EPISODE 8 TRANSCRIPT

0:00:00.9 Speaker 1: Welcome to Dear Romance Writer, your home for the questionable advice for the bewildered and the befuddled, random pop culture recommendations, and conversations about, ew, feelings. Be sure to send in your letters seeking advice on our anonymous forum at dearromancewriter.com.

0:00:20.7 S1: Dear Romance Writer is part of the Frolic Podcast Network, a podcast community of everything romance and romance-related. If you're into romance fiction of any flavor, the Frolic Podcast Network includes shows that future book club style discussions, author interviews, comedy, critique, and fantastic conversations as well.

0:00:39.2 S1: Includes some of the most innovative, interesting, and entertaining podcasts, including Kinda Dating, Crappy Friends, My Imaginary Friends, Smart Podcast, Trashy Books, and Jeff and Will's Big Gay Fiction Podcast. What does this mean for you, the listener? More shows to enjoy and more opportunities for us to introduce you to great episodes and new podcasts you'll love. Find new shows to add to your podcast subscriptions at frolic.media/podcasts. Now on to this week's show.

0:01:22.6 Speaker 2: Hey everybody, thank you so much for coming and joining us today for our questionable advice. We love that you are here. We are here with very fabulous Kelly Reynolds, who is with the Boobies and Newbies podcast, which quite frankly is one of my favorite titles of a podcast ever.

0:01:37.9 Speaker 3: I love that name.

0:01:39.6 S2: Any time I can say boobies, it makes me laugh automatically, 'cause I have the sense of humor of a 12-year-old boy. So tell us about Boobies and Newbies, Kelly, and tell us about your journey into romance.

0:01:50.6 Speaker 4: Well, let me tell you, first of all, once you start a podcast with the title Boobies and Newbies, you automatically start using the word boobies a lot more just in everyday conversation, so that's been a treat for all of my friends, but... Yeah, Boobies and Newbies, it's a romance novel review podcast. I also do author interviews occasionally, but the whole purpose is to introduce newbie romance readers to the genre that I fell in love with when I was 18-ish, so it's been...

0:02:26.7 S2: So just a year ago.

0:02:28.0 S4: Yeah, just last year. No. But it's crazy, I've loved the genre since I picked up my first book. I was never really a reader before then. I was not one of those people that read throughout my childhood. I think I was just waiting for the right book, and once I found romance, that was it, that was all I needed, and since then, it's just... I've been devouring the genre one book after another, and now I get to inflict that upon my friends and my guests and hopefully convert them to be a lover of romance as well.

0:03:08.3 Speaker 5: That's awesome.

0:03:09.0 S2: So are you of the opinion that there is a romance for everyone out there?

0:03:14.1 S4: Absolutely, absolutely. I think there is something for everybody, whether it's a specific kink or sub-trope or... Whatever you're looking for, I really do think there is something for everybody. Especially in 2021, I think we've still got a long way to go as far as diverse representation in romance, but we've made a lot of progress and we're seeing a lot more rep every month, every day. So I do think if we continue along this path and we do bring in new authors and new readers... It's an ever-evolving genre, and that's what I love about it, is if you read a book published this month, it's gonna be nothing like a book published 10 years ago, but they still have their merits, they're still wonderful in their own way.

0:04:09.6 S2: Oh, I love it.

0:04:10.2 S3: I'm sold.

0:04:10.2 S2: Well, thank you so much for being with us. Yeah, yeah. We're here, we obviously love romance.

0:04:17.3 S3: Brought to you by the voice of romance.

0:04:20.6 S2: So thank you for giving questionable advice with us. So we will just jump right in with our letter for this episode.

0:04:26.8 S5: Our first letter, our letter this episode.

0:04:28.5 S2: Hit us, Zeo.

0:04:29.7 S5: Okay, so this is from Victoria. I always loved that name. "I'm a trans woman living in Pittsburgh and having issues with my transphobic mother. Her constant invalidation of my gender has been hurtful to both my partners and me. My prior partner, who identified strongly as a dyke, was not thrilled to have me constantly referred to with masculine pronouns as it erased both their sexuality and my gender. She also seems to be incapable of gendering my current partner correctly, insisting on using gender-neutral pronouns where totally inapplicable. I would love to hear your feedback on ways to constructively approach this issue, as it is an extremely sore subject. Love your show, keep up the great work. Kisses, Victoria." Thank you, Victoria.

