May 15, 2020 • 33 mins
On part two of Dani’s conversation with Libby Copeland, Dani and Libby discuss the fallout on the other side of a major DNA revelation, and why DNA testing could make secrecy around a person’s origins a thing of the past.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Danny Shapiro and this is part two of a special
bonus episode of Family Secrets. I'm speaking with journalist and
(00:21):
author Libby Copeland about DNA discoveries that unleashed the long
held secrets that affect so many of our lives, and
how as a society we can learn to grow, evolve,
change and understand one another. There's a pretty big leap
(00:44):
of empathy that needs to be made for people who
have never considered or had the experience them themselves of
that kind of disruption to their origin story. UM, just
thinking what difference does it make? Or a favorite line
that was delivered to me on an index card in
you know during a Q and A UM was what
(01:06):
good is knowing? And I almost like laughed when I
was like, I actually kept that index card and I
have it pinned to my bulletin board in my office
because what is what good is knowing? It's everything? And
you know, in Family Secrets, UM, in every episode, whether
it ends up in the final episode or not, I
always ask my guests, UM, you know who's like Family
(01:30):
Secret were unpacking? Um, do you wish you hadn't found
out do you wish you hadn't known? And not a
single one in thirty guests thus far, no one has said, yes,
I wish I didn't know? No one um. In fact,
one of my favorite responses was from my friend Sylvia Borstein,
who is UM a mindfulness Buddhist meditation teacher in her eighties,
(01:54):
and she just we were in person, and she looked
at me and she said, do I what do I do?
I do I wish I had? I mean, she couldn't
even understand the question of like, how could you possibly
wish that you didn't know? And and that doesn't mean
that it's not painful and hard, but the relief that
(02:16):
that people feel because that whole in the heart that
you're talking about, like I think with people who have
always known that they were adopted and who didn't have
access to UM their birth parents or their origin story.
The term in adoption literature is genealogical bewilderment um, the
(02:37):
sense of sort of walking around just not knowing UM.
And so that's I would say probably what people describe
of describe as the whole in their hearts. But then
there's the not knowing and then not knowing that you
don't know, which is the case with so many people
whose stories have been withheld from them. And that is
(02:59):
a differ kind of hole in the heart. That's like
a that's a hole in the heart that you don't
know as a hole in your heart. You just you
just have this ache, but you don't the ache doesn't
have a name, it doesn't have a story attached to it.
And so when it does um, And this is not
just this isn't just my experience, it's experience of everyone
(03:20):
that I've talked to. There's just a feeling amid amid
all the shock and pain and confusion and disorientation of
palpable relief, like, h this makes so much sense. Yes, yeah,
and kind of like the people would talk to me about.
(03:41):
There's a sense of excavating. So you make the discovery
and then in the days and weeks and months that follow,
there's this process of unbidden excavation of the past where
these memories arise and all of a sudden, you know
makes sense, these memories you know of an her action
with your mom where she said something and then you
(04:03):
haven't thought about it in thirty years, and suddenly you're
putting that statement that she made into a different context
and it's like ping. And so there's this kind of
emotional archaeology that people would talk about where they were
they were processing, they were reprocessing everything from once upon
a Time on forward, and they were reprocessing it with
(04:23):
the knowledge that put everything into a different perspective. And
there's a term that you use UM in one of
your interviews, unsought known And I don't know if that's
exactly what this is, but it's like this sense of
kind of sensing something but maybe not even totally admitting
it to yourself if I if I have it right? UM?
(04:44):
And so again the number again we're talking about commonalities, right,
and how how do these many many different experiences among
many different people of different ages and different demographics, how
do they align themselves with one another? Because that's part
of the in amazing thing about this moment is the
human nous commonalities of the human experience. UM. And one
(05:05):
of the things over and over is that people would
say to me, and I'm sure they've said to you,
you know I, UM, I kind of always wondered about that,
even if I never quite totally admitted it or I
always had questions or now it all makes sense, right,
And there may be for some people. I did interview
people who said they had never an inkling at all UM,
(05:28):
but enough of them who did that it it may
be that there's a kind of a like a like
a nascent knowledge, like you said, you know, a feeling
of um outsiderness, or maybe little things that you pick
up on that add together into this this just this
kind of I don't know, diaphanous, gauzy sense of nagging question.
(05:53):
And then the DNA test comes along and it's like
there's the question solidified right there, and there's an answer
absolutely no. That's that's beautifully put. And the unsought known,
which is a psychoanalytic term UM, you know, really refers
(06:13):
to that which we we know, like we know it
in our bones. We know it, you know, we know
it like when we talk about a sixth sense, but
we we it's too dangerous to articulate to ourselves, so
we never actually consciously think it. It's more like, you know, why,
why would anyone really ever entertain the thought that, well,
(06:37):
maybe this isn't my biological parent. It's just it's it's
there's so much confirmation bias and so much need to
I mean, I adored my father and UM and felt
so incredibly connected to him and still do um even
though he's been gone for more than half of my life.
But the to ever think the thought maybe he's not
(06:58):
my biological father would have been impossible for me. And yet,
and yet there is a way in which I knew,
you know that that I that that I never thought it.
But when I went back and read my early work
as a writer, it's in there. It's like a trail
of bread crumbs. It's like it's like the unconscious made
(07:21):
conscious um or the unconscious like on the page there
it is UM. So I actually have something that even
amounts to a kind of proof of the unsought known
in my own in my own life. But um, if
if someone had put you know, you've given me a
polygraph or whatever and said, you know, do you think
that your father isn't your biological father? What are you
(07:43):
talking about? What? What? What? What? What could possibly give
you that idea? I think that's why the fact that
the various companies put up a warning saying you may
discover unexpected relatives. I think that's why those warnings don't
take root. I mean, you just sort of explained it.
