172. Michael Knox: "Not Lucky, Nor Chosen"

Once Upon A Time...In Adopteeland

Michael Knox is a returning guest, and after four years of listening to podcasts and interacting with his biological family, he has a different view on adoption. Coming out of the fog, he thinks is a real thing. Nobody can really define it, but there are things that he discovered that might help explain it for some people. The fact that after 25 years of sobriety, his way of handling it was going back to drinking was the wrong way to deal with it.

Michael was adopted in 1961 in Illinois. He grew up with two younger sisters; 1 adopted 1 bio. His family moved to Southern California when he was five. He has been married for 38 years and has three wonderful children and two granddaughters. He worked in the television industry for many years and moved his family to Atlanta work on Olympics and never left Atlanta.

Around 2002, Michael started running, biking and swimming one thing led to another and he started doing Iron Man triathlons. If you asked him to describe himself in 2019 he would say “A husband, father, grandfather & athlete”. He did both Ancestry and 23andMe out of curiosity and was never searching for family. there was a match on 23andMe and life changed forever! Now, he describes himself as ADOPTED, husband, father, grandfather & athlete.

At years 58 years old on July 3 2019, Michael found his birth mom and maternal half brother and sister. With a little more research he found his birth father who passed away in 2011. He had 4 sons and 1 daughter. Michael now has a total of 9 siblings!

Michael's first appearance was during Season 3, episode 44.

Recommended Books: "The Girls Who Went Away"- Ann Fessler, "The Primal Wound"-Nancy Verrier, "The Body Keeps the Score"-Bessell van der Kolk

Recommended Podcasts: Adoptees on, Who am I really?, Adoption; The Making of Me, Pulled by the Root, The Adoption Files, Thriving Adoptees, Voice of Adoptees, Adoption Unfiltered, Unraveling Adoption, Birth Mom’s Real Talk, DNA Surprises, Everything is Relative, and NPE Stories

Music by Corey Quinn