Featured Writing
Featured Writing shares longer-form reflections, essays, and written pieces exploring identity, family separation, origin loss, hidden truths, genetic genealogy, unexpected DNA discoveries, and related lived experiences.
This space may include original writing, community submissions shared with permission, and pieces previously featured through aligned publications and collaborative platforms.
Experiences, perspectives, and writing styles vary. These reflections are shared as part of our broader commitment to community storytelling, understanding, and connection through lived experience.
Her Name is Sheva
Written by Annette Becklund
Originally published in Severance Magazine
This reflection explores memory, separation, longing, identity, and the enduring emotional realities connected to family separation and origin loss. Through personal narrative and remembrance, the piece considers the ways absence, connection, and inherited belonging can continue to shape lived experience over time.
Topics: Origin Loss • Family Separation • Identity • Belonging • Memory • Hidden Truths
Reflections and Revelations
Written by Kathleen Shea Kirstein
Originally published in Adoption Knowledge Affiliates
This reflection explores identity, hidden truths, emotional reckoning, and the evolving realities that can emerge through origin discovery and unexpected DNA discoveries. The piece considers how reflection, memory, and newly uncovered information may reshape understandings of self, family history, belonging, and biological connection over time.
Topics: Identity • DNA Surprise • Origin Loss • Hidden Truths • Family Discovery • Belonging
Even on the Island, They Were Still Waiting
Written by Cindy McQuay
Originally published in Severance Magazine
This reflection explores themes of family separation, waiting, belonging, and the emotional realities that can exist beneath reunion, discovery, and connection within the origin loss community.
Topics: Origin Loss • Family Separation • Identity • DNA Discoveries
Twenty Years
Written by Kathleen Shea Kirstein
Originally published in Adoption Knowledge Affiliates
This reflection explores time, memory, identity, grief, and the enduring emotional impact of family separation and origin loss across decades. The piece considers how lived experience can continue evolving over time, even years after discovery, reunion, or major life transitions.
Topics: Origin Loss • Identity • Family Separation • Grief • Memory • Belonging
Explanation is Not Obligation
Written by Dennis Clark
Originally published in Severance Magazine
This reflection explores identity, uncertainty, biological family discovery, and the emotional realities that can follow unexpected DNA discoveries and NPE (“Not Parent Expected”) experiences. It considers the difference between clarity and connection, and the ways individuals navigate truth, belonging, and unresolved questions over time.
Topics: NPE • DNA Surprise • Identity • Genetic Genealogy • Family Discovery • Belonging
Golden Hour Family
Written by Eve Sturges
Originally published in Severance Magazine
This reflection explores family separation, longing, identity, memory, and the emotional complexity that can exist within reunion, belonging, and biological connection. Through personal reflection and lived experience, the piece considers how moments of closeness and absence can coexist while navigating origin loss and family discovery.
Topics: Origin Loss • Family Separation • Identity • Belonging • Reunion • Memory
Letting Go and Moving Forward
Written by Kathleen Kirstein
Originally published in Adoption Knowledge Affiliates
This reflection explores grief, identity, family separation, and the emotional complexity that can accompany healing, acceptance, and continued movement through experiences connected to origin loss and hidden truths. The piece considers how individuals may carry both longing and forward motion simultaneously while navigating evolving understandings of self, family, and belonging.
Topics: Origin Loss • Identity • Family Separation • Healing • Grief • Belonging
Love Letter to Fellow NPEs
Written by Lezlee Lijenberg
Originally published in Severance Magazine
This reflection speaks to the emotional realities of NPE (“Not Parent Expected”) experiences, unexpected DNA discoveries, identity disruption, and the longing for recognition and understanding that can follow hidden truths and biological family discovery. Through personal reflection and community-centered language, the piece offers acknowledgment, connection, and solidarity for others navigating similar experiences.
Topics: NPE • DNA Surprise • Identity • Hidden Truths • Belonging • Family Discovery
The Side Effect I Didn’t Expect
Written by Eve Sturges
Originally published in Severance Magazine
This reflection explores the emotional and relational impact that can follow unexpected DNA discoveries, hidden truths, and identity disruption. Through personal reflection and lived experience, the piece considers the lingering effects of origin discovery, biological family revelation, and the ways these experiences can continue shaping emotional understanding, belonging, and connection over time.
Topics: DNA Surprise • NPE • Identity • Hidden Truths • Family Discovery • Belonging
Late Discovery Adoption: The Awareness of Its Impact on My Life Is Never-Ending
Written by Kathleen Kirstein
Originally published in Adoption Knowledge Affiliates
This reflection explores late discovery experiences, identity disruption, grief, emotional awareness, and the long-term impact that hidden truths and family separation can have across a lifetime. The piece considers how awareness, memory, and lived experience continue evolving over time, even long after discovery.
