Unfinished Truths
19 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 1 year ago -Perspectives on new kinships and the truths they reveal.
From misattributed parentage, non-paternity events and donor conception to made or chosen families, these are stories of and by people who gain truth through knowledge and want to share that truth with you.
“The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.” David Foster Wallace
Contributions email: [email protected]
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Episodes
The Orphan Train
April 18, 2023 15:00 - 1 hour - 60.8 MBDr. Greg Markway is a clinical and forensic psychologist from Jefferson City, Missouri. Five years ago, he began a quest to find his grandfather's origins. His grandfather was born in New York City, and was dropped off at the New York Foundling Asylum. At the age of 5, his grandfather rode the "orphan train" to rural Missouri where he was taken in by the Markway family. Through DNA testing and considerable research, Greg uncovered his grandfather's fascinating story, and that of his biologica...
Outside Over There
December 05, 2022 19:17 - 10 minutes - 9.45 MBThis is an interim episode regarding the movie ELF and the misattributed parent experience. This short segment also discusses fatherlessness through the ages (in art and literature) as well as a year-end mixed tape/ playlist just for the MPE community! Thanks to friends at Inspired Yoga for opening my eyes and heart, for inspiration in kindling the closing mantra, and to the memory of Maurice Sendak and Richard Scary (not to mention the Grimms) for writing stories for children that hold trut...
Who Shines Light in the Darkness?
October 19, 2022 23:56 - 1 hour - 70.5 MBRaised as an only child, Shelly's mom and dad passed away when she was in her early 20s. In spring 2021, at age 35, she was ready to find children she had been told her dad had before she was born but didn't raise. What she found out is that her dad wasn't her biological father, half of her ethnic heritage was incorrect, and she was not an only child. As a journalist, she has written about her experiences, and is learning how to balance being an NPE, a storyteller, and a mom in the healthies...
Grief Is Part of the Journey
October 06, 2022 18:58 - 59 minutes - 54.6 MBIn 2021, Alexis Hourselt discovered that the man who had raised her was not her biological father. What's more, after having been raised for 35 years as a bi-racial Mexican American women, she found out that she is half African American. In today's episode, Alexis talks about her DNA surprise journey and what it means, not only to discover a new family, but a complete shift in racial identity. Alexis is the amazing host of DNA Surprises podcast as well as the founder, with her friend D...
One Lie 14,000 Times
September 24, 2022 17:17 - 53 minutes - 49.8 MBDawn Davies is the author of Mothers of Sparta: A Memoir in Pieces (published by Flatiron Books, 2018), which won the Florida Book Award Gold Medal for General Nonfiction and the GLCA New Writers Award for Creative Nonfiction. Her essays and stories have been Pushcart Special Mentions and Best American notables. Her work can be found in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, The Missouri Review, Poetry Northwest, The Alaska Review, Narrative, Fourth Genre and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing,...
The People I Call Family
September 16, 2022 20:12 - 1 hour - 60.4 MBAngie was born into a blended family in a small town in Montana. With a brother and sister 9 years older - through her dad - and a second sister who was 5 years older - through her mom- she never felt like her family was any different from anyone else's until an elementary school teacher challenged her ideas of relatedness. Angie's kinship experiences have included being raised as the child of an adoptee, living in a blended family, being raised by a parent with a serious, chronic/ term...
I Have a Voice & I Want to Use It
June 28, 2022 20:27 - 48 minutes - 45.1 MBJillian always knew she was conceived via an anonymous sperm donor. Raised the only child of an open and supportive single mother, she took a DNA test in October of 2020 in an effort to identify her biological father. Fairly quickly, Jillian's DNA discovery lead her not only to the medical information that she was seeking, but to another family with whom she discovered she had much in common. With this genetic information, she has also had the chance to develop a relationship with her youn...
You Belong Here
May 28, 2022 02:59 - 1 hour - 58.5 MBAt 42 years old, Kim was working on her paternal family’s tree via Ancestry when she uncovered a very big secret. A secret that she would also discover most people around her known for years. She always had an underlying feeling that she was different from her 5 siblings...suddenly, it all made sense. Resources mentioned in Episode 10: Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay Gibson PsyD Missing Pieces - NPE Life podcast with Don Anderson Severance Magazine Who Even Am I Any...