So therefully, it kind of all clicked into place in
(08:03):
my brain. There's there's yeah, of course, even like and
even as you're saying, even if you're someone who on
some less unconscious level could have questioned it, maybe questioned it,
you could, you've got a non unconscious level exactly. And
so a warning is not it's it's as good as
a puff of smoke. Will be back in a moment
(08:25):
with more family secrets. You know. There's also this this
part of it that has to do with sort of
basic human instincts or kind of like a primal way
of of of reacting to things. Which is that another
(08:46):
thing that I noticed in the you know, the other
side of this, not the seekers, but the people who
um were either the secret keepers or the donors, you know,
or the um the sort of world around the secret
keepers and the donors UM is that or or or
(09:07):
not donors. And it could be the same thing if
somebody had an affair that when when someone approaches a family,
that or a person who believes that they know the
outer perimeter of their family they you know, they have
three kids, or you know, they they know their story,
they know the story of their family. And suddenly there's
(09:29):
a person, an interloper, an outsider, sending an email or
sending a letter or making a phone call and saying,
I just don't really understand this, but I it seems
were related. It seems that you might be my half sibling,
or you might be my biological parent. I don't understand.
The first um reaction, almost across the board is to
(09:55):
feel threatened. M what do you want for me? Yeah,
it often goes to somehow the financial you know, are
you looking for something you want? You want? Even people
who don't have two nickels to rub together are like,
you want my money? You know? Is that? Why? Is
that why you're contacting me? And it's a primitive I
think like, um, it probably has a kind of biological
(10:20):
route in we know, you know, we know where we think,
we know who are kin is and our and our
kin are usually people who are our kin biologically and
who we know, who we've raised or who we've you know,
existed with in a family dynamic. And then it upends
(10:41):
the idea of what that is. Yeah, it up ends
things that people consider sacred because it's you know, it's
it's disrupted to your narrative of your father if say
he conceived a child while he was married to your
mother UM or even before her UM, it would seem
(11:02):
to conflict. For some people, it would seem to conflict
with his loyalty to you. UM. Now, if you've grown
up with four siblings instead of three, you wouldn't question
his loyalty to you. But to have three siblings and
suddenly there's a fourth um. You know, in my book
I write about you know, people's reactions. There there's the
(11:24):
father who deletes his kid because he doesn't want a
relationship with his with his daughter. There's the the father
who sends a cease and desist letter to his daughter. UM.
Very often women doing the seeking I found UM and UM.
You know, there's a case of a woman who her
parents are no longer alive, but she reaches out to
her siblings on both sides. She's adopted and she finds
(11:48):
her her the identity of her genetic parents, her late parents,
and she reaches out to siblings on both sides, and
one side basically says, listen, our dad was not a
great guy and this is like just really painful and upsetting,
you know, having a relationship with you reminds us of him,
and we don't. We don't have great memories of him,
so no, thank you. And on the other side, her
(12:09):
mother's siblings, her mother's children, they're basically like, wait a minute.
You know you're telling us that our mother before we
were born, had a baby, never told us about it,
gave that baby up at four days old by putting
that baby in a basket on a pastor's doorstep. No now,
because you know, for us to incorporate this story into
(12:33):
our memories of our late mother is to invite all
sorts of questions about her personality, her character, her values,
her the limits of her maternal love. No thank you,
and and and in that instance, um, you know, denial
can be a really powerful thing. And the sisters basically said,
like twenty three and me is wrong. Oh shut it
(12:56):
says we're half siblings on this relative chart. But you
know they have made a mistake. Um, And no amount
of fact finding or evidence bearing is going to alter
alter their perception, because that's it's it's not a question
of fact, it's a question of of emotion and honestly
sacred truth. Like narratives like you know you have a
(13:19):
you have an understanding of your family. You have an
understanding of who your mom was, and um, you know,
it's it's an interesting you know, writing The Lost Family,
I told a lot of stories of the seekers. These
are the people who are testing, These are the people
who are finding out about themselves. There's they have a
lot of agency, they have a lot of autonomy. They're there.
(13:41):
It's painful, but they're glad to know. And on the
other side are the stories of people who are not
talking because these are not these these are secrets, So
these are not stories that they're telling. So you know,
if I'm writing about a woman and she's reaching out
to her father and he deletes his kid, I'm basically
writing around the negative space of his response rather than
(14:03):
interviewing him. Um. And that's an interesting thing to think about.
I think as as we go into this new world,
is you know, what is it like for the people
on the other side, and and you know, what stories
do they have to tell, if any? And and is
there a way And honestly I don't know the answer
(14:23):
to this, but is there a way to make it
easier for everyone to um, to reconcile because I know
and and maybe that's not maybe that's not the right
question to ask because maybe, um, maybe that doesn't include
enough of the experiences of the people who are being
sought and don't want to be found. UM. But you know,
(14:44):
there can be a lot of trauma and pain on
the other side too. You know, if you were an
unwed mother so forced to give up your child, or
who endured a active coersion or rape. Um. You know,
these these experiences of being found can be incredibly painful. UM.
(15:06):
And I mean, it's a question without an answer, but
but it was one of the things that I really
thought was so um moving and difficult to write about,
was this idea that you take two people who are
closely genetically related, and they're at the very beginning of
what could be an intimate relationship in their meeting for
the first time, and their interests can seem to be
(15:29):
in conflict at exactly the moment when they most need
to not be in conflict. UM. And it doesn't you know,
it just doesn't always have a happy ending. Unfortunately. I
wonder how it might be possible for the people who
are sought, you know who who don't have agency in
that sense, they didn't ask to be sought. UM. They
(15:51):
in some cases hadn't known that there was a secret,
In other cases, have kept a secret all their lives.
In other cases haven't even thought of it as a secrets,
have just thought of it as something like, in the
case of donors, something that they did when they were
twenty two years old, um and never thought about again,
UM and ascribe no importance to And we're not hearing
(16:13):
the voices of those people. Why because it's a secret.
And so in in the same way that nothing has
been until very recently, nothing has been studied about the
implications psychologically and emotionally of um donor conception or you know,
(16:33):
sort of just secrecy when it comes to identity, uh,
kept from children. Now there hasn't. There haven't been long
term studies about any of that because no one was
talking because it was a secret. Now that's starting to
not be the case for a whole host of reasons.
