A whole industry exists to help people become parents. What it has been much slower to develop is any curiosity about the person it creates.

Dr. Alissa Beuerlein — licensed counselor, PhD, seventeen years in practice — built the only therapist training on donor-conceived experience from the ground up, drawing on the testimony of the community itself. She is also donor-conceived. She found out as a teenager. The adults around her said she shouldn't be so upset.

In this conversation, Dr. Emma and Dr. Beuerlein examine the intentional blank at the center of donor conception — the gap that isn't accidental, but structured in by a system organized around recipient parents and donor privacy, with the actual person an afterthought. They talk about identity, grief, deconstruction, and what it means to reach toward a biological connection that doesn't reach back.

For donor-conceived people. For therapists. For anyone who has ever inherited a story about where they came from and wondered what it would cost to question it.

Full Show Notes

Support for the show provided by Nine to Kind Planners — use code EMMA20 for 20% off.

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