If I haven't had a good cry for a few weeks, I can always guarantee that I'll shed my quota watching one of these programmes.
There is no happy ending in a divorce. In watching these programmes, I have learned there are two main reasons these adults on my screen are crying.
They want to belong, and they want to feel they matter, because they have spent their lives believing they weren't wanted by one or other parent.
Divorce and shame seem to be the dish of the day. Neither of these has anything to do with the child in question.
The upset person who is searching for their place in life or within their whanau, is simply collateral damage, because of an adult decision.
Then we meet shame. Shame enters the fray when a woman has had the audacity to want or like sex as a young person, and then been made to feel that she is a pariah. How dare she be human.
There is never any mention of the father in such stories, just the pregnant girl who is then kicked out of all she knows from her upbringing and has to give away a life she has nurtured for nine months inside her belly.
I grew one such child and if I had to give her away at birth, you might as well have shot me on sight.
The respect I have for any woman who has the courage to give her child away so they have a better life than she can give them, is immense. I couldn't have done that.
More often than not, the impact of a "someone" choosing not to have them in their lives has left them broken.
Broken, sad and in some cases angry. In a lot of cases these people who would ordinarily have had a happy existence, look battle-weary and slightly hardened.
The common denominator in every single case is that they are vulnerable.
They sit staunchly waiting for news of their loved one and when the producer of the show sits next to them to impart any nugget of information, they sit waiting, hunched, cat-like, for disappointment.
They steel themselves for the fact the person they are reaching out to has, once again, abandoned them.
They would almost find it easier to accept someone has thrown them on the scrapheap again, as opposed to a connection that is tangible.
I also watch with gratitude for being part of my own family.
I went through a stage when I was about 8, thinking that I was adopted. It was because of a beach towel.
My three siblings got lovely cream and fawn towels one Christmas and I got a big fat blue star.
That was enough for me. I was different from the rest.
The fact I am the spitting image of my mum didn't seem to occur to me at the time, but even that brief dalliance with the possibility I was adopted, made me feel horrible.
The premise of the programme by the very nature of its name, Missing Pieces, is that our lives are a jigsaw puzzle, and we require the full quantity of pieces to lead a full and happy life. We all have choices.
We can blame others for the pieces we have been given, or we can substitute family for friends in life's big jigsaw.
The great thing about that is, if you squeeze one of those pieces in hard enough – they fit.
