah, clearing their hair on the back of their hands. John was up in the attic looking at my old report cards from grade school. Yeah, cooking, massive cooking. It was freezing cold winter when I came. We had this big wood stone. I had restored a Victorian house, and that's where we're living. Like one of the big San Francisco Victorians.

SPEAKER_01 15:15

Oh wow.

Why DNA Is Only the Beginning of Building Real Family

SPEAKER_03 15:16

And anyway, we just had a great, great Christmas. And I having learned from my mother, my reunion with my mother, I decided that one of the things, if you're adopted, you you have this genetic link. But if you don't put the time in to create history, mutual history, you will never have a kind of rich memories and family more that is a strength in a family and that binds people together. So, in the case of my son, we all made made time for him, and he made time for us.

SPEAKER_02 16:00

That's so wonderful. I was really scared to ask because you didn't let us know at a time. If there was a reunion, Kendall and I were even talking about this yesterday. I knew we would get to that part of the conversation, but what was I scared of?

SPEAKER_01 16:11

Yeah. And we like to, we've said this many times. We like to not know too much of your story before we start talking.

SPEAKER_02 16:18

I feel it's that being said, though, we have to be we have to sort of ask questions in a very gentle manner because we don't want to, you know, upset our guests, you know, unintentionally. But you know, we also want to know the story. And but we're also very respectful when people want to keep certain things out of it, especially names and things like that. Like that is we we we're we're not gotcha journalism, we're trying to help people, you know. But it is it warms our heart that you've been in reunion and had amazing circumstances, you know, because not everybody ends up with the family, you know, like you did, like you have. How many grandchildren do you have?

SPEAKER_03 16:58

Uh, 12 and one great grandchild.

SPEAKER_02 17:01

Oh wow, congratulations. That's awesome. That's amazing. What are the holidays for you these days?

SPEAKER_03 17:06

Well, the holidays were approaching at Christmas, we rent a house together. The house has to keep getting larger and larger. So we spend the entire Christmas holiday in one house. My kids all live around the country. So this is our one time when we all get together. And we've done it for years and years. The first Christmas that John was with us was when he was 21 and now he's 63. I've known him longer than I didn't know him. Which is beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 17:42

I love it.

SPEAKER_03 17:43

And for him to see people that look like him and sound like him, and his handwriting is like his. I mean, even in the smallest way, he does things with the kids. Like he goes on golfing trips with one of my sons, who's a big golfer. One of my other sons went over and visited him in Malaysia when he was head of Microsoft Malaysia for about a month. So they've done, they went around China together. He speaks Chinese. This is before Chaiba really even opened up. So my son and daughter went over and visited him, and then they rode the Iron Rooster around China. So they've had a lot of experiences together. Like I said, he's been fully integrated into the poor one.

SPEAKER_02 18:35

Yeah, that's incredible. We've only been doing this, I think, for about a year now, but the final question that we've been asking guests on this podcast, and you probably haven't heard it if you've just been listening to the early episodes, is that when you were really going through the tough times, maybe it was when you were in the home for unwed mothers, or maybe it was when you were in the library looking to microfiche, or maybe it's when you get together with all of your children and grandchildren for the holidays. Is there a song or a musical artist that really jumps out at you means something special to you?

SPEAKER_03 19:06

Do you know I can't think of anything like holiday songs to me, read off the bed and it's me right off the That's a good one. But I think the song that it kind of when I think about how Hades can see, there's a song that the first cut is the deepest.

SPEAKER_00 19:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:35

And that song kind of sums up how I felt about my first husband.

SPEAKER_00 19:43

Wow. Oh boy.

SPEAKER_02 19:46

Marilee, you've had an incredible life. And we so appreciate you sharing your story with us. Like this is I get trapped up pretty easily, but I definitely like to sit here with tears running down my face. But it's so beautiful. And so wow. I guess all we can say is happy holidays to you and your family. I hope it's a a beautiful one.

SPEAKER_03 20:10

Thank you. Yeah. We're all going to Santa Cruz. We're rented a house that's as big as a city block in Santa Cruz.

SPEAKER_01 20:18

That's awesome. No, that's wonderful.

SPEAKER_03 20:21

You know, we have a very inclusive family. And so there are now grandkids who are bringing their significant others, and everybody's in the kitchen making paella or brownies or stuff like that. It's just a really great time.

SPEAKER_02 20:41

Yeah. And thank you for sharing a timely story for us to put out before the holidays. We didn't know that was coming, but it's a bonus. Yeah. Wow. Just a joy getting to meet you. And thank you for being so open, you know, about your story. Not everybody would be able to do that, especially coming from the time period of shame, you know. So yeah, but thank you because hopefully it'll inspire some others to either listen and get a little bit of healing, or if they want to tell their own stories, all are welcome.

SPEAKER_03 21:08

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. And it's great to meet you.

Grief, Holidays, and Making Room at the Table

SPEAKER_01 21:14

I do not know how we got through all that without completely losing it. Yes, there were definitely moments where I was sitting here trying to keep it together. That happens more than people probably realize. We get emotional during recordings a lot. And we usually leave that in because it's real. Especially around the holidays. This time of year can bring up a lot. For me, one of the most difficult things is seeing photographs of my birth mother celebrating my siblings and my nieces and nephews, seeing them together, seeing a life I'm not part of. And that pain is very real.

SPEAKER_02 21:48

It doesn't go away just because you understand the circumstances or because a lot of time has passed.

SPEAKER_01 21:54

But when it hurts, I try to hold on to stories like Mary Lee's, stories where the ending is not perfect, but it is loving, where the work gets done, where people show up for each other over time. I called her a tough cookie, and honestly, she really is, a tough Christmas cookie. She reminds us that even after shame, secrecy, and loss, it is possible to build something meaningful, to create shared history, to make room at the table.

SPEAKER_02 22:23

If you're listening to this during the holidays and feeling a little left out, unseen, or overwhelmed, you're not alone. And your story is not over.

SPEAKER_01 22:31

Thank you, Mary Lee, for trusting us with your story, and thank you to everyone listening who carries these complicated feelings this time of year.

SPEAKER_02 22:39

From our family to yours, however that family looks, we wish you peace, warmth, and moments of connection where you can find them. Thanks for listening. And remember, family secrets are the ultimate plot twist. The Family Twist Podcast is presented by Sam Welfare Marketing Communications and produced by How the Cow Eat the Cabbage LLC.