“Our Father” Lit the Fuse

A Netflix documentary about fertility fraud lit the fuse.

After watching Our Father, a question would not let go: how do you actually know donor conception was handled ethically, and how do you know the story you were told is true?

So a DNA test gets ordered. While waiting for the results, the question gets asked at home. The response is silence first, then the truth. An anonymous donor. A social father who knew. Years of secrecy. And the realization that many people had this information long before she did.

This episode goes deep into what happens after a donor conception secret comes out.

In this conversation:

• How Our Father triggered a DNA test and a reckoning
• The moment an anonymous donor replaced a lifelong family narrative
• Losing a genetic identity you did not know you had
• Being raised an only child, then suddenly discovering siblings
• Why secrecy and “best practices” caused more harm than protection
• Wanting connection while learning not everyone wants contact
• Using research and language as a way to survive the emotional fallout
• Why shame belongs to the system, not the child
• The therapy gap for donor-conceived and DNA surprise experiences

This is not a sensational story about fertility fraud. It is about the quieter damage that secrecy leaves behind, even when everyone thought they were doing the right thing.

If you have ever been told not to open Pandora’s box, this episode asks why it was sealed in the first place.

Transcript

Corey 0:01

Hey everybody, welcome back to Family Twist. I'm Corey. And today's episode starts the way a lot of real life does in our house. Pets auditioning for a speaking role, everyone trying to claim the best seat, and then boom, Jamie drops a story that's still fresh enough to sting. Jamie always knew that she was conceived through assisted reproduction, but the family narrative was your dad is your biological dad. Then she watched the Netflix documentary Our Father, and that curiosity turned into a 23 meetest and one brave phone call to her mom that changed everything. What follows is a donor-conceived discovery. You have siblings popping up on a screen, a whole new genetic identity to process, and the complicated question that always shows up in these stories. Now what? Alright, let's get into it. Here's Jamie. Jamie, welcome to the Family Twist Podcast.

SPEAKER_02 0:52

Thank you so much for having me.

Corey 0:54

Of course, we're excited to have you. And really, yeah, I'm very interested just because these stories are so unique. But if you don't mind, can we dig into your story first, especially since it's so fresh?

SPEAKER_02 1:05

100%, absolutely.

Corey 1:08

All right. So let's talk about how you made your discovery.

SPEAKER_02 1:12

Yeah. I wonder if it was more a coincidence or happenstance, or I wonder if there was something brewing under the surface that I knew something was a little off, and then I just needed something to help it sort of come together. I had known that I was conceived via artificial conception. I knew that that was done. But the narrative was always that my social father was the donor of that, right? My parents were having trouble conceiving, so they just needed a little help. And as an adult, I'm very into a true crime podcast. I watch these documentaries and it really gets my curiosity going. So about two years ago, I was looking for something to watch and I stumbled upon a Netflix documentary called Our Father. And it was about a fertility doctor many decades ago who was discovered through the advent of these DNA tests and people getting their DNA done, that he had been using his own sample in these, in these inseminations. And so he had fathered many dozen children. And it was all very dramatic and terrible. And oh, what an awful thing for somebody to do. And something that sort of came upon the heels of that was, well, how do I know that when my when my inseminations, right? When the what conceived me was done, that it was ethical and that it was done the way that it was supposed to be done. So I started to get this little bit of paranoia, like, well, what if what if something went wrong? Or what if something was there? So I I'm terminally curious when things like this come up. I can't let it go. I'm like a dog with a bone and I just I don't know what they need to know. I need to know the answer to this. So I ordered a 23andMe DNA test. And while I was waiting for it, because it's quite a process, right? You wait for the test, and then you have to like, you know, do the test and send it away and wait for the return. So there's several weeks of just the wheels turning. And I finally felt like I couldn't hang on to it anymore. So I questioned my mother. I called her and let her know that I was taking this DNA test because I had watched this documentary. And I said, might I find something there that would surprise me, that you would know about, that I mean, that you could predict that I'm gonna find something unusual. And long silence. And from here came out that she utilized an anonymous donor for my conception. And that, you know, at the time, you know, telling the child that this is what you did wasn't really the thing to do. And she had been hanging on to this for a long time, thinking that maybe now that I'm adult, she should tell me. But there was always something I think that stood in her way of doing that. Fear. I mean, I think that people are fearful of how that might change things or change their child's attitudes towards their family or towards them. So when I found out, my first response was like after I'd been turning this around, I knew it. I knew something was off. I felt, but I didn't know it. But I think that I couldn't let it go because there was something in me that's like, I feel like it would explain some of the things that I experienced growing up or some of the differences I felt myself to have, and always maybe attributed it to me. Just me. There's something off with me, but there's an explanation for that that I can put my finger on. So that was the start of a journey of trying to find out as much as I can, because finding out about this biological family that I didn't know existed was part of me having a journey of understanding myself better. So this has been just a remarkable experience of things that you don't think about. Like, what is a genetic identity until you've had one and then it gets taken away from you? And then it's like, oh, I did have a genetic identity, and now it's been challenged, and now that it changes everything and nothing. It's always been an exploration process that I've been trying to approach from a place of curiosity rather than anxiety, but it's difficult. A lot of difficult feelings come along with that.