And people are talking and and are making these discoveries
(16:56):
by the you know, thousands per week or making these
discover reas just because of the sheer numbers of people
who are still purchasing and taking you home DNA tests.
But the people on the other side of that, the
family is that that these people, and I include myself
in these people, you know, basically come crashing into like, Hi,
you know, you know, Hi, it's me. I think you're
(17:19):
my biological father. I know this is going to be shocking,
but you know that's that's I mean, I'm always taken
aback when people ask me, did you think long and
hard before you reached out to your biological father? And
the answer is I didn't think at all. I was
I was in survival mode. I was trying to put
(17:40):
together the pieces of me and the puzzle of me.
As as you were saying before, UM, I was completely
unmoored and and it really felt like a matter of
um of survival for me. And I think that that
is true for many people who make this discovery UM
and are shocked by it. But on the other side
of the at there is often an elderly person, a
(18:03):
person who has his own children, a person who gave
up a child for adoption and it's always been painful,
who never who maybe never told her own you know,
a husband of many years or or grown children. I mean,
there's so many ways in which our narratives can become upended.
And yet the question that I think is going to
(18:24):
you know, preoccupy bioethicists and and and maybe really needs
to be asked more is what can we do to
um to make this UM the fact of this connection,
you know, the truth of this something that we can
all tolerate, at least enough to be kind to each other. So,
(18:48):
in the case of the story you were telling from
your book, the mother's the mother's family, her her children,
who say, that's just not that can't be the case.
We can't square that with our memory of our other.
She never would have done that. They're actually dealing with
the same level of traumatic discovery as the the person
(19:11):
in your book who's discovering who her biological her birth
parents really were. But no, but but they're not there.
But they're not able to make that empathic leap to
this is another human being and she's suffering. UM. Right,
it's it's my sacred truth and conflict with your sacred truth,
so yours, So yours has to be wrong. UM. And
(19:33):
I mean the terrible thing for the seeker in that situation,
whose name is Jackie UM the woman in my book
is that you know, and for many other people who
are doing the seeking, is you to it's such an
unfair thing for them to have to basically be the
messenger of their own existence, right. They don't blame the messenger.
(19:54):
That's that's the saying. Um, if I come knocking on
your door and I say, hey, my name is Libby,
and I exist and I'm your father's child, Um, you know,
I bear the brunt of all the um emotions that
you would bring to any messenger of such news if
(20:16):
it were not welcome. And yet it is me. It
is me, me vulnerable me. I mean in many ways,
the person is doing the seeking is is twice vulnerable
because they're they're looking for connection with their genetic ken.
And then they also have to be the one to
bring the news. And the person bringing the news of
something that could be disruptive to the person on the
(20:38):
other side is possibly going to catch some flat for that,
and then they feel very rejected and um. You know.
The the extent of the support for people in these
positions is basically Facebook groups. And there's all these Facebook
groups and you see over and over, you know, people
writing about I reached out to my my birth mother,
(20:59):
she doesn't want anything to do with me. I reached
out to my biological daddy doesn't want anything to do
with me. I reached out to my siblings and they've
they've rejected me, and um, you know, said this as
a hoax or whatever, and um, you know, it's it's heartbreaking,
it's it's heartbreaking this The stories really run the gamut.
There are some that are beautiful and you think, man
(21:22):
like that's that's a gorgeous story. That makes me cry,
And there are some that are so sad that they
make you cry for different reasons. Um, and uh, you
just you know, it's a bit of a roulette wheel.
You don't you don't know what you're gonna get, and
you can't control. You can't control the outcome. You can't
control how this person who on the other side, who's
(21:46):
who's genetically very related to you but is a stranger,
how they're going to respond to the news that you're
bringing them, will be right back. I want to ask
you one last question. I could I could talk to
you for we should we should have a three hour
(22:06):
podcast about this, because it's just you're saying such amazing things.
But um, you know, you touch, you touch in your
book on regulation and the Future, and you know the
question of there's still so many structures that are in
place that promote the possibility of keeping things a secret,
(22:29):
even as the impossibility of it being kept a secret
is upon us. I mean, I can't tell you how
many people will say to me, you know, and you
and I touched on this before, but we'll say to me, well,
I'm not going to do one of those tests because
i don't want anybody finding me. And you know, I'm like, well,
good luck with that. Or you know, we are all
(22:51):
we are reaching a point where the the the web
of data, genetic data connecting us is going to be
you know, pretty much. You know, it's already not dependent
on whether somebody actually orders in one of these tests
and spits into the two. But do you have any
thoughts about sort of moving forward, what would be helpful
(23:17):
aside from the idea that you know, I think it's
very very interesting that the seekers and the sought um
both need their own kind of support and study and understanding. Yeah,
you know, I think I think, for one thing, it's
very clear that fertility banks can't promise anonymity to their
(23:39):
sperm donors anymore, UM, and I think that that needs
to be very um up front UM, it needs to
be very clear uh that UM anonymous sperm donor is
an oxymoron at this point, egg donors too. Yeah, and
you know that should just be something that's made clear
to someone as they're donating UM and UM. You know
(24:03):
that's that's pretty much a ship that has failed. UM.
You know, I do think there's a great need for
UM bioethical and psychological research. UM. I don't think there's
I don't think there's sort of putting any cat in
the bag, so to speak, like, I don't think that
there's UM. In my reporting and interviewing, I haven't heard
(24:27):
anyone say, well, you know, here's how we could regulate
DNA testing or here's how we should Now maybe I'm
just not in the conversations where that's being proposed, at
least not for the reasons that we're talking about. In
other words, nobody is talking about a method that would
UM permit this industry to exist and also at the
same time make it impossible to find unexpected genetic family
(24:51):
if you wanted that outcome, which it's not clear to me.
