What happens when telling your adoption story becomes a way to challenge the secrecy that shaped it?

Patricia Knight Meyer returns to Family Twist ahead of the release of WONDERLAND: Memoir of a Black-Market Adoption. She joins Corey and Kendall to discuss sharing her story with readers, hearing from people who never considered adoption from an adoptee’s perspective, and turning her book launch into an event focused on truth, community and adoptee rights.

Patricia also shares why recording the audiobook brought unexpected tears, how her daughter helped bring a chapter of her life to the stage, and why being surrounded by other adoptees gives her a sense of belonging she struggles to explain to anyone outside the community. There is also a little Taylor Swift, some Dateline and a conversation about helping the next wave of adoptee authors tell their stories.

In this episode:

• How readers outside the adoption community are responding to WONDERLAND.
• Patricia’s perspective on the connection between sealed records, secrecy and black-market adoption.
• Why narrating her own memoir became an emotional experience.
• Bringing the chapter “Roses and Thorns” to life through a stage adaptation directed by her daughter.
• How sharing her story through I’m Adopted revealed how many people still need search resources and support.
• Why finding an adoptee community can change what belonging feels like.

Attend or stream Down the Rabbit Hole: The Fight for Texas Adoptee Rights Then and Now on Friday, November 6, 2026, at the Bullock Texas State History Museum’s Texas Spirit Theater in Austin. The event includes a chapter performance and a panel moderated by Emily Ramshaw, co-founder and CEO of The 19th. Attendance and the livestream are free, with registration available below.

Net proceeds from the event will benefit Saving Our Sisters, Adoption Knowledge Affiliates and the National Association of Adoptees and Parents.

WONDERLAND: Memoir of a Black-Market Adoption releases November 3, 2026.

Family Twist is an in-kind sponsor of the event.

Register for the free event or livestream

WONDERLAND: Book details and purchase links

Book extras, soundtrack and discussion questions

Patricia’s website: My Adopted Life

Read Patricia’s story on I’m Adopted

National Association of Adoptees and Parents

Saving Our Sisters

Adoption Knowledge Affiliates

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What happens when the biological father you expected to reject you never knew you existed?

In Part 1, Ashley learned through DNA testing that the man who raised her was not her biological father. After a two-year search, Search Squad found a name and contact information within 24 hours. Four months after giving birth to her daughter, Ashley ran a background check and mailed a cautious letter to a man she knew almost nothing about.

Two days later, he called and left a brief voicemail: “Now you have my number.” Their first exchanges involved selfies and pictures of a truck, a car, a cat, a dog and a motorcycle. When they finally spoke, Ashley learned that he had been told he could not have children and had spent 36 years with no idea that he had a daughter.

Then the story takes an almost unbelievable small-town turn. A friend of Ashley’s newly discovered father realizes she knows the parents who kept the truth from her, bringing the family secret directly back to the people who had refused to answer Ashley’s questions.

In Part 2, Ashley tells Kendall what happened when she confronted her parents, why finally having the truth ended their power over her and how her relationship with her biological father grew through weather warnings, family photographs and an unforgettable first Mother’s Day visit with her 87-year-old grandmother.

Ashley also shares what she told her therapist after receiving affection she did not have to work for: “I’m not doing anything to earn this.” Her therapist’s answer was simple: “You’re not supposed to.”

Listen to hear how a man who believed he could never have children celebrated his first Father’s Day at 66.

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Want more Corey and Kendall?

Join us for Family Twist After Hours, our weekly unfiltered bonus podcast featuring personal stories, family secrets, behind-the-scenes conversations and plenty we don't share on the regular show.

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What if a family photo made your friends ask the question no one in your family had ever answered?

Ashley grew up surrounded by fighting, police visits and what she came to call her family’s “quarterly crisis.” She learned to hide her emotions, protect the adults around her and question her own memories whenever the family’s public version of events did not match what she had experienced. It took leaving home and beginning therapy for Ashley to recognize how unhealthy the family system had been.

Years later, while Ashley and her husband were facing infertility and pregnancy loss, friends noticed how little she resembled her family and asked whether she had ever taken a DNA test. Her Ancestry results connected her to relatives throughout her mother’s family tree, but nothing appeared on the side belonging to the father who raised her. Additional tests confirmed that it was not a mistake, and the aunt Ashley had been warned to avoid responded to her questions almost immediately.

In Part 1, Ashley tells Kendall how her NPE discovery changed what she believed about the man who raised her, why the timing made her missing medical history especially frightening and how becoming a mother gave her search a new urgency. When several search groups told Ashley she would have to wait for better DNA matches, Search Squad found a name, address, email address and phone number within 24 hours.

Listen to Part 1 to hear how Ashley escaped one family system and found herself on the verge of contacting a father who might not even know she existed.

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