Everything's Relative: Podcast Transcripts
You Look Like the Swedish Side of the Family
Speaker 1: (00:01)Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you. Um, yeah, you’re actually the first person I’ve met really in real life who has had this experience now
Speaker 2: (00:10)
are you, you’re in the NPA eat group, are you in PE?
Speaker 1: (00:15)
Yeah, you are to, you understand this from the cellular level is totally understand it. Still processing it. Maybe we’ll never get used to it and yeah, and the only thing that’s a little bit different than for me than the like general population from the, the in the NPE is that I didn’t find out through a test a test. Like it wasn’t an we’ll get to that, we’ll, we’ll talk about that. But so many people in there found out through 23 and me and that kind of thing. And I found out from a phone call then did a DNA test and found out that that is the only thing that’s a little bit different. So I don’t quite understand when people are talking about, um, like I’ve got a relative with 14, 72 CMS or something. I don’t know any of that means that scientific stuff. I mean the sent to Morgan were, that was not the interest in my ancestry. That’s not what got me. And I wonder how many central Morgan’s I share. Right. So I probably should do one so that I, cause I know I will probably are, I hope to meet people who, who, who are into that side of things. But yeah. So I should probably do one of those tests to get, it’s quite interesting, but that’s just not right.
Speaker 2: (01:30)
My focus right now, it might have been had I not made the discovery that I made.
Speaker 1: (01:35)
Right. So, okay. So let’s talk about that. What, how did this all start for you? I have all
Speaker 2: (01:44)
always been absolutely fascinated by members of my family who I, most of them I never met. They were older, great grandfathers and cause they came from other countries and I, I, it fascinated me and it didn’t seem to interest to many other people in my family. Nobody else was very curious. But for some reason I just had this burning desire to know and I was always asking questions and who is that? Well, what did they do and how did they come here and why
Speaker 1: (02:16)
there are a lot of photo albums in your house? Nothing.
Speaker 2: (02:18)
Oh, okay. Nothing. Um, well, we had our, you know, and not really know because when my family, my maternal family, um, my grandfather was born in Stockholm, Sweden, his family immigrated to the u s in the early 19 hundreds. Same thing for my birth certificate father, I guess the man who raised me and the man I believe was my father. Uh, his whole family was in Germany and they emigrated in like 1902. Um, but the Irish came at some point during the famine, like in the 1850. [inaudible]. And you know, that fascinated me because it’s like, Whoa, they escaped. They were all escaping something. Right? Like the Irish were, were almost refugees at that time. They were, they weren’t to frame it that way. No, no, they didn’t. But they were. And, uh, the German part of my German family, I looked up what was happening in history in Germany in 19 of two.
Speaker 2: (03:23)
And things are getting a little bit, so I think they will. And, uh, the sweeter side of my family. I don’t know. I really don’t know. I don’t know what they were leaving. Stockholm was pretty glorious, but, okay. They came here. So I was always asking questions and bunny, but when it got to the part of, but why did they come here? Nobody knew. It’s like my mother would go, I don’t know. I never asked. Grandma died. And what I figured out was at the Times that they all immigrated, there particular nationality was not wanted. Sweets, maybe not so much. The Swedes are so innocuous. Do you know what I mean? They’re, they’re not the, they’re kind of like Switzerland, you know, they’re just really neutral, free people, you know, and uh, eat weird fish, but they weren’t really as good. I don’t think they were escaping anything.
Speaker 2: (04:16)
But the Irish family where they were escaping and, and, but they got here at a time when Irish were really looked down on. So first and foremost on their list was, we are, we’re going to get American, we’re going to be as American, as work in the USA, USA, Chicago, all the way. You know, we’re cubs fans now. No lace curtains, no Irish tea, no corn, beef and cabbage. And none of the stories being passed down. We are Americans. I think that happens. I mean, I think that’s still happening today with minority cultures. When I as a therapist have been with, um, children like an inner city schools and I just never occurred to me that they wouldn’t know. Their family has basic family history. Like, Oh, well where did your parents come from? And they just, I don’t know. I don’t know. And realizing that they don’t, yeah, they don’t want to share that, that information right now they’re trying to be American.
Speaker 2: (05:08)
The German part of my too, they were not, Ooh, they were not, they were not well can imagine. So they adapted. They, you know, they didn’t keep onto their German ways and, and they spoke German in the house but not outside. And it was, you know, hush, hush, hush. So, and I grew up in the south, interestingly enough in a small area outside of Atlanta. And if I had add and I did, I would ask my school friends when we were reading grammar school and even junior high school, um, you know, where, where did your grandparents come from when they might cater or the furthest, the most exotic answer I think ever got with somewhere in Alabama. I mean, these people, they live there forever. Generalization, age, gender roll, gender and generationally generationally. Thank you. Hmm. Um, so that was, I was always really interested and I, but when I was 21 my sister, I have two older sisters. One was 16 when I was born, nine when I was born. So always talking to the one when I was about 21 I was talking on the phone to my sister Robin, who’s nine years older than I, and we were talking about something and it was so long ago that I can’t really remember, but I do remember that she
Speaker 2: (06:36)
put a seed in my head. Then she put a seed in my head and she said, you know, mother had an affair with this tall blonde, really nice, good looking guy. And
Speaker 2: (07:01)
when you were about four, you started to look like him. Oh, Robin and I just went okay. And then we went on and discuss something else. Interesting. I just know. Okay. Okay. Denial so strong. It’s so strong. I’m learning more about that this year than ever before in my life. So powerful. It’s strong. And, and I took that, I remember taking that information in. So you didn’t ask any questions? Like what do you mean mom had an affair? What, like how long I sort of did. I said, well, well who was it? And she said it was this guy named Johnny and now she was only eight when this was going on. So she was just trying to all make sense of. Sure. And, and she said his name is Johnny. And um, at one point he was in and me, he was in the navy and he was a CB. He worked construction and he got stationed at port wine. Mimi from somewhere in Illinois. So my mother decided to leave my dad. Oh, okay. Take the two children and come out here to California and get an apartment near her friend that lived out here. I’m a female friend of the family. And um, sort of trial separation from your dad?
Speaker 2: (08:23)
I don’t think that, I think that was a trial separation cause she was thinking about hooking up with this guy. The Johnny Guy. I think he was, uh, you know, and I think she met him the near, it’s near as my sister so I can figure out, she might have met him in a bar. [inaudible] lots of people need that way. His brother was a bartender. They lived in a small town right outside Chicago, Oregon, Illinois. Very small town. It’s still a small town. And um, this guy, his brother was a bartender on the weekends at this one corner bar and I’m sure my parents went down to that corner bar frequently when they were young. Marrieds and you know, so I think that’s where she met him. I’m not sure how old she was at the time.
Speaker 3: (09:13)
She must have been mid to,
Speaker 2: (09:18)
well she was 38 when I was born. So I would say 30 phone, you know, 35. Um, and
Speaker 2: (09:30)
so you think she was maybe attracted to this Johnny fellow who was over on the east coast or over near you? He was, uh, in Illinois, Illinois. And then you will the, this was later, but first he was in Illinois. That’s where they met. Then he shifted his, his, uh, he came, came out here to port way Mimi, which is stationed out here, which was like five Ventura. That’s what I didn’t know he could drive into Whittier there. I thought you were saying that when they separated she was trying to get away from him, but no, she moved. She took y’all closer and not me because I wasn’t a part of the equation. Okay. So this why don’t, I think they stayed out here for three or four months. I know she took, she put my sisters in school in Whittier. Okay. And they were okay, but I asked them, uh, as an adult we had this conversation.
Speaker 2: (10:29)
Here’s where this, this must’ve been already a nice, okay, good. Okay. Okay. I’m just trying to get a picture of like, and it was what everybody looked like in the 50s. Right? Like right after the war. Things were pretty austere, but on their way back [inaudible] um, so I remember my one sister saying that our dad back in Illinois who was riding my mom letters like, you know, crazy, just daily letters. And my sister being my mother styled of course, sneaked into her drawer and read some of them. Wow. And uh, told me, she said they were asking her, when are you coming back? Are you coming home? What do I do? Men Do? I’m sorry to interrupt it to your sisters. Remember that as an emotional, strange time. The way that we would think of a divorce or separation or, you know, these days they don’t, I don’t know what they felt at the time, but my family was just one of those families.
Speaker 2: (11:38)
We didn’t talk about things. We didn’t talk about feelings. Right. I don’t know if it was because my parents were both children of immigrants. Right. Or if they are, if they were just both dysfunctional in that way. But just, we just didn’t talk about it. We didn’t talk about feelings. You got feelings, okay fine deal them, but don’t bring it to your center table. Entertain, okay, you’ll have him in your room. And so we were never growing up. We were never real sure what we felt because we never got a chance to identify it and explain. It just wasn’t the time and space to think about how they were feeling at that time. So I know my sisters did not like being away from their home and their dad, but it’s kind of cool out here in California. And apparently both of my sisters really liked this man, really liked him and said he was just fun and smart and funny and outgoing, charming and took them lots of places. And my older sister said that for Christmas he bought her an Gora twin set. You’re 15 years old that you know is really dreamy. So now something happened and this, this remains a question in my mind. The story that I was told my whole life was that when my mother was here in Whittier, my father got notification from his company. He worked for a large insurance company and he worked in the farm and hail division. So they asked him to go down to North Carolina.
Speaker 3: (13:20)
Okay.
Speaker 2: (13:20)
To become like a field, uh, inspector after there was a bad hail storm or rain storm or something. I was like, did she mean hail like the frozen? Yes. And it ruins the tobacco crops. So that’s all the tobacco farmers would, you know, put them for their insurance and he would have to go out there and a hat and coat and clipboard and look at the damage. So they asked him to go down there and then gradually they moved him down to Atlanta. I was born in North Carolina, but when I was about six months old, his company moved him down to Atlanta. But my question has always been,
Speaker 2: (14:00)
did they really request him to go down there or did he put in for a transfer because they needed to leave Oregon, Illinois, since my mother came back pregnant. Oh, that’s just a sore story. That’s a possibility that I’ve outlined for myself. Okay. I’ll never know the truth. And they’re all gone. They’re all dead. So I will never know the truth. And my sisters were told the same thing. So none of us have any real story was you have to move for a job. Yeah. So and so your mom decided to come back, you know, whether she knew when she decided to go back to my dad. There’s all kinds of scenarios that have played out in my head. So you don’t even know how pregnant she was. Did she know or did, did she discover it once she got back there and just decided to pass me off his, yeah. So you don’t even know if your dad ever knew? No, although I had a psychic tell me that he did. Okay.
Speaker 2: (15:00)
But, so I, I just don’t know. I question everything and I never questioned anything before. So, and then to back so that when I was 21, my sister put this seed of an idea in my head and I think the reason that she did that was she waited until I was 21, so that she figured if you want to follow up on this, if you want to go digging around for information, you’re 21, you can do whatever you are an adult. But she didn’t give me enough information. She just gave me a seed and it was really easy to just let that seep die in the dark, which is exactly what I did. Um, then much later, once I was living out here and, and much like 1994, I think it was my other sister, my older sister wanted to go to Mac and West Hollywood, but she didn’t want to go alone.
Speaker 2: (15:52)
So she said, let’s go meet. Yes, yes. Okay. She didn’t want to go alone. And um, she said, if you go with me, we’ll go to lunch and that’ll be an afternoon. And I said, great. So we went to lunch, we her to the makeup store and then she live out here or she, yeah, she goes, she lives in here. She lives here. My other sister lives back in Atlanta still. But um, so we went to Mac and we went to lunch and during lunch somehow the conversation turned to Johnny Freeman saying these names made them all, I can be bid out if you want. But anyway, she, she’s, we started a conversation about that and I think I pretty much asked her by this time I was in my thirties, you know, and I pretty much just went, what do you think? You’re the oldest, you’re the oldest.
Speaker 2: (16:43)
So she would be, so you may have been very aware of what was going on. Yes. But there was a lot of denial there too. You know, it’s like, I don’t want to know. I want to know. I don’t want to know. But uh, so we got into a deep dark discussion and she said, you know, I’m pretty sure, I’m pretty sure she’s, when you got to be about four, we started noticing that there was a similarity. And, and I, it’s funny because I always knew something was off. I was going to ask you that. I always knew that there was a secret and it involved me, but I had no clue what it was. And then the rational part of my brain would come in and go, don’t be silly. Everybody feels that way. Yeah, right. You’ve got the two, the two voices, the one that’s speaking your truth and the one that’s trying to get it to shut off.
Speaker 2: (17:36)
And I just knew and I, everybody in my family has the same kind of mouth and it was my father’s mouth and it was like a, the boat, you know, the little, the little book and be very tracked. And what shaped lips? Yes. Almost like a heartbeat. Betty boop. Right. Only, you know, natural looking. And I would just stand as a kid and look in the mirror and go, I don’t have that mountain. You didn’t get those names, those lips. And I didn’t get that. Gosh darn widow peak. Everybody else ready. And I wanted one. And I, there was a lot of things and I just thought, well, and I asked my mom one time, I said, who do I look like? And she said, you look like your grandfather. You look like the sweeter side of my family. Okay. So, okay. So that’s why I don’t look like my father.
Speaker 2: (18:31)
Um, it turns out I look very much like my fault. And so my sister and I had this conversation and a in the restaurant and she convinced me that it was real. And I said, do you think we can contact him? Were you able to take in that information at the time at the restaurant? I was, I was able to take it in and go, okay, so this is really possible. This is possible. This is weird. Right? It’s impossible. You kind of go into another dimension in your mind with it. Totally. And you do good description. Yeah. My mom and my emotions were not involved. It was all factual. It was all historical to me. And it’s fat. I wanted details and I wanted to know and, but, but really in another dimension, nothing to do with my feelings. And she came back to my house after lunch and we sat on my couch with my, this was before cell phones and sat on the couch with my phone, my landline, and we made calls until we located him.
Speaker 2: (19:32)
Oh Wow. And we found a number for him. There was no Google or anywhere else. So it took a while, but we found a number for him and he was in of all places Pahrump Nevada cause you could still call information back then. You could still, okay. Yeah. And uh, we found him in Pahrump, Nevada and my sister got his phone number and she said, I want to call. And I said, what are you going to say? And she said, I just want to tell, I just want to tell him a hello, hello after all these years and see if he remembers me. Start a little bit by along, see how that goes and maybe bring you into the, you know, if it’s going well, maybe bring you into the conversation. I will see. And was your mother alive at this time? No. No, she passed. So she dialed the number and I sat there and just, and a woman answered and my sister said, is John Available? And the woman said, I’m sorry, he can’t speak. He’s very ill and we don’t expect him to last the month. Oh, okay. And my sister just got tears in her eyes and she said, would you please tell him, um, that
Speaker 2: (20:49)
Sherry her, her name, uh, from years back, I remember him from Oregon, Illinois, and from Whittier, California. And he was very, very good to me and I just wanted to let him know that he was in my thoughts. Okay. And she, the woman on the phone said, I’ll give him the message. And then he died, uh, about two months later. Okay. So had my mother told me before her death in 1988 my, my, the father who raised me, the man who I Adore, um, passed away suddenly when I was 15. So that was traumatic. Traumatic. Oh my gosh. Well, especially because in my formative years and in my childhood and as I’ve had a therapist tell me what’s in Utero, I absorbed a lot of her shame, a lot of her fear, um, a lot of her embarrassment and a lot of her anger, I can validate that experience.
Speaker 2: (21:48)
So there was a lot of that going on from, from the, even before I came out. Totally. I was born with that. So all my life, I feel like I’ve been dragging around this big bag of dark matter. Sure. Secrets and lies and cover ups and non-truths and untruths and uh, ah, and I realize, and I’ve always had a problem with Shane, I’ve always had a problem with, with not being able to act, just being frozen with emotion when something happens because it’s hard for me to identify what I’m feeling because I feel so much at once and yeah. And I was never given the opportunity to break each one down and figure out what that was. So, um, she was rather in my very formative years, like when I was,
Speaker 2: (22:41)
first of all, there’s no pictures of her holding me as an infant anywhere. None exist, interest. There’s no pictures of me as a toddler with her. There are no pictures of me as a larger toddler sitting on her lap or even there are pictures of me at my fourth birthday party with her in the background supervising. But it was more like the party was for her. That was, you know, so, and I’m looking completely like this in the photos. It’s my birthday, it’s my party. We all got on stupid little hats and I’m going blank, like get me Outta here. So, so I find that very telling. Totally. And she pawned me off on my sisters because they were built in babysitters. My older sister took me to all my pediatrician appointments and she took me on dates, like literally just pell pond, you off literally and attack people.
Speaker 2: (23:41)
Would gossip think that maybe it was her sister. My mother was raising me as first that no one would look at my sister’s school wide. Yep. But nope, that’s, I was not hers, but she took care of me. And then when she moved away and which she all, Buffy obviously had to, as an adult, she went to college. She came out here and studied at Pasadena playhouse. So then my other sister who was nine years old with me, then she took off her and she wasn’t able to take me to pediatricians appointments and things like that, but she could babysit me all day long. Right. And that’s what she did. And was your mom working? Um, I believe, yes. I believe she had a job at the time and I think she, yeah, I think she was working part time. She worked every day, but she’s still, she had lunches or something.
Speaker 2: (24:34)
It’s fine. She, she, she had things to do things. So, um, so I owe both of my sisters a great debt of gratitude for bringing me up and making sure that, and diapered and, and you know, had clothes on me and didn’t run out in the street and kill myself. So, um, I thank them for that after, um, so I was really interested in this whole ancestry and I wanted to track them, the Irish side of the family and, and I wasn’t having much luck and for Christmas, uh, two years ago, my darling has been, gave me an ancestry Dna kit because he knew I was really Jones. And you already sort of already knew this one variable, but you wanted to see the whole picture. When I got the ancestry DNA kit, I swear to God, I never even thought about the paternity thing.
Speaker 2: (25:28)
I know I never even thought about that. I never thought about, oh, now this is going to give me the answers that are really neat. Oh, I wanted to make sure of was that I was what I was told that I was, am I really Irish? Am I really Swedish? Am I really German? So after, so after this John Man passed away, you just sort of put it away. I did. Yeah, I did. Because what’s the use of delving into it now? I can’t go to my mom. I can’t go to my, the man who raised me and I can’t go to my biological father and say hello. Surprisingly at the time, uh, well he died in 94 so he’s been gone a while and, and so two years ago get this ancestor get and I, all I wanted to do was find out my nationality.
Speaker 2: (26:17)
I just wanted to confirm that the family stories had been accurate. Um, because so many weren’t. And it was very exciting and I got my results and I kept seeing, you know, I’ve years people sharing my DNA. Wow. How fascinating. Who are these people? And that’s all online. Yeah. And um, you will get an a, you can sign up for an email from ancestry. So you get it in your, in your email saying you have a new match. Right. Okay. Go to ancestry and your look and see who the new matches and it, it shows you however much they put online about themselves, their name, sometimes the picture. But ancestry does have a, a little area that you can see the connection. Okay. So if there’s a common ancestral name, it will show up. Right. And I had been, I’d seen some of the Irish names, I’d, I’d seen a few German names since some Swedish names and all of a sudden one day I remember I had gone out for a couple of mile hike and a, this was about a year and a half ago, it’ll be two years in April, April 27th.
Speaker 1: (27:35)
Remember that, how you remember so clearly. And I came home and I was walking, I had been on this nice little hike by myself and I
Speaker 2: (27:42)
came home and uh, her look Ding and oh, I have a new email. My email says you have a new match. And I saw the name and then I looked at how were matched and I saw a whole list of the same name. And that’s when it hit me. That’s when the coin dropped from the mind to the body to the knowing this suspecting and the [inaudible] to be, this is it. This is real to us. Real existential emotional experience. And that was one of the strangest moments. And you wouldn’t think since I had already had wind of it that it would hit me with such force, but just seeing it, confirmation that blood doesn’t lie, DNA doesn’t lie and that that was my paternal family. I was just, I think I literally, I think I just sat there on the couch for about an hour.
Speaker 1: (28:55)
Yeah, no I understand the feeling like, oh I’ve, I mean I’ve heard from other people say I’ve always suspected or I always thought it was this other person but it wasn’t until they got the email or the letter in the mail that just changes the whole experience from an idea to to everything you are or something. It just changes
Speaker 2: (29:17)
and that’s what everybody said and that’s one of the hardest things. Most difficult things about this situation besides the fact that it will blow a hole and yet emotionally when you least expect it. I’m, I’m normally pretty even emotional but this just, I’ve been through years and years of therapy. I mean I know what’s going on in my head and I know what my flaws are and I know what my weaknesses are. I’m pretty self aware, but this news literally shot a hole in me in every possible way. It blew my mind. It blew my stomach and it blew my whole notion of myself and my reality just out of the water and what people say when, what people have said. When I told them, because I was so cavalier about it in the beginning I would just go, oh, guess what? I found out.
Speaker 2: (30:18)
It’s so hard not to because there’s month and a half, two months. I’m just like, okay, coursing through your body at all times, but it’s, it’s the story of this processing it out loud story of Gloria and I didn’t start the emotional, I didn’t start the tears and the end, the literally ugly crying like crying like a three year old where you just can’t breathe anymore and your face gets real red. I didn’t start that for months, months afterwards. I was very flip about it at first and I guess it was a form of self protection because I think I knew it was going to do to me and and it finally did. It takes that long to settle in. Maybe I don’t think you have to let it cause I had a similar experience but it just didn’t. I just had to process the information out loud over and over and over for a while and that’s why I would tell people and their reactions were so they were all pretty much the same.
Speaker 2: (31:19)
At first. It was just an interesting story. It was, wow. Wow, that’s amazing. I got some new shoes the other day and I’m thinking, okay or good. See, it doesn’t make any difference. Your life was your life. You had a father that loved you and cared about you and it doesn’t change anything. And My, my response to that became on the surface from your point of view, no, it changes nothing for me. It changes everything. Everything. I went back and in the last two years what’s been going on in my head is I have gone back to my earliest memories of childhood and I have reexamined. I have taken each one out of its little cage. And I had reexamined every moment of it. And I remember everything that was said, every weird vibe that I felt as a kid. And I felt a lot of them children, no kids, no, they’re there.
Speaker 2: (32:35)
They have not been shut down yet. So I think they’re just so open to your intuition was just the feelings in the room and the feelings coming off of these people that are in charge of you and you’re supposed to be taken care of you. And that’s very confusing to feel. So as a child you don’t have the words, you don’t have the vocabulary or the knowledge to put those into sentences. It all, you know, is, it just feels weird. And every time things got weird, I’d go outside. That’s what I would do as a kid, just go outside. But I would everything from the time I was three until you know everything. And I remember sometimes I would catch my mother’s staring at me. I’d be doing something and I would feel the burning of someone’s eyes on me and I would look over and there she’d be just like with a squint, almost like just trying to figure out, yeah. Yeah. And I don’t, I just, it’s so bizarre and you’ll never know what she was thinking. I will during that time. Well, one thing that my sister said that made me feel a little better about the whole thing was that she said, you know what, mother seemed really happy when we were in Whittier. She seemed happy. She laughed a lot and her spirit was lighter.
Speaker 2: (34:06)
And I said, do you think that’s because she was in love with him? [inaudible] and she said, I think she had, I think they had very, very deep feelings for one another. Um, and I wonder if she had to make a choice. I wonder if she, I wonder if maybe he and my husband brought this up and I went, Ooh, booker. I never thought of that. He said, I wonder, because I was wondering out loud one day, I wonder if the biological father knew. I wonder if she told him or if she thought, no, I’m not saying anything cause that’ll really complicate matters. He really wanted children. I mean, yes, he never had any biological children and he ran it. He really wanted children, but he was also married to someone who was home in Illinois. Oh. He was stationed out here. So they were both married to people.