It's not clear to me that that you would. I mean,
given given the number of people who say that as
painful as this experience has been. You know, they were
glad to know UM. You know, it's not clear to
me that there would be UM. You know that that
that's where you'd want to go with it. But if
(25:12):
if you, if you could, you know, it's intrinsic to
the technology itself that you get a list of relatives
that we all share. You know, I share genetic overlapping
genetic segments with the people I'm related to, So there's
there's no way to really take that out UM of
your results. So you know, and even if you did UM,
(25:36):
you know you would still have ethnicity estimates, which you know,
if you are the child of a man of Scottish
descent and you discover you are not at all Scottish,
you know that in itself is UM can be a
clue depending on how good a company's ethnicity estimates are.
So the question of regulation, I mean, I do see
a lot of conversations around regulation of DNA testing that
(25:56):
pertained issues like privacy and genetic discrimination. I have yet
to see a serious conversation that talks about UM. How
we treat the question of familial revelations and UM. I
guess I think that that's where this is eventually going,
is that I feel like a lot of the bioethical
(26:17):
conversations around genetic testing have centered on medical results, have
centered on privacy, have centered on genetic discrimination. They have
not really talked about how it impacts the family and
the individual on a personal level when they discover that,
for instance, that they are the product of a nonpaternity
event or a not parent expected event and MP and
(26:37):
I think that's where it has to go because I
think most the majority of people who have an experience
of DNA testing, their experience is not getting it from
their doctor. Their experience is not one of really interesting
or surprising or upsetting or revelatory health related results. You know,
the vast majority of the way that people are experiencing
(26:58):
DNA testing is through commercial tests. It's because they test
to find out whether they need to transform their later
hosing into a kilt as that ad goes, and then
they find out something that is like mind blowing, and
really there's almost, I think a disconnect between you know,
the academia that looks such not a testing in one way,
(27:20):
and the real life American consumer experience of it, which
is that if you're going to get a surprise. Is
this kind of surprise that you're getting, not um, not
that your data is being breached UM, or that your
insurer is declining to ensure you. But but this and
this is this is the stuff of people's most intimate lives.
(27:42):
This stuff matters so much so I just think that
we need to be having like a really serious national
conversation around this because there's only you know, we've got
between thirty and thirty five million people in the database
at this point, the databasis of the major four companies,
and now you're seeing them pivot towards offering other products,
(28:05):
and that number is only going to go up. And
it's estimated it's somewhere around two of people UM taking
these tests do make a non paternity expected or non
parental event discovery. And that's how you do the math.
That's a hell of a lot of people. And then
if you I mean, yes for sure, and then if
(28:25):
you factor in the discovery of a half sibling that
you didn't know about, if you factor in late discovery adoptees,
if you factor in the people who's genetic ancestries were
hidden from them to attack them. UM, you're talking about
millions of people. And then if you look at the
way a single secret refracts across the family. If I
(28:46):
discover that I'm the product of the MPE, it impacts,
say there's three other people in my family that it impacts.
It also impacts the family of the man I now
discover them genetic related to related to. So let's say
that's another four people. They've got eight people impacted by
a single discovery. So you're talking millions of Americans, many
(29:07):
of whom never even tested impacted by this. It's just
it's um, it's a cultural transformation. It's an astonishing moment.
I think we're going to be talking about this four
decades to come. I completely agree, And I just keep
on having this image as you're as you're speaking of people,
These millions of people who are being impacted and affected UM,
(29:28):
whether directly or the or the familial or the ripple effect,
are like alone in their homes contending with there's no
formal support. There's no formal support, and and it is
it's a huge seismic, you know, psychological um and emotional
tsunami that's hitting people. And they don't they I mean,
(29:51):
I know they don't know where to go because they
come to me or they come to you. I mean,
just like the volumes of of mail or people coming
to my events back when events forcing um you know,
are just huge and it's and it's this desire, tremendous
desire to gather and to share and to um, to
(30:15):
to be with other people who are having this experience,
or to have people understand what the experience is, to
not feel sort of that other rejected alien feeling, the
lonely boat metaphor, you know, and and you know, this
will go a long way to making that lonely boat
(30:39):
metaphor be something that doesn't feel that way, that feels um,
you know, because what what we what we I think
generally as human beings want And one of the things
I've seen again and again from hosting this podcast is
that when we're able to really inhabit our truth and
see it and speak it and share it and not
(31:00):
feel shame about it and have that sense that there's
this wide array of people who are also going through
this thing, and there's there's help. There are people who
know how to how to talk about it how you know,
there are therapists who know how to um. You know,
find the language for it and be of support is
going to make a huge difference moving forward. Yeah. I mean,
(31:24):
I think if we were all the analogy that I
just thought of as you were talking about, is, you know,
this coronavirus that we're going through and this kind of
imposed self isolation that we're all in. And if I
were doing this on my own, um, for some reason,
I would feel so much more profoundly alone. But I
(31:45):
know that my friends are doing it, my parents are
doing it, everyone and everyone I know is doing it,
and lots of people I don't know, And I feel
like a sense of solidarity because we're all alone together. Um.
And I think that's why you'd seeing these you know,
Facebook groups crop up with you know, a hundred and
twenty thousand members, and that's just one of them, and
(32:07):
many of them have sixty thousand or twenty. And for
every specific type of DNA revelation that you can make,
there is a group out there. Um. And it's because
we need to know we're not alone, and we need
to normalize this experience. We really need to normalize this
experience so that nobody feels like this is their secret shame,
that this is their just their mess up family, right um,
(32:31):
or just their family that kept things from them. There
was a you know, there was there. There should be
a common language, there should be a common um. The
parallels of these experiences should be made clear for people
so that we all know we all are starting from
the same point. And if you've had this happened to you,
there are millions of other people out there to whom
(32:51):
this has happened, and we all have our family dysfunctions
and we can all sort of be together and that
and share those experiences us. Libby, that's a yeah, that's
that's that's perfect. That is such a that is such
a perfect, true and hopeful message to end this conversation on.
I've just absolutely loved talking to you about this and
(33:12):
you've thought so deeply about it, and yeah, just thank you,
thank you for your beautiful book. Well, thank you so much.
