In 1970, outside a Houston hospital, a couple pulled up to a curb and drove away with a newborn. No agency. No judge. No paperwork. That baby was Patricia Knight Meyer. Julie and Patricia met in person at Adoption: The Making of Me in Austin this April, squealing and hugging like old friends after years of finding each other online. Patricia’s memoir, Wonderland: Memoir of a Black-Market Adoption, is Julie’s favorite adoptee memoir she has ever read. In this conversation, they go underneath the story Patricia has told in so many places. They talk about growing up with a birthday nobody could confirm, and the recurring nightmares of “The Dark Man” that stopped only when a piece of paper finally said who she belonged to. They talk about feeling grateful and misplaced at the same time, and why Patricia sees her parents as victims of a system built on secrecy. And they talk about what it means to finally write yourself home: the grief that still surfaces after the book is written, the gift of genetic mirroring she found with her late birth father, and why every adoptee deserves the truth about where they came from. In This Episode Walking into her first adoptee conference and realizing, for the first time, what it feels like to fully belongWhy she named the book Wonderland, and the Lewis Carroll quotes that open many of its chaptersLiving with a birthday she can’t confirm, and the daily reminder of not knowing her own truth“The Dark Man” nightmares, and what changed when her delayed certificate of birth arrivedHow trauma memory works, and why she wrote certain scenes before beginning EMDRThe “Brown Babies” chapter: feeling like she had to make up for her adoptive mother’s lossesBeing grateful and misplaced at the same time, and the secrets she learned to keep as a childWhy her parents, a mixed-race couple in 1960s Texas, likely turned to a private adoption, and how she understands their choices nowWhere adoption trauma has lived in her body, and the grief that surfaced years after she thought she’d processed itWhy adoption should be the last option, not the firstFinding a biological cousin placed by the same attorneyWhat she wishes she’d known before reunion, and why reunion has to move at the pace of the slowest personThe genetic mirroring she found with her late birth father, and releasing Wonderland on the anniversary of his deathWhat she hopes people across the constellation take from the bookThe “Down the Rabbit Hole” launch event in AustinResources & Links Mentioned The Refuge, Julie’s monthly community for adult adopteesWonderland: Memoir of a Black-Market Adoption (Unsolicited Press, November 3, 2026)Down the Rabbit Hole: The Fight for Texas Adoptee Rights Then and Now. Friday, Nov. 6, 2026, 6:30 p.m. Central, Bullock Texas State History Museum, Austin. Free in person and free livestream, with a recording sent to everyone who registers. Benefits the National Association of Adoptees and Parents, Saving Our Sisters, and Adoption Knowledge Affiliates.Patricia’s blogUn-M-Othered: A Revolution in Adoptee Healing, with Julie and Dr. Liz DeBetta. December 4–6, Highland, MichiganCall to Action If something in this conversation stirred something in you, don’t rush past it. If it feels supportive, put a hand where you feel it and breathe there for a moment. If this podcast has meant something to you, a five-star review, or even a few written words, helps more adoptees and the people who love them find their way here. Belonging was never something you were supposed to go out and find in someone else’s approval. Stop outsourcing belonging - insource it! Website Instagram: @juliebrumley_ Facebook: julierasbrum TikTok: @juliebrumley_ Click to Join My Free Adoptee Facebook Group You Tube: @julie_brumley