Speaker 2: (35:14)
Didn’t know that. When my sister said, you know, mom seem to be happy with him. She seemed to happen when we were in Whittier and, and uh, they had fun together and I thought, oh my God, maybe, maybe she wanted to really leave my dad. Maybe she wanted to start her life with this guy, but because he was in the navy, maybe he wasn’t ready to take on a 15 year old and an eight year old. Right. A family of four all of a sudden. Yeah. You know, and, and it’s like, Ooh. Um, but I don’t, I don’t know. I will never know. I will absolutely never know. And you think their relationship was about three months? I think it was probably about a year. Oh, okay. Because I found out later that they met. See I, I of having that in Oregon, Illinois, tiny town. Right. Carried on. And the reason that I know this is because once I started getting these matches on ancestry with this last name, one of them was his niece. I found his niece. So this woman, it’s close father was this man’s brother. So I
Speaker 3: (36:29)
okay
Speaker 2: (36:30)
with a lump in my throat and holding my breath. I tapped out a little message to her. I’m saying I, I have recently done an ancestry DNA dig and I don’t match with her. I matched with her sister. Funny. Yes. But I didn’t, her sister’s name didn’t come up right away, but I found her on another, I found this girl on another site and I put them together as, as nice and, and uh, uncle and I said, I believe our connection is from your uncle John. And if you’re interested, if you want to discuss this, you know, get back to me.
Speaker 2: (37:15)
No, I’m pretty neutral. Or it was, you didn’t want to just drop on all the, drop all the bombs on them right away. Yeah. No, because what if they fought? Oh my God, she’s out for some money. Right. It’s trying to pull, you know, she’s trying to pull something and some of the things I don’t even think about until I’m reading those support group posts, like, oh gosh, I guess there’s just a lot of people with a lot of suspicion and skip skepticism out there. Right, exactly. And I didn’t want them, you know, they live in, they still live in this small town in Illinois. They still have their, the whole family. And um, I’m all the way out here and I thought, I’m not looking for another family. I’m, I’m a big grown up girl. I got my own, I got plenty of fam and uh, but I just wanted to make the connection can just say hello.
Speaker 2: (38:00)
And so we started talking and I told her about my mother and her uncle John [inaudible] was a fair and la La la and that’s when she said, well, my dad was the local bartender when I went all the pieces or more pieces. And so I sent her pictures, I asked her, I said one thing I would like is do you have a picture of your uncle John? Never seen one. And I would like to know a high biological father looks like since I think I look like him. And, and I added to that request, I put a three pictures of me, one when I was three, one when I was 12 my school picture when I was 12 and one is an adult and within five minutes her response was, oh my God, Oh my God. It’s like looking at his face. Oh Wow. And so she went in her family picture boxes and she said, I don’t know, we don’t have a whole lot of pictures here, but I’ll see what I can find.
Speaker 2: (39:08)
And she found one of the whole family and sent me one. And then she found one of him later on as, as an older man and sent me that. And it was hard to see. It’s hard to look at a picture of someone you share DNA with but have never met and you share physical traits go, what am I supposed to feel here? I want to feel something, but I’m not sure what it is. I never met him and I in that brings up the whole nature nurture thing. How much, how much of my personality is from the Dad who raised me. And what personality traits did John have that I might have? I don’t know. I’m always fascinated by families that all look alike. Like when all the siblings are obviously siblings, everybody’s obviously the, the moms or the dads. Um, I always wanted that anyways and didn’t, so yeah, it is the physical traits like, oh there it is.
Speaker 2: (40:17)
And as an adult, all I wanted to do after I became a teenager, all I wanted to do is be different as a young, as a young forming human being, as a little kid, you, I think you need to feel that feeling of belonging. You’re part of the path, the tribe, you’re part of the pack, you part of the tribe and you all look alike. And, you know, I have, I’ve had people say to me in the presence of both of my sisters, you guys don’t look alike, but we can tell, I can tell you, your sisters, your mannerisms, your, the inflection in your voices. You, you know, so that’s nurture. Yeah. I think that’s where we’re all raised. And they raised you so much more than your mom, like similar. And I was raised in a house full of estrogen. Just my dad had no brothers.
Speaker 2: (41:05)
I had no male cousins that I knew of. Um, I, it was all women. So my father was my oasis, especially with my mom, not really being my older sister when I was not when I was nine. The sister who is nine years older than me, he moved away. So I was an only child there with your mom. I was just there with my mom and I didn’t know it was not warm, but my father was there and that made all the difference because he was my partner in crime. You know, he liked the Beatles. So when we were in the car together, we could listen to the radio. And, uh, you know, he, he liked the same things I did. Um, and if it hadn’t of been for him, I, I, I probably wouldn’t be mentally ill. I am anyway, I think, but I think we all are.
Speaker 2: (41:56)
But I would really be in a badge bad way if I had to just depend on my mother. So losing him at 15 was very, very hard to, I don’t know anybody that could get, no one could ever get over that. And so also be denial that I felt with, if that was super strong, uh, as the only way I can explain it is I really disliked school. I was not a fan of having to go and be there for eight hours a day, you know, a half a day maybe I could have gotten used to. I resented the fact that I had to go in a building and somebody was telling me how to think of what to think about when all I wanted to do was stare out the window and write a short story or, you know, I did not like that. I could have when my dad died, I could have milked that and stayed home from school for three weeks and the school would have been fine with it. Right. Grieving. You got to grieve. Um, his burial, his funeral was on a Friday afternoon, Monday morning I went back to school.
Speaker 3: (43:05)
[inaudible]
Speaker 2: (43:06)
now that that’s how bad I needed diversion. I wanted normalcy. I was in denial. There’s nothing different here. He’s just not here. That’s all right. There’s a structure that you understand and I have to go to right now. And that tells me more than anything about why emotional state and the power of my own denial, my feelings, because that was the last thing I would have done had I been in a right mind. Right, right. And your mother wasn’t in a place with you to say, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, she didn’t care. I do whatever your, you know, go eat dirt. Okay. So that was really, really tough. So that when the, when the truth finally hit the truth bomb explode the day that I saw the DNA results and I knew the truth.
Speaker 3: (43:57)
Okay.
Speaker 2: (43:57)
My father’s death at 15 had been stuck somewhere in my site. So in addition to finding out he was not my biological father, we shared no DNA. It was like I lost it twice.
Speaker 2: (44:20)
And that’s why it just because I think this stuff has been so buried in my emotional sack that I keep things stored in short. I don’t want to deal with, I think it’s been so buried for so many years that it’s going to take a long time for it to all get out. You know, I think of it like an emotional boil. You know, it, it gets infected and it gets nasty and then, Ooh, all this stuff comes out and it’s, it’s icky and uh, and it’s painful. But I find that I have days where it’s, it’s at the forefront of my mind all the time. And then we have days when I’m, I’m okay. You know, I’m handling it. Things are fine. Um, but every once in a while, a memory or a song or a fragrance or does, usually it’s just a memory. Um, it’s like somebody hits me on the back of the head with a brick and it’s like, oh, oh, that’s right.
Speaker 2: (45:31)
This is going on, this is, this is happening in my head. I have to think about this. And it just, it, I’ve just been an emotional wreck and, uh, put me back into therapy, which is a good thing. Sure. Um, because everything just seemed to happen at once and once. And it’s just the strangest thing. And honestly and truly, and my husband, who was one of the most sympathetic, empathetic, he’s, he’s enacting. Yeah. Coach, he coaches, he teaches me to be in touch with their emotions. Mr Emotions. He’s a student of Ron doss and, and uh, do Koski all the same time, you know, so he really gets into feelings and he, Stanislavski based in his work, which is all emotional. Um, and so he, for 50 years, he’s guided students on these emotional journeys and, and has said, you know, you have to let all this stuff out.
Speaker 2: (46:34)
You’re holding and you’re holding and you can use it in your work, but you have to let it out and identify it. So you know when to use it. And so he’s so good with that. When I start talking and weeping and, and telling these stories, he just said it’s there with nothing to offer. And he says, I am not able to go there. I can watch this happened to you and I can sympathize, but I can’t truly empathize. I don’t think anybody can jump in and experience. It seems so simple. Who’s just something on a birth certificate. It’s just this, my life was my life and yes, I had a father who loved me and I had a father who would have loved me, how he met me or how do you know about me? So you could say I’ve been super lucky because I had to. Sure. But it doesn’t feel that way. It feels, and I’m starting to get a little bit interested.
Speaker 3: (47:41)
Yeah.
Speaker 2: (47:42)
In this man, John and I started doing some searching about his family, which is fascinating. And I start fantasizing about what would it have been like had we met and we, you know, would we have been friends, would we have gone and done things together? Um, but we have gone down to the corner bar and had a,
Speaker 1: (48:06)
I don’t think you, I don’t know. I mean I just don’t know if I don’t, I’ll find out because I’m, as I talk to people, but I don’t know if anyone can not think of those things and not start
Speaker 2: (48:17)
being decent, you know, oil to the wonderful man who raised me. Right. And then I get all emotional, I feel guilty. And I know that if he was sitting here in this room, he’d say, no, you, you need to find this out.
Speaker 1: (48:30)
Right. Right. Your journey. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (48:33)
I want you to know it didn’t change. It doesn’t change us, but oh, I just get, I feel so bad.
Speaker 3: (48:42)
Okay.
Speaker 2: (48:43)
And I feel so sad that if he knew, if he agreed to raise another man’s child, to the extent that he did with me to the wonderful care he gave me, I just think he is my hero. And I feel so sad that I lost him without one ever, ever being able to say goodbye. It was sudden. It’s not like, you know, a lingering illness where you can go and just visit and say, I love you, I love you, I love you. I never got that chance
Speaker 3: (49:27)
Okay.
Speaker 2: (49:28)
So now my heart is broken in two places at once because he died and once, because he wasn’t my real father, but he was my real,
Speaker 1: (49:39)
I no, I know there’s a, we don’t have enough. Yeah. We don’t have the words for these relationships because even the other day I was, I was trying to explain it to somebody and I said something. Yeah. Just something, one of the mundane things like, oh well my, my dad is my real dad, but my not dad. I said, you know, or, and this person felt the need to interrupt me and say like, well you’re the man that raised you is your dad and, and but the other man is your, and she felt, and it was so interesting cause let’s clearly about her, you know. Okay. Like I don’t need you to explain my who my relationships are with these men. Right. And who’s real and who’s not, and what blood means and what, you know. But she was somehow triggered, triggered by
Speaker 2: (50:28)
my description of who was who. And, and I find that happens. People really want to jump in and, and so that’s what I’m saying. There’s not enough language for who’s the, the re the words, real dad and not real dad. Dad, that sounds a heck. Does that mean my real dad know that sounds like something a nasty five year old would say. Yeah. That’s not how I mean it, but real, they were both raised. We’re both human beings, right? One sperm was just one sperm. Yes. That’s the winter. That was the winter that night. And that’s it. Um, I try not to, and I, I’m trying to come to the, to the comfort level and
Speaker 3: (51:10)
yeah.
Speaker 2: (51:10)
Knowing that it is what it is and my life is my life. And, but now that I know, I think it opens things up in, in a lot of areas. It, it does, it opens up parts of my brain and it opens up parts of my imagination.
Speaker 3: (51:29)
MMM.
Speaker 2: (51:30)
I daydream a lot about him.
Speaker 3: (51:32)
Mm. Uh, and
Speaker 2: (51:36)
why he was like, and what he liked. And I, I asked his niece that I tried to get more of a not real forthcoming and not because she doesn’t want to be, she totally believes me. In fact, she calls me cousin. I know. Right. And, um, I wanted to say, I wanted to ask her, did he like music? What kind of music? Just trying to check the battery on this. Oh, okay. Hold on. Pause. We’re gonna stop for one second because I need to [inaudible].
Speaker 1: (00:12)
Testing. One, two, three. Oh, maybe I should go get a glass of water for myself. Okay, hold on. So here we are. We’re back again with everything’s relative. I’m Eve Sturgis. This is a podcast about the modern world of DNA testing and the way that it’s affecting people. Um, and we have Barbara here tonight, which is, I’m very excited because she reached out to me about this and, um, we’re just getting settled.
Speaker 2: (01:20)
Okay.
Speaker 1: (01:20)
So we’ll start in a minute. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, so it’s the one that bothers me. So that’s what people say. You can go up and going down. Distribution is different. I said it’s going down. I get that. Like getting up off the couch. I can. Um, are you more comfortable holding the microphone or that is not, we don’t need that at all. Oh, okay. But you can put them on a shoe that makes you feel more professional. Um, I’m just wondering, are you the same?
Speaker 2: (02:13)
Okay.
Speaker 1: (02:13)
Are you the, I think Easter, just, I know there’s a famous, each server each you’ve Sturgis. I don’t think I’m famous, but that would be so cool. No, she’s a marriage counselor. Okay. Well I’m a marriage counselor. Do you have a website? Do you have a website? What is it called? Each Sturgis. Oh, just to you’ve sturgeon. No, I don’t know if you’re the same one then. I mean that would be amazing. If I have a doppelganger and author. I do write, I write and I’m a therapist. Licensed marriage family issue. Okay, cool. What have you heard of you? Cause I kept thinking I know that name, I know that name and I’ve been racking my brain and so, you know, cause I, I don’t know why I your name, it just somehow
Speaker 3: (03:00)
your name was familiar to fun. Okay. So, but it’s not the website you’re thinking of. It’s all right. Maybe it’s just a coincidence. Maybe. I don’t know. So it’s up to you. Um, is it okay, this is totally, I don’t want to no, no, no. So you are, you’re, you just came from a meetup with other nps. How was that? Correct? Was that your first one? No, this is not my first meeting within payees. Um, this is my third or fourth and I enjoyed it. We met up in Fountain Valley, we were a small group tonight. I notice a lot of people said on the Facebook group they couldn’t come. No, normally it’s larger. But yeah, a lot of people, I think also the weather probably contributed to that, but it was still nice because when it’s a smaller group, it’s easier to share. And I don’t mind the large groups either.
Speaker 3: (03:59)
Either way is good to just talk with people, bring different things to, and you know, listening to other people’s stories, other people that get what you’re going through. Because what a lot of people don’t realize is, I mean, they just don’t understand. They just don’t understand. It’s so true. No, they don’t. And um, you know, my family, my husband has tried, but he just doesn’t know what to say to me. And my kids, they’re like, whatever mom, they, you know, they never, you know, only my one son knew my mother and he’s 36 and my mother’s been gone for a long time, so he never knew my dad’s, I never knew. Right. The Dad. But yeah. So, and then my siblings are, I have a lot of siblings and I grew up with, and I’m the youngest and they don’t like to talk about it.
Speaker 3: (04:55)
As a matter of fact, I don’t even speak to the three oldest ones anymore because of this. Yeah, we already had a strange relationship, but now it’s a really strict, because of this, and I don’t want to say negative things about my family. They’re not here to defend themselves, but it’s like, it’s been rough and I think they believe I should just be happy that I had a dad at all and just get on with it. And I think they feel like when I talk about it, I’m disrespecting our mother or I’m embarrassing the family and I don’t see it that way because I still love my mom a lot. Not Saying I didn’t get angry. Right. I mean I’m, I was, I’m sure you did. But I actually, I guess I shouldn’t be, I shouldn’t assume, but screaming at the ceiling, you know, like, how could you do this?
Speaker 3: (05:43)
What did you do? But I’ll never have those answers. Right. So I guess they’re all gone. And it feels like that might be the most frustrating element for so many people is that not only is there a surprise results, but then there’s no, there’s no, there’s no answers because nobody knows and I wasn’t looking for this. Right. So tell me what, um, so tell me what happened. Well, I’ve always been the ancestry person in our family. I’ve always been the one that’s been putting together our family tree ever since I was young, I’ve always been interested in who was in the photos and putting the photo albums together. And I’m in the 80s you know, I found an ant that we long lost aunt and I that was without Internet and that was just using phone books and operators. And I have to say that our family is the r part.
Speaker 3: (06:31)
My parents were Canadian and we are, I’m a first generation American and so they came here, they immigrated here. And so I have dual citizenship, but all my relatives live in either Canada or England. We are the only ones, my siblings and their children and that live here. Nobody else lives in the u s uh, with the family I grew up with. So, um, my dad had always said, oh, we’re mostly English, but we had a little Irish and Scottish and I knew my mother’s grandfather was German, but the rest were all British. So I said, well, let’s see how British we are. So I decided to do the ancestry test. I believe it was 2015 and it didn’t come out with any surprises. I, I, I came out like, you know, 73% British, which expected I didn’t see any German. I kind of blew me away.
Speaker 3: (07:30)
But um, they have since revised it and added 25% German, which would account for my, my mother’s side. So they found, they found one and the next time you did it well, yeah. What happens though is ancestry keeps updating their information and as it updates, it can change your ancestry, but you don’t have to retest again and they will just, they just what you’ve got and think based on that data, right. They change adding the new data. And so now I actually have the German in there along with, instead of just the English, I also have some Scottish, Irish and French, which it’s like an operating system. Yeah. And even Sweden and I was like, Sweden, where does that come from? So that’s, you know, cause I never heard Sweden before, but so, but there was no red flags in that. But I did see a bunch of names because when you do your ancestry, they give you a list of matches to your DNA.
Speaker 3: (08:24)
And when I looked on there, I didn’t recognize any names and those matches. I’m sorry, I’ve never, I’ve haven’t actually gone on ancestry.com I clearly need to, if I’m going to continue talking with people. But, um, there are people that have done the test as well. Correct. So if no one you’re related to ever in, in the history of the world has submitted to ancestry.com nothing would come up. Correct. They have to have done the ancestry test or at least have, um, there’s, uh, people that test to, you know, you’ve heard of 23. Oh, sure, sure. I know that as I went through ancestry and they did give you a list of matches and they go by, they give you what the probable relationship is. You also have a thing called sent to Morgan. Yes, I see that on the, on the groups, but it also goes with cross DNA segments.
Speaker 3: (09:14)
So, uh, I saw names on there that said first and second cousins and I didn’t recognize the names and of course it goes away down hall, third, fourth, fifth, sixth cousins. But I thought I knew who all my first cousins were, at least on my dad’s side, because my mother only had one brother and he had never had any children. Um, so I just kind of looked and thought, well, who are these people? But I, uh, to be honest with you, I never doubted my parentage. I always felt different as a kid. So I have to say this, I always used to say, oh, I must be adopted. And I used to ask my sister, are you sure you saw mom pregnant with me? Are you sure she didn’t, I didn’t get mixed up with the hospital. Yes, because I felt different. Not that it’s because I, I looked a friend a little bit, we all, you know, our fair complected, but I just felt I’m very emotional and they’re all more pragmatic and analytical and I’m the opposite.
Speaker 3: (10:07)
I’m a little emotional and about feelings and keeping the peace then, I don’t know, I thought, well maybe it’s just because I’m the youngest and as a big momma’s girl. And uh, so there was, you know, I always had, and then I got sent to my grandmother’s a lot and they didn’t. And I used to think, how come I have to go? It’s not that I didn’t let my grandmother and I wouldn’t mind going, but it was like you’re all alone there for weeks and weeks at a time there for a long time. Yes. And question, you know, how come not when I was really little, but as I got older and then when I was older, why did I only get sent, you know, and my sibling, my one sibling, my sister who is closest to me in age, you know, said mom was saving you.
Speaker 3: (10:47)
I said, saving me from what you know. And, um, I always just felt I was being abandoned, you know, I have issues with a band and mint because of it. And, uh, so anyways, getting back to my DNA, I didn’t have any interest or concern cause I thought my dad’s, my dad, my mom’s and my mom and I’ve, nobody’s ever said otherwise. And uh, finally I think maybe six months later, I finally said, you know, I’m going to reach out to the person on the top of the list and ask, because maybe he’s a cousin. I don’t know about that. Maybe one of maybe me, my aunt fellas who died in the 60s. Maybe when her and my uncle were getting divorced. Maybe she was a bad girl. I don’t know. You know, this is a secret love child. I don’t know. That’s where I was going.
Speaker 3: (11:34)
And so I messaged him. Yeah, I know. I didn’t know I was going to be, so I messaged him on ancestry and he said he had no clue how we were related. And um, that was it. So I left it alone and I didn’t bother with it for like a year. He was the one who started researching. Oh. And then he finally started contacting me, asking me just random questions through ancestry. So he doesn’t have my direct name. He doesn’t even know my name, but my profile is protected. Matches can see my, my, my chart, but they cannot see my name. Anybody who’s alive, it’s just private. So, and I don’t use my real date on ancestry, have a private name that nobody would know. I want to ask you what it is, but you can’t tell me
Speaker 3: (12:24)
Don’t tell me. I’ll just tell you that everybody, you know, he was referring to me as a name that was not mine and I didn’t correct him at first, but um, he first came out with a short message, you know, or do you live in California? And I was like, yes, but I didn’t ever specify anything. Another what do you live in southern California? Yes. Were you born between 1959 or 60 61? And I’m like, yes. And finally it really freaked me out was when he asked me, do, did you live in or around or near all? Hambre it’s like, uh, it’s like 20 questions. Yeah. But all like, but more. And I’m like her small ones. Yeah. And I was getting a little right, like creepy, creepy, 20 west, like, you know, who’s this person and why is he, I knew who he was cause on my ancestry, you, I’m like, why is he, how did he know about all hambre cause it’s not on my profile and my names and then no one knows about Alhambra.
Speaker 3: (13:23)
No. Well they do now and they, everybody, El Hambra is in southern California. Los Angeles. Yeah. It’s right on the border. I let grew up right on the border and not too far from cal state. And um, so yeah, I said yeah. And then he says, you know, thanks. And I’m like, what was that all about? So now I’m, you know, I’m like, what the heck? And I called my sister and she’s loved, don’t trust it. You don’t know. It could be a scam. And I’m like, yeah, I, you know, it could be. So finally he decided to inform me. He says, okay, I’ve got, cause he kept sending me, asking me more little questions and, and I just set, finally said, you know what is going on? What, you know, I, I’m not comfortable to telling you are sharing with you anymore. I want to know what you know and what is going on.
Speaker 3: (14:11)
I think that’s fair. And I didn’t quite say it that way. I said it a little nicer and we’re still just messaging through ancestry. He doesn’t even know my name yet. And um, so he finally says, well, I have some information to tell you that I think’s going to rock your world. Oh, oh. And those were his exact words, rock your world. And I thought, rock my world. Why would it rock my world of my, cause I’m still thinking it’s an aunt or an uncle that was bad. Right. And this is their illegitimately Charles and still rock other’s worlds. Well actually he’s showing us a first, a second cousin. Oh, okay. Oh, hi. Match. And, and he pointed that out to me in one of his messages. You know, our CIENA Morgans are too high for us not to be closely related. So that’s why he dug well.
Speaker 3: (14:58)
It turned out, um, he told me, I, I realize you’re wary about this and you’re leery. And finally he identified what he did for a living and he says, you know, I do this. Um, and uh, he does not live in the state of California. We’re just going to use his first name. His first name is Ken, but he is an attorney for the state. He lives in, he works for the state as an attorney. And so I think he was trying to get, and he, you know, sent me his business phone number sent me so that I would feel more comfortable knowing that he wasn’t a scammer or as a legitimate business and it doesn’t need to pull up. I totaled them up and he sent me his picture and then I matched it with looking him up and yeah. Okay. He is an attorney and he does work for the state.
Speaker 3: (15:47)
He lives in me. He is a, he works in, you know, it’s an attorney in the state, so said, okay, so he’s legit. And uh, so then I said, you know, I’m going to give you my private email cause he started to tell me things. So I gave him, I used to have three emails back then, so I thought, okay, if he’s a scam me, I can just delete this email. So I gave him one of my email addresses and then finally told him my real name, my first name, and I said, you’ve been calling me this, but this is my actual name. And then he proceeded to tell me the family history and that I was one of two men’s daughter that he believed, um, you know, that, that I was one of his uncles, uh, children. And I just was in total disbelief because I’m like, no, my dad’s my dad and you know, this can’t be true and I’m reading this and I’m really upset.
Speaker 3: (16:44)
I mean, I’m like, who does this to somebody, you know, this is a horrible thing to say to me and, but I didn’t, who just dumps us information. Yeah. When he was trying to be very tactful and he did work up to it over like six months. This wasn’t something that just happened all in a week. And so, um, after I read his very long email, I got really upset. I didn’t answer him and I immediately called my sister, that’s the w whose color Jay. Um, and I told her what happened and she goes, oh, it’s gotta be a scam. Send it, send me everything I’m going to, I’m going to check them out. So I sent her everything and she started checking it out and then I got more information from him, even sent photos and I’m like, freaking out now. Now I’m crying. Now I’m really distraught and I’m, so this went on for three days. And uh, finally my sister says, look, I don’t know anything as far as I know your mom and dad’s kid decides. Even questioning if I was my mom’s kid at that point. Yeah, I totally relate to that feeling of just like maybe, maybe
Speaker 1: (17:49)
it’s all diff. Maybe it’s all something I don’t understand or know.