0:05:12.5 S4: Thank you.

0:05:13.4 S5: Whew.

0:05:14.3 S2: Can we start off with a group hug for Victoria...

0:05:16.9 S2: 'Cause quite frankly, yeah, exactly, exactly. Big group hug for that, 'cause this is... This is heartbreaking, quite frankly, because you wanna think of your mom, not everybody has that relationship with a mom who is supportive. But you like to think your mom's always got your back, even if while she's got your back she's also nagging you about what you missed and telling you you load the dishwasher wrong and all of that stuff, but you know at her core she would be that person throwing the mountain lion across the yard for you. So that makes it really, really hard and heartbreaking, and I really wish there was a great answer, and maybe you guys have thought of one, but I wish there was a great answer that showed an option to say, "Well if you just sit her down and say these magical words to your mom," then your mom is going to have that eureka moment and the clouds are gonna part and everything's gonna be okay. As a romance writer, there is nothing more in the world that I would love to do than to say here's your three-step plan, go for it. I also am a Virgo, so I love a three-step plan.

0:06:40.3 S3: I'm with you.

0:06:41.5 S2: Yeah, but I don't know that there is one. I mean, this seems to be honestly a sit down with your mom, where you've gotta say, "These are my boundaries, this is my thing, these are my limits, and if you cannot go there, I cannot be here with you."

0:07:02.1 S3: Yeah, I mean...

0:07:04.3 S2: And that's awesome. I mean, my heart breaks for that. You guys, please say you have something better.

0:07:09.7 S5: I wish, but mom sounds like she's being more than a little bit passive-aggressive.

0:07:14.8 S2: Oh, yeah.

0:07:15.3 S5: It's like, Okay, I'm gonna meet you this far, but I'm not going to go any further and I'm gonna insist on doing these things that I know are hurtful to you, and that is disturbing, that's disturbing. 'cause it's one thing to say, I don't accept who you are, it's another to pretend like you do, and then do these little things that you know are gonna hurt your kid, that's, yeah.

0:07:35.4 S2: I think that's like step one is kind of figuring out where mom's head is at is... In that is... Is she being purposely passive-aggressive or is she just really in a place of fear, not understanding, because we all display those emotions differently, so I feel like if she really is just not grasping the concept. If she just does not understand when it comes to pronouns and misgendering somebody.

0:08:07.2 S2: One of my best friends is trans and they come from a very Catholic upbringing, and so I know that this was an issue when they were coming out as trans, and it's just a constant coming out, over and over and over again, that it's not a one sit down fits-all kind of situation. So I wish it was. I'm with you Avery. I wish it was as simple as that, but it's such a complex issue that I, on the one hand, want to believe in the best in mom. I want to believe that mom is just scared and doesn't understand and maybe wants to but is hesitant on how to approach that. And so in that regards, it's a lot of work that we're asking Victoria and anybody else to put in for... To make somebody understand, but if you wanna keep that connection with mom, it might be worth the work, so I think it's just about also kind of figuring out what is it that you want out of this relationship with mom as well?

0:09:15.0 S3: And I have so many questions still because I wish we had a little more information about what Victoria's relationship with her mom was like on other issues. 'cause I do think that it would be really helpful to know what... Is this the one part of their relationship that her mom is really fucking up and otherwise is pretty supportive. 'cause that would... Not that the supportive-ness would balance it out, but that that would make it really clear that like, Yeah, she's transphobic, because she loves you and is supportive of you in all these other ways, and yet that same person refusing to do this thing that sends a really clear picture, or is this something that her mom is pretty not great at in general, not great at listening, not great at being respectful, etcetera, and I do think that knowing some of those things would help know the approach... One thing I'm really... One thing I'm not sure about is like how many chances?

0:10:24.2 S2: Yeah.

0:10:24.5 S5: Yeah, I was wondering that myself.

0:10:27.4 S3: Yeah, because it sounds like from what Victoria is saying that this has been going on for a while, right? She's talking about her previous partner and herself and a current partner, so clearly this is not just someone who has come out as trans like this year.

