Long Lost Family - General Discussion

[Jadzia]

From what I have read on various DNA Facebook groups, the show has a long lead time and researchers are working many cases before they even come to air. Usually participants have to hand over access to their Ancestry DNA accounts and they can’t look at them while the producers are researching.  If the producers can’t make any headway after a certain amount of time they give the access back to the adoptee and don’t select them for the show. 

I was wondering if they record the first contact with the person they find and then edit it on the show to make it sound like Chris or Lisa is the one calling them for the first time. 

I find it funny that they always show these important calls happening while the hosts are driving their SUV or in a coffee shop. 

[tres bien]

I really didn't like Friday's episode. 

There was too much over the top drama or even faux drama for me.

There really wasn't anything unusual in either story that, for me, merited an episode. 

And as in many episodes,  unanswered questions.  I would have liked to know if Greg's adopted mother was ever heard from again or did she just disappear?

Edited November 25, 2019 by tres bien

[iMonrey]

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I was wondering if they record the first contact with the person they find and then edit it on the show to make it sound like Chris or Lisa is the one calling them for the first time. 

Oh they definitely do that, because every subject is first shown explaining their story to some unseen camera man, and then either Lisa or Chris shows up to meet them and they explain it all over again!

[readerblue]

I didn’t understand why they had the lady from the salvation home there just to say the name of the hospital, especially when the birth mom knew it was close to the home. As soon as she said it, the birth mom was like, oh yeah that’s it.  Why not just see what hospitals are close to there and see which name rings a bell. 

[RoxiP]

The woman from the Salvation Army home was labeled an "adoption activist" - probably her friend wanted to bring her on the show as a resource.   I suspect there was a lot more filmed with her that ended up on the cutting room floor.

[iMonrey]

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I didn’t understand why they had the lady from the salvation home there just to say the name of the hospital, especially when the birth mom knew it was close to the home. As soon as she said it, the birth mom was like, oh yeah that’s it.  Why not just see what hospitals are close to there and see which name rings a bell. 

Or why they had to take her back to the Salvation Army home to tell her they'd found her daughter. I also wondered whether or not that house still functions as such, or if it's just a private residence now, or some other business (or vacant). It was a very distinctive building.

Greg's DNA turning up a match for a half brother just goes to show how Ancestry is really letting a lot of skeletons out of a lot of closets. Imagine finding out your father had some other kid before you were born and not only did you never know about it, but neither did he!

[Blergh]

OK, nice that the Eurasian woman born in South Korea then raised in New York was able to find her male bio parent in the US via the Ancestry.com. However; it's odd that not only did he NOT mention what her female bio  parent's name was when he recounted his recollections  of the woman's conception but the woman herself did not ASK what her female io parent's name was. I know that there are a small number of surnames in South Korea for a large number of people and many given names are quite common but even if it had the Korean equivalent for 'Jane Smith', I'd think that would be a good start to see if they could find her ID- especially since her male parent said it was a relatively small town he met the woman's female parent in.  I just thought it odd that there seemed no attempt to even ASK the question. 

[jabinlbc]

23 hours ago, iMonrey said:

Greg's DNA turning up a match for a half brother just goes to show how Ancestry is really letting a lot of skeletons out of a lot of closets. Imagine finding out your father had some other kid before you were born and not only did you never know about it, but neither did he!

My friend recently did Ancestry DNA and discovered her dad had two previously unknown younger half sisters (his father/her grandfather had been a traveling salesman and apparently had an ongoing relationship with a woman who had two daughters that were subsequently put up for adoption).  He recently met up with them.  This would have made a good episode!

[iMonrey]

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OK, nice that the Eurasian woman born in South Korea then raised in New York was able to find her male bio parent in the US via the Ancestry.com. However; it's odd that not only did he NOT mention what her female bio  parent's name was when he recounted his recollections  of the woman's conception but the woman herself did not ASK what her female io parent's name was. 

I assumed there is some legality in mentioning the name without the person's consent, because the birth mother may not want her story told on TV or want to meet her daughter for some reason. They don't reveal names when the subject does not wish to be involved or cannot be located.