Speaker 3: (17:53)
They may be mixed me up at the hospital because this man lived in Alhambra where I lived and I got, I asked for his address, I asked for his blood type and he’s like, and I said, look, you asked me where it
Speaker 1: (18:05)
my turn I bloody blood type. And I said, well ask it’s sudden. What are his blood type? So funny cause I, that was one of my questions too, was about blood to, I don’t know my blood type, but I was like, and what’s his blood type maybe needed to know for my math
Speaker 3: (18:20)
what I was a teenager, I became ill and I was in the hospital and I remember the doctors telling my mother my blood type and my mother was dumbfounded because she said there was no way that could be my blood type, kind of I’m going to share my family’s blood type. My brothers and sisters and my mother and my father were all a positive and I was being negative and that’s not possible. That’s not possible. And so my mother knew that as a teenager when I was a teenager, but I didn’t, I saw the look like she was like, and then I knew at that. Now looking back to that moment, which to me as a teenager didn’t think anything about it. I remember. So I think she knew at that point. So she may not have not, she may not have, well it’s a 50 50, 50 50 I’m dad’s there and I looked enough like her to pass, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: (19:10)
And it, so anyways, I said I needed more DNA proof from, from him that I wasn’t satisfied with just cousins I needed. So he said, well, you know, you’re either this persons or this persons, but I think you’re this person’s, and it’s so strange because my biological father and my birth certificate father both have the same first name. Both had blonde hair growing up. Both had blue eyes, both balded early, you know, receding hair out of their hair, turn Brown. I’m, the difference was where they came from, different, you know, they were, he was an American where my father came from Canada. And then my grandparents were all from England, so we were English and Canadian and, and I’m just like, so I guess my mother had a type right. And, uh, I did ask my siblings to test for, for, for further proof. None of my siblings would test my brothers and sisters and not one of them would come forward and test for me. I said absolutely not. And they got really angry with me and I, there’s, I won’t go into all the details since they’re not here to defend themselves, but, um, it was very hurtful. That would really hurt me. It’s really strained my relationship with them. Um, my two eldest siblings reacted the harshest, I won’t even go into that, but let me just put it this way. I no longer speak to the three eldest, I don’t eat. Did they?
Speaker 1: (20:41)
Wow. It just, okay, I’m dumbfounded. They feel I’m disrespecting her mother, but my,
Speaker 3: (20:48)
my eldest sister just can’t handle the drama. And you know, my one brother said I should just be happy and my other brothers, so this is just crazy. I don’t even want to talk to you. I don’t care what happens in your life. Don’t call me anymore cause I was really distraught. Yeah. Yeah. And they felt I was being so disrespectful to our mother, but I wasn’t, I didn’t do anything wrong. You didn’t do anything wrong. I, they were elder, I mean they’re all a lot older than me, so I thought they must know something maybe. And that’s why I spoke to them. My sister did warn me, don’t talk to the others, just keep it between us. And I should have listened to her, but I didn’t. And uh, but I waited three days before I contacted them and then of course it was really horrible.
Speaker 3: (21:28)
Their reaction was very bad. And um, and so I no longer just, I, this whole idea is just too much for them. They can’t, they just can’t do, my sister that does talk to me can’t handle speaking about this anymore because she feels it has such, it brings such negativity to the conversation. So I really don’t talk about it with my family now. I just rely on my friends. But my new family, so my niece is tested. I didn’t know they were my nieces at the time and they came out pretty high match to their father tested. And of course it came out really high, too high to be a first cousin. So we knew at that point who my father was, his name is John George and my real Father John George and my dad, I thought was my real dad was also John. It was John Kennedy.
Speaker 1: (22:18)
Okay. I was like, tell me he’s not John George too. And I’m married to a jury. I was kind of scream John’s, it’s funny
Speaker 3: (22:24)
because even up to this point in my life before I found this out, John’s had been a running theme in my life. I’ve always had a John in my life, whether it was my dad, um, uncles, grandfathers, all the line. And my dad is just except one, just all Johns. I’m married to a John. Both my sisters married to John. He and my niece is married. John’s, whether it’s the variation, John, Jonathan or, uh, and then my mother, my mother’s mom, my grandmother, my maternal grandmother, her father was Joe Hahn, which is another form of John. Yeah. And then it turns out that my new biological father, his brother, he named his son John, my brother was now John and he named his kids John. My husband is John, my stepson is John and my father in law’s John. This is like, yeah.
Speaker 1: (23:13)
And My, and all my grandparents on that line with my new dad. They’re all John Being John Malcovich or something. Yeah. They’re all just like a thing about where you opened the door and there’s the same pictures inside and it just goes and goes and goes or something. Yeah. And so I said, I know it’s gotta be true now they’re all John. Of course, it’s more testing needed, you know, it’s been my whole life. Yeah.
Speaker 3: (23:34)
And so I accepted it and I’m part that was hard though, was I was so afraid. My new family with now reject me and I couldn’t take more rejection. I’d already felt like I was not I, you know, you don’t know who you are. I am. I, this am I that is that really my mom, I mean I felt like my whole life was a lie and already questioning things because of being sent away to your grandmas. Yeah. Anyway. And then these older siblings that have had a different experience than you and they won’t help. No, they wouldn’t help. So I had to reach out to a first cousin. Um, my father had some brothers and sisters, so, and they don’t live in the u s so I had to contact him. He lives in Canada and I asked him if he would test because his mother and my dad are brother and sister.
Speaker 3: (24:25)
And of course him and I did not match. So he was how I got proof for the paternal side. We did not match at all. Right. And that was really upsetting. Yeah. And he did the ancestry just like me. And, uh, so, but then I couldn’t find any matches to my mother either. So I was really upset thinking maybe my mom’s, and this is when I was grilling everybody and they thought I was disrespectful, but I, I, I said, are you sure I wasn’t, you know, maybe swapped at the hospital as a bay. And right now hammer back then was pretty small. And um, but I finally found a third cousin that we share the same great, great grandparents. So that is in my mother’s line. So I know now my mom is my mom because your mom is rumbling as well. I feel like part a part of this strange experience is since, since, uh, since it’s, since it was, since this thing was previously unfathomable, it was unfathomable and now it is suddenly scientifically proven.
Speaker 3: (25:26)
Right. Anything could be possible. So, so why not switch to the hospital? Why not picked up off the side of the road? Founded a basket in a river? Like it could be anything. Yes, it could be. And people don’t understand that. Like it’s like your brain opens up a whole new section and it may sound and life was tough growing up crazy. But it was, it was hard growing up in our house. We, we were a family of secrets and it turns out that carried on and into, you know, whatever went on at home. You, we were not allowed to tell our friends. You didn’t, you didn’t even discuss it with our own family. Everything was stiff. Upper lip. Keep it to yourself. We don’t share our problems, not even with each other. It, I grew up in a, in a household like that and my siblings are pretty much still that way.
Speaker 3: (26:15)
Yeah. But, um, I guess I broke that mold. Um, a lot. Right. One sister does too. I guess we’re more, but I’m even more so than her. And so, you know, I, it, it was a difficult childhood. You know, my, I kept questioning, so why would my mother do this? What was her motivation? But I, you know, I, you lie to yourself so long and you hide the truth of your upbringing for so long. You don’t want to face the painful realities of that. Your household was your father was? My father drank a lot and he was quite physically and emotionally abusive to my mother. Oh, that’s all right. This is all conjecture on my part because I do not know anything because my father died. My father I know died in 1973 my biological father died in 1987, uh, in Monrovia because not far from where I looked at it.
Speaker 3: (27:15)
He didn’t go far. Yeah, he moved from El hammered in Monrovia and then my mother died in 1992 so I will never have those aliens. Never have those answers. Never know. But I do wonder what her motivation was. And I thought, well, Gosh, Barbara, your dad was so abusive and criticized her and put her down. And I don’t doubt that my dad loved my mother, but it was a control thing. And he did change in the last year of his life when he was dying. He became a much nicer person and it didn’t do that. But, and that’s the man I like to remember. But I’d like to believe that she just felt so lonely in broken hearted, that she was reaching out for some kind of comfort to the affair, the affair, the motivation to, I don’t want to think they’re right because I have to tell you, my mother is not the type that you would think of doing or having an affair.
Speaker 3: (28:10)
Like first of all, when did she have time? She didn’t drive back then. She had five kids already. And I mean my dad was just there, you know, when he wasn’t working and she didn’t drive, so she’d have to walk. They came to the house and I think the kids would notice and I just, so I don’t know how it all happened, how it went about, but I’m just assuming that she was seeking comfort. That’s, I prefer to believe that then, you know, cause a lot of mothers tell their nps, oh, I was raped or I was attacked. Sure. Yeah. And I, but I don’t know. So my little mind likes to believe that she needed comfort and love and she sought it out through him. And that’s what I tell myself. And, um, I spoke to my new brother and it was hard for them too because they’re like, he’s much older than me.
Speaker 3: (29:00)
He’s 76 now and John and yeah, have another gentleman. And um, he told me things about my dad I wanted to know and I said, can you tell me anything about him? And what I heard was he was just like my dad, my other dad. So I don’t know what my mother, right. She, like I said, she must have had a, she had a type and a, I asked him, is there anybody in the family who can tell me anything else? I said, cause I really, I like to look for the positive in people. I like to form my own opinion of someone. I’ll never get to meet him. And I thought, well gosh, he was a womanizer and he drank too. So what the heck? I so, uh, you know, I just left it at that and I don’t ask any more questions because nobody can give me any answers. And there’s no way to cross check like what he was doing in Alhambra that would have crossed paths with your mother. Like there’s no way to even figure out, like I asked like where was he working that she would have, yeah,
Speaker 1: (30:00)
Ben or like my questions are not original. I asked him for his address in La Habra and I did. Can you list all of the grocery stores and bars that he did? Like they had a lot in common. Him and my dad was a very big fishing.
Speaker 3: (30:14)
They both belong to the fishing stuff in Alhambra and they like to go fishing. And my dad was telling me about fish when I was, when he was dying and they both, um, we used to have a man that came to the house and brought us fish. Could it have been him? I was never allowed to go to the door when he was there. And was it somebody my father knew? Was it one of my dad’s drinking buddies because they told me he used to frequent the bars there at Alhambra. I’m soda. Right when you said fishing, I thought, oh, maybe they were friends. Maybe they did. Maybe the dads were friends. And my father did work for hostess at one time. So I thought, you know this, they told me he was in food wholesale. I thought, well, maybe they knew each other. Yeah, I bet.
Speaker 3: (30:53)
I’ll never know. Well, and then you start remembering things from your childhood. You know, the time when I was a little girl, three, four years old in bed, parents are fighting. Well, mostly my dad’s fighting, my mother’s listens. And he’s saying, you know, that’s not my daughter. It’s the postman’s. It’s the, you know, I’m talking about. Yeah. Oh Wow. And that memory came back. It did as an adult. And I kept saying, you know, but at the time even I was like, why would my dad say that about me? But you’re little, you just blow it off. Right. And I say all sorts of things that you don’t understand. And I just never,
Speaker 2: (31:30)
yeah.
Speaker 3: (31:30)
And I did think of it later in my thirties and forties but you don’t share it, you know, you just don’t say anything. He just say, Oh, it was just dad had had too much to drink and he was just mad at mom and he was trying to make her feel bad. But now I know maybe he was suspected, maybe he knew, you know, and, um, my one sister said, don’t know if dad known he would’ve killed mom and you. And I’m like,
Speaker 2: (31:52)
okay,
Speaker 3: (31:52)
I don’t know. But either way, I was his daughter in the end, you know, and he was trying to teach me things, but it’s been very hard in the, in the here and now questioning and just that nobody understands. And
Speaker 3: (32:08)
you know, I haven’t met any of my new family, um, because they all live out of state. They all live in the south or the Midwest. Nobody’s here in California. And uh, so, uh, yeah, and they’re all in different states, so it’s not like I can just can’t have a meeting point where everybody could get together. We would have to have, they have a tendency to have family reunions so many years apart. Um, so hopefully they’ll have one and get to go. And I hope I’m welcome to be there. I, it’s just been really hard. I mean, when I told my girlfriend, she was just blown away and I did do a small little piece with CBS. Um, but we didn’t talk about my story or anything, just how hard it was because I don’t, I want other people to realize, you know, you’re not alone.
Speaker 3: (33:00)
And there’s a lot of us, the website, you know, the NPE website, it’s growing and growing so fast when numbers are climbing so fast. When I joined it was under a thousand and now we’re above what, 5,000. And it’s insane. And I’m like, and that was just, I only just joined at the end of June, beginning of July. Me Too. Yeah. Yeah. And it was like, May, I think I came in on in May or June or something. I was like 900 or a thousand, something like that at that time. Maybe even 800. I can’t remember. Yeah, it is. It’s, I am, I mean, I’m fascinated about every facet of the situation, but the fact that there’s so many,
Speaker 3: (33:43)
uh, but every single person is, is treated as a secret. So then you can’t, I don’t know, it’s just, it’s such, so incredibly isolating when it turns out there must be someone in the room, someone else in the room who, who, who’s gone through what you’ve done or who gets it or, or something. It’s just, it’s just a really, the isolation is really, it is hard range. And believe it or not, and this is going to sound crazy, but I came from a generation where there was a lot of shame around this. Now my mother was married so I wasn’t, she wasn’t unwed. But you know, back in the fifties and sixties, there was a lot of shame attached to being,
Speaker 3: (34:25)
you know, oh yeah. And married having a child or having an affair or being divorced. [inaudible] so sometimes I feel shame. I feel ashamed. Like I’m the dirty secret. I’m the one that should never have been born. And I’m, because I heard it was hard growing up. That hurt a lot of things from my elder siblings. Um, in particular, my brothers were very cruel. I just, you know, they won’t be happy hearing this, but it’s the truth. And I’m not going to hide that secret anymore. I had seen sacred, so all my life and I’m done with secrets. Well, and how else is it going to stop? Yeah. Right. I want to break that cycle. No, never. This will now submit that. I’ll never speak to that again. We’ll have, and also the shame, I can’t imagine that that your mother, whatever the situation was, I can’t imagine that she wasn’t struggling with shame around it. Right. And it had talked to that whole thing away until the, till the blood test, when you were in high, the blood type came out and when you were in high school, which probably made chain resurface and to think of you developing in the fetus as a fetus in the womb with all of that shame happening. And there’s all these
Speaker 1: (35:38)
studies now about the kind of things that pass through trauma and experience and emotions that come through that genetics and DNA. So I have major abandonment issues. So I think, I think struggling with shame, it’s like the least crazy thing you could feel. Yeah. I think even if they logically know, like I shouldn’t feel ashamed. This makes no sense. This isn’t my fault. You’ve got all these pieces, cells in your body that only know that. Yeah, maybe.
Speaker 3: (36:13)
No, it’s true. I know people tell me, you know, and what you shouldn’t be ashamed. But um, other nps telling me, yeah, but I’m like, I can’t help it. I feel like an even talking about it, I feel like I’m embarrassing my mother and I don’t want to disrespect. I love my mom. Right? I’m not one of those people that, you know, thinks my mother’s horrid or I don’t.
Speaker 1: (36:35)
Well, anything. Think about how long did you live with your mother? How long, how old were you? When I was 31 when my mother passed away. First of all, that’s very young to lose a mother, but 31 years of loving her and respecting her and knowing. Sure. So seeing her faults, but knowing, knowing what it was to like to love someone unconditionally. And I was a mama’s girl. Right. And you said that. Yeah, big time. So all of that, you’ve got 31 years of that and then this new information comes. So it’s making you think things or feel things that yeah, that you for 31 years never would have or, or you know, like of course there’s a conflict in your heart about it.
Speaker 3: (37:22)
Pregnant with me was she like thinking, oh my God, you know, cause abortion was illegal back then. And I know you shouldn’t think those things cause I’m here, but I often wondered did she think about it? Did she wish I would just go away? Was it, was I wanted, was I just that terrible mistake that she had to put up with because that was, there was no choices. And I know we shouldn’t think like that, but I do think that because she was so tired and she had, she had had actually by that time seven children, two had died before I was born. They were still bored. And here I am, baby number eight, you know, and she lived with an abusive husband and women didn’t have the rights back then. You know, your husband treated you that way. They’d say, you know, well what did you do to make him angry and how it was bad and there was no women’s movement.
Speaker 3: (38:13)
Not In the way we know it now. You know, and I, you know, I do wonder sometimes, did she, I know she loved me because in the end we were close and obviously not as close as I thought we were because the secrets you never told me and she knew she was dying, but I, I did wonder, you know, you know, was was I even wanted, did she even really, did she just look at me with dread? Was it just like, oh my God, there she is. I think later that changed. Well, how could you have been a mama’s girl? Because I was really claiming because of you. You feel like that was, we could, there’s a possibility that could have all been coming from you. So terrified of losing my mother when my dad died. I really got scared cause I was 12 when my father passed away and I’m talking about my father.
Speaker 3: (39:02)
I knew my birth certificate father. Um, I was really terrified of losing my mother and she wanted to carry on with her life. She got a new boyfriend, she got remarried and I resented that. And there’s a lot of things that happened in my life that are far beyond the NPE. I mean I had my own little experiences where I went with my first husband and they were all against us and having my son and having children. And I look back and I have discussed it with my ex and we’re like, God, your family put us through hell and look what your mom did. Look at your family. Did you know to us and look what your mom did. And you know, and I, and it makes me angry because I think, you know, if I had known what I know now, I would’ve been willing, who are you saying anything to me? This meant, you know, they put us through a lot when we had our son and
Speaker 2: (39:53)
okay,
Speaker 3: (39:54)
I’m just, I look back at everything that I went through and I think, oh my gosh, you know, they kept telling me I was the black sheep of the family. I was this, I was putting shame on the family. Even back then it was like, you know, by going with this man and it was for racial reasons, he was not white. Then you’re putting shame on the family and oh my gosh, we can’t do this. And you know, he wanted, you know, to be married with me and have our family together and have everything. And they were just, they gave me such a hard time and I look back and I think, wow, what hypocrites, right. For anyone to be, yeah. Judging anybody. So, you know, I am now married to somebody else, but I feel like in some ways when I look back, like it ruined my life.
Speaker 3: (40:38)
And that sounds, I know that sounds dramatic. I had good jobs. I have retirement, I have health insurance, I’m married, I have a nice house. I have great, you know, my kids, you know, everybody has problems in their life so it’s not like my life’s a disaster. But emotionally that’s how you feel. A lot of baggage. That’s how you feel. You don’t have to validate that to anybody or to me anyway, at least see a therapist on a regular basis. I am not ashamed to say that I take antidepressants and I take any anxiety. I have a lot of anxiety and panic and um, I already had it, but it kind of excelled with this because I really now felt like the outsider. Right. Are you able to even conceive of what might have been different had they been honest with you about? Well, when I think about it, I didn’t have a dad and my, my father died in 1973 and I was angry for a while there because I thought my dad lived nearby and whether or not my mother knew that, I don’t know.
Speaker 1: (41:42)
But I know like in retrospect, he may have been around to be present as a man in your life. Right.
Speaker 3: (41:48)
Whether or not he was still drinking or whatever. I mean, I, I like to believe he changed because he did remarry. And I’d like to believe that, you know, as people grow up, they mature and realize, and I wondered what it would be like if he had been in my life. I probably wouldn’t have been able to accept it very well when I was younger. But I think over time with maturity, because like with my mother when she got married is very angry. But once I had my own family and my son, I, I realized, you know, she can’t be alone. She needs love and so accepted my Stepdad, I didn’t, in the beginning it was maturity comes empathy maybe. And then I was, and that’s when I, and then after that relationship, when apart especially with a lot of interference from my family, um, I actually clung more to my mother. Interesting. Yeah. But now that I look back, I think, wow, you know, you guys are some of the reasons we weren’t still together. Not Completely. It takes two and it takes the whole, but I’m thinking, you know, we never had support.
Speaker 1: (42:50)
That’s a strain on a relationship that I can’t fathom. Just like I can’t just go, I mean, just in my experience of dating and relationships to not have family support is support was so stressful. No support whatsoever. And now when I have, you know, we want to have stuff clients, I have young women clients, women who mostly are talking to me about this. Like they’ll be dating someone that their family is unsure about and, and they, they don’t, they don’t get it yet. Like they’re young and I’m like, are you sure they’re parents don’t like that, you know, whatever. I just try to get them to understand how big of a deal that is. Um, and I’m not trying to talk them out of it, I’m, or have a relationship. I was just like, okay, is that like something you’re, you’re prepared to deal with the rest of your life, you know, and they just, it, you know.
Speaker 3: (43:44)
Yeah. It was, I mean, first of all, we were different backgrounds. We came from different socioeconomic backgrounds as well as race. So back in this was, you know, seventies so that was a big deal still.
Speaker 1: (44:01)
You were just blown it, but I didn’t, it didn’t
Speaker 3: (44:04)
matter to me. Right, right. Okay. But it mattered to them. And to me, I couldn’t understand why they were so upset and this person really loves me a lot. And um, it bothered me, you know, and uh, yeah, he was not, did not come from a wealthy family and was a working guy. You had to work really hard. He would have been considered, you know, regular blue collar, you know, lower class. They said he’s not in your league, he’s not in your class. He’s not in a, you know, my family came from a really big brat background of barons and earls and yeah, I know because I looked it up. So I guess they felt, even though we were middle class living there, I guess they never forgot their roots and they just felt I was going beneath me. And I just thought that was, so being a child of the sixties and seventies thought that was so, you know, it’s not how I thought.
Speaker 3: (45:02)
No, that would be so hard. No, I mean, I was thinking I was younger, so it was like, you know, for me it didn’t, I wasn’t a hippie or anything, but it was just for me that wasn’t that pickup. And what’s the age difference between you and like the oldest sibling? The one I grew up with is 75. Okay. And I’m 57. Right. So I was born in 61 and my parents, my mother was 42 when she had me and my, my BCF as you know, there was a year older. They were, you know, born in 1918, 19, 19. So they were, uh, when they were adolescents, they were depression era, depression era. Uh, and then you had a rough life and at that point, but, um, they always made it through because they, oh, you know, they’re good family. Right. And, uh, but, uh, I don’t know why by the time I came along, you know, I was born in 61 and then, you know, I always thought my siblings would be more liberal about things like that, but they weren’t.
Speaker 3: (46:14)
Right. Well, it’s almost, well it was going to say, I mean like you’re, it sounds like your oldest sibling, it’s like that’s almost a different generation. I mean, he was born in 1944. Right. He, you know, he was that during World War II and like prime baby boomer, I’m at the end tail of the baby boomers because that goes to what, 63 64. But yeah, it’s a whole different generation and they’re not, I don’t think they’re like that now. [inaudible] maybe. No, I don’t think my, I don’t think my sisters or my, but I think the two oldest, not about race and class, but maybe still about, no, I think they are still about race and class. That’s not who I am. That’s not who my other siblings are because our family is all mixed now. I was the first one to break that mold. And um, after that, it just kind of, I’m so glad because I made it easier for the other.
