Unraveling Me

Join host Kara Rubenstein-Deyerin as she speaks with people who, like her, have experienced NPE's (non parental events), DNA surprises, adoption issues and other unexpected information bombs that revealed the truth about where they actually came from. As anyone who's ever experienced such an event can tell you, it separates you from you. From knowing your own story. In "Unraveling Me", Kara will explore the myriad ways why knowing the truth about who you are matters.For more information please visit righttokknow.us.

THE BLURB: Kara grew up believing she was half Black but learned she was actually half Jewish instead. Jodi, by contrast, grew up believing she was 100% Black only to learn she was 50% Black and 50% Ashkenazi Jew. How does one wrap one's mind around a radical re-imagining of who one is and where one came from? And why is it such a legal struggle to learn these truths about ourselves?SHOW NOTESEveryone 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/.

S1E3 – Unraveling Bruce: Bruce’s story is raw, honest, and deeply human. It reveals the long shadow that secrecy casts—and the resilience required to rebuild identity at any age. This episode is about race, truth-telling, and the quiet survival strategies a child learns when the world insists he is something he cannot understand. And it is a testament to what can happen when, even late in life, we choose to face the truth head-on. Bruce grew up as one of ten children in an Irish-German Catholic family in Texas and Oklahoma. He was the only one who looked different—dark curly hair, brown skin that deepened in the sun—yet his parents insisted he belonged. Inside the home, he was simply one of the kids. Outside, he faced racism he had no language or context for. Decades later, a DNA test taken on a whim revealed what no one had ever told him: Bruce was biracial, and his genetic father was a Black man. Born in 1952 in a state where interracial relationships were illegal, Bruce entered the world as a secret his parents were convinced they had to keep.SHOW NOTESIn this conversation, Kara and Bruce talk about:Growing up “the only one” in a large white familyExperiencing racism as a child with no understanding of whyThe lifelong impact of secrecy, misattributed parentage, and identity confusionUsing DNA testing to unravel ethnicity, parentage, and scientific truthWaiting four years for DNAngels to identify his genetic fatherNavigating complicated new genetic relativesLiving as a biracial man raised as white and the emotional toll of never belonging fully anywhereHow identity formation is shaped by context, environment, and who tells us who we areEveryone 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/.

S1E4 - Unraveling Oliver: This episode is about adoption, silence, identity, and the long interior journey many adoptees walk before saying their questions out loud. Oliver’s story is gentle, thoughtful, and profoundly human—a reminder that even truths revealed late in life still deserve space, compassion, and voice. Oliver grew up in a Dutch Indonesian family, surrounded by people who looked just like him. In Los Angeles, being Filipino by birth but raised in a culturally similar community meant he never questioned his place. But when the family moved to rural South Carolina at age seven, the contrast sharpened. Suddenly, he was “the odd one out,” but for reasons he couldn’t understand.SHOW NOTESAt 18, right before leaving for the military, Oliver's parents told him he was adopted. The revelation landed just as he was entering an institution designed to strip away identity and rebuild it from the ground up. For years, Oliver held the truth quietly inside himself, unsure how to search without hurting the parents who raised him. It wasn’t until he became a father himself that the questions he’d buried began to surface. And it wasn’t until decades later, after his mother died and his father developed dementia, that Oliver finally allowed himself to search.In this conversation, Kara, Oliver, and Melissa talk about:Growing up looking like you “fit,” even when the story doesn’t fit you at allThe shock of discovering adoption at 18How the military intensifies questions of identity and belongingWhy many adoptees delay searching until their raising parents are goneThe emotional and ethical landmines of reunionThe fear of hurting the people who raised youUsing DNA and genealogy to trace a genetic motherNavigating this journey as a couple—support, differences, boundariesWhat it means to build identity when the truth arrives decades lateWhat supportive partnership looks like when one person is unraveling their identityEveryone 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/.

S1 E5 – Mark Hansen - Mark’s story sits at the intersection of fertility fraud, misattributed parentage, and the long-term trauma caused by secrecy. It is raw, candid, and deeply human. This episode is about truth-telling, consent, identity, and the lifelong impact of what happens when people in power make choices without it. And how you can turn your pain into power. Mark was 47 years old, sitting beside his aging father at a routine medical appointment, when everything he knew about himself changed. In the quiet of that exam room, his dad turned to him and said: “There’s something I’ve never told you...” . What followed was a revelation that reshaped every corner of his identity. Mark learned he was conceived in the 1960s through an unethical insemination procedure. With no consent. No disclosure. And no accountability. SHOW NOTES:In this episode, Kara and Mark talk about:· The exact moment his raising father disclosed the truth· What insemination practices looked like in the 1960s—and what doctors were actually doing· How he confirmed the truth with DNA testing· Seeing his genetic father’s face for the first time—and seeing his own staring back· The moral obligation he felt to notify four half-sisters living just miles away· Why secrecy, shame, and fear keep families silent for decades· How misattributed parentage can unravel sibling relationships· What it means to “lose” your dad twice—once in death, and once in truth· The ripple effects on extended family, medical history, and identity· How he rebuilt stability and self-understanding in the aftermath  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/.