Topics: Late Discovery • Identity • Hidden Truths • Origin Loss • Family Separation • Grief
Maybe
Written by B.K. Jackson
Originally published in Severance Magazine
This reflection explores uncertainty, longing, identity, and the emotional space that can exist between knowing and not knowing while navigating family separation, origin loss, and biological discovery. Through personal reflection and lived experience, the piece considers the weight of unanswered questions and the ways individuals continue searching for meaning, connection, and belonging over time.
Topics: Origin Loss • Identity • Family Separation • Belonging • Uncertainty • Family Discovery
Break Something
Written by Karen Stinger
Originally published in Severance Magazine
This reflection explores anger, grief, identity disruption, and the emotional intensity that can surface through hidden truths, family separation, and unexpected discoveries related to biological connection and personal history. Through personal reflection and lived experience, the piece considers the tension between restraint, expression, and the desire to release what has been carried internally for years.
Topics: Grief • Identity • Hidden Truths • Family Separation • DNA Surprise • Emotional Processing
Lies We Tell Ourselves
Written by Kathleen Shea Kirstein
Originally published in Severance Magazine
This reflection explores hidden truths, survival narratives, identity disruption, and the emotional realities that can emerge when individuals begin reevaluating long-held beliefs about family, belonging, and personal history. Through personal reflection and lived experience, the piece considers the ways people adapt to uncertainty, protect themselves emotionally, and navigate the tension between truth, grief, and self-understanding.
Topics: Hidden Truths • Identity • DNA Surprise • Family Separation • Emotional Processing • Belonging
There Was a Secret
Written by Kathleen Shea Kirstein
Originally published in Severance Magazine
This reflection explores hidden truths, identity disruption, family secrecy, and the emotional realities that can emerge when long-held information is uncovered later in life. Through personal reflection and lived experience, the piece considers the lasting impact that secrecy, origin discovery, and unexpected revelations can have on belonging, memory, and self-understanding.
Topics: Hidden Truths • Identity • Family Separation • DNA Surprise • Origin Loss • Belonging
Animal Tale
Written by Lorah Gerald
Originally published in Severance Magazine
This reflection explores identity, survival, instinct, emotional protection, and the lasting impact of hidden truths and family separation. Through personal reflection and metaphor, the piece considers the ways individuals adapt, endure, and search for understanding while navigating origin loss, belonging, and lived experience shaped by disconnection and discovery.
Topics: Identity • Origin Loss • Family Separation • Hidden Truths • Survival • Belonging
The Stuff Love Can’t Fix
Written by Liz DeBetta
Originally published in Severance Magazine
This reflection explores the limits of love in the face of family separation, identity disruption, hidden truths, and origin loss. Through personal reflection and lived experience, the piece considers the emotional realities that cannot always be resolved through care alone, including grief, disconnection, longing, and the lasting impact of separation from biological origins and inherited history.
Topics: Origin Loss • Family Separation • Identity • Grief • Hidden Truths • Belonging
Blown Off Course
Written by Kathleen Shea Kirstein
Originally published in Severance Magazine
This reflection explores identity disruption, uncertainty, grief, and the emotional disorientation that can follow unexpected discoveries related to family history, biological connection, and hidden truths. Through personal reflection and lived experience, the piece considers how individuals may navigate shifting understandings of self, belonging, and direction after experiences that alter long-held assumptions about family and identity.
Topics: Identity • DNA Surprise • Hidden Truths • Family Separation • Grief • Belonging
In Search of Origin
Written by Dr. Liz DeBetta
Originally published in Severance Magazine
This reflection explores creativity, healing, identity, and the lifelong search for understanding that can accompany family separation, origin loss, and adoption-related experiences. Through personal reflection and lived experience, the piece considers the role of writing, self-expression, and creativity in navigating grief, belonging, emotional awareness, and evolving self-understanding over time.
Topics: Identity • Origin Loss • Healing • Creativity • Family Separation • Self-Discovery
Dear Younger Self, Working Overtime at the Courthouse on a Saturday Afternoon
Written by Danna Schmidt
Originally published in Severance Magazine
This reflection explores identity, hindsight, hidden truths, and the emotional complexity that can emerge when looking back on life before unexpected discoveries reshaped personal understanding. Through memory and lived experience, the piece considers the ways unanswered questions, intuition, and later revelations can alter how individuals understand family history, belonging, and self over time.
Topics: Identity • Hidden Truths • DNA Surprise • Memory • Family Separation • Belonging
Many additional essays, reflections, poetry, and community-centered writing exploring identity, origin loss, family separation, NPE experiences, donor conception, and unexpected DNA discoveries can be found through Severance Magazine.
Readers interested in continued exploration are encouraged to visit and support their work.
Community members who have written reflections, essays, poetry, or personal pieces they may wish to share through Hiraeth Hope & Healing are also welcome to reach out by email for consideration.