Speaker 3: (47:11)
I feel like you’re breaking the mold all over the place. You’re really like setting, showing that you can live a different way, be different kind of person, everything. So their mother, you know, or, or fathers didn’t have to be shocked, but I, I did have to go through on Facebook and unfriend a lot of family because I thought if I decide to talk, I don’t talk about this on my private Facebook page, but I thought if I am friends now with my brother and my nieces, one nephew and three cousins on Facebook, and I thought if anything comes up, they’re just going to get all upset. So it’s just better if they don’t see it. So I unfriended them since they don’t want to talk to me about it anyway. I mean, if it’s not, and I even unfriended some of their children because, um, I figured they’d run and tell them. Right. Yeah. And even though they haven’t done anything to me, I just don’t want them to tell my siblings. So I,
Speaker 1: (48:01)
well even they might, I mean I get worried because I also don’t, don’t say anything about it on Facebook because it’s, um, it’s still very secret in my family and I just don’t know what is going to pop up on someone else’s feed. And then they’re just going to innocently, they’re not even like gossiping about me. They’ll just say to there, my aunt and uncle, you know, like, Hey, like did you know that Eve Dah, Dah, Dah, you know, just something, something so innocent that actually a guy, you know, um, yesterday a guy from high school put on Facebook that he discovered an older brother that he didn’t know existed because of 23 and me and I immediately wrote on it, commented on his thread that just said like, Hey, I’m doing a podcast, would love to talk to you about it. And I don’t know where that showed up in my family’s Facebook feed world and now realizing 24 hours later, that would, yeah, I haven’t told them, you know, like that. I haven’t told my parents yet. It’s coming. It’s coming in the next. Um, no, no. I mean they know about the NPE part, but I just haven’t told them about the podcast launching yet. I just haven’t told them they, they want to, I’m not talk. They want to not talk about it ever again. Um, which saw, they all are. And I, my oldest siblings. Yeah. Yeah. They’re in their sixties. And uh, and I, I, I understand. I understand. And it’s a wish. I can’t honor right now. Um, you know
Speaker 3: (49:36)
what though, you have to, this is your story. This is our story. This is our life, our choices now. And there’s been too many secrets and I think we have the right to tell our own story. I’m sorry if it hurts. I don’t just, I don’t know if you feel this way, but I don’t want to hurt anybody, right. No, I absolutely understand dead. So who am I hurting? I mean my siblings feel hurt. Well, I’m sorry, you know, but this is my story to tell. Not Yours. Right. And you, you can’t tell me not to share it if I don’t want to. Is it widely? No, no. I don’t share it on my private Facebook page. Only my closest friends and closest family know I haven’t. The one cousin that tested is sworn to secrecy. I so afraid of rejection from my other cousins on my paternal side lessons on my maternal side.
Speaker 3: (50:29)
My mother only had one brother and he had no children. They’re all second, third cousins because my grandmother had, it comes out that like, actually you’re not related at all. I’m afraid they’ll judge Smith be like, okay, nevermind. She’s not a real one of us. Yeah. I’m so afraid of that. And some of them I’m really friendly with. They don’t live here. They all live. Like I said, they live in the UK or they live in Canada and I’m actually embarrassed and ashamed to tell them. Hm. I don’t want them to know. The one cousin that tested said it wouldn’t make a difference to him. I’m still his cousin, but I have asked him not to tell the siblings. Are you, would you say you’re the closest with him? Like why did you choose, why did you reach out to him? Because we weren’t communicating.
Speaker 3: (51:10)
You just communicate more often. And I knew he was directly, you know, the first cousin and I’m friends with his sister as well. Um, the other two siblings he has, I’m not, you don’t really communicate at all. Nothing, but the two of us do. I know. And you know how you just click with some people. And then I have more distant cousins in England and I’m very friendly with them, especially one couple in particular. And um, I could link where we’re descended from and, and I don’t want to tell him that I’m not because he, he posts, he posted something on his Facebook page one time, two things. One was that, um, there were certain people he needed to get rid of his out of his life. And I said, oh. And one of our cousins who I now know was not actually my cousin, right.
Speaker 3: (51:58)
Posted on there, you know. Oh, I hope that doesn’t mean me. And then I put on there, well, Gosh, I hope not me. And he goes, oh no, not you. He says, I’m too emotionally attached to you. I could never get rid of you. And I was like, but then there was another one that we private, we work, we also private and we were talking about this other cousin. He says, well, she’s not really one of us. She’s by marriage. So she doesn’t really count, but she’s still, and I’m an admin on our family page. Oh, him and my cousin and I are the admins on our family page. How do I tell him I’m now not really that. I mean legally I am legally, he is my father. He is on my birth certificate. My mother was married and as you know, law here, if the woman is married, that man is presumed the father.
Speaker 3: (52:44)
Right. So legally, just like as if it was an adoption. He is my father and I have no intention of changing my name. I know that it’s a big subject with uh, yeah, well I go by my married name anyway, but I’m not changing my maiden name. I even if my marriage was something was to happen, I’m not, no, this is who I am and I’m actually still strongly about my name as well. Yes. I mean my name is actually, uh, a really rare last name. I’m not going to share it because um, that’s okay. You don’t have to do one to, yeah, don’t do that. But um, my marriage name is not rare, but my maiden name is a very unusual name and if you meet somebody with that name, my father always told us you’re related. You’re probably related if you, and it’s funny cause my cousins, even their third, fourth cousins, they tell me the same thing that there’s parents always told them. And I’ve actually nailed it down to where, you know, I’ve gone back to the 14 hundreds and it’s so, and he’s not even my dad.
Speaker 3: (53:47)
I’m going to go visit this castle that belonged to one of the Earl’s that is now a museum. And I thought I was going to say, Hey, you know you’ve got a blood relative here. And I was said, I’m not even applied relative. You know, I can’t. I just, it’s not that my mother doesn’t have that on her side. She does, but it’s just like I was so identifying is this, cause I’ve done this research like I did. You will really resonated with you for whatever reason. I’m the ancestry person, my homes. I’m the one that, and now I’ve lost my fervor. I don’t want to do it anymore. And people said, well, you can do your new family. I said, I don’t need to. They’ve already done it. They go back 10 generations. I’ve lost my interest in looking at whether it be my mother or my father’s side. I feel like I wish I never knew. I almost wish that I, I don’t want to hurt my new naces or my brother by saying that, or the new family. I don’t want them to think, you know, that I’m not going to appreciate what I could have with them, but it’s not about them. It just caused me a lot of pain and I sometimes wish I had never done the DNA test. I only did it for fun. I never thought I’d find anything. I just did it to do see how English I was, you know, and
Speaker 3: (55:06)
never expected this kind of outcome. And, and I, I kind of wish I didn’t know, but I am embracing, you know, I’m very cautious with the new family and I know they’re cautious with me, but they said they’re very open about the situation and I’m hoping that maybe there’ll be the family I never had. That’s a possibility. I mean, I don’t want to get my hopes up either because I’m so afraid of being hurt and rejected again and I don’t want to be rejected. And I can’t really explain that to them because they all seem pretty confident. But it sounds like my grandparents on that side were very good people. They grew up, it sounds like the family with the exception. I read the family memoir, one of the brothers wrote a big memoir about the family. So I really wish every family, every family did that really change this experience for everyone.
Speaker 3: (56:02)
The only family member that had anything negative was my biological father and John the drinker from Alhambra, but you know, and it’s uncle John. Yeah. What I’d like I said, you know, later on they can’t, he came back into their lives and I think, you know, I know he tried to make amends with my brother, so I am hoping he had his redemption in the end. Um, I have older cousins that could give me answers, but I haven’t spoken to them yet. I have first cousins that are in that generation of the 70 they’re in their seventies, sixties and 80s but they haven’t reached out to me. Just my brother and my two nieces. I’m friends with a nephew, and then the three cousins are all second. They’re my first cousins children. So I guess that’s, is that
Speaker 1: (56:46)
cousins once removed? I’m the worst. I don’t know cousins. Well, I think it’s second. Yeah. The reason they’re first cousins once removed or they’re second cousins. So their parents are my first cousins. I feel like I figured that out number of times. Even with my cousins we fit. We have sat down and figured out who’s the one who’s the removed and who were, and I still never remember from meeting to meeting. It’s been very,
Speaker 3: (57:11)
I don’t want to come off as a, as a, you know, Debbie Downer or negative Sally, whatever you want to call it. I’m trying to be very,
Speaker 2: (57:19)
yeah,
Speaker 3: (57:20)
realistic, but just being real. I don’t think any of this is Debbie Downer and I’m trying to be real, but I don’t want to, you know, my sister says, talking to me about is so depressing and she can’t handle it. It’s like she says, when I talked to you, I feel like I’m talking to or, and that really hurt.
Speaker 1: (57:34)
Oh, that’s because I’m being real with my sister. I’m telling her how I really feel. Well, and if you said that you grew up in a family that didn’t want to talk about their emotions, no, they didn’t ever probably meant they didn’t want. Talk about the quote unquote negative emotions being called, it’ll probably rain today. Yeah. Oh Man, I don’t have my tail.
Speaker 3: (58:00)
I realize now that I’m just going to have to have a superficial relationship where it’s all sunshine and roses and just how are you? I’m great. How are you? Which is what they want and yeah, and, and that’s, it’s not a real relationship. That’s really hard. I’m so sorry. That’s what I’m going to have to have. And I, it took me a while to accept that it’s, I can’t tell you how much I think I’ve done more crying this last year than I have in a long time.
Speaker 1: (58:29)
And how long has this been since the, it’s been a year since this
Speaker 3: (58:33)
is it not even a year. It’s your cousin from another state. May was when he told me of his suspicions. July was when it got confirmed. Right. Cause you said that’s when you joined the group. As a matter of fact, the last time I was here visiting, I come stay with friends. Like I told you, I grew up with them in Alhambra. They live next door. So they knew my whole family. The last time I came here, about three, four weeks ago, I went to where my mother and my grandparents are buried and I, I just had to talk to my mind. I know it sounds crazy, she’s dead, but I just went to, I had to go to the cemetery and I just, I found the grave and I’m just screaming at my mom from, and there was nobody around. It was a Tuesday and bringing crazy, no will I, you know, the security guard came and he was like watching me from afar and when I realized he saw me pacing back and forth yelling at this grade that he probably thinks I’m a lunatic so I better, you know, I did the sign of the cross. It’s a Catholic, the Catholic cemetery. So I did the sign of the grizzlies incubators, just start praying because I pray because I didn’t want him to think of some limit tick that was there to, you know, having a breakdown. And forgive me for anybody who has mental health issues.
Speaker 3: (59:38)
Cause I already said that I have panic and I [inaudible] no, I don’t think, I don’t think you were saying anything offensive. Yeah, I just didn’t want him to think I was somebody who was going off the rails in the cemetery and uh, I just, you didn’t want him to take any action right? In that way. So I was just getting it off my chest, just asking her how could you do this to me? You know, why didn’t you tell me before you died, you know, why didn’t you, you know, when you saw everything that was happening and how my siblings treated me. Why didn’t you intervene? Why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you tell me that? I had other family and nobody in my family is really religious. Um, they’re all atheists. If they’re not atheists, they believe, but not an organized religion. But most of them are atheists.
Speaker 3: (01:00:19)
Your siblings? Yeah. My one sister, I don’t, I don’t really want to make this about religion, but one sister was a Jehovah’s witness. I do not believe she’s practicing anymore. The other one. She believes in God but not organized religion. The brothers are all atheist and we were not raised with a lot of religion. Right. Grandmother was half that interests me because I mean, I know that culturally and socially it was not, um, you know, having a child out of wedlock or from infidelity is not acceptable. But I just was assuming there was a religious blanket on that as well. No. Well, my parents were raised with church. They just didn’t raise us with church. Now I did go to church with my grandmother and with her nurse and with her daughter who I used to play with when I stayed with my grandmother and they were Catholic. My Grandmother was Catholic. Why? My Mother didn’t become Catholic. I have no idea. When did you become Catholic? I, I kind of had a transition,
Speaker 4: (01:01:22)
mmm.
Speaker 3: (01:01:24)
Over years, but officially I made it official about, oh, I don’t know, five, six, seven years ago. Um, I didn’t get baptized till I was in my thirties. I went through confirmation and stuff though. 2011, 2012, 2003. I can’t remember the exact date. You think I would know. But I’ve had so much happen to me, but it’s been, I’m not expecting the exact date. And I always thought, I’ve always had faith though. I’ve always had this, I’ve always asked, I’ve always been a child that used to ask questions, which was really annoying to my family because I’m supposed to stay quiet and not ask questions. And I would always ask, you know, you know, how come we’re here or why do we exist is, you know, why don’t I see my cousins and I, I mean, I was always questioning everything and you know, I was always told, just be quiet, don’t ask questions you’re seeing, not heard those days. And so meeting this, talking to this new family and I out, a lot of them are Catholic and I was just like,
Speaker 1: (01:02:22)
oh, interesting. Really? I cried because I’d had no
Speaker 3: (01:02:29)
buddy that’s Catholic. And I’m just like, you know, my, my boys are, you know, my children are all baptized and my boys are Catholic, but they never went with the faith, like went their own way. But I was like, oh my gosh, I have cousins and, and, and stuff that are,
Speaker 1: (01:02:44)
can I, so that might be a really, that might be a point of connection. Yeah, that’s, that’s really happy. That could feel really good. Yeah. I mean, I’m really Catholic. Well it’s recent, so I made, I’m assuming, I was like assuming like if it’s new then yeah, it’s,
Speaker 3: (01:03:01)
I was going to church long before I made it official. I’d been going to Catholic Church since I was a little girl and I actually started praying the rosary like in the 80s, and nice to have my mother’s, my grandmother’s things, uh, the Catholic thing she had, but, um, I didn’t make it official. I was still going to Catholic church. I did go to Christian Church, you know, um, nondenominational Christian churches. And, um, I was just looking for a night. I even studied with the Jehovah’s Witnesses. I read part of the Koran. I mean, it was just like really looking and I, I finally knew
Speaker 3: (01:03:35)
that this is where I was meant to be and, but I’ve always had faith in religion and I don’t want to use religion, sphere, APP spirituality. I’ve always questioned our existence. Where does, everybody else was like, God, that was wrong with you or you know, just, we were, we were monkeys, you know, and, you know, and so I just, but I never could accept that and I was always different. I was always different than everybody. So I, and so I think I found out that that whole family was raised, whether they were Baptist or Catholic and, uh, one of them is now more women, but by choice, he, he switched. He was Catholic. But I think the faith and religion had to come from that family because they’re all believers. And I’m thinking like everybody,
Speaker 1: (01:04:20)
somehow that got passed down to so some good, like, just some like lovely. Yeah. I mean, it’s like just gotta check the battery here really quick because I don’t seem to battery if that happened to you, but it’s like I, I sometimes think maybe it’s genetic. Right? Well, I mean I just think you can’t help but wonder all of it. If I’m, if, if I can say like, oh, the shame you’re feeling could be genetic then why not? Also the spirituality.
Speaker 3: (01:04:46)
Well there were a lot of things I am, I’ve inherited from my mother. I always thought it was also my dad’s side, like migraine headaches. We all have the unfortunately. Yeah. And there’s that. Uh, I inherited dad. Um, my mother was a very nervous person. She had a lot of anxiety and panic. I know that’s where I get that. My sister has it as well. She was going to hate that I said that and so does my daughter and my mother. I feel like sometime I might’ve been the cause of some of my mother’s distress. My Dad was too, let’s not forget that WHO’s responsible? But she ended up in camera, real state hospital for a while
Speaker 1: (01:05:27)
cause I hate, I hate framing it that way.
Speaker 3: (01:05:30)
My mother went through a lot. She wasn’t mentally ill. She was, I believe she had some nervous breakdowns. She was stressed out. Well yeah, I mean all the things that was happening and I’m that depression. I, I’ve always been somewhat depressed. I had been diagnosed with chronic depression but that didn’t come til much later in life. I never would admit I was depressed. I kind of went through always just pushing forward one foot in front of the other. It’s, I didn’t even start taking medication till like seven years ago. So stubborn. If I had known medication was going to help that much, it would have taken it 30
Speaker 1: (01:06:07)
years ago. But I think that therapist, um, I’m going to stop you for one minute because we have to change the battery.
Speaker 2: (01:06:15)
That’s okay.
Speaker 3: (01:06:18)
And if I’m talking too loud, I apologize. You’re not talking too loud because I have a hearing issue, so, no, no, no. I have tinnitus. Manir is disease. So, oh my dad has that. Yeah. So I talk, I have, I am losing hearing. I talk really loud because I’m trying to hear myself and over the ringing. It’s really loud. No, no, no. I need you to talk about, let me just, I kind of forget that. Geez. I just don’t want to bore your, no, no, no, no
Speaker 2: (01:06:45)
edit. We’ll shave it a little bit. Hey Kayla. Kayla,
Speaker 1: (01:06:57)
and I don’t want to make it all about my mental healthy passed, so now we know how to do it. I know, cause we’ll probably, I’ll probably shave it all down to be about an APP, you know? So yeah, I just, I think it’s hard not to just like, I mean, that’s part of the nature of just having a conversation is that we just meander into different topics. Yeah. And I gotta tell you, there’s a lot of things I haven’t said hello to choose the battery and I forget what I’m supposed to do. So I hit them.
Speaker 2: (01:07:24)
I hit the room. Oh, I guess I am. Well, I hit it once.
Speaker 1: (00:00)
Absolutely, no, I totally agree. So, okay. So that makes her on May make his aunt double checking to make sure I don’t make that same mistake. Hello? Hello. Okay. Is My mic on?
Speaker 2: (00:14)
Your mic is on. So I’m a hello. This is everything’s relative. I’m Eve Sturgis. I’m sitting here with, uh, Carla who reached out to me and said she had some, a story to tell. So I drove down to Orange County. I’m kind of doing an Orange County tour today. Uh, and I’m super excited to hear her story and find out what this experience has been like for her. And, uh, she’s gotten notes for me. She’s got pictures, she had coffee. This is really fun and great. So, um, why don’t you get started and then I will interject as necessary. Does that make sense? Sure. Okay. Take it away.
Speaker 1: (00:56)
Thank you. Uh, so I was born in 1967 in the summer of love and, uh, in this house that we’re sitting in, you know, it was my child, gorgeous house by the way. Everybody gorgeous. I’m dying. Um, my parents split when I was seven, but they remain best friends very close for my whole life. My Mom’s still living. Um, my dad passed away in 2002. And just for the sake of clarity, I think a lot of people in our world, um, in the, in PE world referred to birth certificate father and a birth father. I use the terminology, my dad and my donor. Great. Okay, great. Thank you for clarifying. Yes. Um, so growing up, you know, I felt very loved by both of my parents, but there was sort of a disconnect and I always felt that the two of them connected with each other more than either of them connected with me. Oh. Either of them. Right. I just didn’t feel like they got me or they understood me, but there was always something there that I really couldn’t put my finger on. Um, in addition to that, I didn’t look anything like my dad and we didn’t have any shared mannerisms. I definitely did with my mom. Right. But there’s just something kind of underlying. Um, but, uh, anyway, so, you know, my parents split, but they’re very good friends and you know, I have a decent upbringing. Everything. Nothing terrible,
Speaker 2: (02:29)
mad at everybody. Stayed. Did your dad stay living right near you?
Speaker 1: (02:32)
Uh, my destiny living in this house moved out. Okay. So, um, but you know, I saw my dad on the weekends and things like that. Um, when I got married, um, which was a few years before my dad passed away. Um, we were in our early thirties and my then husband and I spent a lot of time talking about, um, you know, starting a family, what we do if we couldn’t have kids naturally, because at our age we were starting to see our friends having a lot of difficulty and sometimes using fertility clinics. And you know, we saw this road that they were going down and thought that in some cases they were being taken advantage of a bit and in the heat of the emotion. Oh yeah. You know, making decisions when you’re already on fertility, drugs and things like that. And it just didn’t sit right with us. So we had a lot of really deep philosophical conversations and decided that, um, if we couldn’t have kids, naturally we go straight to adoption. And we were very firm about not wanting to use any kind of artificial means of getting pregnant and, uh,
Speaker 2: (03:45)
great discussion to have. By the way, for anybody who’s getting married, I would recommend that as well and to be on the same page so you’re not having that discussion while you’re trying to get pregnant. So thank you. Um, money, religion kits, do it guys.
Speaker 1: (04:00)
Yes, I recommend that too. Um, so basically we used to joke around about, you know, we don’t want our kids ending up on Jerry Springer. Right, right. And Yeah, so I’m waiting for Cherries, were going to call me any day now. Um, so fast forward about three years later after we get married and we’re just starting to really think about having kids and my dad passes away suddenly unexpectedly massive heart attack. Um, and I, we were living in San Francisco and he was here and he left behind horrible physical and financial mess. So this house that you’re sitting in, imagine you can’t see the, the floor in the entire house. There was one pathway from the front door into the living room, but it was filled with papers and everything. You can imagine a hoarder, hoarder, there’s an attic that spans the length of the house full, had you known garage full, not to this degree, basement full. So, um, clearly had some issues and there was no will. And so I had to go through all the stuff. So without getting into too much about that, it was basically my full time job for a year to go through, deal with his stuff, clear out the house, manage his estate, deal with his finances. He hadn’t filed taxes in 10 years, things like that.
Speaker 2: (05:25)
That sounds like it was. And so that’s the point emotionally, like emotions not withstanding, I mean physically exists, just sounds so hard. Part of the problem here is that I never got a chance, a chance
Speaker 1: (05:37)
to grieve the loss of my dad. I just had to, I’m an only child. I had to jump around running, taking care of business. Okay. So this is kind of sets the stage, right. So, um, during this time my mom is supportive, but you know, my mom and dad, never anybody else, you know, I think they were each other’s soul mates and she was grieving. Okay. But I couldn’t deal with that. I had to deal with all this stuff. So fast forward a year, we finally got through the house. Probate has ended, we’re getting back on track of having her own family and all of that. And my mom says, I need to talk with you. So she comes over and I’m thinking, she’s going to tell me she’s got cancer. A lot of people in her family had kids, so why don’t we go or you can tell me you have cancer.
Speaker 1: (06:30)
And she said, no, no, this is about me and you and your father. And I said, are you going to tell me that he was not my biological father? And her jaw dropped. And she said, what on earth would make you say such a thing? And I told her, I said, I always kind of suspected, um, you know, look like him. We didn’t have any shared mannerisms. I said, but I’ll tell you there. The moment that I knew was when I graduated from college and he was a college professor at the college that I attended. And so back in those days, it was the late eighties there were physical pictures, digital pictures, so physical pictures. I get my physical pictures back. There’s a picture of my dad and his robes arm around me. Really proud. And the next picture, it’s one of my English professors, same pose in his robes, arm around me. Really proud and I’m looking back and forth at the two pictures. No, no, no, no. Like, oh my gosh. I look more like my college professor, then my own dad. And it freaked me out. Side Note, I am not my college.
Speaker 2: (07:33)
[inaudible] was like, no, but if you saw there, man, okay,
Speaker 1: (07:39)
born in 1967 it’s the summer of love. They’re having all kinds of parties, whatever, you know. So this is what’s going on in my mind as I’m looking at these pictures. Oh my goodness. You know, who knows what happened. Never in a million years would occur to me that I might be adopted because I know I’m my mother’s daughter. Like there’s just no question. Right, right. I look enough like her, it’s just, there’s no way, but the only possible explanation and to me is that my mom had an affair. And whether my mom, my dad knew, I just, I didn’t want to go there. And the two, like I said, the two of them were best friends. So they found a way to still have a great relationship. So time I’m thinking, I don’t even want to touch this. I don’t want to bring it up. I am so not drama kind of person.
Speaker 1: (08:35)
Um, it just didn’t seem like any good could come of exposing that are asking questions about it. Okay. So again, I’m 21 just finished college and I’m like, I just not going to say anything. So I just decided not to. So my mom brings the science of fast forward. So I tell her, okay, this happened and that’s from that moment I just knew. And she said, wow, well why didn’t you ever say anything? And I told her, I thought it meant have an affair. You, she said, no, that wasn’t it at all. She said, we went to a fertility clinic and used a donor and then my jaw dropped because, okay, so I’ve already told you, I’ve decided that that’s not a choice that I would make for myself. So now I’m processing
Speaker 2: (09:22)
and you’re, and I’m sure you’re painting your mom at least was aware of that conversation that you and your husband were having at all? Honestly, probably not. Okay. Maybe not that close.
Speaker 1: (09:30)
Okay. Okay. So, um, but it’s kind of, it’s enlightening that it would show you that she doesn’t know me well enough to know that, but then, yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, um, I was pretty floored and I guess she had seen an Oprah episode where the donor, you know, United with his offspring and it was kind of, you know, sunshine and roses and everything went great and she thought that this might happen for me, is the second person today to bring up Oprah and away. Thanks. So Oprah. But you know, back in those days, it was the happy side of these things. You didn’t really see that there could be another side of it. Right. So, but you know, I think out of respect to my dad, she waited until he had passed and then, um, told me she did not check with the clinic first before telling me.
Speaker 1: (10:26)
So she gave me all the information and it was a clinic through Ucla where my dad had gotten his phd. And so that was how they found out about it because in 1966 yeah, nobody talked about, yeah. That was not something out in the open. Absolutely not completely taboo. Like I don’t even think most people would know that this was even an option, right. In those days area. I don’t know. So, um, so she gives me that the information and I called the clinic in. What my mom had told me is that the paperwork they filled out was that they wanted a donor that matched my dad’s description physically. Um, he was like, just genius. You know, they want somebody really smart, really intelligent, same ethnic background, German, Polish. Um, and so that’s what they asked for. And you know, I looked more like my mom, I didn’t look anything like my debt. So it’s hard to tell what I actually
Speaker 2: (11:25)
yeah, it’s always a gamble, like, yeah.