[abc123baby]

On 11/17/2019 at 3:42 PM, Galloway Cave said:

The one aspect of the search that is time-consuming and at times difficult is when CeCe or Jen have to go back multiple generations to find the common ancestor, then work forward to possible birth parents. It's like solving a math problem. If you don't have subscriptions to various other sites (newspapers or Fold3), that can also slow down the search. Right now I am hung up on tree because I haven't cracked open my wallet for access to international records. 

YES! it is super time and detail intensive. i did my own DNA and had a girl connect with me as a 3-4 cousin. she was adopted and i was closest connection. i did not know how we were related, but i worked up to our common ancestor, my grandmother and her great grandmother were sisters. my grandmother had five sisters though!, and then worked down each sisters families, who all had 5-6 children each as possible grandparents, and then down to her possible mother. and I found her! it helped that i was able to ask my extended family information even if no one was forthcoming with any information. i eventually got her grandfather, my my grandmother's nephew, who i knew his name but had never met and he confirmed his daughter was the birth mother. 

[Blergh]

23 hours ago, iMonrey said:

I assumed there is some legality in mentioning the name without the person's consent, because the birth mother may not want her story told on TV or want to meet her daughter for some reason. They don't reveal names when the subject does not wish to be involved or cannot be located.

I understand what you are saying but what would have stopped the grown Eurasian woman or the interviewer from asking the woman's male bio parent the question- and the male bio parent giving the answer with any name's sound edited out? IOW, the producers could have had it for him to said "Her name was Rumplestilskin" but the viewers would have only heard "Her name was ... "  then the grown Eurasian woman could have said "Now that I've met my bio dad, I hope I can find Rumplestilskin," but the viewers not needing to hear the name.

However; there seemed to have been no attempt either by the searching woman herself or the interviewer to even ask the question. 

[iMonrey]

Blergh I think it's a production decision more than anything else. The participants are either told in advance not to bring it up, or else they do and the show edits it out. Their choice to deal with it is to ignore it. But I do agree it's frustrating. There are dozens of episodes where the searcher shows a baffling lack of curiosity about half of the equation, and I can't believe that's really the case. The show just backs away from whatever they can't reveal or don't know.

[bybrandy]

yes, like in the most recent episode there is no doubt in my mind that the producers took what the sister thought she knew about their birth dad and tried to make contact with him but they didn't go into those details.   

[iMonrey]

Marnie and Mary: I don't see that ending up well. Any time the adopted child turns out to have had a rather unhappy life (parents divorcing, cold, distant, dying, whatever) I think that guilt automatically gets projected back onto the birth mother. Marnie just seems a little too needy. 

Amanda and Courtney: It sounds like their father was sort of a garbage person. He got two different women pregnant in less than a year and both gave their kids up for adoption. Courtney's mother didn't want any contact with her and neither did her father. But I'm glad they found each other, they are both lovely girls and seem to have good lives. 

[tres bien]

December 13th episode Switched at the Hospital was really the saddest episode of LLF I've seen.

Most of the stories are typical of what I expect and basically the same. This one came out of nowhere. 

[threebluestars]

That was a wild story. Switched at birth is one shock, but to have your cultural upbringing also not match your DNA is like a second shock. I felt bad for everyone involved. I wonder if Mary Ann's parents ever had any inkling?

[Gramto6]

And the other sister, the one that belonged in the Hispanic family, how is she going to deal with all this? She was robbed of her heritage.  It is sad all around. That birth hospital is closed, wonder if there were other problems there that brought it down?

[sonder]

Switched at the hospital. Crazy. The found sister stated she talked to her father about it who noticed right away at the hospital it was the wrong baby and the mother noticed a week later. The mother didn’t do anything because she bonded with the baby? Even though the mother had bonded with the wrong baby, she allowed her biological daughter to be out who knows where and with who in the world. That’s even crazier. I googled trying to find an update but nothing. That means the other baby has a whole Hispanic family to meet if she wants. Does she have siblings on her Hispanic side to meet? I missed that part. Many other switched at hospital stories come up when I tried googling an update. I wonder how the other switched baby looks because it seems if this happened today, many people would be saying that child is in the wrong family or something! Very sad and I wonder what the Hispanic parents ever thought of the white/blonde daughter. Too bad all the parents are gone in this story. 

