The word “family” can mean different things to different people, depending on your background. For award-winning Julie Ryan McGue, the experience of being part of a family included adoption, new siblings and the lifelong journey of finding their identity amidst secrets, challenges and tragic experiences.
In new new memoir ‘Twice the Family: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Sisterhood’ (Feb. 4, 2025, She Writes Press), Julie unravels the gripping tale of adopted twins facing the turbulent tides of love, loss and identity in suburban Chicago. In this coming-of-age memoir — set in Chicago’s western suburbs between the 1960s and ’80s — adopted twins, Julie and Jenny, provide their parents with an instant family. The twins’ sisterly bond holds tight as the two strive for independence, individuality and belonging. But as Julie’s parents continue adding children to their family, several painful and tragic experiences test family values, parental relationships and sibling bonds.
Faced with these hurdles, Julie questions everything: who she is, how she fits in and even her adoption circumstances. She understands her adoptive family is held together by love, faith, support and her parents’ commitment to each other and their children. And yet, the life her parents have constructed is not one Julie wants for herself. As she matures, she chooses her own unique path. In the process, she realizes how the experiences that formed her have provided a road map for the person and mother she wants to be.
There is so much to be explored within the topic of adoption, and Julie has given us a window into it through her own experience, candidly sharing the real struggles she has experienced. Julie sat down with us to talk about adoption misconceptions, her healing journey, and what she wants readers to take away from ‘Twice the Family’.
What made you want to write ‘Twice the Family’ and share your story?
Many of the readers of my first memoir, Twice a Daughter, expressed an interest in knowing what it was like to grow up as an identical twin and an adoptee. I hope this book satisfies those curiosities. Twice the Family provides essential backstory to Twice a Daughter, but it is a standalone. The two memoirs can be read in any sequence.
When you write a memoir where other family members are included, do you have to get permission from them? How did you navigate this aspect of your process?
If you write about someone who is living, you should get their permission or change their identifying information. In my first book, I presented specific chapters to the people/characters involved and asked them if there was anything unacceptable or if they wanted their names changed. Several people had me change their names, but the essential story remained intact. And in writing Twice the Family, there were several chapters with which I collaborated with my sister and mother. This was because the events had happened so long ago that I wanted to make sure I was clear on the facts.
There are strong themes of identity and belonging woven throughout ‘Twice the Family’. Why was it important to write about and explore these topics, especially speaking to readers who are adopted?
Certainly, everyone battles with identity and belonging during their formative years, but for adoptees these issues are magnified, profound. As a closed adoption adoptee, my sister and I were not given any family background or medical history. I spent a lifetime wondering about who, what, why and where. This lack of essential personal history puts an adoptee behind in development.
I wanted to address this and bring it to the forefront not only for those familiar with the adoption experience but for those not touched by adoption. Creating awareness about the adoptee’s psyche and struggle to achieve identity and belonging are important themes in my writing.
You have talked about the concept of adoption trauma. Can you explain what this is, and how it impacts narratives around adoption we see in the mainstream?
Nancy Verrier coined the term “primal wound,” explaining that the very unnatural act of removing a child from his/her biological parents is traumatic. For the closed adoption adoptee, the rigid state laws that prevent any knowledge or contact with birth parents is also traumatic, harmful to a child’s normal development. Many of the mainstream narratives address the adoptee’s search for self and belonging as well as highlighting our journeys toward claiming personal information and connecting with birth relatives.
What are the biggest misconceptions the world often gets wrong about adoption and adoptees?
There is this perception that adoption is all joy and happiness, that an adoptee is glad, grateful even, to have found a forever family. But inherent in adoption is loss for every party in the triad. Infertility often leads adoptive parents to adoption for family building; their loss is in not parenting a biological child.
Adoptees lose connection to their birth relatives, and many of us lack basic information about from whom and where we come from. Adoption means birth parents lose the right to parent their birth child. Loss abounds, which is not to say that there aren’t wonderful aspects about adoption, there are, but it’s not all unicorns and rainbows as has been portrayed.
Your memoir is a powerful source of information in that it allows for readers to understand the complexities and nuances adoptees often occupy. Why do you think it is important for society to move away from the oversimplified stories about adoption and allow adoptees to speak for themselves?
If your life has not been touched by adoption in some way, you’re ignorant about the deep-seated issues. The lack of accurate medical history and background information is a big one. Adoption professionals are for the most part well-meaning, but their goals are to help adoptive parents build a family, and they charge for that.
In all models of adoption, whether it is closed, open, or private adoption, the needs of the child need to be considered and put to the forefront. In my opinion, the child’s “right to know” about all information that concerns them should trump the biological and adoptive parents’ “right to privacy” or right to parent as they see fit.
Can you tell us a little about the inherent and even biological pull to search for genetic information about oneself?
When you are a child, you have basic needs: food, safety, a home, and to feel loved. As you develop, you strive to understand yourself and to fit into society. How can you know yourself and fit in when basic information about the essence of your being is inaccessible? This is the dilemma of the adopted child. I spent a lifetime wondering and it took a breast biopsy to push me into researching my adoption. Possessing that knowledge fulfilled me in a way I never dreamed possible.
When you meet adoptees today through your work, what do you bond over most?
We bond over the similarities in our stories: the birth relatives that disown and reject us, the ones that accept and include us readily, without judgement, the struggles our adoptive parents have with our “need to know,” and the joy we have in reuniting with biological family, where we find likeness and kinship.
How has your sisterhood bond become an integral part of your own identity, and what you talk and write about today?
I know that I am inordinately blessed to have been adopted with my twin sister. We have Catholic Charities to thank for their strict policy regarding placing multiples in the same family. In the adoption world to be raised with a full sibling is rare. I never had to wonder who I looked like or took after. She was right there, my mirror image. We are so alike in thoughts, feelings, interests, and ambitions that our reactions are predictable. I have her back always and she has mine. I write in Twice a Daughter that it is as we are stitched into the same skin.
Every healing journey is unique to each person. What has yours looked like, and what has been the most helpful tool, that you would encourage others to utilize?
Writing has always been my go-to healer. I have been a committed journal-er my entire life which has allowed me to vent and learn about what I think about with respect to every aspect of life. I am always surprised what my subconscious has been diligently working on when I sit down to write. Whether you intend to write for publication, posterity, or personal use, I think writing twenty minutes per day should be in every person’s toolbox, alongside a consistent meditation practice.
Buy a copy of ‘Twice the Family: A Memoir of Love, Loss and Sisterhood’ HERE, see more of Julie’s work on her website, and follow her on Facebook, Twitter (X), and Instagram.