Kendall 5:23

Do you know whether your raising father view that?

SPEAKER_02 5:27

He did know. My parents were having trouble conceiving, which also, I mean, is a bit of a trauma, right? Infertility, and you know, there was a lot of pain associated with that, and they were problem solving around that. My social father wasn't open to adoption, but he thought that maybe, you know, donor conception, then I would be part of my mom, and he loved my mom, so then he could love me, and so he knew that this was something that was in the background. A lot of people knew, right?

Corey 5:57

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 5:57

I might have been the last person in the dark.

Corey 6:01

You know, we've heard this time and again, but were your parents explicitly told don't tell her?

SPEAKER_02 6:07

I do believe that there was sort of, you know, recommendations made. And uh I think that we've learned a lot since the 70s about kind of best practices when it comes to these things. I think that it was just thought that, well, what a kid doesn't know won't hurt them. And, you know, you don't want them to be confused, you don't want them to be upset. So the best thing to do is just to sort of conceal that. And I do think that that was, if it wasn't explicitly recommended, it was suggested as a possible path forward. So I do think that my experience was a bit of a product of my time and what the medical community felt about donor conception and how that was passed down to these recipient parents who wanted to do the best for their children, they were trying to do the right thing, but ultimately, you know, it leads to more problems.

Kendall 6:59

It does. And it's so funny because I, of course, coming from the perspective of as an adoptee, but even my parents who lived in a town as big as the room that we're sitting in right now, they were they were told, oh, you should never tell him. And my parents were like, Well, A, everybody knows that my mom wasn't pregnant and suddenly there's a baby. And they were like, it didn't matter if they had lived in a metro area where nobody would have known them, they were going to tell me the truth. And I respect that so much because they were like, We're not ashamed, we're happy, we we we've acquired this child, they just they just honored me that way.

SPEAKER_02 7:47

Um and kind of, you know, I think that that shame, right? I choose not to be ashamed. It is the shame that dictates this. It's this like feeling like somehow I did something I wasn't supposed to do, and that's simply not true. So I think it's unwarranted shame that unfortunately ends up dictating how a lot of people respond to this. So I very much respect your parents for pushing against that grain.

Corey 8:11

You mentioned the 23andV test. You get your results. What's in there?

SPEAKER_02 8:16

Well, I feel privileged that I had sort of a forewarning that I was about to see some things that I might not expect. And, you know, probably some of the typical things that come up with MP situations. I found that I had some heritage that I didn't know about, 22% Ashkenazi Jewish, which was not on my radar as part of my genetic makeup. Obviously, a lot of relatives that I was not aware of. So seeing half siblings, half nieces pop up, which for me was remarkable because I was raised as an only child. So even the idea of having a sibling was mind-blowing. Siblings. So, I mean, seeing these names pop up and knowing that each one is part of my story, but they're so separate from me in a way, and they are having their own experiences was really soul-shaking in some ways. So I think that providing that path moving forward of I want to know more, it's like, well, what can these people tell me that might help put some of those puzzle pieces together?

Corey 9:24

Was there already an established pod of half siblings? Because you know, we hear things, the unregulation of the the industry, you know, we hear about samples getting used multiple times and more than you know, than they were initially said, told the donor they were going to do. So, you know, we've had people on the show that have got dozens and dozens of siblings.