Speaker 1: (11:28)
But you know, it’s not like I have like blue eyes and red. I mean, I dye my hair red, but I’m blonde. So, um, you know, it’s not like I stood out or I looked like I didn’t fit in. I looked like my mom. I had the same coloring is wildly, wildly different. No, not at all. Not at all. Like she has Hazel eyes, I have Hazel eyes, my daughter has Hazel eyes, ironically. Um, so anyway, so I called the clinic and said, you know, my parents came there in November of 1966 and, um, you know, I’m just curious if you have any information. And the guy says, well, we had a fire a couple months ago and uh, everything from that time period was lost. Okay. So now I’m starting to feel like you believe that soap opera at the time? Not really. I just figured they probably just didn’t save anything. If they add anything. Right. But yeah,
Speaker 2: (12:27)
I would be like, that was like a script written on the wall that was like, that’s the way we maintain confidentiality.
Speaker 1: (12:34)
Yes, we have fires. But I will say I did research later on, like many years later and I was able to confirm that they did have a fire at the clinic and they had to move locations and the clinic ended up shutting down after having some issues. Other issues, not fire related at the, I can only imagine, but um, but no, but the reality is I’m sure they probably didn’t even save anything. So, but what the guy tells me is, you know, he says, I’m really sorry that I don’t have anything for you. He said, just look in the mirror and it’ll tell you everything you need to know. So I get off the phone.
Speaker 2: (13:14)
That feels also like something they had written on the wall.
Speaker 1: (13:18)
It’s like how does missive thank you. Lifetime movie? What? Yes. So this is becoming a soap opera, right? But because of what my father, my actual father has taught me, you don’t just let that go. Right. So I thought, okay, I’m a teacher, I believe in teaching and training. This is a teachable moment for that person that answered the phone and you might need a little sensitivity training. So I send an email to the director of the clinic and said, I called and this was, you know, the dialogue we had and I just one, maybe you could speak with that person about being a little more sensitive to the people who are the results of these procedures at your clinic. And he writes back and said, oh, I don’t remember that conversation. That was me. Oh my God. I thought, okay, if this is the director of the clinic, um, I’m probably not going to get anything out of this.
Speaker 1: (14:17)
Right? So I just walked away from that and the best to let that one go. But at the time I didn’t look into any information at the clinic. I didn’t look to see how long the clinic had been in existence. To me, I assumed this must’ve been something brand new, cutting edge when my parents went. So at that time I assumed if I ever connected with siblings I would be the oldest and it would probably be people younger than me. Never in a million years occurred to me that the clinic would have been around longer than that. So okay. So I get nowhere with the clinic. And then, um, a friend who had seen that Oprah sowed told me that something they mentioned on the episode is called the donor sibling registry, which I can’t remember, this is, this is a 2003 when this is all happening. Um, so it was a website, pretty rudimentary. It didn’t have like a super robust search function or anything like that. It was just a bunch of people posting, you know, I was conceived at this fertility clinic during this time period and that you would look and see if you had any matches and then you would contact those people. Right. And I didn’t see anybody who was conceived around the same time for some reason at that time it didn’t occur to me to look for other time periods.
Speaker 1: (15:49)
Right. Cause I think I started out looking for the donor and then I started looking for siblings. But I didn’t think, oh, I should look for anybody who was conceived in the sixties or seventies
Speaker 2: (16:02)
well, why? I mean the whole, the whole process of donor ship, I don’t even, I don’t even know how it works. Like I, I mean I know that we all know the basics. We know that like a man gives his sperm. Yes. And that’s about, I mean, I mean it’s just like not, it’s not a, it’s not an industry or a like, it’s just not an area that we know about. We don’t know how they make the sausage.
Speaker 1: (16:29)
I have never thought more about sperm in my life than I have in the last few years. Um, but, and how prolific it is and how detached, at least some men can be from what it can create.
Speaker 2: (16:46)
Totally. Well, yeah, I mean, and I just am wondering, like, I just didn’t even, I’m just, I’m dying to know how many people used a donor, um, facility and ever considered that that would be, that would come up for their child. Like, no, that would be an issue. Like I just don’t think. Yeah. Okay. And back in those days, especially in those days,
Speaker 1: (17:09)
no conception of DNA, like genetic matching, something like, um, what we can do through ancestry 23 and me that you could just spit in the tube, send it off and it can match you across, you know, millions of people. No concept of something like that. So at the time the prevailing thought was the most important thing is that anonymity of the donor and saving the pride of the father in this scenario. Okay. So clearly my parents tried to get pregnant for eight years, couldn’t they go to clinic one time, get pregnant? We know obviously the donor, but to save face, what they did in those days a lot was they would mix
Speaker 2: (17:58)
oh yeah.
Speaker 1: (18:01)
Donor sperm and starting to see stories coming out that there were doctors. Yep. Yep, Yep, Yep. We’re treating women who would use their own also contributing. We’re also contributing. Okay. Without getting super graphic. Um, back in those days there was no freezing of sperm so that you could get a donation, freeze it. And then come back and use it later. You had to have fresh. And so if the planets aligned and the woman’s Abi elating and the husband can be there and all this and that, the doctors, you know, ducking out into another room, coming up with a local donor. I mean, oh my God, Oh my God. You can see why I have issues with this whole thing. Just fist a rabbit hole. It is. And ethically, those kinds of things just make my skin crawl. Okay, so you have that whole aspect of it and sort of this God complex.
Speaker 1: (19:04)
Right. And you have to remember that fertility clinics, their purpose, their mission is to get women pregnant and have live births. After that happens, they could care less. That’s why there’s that dismissiveness it’s like you’re alive. You know? What do you care to look in the mirror? What does it matter? Who cares what your genetic makeup is? You know? It’s, it’s unbelievable. So there’s, there’s that aspect of it and then now there’s much more control about how many offspring you can generate from one donor. Back in those days, there were no, it was the wild west.
Speaker 2: (19:42)
I have a question or don’t know. I have a question and it is, I mean, none of nothing, no question about sperm is not gross. But because this came up recently, someone was telling me that some either a country like Australia or the UK, somebody just made a rule that you, no one can give more than 10 you can’t have more than 10 submissions. So here’s my question. There are like millions of sperm per submission, right? Does each submission get used for one person or does it get divided? Do you know? Those are great questions because I was like, well, they said my, the person saying it was like, well you can only do 10 now in that country. So then you would know that your offspring would would cap off at 10 and I was like, not if they’re splitting it, you only need one sperm. So write a donation doesn’t
Speaker 1: (20:38)
necessarily equal the number of offspring. Right. Unless they only use one to one session for one in semination. Oh Man, I’m going to figure this out guys. Yeah. These things are on my list. Like who’s dividing the sperm? Whose job is that going down this road? I, it’s like I get angry and angrier and more frustrated at the industry as a whole. The system at the system. And I feel like out of this, there needs to come something. I need to do something to be helpful to someone somehow. I’m not exactly sure what that is. Um, part of it too, I think is this what used to be such a focus on the anonymity of the donor. So imagine too that imagine you’re a donor and you donate, you have no concept at this time, 1966 that somewhere down the road you might be identified. Hello?
Speaker 1: (21:32)
Yeah, no, I’m fascinated. I, yeah, I think about those men a lot. Like what is it like for them to get a phone call? Right? I mean, in my mind it’s like a knock on the door and someone is standing there, um, that was not their intention. And so this is a piece of the puzzle. And honestly to me, I feel very strongly that if you’re gonna donate and you’re going to create a human being at a minimum, you should provide medical history in some family information. You know, you could still remain anonymous and still provide some of that I think. And I think the laws are changing or maybe they have already changed. Um, so that you cannot remain completely anonymous anymore. It’s just not realistic in the age of Home Dna kits. You, you just can’t, and I don’t think you can go into it.
Speaker 1: (22:25)
You should go into it with that belief that you’re going to remain completely anonymous. Um, okay. So I find out, I get nowhere. I have no information about anything. Okay. And again, this is 2003 and you know, what do I do with this? So my mom has told me this, so I can’t do anything about it. I’m not going to have this Oprah moment with my donor or my siblings who, if they exist and there could be hundreds, thousands of us. Right. And you know, I didn’t, I grew up in the only child. I wanted brothers and sisters. My whole life. So that was really my interest. You know, I had a dad had father-in-law, I didn’t really, it wasn’t really looking for a dad. It would’ve been nice to thank him. I suppose for me just donation sharp. I’m alive because of you. Whether I agree with that or not, it’s the case.
Speaker 1: (23:17)
It’s the truth. So thank you. But that’s all I really needed as far as that went. Um, and I remember talking with my brother in law about it after this all came to light and I was saying, you know, I’m really frustrated that I can’t find any information about possible siblings. And he said, what are you looking for? You have siblings now? And he meant my inlaws. And I said, you know, that’s a really good point. And I’ve thought about it and I thought, okay, my brothers, my brothers in law, they earned that title. You know, they were in my life. Like when my dad died, they stepped up. They were there for me. That’s family, you know, and we don’t share any DNA at all. And it doesn’t matter if they’re my family. And it was a really good point. And I thought, what am I looking for?
Speaker 1: (24:07)
I have what I need. I wanted family, I’ve got family, you know, just let it go. And back then there’s no ancestry 23 meet any of that stuff, right? So you could get a paternity test with somebody if you thought they, they might be your parents. But other than that, there was really nursing to databases that are out. There was nothing to do rowing. So, excuse me. So at this point I just sort of just have to put it away and I, I put that aside and then it really started to kind of come up for me. This whole notion that I’ve been lied to and what I thought was true isn’t true. And you know, even though my parents did this out of love, it’s still, it’s very disconcerting and it’s uncertainly when the, the, the people that you should be able to trust more than anyone in your whole life.
Speaker 1: (25:04)
Your parents have lied to you and over and over again, you know, you have a family history project that you have to do for school, you know, all that kind of stuff. People bring up school projects so often. Yeah. And it’s looking back, wow. You know, none of that shit that’s not my family history. You know, I’ve been, I’ve been telling all these untruths because that’s what I knew. And so then I started perseverating, all of that. Right. Because I’ve given up now on any chance of finding my biological father or siblings. Okay. So then I have a kid and then I have a divorce and I become a single parent when my kids, three and a half years old. Okay. So again, I just don’t really have the luxury of dealing with not a lot of time for family research in there. No. And I, and there’s grief along the way and none of the grief am I really having the opportunity to deal with. So I’m just having a kind of squish it all down. So fast forward to probably like 2014. Okay. Um, it’s about five years after my divorce. And I’m finally getting out there and kind of getting in the dating world. And my best friend says, you could take your brother.
Speaker 1: (26:25)
And she wasn’t totally off because she said, you are in the geographic region where this happened. You could date your brother. And she said, they have these kids now. And so she told me about ancestry and she said, you should send in for one of these things. And I think part of it was just, she really wanted to know. She’s a very curious person. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (26:46)
I just feel like, yeah, to me that would do like the chances would be so slim that it, but it’s so revolting. However I guess that that’s a possibility. Yeah,
Speaker 1: (26:56)
it really is. And um, so of course I at that moment resigned to never ever date a Jewish guy again in my life.
Speaker 2: (27:05)
Just the one taking like spitting into tubes everywhere. And it made me so sick
Speaker 1: (27:10)
I think of that. But, um, so, but she really kind of pushed me about it. And at first I thought, you know, she’s just curious. You know, obviously people are very curious about my situation because this is not typical. People my age were not donor conceived nowadays. This is very common. Right. But my generation, no, I give you, if you had told me that I was adopted, I would’ve been able to find other people I knew that had a shared experience. I don’t know anybody that will accept now that I’ve met people through the, um, the Facebook group where we met. But other than that, I don’t have anybody in my life that has been through something like this. So yeah. And it just doesn’t, doesn’t come up anyway. No, no. But, um, so she kept kind of bugging me about it. So finally I bought the kit and then it sat on my counter for, you know, six months or something. Finally send it him. I get the results and I look in there and it says 96% eastern European Jew. This is what I see on the first screen. And I was so annoying. It’s like I paid $70 for that. I know more than that. I knew more than that before spinning in the tube. I was so frustrated and I just shut it down.
Speaker 2: (28:29)
That’s why I’m not very interested in those tests. If I had clicked through seeing that there was more information
Speaker 1: (28:36)
and then that, but, and I didn’t even think to look at the matches, the people matches. I just saw that I thought this is bs. This is so stupid. I wasted my money. Why did I do this? Shut it down and didn’t go back in for a year and a half.
Speaker 2: (28:55)
Oh, you really shut it. Shut it down.
Speaker 1: (28:57)
I was so annoyed that I wasted my money. That’s what I just, I couldn’t get over that. And I think my friend was really disappointed. Like, oh, I was really hoping that it would get you some information. So then I start getting these email messages. So if somebody messages you through one of these sites, you get an email message, but you have to log into the site. You got a message from somebody. So this woman is like a fourth cousin, distant cousin. We barely have a connection on my mother’s side. Right. And I’m thinking, okay, I don’t need to be dealing with something on my mother’s side that I have enough on my plate.
Speaker 2: (29:31)
Right. Let’s move along. Not Interesting. Okay.
Speaker 1: (29:34)
But this woman is, I want to say she was harassing me, but every couple of months she’s sending me message persistent. She was, yeah, she was persistent and clearly needed some answers and I just felt bad for her after a while and I wanted her to stop and leave me alone. So this was, it was December, 2017 I logged into ancestry or tell us woman to stop in a very nice way. Um, and I just said, look, you know, I’m going through a whole thing and I’m really here looking for siblings and I seriously cannot handle more than one screen at a time. So I said, I, I, I’m sorry, but I said also, I just really don’t have much information for you, you know, and um, I wished her luck and you know, she thanked me for responding. Well, when I looked to see like where in the lineup she was, cause I had like thousands of matches, right?
Speaker 1: (30:33)
There’s my mom and then there’s two people below my mom and it says close family and I have no idea who these people are. And then everybody else is a much smaller match. So I also, I go back to my messages and I realized they had also those two people had messaged me as well. And so I looked at the messages and one of them is saying, I’m not sure why we’re connected. I have reason to believe that my father is not my biological father after all. But this is all a surprise to me. Maybe you can help me find some answers. And again, I’m looking at that and I’m like, help you find the answer. Let people stop asking me for help. I am a mess and I’m looking for answers. And so again, I see that and I’m like, I can’t deal with this. So I shut it down and I don’t go back. It’s amazing for seven more months and now, okay, I looked back and I feel terrible that I did that. And especially after being this Facebook group that we’re in and reading people’s stories and seeing how desperate they are just to get some answers. And even if you don’t have an answer, at least responding to somebody and acknowledging them how important that is. So I do feel kind of terrible that I didn’t do that. Now I know better
Speaker 2: (32:00)
[inaudible] this is just the whole, it’s a whole, it’s a whole new world and it’s a, it’s an area we don’t, you can’t imagine. So you don’t have empathy if you can’t imagine it or true.
Speaker 1: (32:10)
That’s very true. So, so last summer, so this is July, 2018. Um, it was that really oppressively hot week where it was just hot all around the country and we were visiting our friends in the south and you go, oh, it was awful. It was so hot. You couldn’t even go outside and doing things. We’re stuck inside all day. And for some reason I decided maybe this is the time to log back in and write these people. Yeah, I’m off. I’m a teacher. I’m off in the summer and that’s, I’ll decide to deal with this. So, so I logged back in and I respond to them of course, you know, seven months after they’ve contacted me. And um, so the one by this point, she and the other one, like the two of them have not only connected but they’ve met and they have determined that their sisters, half sisters.
Speaker 1: (33:07)
Okay. So it, you know, the writing’s on the wall. I’m half sisters as well. So there’s the one who she had no idea. She did DNA testing and that’s how she found out both of our parents are dead. There’s nobody to APP. Okay. The other one, which is what’s really throwing me for a loop, she’s not a donor kid. She is the result of an affair and she’s given me permission to talk about this. So I was not expecting this at all. Right. Yeah, no, I’m like, I can’t even put the pieces together right now. I’m like not breathing. So our donor had an affair with her mom and long story short, I mean that’s, you know, her story to tell. But basically she didn’t meet him until she was an adult. She already had children. And um, so she met, she grew up thinking another man was her father.
Speaker 1: (34:10)
Yes. Or not knowing who her father was for part of the time. So that’s a kind of its own best. Right. Um, but I think publicly she had to pretend as though her brother’s father was her father. Got It. Okay. So family wise and everything, you know, they all had the same father, but behind the scenes everybody knew kind of that wasn’t the case. So, um, so she meets him as an adult and you know, they have sort of a lukewarm relationship, not great, but to hurt. That’s her father. Right? So the first thing she does is she contacts him. I mean, she just did ancestry just for fun. Right. Is to find out her ethnic background. Famous last words she said later on, she remembered that when she was a teenager, her mom had said at one point, you know, your dad was a sperm donor.
Speaker 1: (35:07)
You might have all kinds of brothers and sisters out there, but I think at the time maybe she didn’t really understand what that meant or you know, again, this isn’t stuff that people talked about back in those days and it didn’t really resonate. And so when she went to do the DNA testing, it didn’t even occur to her. So she starts matching with these people. She contacts her dad and is like, I think I’m matching with your people from your donations and you do you want me to put you in touch with that? How do you want me to deal with this? And he was like, absolutely not. I want nothing to do with them. So on the one hand it was good to just get that definitively know that that’s the case. Yeah. No ambiguity there. No, but I have to say for me, it kind of sent me in a tailspin because it was much easier when this person was abstract and they didn’t know anything about them.
Speaker 1: (36:06)
Um, my question has always been like, you know, medical history is important. Family history, whatever. To me, the most important thing is, is he a good person? Do I call somebody who’s a good person? That’s what’s most important to me. Okay. And I don’t know that that’s [inaudible] excuse me, and don’t know that that is what’s most important to my siblings. But for me personally, that’s the key. So if he’s not a good person, I don’t want to know about the rest of it. I’m not interested. I don’t care. I’m out. But it would be really nice to know that half of me comes from someone that has done some good in the world. Right. Um, because those are my values. And, uh, when he just completely shut it down, I mean, not even, you know, selfishly wanting information about us. I mean, anything’s just completely denying that we exist. And it was exactly the same treatment from the fertility clinic.
Speaker 2: (37:08)
Yeah. Right. Yeah. And um, you know, and I didn’t take it as a personal rejection. It’s like you don’t even know anything about me. How could it be? It, it’s the opposite of a person. It’s like a nothing, it’s not even an acknowledgement. It’s not even enough of an acknowledgement to be a rejection. Right. You get that. Yeah, I get it. I don’t, yeah, you’re right. I mean, I’m struggling to find the words to, to summarize what you’re saying and you’re doing it great.
Speaker 1: (37:34)
Yeah. But it, but it is, it’s a weird thing to wrap your brain around. And so that was really disconcerting. And um, so she gives us this information and the two sisters and I are kind of, we’re all figuring out, we’re sisters, we’re sharing our stories, getting to know each other. And Oh, here, pop’s brother.
Speaker 2: (37:54)
Right. During that week when we have the, I finally decide that you’re going to look at this suddenly siblings everywhere. Here comes a brother. And
Speaker 1: (38:05)
so, and then a couple of weeks later he happened to be visiting nearby where I live. And so he asked, do you want to meet? And sure. Okay, why not? It was mindblowing.
Speaker 2: (38:19)
Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know anybody that’s, well, I don’t, I don’t know. I don’t know if I known anybody that’s met their siblings yet. We just stared at each other. You literally staring at each other and he’s like, can I see your toes? And Oh yeah, no. [inaudible] you
Speaker 1: (38:36)
do the same thing. And you know, we’ve got this, you know, cookie curly hair, this crazy thick curly hair that nobody in our family has. And um, and then we both took off our glasses and um, it just, I’ve never looked so much like somebody, and I’m looking at, he’s got these eyes that look like they’re Asian but we don’t have any Asian. I was like, where does that come from? And we have the same cheeks. And it was really unbelievable. And his son was with us and he’s in his twenties and he said it was remarkable to watch,
Speaker 2: (39:10)
watch this experience. Yeah. That must’ve been so interesting to witness. You know, it was weird. It was,
Speaker 1: (39:17)
it wasn’t like we just met. It was as if we’d known each other for years. We can finish each other’s sentences. We had so much in common, both teachers, and it’s just, we just got each other immediately. And it was such a powerful experience. It was amazing. It was so amazing. I couldn’t ask for a better experience. Right. And then, um, after that I created a private Facebook group for the four of us. And I said, you know, why don’t we share pictures and we can share our stories and then if we match with anybody else, they can just come in because otherwise we’re going to have to keep going through this over and over again. Cause we’re thinking, I mean really, there could be hundreds of us out there.
Speaker 2: (40:06)
And you all, you all just happened in your own lives, individual lives decided to do a mail in test and you all coincidentally chose the same company?
Speaker 1: (40:17)
No. Um, I think the brother and I both did it to try to find siblings. He’s probably, he was probably trying to find the donor to possibly, he’s a bit more interested in that, but he knew before as well. So he’s known for years. His mom told him, um, so same kind of thing is my situation, that there really wasn’t the mechanism to connect with anybody. And now here’s the mechanism to do it. So he and I kind of did it for the same reasons, but at the same company. No, he did 23. One of the sisters had done 23 and me as well. So they matched and she told him, you need to do ancestry and connect with the others. There’s more of us. Oh my gosh, there could be, now I’m getting it. Okay. Yeah, there could be hundreds of you. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, yeah. And then the other two I think just did it for fun. They weren’t looking to connect with anybody, but the two of us were looking specifically to connect, so we knew going in. Right, okay. Right, right, right, right. I, I think both of us are very grateful that we didn’t discover this by taking the test. Like so many people, it just adds this whole layer of,
Speaker 1: (41:44)
it’s just that, that, that pain of the DC and betrayal and all that kind of thing. You know, I’m so grateful to my mom that she came. Yeah. Yeah. So at least like I don’t have that to deal with. Um, so we, you know, we’re all talking, getting to know each other and we realize that we’re all going to be in the bay area for Thanksgiving. So we met San Francisco Bay area, San Francisco Bay area, so we all met in person and most of the kids as well. And it was so wonderful. So great. Oh yeah. And you know, so far everybody’s like a good person. And, um, we all have the same dark, sarcastic sense of humor. We get each other. Um, we’re all like either for the most part, you know, teachers or social worker or that type of thing. Excuse me. So you inherited something from this kind of mystery man.
Speaker 1: (42:46)
Yeah, yeah, I think so. Um, but you know, we’re all different too because we grew up in very different circumstances. We all have completely different, sure. Family Dynamics and situations. And, um, so we met and it was good. And when we left, my daughter, who, she’s 13, she said, I already feel like they’re my aunties and my uncle and my cousins. So to the kids, that sounds so fun to me. It just, it’s just love. It’s just more people to love and you know, that kind of thing. I don’t think the kids are freaked out by it at all. It’s more you know, us. But um, so you know, so we kind of stepped back from that. And then, um, and by the way, I’m the youngest of everybody. Oh, how funny. It’s exactly the opposite of what you imagined. Absolutely. I never thought it would be the baby, the baby.
Speaker 1: (43:40)
So this is the running joke is, you know, so then one sister sends me a text message, hey, little sis don’t get too comfortable in that baby spot because we’ve got a live one. So somebody matches with us. You got a new one, new one. And this is, it’s exciting, but it’s also kind of disconcerting because it’s like boom, you have a sibling. Yeah. Just, yeah. You know what I mean? Like at least like with a pregnancy, if that can happen, that you have nine months to adjust and kind of get used to this idea. Right. Your whole understanding of the way families are formed is totally blown out of the water. No, the stork comes through email and it’s an announcement and now all of a sudden you a baby and it, it’s just, it’s kind disconcerting. But by this point I had put, um, not a disclaimer but in my profile on both ancestry and 23 and me a description saying, you know, I learned as an adult that my father was not my biological father. My parents used this clinic, you know, and I basically explain in a nutshell my story where I was conceived and when, so the new match told me later, it was very helpful because she was not expected. It was a surprise. So she logged in and then we’re all waiting for a connection and then she logs out and doesn’t go back in for like four days. And I told everybody else, cause I’m active in that Facebook group. I said this is a shock. Didn’t know she didn’t know or there’s something about this that is surprising to her because she’s not reaching out at all.