This is so helpful, so wonderful to talk to you.
(33:39):
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Danny Shapiro and this is part two of a special
bonus episode of Family Secrets. I'm speaking with journalist and
(00:21):
author Libby Copeland about DNA discoveries that unleashed the long
held secrets that affect so many of our lives, and
how as a society we can learn to grow, evolve,
change and understand one another. There's a pretty big leap
(00:44):
of empathy that needs to be made for people who
have never considered or had the experience them themselves of
that kind of disruption to their origin story. UM, just
thinking what difference does it make? Or a favorite line
that was delivered to me on an index card in
you know during a Q and A UM was what
(01:06):
good is knowing? And I almost like laughed when I
was like, I actually kept that index card and I
have it pinned to my bulletin board in my office
because what is what good is knowing? It's everything? And
you know, in Family Secrets, UM, in every episode, whether
it ends up in the final episode or not, I
always ask my guests, UM, you know who's like Family
(01:30):
Secret were unpacking? Um, do you wish you hadn't found
out do you wish you hadn't known? And not a
single one in thirty guests thus far, no one has said, yes,
I wish I didn't know? No one um. In fact,
one of my favorite responses was from my friend Sylvia Borstein,
who is UM a mindfulness Buddhist meditation teacher in her eighties,
(01:54):
and she just we were in person, and she looked
at me and she said, do I what do I do?
I do I wish I had? I mean, she couldn't
even understand the question of like, how could you possibly
wish that you didn't know? And and that doesn't mean
that it's not painful and hard, but the relief that
(02:16):
that people feel because that whole in the heart that
you're talking about, like I think with people who have
always known that they were adopted and who didn't have
access to UM their birth parents or their origin story.
The term in adoption literature is genealogical bewilderment um, the
(02:37):
sense of sort of walking around just not knowing UM.
And so that's I would say probably what people describe
of describe as the whole in their hearts. But then
there's the not knowing and then not knowing that you
don't know, which is the case with so many people
whose stories have been withheld from them. And that is
(02:59):
a differ kind of hole in the heart. That's like
a that's a hole in the heart that you don't
know as a hole in your heart. You just you
just have this ache, but you don't the ache doesn't
have a name, it doesn't have a story attached to it.
And so when it does um, And this is not
just this isn't just my experience, it's experience of everyone
(03:20):
that I've talked to. There's just a feeling amid amid
all the shock and pain and confusion and disorientation of
palpable relief, like, h this makes so much sense. Yes, yeah,
and kind of like the people would talk to me about.
(03:41):
There's a sense of excavating. So you make the discovery
and then in the days and weeks and months that follow,
there's this process of unbidden excavation of the past where
these memories arise and all of a sudden, you know
makes sense, these memories you know of an her action
with your mom where she said something and then you
(04:03):
haven't thought about it in thirty years, and suddenly you're
putting that statement that she made into a different context
and it's like ping. And so there's this kind of
emotional archaeology that people would talk about where they were
they were processing, they were reprocessing everything from once upon
a Time on forward, and they were reprocessing it with
(04:23):
the knowledge that put everything into a different perspective. And
there's a term that you use UM in one of
your interviews, unsought known And I don't know if that's
exactly what this is, but it's like this sense of
kind of sensing something but maybe not even totally admitting
it to yourself if I if I have it right? UM?
(04:44):
And so again the number again we're talking about commonalities, right,
and how how do these many many different experiences among
many different people of different ages and different demographics, how
do they align themselves with one another? Because that's part
of the in amazing thing about this moment is the
human nous commonalities of the human experience. UM. And one
(05:05):
of the things over and over is that people would
say to me, and I'm sure they've said to you,
you know I, UM, I kind of always wondered about that,
even if I never quite totally admitted it or I
always had questions or now it all makes sense, right,
And there may be for some people. I did interview
people who said they had never an inkling at all UM,
(05:28):
but enough of them who did that it it may
be that there's a kind of a like a like
a nascent knowledge, like you said, you know, a feeling
of um outsiderness, or maybe little things that you pick
up on that add together into this this just this
kind of I don't know, diaphanous, gauzy sense of nagging question.
(05:53):
And then the DNA test comes along and it's like
there's the question solidified right there, and there's an answer
absolutely no. That's that's beautifully put. And the unsought known,
which is a psychoanalytic term UM, you know, really refers
(06:13):
to that which we we know, like we know it
in our bones. We know it, you know, we know
it like when we talk about a sixth sense, but
we we it's too dangerous to articulate to ourselves, so
we never actually consciously think it. It's more like, you know, why,
why would anyone really ever entertain the thought that, well,
(06:37):
maybe this isn't my biological parent. It's just it's it's
there's so much confirmation bias and so much need to
I mean, I adored my father and UM and felt
so incredibly connected to him and still do um even
though he's been gone for more than half of my life.
But the to ever think the thought maybe he's not
(06:58):
my biological father would have been impossible for me. And yet,
and yet there is a way in which I knew,
you know that that I that that I never thought it.
But when I went back and read my early work
as a writer, it's in there. It's like a trail
of bread crumbs. It's like it's like the unconscious made
(07:21):
conscious um or the unconscious like on the page there
it is UM. So I actually have something that even
amounts to a kind of proof of the unsought known
in my own in my own life. But um, if
if someone had put you know, you've given me a
polygraph or whatever and said, you know, do you think
that your father isn't your biological father? What are you
(07:43):
talking about? What? What? What? What? What could possibly give
you that idea? I think that's why the fact that
the various companies put up a warning saying you may
discover unexpected relatives. I think that's why those warnings don't
take root. I mean, you just sort of explained it.