SPEAKER_02 9:44

I know, and that was my fear that I was gonna come back with hundreds of siblings. And like, oh my gosh. That's what worried me most of all. It's like it was something unethical done. I mean, that really bothered me that there could be some you know ethical violations in there. But I had a few. It seemed like, you know, that this the sample were from the same donor, was used a couple times. But when you say an established pot of siblings, they're not in contact with each other. It seemed to be very much like sort of this isolated experience of people sort of finding these things out and then sort of stopping, right? Like stopping there. It's like, ooh, like this is you know uncomfortable and you know, I don't know how to move forward from this. So there wasn't communication there. I was actually the first one who decided to be quite annoying about it and press the issue a bit and try to get in contact with some of these folks. And my being an irritating person paid off a little bit in terms of more information.

Kendall 10:43

I am built like that too. Like I could I I'm so inquisitive that even if they don't want to know me, I want to know I would want to know that they know that I exist, right?

SPEAKER_02 10:56

I mean, it's like I said, the terminal curiosity. And sometimes I wish I wasn't built that way because I do know it opens up cans of worms that can't be shut. And it's amazing to me that there's people out there that can get this information, and then just that's where it ends, but also you know, that's their process, right? That's their process. It just wasn't me, so I had to put it the day I found my biological family.

Kendall 11:24

Corey he was so funny, he was like, So maybe you should sit on this for a minute, and I paced the floor for three hours, and then I was like the Facebook assassin. I was like, Who are these people?

SPEAKER_02 11:39

I have never Facebook stalked people more in my entire life. Then this process turned me into a very expert social media.

Kendall 11:47

I was 47 years old. I'm like, I have missed all this time with these people. I'm not gonna miss one more minute. That's the way I felt about it. We're gonna run Corey's gonna along for the ride.

SPEAKER_02 12:02

Which you have to I mean, I think that you have to be just open to like whatever direction this goes. Like we kind of have to roll with it and sort of figure things out along the way because not one of us has prior experience navigating these things.

Corey 12:17

So, Jamie, with your curiosity, was there also this sense of relationship seeking?

SPEAKER_02 12:22

Yes. And you know, that's the part that's difficult for me. I think that, you know, I am I feel like the these relationships that could possibly be out there, to me, they're just so rife with just insight. So I I want to pursue them and also recognizing that nobody's entitled, right, to have a relationship with me and trying to navigate that, like this sort of desperate wanting to know and to connect and to be that person that's that's kind of feeling like I'm interfering, and then, you know, not to have that be received and people not wanting those relationships with me has been one of the more difficult parts of this experience. So, yes, I was looking for relationships for knowledge, for insight, and trying to be open to them when they came, but not being too disappointed when they didn't, because there's no guarantees in this process.

Corey 13:24

Jamie, if the donor were to pop up in your results, would you reach out?

SPEAKER_02 13:28

Well, so I actually have reached out. So I utilized a DNA because I did sort of my own sleuthing to start with. I kind of reached out to some of these closer hap relatives to see what they knew, to see if there's any insight to be found there, and kept on reaching these dead ends. And at that point, I had to, you know, I had to reckon with like, okay, I've kind of done all the informal things that I can do. Do I want to stop there and say I did what I could, or do I want to press forward? So, of course, because I am who I am, I decided to utilize some of these services that exist for people like me who are searching and looking and they have the skills and the knowledge to do that. So I ended up working with Laura from D Angels, who was very lucky to have her. I mean, she spearheads this whole thing. So just a wealth of knowledge. And I mean, he was helped me quite a bit. Yeah. So the first hit that came up for my possible donor actually ended up being incorrect. So there was a whole side quest drama with me contacting these people who were related to my donor, thinking that they were my donor and their family. And that bringing up a lot of just uncomf discomfort and rejection and things, which ended up, I mean, with a lot of insistence of like, nobody here donated, like, this is not true. People thinking it was a scammer because I'm reaching out, like with this weird, like, you know, request. Also, that put us back on track to find the real donor. So, so the organization was able to locate my donor. I used their liaison services to contact him because my heart couldn't handle the rejection again after I went through it the first time with that first part of the family. So they were able to make contact and I was able to receive a letter from my donor, which I then returned. So I did end up getting more information than than I thought that I might.

Kendall 15:29

At that point in time, did your raising parents know you were proceeding that way?