Speaker 1: (45:27)
And in that, the, my profile I put, I’ve connected with, you know, several siblings already. It’s been a great experience. I’m open to connecting with anybody else. Please reach out to me if you want to have a conversation you, so it’s very open and warm and welcoming. But you know, I don’t want to hound the other person. I want them to know if you’re ready. I’m here. And um, it did, it took about another six weeks or so and I heard back and you know, in her situation she knew her parents had used a fertility clinic, but it was a surprise that it wasn’t her father.
Speaker 2: (46:14)
Oh, okay. So they had used the clinic and actually got it. Okay. No, if that should be okay. We can take it out. You edit that out. Totally. Um, yeah, I get it. I get it. And she’s kind of the freshest thing. So it’s raw. I got it. So a new sibling connected with us
Speaker 1: (46:36)
and um, it was a bit of a surprise for her. And so she,
Speaker 2: (46:41)
she considerably younger? No, she’s for, she’s a little bit here. So you’re still the youngest? She in the brother.
Speaker 1: (46:49)
We’re born in the same year. And then the first two sisters that I connected with are born in the same year, within a few months of each other. So,
Speaker 2: (46:57)
and there’s no, because this guy won’t talk to you, there’s no way to know like what was going on for him from his,
Speaker 1: (47:03)
okay. No, and I feel terrible for the sister who has a relationship with him because she has some of these answers.
Speaker 2: (47:11)
Oh.
Speaker 1: (47:12)
And I didn’t even think about that. He has asked her not to share information with us, but I have to say that I think she has tremendous integrity because she is honoring her father well also trying to relationships with us. And it’s one of the things I admire about her, even though it’s frustrating to know that she has the answers to our questions or at least some of them I admire that she’s made a commitment, you know, to me that shows loyalty,
Speaker 2: (47:46)
respectable way to go. But I assume that she would
Speaker 1: (47:49)
be that loyal to me. And, um, we have a very close relationship and you know, I’ve actually expressed to her my frustration about this whole thing. I can talk with her openly because she doesn’t take it personally. Right. Like she can understand their stance, why you’re frustrated. Yes. And she can understand everybody in the situation, but she’s still doing the honorable thing and she’s keeping her word to her dad and I totally get it. But it is weird to have that connection and to know somebody who knows him. It’s, yeah, it’s, it’s, that’s the part of this that I would have never expected. Right. Yeah. So that’s, you know, every situation has its own unique
Speaker 2: (48:35)
is everybody. But uh, okay, wait, everybody from the same clinic fertility place or was he donating all I, wherever he was at
Speaker 1: (48:45)
so far, I, no, now you’re giving me something else to obsess about that honestly never occurred to me that he might have been donating others.
Speaker 2: (48:58)
So you were all from the UCLA place. Okay.
Speaker 1: (49:00)
And he was apparently a nursing student, I think at the time is how he found out about it. So back in those days, that’s a lot of, um, where the donations came from or doctors, medical students, nursing students, you know, people in the medical field. Um, makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, I honestly have no idea if he had a genuine interest in wanting to help people or if it was just beer money or,
Speaker 2: (49:29)
you know, I, I have no idea. No way to know baby.
Speaker 1: (49:33)
Yeah. But, um, I thought I came up with a really great compromise. Um, when we all got together at Thanksgiving the next day that sister was going to see her dad and the other siblings were like, oh, can you deliver
Speaker 2: (49:51)
me asking person, here are 37 things I’d like to know this time. And I said,
Speaker 1: (49:56)
you know what, you guys, he has already said he does not want that. So I said, instead of all of us in inundating him with a bunch of questions, what if we come up with maybe the three most important questions that we have collectively give those to the sister, she can take them to him and ask, would you be willing to answer these questions? I’ll take them back and that’s it. So at least we get something, he still remains anonymous. She’s keeping her
Speaker 2: (50:28)
work. You know, everybody like you, someone that understands boundaries.
Speaker 4: (50:32)
Yeah, good point. And that
Speaker 1: (50:37)
everybody gets a little bit of what they want and compromises a little bit.
Speaker 4: (50:42)
Okay. So
Speaker 2: (50:46)
the sort of happens in sort of doesn’t, but he shoots it down anyway. It just not going to respond to anything. It doesn’t want to give any information burn with his boundaries. Yes. And so
Speaker 1: (50:58)
to me, this is clear then, and I think my feeling is I’m not going to bring it up with that sister again. He’s made it clear she has tried twice. I’m not going to put her in that position again. I can’t speak for my siblings. I don’t know what they’re going to do. But, um, I will not bring him up to her now. At some point, later on in life, he passes. She may feel free to share things, you know, but it depends on what agreement they had.
Speaker 2: (51:23)
Right. So this Thanksgiving that you all got together, was that this past thanksgiving, 2018 yes. Okay. Yes. And so, and then the new sibling connected with us new year’s this year. And she’s five months fresh. Yes. So
Speaker 1: (51:37)
the table that you’re sitting at right now in my dining room, this will be filled with all but one of the siblings. So the one who is not donor conceived as the one who can’t come, but the newest one is flying out. She lives on the east coast. She’s coming out to visit her mother. And so I said, why don’t we all try to get together so everybody’s coming together so that we can meet her in person?
Speaker 2: (52:01)
Huh. So she’s interested. Yes. She’s interested in, you know, I think, sure. I wouldn’t say standoffish, but you know, she’s not even skeptical, cautious, cautious. I think she’s just trying to catch her bearings like I was. But you know, I sort of assured
Speaker 1: (52:21)
her, I said, look, I can tell you were a good group of people. I can’t guarantee that moving forward, anybody we match with will be in the same. But so far everybody seems like a very genuine, heartfelt person. We care about each other. Um, and I, you know, all I can say is jump in.
Speaker 2: (52:42)
Yeah. I imagine that even if she decides that it’s not a connection that she wants, it’s a safe attempt. It’s like a safe, you’re a safe group to meet for an afternoon. Yeah. And at first I was thinking we would meet at a restaurant or something like that
Speaker 1: (52:59)
and then people individually started saying, you know, that seems kind of impersonal, right. And so, but I, I was trying to make it so it wouldn’t feel like an intrusion or whatever. You know, I, I love hosting parties and having people over and things like that. And, um, my inlaws are a Filipino from Hawaii, so this whole like know Aloha spirit and everybody is Ohana and, you know, like I told you when you came in and go in the fridge,
Speaker 2: (53:30)
yeah. Whatever you want. I made myself right at home. Thank you very much. This is what we do here.
Speaker 1: (53:34)
Right. But not everybody is that way. Right. So, um, but I just kind of put it out there, hey, what would you think about coming to my house? We’re happy to host. And I think everyone actually ended up really liking that idea and that we’re not out there in a public place talking about these really personal things,
Speaker 2: (53:50)
really personal things. And the other thing about restaurants, I mean it just depends on where you go obviously, but then there’s a time constraint maybe and yeah. And you just, yeah. You just don’t know what’s going to happen. And I was thinking the time constraint aspect, you might be positive. Right? Totally. If you’re not getting along, that’s awesome. Yeah, totally threw at my house and you’re kind of right. But, um, but no, it’s,
Speaker 1: (54:14)
I think it’ll be good. And um,
Speaker 2: (54:17)
and what made you choose this weekend? Is something coming up or just you just do mother’s Day. Oh,
Speaker 1: (54:24)
and it just, it’s like the only weekend that kind of worked for everybody. Um, we have a crazy week next week and it’s just that the timing worked out.
Speaker 2: (54:34)
Oh, interesting. Yeah. Okay. So that’s sort of, that will be a presence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: (54:40)
that’s kind of where we are. I don’t know if you have,
Speaker 2: (54:43)
yeah. Uh, Gosh. I mean, I don’t know if I have a need to fill out. You did such a great job. Um, I guess, I mean I think I know the answer to this, but does your, your 13 year old now this whole situation. Okay.
Speaker 1: (54:56)
And so she was at that, um, please give me,
Speaker 2: (54:59)
right, right, right. With the cousins and everybody’s, all the, all the, all the offspring know all the children now she has a cousin that’s her age there three weeks apart. Oh, how funny. Okay. She loves that. Right. So for her it feels more just like a family. Yeah. Okay. That’s great. I’m sorry, I’m just going back over stuff you already said, but I will say
Speaker 1: (55:18)
just adding something, she asked me a very poignant question. So when I told her about all of this and you know, it’s something that I’ve been grappling with and I’ve been very honest with her about it and she asked me, is there any time when grandma could have told you this and it would have been better.
Speaker 2: (55:38)
That was my next question and I mean this is from the 13
Speaker 1: (55:43)
and I had to really step back and think about it and answer honestly. And I said No. I said if she had told me when I was a teenager I absolutely would not have handled it well, especially toward my dad and in my twenties I don’t think I could have coped with it. No really. I said, I told her the only way this could have been any better is if it were just the narrative of my life and this is what I was raised with and I knew from the very beginning that this was the case. And I think you would have that about anything, whether it’s adoption or probably the only situation where that would be helpful would be if you were conceived as part of assault, a trauma, trauma, rape or incest or something like that. Growing up knowing that probably not so beneficial. Right. But other than that, yeah, that’s really, but there really is no time when my mom could’ve told me.
Speaker 2: (56:44)
But that is such a great question cause I was, cause everybody has a different answer.
Speaker 1: (56:48)
Yeah. And it really helped me to be able to forgive my mom or kind of move past that feeling of I’ve been lied to my whole life and it’s when could she had told me and back then they did with the doctor. The doctor told them, you know, they came in, they got there, the insemination, the doctor said you go home and make love to your husband and you’ll never know who’s it is. Right. And from what I’m finding out, this is very common. This is what doctors told couples and you know,
Speaker 2: (57:24)
why would she tell you?
Speaker 1: (57:26)
And if she, you know, no, for sure. And yeah, the doctor said never speak of it to anyone. Don’t even speak to each other about it. And I think there’s a good chance they’ve probably never did talk about it again. Um, you know, my dad’s name is on my birth certificate and even when my parents split, I mean he stay present as your dad. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, I honestly believe he probably would not have wanted me to know because yeah, after he passed away and I was going through his medical records and things, I found some things that like he had kidney disease. Right. Why wouldn’t he had asked me for a kidney, you know, why would he let it get to this point? He died at 67, you know, didn’t even get to retire. And as I was going through this stuff, so this is before I knew the story. I’m looking through his records and I’m thinking, why wouldn’t he have asked me? You know, like I would have done that for my dad. But now that I know this information again, it’s like a soap opera. Oh my gosh. Probably through that process it would have come out that we’re not biologically related
Speaker 2: (58:48)
related or like types like tired or something like that. Yeah. And it’s too bad. We can’t know if that was because he just would, could never bear like, also it’s like he, there’s probably parents are like, I could never ask my child for a kidney that’s, you know, like brothers. No, I didn’t know either way, but you’re right. Like anything medical.
Speaker 1: (59:09)
Yeah. And on the one hand, so that’s one of the good things that came of this is that there are some things, like his mother had Alzheimer’s, so you know, now, I mean, I might still have a connection to, but I don’t know for sure that I absolutely do. Right. But I mean, I ended up doing 20 maybe it’s different in some cases maybe is better than definitely, you know, all of it is like you really can’t control him anyway. So once, once our donor refuse to give us any medical information or anything, I did 23 and me to get the health report part of it and I figured it probably doesn’t hurt to be in both the systems in case people match with us. Bigger dining room table.
Speaker 1: (59:57)
We’re barely gonna fit it this way. Oh, you’re right. We’re gonna have to do the kids tend to get some leaves out there or something. Yeah, we’ll add that card tables. Yeah. So, you know, I mean it’s, I feel better knowing the truth and okay. I wasn’t crazy suspecting this. I’m excited to have siblings, you know, 51 years old and I hadn’t had [inaudible]. He was really fun. It seems really fun that way. And really those are good things. It’s just the, um, and I think through the experience I’ve developed a greater empathy for other people, especially being in the Facebook group. Um, and seeing so many stories and it’s helped me appreciate that my mother came to me and truth. Yep. Yep. Yep. Um, that’s a big deal. Um
Speaker 4: (01:00:50)
hmm.
Speaker 1: (01:00:50)
But on the other hand, I think this whole experience has really reinforced my feelings about fertility clinics and that whole world. And that’s a whole world I know. Nothing about me. So interested now. It’s a, it is interesting and I think what you would find what’s going on now is very different from what was happening before people into and before people question doctors, right? 60. Yeah. Whole different ballgame. Doctors were gods, you did not question what a doctor told you. Right. Plus there was no Google or diagnose yourself or, um, you couldn’t find alternative ideas or things and bad things about back then. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, but, uh, and then there’s another kind of strange aspect, which is you kind of feel like a lab experiment. Yeah. Okay. So even though, yes, this happened because your parents loved you and wanted kids so badly and stuff. Still you weren’t, you weren’t conceived in an act of love. Right. It’s a bit sterile and clinical and it’s petri dish fee. Yeah. Yeah. And um, we read an article and they used the term genealogical bewilderment. Oh yeah. And I’ve read that. Read that too. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (01:02:20)
It really kind of totally is a great, captures it in for sure. And it’s like Danny Shapiro said inheritance, you know, this changes nothing and it changes everything.
Speaker 1: (01:02:31)
It’s, it’s really hard to, to describe or to understand I think, unless you’ve
Speaker 2: (01:02:39)
experience it like most things. Yeah. So fresh that people don’t even don’t even have a reference. No. So, but it does,
Speaker 1: (01:02:48)
it’s, it’s about your sense of identity and you don’t realize how much your, your ethnicity or your culture or your parents hid affects your sense of yourself until it’s kind of pulled out from under you. Right. At least for me, I think the clinic really did do what my parents asked and found somebody with the same ethnic heritage because like I said, I had the most boring results in anybody I know, you know. But I know other people who’ve logged into ancestry and found out their 30% something they had no idea about or
Speaker 2: (01:03:36)
yeah, totally, totally unsettling for people. Yeah. And so I didn’t have that
Speaker 1: (01:03:41)
part of it. Um, but definitely, like I said before, this idea of wanting to know who I come from, who is this person that makes up half of me, I have no idea and I will probably never know. Never know.
Speaker 2: (01:03:59)
But you’re experiencing,
Speaker 4: (01:04:02)
yeah.
Speaker 2: (01:04:02)
The benefit of these relationships with these siblings. Yes. Who also don’t know except for the one. Right. But so you guys sort of say, you know, like if somebody asked me,
Speaker 1: (01:04:11)
do you wish you had never done the test? No. I mean, cause then I wouldn’t have my siblings. Right. But that aspect of, of connecting with somebody who does know him and knowing for sure that he wants nothing to do with this, that’s been difficult.
Speaker 2: (01:04:26)
Sure. Is that something that you guys talk about the siblings together or it’s just you don’t need a little bit, but I think
Speaker 1: (01:04:36)
I’m probably having the hardest time philosophically with that aspect of it. I think the others, it’s more like they want medical history. They want to know about our family. They want to know like what this person is. Let you know, what are his hobbies, what are his interests, what you know, I, for me personally, I can care about any of that kind of stuff if he’s not a very good person, I don’t even know, don’t even want to know the rest of it. But, um,
Speaker 2: (01:05:06)
yeah, we all kind of have like a different, a different take on it, which is interesting. And I guess that’s how families are. I don’t know, because I didn’t grow up with brothers and sisters, but it’s very enlightening
Speaker 1: (01:05:19)
to me to see, you know, even though we have these commonalities and we have, you know, the, we call it the cheeks and chin, we are family crust, cheeks and chin. Um, but we each have our own personality, some of which is, you know, nature and some of which is part of our environment. Some of it’s just us, you know. And did everybody grew up in California? Yes. Okay. Yes. And my brother and I who are two years apart, we hung out in the same spots and we could have very easily cross paths. Wow. Wow. Wow, wow. Wow. Okay.
Speaker 2: (01:05:59)
Right. So your friend was onto something.
Speaker 1: (01:06:01)
Yes, she was. Cause we showed each other our high school pictures. Oh yeah. Like yeah. I would’ve thought you were cute. Wow. Maybe we should edit that.
Speaker 2: (01:06:11)
[inaudible] the stuff you don’t know is in growth. That’s true. But that’s true. But it’s complicated no matter what. Yeah. Great. Thank you so much for sharing this perspective. It’s so wonderful to get a new everybody. I mean everybody has a different angle, but already the diversity of stories has been, um, great. Greater than I than I could’ve hoped for. Um, yeah. So thank you so much for giving me your, your afternoon.
Speaker 1: (01:06:43)
Thank you for getting the word out, to help build understanding about our situations. Yeah. I really hope.
Speaker 2: (01:06:50)
Yeah. I really hope that works, if that makes any sense at all. Um, yeah. All right. Turn this off.
The Nicest Man in West Virginia
Speaker 1: (00:00)
Earned, staying with her. Um, bye.
Speaker 2: (00:02)
I have a younger brother and sister and, sorry, I have to stop you. Um, we have this, this is so embarrassing. Um, just start again with when your wife got you that tense. Just say, just start over from there. Okay. So what got you in to this? Um, I got an ancestry free
Speaker 1: (00:24)
DNA test for Christmas 2017 from my wife. She had seen me get very interested in genealogy. Um, my mother had had dementia for the last several years of her life. She passed away in October of 2017 but my younger brother and younger sister, my only my only two siblings, uh, took turns staying with her for like 12 hour shifts until we finally, uh, moved her to assisted living. But she had no real short term memory left, but her longterm memory was, was very good. And she had eight brothers and sisters and she remembered all their maims middle names, birthdays, most of their children, you know, the longterm memory was really good. And I think it made her feel good to be able to talk about something and know what she was talking about. Yeah. At whatever level of grounding, whatever. Yeah. Whatever level, you know, that she was aware that she was having memory problems.
Speaker 1: (01:36)
Uh, but you know, then she couldn’t remember that she’d have lunch 15 minutes ago. But, uh, which is again, a typical scenario. But, so I got into that and I hadn’t had a whole lot of connection with her family. They lived on the Far Eastern end of West Virginia and we’re at the far western end. And we didn’t go to the small town where she was from very often. I mean, in the pre interstate days, it was like a six hour drive. Right. So, uh, yeah. So I didn’t really know too many of those. She said, we, well, you’ve got three dozen first cousins. Yeah, I know, but I’m like, he could name most of them, but yeah. Well, well, you know, eight brothers and sisters, two of them had 10 kids, 10 kids each. So yeah. Um, yeah, yeah. Um, yeah. And then on my father’s side, my paternal grandfather had divorced.
Speaker 1: (02:35)
He and my grandmother gotten a divorce in the early forties and he was totally out of the picture and never heard from again. And I didn’t know a whole lot about, you know, the, my father’s family going back very far except on him, on his mother’s side, but not, not as father’s side. So that was, those were kind of mysteries. But I didn’t think know that much about the DNA tests at the time. I never really would have done one on my own, but when my wife got me one, I did it. And uh, for herself, no, no. And she’s still, she still doesn’t want to do one, especially, especially now after web app and would make,
Speaker 2: (03:16)
right. We’re watching the worst case scenario go down.
Speaker 1: (03:19)
Yeah. But, um, so I got the ruse. I think I waited a little while after Christmas before I did it. So I got the results back I think in March of 18. And you know, I got the ethnicity thing that, that one of the things, you know, they advertise a lot online about, you know, where your roots were and they were pretty much where I expected. England, Ireland, Scotland, northern Europe, a little bit of Sweden, yellow, nothing surprising or, or earth shattering or anything like that. And then you get that list of DNA matches and there was a whole bunch of names that didn’t ring a bell at all. You? No. Uh, I couldn’t figure out who these people were. I did have a, a great grandmother on my father’s side who had been adopted. So I figured, well, maybe some of those are our, her, uh, family at some level.
Speaker 1: (04:16)
And, uh, and then again, there was some mystery about the, the paternal grandfather, maybe he had another family or other, you know, offspring after he disappeared from, from our part of the world. But, uh, yeah, but I just, there were eight of my top 10 were, you know, two of them were, were my mom’s side. I recognize them, but eight of the top 10 were just names I didn’t know. And, and, uh, there weren’t no, nobody of my surname or my grandmother’s Sir name, paternal grandmother, surname or w, you know, made name, whatever. And, um,
Speaker 2: (04:56)
was it just, I don’t know how the, I don’t know. I’m sorry I didn’t repped. Oh, I don’t know how that will sort of show up. Did it show that those, those eight of the 10 that you didn’t recognize, did it indicate whether they were on paternal or maternal side?
Speaker 1: (05:12)
No, no, it doesn’t end. Okay. But, uh, but like again, Ya know, I, I recognized, definitely recognize two of the people on, on Mom’s side and uh, so I figured the other eight had the B, Ya know, on my father’s side and, and uh, yeah.
Speaker 2: (05:29)
But I was just thinking it was so many cousins. Yeah. I just think of so many cousins that, that I would have just been like, well, I don’t know everybody I know who married to, well, I mean, I asked, I asked
Speaker 1: (05:42)
my mother, I think, no, no, I didn’t. I’m sorry. Cut that with that. That’s not right cause she, she had passed already by the time I took the test. Oh, okay. I’m sorry. But I, I asked, asked a few of the relatives I knew and they didn’t know. Yeah, know I’m the on Mom’s side. They, they didn’t recognize those names. So, um, so anyway, I just went along like that for a few months, which was, I, I kind of get the feeling now and with 20, 20 hindsight, maybe I knew there was something up because that’s not me. You know, when, when I had cancer, you know, I tried to get every word I could find about it and know exactly what could happen, what, you know, what would happen if, yeah. Just be as educated as possible. And this is like, well, I just threw up my hands.
Speaker 1: (06:28)
I’m like, I don’t know what’s going on. So, uh, the big thing that happened was a distant cousin on my mother’s side contacted me through the ancestry messaging system and said, you know, this is who I am. You match me. You met my grandmother, you match my great uncle. Again, this is on my mom’s side. And, um, you know, I do. And she says, uh, and I’ll give you her first name because he’s an angel. You know, she became my search angel at the second cousin three times removed. I’d never heard of lives in New Mexico. And, um, I bet her her is amber and she’s, I can’t thank her enough for what she ended up doing for me. But, uh, so she said, if you would please download your DNA. And she told me how to do it all and from ancestry and upload it to those other three family tree DNA and my heritage and the Jed match or GED match.
Speaker 1: (07:30)
However you say that. She said, I do, I do things like, uh, DNA painting, tracing, which parts of which chromosomes come from, which ancestors? The, I mean, she’s really into it. So I think she’s entirely self taught at this. But, um, so I said, yeah, I’ll do that. And then my add kicked in and I didn’t really do that cause I was kind of, again, maybe subconsciously staying away from it all. But several months later, maybe not until like November or December, I think I finally downloaded and uploaded it and all that and told her it was out there and that she told me how to look at some of the compares on those sites and have one of the matches or one of the sites. There was my niece, uh, my brothers, youngest daughter, and she had found, she had done a 23andme test that, you know, you can upload either time to, uh, I think of this was at TVD match.
Speaker 1: (08:31)
And, uh, so I messaged amber and I said, well, you’ve got another distant cousin, you can work with their, Ya know, this matches. And told him, told her who, uh, who it was. And then the fateful day arrived December 28th, amber messages me and says, uh, um, when we were still messaging through the ancestry system and she said, I’ve got some news for you and it’s going to be upsetting. And I said, okay. I said, why don’t we become Facebook friends here, we can message easier. So we did. And, uh, she said, well, you and your niece only match at 1000 cent, the Morgan’s tms, which another term that’s become ingrained in me. And, uh, and I said, okay, what does that mean? And she said, well, an uncle niece should match it about 1800 on average and at least 1300. And I said, okay, what does that mean and why?
Speaker 1: (09:32)
Baby babies said they’re amber. Yeah. And she’s like, well, you know, that means that one of your parents was not your biological parent because your niece has DNA from both of them through your brother, but you only have DNA from one. That’s why the matches are there and it’s gotta be Your Dad because I’m at you on your mom’s side. Right. And I like, oh boy. Y’All know, how, how on Earth could that be? You know, I’m, uh, my parents were married six years before I was born. You know, they really, really, really were trying hard to have a child. Uh, we think from what my sister has told me like that maybe mom had a miscarriage or two along the way there, but when I was born they named me after everybody. I have two middle names. Yeah, no, they tried to cover all the male name basis there cause they weren’t sure they’d ever get another one. Maybe send my brother, my brother, I am the oldest and my brother came along two years later and they totally made up his name. Thirdly, there’s nobody with either of his first or middle name in her family. So they use them all. And then my sister five years after that.
