Black-Market Baby: Patricia Knight Meyer on Wonderland, a Made-Up Birthday, and Learning Love Doesn’t Have to Mean Loss

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 belong Why she named the book Wonderland, and the Lewis Carroll quotes that open many of its chapters Living 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 arrived How trauma memory works, and why she wrote certain scenes before beginning EMDR The “Brown Babies” chapter: feeling like she had to make up for her adoptive mother’s losses Being grateful and misplaced at the same time, and the secrets she learned to keep as a child Why her parents, a mixed-race couple in 1960s Texas, likely turned to a private adoption, and how she understands their choices now Where adoption trauma has lived in her body, and the grief that surfaced years after she thought she’d processed it Why adoption should be the last option, not the first Finding a biological cousin placed by the same attorney What she wishes she’d known before reunion, and why reunion has to move at the pace of the slowest person The genetic mirroring she found with her late birth father, and releasing Wonderland on the anniversary of his death What she hopes people across the constellation take from the book The “Down the Rabbit Hole” launch event in Austin Resources & Links Mentioned The Refuge, Julie’s monthly community for adult adoptees Wonderland: 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 blog Un-M-Othered: A Revolution in Adoptee Healing, with Julie and Dr. Liz DeBetta. December 4–6, Highland, Michigan Call 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