So therefully, it kind of all clicked into place in
(08:03):
my brain. There's there's yeah, of course, even like and
even as you're saying, even if you're someone who on
some less unconscious level could have questioned it, maybe questioned it,
you could, you've got a non unconscious level exactly. And
so a warning is not it's it's as good as
a puff of smoke. Will be back in a moment
(08:25):
with more family secrets. You know. There's also this this
part of it that has to do with sort of
basic human instincts or kind of like a primal way
of of of reacting to things. Which is that another
(08:46):
thing that I noticed in the you know, the other
side of this, not the seekers, but the people who
um were either the secret keepers or the donors, you know,
or the um the sort of world around the secret
keepers and the donors UM is that or or or
(09:07):
not donors. And it could be the same thing if
somebody had an affair that when when someone approaches a family,
that or a person who believes that they know the
outer perimeter of their family they you know, they have
three kids, or you know, they they know their story,
they know the story of their family. And suddenly there's
(09:29):
a person, an interloper, an outsider, sending an email or
sending a letter or making a phone call and saying,
I just don't really understand this, but I it seems
were related. It seems that you might be my half sibling,
or you might be my biological parent. I don't understand.
The first um reaction, almost across the board is to
(09:55):
feel threatened. M what do you want for me? Yeah,
it often goes to somehow the financial you know, are
you looking for something you want? You want? Even people
who don't have two nickels to rub together are like,
you want my money? You know? Is that? Why? Is
that why you're contacting me? And it's a primitive I
think like, um, it probably has a kind of biological
(10:20):
route in we know, you know, we know where we think,
we know who are kin is and our and our
kin are usually people who are our kin biologically and
who we know, who we've raised or who we've you know,
existed with in a family dynamic. And then it upends
(10:41):
the idea of what that is. Yeah, it up ends
things that people consider sacred because it's you know, it's
it's disrupted to your narrative of your father if say
he conceived a child while he was married to your
mother UM or even before her UM, it would seem
(11:02):
to conflict. For some people, it would seem to conflict
with his loyalty to you. UM. Now, if you've grown
up with four siblings instead of three, you wouldn't question
his loyalty to you. But to have three siblings and
suddenly there's a fourth um. You know, in my book
I write about you know, people's reactions. There there's the
(11:24):
father who deletes his kid because he doesn't want a
relationship with his with his daughter. There's the the father
who sends a cease and desist letter to his daughter. UM.
Very often women doing the seeking I found UM and UM.
You know, there's a case of a woman who her
parents are no longer alive, but she reaches out to
her siblings on both sides. She's adopted and she finds
(11:48):
her her the identity of her genetic parents, her late parents,
and she reaches out to siblings on both sides, and
one side basically says, listen, our dad was not a
great guy and this is like just really painful and upsetting,
you know, having a relationship with you reminds us of him,
and we don't. We don't have great memories of him,
so no, thank you. And on the other side, her
(12:09):
mother's siblings, her mother's children, they're basically like, wait a minute.
You know you're telling us that our mother before we
were born, had a baby, never told us about it,
gave that baby up at four days old by putting
that baby in a basket on a pastor's doorstep. No now,
because you know, for us to incorporate this story into
(12:33):
our memories of our late mother is to invite all
sorts of questions about her personality, her character, her values,
her the limits of her maternal love. No thank you,
and and and in that instance, um, you know, denial
can be a really powerful thing. And the sisters basically said,
like twenty three and me is wrong. Oh shut it
(12:56):
says we're half siblings on this relative chart. But you
know they have made a mistake. Um, And no amount
of fact finding or evidence bearing is going to alter
alter their perception, because that's it's it's not a question
of fact, it's a question of of emotion and honestly
sacred truth. Like narratives like you know you have a
(13:19):
you have an understanding of your family. You have an
understanding of who your mom was, and um, you know,
it's it's an interesting you know, writing The Lost Family,
I told a lot of stories of the seekers. These
are the people who are testing, These are the people
who are finding out about themselves. There's they have a
lot of agency, they have a lot of autonomy. They're there.
(13:41):
It's painful, but they're glad to know. And on the
other side are the stories of people who are not
talking because these are not these these are secrets, So
these are not stories that they're telling. So you know,
if I'm writing about a woman and she's reaching out
to her father and he deletes his kid, I'm basically
writing around the negative space of his response rather than
(14:03):
interviewing him. Um. And that's an interesting thing to think about.
I think as as we go into this new world,
is you know, what is it like for the people
on the other side, and and you know, what stories
do they have to tell, if any? And and is
there a way And honestly I don't know the answer
(14:23):
to this, but is there a way to make it
easier for everyone to um, to reconcile because I know
and and maybe that's not maybe that's not the right
question to ask because maybe, um, maybe that doesn't include
enough of the experiences of the people who are being
sought and don't want to be found. UM. But you know,
(14:44):
there can be a lot of trauma and pain on
the other side too. You know, if you were an
unwed mother so forced to give up your child, or
who endured a active coersion or rape. Um. You know,
these these experiences of being found can be incredibly painful. UM.
(15:06):
And I mean, it's a question without an answer, but
but it was one of the things that I really
thought was so um moving and difficult to write about,
was this idea that you take two people who are
closely genetically related, and they're at the very beginning of
what could be an intimate relationship in their meeting for
the first time, and their interests can seem to be
(15:29):
in conflict at exactly the moment when they most need
to not be in conflict. UM. And it doesn't you know,
it just doesn't always have a happy ending. Unfortunately. I
wonder how it might be possible for the people who
are sought, you know who who don't have agency in
that sense, they didn't ask to be sought. UM. They
(15:51):
in some cases hadn't known that there was a secret,
In other cases, have kept a secret all their lives.
In other cases haven't even thought of it as a secrets,
have just thought of it as something like, in the
case of donors, something that they did when they were
twenty two years old, um and never thought about again,
UM and ascribe no importance to And we're not hearing
(16:13):
the voices of those people. Why because it's a secret.
And so in in the same way that nothing has
been until very recently, nothing has been studied about the
implications psychologically and emotionally of um donor conception or you know,
(16:33):
sort of just secrecy when it comes to identity, uh,
kept from children. Now there hasn't. There haven't been long
term studies about any of that because no one was
talking because it was a secret. Now that's starting to
not be the case for a whole host of reasons.