Speaker 1: (10:51)
Oh yeah. So, okay. So why do we do now amber? Right. I kept, go ahead. I’m sorry.
Speaker 3: (11:01)
Oh this to say, how did you, were you able to process the, the suggestion at the time?
Speaker 1: (11:08)
Well I was, I was kind of Numb, but you know, I’ve, I’ve always been really interested in, in data and it’d be on my own thinking logically as you know, with a computer science degree, did a lot of programming and database design and things like that. And so I’m like, okay, I’m not, I’m not afraid of the truth here. Just, just tell me what’s, what’s the truth? And she said, I can take your matches and do, what do they call them, mirror trees and things like that. And, and put together a scenario, Ya know, to see who your biological father was. Okay.
Speaker 1: (11:52)
She told me a little bit about what she was doing. She went along, she even knew what to do. Like I wouldn’t even know where to start. She had found both of her grandfathers were not, um, you don’t know who they should have been or whatever. Oh. Um, so she had some experience at that. She’s worked with a cousin who was adopted I think. And, and, uh, you know, she, she had done this a lot, just, just totally like as I, just as an amateur searching for people. But, um, and, and I, I think I thanked her every 10 minutes for everything she was doing. She probably got tired of seeing that. But, um, so over the next few weeks she looked and worked and whatever, and came back with a name for me. And it was a man named Emmet. And, um, wow. He obviously, he, he passed away.
Speaker 1: (12:52)
I, I’ll go ahead and give his, his name is Amet. It’s K, e r e. N. S, but it’s pronounced Kearns. And, um, so we’re looking into who he was and he passed away nine months after I was born at age 29. Uh, yeah, he had, he had a heart attack basically, and I was able, in West Virginia, they’ve got a lot of old death certificates on the vital statistics stuff on the, you know, at the state level. So I found his death certificate and he had had rheumatic fever as a child, like at age nine. And that’s, that’s a disease you don’t hear much about anymore. It, it went away a with a lot of better antibiotics and things, so, but at a damaged his heart and, and uh, and he died down that, like I say, at age 29. So I’ve got that information now.
Speaker 1: (13:56)
I think maybe that was a week or two after, after that December 28th date. So I go to tell my brother and sister everything now. And, um, I’m telling them the story and I talk about Emmett and I said he was married to a woman named Ruby. And my sister says, is that Ruby and gives me another last name than the one I had for that. I looked and I said, well, that was who she married after Emmett, you know, after Ramadan. And she said, well mom stayed in touch with her for, you know, until she passed away about eight years ago. So you know, the plot thickens and, and come to find out that ruby is also the sister of a woman that married one of my mom’s brothers and they, they were one of the ones that had 10 kids there. So was there was definitely connection and, and come to find out ruby was my mom’s best friend really growing up in there in their smaller town than the, than the small town that all this took place in.
Speaker 1: (15:03)
And um, so, you know, it ends up ambit and Ruby were married the year after my parents and lived there in the same town. And matter of fact lived a block away and that had been I think a year ahead of my father at the high school there. And um, you know, so they’ve definitely knew each other and did things together and that kind of thing. So somehow, and the, and the big thing that’s missing and the big neon letters that kept flashing in my brain is like, y, y, y, y. You know, at the point of my conception, you know, Emmett and Ruby have been married for five years. My parents had been married for six. It wasn’t like anything that happened at the start of, uh, you know, we’re a break in the relationship or anything. So I’m that big. Why is missing?
Speaker 4: (16:00)
Huh?
Speaker 1: (16:01)
And there’s no one to talk to, no one to talk to. No, it’s a [inaudible] gone. Amyx gone. His siblings are gone. There were a couple nieces that were not even teenagers when he died, but then my sister says, well, Ruby had a daughter and, um, we’ll just call her, see if he was living and she’s, you want him to contact her? So I contact her and she said, well, I was always told that I was Emmett’s daughter. He’s on my birth certificate, even though I was born the year before he and Ruby got married and I, so she said, I’ll bet we’re half siblings. And I said, well, would you take a DNA test if I paid for it? And she said, oh, I will, but you know, I’m sure were half siblings. And I said, I’m not believe in anything without, you know, for awhile here. And uh, so she took the test and she is not
Speaker 4: (17:05)
okay.
Speaker 1: (17:06)
It was not Emmett’s daughter. So I had to give her the news that amber gave me. Ben Say, yeah. So here I didn’t even know what an NPE was and I had my own event and then I had the conveyed the news to cause somebody else’s event. You know that with him within three months. But there, there was a kicker on, on a CS test. I said, you do have a half sister that I think you don’t know about and uh, we’ll call her g. And by the time I told c about this, I’d already talked to g and found out that she had been Ruby’s daughter like two years after three years after Amet died. Ruby wasn’t married, remarried or anything. So she gave her up for adoption and gene knew gene knew about that and had tried contacting Ruby about 20 years earlier. G is now 58, I think sees 68.
Speaker 5: (18:12)
And uh,
Speaker 1: (18:14)
and she tried contacting Ruby through a social worker and Ruby said, well, I’d really nobody in my family, you know, I did all this in secret and nobody knows I had you. I really don’t want any contact. I’ll give you any medical information you want about your family. And, uh, but I prefer you not contact me again or, or my daughter and g lived up to that. But, but once I called her, you know, I was managing a CS DNA test at ancestry. Once I, once I called her, she said, well, Telsey I would love to have a relationship. I’d like, you know, let her know about me. And, and they ended up, they live an hour and a half apart. And, uh, and so the next, the day after I visited, say we had a w this is about six hours away from us, but we had just again, totally coincidental, we have planned the trip there for, uh, for a dog training conference and yeah, in March, the same area, same area.
Speaker 1: (19:17)
So I, one day I went to cc and told her everything I was lucky enough to be able to tell her in person and sat there and held her hand and told her, you know what, I had to tell her and about and about g and said, I’m going to be having lunch with g tomorrow, can we call you after lunch and I’ll introduce you to, and she said, yeah, she was really in shock. Although see as told me now several times, I’m, I’m really glad to know the truth. We have that. Oh, she felt like I did. And so the next step, so I have lunch with Judy the next day and we called her and uh, and they, they had a nice talk and c said, you know, can you come visit this weekend? And A, and g couldn’t actually, they have not met yet in person, just due to some health and, and work concerns, but they still plan to obviously.
Speaker 5: (20:10)
Okay.
Speaker 1: (20:10)
But, uh, but so that, you know, that’s kind of the thing that makes me feel good about this. At some point it’s like, well, yeah, you know, I don’t know why and this upset the apple cart and I feel got that feeling all of us and P folks seem to have the, you know, we’d w our sense of self has been disrupted at the very least. And, um, but I do have that kind of good feeling that C and g, you know, are gonna meet just because of what happened with me. And, and the one other fun party is c and g and I are very distantly related on the order of about 15 or 20 CMEs there. So it’s not like I have no reason, you know, ever see them again or talk to them again now. Now they’re, you know, they’re distant cousins too. We haven’t figured out exactly what the tree look like. Looks like. The connects is, but yeah. So that’s, that’s the whole, we have the whole convoluted story and it’s, um, you know, I’m still assimilating all this. I’m getting some therapy, uh, to deal with all this. And I know you’re in favor of that. And, uh, and um, it again, it just, it disrupts your sense of self. I told somebody you would be like, if you woke up tomorrow and one of your legs was like an inch or two longer than the other one, Ya know, you’d be able to do what you needed to do, but you’d never feel normal again.
Speaker 2: (21:45)
Right. Just a little, uh, like disoriented.
Speaker 1: (21:49)
Yeah. Yeah. It’s, and, and I’ve few people that I’ve told the story to, I pulled some former coworkers and some, and some relatives and, you know, they say, well, everybody’s gone. It’s not like you have to, you know, you didn’t inherit any new siblings. You didn’t have to deal with helping your, your, um, father that raised you. You don’t know that he’s not your biological father. Everything, you know, he’s been gone for, for 23 years. And, and as I said, my mother 18 months and, and the, the biological father, like I say when I was nine months old and I find myself at times wondering did he even ever hold me, you know, just because he was a friend of my, of my parents, you know my right. Yeah. And um,
Speaker 2: (22:38)
man, so it’s, you didn’t inherit, you didn’t inherit out. It’s a lot of things that people are referring to, but you inherited like so many questions that you can’t get an answer to.
Speaker 1: (22:51)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 2: (22:53)
I think you’re the first person that can’t even, I don’t, I don’t even know how to describe it. Like you just, you’re just, you’re the last or the last line of the, of the conversation.
Speaker 1: (23:06)
Yeah. Yeah. I have, I have spoken to a gentleman who is 90 and still lives in that town and was my father that raised me. He was his best friend in high school and he also knew amate cause he was, they were in high school too. And then ended up, they were in the Jaycees together. They’re in that town and they were in the elks club together. And, uh, and this man said, you know, I remember [inaudible], he was a fine young man and I, and I’ve read his obituary also, and he did a lot of good things and was very active and that kind of, and charities and the organizations like keep saying you sounds like a great guy, except he was married and he’s got another, a married woman pregnant. But you know, uh, and uh,
Speaker 2: (23:58)
right. And there’s no way to know if that was even an arrangement. They all knew about [inaudible] or something. I don’t know.
Speaker 1: (24:04)
Yeah. Um, and, but this guy, the 90 year old friend said, you know, he said, I just couldn’t imagine any, any reason why that would’ve happened. You know, he just said like, your parents are like the best people I ever knew. And I can’t imagine that anything like that happening or any reason it would have. So there’s, you know, that, that it happened, but nobody knows why.
Speaker 2: (24:29)
Right. And I’m sure you have come up with all the reasons. Yeah. All the, yeah, I mean there, yeah,
Speaker 1: (24:37)
I’ve won one exercise my therapist has had me do is kind of, I wrote a letter to, well first to my, my dad’s the dad that raised me, his mother, cause I was really close to her as my, as my grandmother. I was the first grandchild. We lived there two years, share the house with them before we moved away, have one and one, you know, the dad that raised me, graduated from college and um, so I’ve, I that hurt that really, that hurt more than anything else was thinking that I wasn’t related to or even for all. I’ve still got all the memories and everything and her husband, you know, was her second husband, was not my blood relation grandfather, but he couldn’t have been a better grandfather and uh, Ya know, so I know that, but it’s still, it just still really hurts and um, the, to think about that loss of, of, you know, physical, I don’t know, blood or DNA connection and I’m sure,
Speaker 4: (25:45)
but
Speaker 1: (25:46)
it’s just, it just doesn’t, it just doesn’t make sense. My sister is groping for straws, somewhat thinking that maybe there was an rh factor conflict and you know, because of the miscarriages, maybe they were just trying to have a, a successful pregnancy or something, which, you know, there was maybe a chance of that, but I, you know, kind of amateur sperm donor kind of thing. Um, you know, though in the fifties, I’m not sure how that, how that would’ve worked.
Speaker 2: (26:21)
Yeah, no way to know. So when you told your brother and sister about all of this, um, how did they feel about it?
Speaker 1: (26:30)
Well, they didn’t want to believe it. I mean they, they just said there has to be a mistake, which I know that’s a lot of, a lot of people’s reaction to. And, and um, I told my wife, I said, I don’t want to hear know any time in the future. I don’t want them to think, well, that was a mistake. That was a mistake. And I would keep hearing that. So I did a 23 and me test, uh, just to try and confirm things. And that’s, that’s where my niece had had tested originally. And the, and the ended up, my brother tested there too because she, my niece got him one for before Christmas that year also. And the, and we did matches has half siblings, not as full siblings and uh, so that, that really confirmed things and he has matches people with the right last name that I’m missing.
Speaker 1: (27:26)
So, uh, the, that, that confirm things, I never had to hear that again. And the other thing I told them both, I said, now you know, obviously this means genetically we’re half brother, half sister relationship. I said, I’ll never say half again and in your presence, cause you know, you’re my brother, you’re my sister. I said yellow, I’m off. Yeah, I’m on, I’m on groups and discussion boards and stuff on the, on Facebook and, and you know, that’s, that’s the discussion there but, but not when you’re just talking about genetics, but you’re my brother. You’re my sister. Yeah, your kids are my niece and nephew. It’s not never going to be the half thing again. And that’s, and that’s been the case. We’re not terribly, terribly close. They both live in the area here and you know, I don’t, they see each other a lot more than I see their or them just because my sister’s husband and my brother both worked at the same place. But, um, but you know, I’m, I’m very satisfied with their response. They’ve been very supportive. We’ve, we got together for something recently and they never even mentioned it and the, and which was wonderful because it wasn’t about me that what we were therefore, you know, it doesn’t have to be talked about every time we get together. Yeah. I think that’s a good feeling.
Speaker 6: (28:55)
Yes.
Speaker 1: (28:56)
Rough. Everyone’s, it’s settled in. Yeah. I’m trying to think if there’s anything else I wanted to, what did they convey? I mean that’s that again, that’s pretty much yet the, this letter writing process. I wrote a letter to my mother. We all know that, that what I would say to her, and I tried to express that if, you know, if you had told me I was, I, I, I found that I was really mad at her and not for what she did, but just that she didn’t tell me of the possibility. Right. You know, and when I wrote the letters to my, yeah. And I, you know, if you told me and asked me not to tell anybody, I wouldn’t have got to know now, but you didn’t tell me anything. And now, now, but I know it’s my story and you know, and I really am, I’m free to do what I want with it. Not Out of spite or anything, but just trying to find if there is anybody who has a clue.
Speaker 7: (30:05)
Okay.
Speaker 1: (30:06)
Yeah. So, but then the letter I wrote to my biological father was, I was, it, it came across, I was really bitter and, and mad at him for what he did. And I know it takes two to tango, but you know, it just, that obviously I wouldn’t have ever have known him. You know, there was no opportunity since, since he died so young. But, um, but that again, just talking to them both abstractly, I was more upset with him for what happened, what happened, you know, you’ve messed up my life kind of thing. Yeah. And uh, but I bet, yeah.
Speaker 1: (30:56)
Um, well that, I think that, I think it sounds like the letter writing process has been helpful. It, it really has. My really, my wife first kind of suggested it and then the therapist thought it was a good idea too. And I, and I got it. I write it and I, I, it seems like I throw a lot of facts in there and then I, I go back and put in feelings and then I never, I, it’s like I don’t really, you know, break down and, and let my emotions out until I’m reading it out loud, which is, it’s, it’s kind of an interesting process. I’m learning a lot about myself through all this, not just what my, you know, what’s written on my chromosomes, but, but sure. But it’s really been, it really leads you to question, you know, how much that the nature nurture thing.
Speaker 1: (31:57)
You know, uh, my father was a civil engineer and, and um, you know, and I was really inspired to get a college degree and have a professional career. Uh, because of that. My mother, the father that raised me, you know, um, damn it, I think what it was that he was a bank teller. He had gone to college for two years but was a bank teller and, and part time bookkeeper for the bank. And uh, you know, I just wonder if I’ve seen one picture of him, the a c gave me one of, one of the pictures she had. She said, you can have all my pictures because if he’s not my dad, I don’t need them anymore. And she, wow. Well she was seven when he died and a lot of those years, she said, actually she spent with her grandmother, her mother’s mother for, for whatever reason. And uh, so she offered me all on him. She had three pictures of him and I only took the one that was just him because the other two had her mother [inaudible]
Speaker 2: (33:06)
so wow. So did just from a, just to clarify the timeline between c and g, she, Ruby had one baby that she was raising and then she had another child that she gave for adoption. Yes. Or the other way around. Yup.
Speaker 1: (33:27)
She had c and then, you know, and then married the the next year and then Amet died six years later and she still had, you know, still had see you there. And, and uh, although like I say, some of those years, she wasn’t actually with, with ship her an [inaudible]. But then three years later she had g, um, before she had, before she remarried and she gave g up for adoption. And then actually then she did remarry about a year later and had a boy and uh, kept kept hammering and I was with the second husband
Speaker 5: (34:07)
and I’m [inaudible]
Speaker 2: (34:10)
so, so actually am I just questions and mysteries everywhere. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (34:15)
Yeah. Gee. Found out who her, who her biological father was. But we’re, um, I want to mention amber, my, my search angel. Thank you again, amber and, and my, uh, and I are trying to find seeds. Yeah. Trying to find cs father. You know, cause he doesn’t know still we’re, we’re having, we’re not having a whole lot of luck getting matches and things, but uh huh. But you know, we’re, we’re trying to find that and [inaudible] and that’s kind of become a, uh, a real quest for me. I, you know, if I be, if I gave her the news and asked her to take the test and then gave her the news that took away who she thought her father was, I’m going to try and find out who he was. But the bamboo’s doing all the, all the real work on it at night.
Speaker 2: (35:07)
Wow. So does the only way that it will work define that to find her father sees father is if people from his lineage have submitted stuff to one of these companies.
Speaker 1: (35:22)
Yeah. Yeah. There’s going to have to be a close, a close. Matt, we haven’t got any matches closer than second cousin, I think. And not many of those. And uh, and m m m actually amber, thanks. There may be an NPE at work somewhere in the matches we’ve gotten, you know, that the, that there that they may not be aware of or something. The trees and the DNA maybe don’t match but uh, but yeah, that’s, yeah, I just, I don’t know. I really want that to happen for cause she was, she was on the, I told her when I’ve asked her to do the test, I said no matter how it comes out, I’m going to come, I’m going to come meet you and you know when we’re in the area there and, and the and get to know you whether you’re my half sister or not. Cause I talked to her on the phone four or five times I think over that period. And, and uh, and Ya know, she’s a sweet person and, and the man, I want her to know, I want her to have some peace in her and her sense of self too.
Speaker 6: (36:31)
Okay.
Speaker 2: (36:33)
That’s really nice of you. I think that’s important to remember that everybody involved in this, in these scenarios are human and that we want connection so badly.
Speaker 1: (36:45)
Yeah. The, the groups on the Internet are just amazing. Some of the stories and, and, uh, of course most of them are dealing with living, you know, ramifications of the, of the MPE event. And, um, but it’s, it’s, it’s just neat to be in a group in groups where you can be there for people and, and just listen and, and understand and, you know, and, and if there’s something that you can relate to, you can offer a little advice or, or comfort or whatever is called for, but, uh, but it’s just
Speaker 6: (37:23)
okay,
Speaker 1: (37:23)
you know, we, we all know how, how we feel and the, and not many people do.
Speaker 2: (37:32)
Yeah, no, it’s in a totally amazing sort of phenomenon to be experience something so isolating, but then discover how many other people are experiencing it as well. So it’s sort of like no one understands and yet more people than you expect understands. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (37:52)
Yeah. I mean, I don’t know what the, I’ve seen people guess what the percentages might be of of how many actually existed or somebody in one of the groups one day said just what exactly was going on, you know, in the fifties and sixties. And I said, well, what’s going on is the same what was going on as the same thing that’s going on now? Just nobody talked about it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: (38:18)
no, I think you’re right.
Speaker 1: (38:20)
And if, you know, people were afraid of it getting out and that’s why, you know, that person like ruby would go away and, and have a, have a child and give it up for adoption. And I think hardly anybody in her family knew.
Speaker 4: (38:36)
Yeah.
Speaker 2: (38:38)
But um, yeah, so much secrecy.
Speaker 1: (38:41)
Yeah. So secrets. He’s shame, you know, and, and, and a lot of us, US NP type folks feel or get fingers pointed at us and all we’re do is just, they, this is all I found this out. You know, I didn’t cause them to do anything. I didn’t arrange my conception or whatever. There’s a lot of myths. There’s being shot in our world here. I think, you know, I’ve figured it out.
Speaker 2: (39:11)
Yeah. No, I think you’re right. People don’t know where to put their, um, it’s like confusion that turns into anger or something and then they don’t know where to put it. So they put it at the person that saying it out loud. Yeah. Well I love hearing that you are trying to be kind of be of service to people and you’re already a person that really likes to be a part of the community and help out. And it sounds like you’re finding a way to, to use those, those traits. Um, well with your new, your new found information too.
Speaker 1: (39:49)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the honor, why, why wouldn’t you? I know how I know how much it hurts. I know how strange the feeling is. You know, it goes from pain to just a lasting feeling of, of difference. You know, I am in a post a couple of weeks ago, I said, you know, on December 28 I f from then on I didn’t, I don’t feel like I used to feel. Yeah. And, and it’s, it’s hard to convey that, but when people that have gone through it, they don’t have to convey it to us. We, you know, we know we’ve, we’ve been there, we’re, we’re, we’re going to be there.
Speaker 4: (40:32)
Okay.
Speaker 1: (40:33)
I know I mentioned I had cancer, you know, thank God for a great surgeon. If it was removed 14 years ago when it was cured. Yeah. But it could, it could have killed me. This isn’t going to kill me, but it can’t be cured. Right. You know, it’s a weird, I don’t want anybody that’s had cancer to the jump on me for saying that, but it’s, you know, I’ve had both and one we had a, one’s a lot worse than the other, but, but that one was found early on was cured and, and this one can’t be that and this one’s found late. I mean, you know, 62 years late. Right.
Speaker 4: (41:12)
Okay.
Speaker 2: (41:14)
Right. That’s it. Yeah. No, I think that’s a great way to look at it.
Speaker 1: (41:18)
Well I would definitely hope. Yeah. I hope I said that well cause again, I don’t want to give the wrong number.
Speaker 2: (41:23)
Thank you to that. Nobody jump onto, um, all defend you. I understood what you meant. Thank yeah. You,
Speaker 1: (41:34)
you know,
Speaker 2: (41:36)
yeah, I do know. I do know. Well this is, this is so great. I’m so glad that we finally got to connect. Um, you know, listeners don’t know this, but Dick and I have been sort of in conversation for, um, a few months now just because I was interested to know who might be in West Virginia cause I have to go there every four to six weeks. And I thought, well there’s another place I can look around and I’m connected with Dick. And it’s been really great. So we’ve been wanting to get him on tape for Awhile and uh, we finally did it and it was a few hiccups there in the beginning. Yeah. And I think, I think this one’s gonna work. I’ll let you know if we have to do this again. Um,
Speaker 1: (42:24)
fine. Yeah. Yeah. No, it’s therapeutic. Talking about it. Every time I talk about it, I think, you know, it helps, it helps somehow. And, and, um, I didn’t mention, you know, cause this is the, you want this to be kind of timeless, but I’m going to a family reunion of my mom’s side of the family next weekend, uh, driving all that way over to the, to the eastern Pam handful. Uh, and I’m going to talk to the 50 or 60 or so maternal family there. I’m going to talk about it to them. Wow. And, um, and if things work out, you know, because again, this, you’d obviously, this won’t be part of the, the podcast hopefully, but g is gonna come over there in Maryland, by the way, there she’s in there in the both in the DC suburbs is where Brad C and g both live and she’s gonna come over because, you know, since her mother’s sister was married to my mom’s brother, you know, she, those first cousins of my mom’s brother are her first cousins also, Ya know, so, and she’s going to come over and I’m going to introduce her to some of those and,
Speaker 2: (43:46)
cool. Yeah, that sounds so cool to me. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (43:49)
It’s, uh, you know, I’m looking forward to seeing her again. She’s, she and I are going to be, I think closer than any fifth cousins maybe ever. Hopefully just because I’ve done, you know, again, that’s that one shining kind of light in this, this whole thing. Well if it had to happen, at least somebody got something, something good out of it, you know, I got, I got the truth. I may not be happy with it, but I got the truth. But she’s got siblings for the first time in her life. Right. And she loves that. She told me I was the first, first blood that she had ever met in person
Speaker 4: (44:34)
and she’s 58. Yup.
Speaker 2: (44:38)
Sounds like that was so powerful for, okay.
Speaker 1: (44:40)
I started shaking when we were sitting there eating and I was like three or four minutes for, I couldn’t eat anything else. Y’All know, I’m like wow, I’ve never even occurred to me. Cause she said she had talked to her, you know, her biological father’s sibling or, or a children. Couple of them. But she’s, but she’s still never met them in person. He was, he had passed away. She never met him. And, uh, and then, you know, and then after lunch she got all nervous. I thought, okay, let’s call. See. And she’s, she’s all nervous. And I’m like, Gosh, what do I say?