0:10:41.8 S2: Yesterday.

0:10:43.2 S3: And so this is a mom who's had time... I feel like one of the things with conversations about trans kids being more in the media is that there's this whole support system for parents that has sprung up, that's like... And I say support system, not as if there's something wrong with being trans and you need to help, but system to support parents supporting children. Trans or gender non-conforming children, and part of that, that I've seen so much is parents kind of being like, "This is really hard, and it takes a lot of work and I need my kid to cut me some slack," and it's not that I'm not sympathetic to people needing to have slack cut, everyone gets to feel that way, but to be honest, I'm pretty unsympathetic to parents who are saying that they need time to say to their children, the one thing that makes the difference between making them feel like a person and making them feel like a mistake.

0:11:50.1 S2: How much time do you need to say, "I love you no matter what."

0:11:53.3 S4: Yeah.

0:11:53.9 S5: Yeah.

0:11:54.5 S3: Exactly. And so I think that one piece of this that I'm struggling with is, I don't wanna say to Victoria like, Fuck your mom because we don't quite have enough information maybe, but I'm also like, there's a big difference between years of misgendering your child, and not... Everyone makes mistakes, but if you misgender your child and you made a mistake, then you say, I'm really sorry sweetie. What I meant to say was and then you [0:12:22.0] ____.

0:12:23.2 S5: Right, right. That does not sound like what's happening here now.

0:12:26.3 S3: Yeah, it doesn't sound like what's happening yeah, and so there is this three-part plan, Virgo-style plan where we can be like, Okay, you just have to figure out what's your mom's key? How do we figure out what's the way to make her understand? And when we figure that out, then we can fix it in this way, and that might be true, but it's actually not your job to figure out how your mom's brain works and then deliver to her the precise academic words to make her treat you like a person. And I think so many parents don't understand the... To many parents, I think they're thinking, there are 100 lines of my relationship with my kid and their transness is one of them, and so if I'm messing up on this one angle. I'm still succeeding in these 99 other angles, and to the trans-kid of that parent.

0:13:28.5 S3: They know that you're doing great in 99 ways, but the one way that they really need you, you are 100% failing at. And I think that that math just feels really different on the parent side of the equation and on the kids side of the equation. Sorry, I've been talking for a really long time.

0:13:48.1 S5: No, no, I was just thinking...

0:13:49.6 S2: No, I think that's a great point.

0:13:51.0 S5: It is. There was a conversation that had or I was part of a panel a couple of years ago, and it was with a trans man and his mom. And they were talking about a group that she was in, like other parents of trans kids. And she was saying there was a woman who was like, "I needed time to mourn the loss of my daughter before I could accept my son." And everyone turned and looked like, "What?" It was like "Mourn?" like, "What?" That was such a... So I'm wondering if there is something like that going on here, where this parent feels wronged somehow, because their kids asserting who they are and is proud of who they are, and they're just like, "I don't accept that because it's not what I envisioned or... " You know what I mean?

0:14:38.1 S2: You know what that is, that is such another way that our society and its rigid gender standards historically screw people over. Because what I hear, and I could be hearing incorrectly, but what I hear when a parent were to say something like that is they are mourning the societal things that come with having a girl. So like the father-daughter dance, the wedding, or going and getting pedicures together, or whatever may be, that gender-specific, very strict activity. It's the same that comes with the people that, and listen, everybody has their thing, but will try and have kids forever so they can have the one gender they're missing, right?

0:15:34.8 S5: Yeah, that's...

[laughter]

0:15:34.8 S2: And everybody has their thing, alright? I have three kids, so I'm not gonna judge anybody with multiples. But that is... That again, is what it's about, is not the actual human, it is about the gender expectation that comes with that. And so that's what I hear when I get that.

0:16:00.6 S3: Yeah, I totally...

[overlapping conversation]

0:16:01.6 S2: One thing we haven't talked about that I wanted to bring up with this letter, and I think it's a really universal thing, not that rest of this has not been, but when Victoria talks about how her mom misgenders her and that affects her partner. And I think that that is something that is a past impressive mother-in-law specialty no matter what the relationship, what the gender relationship is of the parties involved.