And people are talking and and are making these discoveries
(16:56):
by the you know, thousands per week or making these
discover reas just because of the sheer numbers of people
who are still purchasing and taking you home DNA tests.
But the people on the other side of that, the
family is that that these people, and I include myself
in these people, you know, basically come crashing into like, Hi,
you know, you know, Hi, it's me. I think you're
(17:19):
my biological father. I know this is going to be shocking,
but you know that's that's I mean, I'm always taken
aback when people ask me, did you think long and
hard before you reached out to your biological father? And
the answer is I didn't think at all. I was
I was in survival mode. I was trying to put
(17:40):
together the pieces of me and the puzzle of me.
As as you were saying before, UM, I was completely
unmoored and and it really felt like a matter of
um of survival for me. And I think that that
is true for many people who make this discovery UM
and are shocked by it. But on the other side
of the at there is often an elderly person, a
(18:03):
person who has his own children, a person who gave
up a child for adoption and it's always been painful,
who never who maybe never told her own you know,
a husband of many years or or grown children. I mean,
there's so many ways in which our narratives can become upended.
And yet the question that I think is going to
(18:24):
you know, preoccupy bioethicists and and and maybe really needs
to be asked more is what can we do to
um to make this UM the fact of this connection,
you know, the truth of this something that we can
all tolerate, at least enough to be kind to each other. So,
(18:48):
in the case of the story you were telling from
your book, the mother's the mother's family, her her children,
who say, that's just not that can't be the case.
We can't square that with our memory of our other.
She never would have done that. They're actually dealing with
the same level of traumatic discovery as the the person
(19:11):
in your book who's discovering who her biological her birth
parents really were. But no, but but they're not there.
But they're not able to make that empathic leap to
this is another human being and she's suffering. UM. Right,
it's it's my sacred truth and conflict with your sacred truth,
so yours, So yours has to be wrong. UM. And
(19:33):
I mean the terrible thing for the seeker in that situation,
whose name is Jackie UM the woman in my book
is that you know, and for many other people who
are doing the seeking, is you to it's such an
unfair thing for them to have to basically be the
messenger of their own existence, right. They don't blame the messenger.
(19:54):
That's that's the saying. Um, if I come knocking on
your door and I say, hey, my name is Libby,
and I exist and I'm your father's child, Um, you know,
I bear the brunt of all the um emotions that
you would bring to any messenger of such news if
(20:16):
it were not welcome. And yet it is me. It
is me, me vulnerable me. I mean in many ways,
the person is doing the seeking is is twice vulnerable
because they're they're looking for connection with their genetic ken.
And then they also have to be the one to
bring the news. And the person bringing the news of
something that could be disruptive to the person on the
(20:38):
other side is possibly going to catch some flat for that,
and then they feel very rejected and um. You know.
The the extent of the support for people in these
positions is basically Facebook groups. And there's all these Facebook
groups and you see over and over, you know, people
writing about I reached out to my my birth mother,
(20:59):
she doesn't want anything to do with me. I reached
out to my biological daddy doesn't want anything to do
with me. I reached out to my siblings and they've
they've rejected me, and um, you know, said this as
a hoax or whatever, and um, you know, it's it's heartbreaking,
it's it's heartbreaking this The stories really run the gamut.
There are some that are beautiful and you think, man
(21:22):
like that's that's a gorgeous story. That makes me cry,
And there are some that are so sad that they
make you cry for different reasons. Um, and uh, you
just you know, it's a bit of a roulette wheel.
You don't you don't know what you're gonna get, and
you can't control. You can't control the outcome. You can't
control how this person who on the other side, who's
(21:46):
who's genetically very related to you but is a stranger,
how they're going to respond to the news that you're
bringing them, will be right back. I want to ask
you one last question. I could I could talk to
you for we should we should have a three hour
(22:06):
podcast about this, because it's just you're saying such amazing things.
But um, you know, you touch, you touch in your
book on regulation and the Future, and you know the
question of there's still so many structures that are in
place that promote the possibility of keeping things a secret,
(22:29):
even as the impossibility of it being kept a secret
is upon us. I mean, I can't tell you how
many people will say to me, you know, and you
and I touched on this before, but we'll say to me, well,
I'm not going to do one of those tests because
i don't want anybody finding me. And you know, I'm like, well,
good luck with that. Or you know, we are all
(22:51):
we are reaching a point where the the the web
of data, genetic data connecting us is going to be
you know, pretty much. You know, it's already not dependent
on whether somebody actually orders in one of these tests
and spits into the two. But do you have any
thoughts about sort of moving forward, what would be helpful
(23:17):
aside from the idea that you know, I think it's
very very interesting that the seekers and the sought um
both need their own kind of support and study and understanding. Yeah,
you know, I think I think, for one thing, it's
very clear that fertility banks can't promise anonymity to their
(23:39):
sperm donors anymore, UM, and I think that that needs
to be very um up front UM, it needs to
be very clear uh that UM anonymous sperm donor is
an oxymoron at this point, egg donors too. Yeah, and
you know that should just be something that's made clear
to someone as they're donating UM and UM. You know
(24:03):
that's that's pretty much a ship that has failed. UM.
You know, I do think there's a great need for
UM bioethical and psychological research. UM. I don't think there's
I don't think there's sort of putting any cat in
the bag, so to speak, like, I don't think that
there's UM. In my reporting and interviewing, I haven't heard
(24:27):
anyone say, well, you know, here's how we could regulate
DNA testing or here's how we should Now maybe I'm
just not in the conversations where that's being proposed, at
least not for the reasons that we're talking about. In
other words, nobody is talking about a method that would
UM permit this industry to exist and also at the
same time make it impossible to find unexpected genetic family
(24:51):
if you wanted that outcome, which it's not clear to me.
