Send a text

What happens when your story begins in one country, is rewritten in another, and then calls you back decades later?

In this powerful episode of Family Twist, Corey and Kendall sit down with Sandi Morgan Caesar to explore a life shaped by early loss, international adoption, racial identity, and an unrelenting search for truth.

Sandi was born in Panama to a 14-year-old mother and spent the first year of her life with her birth family before being placed with a Black U.S. Air Force family stationed there. At just four years old, she experienced another devastating loss when her adoptive father died by suicide shortly after the family relocated to the United States.

Growing up as the only Black student in her school, navigating trauma, and always knowing she was adopted, Sandi began searching long before DNA testing made it easier. She wrote letters. She reached out to strangers. She refused to give up.

In 2004, her persistence paid off. With the help of a Panamanian government employee who believed in her mission, Sandi found her birth mother. Within weeks, she was on a plane to Panama.

But reunion is not a finish line.

In this episode, Sandi shares:

• What she knows about the circumstances of her adoption
• The moment she found her birth mother after years of searching
• The emotional complexity of reunion across language, geography, and time
• Growing up Black and adopted in predominantly white spaces
• The grief of losing parents, both biological and adoptive
• Reclaiming her Panamanian citizenship decades later
• What it means to hold multiple identities at once

This conversation also touches on immigration, race, safety, and belonging in the current political climate. Adoption stories do not exist in isolation. They intersect with culture, power, and history.

There is grief in this episode. There is resilience. There is music. And there is reclamation.

If you are an adoptee, late discovery adoptee, NPE, donor conceived, or someone navigating complicated family truths, Sandi’s story will resonate.

Remember, family secrets are the ultimate plot twist.

About Sandi Morgan Caesar

Sandi Morgan Caesar is a transnational adoptee born in Panama and raised in the United States. Adopted at 11 months old by a Black U.S. Air Force family, Sandi grew up navigating loss, racial identity, and the lifelong questions many adoptees carry.

After years of searching prior to the rise of commercial DNA testing, she located and reunited with her birth mother in 2004. In 2024, she reclaimed her Panamanian citizenship, deepening her connection to her country of origin.

Sandi is active in adoptee and transnational adoptee communities and co-facilitates a support group through Adoption Network Cleveland. She is passionate about identity, advocacy, and creating space for honest conversations about adoption, race, and belonging.

Send a text

A Netflix documentary about fertility fraud lit the fuse.

After watching Our Father, a question would not let go: how do you actually know donor conception was handled ethically, and how do you know the story you were told is true?

So a DNA test gets ordered. While waiting for the results, the question gets asked at home. The response is silence first, then the truth. An anonymous donor. A social father who knew. Years of secrecy. And the realization that many people had this information long before she did.

This episode goes deep into what happens after a donor conception secret comes out.

In this conversation:

• How Our Father triggered a DNA test and a reckoning
• The moment an anonymous donor replaced a lifelong family narrative
• Losing a genetic identity you did not know you had
• Being raised an only child, then suddenly discovering siblings
• Why secrecy and “best practices” caused more harm than protection
• Wanting connection while learning not everyone wants contact
• Using research and language as a way to survive the emotional fallout
• Why shame belongs to the system, not the child
• The therapy gap for donor-conceived and DNA surprise experiences

This is not a sensational story about fertility fraud. It is about the quieter damage that secrecy leaves behind, even when everyone thought they were doing the right thing.

If you have ever been told not to open Pandora’s box, this episode asks why it was sealed in the first place.

Send us a text

What happens when the truth about your origins arrives decades late and everyone else already knew?

In this episode of Family Twist, Kendall talks with Keith Sciarillo, a late-discovery adoptee who learned later in life that neither of the parents who raised him were biologically related to him. Even harder, siblings and family members knew the truth long before Keith did.

Keith shares what it is like to grow up inside a family secret, how silence reshaped his childhood, and why so many moments only made sense after the truth finally came out. He and Kendall talk openly about resentment, understanding, and the complicated balance between grieving what was lost and accepting what is.

