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What happens when a father and daughter meet for the first time, in adulthood, and decide to build the relationship in public, in real time?

In this episode of Family Twist, Corey sits down with Joseph McGill Jr. and his daughter Charity Barriere Muhammad, who reunited just six months ago and are already preparing to share their story on stage together at Untangling Our Roots Summit 2026 in Atlanta, March 19–22, 2026.

Joseph is the founder and Executive Director of The Slave Dwelling Project, an effort that brings attention to the overlooked structures where enslaved people lived by arranging overnight stays in extant slave dwellings, creating space for truth-telling, dialogue, and public education. He is also the coauthor of Sleeping with the Ancestors: How I Followed the Footprints of Slavery, a deeply personal account of that work and what it reveals about American history, memory, and legacy.

Charity is a cultural storyteller, educator, author, and the visionary behind Gumbo for the Soul, blending ancestry, creativity, and community. In Corey’s conversation with Charity and Joseph, you’ll hear how reunion has expanded her sense of identity, including the way heritage and family history show up in food, traditions, and the stories we tell ourselves about where we come from.

Together, Joseph and Charity speak candidly about the early days of reunion, learning trust, holding space for hard truths, and what it means to build a relationship as two adults who both had full lives before they ever met. They also talk about what they hope others in the adoption, donor-conceived, and NPE communities take from their experience, especially those who are still searching, still processing, or still afraid to ask the next question.

Kendall will be attending Untangling Our Roots for the first time, and this episode is part preview, part love letter to the messy middle, where healing is real, but so is the work.

In this episode, we cover

• What six months of reunion can feel like, emotionally and practically
• Nature and nurture moments, when similarities show up in unexpected ways
• Trust-building after a lifetime without a parent-child relationship
• How Joseph’s work as a public historian shapes his view of legacy and family
• How food, recipes, and cultural inheritance become part of reunion
• Why therapy, patience, and “doing your part” matter in late discovery family connections
• What Joseph and Charity hope their on-stage conversation sparks for others at Untangling Our Roots

Guest spotlight

Joseph McGill Jr.
Founder and Executive Director, The Slave Dwelling Project.
Coauthor, Sleeping with the Ancestors: How I Followed the Footprints of Slavery.

Charity Barriere Muhammad
Founder, Gumbo for the Soul, author, educator, cultural storyteller.

Mentioned in this episode

• Untangling Our Roots Summit 2026 (Atlanta, March 19–22, 2026)
• The Slave Dwelling Project
• Sleeping with the Ancestors: How I Followed the Footprints of Slavery
• Gumbo for the Soul

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Last March, Corey attended Untangling Our Roots Summit in Denver for the first time. He went alone, unsure what to expect, and quietly wondering if he belonged there at all.

In this solo episode, Corey reflects on walking into a room where everyone already spoke the same language. Adoptees, donor-conceived people, NPEs, MPEs, birth parents, adoptive parents, partners, spouses, and allies, all in one space, without hierarchy or comparison. What began as a moment of imposter syndrome quickly turned into connection, recognition, and relief.

This year feels even more meaningful. Corey and Kendall are attending together, and both will be speaking. Corey will be interviewing filmmaker Lisa Brenner, whose work explores identity, truth, and family through storytelling. Kendall will be moderating a powerful panel, “Who Am I? Is This Me. A Male Perspective,” centering men’s voices in conversations about identity disruption and discovery.

This episode is an invitation. To anyone who has ever felt alone after a DNA discovery. To anyone still trying to understand where they fit. To anyone who needs to sit in a room where they don’t have to explain themselves.

Untangling Our Roots is the largest gathering of these communities anywhere in the world, and it only happens every other year. If you miss it this March, the next one won’t be until 2028.

You don’t need all the answers. You just need to show up.

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What happens after the truth comes out, when the search begins and there is no DNA test, no internet, and no clear roadmap?

In part two of this two-part episode, we continue our conversation with Marylee MacDonald as she takes us into the long, painstaking search for her birth family. This was a time before commercial DNA testing, when finding answers meant microfilm machines, legal notices buried in newspapers, and carefully rehearsed phone calls that could change your life in an instant.