0:16:38.8 S2: And I think that as the partner whose mother that is, you have to pay special attention. Because it's one of those what you choose to do with your mental health, with your body, with your... All of that stuff is you. But when you are bringing another person into it and they love you, so they're trying to put up with a whole lot, but what you're doing is you're bringing somebody into a situation where you know they're gonna be harmed and you are not sticking up for them, that is bad. And Victoria doesn't say in the letter what her reaction is to this. If she's like... It's like, "Mom, we're leaving if you can't get this right." Or even if the partner is not there at all and doesn't care. And I still think you need to stick up for your partner at that point in time, it doesn't matter if they hear or not. But yeah, that's another level of this, I think.

0:17:35.1 S3: Yeah, and I think that's such an interesting point because I wonder whether the mom is doing it passive aggressively on purpose, if so, that sucks. But I also think that that's another dimension that a lot of parents or a lot of folks from older generations might not understand is implicit to misgendering their own child is that if your child is a trans woman dating a woman who identifies as a lesbian, then misgendering them is completely negating and erasing the identity of that person.

0:18:06.8 S2: Identity, yeah.

0:18:07.9 S3: And I think, again, part of the discourse of this that I see from the parent's side is they're thinking of it as their child, right? And the arrow is just so direct. But actually your child is also someone's partner, someone's sibling, someone's best friend. And you're thinking about maintaining what to you is your fantasy of that child that you had before they were born or whatever, however that works. But there are real other people who are being harmed and negated and made to feel terrible by what you're doing as well. So it's just one more level of remove, of damage. And I was thinking, when you were talking Avery, about the fantasy that parents can have that are just totally based in sexist societal gender norms, I think that's so right on. And there's a little bit of this that made me wonder, is the mom secretly feeling this magical thinking like, "If I start gendering my daughter correctly, then it's like a done deal."

0:19:20.6 S5: That's gonna be all.

0:19:21.2 S3: It's like a done deal. It's real, it's acknowledged. And so this is just putting up this little bit, even maybe just for the moms for herself, putting up this little bit of like, "As long as I don't go along with it, I can still cling to the idea that it's not real or it's not happening."

0:19:37.0 S4: That it's just a phase.

0:19:39.4 S2: That's a good point. And honestly, I studied film in college, and one of the things we talk about when it comes to fears is that the scariest thing that you can be afraid of is the unknown. But the minute you put a face to the monster or a name to whatever is going on, then you know what it is, you can conquer it, you can understand it. And so it feels like her mom is just very much trying to...

0:20:12.4 S2: Shy away from that because the minute, like Rowan said, you acknowledge it, then it's real. This is the reality we live with.

0:20:21.6 S5: Well, naming something gives it power. So as long as she doesn't name it, then she feels like she has some...

0:20:28.0 S2: Control.

0:20:28.2 S5: Semblance of control, yeah.

0:20:30.9 S3: I'm honestly wondering where Victoria's dad is in all of this. I don't know if it's a single mom or if there's a dad or a partner involved. Because that would also complicate things for me a little bit, like is her dad... If there's a dad in the picture, is her dad doing worse and so she's clinging to a relationship with her mom because that is more supportive parent? That would complicate things for me a little bit. Having to have someone to cut off, someone who's the one parent who is supporting you, or on the other hand, if there's a dad in the picture if her dad is really supportive.

0:21:09.3 S3: If I were married and had a kid with someone and that kid was trans and my partner was misgendering my kid, I would be murderous, and that would be a deal breaker for me, where I would be like, "Partner, that's my kid you're misgendering. And I don't care how hard a time you're having with it, that's on you. It's not someone else as a responsibility to curtail the fullness of their human journey, to make you feel comfortable. Get your shit together or we're getting divorced." That's... So I'm curious.

0:21:49.9 S2: Yeah, Victoria, we wish we had a better answer for you.

0:21:54.6 S5: We got something out of all of that.

0:21:57.4 S2: I feel like as we've circled around it, it's not Victoria's job to educate mom.

0:22:02.8 S5: Right.

