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