The Damage of Dishonesty: An Adoptee's Reckoning with Kristina Richie

Cate & Ty Break It Down

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Tv & Film

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 22 October 2025

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On today's episode, Cate & Ty sit down with Kristina Richie, whose adoption story is so emotional and full of tense moments that we had to split it in two parts. For Part 1, Kristina begins by talking about her childhood being filled with secrets and a desperate search for identity, to a dramatic reunion with her birth mother at her high school pep rally. Kristina recounts the emotional toll of hiding truths, the rebellion that followed, and the eventual reckoning once the truth was out. Join us for Part 2 next week as Kristina shares more of her enduring quest for connection.

Check out Kristina on Tiktok @kristinarichie

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Transcript

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0:00.0	All right, everybody, thank you so much for tuning back in to Kate and Ty, break it down.
0:12.3	We have a very special guest today, Christina Richie.
0:16.1	TikTok.
0:17.2	I'm trying to think of where the people would know you from.
0:19.8	TikTok.
0:20.7	TikTok. Yeah, we you from. TikTok. TikTok.
0:21.1	Yeah.
0:22.2	We got connected through just Adopty TikTok space where everyone was talking about everything.
0:29.9	And I was like, hey, Christina, that's crazy.
0:32.3	Pretty crazy story.
0:33.4	Yeah, your story is very interesting to me for sure.
0:36.2	But can you tell us just about like your journey, being an adopie, your story, what it was like for you growing up?
0:42.4	So, yeah. So I was adopted as an infant straight out of the hospital. My biological parents were young. They're teenagers. So 17 and 18 years old when they got pregnant with me, 18 and 19 when they had me. And my
0:55.5	biological mom grew up in a very abusive household, very similar to y'all's growing up. Okay.
1:00.6	So my biological mom was raised by her stepdad and her mom. Her mom was a quadriplegic.
1:04.7	She jumped into a swimming pool and she was 29 years old after my mom and broke her neck.
1:08.8	So and then she was, yeah, it was, it was gnarly.
1:11.6	So she was with a wheelchair or a walker for the majority of my mom's life.
1:16.6	And her husband, my mom's stepdad was 6'9, 350 pounds, big, really scary, very abusive man.
1:26.7	And he was very abusive to my mom and her two sisters.
1:31.7	My mom didn't find out until she was 17 that that was not her biological father.
1:35.3	She thought her whole life, I think she found out actually when she was pregnant with me.
	...

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