0:22:03.0 S2: It's not Victoria's job to tell mom how to understand who she is or what her pronouns are, or her partner's pronouns, but this is something that... This is a journey mom has to take and it's up to victory to decide how present she wants to be in that journey as mom takes it.

0:22:24.5 S4: I agree. She needs to be the one to take responsibility for what her boundaries are and to stick to those, which is hard.

0:22:34.4 S5: I would say to Victoria to sit down with mom and say, "We're gonna have a conversation about this. Just this, not anything else, like this is gonna be the subject. Here is who I am, this is where this is what I'm feeling, this is what I'm thinking, and these are the things that you need to figure out. Whether you want to support me, whether you don't I can not go... " 'Cause clearly, this can't go on. I think Victoria, you need to put your foot down and say, "This is where it stops. So either you support me fully or we'll have to renegotiate our relationship."

0:23:09.3 S2: And not accept answers just like, "I'll do better."

0:23:12.5 S5: Yeah, exactly.

0:23:12.6 S2: Or "I'm going to try." We need concrete action plan. This is where our three-step Virgo plan comes into play.

[laughter]

0:23:23.0 S4: On mom's side of things.

0:23:25.1 S2: That's true, that's really true. And you know what, who knows, maybe mom would react well to that because maybe... Okay, in a very super kind looking at the whole situation, probably overly kind and naïve, is perhaps mom is floundering. Perhaps mom is really floundering. So strict guidelines might be a way to help.

0:23:55.2 S5: And being explicit about how it hurts too.

0:23:57.9 S2: I think that is extremely hopeful, but yeah.

0:24:03.2 S3: I agree with you that adding the feeling part might be... Obviously, we said there was no magic missing key here to unlock this, but I think my experience with folks who are going through something where their parents are not supportive, is that after a while you shut down the feelings part because it's too painful, to be that vulnerable to someone who's harming you. And I wonder if... I think it would be so hard and do as I say, not as I do, because I fail at this all the time to say to your mom, "We've talked about this before, I've told you what I want every single time I'm with you and you do the opposite of what I've asked you to do. It makes me feel like you don't love me, like you don't care about me.

0:25:00.7 S3: Like your ideas about who I am as a person are more important than who I actually am and that feels like absolute shit. And every time I talk to you, I get off the phone or I get in the car, and I leave and I cry because my mom doesn't respect my humanity as a person, that's how you make you feel. Is that how you mean to make me feel? Because if it's not, there's a set of actions that you need to take because that is how I feel every time I talk to you." And if that doesn't get your mom, nothing will that you can do. I don't think.

0:25:39.4 S2: Victoria, another hug.

0:25:42.7 S5: Yeah, group hug.

0:25:43.3 S2: Another group hug. And we love you.

0:25:52.0 S1: This episode of Dear Romance Writer is brought to you by Lone Wolf by Diana Palmer, Rebecca Zanetti and Kate Pearce from Kensington. It's a 3 in 1 book with stories about solitary heroes who are about to meet their perfect partners from a trio of New York times best-selling authors. In Colorado cowboy by Diana Palmer, Ester Maris is fleeing her mother's killer and ends up in a rugged strangers cabin. As Ester heals, she realizes how much danger she's brought to his door and how far he'll go to protect her. In the Lone Wolf on her doorstep by Kate Pearce, Beth Baker senses her grumpy summer tenant must be in trouble when his pet Wolf shows up at her door demanding she follow. Connor O'Neil solitary and stubborn, doesn't want Beth's help, but only he can show her how to trust again.

0:26:44.1 S1: In Rescue cowboy style by Rebecca Zanetti. Trent Logan has his ranch, his friends and his wolf, and that's more than enough, until a shivering City girl runs into the cattle club to escape a Wyoming storm. Her eyes hold a world of secrets and he'll have to face the demons of his own past in order to save them both. You can find Lone Wolf by Diana Palmer, Rebecca Zanetti and Kate Pearce, wherever books are sold. Find out more at Kensingtonbooks.com.

0:27:24.7 S2: Well, continuing in our mother stories, [laughter] I guess will be our...

0:27:32.9 S5: Now to something completely different.