They also explore identity in a literal sense. Keith grew up believing he was Italian Jewish, only to later discover Puerto Rican and Hungarian Jewish ancestry, including Holocaust survivor history in his biological family. That shift was not just informational. It changed how Keith understood himself, his body, and where he comes from.

The conversation moves into parenting, responsibility, and the decision not to pass trauma forward. Keith reflects on becoming a parent while still processing his own story, and why showing up honestly matters more than pretending everything is fine.

Toward the end of the episode, Keith mentions a film that deeply resonated with his own experience, Myth of the Ghost Kingdom. The film follows a late-discovery adoptee and captures the emotional reality of learning the truth far later than anyone should. Keith explains why the story feels uncomfortably accurate, and why seeing adoption and identity explored on screen can be validating in ways people do not always expect.

This episode is for anyone navigating a late-discovery adoption, a DNA surprise, or the long shadow of family secrecy. It is also for anyone trying to understand how silence shapes a child long after childhood ends.

Send us a text

What happens when the truth doesn’t arrive as a single moment, but hides in plain sight for years?

In this episode of Family Twist, Corey and Kendall sit down with Dr. Nicole Price, a DNAngels Board Advisor whose discovery that her father wasn’t her biological parent came not from a sudden match, but from something she didn’t notice for nearly a decade. A small line of text. A quiet warning. A truth everyone else already seemed to know.

Nicole shares what it was like to realize she may have been the only person in her family kept in the dark, and how that silence reshaped her sense of self, her relationships with her siblings, and her understanding of empathy. She talks candidly about anger, betrayal, grief, and the physical toll this kind of discovery can take, including anxiety, identity disorientation, and the need for trauma-informed support.

This conversation explores what it means to grieve the person you thought you were, why “you’re still the same” can feel dismissive instead of comforting, and how healing doesn’t come from minimizing the impact of a DNA surprise, but from honoring it. Nicole also reflects on reconnecting with her biological father later in life, adjusting expectations, and learning to sit with silence rather than trying to force a relationship to be something it isn’t.

Nicole now helps others navigate these moments through her work with DNAngels, offering empathy and guidance to people who are just beginning to process their own discoveries.

Nicole will also be speaking at Untangling Our Roots, where she’ll be part of the DNAngels presence supporting attendees who are in the middle of discovery, grief, and integration.

This episode is for anyone who has ever been told to move on too quickly, who felt their body react before their mind could catch up, or who needed reassurance that this kind of truth really is a big deal.

Guest bio: Dr. Nicole Price is no stranger to the transformative power of empathy. Her personal journey, beginning with the revelation at 45 that her father wasn’t her biological parent, launched her exploration of empathy’s profound impact. These experiences now shape her professional approach, blending her technical, results-focused background with empathetic understanding.

Dr. Price’s dynamic genealogy workshops, consulting, and keynotes equip others with practical strategies to enhance their research. With her energetic presentation style, she inspires participants to apply empathy to their genealogical work.

She holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from North Carolina A&T University, a Master’s in Adult Education from Park University, and a Doctorate in Leadership and Management from Capella University. Postdoctoral studies were completed at Stanford University.

Key Takeaways

• A DNA discovery doesn’t have to be loud to be life-altering. Quiet realizations and delayed understanding can hit just as hard.
• Finding out you were the only one who didn’t know creates a unique kind of grief, one rooted in betrayal, silence, and isolation.
• “You’re still the same person” can feel invalidating. Discovery often changes how someone understands themselves, their body, and their place in their family.
• This kind of revelation is a grief event, not just new information. Grieving who you thought you were is part of healing.
• Your body often reacts before your mind can catch up. Anxiety, disorientation, and physical symptoms are common and real.
• There is no correct timeline for processing discovery. Pausing, pulling back, or limiting new information can be an act of self-care.

Send us a text

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

Send us a text

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.

Send us a text

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.

Send us a text

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.