[Koalagirl]

Switched at hospital. I have to wonder if either husband was afraid their wife had been unfaithful but were afraid to push the issue.  In those days DNA didn’t exist but wouldn’t a simple blood test have helped in some way?

[iMonrey]

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And the other sister, the one that belonged in the Hispanic family, how is she going to deal with all this? She was robbed of her heritage.  It is sad all around. 

While I understand completely, I wish the other sister had agreed to be interviewed. It felt like half of the story was missing. The older sister said she had always suspected she wasn't biologically related but she did not mention if the sister herself ever spoke of it or wondered about it. I mean, it had to have occurred to her at some point in her life. She made it sound like it was something she and her father talked about once and nobody else ever did.

The trash bin baby was super sad too, but she was lucky her older sister made such an effort to find her and even left her phone number. Talk about making Lisa's job easy. I thought it was really cute she wanted to do a bunch of girly sister things like paint each other's nails. I hope they have a successful relationship. I'm worried the older sister might turn out to be a little too needy, and I'm not sure the younger sister will welcome the constant reminder of what happened to her after the newness wears off.

[UsernameFatigue]

2 hours ago, Koalagirl said:

Switched at hospital. I have to wonder if either husband was afraid their wife had been unfaithful but were afraid to push the issue.  In those days DNA didn’t exist but wouldn’t a simple blood test have helped in some way?

I thought the same thing with regards to the parents, where the fathers could have accused the mothers of being unfaithful. What a mess. A blood test could have helped of course only if the child had a different blood type from either of the parents, but given that a blood type like O positive is very common, it is quite possible that though unrelated child and parent(s) may have shared a blood type. 

I thought it was odd too that the mother of one of the babies thought she had the wrong one but since she had already bonded didn't pursue it. One would think she would have wondered until the day she died if she had a biological daughter out there somewhere and how she was doing? And the father too, of course. 

The woman raised in the Hispanic family said she was raised with a brother, so it looks like each woman has at least one biological sibling. I hope the woman with the Hispanic brother was able to connect with him and have a similar outcome to the sisters shown. 

[Yeah No]

Both girls were robbed of their heritage.  I cried more during this episode than any other so far.  I still can't wrap my mind around not going back to the hospital if you weren't 100% sure it was your own baby, bonding and no DNA or not.  When I think of some of the things that people did back in the day that most of us would never do now it does shock me, even in some situations in my own life.  But I know for sure my own mother would never have let that happen.  She would have felt that something was wrong and spoke up about it even back then.  I just can't understand some people, what can I say?  I too am sad that the other sister didn't agree to be interviewed.  I hate it that in recent seasons we are left with unresolved ends on this show more than ever before.  At least they could have mentioned that they all got together and everything was going well or whatever.  Setting the audience up for something then letting us down without any acknowledgement really sucks.

On a shallow note, the seeking sister reminded me of a real-life version of the cartoon character, Cathy.

Edited December 15, 2019 by Yeah No

[RoxiP]

That was just a strange, sad story.  The father said he noticed right away in the hospital that the baby looked different but that the mother was still in the twilight stage of drugs (weird, I don't think I got that many drugs post-birth) and said it was their baby, and then apparently she noticed it later but because she had already bonded didn't pursue it?  That is just strange and weird.

[Gussie]

On 2/19/2017 at 9:19 PM, jenifaohjenny said:

Yes....that's what kind of confused me because I felt like that new story from that daughter was a different story concerning what her father was arrested for - it was not kidnapping. Just wondering what the true story was in the end. 

The three sisters that were reunited, I never saw the original episode of that. The youngest one seemed to have a nice childhood in Massachusetts, but she was very bitter. Just about the fact they did not tell her until she was older? There must have been more...I hope I find that original episode on demand. 