[chuckle]

0:27:34.6 S2: Yes, and our transition out of there, there was a story that was on, I think, all of our social media loops lately, about a woman discovering that her son's bride is her long lost daughter.

0:27:48.4 S5: But wait, there is more.

[laughter]

0:27:49.7 S2: So we just wanted to share this and chat a little bit about this because this is really interesting. So I'm just taking a little snippet out of Yahoo news, you could definitely find it all over the place.

0:28:02.0 S5: We'll put the link in our website or whatever.

0:28:06.1 S2: Yes, absolutely. In the show notes. So what we've got is basically a woman in Eastern China had the shock of her life when she found out that her son was marrying her long-lost daughter. The reunion occurred right at the would-be spouse's wedding. The shocking discovery was made after the woman noticed a birthmark on the bride's hand, which looks strikingly similar to that of her long-lost child. Determined to uncover the truth, the woman mustered the courage to ask the bride's parents whether she was adopted.

0:28:37.4 S2: After explaining her story and the identical birthmark, bride's parents eventually confirmed that their child had been adopted. Details were quickly ironed out, and the bride confirmed that she was indeed the woman's long lost biological daughter. It turns out she went missing as a child and was picked up by her adoptive parents on the road side, some 20 years ago. The wedding could have been called off at this point, but the woman also revealed that her son, her now daughters groom was also adopted. The wedding proceeded as planned, but the shocking twist is one detour their guests will never forget.

0:29:13.4 S5: If you submitted this as a script or a manuscript, they'd be like, "Yeah, go back to the FanFic that you were working on before."

[laughter]

[overlapping conversation]

0:29:22.0 S2: Yeah, that would never happen.

0:29:24.2 S2: Dial it down baby, dial it down. I get told all the time that I'm too so soap-opery. This is like my jam, I love this.

0:29:33.2 S5: Right, it's one of those articles you skim the first few lines like, "Oh man, that's amazing." And then for some reason, I kept reading and I was like... And then I just went on like, "Oh my gosh, you are not gonna believe what happens at the end of this thing." It's just wow.

0:29:45.8 S2: And can we just talk about the fact that this happens on the day of the wedding.

0:29:49.5 S5: At the wedding. [chuckle]

0:29:50.3 S3: Oh, yeah.

0:29:51.3 S2: I'm just like, well...

0:29:52.3 S5: And the guests are like... I'm doing tennis heads here, sorry for the podcast people.

[laughter]

0:29:57.1 S5: Just like watching a tennis match go back and forth like, "What? Wait, what?" I wanna see the birth mark, honestly, like how recognizable...

0:30:05.5 S2: It's gotta be super unique. But so this led to a conversation on our group chat about the ways in which families have secrets. [chuckle] And how sometimes it's hard to keep those family secrets, they always have a tendency to come out, which was interesting with this.

0:30:31.7 S5: Maybe not so dramatically, but...

0:30:32.7 S2: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so if you've got a twisted family tree, you are definitely not alone in this world.

0:30:41.6 S5: You can pull this up, you are like, "Well, at least it wasn't like that wedding in China in 2021."

0:30:48.3 S3: I just keep thinking too, if you're thinking about being the bride in a wedding, you're like, "Oh, I want people to remember my dress, I want people to talk about the food, and the band and everything."

0:31:01.9 S2: They are never talking about that stuff.

0:31:03.7 S3: I'm like, "Nobody is ever gonna remember your wedding as anything but the day where you realized you were marrying your step-brother, adopted brother." I'm not even really sure what their relationship. Well, they're married now, so husband and wife, there you go.

0:31:20.5 S5: I wonder how long it took for them to all work this out. 'Cause I've been to some weddings that are like an hour, and then I've been to a wedding that lasted 12 hours. Was this like a long day planned already, and they were just... [chuckle] I'm sorry, but they're just like, "Yeah, we were here anyway, let's just hang out." Or was it like, "Here, the ceremonies in 15 minutes." But all this stuff happens and people are just waiting around to find out what goes... How did this... I would really love to see how this played out. But I imagine being the mother and the daughter. And the daughter is a bride, your wedding day, you're totally focused on like, "Do I have something in my teeth? Is my dress... Somebody is gonna step on it." That whole thing. And then there's this woman who keeps looking at you and looking at your hand and stuff.