It's not clear to me that that you would. I mean,
given given the number of people who say that as
painful as this experience has been. You know, they were
glad to know UM. You know, it's not clear to
me that there would be UM. You know that that
that's where you'd want to go with it. But if
(25:12):
if you, if you could, you know, it's intrinsic to
the technology itself that you get a list of relatives
that we all share. You know, I share genetic overlapping
genetic segments with the people I'm related to, So there's
there's no way to really take that out UM of
your results. So you know, and even if you did UM,
(25:36):
you know you would still have ethnicity estimates, which you know,
if you are the child of a man of Scottish
descent and you discover you are not at all Scottish,
you know that in itself is UM can be a
clue depending on how good a company's ethnicity estimates are.
So the question of regulation, I mean, I do see
a lot of conversations around regulation of DNA testing that
(25:56):
pertained issues like privacy and genetic discrimination. I have yet
to see a serious conversation that talks about UM. How
we treat the question of familial revelations and UM. I
guess I think that that's where this is eventually going,
is that I feel like a lot of the bioethical
(26:17):
conversations around genetic testing have centered on medical results, have
centered on privacy, have centered on genetic discrimination. They have
not really talked about how it impacts the family and
the individual on a personal level when they discover that,
for instance, that they are the product of a nonpaternity
event or a not parent expected event and MP and
(26:37):
I think that's where it has to go because I
think most the majority of people who have an experience
of DNA testing, their experience is not getting it from
their doctor. Their experience is not one of really interesting
or surprising or upsetting or revelatory health related results. You know,
the vast majority of the way that people are experiencing
(26:58):
DNA testing is through commercial tests. It's because they test
to find out whether they need to transform their later
hosing into a kilt as that ad goes, and then
they find out something that is like mind blowing, and
really there's almost, I think a disconnect between you know,
the academia that looks such not a testing in one way,
(27:20):
and the real life American consumer experience of it, which
is that if you're going to get a surprise. Is
this kind of surprise that you're getting, not um, not
that your data is being breached UM, or that your
insurer is declining to ensure you. But but this and
this is this is the stuff of people's most intimate lives.
(27:42):
This stuff matters so much so I just think that
we need to be having like a really serious national
conversation around this because there's only you know, we've got
between thirty and thirty five million people in the database
at this point, the databasis of the major four companies,
and now you're seeing them pivot towards offering other products,
(28:05):
and that number is only going to go up. And
it's estimated it's somewhere around two of people UM taking
these tests do make a non paternity expected or non
parental event discovery. And that's how you do the math.
That's a hell of a lot of people. And then
if you I mean, yes for sure, and then if
(28:25):
you factor in the discovery of a half sibling that
you didn't know about, if you factor in late discovery adoptees,
if you factor in the people who's genetic ancestries were
hidden from them to attack them. UM, you're talking about
millions of people. And then if you look at the
way a single secret refracts across the family. If I
(28:46):
discover that I'm the product of the MPE, it impacts,
say there's three other people in my family that it impacts.
It also impacts the family of the man I now
discover them genetic related to related to. So let's say
that's another four people. They've got eight people impacted by
a single discovery. So you're talking millions of Americans, many
(29:07):
of whom never even tested impacted by this. It's just
it's um, it's a cultural transformation. It's an astonishing moment.
I think we're going to be talking about this four
decades to come. I completely agree, And I just keep
on having this image as you're as you're speaking of people,
These millions of people who are being impacted and affected UM,
(29:28):
whether directly or the or the familial or the ripple effect,
are like alone in their homes contending with there's no
formal support. There's no formal support, and and it is
it's a huge seismic, you know, psychological um and emotional
tsunami that's hitting people. And they don't they I mean,
(29:51):
I know they don't know where to go because they
come to me or they come to you. I mean,
just like the volumes of of mail or people coming
to my events back when events forcing um you know,
are just huge and it's and it's this desire, tremendous
desire to gather and to share and to um, to
(30:15):
to be with other people who are having this experience,
or to have people understand what the experience is, to
not feel sort of that other rejected alien feeling, the
lonely boat metaphor, you know, and and you know, this
will go a long way to making that lonely boat
(30:39):
metaphor be something that doesn't feel that way, that feels um,
you know, because what what we what we I think
generally as human beings want And one of the things
I've seen again and again from hosting this podcast is
that when we're able to really inhabit our truth and
see it and speak it and share it and not
(31:00):
feel shame about it and have that sense that there's
this wide array of people who are also going through
this thing, and there's there's help. There are people who
know how to how to talk about it how you know,
there are therapists who know how to um. You know,
find the language for it and be of support is
going to make a huge difference moving forward. Yeah. I mean,
(31:24):
I think if we were all the analogy that I
just thought of as you were talking about, is, you know,
this coronavirus that we're going through and this kind of
imposed self isolation that we're all in. And if I
were doing this on my own, um, for some reason,
I would feel so much more profoundly alone. But I
(31:45):
know that my friends are doing it, my parents are
doing it, everyone and everyone I know is doing it,
and lots of people I don't know, And I feel
like a sense of solidarity because we're all alone together. Um.
And I think that's why you'd seeing these you know,
Facebook groups crop up with you know, a hundred and
twenty thousand members, and that's just one of them, and
(32:07):
many of them have sixty thousand or twenty. And for
every specific type of DNA revelation that you can make,
there is a group out there. Um. And it's because
we need to know we're not alone, and we need
to normalize this experience. We really need to normalize this
experience so that nobody feels like this is their secret shame,
that this is their just their mess up family, right um,
(32:31):
or just their family that kept things from them. There
was a you know, there was there. There should be
a common language, there should be a common um. The
parallels of these experiences should be made clear for people
so that we all know we all are starting from
the same point. And if you've had this happened to you,
there are millions of other people out there to whom
(32:51):
this has happened, and we all have our family dysfunctions
and we can all sort of be together and that
and share those experiences us. Libby, that's a yeah, that's
that's that's perfect. That is such a that is such
a perfect, true and hopeful message to end this conversation on.
I've just absolutely loved talking to you about this and
(33:12):
you've thought so deeply about it, and yeah, just thank you,
thank you for your beautiful book. Well, thank you so much.
This is so helpful, so wonderful to talk to you.
(33:39):
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