Unknown Identity: The Untold Life of a Donor-Conceived Person | Lizzy Forman | TEDxTheMastersSchool
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 Published On Jun 7, 2018

Lizzy Forman will address her privilege as a member of a new generation of kids conceived through the use of sperm banks, and the challenges of growing up with no idea whose DNA lived within her. Lizzy is an advocate for donor-conceived people across the U.S. and has helped create and gather a group for donor-conceived people in New York and surrounding areas. She will attempt to reach out to people from all walks of life and help them understand what it means to be donor-conceived and struggling with identity, whether one is aware of being donor-conceived or not. This is a community that has been buried since its conception, says Lizzy, who adds that she will do her best to reveal it and give the audience new insight into donor-conceived friends, family and loved ones. Lizzy Forman is a donor-conceived person born and raised in New York City; she was raised in a single-parent household by her mother and an army of au pairs. While growing up, she had knowledge of diverse family standards in a liberal city like New York, with the addition of her own experience — the challenges of growing up with no idea whose DNA lived within her. She would explain her family dynamics to anyone who asked about her dad in this way: “I have a mommy, a babysitter, and a dog named Rusty, but I don’t have a dad.” In her freshman year of high school, Lizzy became more interested in her genetics. She was able to find a biological half-brother from the same donor through a donor-conceived sibling registry. They met in December 2016 and have been close ever since. In 2017, Lizzy took an ancestry DNA test and found a half-sibling and her donor. After her recent connection with her biological father, Lizzy has been slowly piecing together traits shared between the two. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

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