SPEAKER_02 15:35

Yes. I'm lucky that my mother was receptive to this. Like I know that that's not always the experience of these things. Like people, you know, again, the secrecy, the shame, like it keeps it closed down. But I think my mother, I think that she held a lot of, you know, guilt about keeping that secret from me. I think there was part of her that knew that that might not be the right thing anymore, but it had gone on for so long and she wasn't quite sure the right way to handle it. So when I discovered it on my own, she said, you know, you handle it the way that you want to handle it. This is yours now to hold and do what you want with. So you know, I think that in some ways it helped my relationship with my mom because after the initial sort of feeling of betrayal of the secret, there was this sort of understanding and compassion about why she held it for so long. And I think part of her kind of healing of the experience is seeing me deal with it and be okay. If I'm able to approach it from a place of curiosity rather than anxiety and shame and guilt and all of those icky things that held this for so long, I think that allows her to kind of approach it that way too. So I like to think that the search has been a little healing for all of us.

Kendall 16:49

And she wanted you. She went to all that length to have you. Desperately. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_02 16:57

Yeah. No, I I feel quite lucky in the grand scope of MPE experiences that you know, some of that worked out in my favor, I think. You know, to be a very desperately wanted child has its advantages.

Corey 17:11

How has this journey affected your work?

SPEAKER_02 17:15

I'm a licensed counseling psychologist. I am a university professor. I'm lucky that my job allows me this kind of avenue to explore and use this energy that I have in a way that feels meaningful and helpful not only to me, but potentially to others, the work that I do. So because I'm an academic and because I find science very soothing, science is objective, like it just kind of strips the emotion from the experience and helps you look at it in this kind of accurate way. So almost as soon as this stuff hit me and I had all these unprocessed emotions, my coping strategy was to go to the research, see what the research says about this experience. And then once I collected all that research and I felt like I was pretty well educated in the topic, it's like, well, why not do my own research? Why not continue in this line of people picking apart the experience and understanding it better so that we can have some context around these scary kind of feelings that we have around it? So I felt that turning to the research and seeing what does this population of MPEs or this population of donor-conceived people, what is their experience? And reading about it was so validating because it provided language and a context and a paradigm around which what I was feeling just kind of fit into this larger phenomenon. And it's like, oh, this is pretty normal. I mean, this situation isn't normal, but for people that experience this, what I'm feeling is pretty normal and what I'm experiencing is. So it's fun for me to dig deeper into answer some of the burning questions that I have about this through the research process. And my position as, you know, as an academician or as a therapist gives me a platform that I can share this with other people. So I'm hoping that from the podcast, from the presentations at the conferences and the summits, I'm hoping that even a couple people learn something about themselves that feels validating, then I've done something positive and I can feel like this experience has ultimately gone in this direction for good.

Corey 19:35

As you're aware, there's a lack of therapists available for this specific type of need for these family surprises, the DNA surprises. What can you do in your role to help spread the word that there is this need? And maybe this is something that students feel passionate about is maybe they can focus on that sort of counseling and therapy.

SPEAKER_02 19:54

Yeah, I'm absolutely, and that's part of it because I am a therapist, right? I mean, I'm a psychotherapist and I've always been able to use my knowledge of psychology to I I want to improve well-being, right? And I would be a hypocrite if I wasn't using those tools to improve my own well-being. But like I feel like as I move through and I talk about this, and I've made a very conscious decision, like your parents, Kendall, that I refuse to be ashamed by this. I refuse to. Like it wasn't my fault. Nobody did anything wrong, right? I mean, this was nobody did anything unethical. So I'm gonna talk about it and I'm going to share it with other people and I'm gonna get them thinking about it. So in my role as a professor, like even beyond, like sometimes in the classroom, I'll bring it up. And I have students in my lab who I'm incorporating in my work who are learning more about this. And so now maybe I have a couple dozen people who knew about this who didn't know about it before. Heck, even the people who took my study, right? The people who did my surveys, maybe they never thought about DNA surprises before, but now it's in their awareness. So now they they have this like slightly deeper level of just consideration. So they might take that forward. So I do hope that just by talking about it, making it public, pulling the shroud of secrecy and shame back from it, that we can create a world where there are more people who are educated. There are more therapists who know that this can come up and know how complex it is when it comes up. Because I think that's like people not aren't quite sure how to cope with it. And therapists are people too, with their own biases and their own, you know, when they don't have personal experience, it's hard for them to appreciate. So ultimately, yeah, I hope that there are just more mental health professionals out there who have this awareness so that their first response isn't some of those unhelpful things, like some of the invalidating things that can cause a lot of damage when somebody who's supposed To support you comes at it from a place of shutting it down. Well, your dad's still your dad. Or like, do you really want to open up Pandora's box? And like, yes, yes, I do. Absolutely. And I expect you to be here with me every step of the way.