Marylee shares how she searched for her birth mother after her adoptive mother’s death, navigating guilt, fear, and hope all at once. When she finally makes contact, she experiences something many adoptees describe but rarely get to feel. Mirrors. Voices that sound like hers. Siblings who feel instantly familiar.

But reunion is not a fairy tale.

Marylee opens up about being kept secret, introduced as a “family friend,” and hearing words no one ever wants to hear from a parent. She reflects on the complicated emotional terrain of reunion, where love, shame, pride, and distance can all exist at the same time.

And then comes another layer. Marylee also shares the story of finding the son she was forced to surrender as a teenager. What followed was not instant closeness, but something deeper. Time. Effort. Shared history. And eventually, a family that chose to make room for one another.

This episode lands during the holidays, and without planning it, Marylee leaves us with a powerful reminder of what connection can look like when the work is done. A full house. A crowded kitchen. Decades of memories made after years of separation.

What We Talk About in Part Two

Searching for birth family before DNA testing
Using microfilm and legal notices to find answers
Making the first phone call to a birth parent
Meeting siblings and finally seeing mirrors
The pain of being kept secret after reunion
Why reunion does not erase grief or shame
Finding a son surrendered in a closed adoption
Building real family history over time
What the holidays can look like after reunion

About Our Guest

Marylee MacDonald is an adoptee and author whose work explores adoption, identity, secrecy, motherhood, and reunion. Her writing reflects both the emotional cost of closed-era adoption and the long process of building real family connection after decades of separation.

Website

Book: Surrender: A Memoir of Nature, Nurture, and Love

Content Note: This episode includes discussion of adoption secrecy, family rejection, grief, and emotional distress. Please listen with care.

Connect with Family Twist

If this episode resonates with you, share it with someone who understands how family secrets shape identity. If you have a story of adoption, late discovery, or a family truth that surfaced years later, we would love to hear from you.

Family secrets are the ultimate plot twist.

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What happens when the story you were told about your adoption turns out to be a lie, and you find out at the moment you need support the most?

In part one of this two-part episode, we talk with Marylee MacDonald, an adoptee who always knew she was adopted and believed she had a tragic but simple origin story. She was told her birth parents had been killed in a car accident. The door was closed. The past was settled.

Until it wasn’t.

At 15, when Marylee became pregnant, her adoptive mother revealed the truth. Marylee’s birth mother was alive. And she had been a teenage girl, just like Marylee.

This episode explores what it means to grow up being told you were “chosen,” while also learning that what can be chosen can also be unchosen. Marylee reflects on the pressure to perform, the subtle reminders that she was different, and the deep ache of growing up without mirrors. No one looked like her. No one sounded like her. No one shared her temperament, her intellect, or her fire.

Part one focuses on Marylee’s early life, her adoption, the lie she was told about her origins, and the experience of being sent to a home for unwed mothers with little explanation and no real choice. It is a story shaped by secrecy, shame, and survival in an era of closed adoptions and hidden pregnancies.

Part two will follow Marylee into the search for her birth family, the reunions that followed, and the son she was forced to surrender.

What We Talk About in Part One

• Knowing you were adopted, but not knowing the truth
• Being told you were “chosen” and the pressure that creates
• Subtle comments that signal you do not fully belong
• The absence of mirrors for adoptees
• Discovering the truth during a teenage pregnancy
• Being sent to a home for unwed mothers without explanation or consent
• How secrecy and shame shaped adoption in the 1950s and 60s
• The emotional cost of learning the truth too late

About Our Guest

Marylee MacDonald is an adoptee and author whose work explores adoption, identity, secrecy, motherhood, and reunion. Her writing reflects both the emotional cost of closed-era adoption and the long process of building real family connection after decades of separation.

Website

Book: Surrender: A Memoir of Nature, Nurture, and Love

Content Note: This episode includes discussion of teenage pregnancy, adoption secrecy, family rejection, and emotional distress. Please listen with care.

In part two, Marylee shares how she searched for her birth family long before DNA testing. Through microfilm, legal notices, and carefully scripted phone calls, she recounts the moment she heard a familiar voice on the other end of the line. She also shares how she reunited with the son she was forced to surrender, and what it means to build real family history after years of silence.