0:32:09.9 S2: And it's your future mother in law.

0:32:11.4 S5: And it's your future mother-in-law, and you're like, " Oh man...

0:32:13.1 S2: Giving you the judgy look.

0:32:14.2 S5: "I thought she passed... I thought she already gave me her blessing, why is she looking at me like this?" And how did she not realize this... They hadn't met before? How did this... There is so much going on.

0:32:25.2 S2: There are layers upon layers to this. And the other thing to think about too is I wonder, okay, and this is probably just me and my active imagination, but if you do the 23andMe DNA thing, right? You get on... You get a little email listing or you can check in whenever you have relatives that come in, right?

0:32:49.6 S5: I've heard about that, that just freaks me out.

0:32:50.7 S2: Yes, and I am the person that is constantly waiting for the one that says, "You have a brother or you have a sister."

[laughter]

0:33:00.5 S2: I'm sorry, Dad. But that is constantly my assumption, so I am always waiting for that. So I kind of wonder how many of these type of stories there are out there now that we don't care about because of the DNA things that happen, or there have been the stories about the families that have been found because there's one sperm donor who...

0:33:24.8 S5: Oh, yeah, yeah yeah...

0:33:25.7 S2: Ended up... Yeah, 'cause that happened recently too. And like we talked about the fact that when in the olden days, our parents' generation, that unplanned pregnancies could end up with adoption a lot of times, and if that adoption was local, then you never knew. So, I don't know, I think all of these twisty little family stories are interesting and really kind of lean us back towards the importance of communication, which Rowan is always like, "Cameron, home going. Just be honest." That is the Rowan quote, "Just be honest. Just say what you're thinking."

[laughter]

0:34:07.7 S5: And there was stuff in the article about whether or not the daughter was a victim of child trafficking. They said that they found her by the side of the road, which may be, but imagine being a woman who carried the pain of losing your daughter, either through kidnapping or just loss or whatever, and then... That's just...

0:34:28.9 S2: To find her again.

0:34:30.4 S5: And then find her again after like... 'Cause some women just push it all down. Some people just push all the pain and all the loss and stuff down, and then to have it slap you in the face like that, that must have been quite a day.

0:34:42.7 S3: Yeah. Well, what I kept wondering was would the mother had started this all up if her son had not been adopted. If it had been her biological son, would she... 'Cause okay, it's all about what is the construction of formally right, and one of the things that gets talked about...

0:35:02.2 S2: There're genetics in there too.

0:35:03.7 S3: But what I think gets talked about so much is what makes it... What is the incest taboo? The incest taboo is not a genetic thing, it's about being with someone who was raised in the social role of the sibling, or cousin or whatever it is, but the idea that family is one category and romance and sex are another category, and in this instance, even if they were biologically related, which people have their own thoughts on this, those two people never knew each other, so they're not siblings. Culturally, but they... And so I think it really depends... First, so for some people, they're like, "Oh my God. They share genetic material. They are 100% siblings. That's horrible." Other people are like, "They may as well be strangers. Their genetics don't have anything to do with how they relate."

0:35:55.3 S2: I am firmly in the genetic camp, and I will stay there, and I will live there and I will build my big home, alright? No brothers and sisters. Sorry.

0:36:06.9 S4: I feel like that would have been something I would have said a few years ago, but I think I'm actually more in the other camp at this point, because I've seen enough TV shows and movies where we find this couple and they're so in love and they got married and oh, it's the perfect life, only to reveal that, "Uh oh, you're long lost siblings." But they were never raised together as siblings, they don't have that familial bond, and so I don't know.

0:36:37.3 S2: Well, that could be the case, but that doesn't change the fact that you can have so many genetic problems with that. With mixing the same...

0:36:45.4 S4: Well, do you have to have children?

0:36:45.8 S2: Like winding your thing. You know what? To me, that is a taboo too far.

0:36:52.3 S3: There has been research. One of the things that... I feel like that is the thing that people often bring up, and definitely it's more likely with siblings, I guess, if kids are something you're gonna have. But I actually Googled it right before this, 'cause I wanted to know the statistic.

0:37:06.4 S4: I love you.