Kendall 22:15

Exactly. My name's Pandora. On Friday, I had a couple of guests to my work, and I'm the HR manager. And people hear my accent and they say, You're not from New England. And I'm like, Yeah, but you're right. And let me tell you why I moved here. And it becomes my story, right? Of how I found my family. And we got into this really short discussion about how weird it is that my official birth certificate lists my adoptive parents as my birth parents. You know, that that Betty Austin, who never gave birth to a child, gave birth to me on my birthday. It's I think it's deceptive for everyone involved. And I never blame my parents, it's the way that the legal system worked. But I'm all about like those unravelings. I think we have to own our stuff, you know, and move forward. And it's so it's degrading, I think, at some level, to have false information on our original birth certificates. I think it's crazy. I think it's weird. Like, why couldn't there have just been a codicle that said, you know, here's the original, but these people adopted it? But no, the standard back then was to correct the information. And I just think that's shitty. I'm sorry. I just do no.

SPEAKER_02 23:54

And you know, I tend to agree with you from this place of understanding that I have now. I feel like it in the past there was this thought that this is really for the best because you don't want your child to be marked with a stain of illegitimacy. Exactly. You know, that was a terrible thing. And there's pejorative terms associated with that. And people were treated differently because they weren't part of this union. And it was thought of as a protection. It was protective, but it was also shitty. And those two things can exist in the same space. And that's been part of my process, allowing the yucky stuff to exist with this understanding and trying to keep those two things together without either one invalidating the other.

unknown 24:42

Yeah.

Kendall 24:43

I was 47 years old when I found my biological family, and I never had one moment of shame associated with my adoption, with my upbringing. And then suddenly, when my biological family came to light, it felt very ominous all of a sudden. It felt very, oh, I have to consider all these other people's feelings in relation to my creation, my existence. You know, my parents raised me to have pride and never be ashamed of who you are. But I regressed a little bit back then. And that's not fair. That's not fair to the child.

SPEAKER_02 25:28

No, it's not. That was probably the hardest thing about this experience to move forward from a place of like, I don't know if excitement is the wrong word, but I mean there was this kind of like, let's see what this uncovers. And to have that met with like, you know, almost outright hostility and this sort of questioning of like, well, have you thought about how, you know, these people feel? And, you know, they were guaranteed anonymity and what this does to them. And it was the first time that I felt a little ashamed. It's like, am I doing something wrong by pushing forward? And it was something I had to reckon with. Like I had to grapple with that quite a bit and come to the other side and be like, you know, their shame can't be my problem. Their shame for them to kind of grapple with and hold like that is not for me. And that allowed me to kind of restart my search. But I can see why that would stop people. I can see because it's not a good feeling.

Kendall 26:31

And it was foreign to me. Yes. And I hope it was to you. Like, I just never ever imagined that my biological mother wouldn't embrace the idea of a relationship with me if we ever found each other. And spoiler alert, we've never spoken. Uh, I think positively delusional about what could happen that I never dreamt, I never dreamt that someone would reject me at that level. Like it wasn't her choice when she was 15, it was her parents' choice to make her give me away. So I I respect that. And I've never had one ounce of animosity toward her about that situation, but I have a lot of animosity that since to 2017 she hasn't spoken to me. I just can't relate. If I found a child in 2017 that I had lost in 1970, I couldn't have gone to sleep that night without speaking to that child. That's how I'm built. I just I might never understand what goes through someone's mind.

SPEAKER_02 27:46

That no, I agree. It's I think that in this situation, there's these ways that I've had to practice this sort of like radical empathy of people who did things that hurt me and disappointed me. And I can't understand. You know, I'm lucky that I've had access to therapy and I've done my work and I've done all these things to try to get to a place where I can. And for some people, there's this blockage that they just can't get past it. And maybe someday they will, right? Hope is painful too.

Kendall 28:19

Absolutely. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 28:21

Like they're going through their own journey, and where that ends up taking them is out of my control. So, you know, they have to walk their own path. And in the meantime, I have to do what I need to do to be okay within myself and to try to just make it a better place for people like us. So staying open without staying vulnerable. Yes.