The Ghost Children
May 14, 2022 22:02 - 1 hour - 61.2 MBMy guest this week is Mirren (she/her), a Missouri adoptee, born and raised in St. Louis. She holds an A.B. in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology from Bryn Mawr College; a Ph.D. in the History of Art from the University of California, Berkeley; and a B.S. in Nursing from Samuel Merritt University in Oakland, California. She is currently studying to be a women’s health nurse practitioner through Georgetown University. She has worked in adoptee rights advocacy since the late 1990s and has b...
An Underestimation of My Determination
May 04, 2022 20:43 - 1 hour - 70.8 MBThis week I would like to welcome Stacy, a thirty-four year old mother of a two year old little girl; Stacy and her husband are expecting a second daughter in August. Living on the central coast of Oregon, Stacy and her family have a dairy farm as well as a footwear manufacturing company. Originally from Kansas, born and raised, she moved away shortly after college and eventually she and her husband made their way to Oregon. Stacy learned that she was a donor conceived person (DCP) when sh...
I Am Right Here
April 14, 2022 18:18 - 1 hour - 96.5 MBOur guest for Episode 7 is Brandy, a 41 year old wife and mother of three who found out her "dad" was not her biological father when she was 10. It took her 30 years to find out who her biological father was and to put a label on her non-paternity event. Through finding her biological father and his family, Brandy found solace in the many things she had previously always questioned about herself. Having a label to place on her parental situation as an NPE has also made her understand hers...
The Half Known Self
March 21, 2022 23:33 - 1 hour - 56.9 MBKara is a 21 year-old egg donor conceived person. She was 10 years-old when her raising parents told her she was donor conceived and she struggled with her biological mother’s anonymity in her teenage years as her conception was never mentioned again. In August 2019, at almost 19, Kara took an AncestryDNA test and matched with her biological mother with whom she now has a close relationship. Kara is on Instagram sharing her perspectives as well as advocating for donor conceived people and ed...
The Cult(ure) of the Family
March 20, 2022 03:24 - 32 minutes - 30.3 MB*Interim episode 2*. The host discusses what it means to be an NPE in a culture so heavily identified with family. What idioms, proverbs, tropes do you hear routinely? How does the NPE experience impact your sense of home? What responses to your DNA discovery would you rather never be spoken again ?
The Nurse: In The Room
March 07, 2022 23:35 - 13 minutes - 12.8 MBThis is an interim episode: a tribute to a different kind of family. Perspectives of fellow nurses during the Covid-19 pandemic, two years later.
In The Room
March 01, 2022 23:23 - 16 minutes - 15.6 MBThis is an interim episode: a tribute to a different kind of family. Perspectives of fellow nurses during the Covid-19 pandemic, two years later.
The Nurse
March 01, 2022 23:23 - 16 minutes - 15.6 MBPerspectives during the Covid-19 pandemic, 2 years later
The NPE Experience: One Year Later
February 28, 2022 02:25 - 34 minutes - 32.1 MBDriving to work with an updated / retrospective on my NPE story and introduction to the show.
Misattributed Parentage: Kinship vs DNA
February 16, 2021 23:39 - 28 minutes - 26.3 MBThis is an introductory episode to Unfinished Truths where the host discusses kinship and how her own non-paternity event (NPE) has broken her understanding of kinship and family wide open.
Welcome to Unfinished Truths
February 06, 2021 00:54 - 5 minutes - 5.55 MBThis podcast it about truth: partial truths, broken truths, undiscovered and unfinished truths. How do we understand kinship in the age of reproductive technologies and prolific, consumer DNA analysis when what we discover isn't a truth at all? With this introduction your host, Jennifer Carraher, talks about non-paternity events (NPE), reproductive technologies and their impact on traditional notions of kinship. She tells her own NPE story in episode 1.