Connect with Family Twist

If this episode resonates with you, share it with someone who understands how family secrets shape identity. If you have a story of adoption, late discovery, or a family truth that surfaced years later, we would love to hear from you.

Family secrets are the ultimate plot twist.

Send us a text

What do you do when a DNA test proves that everything you believed about your race, your ancestry, and your family history is not true, and at the same time the world becomes more dangerous for the people you have just learned you belong to?

That is the question at the center of Kara’s story. Kara grew up believing she was African-American, with a family history rooted in ancestors who had been enslaved in Texas. When she asked her father to take a DNA test so she could plan a "Finding Your Roots" style trip to Africa, the results were overwhelming and life-changing. Her test showed zero African DNA and fifty percent Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry.

Kara is the founder of Right to Know, a national nonprofit dedicated to advocating for adoptees, donor-conceived people, and NPEs who want access to their origins. Even with years of advocacy behind her, nothing prepared her for the identity shock of becoming part of a Jewish community during one of the most turbulent periods for Jewish people worldwide.

Her youngest son, Nico, shares his own perspective. He accompanied Kara through Jewish spaces, Jewish summer camp, and eventually a semester abroad in Israel. That trip became far more than cultural exploration. Nico was in Israel when Iran began launching missiles. His story includes middle-of-the-night sirens, running to bomb shelters, sleeping underground, and eventually being evacuated on a cruise ship escorted by the Israeli Navy to Cyprus.

This episode brings together personal identity, world events, and the difficult reality of building a new sense of self in a time of public hostility and fear.

What We Explore in This Episode

• How a DNA test overturned Kara’s lifelong understanding of her race and ancestry
• Why DNA surprises around race have a unique emotional impact
• How Kara’s father responded with deep love and support
• Kara’s founding of Right to Know and her commitment to identity rights
• The challenges of entering Jewish spaces during a time of rising antisemitism
• Nico’s path from temple to Jewish summer camp to a semester in Israel
• What it feels like to live with missile alerts as part of daily life
• Sleeping in bomb shelters and learning how quickly danger becomes normal
• The Navy escorted the evacuation to Cyprus and the global attention on Iran’s missile strikes
• How Israeli culture reshapes a person’s understanding of joy, resilience, and living in the moment
• The creation of new December traditions for a family with multiple layers of identity
• The music that helped both Kara and Nico stay grounded

Why This Episode Matters

This story is unfolding during a time when antisemitism is rising, when political tensions around Israel are impossible to ignore, and when DNA tests continue to reveal hidden ancestries that launch people into unexpected communities. Kara and Nico’s story sits right at the crossroads of these issues, which is why it feels urgent, honest, and timely.

Perfect For Listeners Who Are

• Navigating a DNA surprise that shifted their identity
• Learning they have Jewish ancestry
• Feeling imposter syndrome in cultural or religious spaces
• Trying to explain DNA surprises to their children
• Interested in real-world experiences inside Israel during the Iran missile attacks
• Part of the adoption, donor-conceived, or NPE communities
• Drawn to stories where family secrets collide with global events

If this episode speaks to you, share it with someone who is working through their own identity twist.

Right to Know

Untangling Our Roots

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In Part One, Lisa shared her extraordinary adoption reunion story. A closed adoption, a lifetime of questions, a birth family who lived down the street, and the shocking discovery that she likely cared for her own biological grandfather in the ICU. It was a story about caregiving, identity, and the power of finally finding your roots.

Part Two takes us into a very different kind of discovery.

This episode explores the emotional fallout of her paternal DNA match. What begins with hopeful emails and a powerful moment of genetic mirroring turns into years of confusion, mixed narratives, addiction, emotional manipulation, and the painful truth adoptees often live with. Reunion does not guarantee safety. Sometimes it brings an entirely new wave of grief.

Lisa walks us through the relationship with her biological father, the intense early connection, the unraveling that followed, the trauma she and her daughter endured, and the strength it took to reclaim her voice again. It is an honest, vulnerable look at what happens when the fantasy of family meets the reality of human complexity.

And throughout it all, Lisa continues to ground herself in caregiving, advocacy, and her work as a nurse practitioner. As nursing faces new threats on the national stage, her story is a reminder of how much nurses carry for the rest of us and why their voices matter.