Kendall 28:48

I think you just found our new catchphrase. Yeah. Honestly, that's thank you. I'm really, yeah, really touched.

SPEAKER_02 28:57

Cool. Thank you. I it was occurring to me last night. It's like I was thinking of a catchphrase too. It's like, how do I want to say something that has been the most helpful to me? It's like you have to lead with your head, but honor your heart. Right? That place of emotion can be irrational and illogical and associated with so much pain. But it needs to be honored and it needs to be taken care of and held with a place of compassion. You can't just step it down, right? It has to be there alongside and being open to the curiosity or the excitement. There's been moments of joy associated with this too. They're little, but they're there. And I don't want to close myself off from those just because the rest of it can be quite painful.

Corey 29:47

So, Jamie, can you remind us what you're going to be talking about at Untanging Our Roots?

SPEAKER_02 29:52

Of course. So I will be doing a presentation on others' responses to MPEs. How do outsiders think about it, process it, think what goes through their mind when presented with this scenario? And are there factors about those people that make a difference when it comes to whether or not they approach it from like a validating place, like you do what you gotta do here, or whether they approach it from that closed-down place of Pandora's box, right? Giving some of those cliche statements that are well-meaning, but they feel invalidating because it makes it feel like you're doing something you're not supposed to do. So I did an empirical study related to this to see if there were some differences there. We looked at things like gender and political ideology and spiritual affiliation. We looked at attachment quality with one's own parents, tendencies towards maximizing or satisficing, which is essentially like, do you like, are you always looking for something more than what you've got, or are you looking to like just be satisfied with what you've got? We looked at empathy, like reactivity to see if empathy makes a difference in those responses. And we found some interesting things. So I'm really excited to share that at the summit. For me, this study was all about trying to have compassion for people who make me feel bad. People who, you know, come at it from that invalidating place, but recognizing there's things about them that make them respond that way. It's not about me. It's not about me and who I am and my lovability or my acceptability, right? It's about this other person and how they're approaching this situation. I guess we'd say like intellectualization is my coping strategy, right? It is a defense, but it is helpful to me.

Kendall 31:56

Absolutely. Well, and I am such a research nerd that I can't wait to actually read the research that you did. That is fascinating to me, and I would love to dive into that. Yeah. I think that matters a lot, right? It's one thing to get, I don't know, kind of qualitative information, the way that we're doing it through the podcast, but having the quantitative data behind it is fascinating to me. And I think it is to a lot of people. It just validates our feelings, honestly.

SPEAKER_02 32:31

Yeah, thank you. I think there is something to be said about feeling worthy enough to be studied, right? This is important enough to focus this energy on and understand better. And there is an inherent validation in being part of this sample that is being your experience is being considered in a way that it was not considered before.

Kendall 32:52

Thank you. Yes.

Corey 32:54

So, Jimmy, the final question we always ask our guests, and I know this is a relatively fresh journey for you, but when you had that conversation with your mother or when you were going through the search with Dean Angels, was there a musical artist or a song that you kind of leaned on to help you through this journey or genre?

SPEAKER_02 33:11

I love that, and I'm so happy because this was recently a post on one of the MPE groups that I follow. And I also suggest that to anybody going through this process. Like one of the first things I do is turn to the research. The other thing I do is just join all of these groups on social media related to my experience because just hearing people talk about it and echo things that are going through my psyche at the time is just that's another validating thing. So at least I had the opportunity to think about this before you asked the question. I was watching uh Frozen 2 with one of my children shortly after I found this discovery. And there's a song called Into the Unknown. And of course, we have like Adina Menzel, who's amazing, and I mean the voice just evokes the emotion. But the song is all about like it's some truth that you don't want to face, but it's just calling to you, and you can't help but like follow it where it's going. And I just when that song came on, I just sobbed like a baby because felt like that's what I was doing. It's like I don't want to hear this voice that's telling me that I have to do this. I want to block it out and just live my life and not have to think about it. But there is this pull to my heart that I can't let go. So I've got to follow it into the unknown, right? Wherever it takes me. It is where I have to go. So I'm gonna go with Frozen.

Kendall 34:40

I hope you've gotten to listen to it several more times.

SPEAKER_02 34:43

I do. It's on my playlist, and every time it comes up, I have to sort of stop what I'm doing and attend to the emotions that it brings up in me. Thank you.

