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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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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Decades after Dixie went to live with relatives in Iowa, her biological sister Molly was still angry that they never grew up together. Another family member believed Dixie had been better off with the parents who raised her.

In Part 2, Anita Johnson talks with Corey and Kendall about loving Gram after learning the truth, the questions she never asked her mother and whether there was ever a right time to move Dixie back. The conversation also leads Kendall to reflect on the nine years since finding his birth mother and what acceptance looks like now.

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What happens when you discover a family secret, but the people who kept it never know you found out?

Anita Johnson’s mother, Dixie, grew up on a farm in Iowa. Her parents doted on her, and she carried that love into adulthood. During World War II, Dixie needed a birth certificate to work at a Navy shipyard. Iowa had no record of her birth, so the father who raised her filed an affidavit. Later, Dixie found another birth certificate in a drawer. This one pointed to a family in Wyoming she had known all her life.

Dixie eventually told Anita the truth, but she asked her 12-year-old daughter not to tell Gram. For Anita, Gram was the grandmother who taught her to sew, welcomed her for overnight visits and made her feel loved no matter what. Anita had to make sense of the discovery while their visits and family gatherings carried on as usual.

In Part 1, Anita tells Corey and Kendall how Dixie learned about her adoption and why she kept that knowledge from the parents who raised her. Anita also shares an account written by one of Dixie’s birth brothers about how Dixie came to live in Iowa. It offers part of the family’s history, though Anita is careful about the questions it leaves unanswered.

Anita knew we like to hear these stories from our guests, so she gave us very little before we recorded. Listen to Part 1 and hear how the secret came to belong to her, too.

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Imagine learning at 52 that you were adopted because your mother’s oncologist casually mentioned it during a phone call.

Al Isaacs had spent his life believing he was an only child with loving parents and an ordinary birth certificate. Then one accidental comment exposed a secret his family had kept for more than five decades.

There was no simple way to ask his parents for answers. Both were living with dementia, and his father was nearing the end of his life. When Al turned to an aunt, she confirmed the truth with six devastating words: “I always wanted to tell you.”

The documents Al had trusted were false. His adoption had been arranged through the gray market, leaving him with few reliable records and an enormous question: Who was Mary Smith?

In this episode, Al talks with Corey about:

• Discovering at 52 that he had been adopted
• Realizing other relatives had known the truth for decades
• Loving his parents while struggling with what they concealed
• The false paperwork behind his gray-market adoption
• Using DNA, genealogy and Search Angels to find answers
• Discovering a biological sister he never knew existed
• Searching for a birth mother with an extraordinarily common name
• Learning that Mary had been a gifted folk singer
• Finding photographs, records and performances that brought her past to life
• Using humor to tell a painful story without diminishing it

Mary’s trail leads through the Greenwich Village music scene, a 1968 talent competition hosted by Duke Ellington and recordings that had nearly disappeared. At one point, an old photograph of a woman holding a guitar becomes a vital clue in a search that repeatedly seems impossible.

Al tells the story in "Finding Mary Smith: A Memoir of Family Secrets, Gray Market Adoption, and the Miracle Reunion with My Mom," winner of the 2026 Global Book Awards Gold Medal for Biographical/Memoir. The book and audiobook are available wherever books are sold, and Al’s collection of photographs, songs and rare footage can be found at alisaacs.com.

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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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Nicole Davis had already found her biological mother’s side of the family years earlier, but she had pretty much given up on finding her father. In fact, she had been led to believe he was dead.

Then an Ancestry notification showed up while she was getting ready for Jazz Fest. Nicole was busy, didn’t think much of it and ignored it. She ignored the message that followed, too. It took a Facebook friend request to finally get her attention.

The match was 27 percent. That’s how Nicole found a sister she didn’t know she had, and how she learned that the biological father she had believed was dead for 12 years was actually alive.

In Part 2, Nicole tells us what it has been like getting to know her father and discovering that she has several sisters, including one close in age to her own child. We also talk about the family relationships that haven’t been nearly as easy, including why Nicole has stepped away from her adoptive parents and why she hasn’t told her adoptive father everything she has learned.

Since Nicole is also a serious horror fan, there was no keeping horror out of the conversation. We talk about growing up with evangelical Hell Houses and Rapture movies, the “evil adoptee” trope that horror has leaned on for decades, and why Myth of the Ghost Kingdom got the adoptee experience right in ways she rarely sees onscreen.

Nicole also tells us about The Music of Us, the book she’s writing about roots, music and the stories that connect them.

Family secrets are the ultimate plot twist.

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Nicole Davis always knew she was adopted. What she didn’t know was how strange the story behind her adoption would look once she started examining it as an adult.

Nicole was born in Alabama in 1974. Her adoptive parents had spent years trying to have a child and then trying to adopt. According to the family story, they eventually failed a home inspection because a step between their kitchen and sunken living room wasn’t up to code.

Then Nicole’s mother wrote a letter to Alabama Governor George Wallace. Within a few months, her parents got a call. They drove to Montgomery and brought Nicole home.

Her mother has always believed Wallace made it happen. Nicole grew up thinking that was a great story. Today, she has a lot more questions about it.

In Part 1 of our conversation, Nicole talks about growing up adopted in rural Alabama, the family she was raised in and the fears that followed her from childhood. As a little girl, she worried someone would come and take her away. Eventually, she found herself staring down the road and hoping someone from her biological family would show up and do exactly that.

Years later, Nicole began finding biological relatives and learning how much of what she thought she knew about her origins was incomplete or simply wrong. Then an Ancestry match appeared.

Nicole initially ignored it. When she finally looked more closely, she discovered she shared 27 percent DNA with the woman trying to contact her. She had found a sister.

That sister had another surprise: the biological father Nicole had believed was dead for 12 years was alive.

Nicole also happens to be a serious horror fan, and the connection between her adoption experience and the things that scare her is fascinating. Horror gave her something real life often didn’t: predictable fear. Freddy Krueger had rules. A Stephen King novel had an ending. Her childhood could be much harder to predict.

That makes Nicole a natural crossover guest for Family Twist and our other podcast, Horror Heals.

In Part 1, we talk about adoption trauma, abandonment, biological family, DNA discoveries, rural Alabama, evangelical Christianity, the questions surrounding Nicole’s adoption and the possibility that George Wallace played a role in how she became part of her adoptive family.

And just when you think Nicole’s family story couldn’t sound more like a horror movie, she says it herself:

Her family dynamic is “a nightmare.”

Part 2 is coming next week.

Remember, family secrets are the ultimate plot twist.

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