S1 E6 - Unraveling Lauren C - Lauren’s story is a reminder that family trees aren’t just diagrams—they’re living, shifting truths. And sometimes the truth has been whispering to us for years before we finally hear it. Lauren had been building her family tree since 1977. Cemeteries, phone calls, interviews, handwritten charts, decades of work, 68,000 names, and the belief that she knew exactly where she came from. But one DNA test changed everything. A “routine” ancestry test revealed that the cousins she couldn’t place weren’t distant connections—they were clues. And the man she’d called “Uncle Jack” her entire life wasn’t just a family friend. Hidden in her mother’s shorthand diaries was a decades-old secret that rewrote everything Lauren thought she knew about her parents, her childhood, and herself. In this conversation, Lauren and Kara talk about:How a high-school genealogy project sparked a lifelong search for family truthThe obsessive dedication many NPEs feel to family history and how it shifts after a discovery How her mother’s coded shorthand diaries revealed an affair and a tangled web of secrecyThe moment her top or her DNA surpriseRealizing her birth certificate father had always known she wasn’t genetically his and why mumps really were a big dealThe complicated grief of understanding her parents' marriage and the emotional toll on everyone involvedWhat it feels like to discover first cousins, siblings, and relatives hiding in plain sightRebuilding identity after the foundations of your origin story fall awayEveryone 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/.

S1E7 – Unraveling Marcie - This episode is a profound look at identity, secrecy, reunion, and the lifelong impact of being denied your own information. Marcie’s story shows that unraveling can happen at any age, and that even those who’ve spent a lifetime helping others make sense of their origins can still be blindsided by their own. Her journey is a reminder that identity is not a fixed thing—it’s a living, shifting truth we deserve to know, and a story we deserve to claim.Marcie’s story is unlike any other in this season because it spans every side of the adoption and misattributed parentage world. Marcie co-founded the National Association of Adoptees and Parents (NAAP), fought for nine years to change Indiana law, helped open adoption records, and eventually helped create the Untangling Our Roots conference with Kara. And then, at 68, everything she thought she knew about herself shattered. A DNA test, one she took reluctantly for her brother, revealed a family secret. Suddenly, Marcie found herself on the very path she’d guided countless through. Socked, disoriented, ashamed, grieving, and desperate to understand where she came from. SHOW NOTES:In this conversation, Kara and Marcie talk about:· Surrendering a child in the closed-adoption era· The trauma of reunion and the beauty of connection· How denial becomes a survival skill· The night a shoebox of memories forced her to face her past· The emotional freefall of discovering your genetic father isn’t who you believed· Why even experts are unprepared when their foundation cracks· What it feels like to belong to no one—and everyone—at once· What adoptees, birth parents, and MP individuals share—and where their experiences differ· How community and compassion carried her through the darkest days 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/.

Unraveling Lauren: This is a story about identity, truth-telling, and what happens when the missing piece of your story finally comes into focus. Lauren brings humor, honesty, and hard-won clarity to a journey many donor-conceived people will recognize—but everyone can relate to.Lauren LoGiudice grew up in a loud, loving Italian-American family: tall, lanky, pale, and unexplainably not Italian-looking. For decades, she fielded questions, invented explanations, and tried to make sense of the genealogical bewilderment she couldn’t name. My favorite: she was descended from Vikings. At 45, a DNA test finally revealed the truth—she was donor-conceived. And overnight, her entire life—her family stories, her jokes, her career, even her face—suddenly made sense.SHOW NOTESIn this conversation, Lauren and Kara talk about:• Growing up as “the odd one out” in a tight-knit cultural community• The stories families invent to explain a child who looks different• How genealogical bewilderment shaped her comedy and her characters• The cognitive dissonance that kept her from interpreting her DNA results• The moment she learned she had 15+ donor-conceived siblings• Meeting her parents’ donor “Jim” and finally seeing herself reflected• Why secrecy, shame, and silence still surround donor conception• How owning her story transformed her comedy and her voice• Why she created a community of “misfits” for people who never quite fit a categoryFor more information about Lauren - and where to enjoy her work - please visit https://www.laurenlogiudice.com/.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/.