Corey 34:51

We so appreciate the work that you're doing. Thank you for continuing to spread the word and get more information out there. I'm really looking forward to meeting you in person.

SPEAKER_02 34:58

Oh, well, thank you so much. And thank you for the work that you do. I mean, to your point of having the quantitative portion is important. But just even for my emotions, I feel like the work that people are doing of just talking about it, highlighting it, bringing it to life, giving a counterpoint to like some of the fictional depictions in the media of like what it's like to get a DNA surprise. Like, you are the father. I feel like the work that you're doing is that direct pushback to that sensational stereotype. I mean, this is the real deal. So the more people can hear that, just the better we're going to be as a society to just have compassion for experiences that that we've never had, but but other people have. And that's the goal, right? Just to create a world where understanding is the default rather than like closing it up.

Kendall 35:52

Absolutely. And something that Corey and I never expected when we started this podcast was we'd we have never known people that had had such negative experiences through adoption as adoptees. And we've heard so many stories that I have so much empathy for their situations and their ideologies that are behind their feelings. I just never thankfully had that. I never thought that that was as prevalent as it is. And it's been surprising and gives me a lot more empathy for helping them.

Corey 36:34

Well, and that's why events like untailing our roots are so important, you know, because there are a lot of we all have similarities, but everybody's story is unique and everybody's in a different stage of their journey to be able to come together and not have to explain anything to anybody and just to get right into the healing and the conversations is awesome.

SPEAKER_02 36:53

Yeah, I mean, therapeutically I work with like some niche areas, right, that not a lot of people experience, but it affects them quite a bit. And we often say that when we have retreats and workshops where everybody comes together, having a place where you don't have to explain because you just know that everybody else in the room gets it is life-changing. It makes a big difference. And I could soapbox for a long time about adoptees and how horrible adoptees are treated in this grand scheme of like, you know, you're supposed to be grateful and it's this beautiful coming together of a new family. And it ignores so much about the difficult feelings and the ambiguity and the dissonance that it all brings up.

Kendall 37:35

So identity. I never, yeah, I always associated myself with my adopted parents, you know. But even I, as a four-year-old, was Corey's heard this a lot of times. My my parents would walk, you know, and and meet friends that they hadn't seen in years, and they'd be like, Oh, and this is our son Kendall. And, you know, people maybe didn't know that they had adopted, and they would say, Oh my gosh, he looks just like you. And being four years old, I was like, You're full of shit. I don't look like either of these people, but that's okay. Like they're my mommy and my daddy. You know what I mean? Like, I just owned it, and I respect so much that my parents allow me to have that voice.

SPEAKER_02 38:22

Yes, in some ways, I mean they were ahead of their time and it's a impact. So I remain grateful for the parents out there, the people that somehow had this intuitive understanding that this is important enough for this person to know about themselves and yeah, they never said, Oh, Kendall, be quiet about that.

Kendall 38:44

You know, I wouldn't have even if they'd said so. But they knew that that was important to me to say I belong to these people, but I didn't come from them.

SPEAKER_02 38:56

And both sides of that story are important, right? I mean, your parents are part of your story, your biological parents are part of your stories.

Corey 39:04

Exactly. Well, yes, thank you for saying that. And and again, thank you for taking your time and sharing your story with us, too. It's really important.

SPEAKER_02 39:11

Oh, thank you. And um, I love talking about it, so I'm happy to put it out there in the world.

Corey 39:19

That was our time with Jamie, and I'm really grateful that she trusted us with a story that's still unfolding in real time. The part that's sticking with me is how Jamie means it so clearly. You can lead with your head, but you still have to honor your heart. Because this isn't just family information. It's identity, grief, curiosity, connection, rejection. It's hope. It's all of that at once. And if you're thinking, yeah, that's my brain too, please hear me. You're not weird, you're not too much, and you're definitely not alone. One more reminder, Jamie will be at untangling our routes in Atlanta next month, sharing research on what shapes people's responses to DNA surprises, and why some of the most common phrases people say can feel supportive or absolutely invalidating, depending on what's underneath them. If you're going, come find us. We'd love to meet you in person. And if this episode hit home, please share it with someone who gets it. Leave us a review. It helps more than you think. And we'll see you next time. Until then, remember, Family Secrets are the ultimate plot twist. The Family Twist podcast is presented by Staff Waffler Marketing Communications and produced by Mosaic Multimedia.