Sarah Spain

And they turn out so well.

They become these successful young men.

And then here come these birth parents who have a lot of judgment at first about what he went through as a kid.

They wanted the best for him.

Both Sherman as someone who cared about him and had met him as a young man, and then Carol who gave him away with the expectation he would end up in a two-family home.

everything would be this idyllic setting you imagine, an adoptive family that really wants a baby and can't have one of their own.

And instead, he has this really tough childhood.

And so it's almost a role reversal of a lot of adoption stories you hear, right?

Where the birth parents are struggling or fighting something, they give up a baby and here come the saviors to fix everything.

And instead, you've got these two incredible, well-adjusted, successful adults

looking at this woman who did her very best, but still struggled at times.

And so to really understand like what he got from Adele, his adoptive mom, and then what almost certainly came to him through DNA, how similar he is to Sherman, even though they didn't meet until he was 17 years old.

And even though he was in his life as a mentor, but not all the time, like how he became, I mean, the same exact life.

won a Super Bowl, lost a Super Bowl, both of them to Tom Brady, had sons, son goes to Miami of Ohio, plays defensive back, is a teacher.

It's just, it's remarkable.

Yeah, I mean, he just took a job with the Raiders, and he is now coaching under the boy wonder who I guess never ages and retires, Pete Carroll, who could be both the head coach of his dad as a running backs coach and now the head coach of Dylan with the Raiders.

And so understanding that we are both a product of what made us and also of everything around us also implies choice, which is like the through line of this book is yes, you are handed certain genes.

Yes, you are handed certain family, certain circumstances, but your choice at every turn impacts whether you make it out, whether you make it right, whether you make it good, whether like Dylan, you decide to end a bunch of cycles that you don't think serve you or your kids.

I don't want to be a father who abandons his family.

I don't want to be abusive.