S1 E46 – Unraveling Sheridan By 40, Sheridan believed she had already done the difficult work of understanding her childhood. The man named as her father on her birth certificate died by suicide when she was six, leaving her to grow up beneath the weight of grief, religious shame, unanswered questions, and the childhood belief that perhaps she had not been enough to make him stay.
In her late 30s, Sheridan began confronting how that loss had shaped her. She recognized the connection between fatherlessness, fear of abandonment, and an identity built around being helpful, funny, charming, and indispensable. With the support of her husband, she worked through much of that grief and entered her 40th year feeling grounded.
Then she took a DNA test.
It was supposed to confirm her Dutch ancestry before a family trip to the Netherlands. Instead, Sheridan matched directly with a man identified as her father—a man who was very much alive.
Content note: This episode includes a discussion of suicide.
SHOW NOTES
In this conversation, Kara and Sheridan discuss:
Sheridan brings both lived experience and the insight of a therapist to a conversation about grief, worthiness, abandonment, and the stories children create to explain what adults will not tell them. Her story shows that healing is not erased when new information arrives, but it may need to expand to hold a truth we never imagined.
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/.