I did a google search and found out the father was charged with transporting a minor across state lines for sexual misconduct.

[PamelaMaeSnap]

I realize I'm coming a little late to the party here but I've been bingewatching this show of late (it goes well with knitting) and maybe it's hormones (joke, I'm long past that stage) but I have yet to watch an episode where I DON'T get teary-eyed at some point.

Is it possible I'm no longer jaded? Does anyone else here stealth-cry a lot at this show?

I had my Ancestry.com done and there were virtually zero surprises (except that I was able to trace back my paternal grandmother's line, the one that had been the biggest mystery, to the mid-1700s in "Eastern Europe") but I'm trying to convince my husband to spit into a tube for me so we can give our newly-married daughter everything she needs to know about her ancestry ... especially since hubby doesn't actually know the identity of one of his grandfathers (he only knew his step-grand in real life and only knew his blood-grandfather by what is obviously an "Ellis Island Special" name). 

 

[Porkchop]

I miss this show! Will it ever come back?

[CeeVee]

On 12/12/2017 at 11:02 AM, iMonrey said:

I thought the exact same thing! I knew from the start it would turn out they weren't full siblings, because they made such a huge deal out of it, and they looked nothing alike. And  Jason looked exactly like his father in that photo. Because it kind of makes sense that their mother told them they both came from the same donor if indeed she thought that, because their father was shooting blanks and they didn't think he could impregnate her, and then years later they learn he did. But Lisa & Co. were able to track down his bio father? Maybe it turns out he's related to Jason's dad?

Thank God it was Christina's father they found and not Jason's or she probably would have killed herself.

Yeah - the eldest daughter's absence in all of this was glaring. No mention of "you have another sister!" and the Uncle specifically told Chris to go speak to the younger sister. Also, the hand-drawn family tree was wonky and made it look like Dawn and Diane were the grandchildren of Judy rather than her daughters. Someone didn't know how to properly draw family trees.

If only you could know how horrible it was to be raised keeping secrets and being lied to about your identity, maybe you could understand why I was upset. Thankfully, I didn't kill myself. You all need to get a life and learn how to be kind. 

[RoxiP]

On 4/22/2022 at 4:20 PM, CeeVee said:

If only you could know how horrible it was to be raised keeping secrets and being lied to about your identity, maybe you could understand why I was upset. Thankfully, I didn't kill myself. You all need to get a life and learn how to be kind. 

One of my daughter's best friends found out at 14 that she was adopted and that her mother lived in the same community.  It really messed up her relationship with her adoptive parents, her relationship with her biological mom - this was a secret in a small town that was never going to stay a secret and I don't know what her adoptive parents were thinking...she had problems trusting anyone after all the lies.

[auntjess]

I've just recently discovered this show, and watch all the ones they show.  
I'd like them to show the "what happened next" ones.

[tres bien]

It's too bad TLC has cancelled LLF. There's so much unwatchable trash on this network. LLF was generally an uplifting feel good show 

Edited December 18, 2022 by tres bien

[RoxiP]

On 12/17/2022 at 6:00 AM, tres bien said:

It's too bad TLC has cancelled LLF. There's so much unwatchable trash on this network. LLF was generally an uplifting feel good show 

I agree, and for auntjess, they did show "what happened next" a couple of times.

[auntjess]

I found the What Happened Next episodes online,
https://go.tlc.com/show/long-lost-family-what-happened-next-tlc?fbclid=IwAR3FrfcJfKFiyaxAhc_ChNmklhQZ52QVbMmCKrZzkQR7oxodHIwZfh6jfXg
and was able to watch Janice and Leslie's episode.  I just had to plug in who my provider was, to see it.
It was sad, and hope they were able to work it out.

 

[KaraB.]

He wasn't arrested for kidnapping. The show  didn't verify anything the biological mother claimed. He was my Grandfather, and I can see how he may have scared her, he could be very loud and intimidating, but I don't believe for a second that he did the things that lady claimed. Look up his record, see for yourself.