This is Part Two of Lisa’s story. If you missed Part One, we recommend listening in order.

Her book, The Adopted Nurse, expands on this journey with even more insight and compassion.

What Listeners Will Hear

• The first phone call with her biological father.

• How hope and longing shaped her early trust.

• The intense bond that formed during their first visit.

• Signs that something was not right.

• The unraveling of the relationship.

• The impact on her daughter.

• The yearslong cycle of addiction, apologies, and emotional confusion.

• The night she and her daughter were kicked out with nowhere to go.

• How therapy and reflection helped her make sense of the narrative she was given.

• Why she will never know the full truth about her birth parents.

• How this experience deepened her work as an adoptee advocate and nurse practitioner.

• What she wants other adoptees to know before they take a DNA test.

• Her message of healing, strength, and reclaiming your own story.

Link to Lisa’s Book: The Adopted Nurse

If Lisa’s story resonates with you, or if you have your own Family Twist, we would love to hear from you. Your story matters. Your truth matters. And your voice deserves to be heard.

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With the Trump administration moving to reclassify nursing so it no longer counts as a professional degree for federal student aid, this episode couldn’t land at a more urgent moment. Nursing organizations warn that limiting access to funding threatens the very foundation of patient care, and in our household, where nurses are family, this news hits hard.

Today’s guest, Lisa, is a nurse practitioner, an adoptee, and someone who has lived through more than one life-changing twist thanks to DNA testing. Her story blends caregiving, identity, trauma, reunion, and that beautiful mix of nature and nurture we explore so often on Family Twist.

Lisa grew up in a loving adoptive home, always knowing she was adopted but never knowing the medical history she desperately needed. As a nurse practitioner and later a mother, the absence of that information became impossible to ignore. When she finally began searching for answers, she uncovered a story that feels like fate.

If you want to go even deeper into Lisa’s story, you can find her book here:

The Adopted Nurse (Amazon):

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+adopted+nurse

Her journey includes:

• A neighbor who recognizes her immediately

• A grandfather she may have unknowingly cared for as an ICU nurse

• A birth family who lived down the street from her adoptive parents

• Birth aunts who welcome her with warmth, memory, and long-held truths

This episode explores the way caregivers are shaped by their histories, how adoptees carry both gratitude and grief, and how discovering your roots can transform everything.

Next week, Part Two goes even deeper with a second DNA discovery that completely reframes Lisa’s understanding of identity and safety. But first, this is where her story begins.

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In part one, a simple birthday DNA kit rewrote everything Nick thought he knew about his identity. He learned he was donor conceived at thirty-six, discovered fourteen half siblings, and realized his parents had carried the truth for decades.

But nothing prepared him for what came next.

In this episode, Nick talks about the two siblings who were raised by the donor, and the complicated question that hangs over many donor conceived adults:

Do they know about us

And if they do not, should someone tell them

Part Two explores the unsettling space between biological connection and total silence, and what it means to live with questions you cannot safely or ethically answer.

Nick also shares how he transformed his experience into a book and a podcast, giving other donor conceived people a place to speak honestly, without shame or editing. His story is both deeply personal and universally familiar to anyone navigating DNA surprises.

• What it feels like to discover donor raised siblings who may be unaware of you

• The ethics of reaching out when the consequences are unknown

• How donor conceived adults become detectives whether they want to or not

• The ongoing challenges of incomplete medical histories

• Writing as a way to process identity shifts

• Why Nick created a podcast for donor conceived voices

• How openness can protect mental and emotional health

• The growing need for reform and transparency in the fertility industry

• How music helped Nick work through identity questions

• Donor conceived people often live with unanswered questions that affect identity, medical decisions, and relationships

• The donor’s raised children may be unaware of their genetic siblings, creating an emotional and ethical dilemma

• Stories and conversation help break isolation and build community

• The fertility industry still offers little guidance to the adults created through these methods

• Honesty and visibility remain the strongest tools for change

• How would you feel if you learned you had siblings who did not know you existed

• What responsibility, if any, do donor conceived people have toward the donor’s raised children

• What part of your story have you been afraid to speak out loud

• How might telling your truth change your relationships or your sense of self