Speaker 4: (45:16)
But, uh,
Speaker 1: (45:19)
oh, it is. Yeah, the eve, it’s great to finally, uh, I’ve obviously I’ve heard your voice before, but uh, on the other episodes, but, uh, but it’s nice to talk to you and, and uh, we, we do have to get together, uh, when next time you’re back. Um, there are three others in Huntington here that I know of. Two of them. I know personally that I think,
Speaker 2: (45:43)
yeah, I remember you mentioned that once we were talking. I just, yeah, like, uh, I mean it’s something to do with small towns, but it also has to do with just how common this is. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (45:54)
I think I told you the one was a caterer for a luncheon that we, we go through every year. I, she and I just hit it off and we’re talking, my wife had to come chase me out of the kitchen twice when, because Susan was trying to, you know, to fix the food. She and her, she and her son was helping or even so, you know, she said, you know, this, this guy had gone through the same thing here. So she and I are Facebook friends now and, and staying in touch. And then the other young is a young woman in her twenties, I think, who is the, my wife’s best friend’s daughter’s best friend is, is the connection there.
Speaker 2: (46:34)
Yeah. And so it wasn’t just happening in the fifties and sixties. Yeah. Like this, this stuff that kept going. Yeah. So, yeah, the younger people have different sort of challenges with this to, to grapple with. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. I can’t wait. Can’t wait to meet everybody. Yeah. Um, well let us know when you’re coming in a, I’ll get up, get as many of them together as I can and, and we’ll,
Speaker 1: (46:59)
yeah, no, we’ll get together for dinner or something and, and uh, have just our own little NPE table there.
Speaker 2: (47:06)
Yeah, that’d be so fun. I, um, I’ll be back in the fall. My daughter’s coming back to La for summer, so we’re going to be here and then she wants to continue high school out there. Okay. So, um, she’s gonna, she’s gonna do that. She’s really enjoying being at Cabel Midland, so, um, I think it’s a good school. So yeah. My niece, yeah, she’s having a great time. Yeah. My, uh, my niece,
Speaker 1: (47:30)
not the one I matched DNA wise, but the oldest niece, um, is the secretary at the, at Huntington high, the other high school in the county. Okay. And, uh, and my mom had done those. I’ve seen that school. Yeah. My, it’s the one up on the hill there as you come off of the, that how Greer exit. Yeah. And, um, but yeah, that’s that. I just want to say that’s wonderful. I know that’s a, a lot for you to, you know, to have her that far away, but that’s, you know, you’re, you’re willing to let her, let her do what she, what she wants to do and what she thinks is best for her. You know, that’s, uh, that’s wonderful of you. Very, very selfless.
Speaker 2: (48:10)
Ah, yeah. It’s been quite the process and she, I don’t know what it would be like, but it would be different if she wasn’t. Um, I don’t know, doing so well, but it seems like people, the people there are taking care of hers in a good way, so she’s so she wants to stay. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: (48:30)
yeah. No, you’d that you’d definitely pass pass the mom test. Ah, my child before me. I’ve used that a few times in posts on there. You know, it’s like, yeah, the way some of the bcs and people act, but I think that’s wonderful of you. I read your article that you wrote about not being a single mom anymore when you got married. That was, I thought that was, that was very interesting.
Speaker 2: (49:00)
Oh, thanks. Yeah. Yeah. I went through lots of transitions in our, like 15 years together, but, uh, I think we’re doing good. I’m excited to see here for this summer for sure. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (49:15)
And I, I, I, I listened to your husband’s podcast too, the one you guested on the, the, um, sleepless in Seattle.
Speaker 2: (49:25)
Yeah, that was, that was funny. Cool. Okay. Alright, cool. Great. Well this was a great way to end my week and begin my weekend and I’m hope you have a nice weekend. I heard thunderstorms. I hope you guys get some nice weather.
Speaker 1: (49:42)
I think it’s, I think they’re over for now. We’ve got a lot of mowing to catch up on, but yeah, no, but yeah, thanks again. Thank you so much for the opportunity. I hope you and I, we didn’t collide talking too much there that you have to do a lot of, a lot of editing, but uh, yeah, no, it’s weird. I’ve, I hosted a podcast for a little while about Marshall football and, and, uh, and you know, I’ve, I’ve tried to watch my pauses and things, but here I was the one on the other end of the questions here and, Ya know, some required a little thought or choosing the right word or whatever, but I hope, I hope it’s not too hard to edit.
Speaker 4: (50:20)
Okay.
Speaker 2: (50:21)
No, I think it’s going to be fine. And you know, um, part part of podcast for me is that it just has to be imperfect. Like we’re just trying to have a conversation and sometimes people talk over each other. So I’m sure it’ll be great. Uh, I will let you know as soon as I know when it’s gonna be up and I’ll be in touch if I have any questions.
Speaker 1: (50:44)
Yeah, that’s the assignment my therapist gave me next is to, is to write how I’m going to tell people on Facebook.
Speaker 2: (50:53)
MMM, okay. So keep me updated about that for sure.
Speaker 1: (50:56)
And, uh, okay. Eve, thank you so much. Appreciate it.
Speaker 2: (51:01)
Right. Thanks Dick. Have a great weekend.
Speaker 1: (51:04)
Bye. Bye.
Speaker 1: (00:00)
Right. Cool. Yeah. So we’re rolling. You’ve got your coffee. Got My coffee, get your coffee. I got my tea. Perfect. So I don’t know anything actually. I was like realizing that only what you put on only what you’ve, what you, there’s a lot more background. Yeah. I don’t know how this all started. I don’t know. I was not looking okay for him specifically. Okay. But wait, did you know you were donor conceived baby? My mom told me when I was 10. Okay. Um, and so my sister, I have three siblings. None of us have the same dad. My sister and I are both donor babies and my brother is from a subsequent marriage that my mom had. Um, are you the oldest? I am. Okay. Yeah. So she told me, didn’t tell my sister. So that was an interesting dynamic growing up. But I will scale up the drama.
Speaker 1: (00:55)
But did she say like, this is a secret? Don’t tell your sisters. It was like, I’m telling you this now. Never speak of it again. Oh, I don’t know. I was like, hi, I’m 10. Cool. Yeah. Oh No. Oh Gosh. So yes, growing up it was, it was weird. Like I realized when I got older and started like dating and like making out with dudes and I was like, wait a minute, what if one of these people is my half brother? Oh, you started think about that. Like brought that up and it just like doesn’t even occur to me. So I would like ask weird questions like, oh, like where did your dad go to school for college specifically? [inaudible] I’m just curious. Yeah, no one visit. Yeah, exactly. Okay. So it was interesting. So many questions. Uh, where did you grow up? Connecticut. Okay. And then, okay. And when your mom told, okay, okay, just continue, just continue and then I’ll, and then I’ll, I don’t know, I may or may not interrupt. So I didn’t know. I kind of didn’t really care. Um, I’d had a bunch of,
Speaker 2: (02:07)
hmm.
Speaker 1: (02:08)
Fake dads, you know, like Stepdad’s whatever. And um, it, none of them were great role models. So I also was like, what do I need another dad for? Like, this is sort of unnecessary. I can take care of myself. It’s my mom. Like we’re good. And did your mom have partners at the time she conceived you or was she, she was married. Okay. Yes. Okay. And they had trouble conceiving, so, okay. They went to the clinic for me and my sister, um, age three years and 10 months. Okay. And my brother is almost 10 years younger than me. Um, but he knows his biological father. Um, so I’m trying to think of the best way to, to lay everything out cause it’s so, like confusing. Um, they’re all little like, yeah, it’s all over the place. So like my sister and I never,
Speaker 3: (03:00)
we were never on like a hunt for our dads and I look very much like my mom, so I couldn’t just like open a yearbook from like a certain day, you know, and like look through and go, oh, that kind of looks like me. Like I had no hope. I was just like, I look like my mom. What information did your mom have? She said he was a 21 year old medical student at NYU in early 1978. Okay. So she had just, um, then that’s the information she had chosen. That’s all they gave her. They said, we will find someone who looks like your husband. [inaudible] okay. Who was, uh, Italian dark hair, dark eyes, not very tall, you know, like all of skin. Um, handsome sounds like he’s very sure. Right. You know. Um, so they’re like, we’ll find somebody who looks like your husband. She’s like, great, cool. Sign me up. Um, and I think it, she told me one day that it costs like 60 or $80 every time you went. And I was like, oh my God, I know how much I cost. That’s,
Speaker 4: (04:00)
yeah. Okay. That’s predict cheap. Like it’s like what everyone goes through now. Yeah,
Speaker 3: (04:08)
yeah. Yeah. And I didn’t know, I’ve recently spoken to her a little bit about it. Um, and she said it was not like a sperm bank. The donor came in at the same time she was there and was like in the next room.
Speaker 4: (04:27)
Well, okay. So it was just like, what? Okay. So, yeah, not what I was thinking when I was [inaudible]
Speaker 3: (04:34)
growing up. Like she told me this recently and I was like, oh, I thought that I didn’t realize he was like right there. She’s like, no, I could like here the next route, like the door opening and like the nurses
Speaker 4: (04:43)
going in and coming back and I was like, oh my God, like pump your head out the door. Like I’m too nosy. I never would have been able to like just sit with her husband with her.
Speaker 3: (04:54)
I don’t know. But I don’t think so. Probably not. I mean, this was all just so, so taboo. Like she’s still, she still has a hard time talking about it. Like I don’t wanna say like her name. I don’t want to say like the family’s name or anybody else’s name because I just, it’s super personal to her. And I grew up with this like shroud of secrecy around so much that now as an adult, I’ve turned into like,
Speaker 4: (05:21)
here’s all my shit. I don’t care. My Dad would,
Speaker 3: (05:27)
he was, uh, he’s been, he’s been really wants to be supportive of this podcast, but he’s struggling for obvious reasons. And at one point,
Speaker 4: (05:36)
I know it’s a thing to tell everybody everything now. Oh yeah. I kinda tell every family and like
Speaker 3: (05:48)
with my profession, like my clients, we tell each other a lot,
Speaker 4: (05:54)
very similar to like hairdressing where you are like sort of somebodies therapist and yeah.
Speaker 3: (05:59)
Yeah. Well you’re like also because you’re working with bodies, it’s just like intimate by default. You’re already in a very like vulnerable position. And so yeah, you just kind of talk about everything. So over time, like my clients have, they know about it. I haven’t been like shy about anything. I just don’t really bring it up with my mom. Not so much. I mean, admittedly less because I don’t want to bother her and more because I just don’t want an argument,
Speaker 4: (06:28)
you know? Like sometimes my mom needs to get like bothered a little bit by things, but this is more like protecting myself at this point. Like this conversation isn’t going to yield anything. We’ll just argue and it’ll be stupid. So why bother?
Speaker 3: (06:41)
Great. Um, so yes, shroud of secrecy, uh, started asking people that I was dating where their fathers went to school. Um, but I never had this like need to find him. I never was like, oh, there’s something missing from my life. And like all of these other things that you hear about people. And I was just like, no, I’m cool. Like I have things to do. I’m getting all I wanted was, cause we, my mom’s side of the family is, um, Italian and Irish and Bohemian from what we knew. So I had done like some research into our ancestry and like I’ve always been really fascinated by it and where everybody came from and where they lived. And it was just so frustrating that I only had half of the story with me. Right. So it wasn’t like a relationship piece that was missing. It was like a carrot.
Speaker 3: (07:32)
It was like a heritage history piece that you just wanted to know my background. I was like, well, I’m these nationalities that I know of. Uh, I don’t know the other half of it. Yeah. So, um, and I wanted to know as I got older, I wanted like medical history because I’d had like a few weird things happen medically that people were like, oh, well that didn’t happen in our family and we don’t know. So it was just like, it just practical like logical reasons to want to know the, your entire makeup. Um, so life kind of just went on, um, didn’t really think about it much. And then I had done research with ancestry.com to look for census records and anything find, like I was living in New York City at the time, so I was looking for where my ancestors came and where they lived and where they were.
Speaker 3: (08:20)
And I was like, oh wow. I walked by that street all the time. That’s crazy. Like, so stuff like that. Um, and then they came out with the DNA test and I was like, oh, awesome. I talked to my sister, I was like, listen, this is the easiest way for us to figure out where we’re from and what our dads are like because we can take the test and then whatever we don’t have in common is our dads. That’s brilliant. I was like, let’s just do that and then we don’t have to worry about finding anything. We don’t have to ask anybody anything. So ancestry used to just do heritage. I had been on there for just like family tree sensors, like the census stuff and like records and I hadn’t done the DNA test. Okay. Um, this was, I mean I think I’ve been on there since 2008, 2006 it was a long time ago. Like an original. Yes. I was like, where did this nerd thing get me? Let me let him sign up for it really quickly. Um, so we got the test, we did them, they came back. And of course, because of my life, my life is always ridiculous. We have a whole bunch of stuff in common. Yeah. And then she’s got all of the same things that I have an extra and I have nothing that differs from her.
Speaker 3: (09:36)
So it would be like you have, she had like, you know, a through e and I would have like a through c but I wouldn’t have like anything else she had. We had all, it was like my mom, I used to tease my mom that she had cloned herself to have me because we were so similar and I was like, great, this just bolsters my theory. Um, just her and that’s it. Fine. Um, so we laughed about that. Whatever we find out like this total, you know, unexpected thing that my sister is like 30% European Jew and no one in the family that we know is Jewish at all. And she’s like got blonde curly hair and blue eyes and the rest of us are like dark, dark. Right, right, right. So she grew up thinking for sure she was adopted. She was like, please just tell me, tell him.
Speaker 3: (10:20)
I was like, wait, when did she find out I had to take her out? We recently talked about it. I had to take her out. She was like, you took me out one night and we went to friendlies and we had like ice cream and we’ve talked about it and you explained everything. How old were you guys? Um, I was in high school, so I think it was probably like I was probably a senior and she was probably like just about to come into high school. Yeah. Because I just couldn’t take it anymore. And she’d be like, can you please tell me if I’m adopted? Just tell me. And I’m like, talk to your mother. Like I’m a kid too, man. Too much information. Totally. Um, so yeah, they, that was the original, um, DNA stuff with ancestry. Didn’t really hear much else going on.
Speaker 3: (11:11)
I heard a lot of stuff from 23 and me occasionally, but I hadn’t done that one. I also did National Geographic, um, just cause again, I’m a nerd and I was like, call me through. You’re both in the undertow. Yeah. Um, so flash forward, um, we had done my husband’s DNA also and his test, my test, and my sister’s tests were all on my account. So any messages that were coming in can be for any three of us about tests. Right. So that your husband or my sister and her sister. Okay. So very often they were coming in and it was just asking about my husband’s family tree and I’m like, [inaudible], I don’t know, blah, blah, contact his mom, whatever. So like I’ve just been very lackadaisical with checking ancestry
Speaker 4: (11:54)
because there’s other things going on in my life. I’ve had like two major moves. I’ve had a child, like all of this stuff has happened since the original test. Yeah. And occasionally they update, um, DNA. So I would find out a little bit more and I’d see like, oh, what is this like French Canadian thing. Right. What? But oh no, like this is, that’s definitely different. So they, little things hints here and there, but nothing solid. Um, so finally, one day, I dunno what happened. I like just randomly had some free time, which is odd. Super Rare. Yeah. And I went through the messages on there
Speaker 3: (12:28)
and I was like, wait, some of these are from my sister. Oh wait, this one is for me. Oh. And this woman and her daughter were telling me that I came back as a very close relation to them, like, um, first or second cousins. And the woman who wrote me, it was her husband who was the match and then their children. So I’m like, who are these? What’s going on?
Speaker 4: (12:54)
I just wasn’t in that mindset. So I was just kind of like, I’m going to just take a minute and like all kinds of internet, stock them a little on ancestry and see if they’re real people cause I don’t trust anyone.
Speaker 3: (13:06)
Um, and at the same time my sister had gotten a message from people saying, Hey, we’re related to you somehow. So at the exact same moment in our lives, right. So when we started talking to my mom a little bit about it, she was like, why are people immediately asking, no, I don’t trust it. The both of you. At the same time, I’m like, I know it’s weird, but, and she’s basically said, I don’t really want to have anything to do with it, which is a super bummer, but um, I’ll get to them. So we start corresponding with these people that say they’re our family and the woman who would be my aunt by marriage, she wrote me back and she said, cause I was like, yeah, you know, this and this. I didn’t give any
Speaker 4: (13:53)
details because again, I don’t trust anyone. I was like, oh, what are, that’s weird. What do you, what do you use? I don’t know. My Dad’s side.
Speaker 3: (14:02)
So she said, you know, I, I’m sure the first thing you’re wondering is why I’m reaching out and why he isn’t. He passed away 30 years ago. Oh. Um, but we knew that he had chosen to be a sperm donor and a lot of us are really excited.
Speaker 4: (14:22)
Oh, I’ll find you and to hear about your life.
Speaker 3: (14:29)
No, I’ve had, it’s unexpected. Completely. How did that feel? I don’t, at the time I didn’t really like process. I was just, I have a tendency to go like logical and just take the information and put a little compartments and I’ll deal with it at another time. Um, so I, I kind of focused on the science of it and I, I went into [inaudible]
Speaker 4: (14:54)
to seeing how many center Morgan’s meant, what relation and did all of that research to make sure that this was the right connection and these were the right people. And it wasn’t something weird because I can’t go and talk to my mom about it until I have like all of my ammunition
Speaker 3: (15:08)
stay on the data. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, it, I mean everything lined up and it wasn’t just like one person whose DNA came back. It was this man who was my uncle and his like five kids and like their cousins and second and third and fourth cousins, they’ve like all taken the tests. Wow. They’re just like a really, so it was really happy family. Yes. And it was interesting that like, I suddenly had all of these connections to people and it blew my mind. And do you think that they, do they all take it because they were all, all with the same goal? No, I think they just, I mean, I don’t know for sure, but I’m guessing they haven’t all contacted me. Um, and my aunt has said that some people are kind of like, we want to just take a back seat to this and we’re not sure how we feel and other people are really interested and you know, whatever. Um, and she said, you know, my husband wasn’t really sure at first and he was like,
Speaker 4: (16:13)
I don’t know why we need to get involved in this. And now he’s more, well, maybe if we’re in the same place we should like, see if we can get coffee sometime. So she was basically like, you know, baby steps, whatever,
Speaker 3: (16:25)
he’s warming up. Right. And they told, she told me stuff about my biological father that just like floored me. Um, like I said, my mom’s brother-in-law. Yeah. Okay. Um, she said that he was an actor and a singer and they were in the Midwest. They grew up in the Midwest, but he moved to New York and he was an actor and a singer and he toured the u s with different shows. Okay.
Speaker 4: (16:54)
And when he was in between med school classes, uh, I’m putting bad school in quotes because this goes back and like, then I talked to my mom about all of these things. This person told me
Speaker 3: (17:07)
and she’s like, oh, but, but, but that’s, that can’t be true because that’s not what the doctor told me. And I was like, okay, listen,
Speaker 4: (17:15)
it was the 70s the doctors were not thinking that in a few decades you’d be able to spit in a tube and send it to the computer and get back. Like no one was thinking that they were doing whatever they wanted. Yeah. So she was like,
Speaker 3: (17:30)
but they said he had, you know, he looked like this and he went to med school and I was like, well, this guy, from what I’ve heard, uh, was tall and thin and had red hair,
Speaker 4: (17:45)
and then she’s like, no, no, that can’t be it. That would make me so
Speaker 3: (17:50)
angry. Was she angry? I think she’s angry, but also I think she has the same reaction that she’s had. Any time that this comes up, it’s that we’re just hers. Right, right. Well, she, she’s had us just hers for so long that I think she is worried about maybe sharing or us being taken away or something. I think that that comes up a lot for the parents. Yeah. Um, but it’s not that, I mean, I just really wish she could get past the, the hurriedness of it and realize that this is something that I find just incredible. Like the way that it happened is incredible. Um, but also like I’m having emotions about myself that I wasn’t expecting. Like I heard you know, that he was a singer and an actor and this and that. And I, when my aunt wrote me and told me all this stuff, she said I had to laugh when you said that you were in the arts because he was two and my mom all the time growing up was like, I don’t know where he got that from. [inaudible] I’m like, yes, you
Speaker 4: (19:00)
okay. You literally know where that came from. Right George. She’d be like, you didn’t get it from me. I’m like, well, um, I mean and there are a few people on her side of the family who draw a little bit or like play a little guitar. But I went like
Speaker 3: (19:18)
headlong into music and art when I was a kid and theater and all of this stuff. And I always, now that all of this is like come out and I’ve kind of processed it a bit. Um, cause this all happened this year. I got these messages from 2019. Yes, February, I think February. March was when we first started talking about it and it’s July now. So, yeah, so fresh there has not been a ton of communication back and forth. Um, and I am having a little anxiety about that cause I’m like maybe they don’t want to talk to me anymore. Maybe, but, but they ha I had literally wrote them. I know that I’m not a priority. It’s OK. Like I’m interested in pursuing this. I’m interested in staying in touch. Like let me know what’s going on. If you find more pictures of him, you know, let me see. And this and that. Um, and actually one of the pictures that she sent was of my dad and his two younger brothers when they were kids. And there’s my dad with his red hair and his two younger brothers with like white blonde hair. And my son has like white, right.
Speaker 4: (20:27)
And I do not have a voice.
Speaker 3: (20:29)
I haven’t seen any seniors on it. Um, and like his dad has blonde hair, but it’s, yeah, even my mother-in-law’s like, it was not that color blonde. He had like golden blonde when he was little. So there’s all those interesting little things that like pop up. And I, when I was pregnant before this even happened, before the dad stuff came up, I was like, oh, maybe he’ll be a redhead. [inaudible] maybe like I, since I was a little kid, I’ve been obsessed with red hair for no reason or maybe a reason now or reason, but no one in my family there were like, there’s a group of like cousins who all have red hair, but that’s it. Yeah. Um, and I remember telling my mom and my friends like, no, I have the wrong hair color. It should have been red. I like snuck up behind her back and dyed it red when I was really little.
Speaker 3: (21:18)
Um, it’s heading kind of reddish now. Like it’s usually comes back to being some form of red, like over my lifetime. Um, and that, I mean, I probably sounded like a crazy person writing this new family back, but like, oh my God, red hair. I have just been like, don’t every doll that I got every like, I mean if there were two guys in a room and they were the exact same and one of them had red hair, I was like, well, the red haired ones hotter, like everything red constantly. Huh. Um, so that was definitely weird. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Um, and then I figured why not since he had been since my dad was in, uh, the theater and in New York, it’s like, hmm, I know a pretty red group of ladies on the Internet who has a lot of like entertainment connections.
Speaker 3: (22:13)
Let me see if anyone from my mom group can put me in touch with anyone who might know him. Oh my gosh. So somebody wrote me back and she said, oh, I know so-and-so who was in the original cast of Dah, Dah, Dah. I think he might know somebody, let me find out. So wildly random. I know, but I was like perfectly like I can track the whole thing. It’s random, but it makes, and I waited. I was like, the moms will know, I just need to wait until I’m ready to like have contact with this person. So somebody wrote me back, they were like, okay, uh, my friend actually know somebody who was in that specific show with your dad. Here’s her number. She’s expecting to hear from you on believable. And then I sat on that for a while because I just like, I mean, aside from all of this, like we moved to La 18 months ago, I remember, um, so this happened like a year after we moved here.
Speaker 3: (23:11)
I’ve been having like super anxiety issues. I’ve been having my own shit going on. Like, I can’t, my sister and I talk about it a lot where we kind of like obsess about looking for dad stuff for a day or two and then we fucking leave it for like two weeks. We just can’t. Yeah, no, I get my hands off. I feel like that all the time, and I said this in another podcast episode, but like I don’t have time because it’s kind of all consuming. Yeah. And I don’t if I had an hour in my day, there’s other things I would do like up the, yeah, there’s 12 other things,
Speaker 1: (23:48)
like there’s practical things like laundry, but also it’s like, oh gosh, I have an hour to get to know somebody. Why don’t I call my best friend who lives in San Francisco? That would be somebody’s mom [inaudible] with my mom. Why don’t I have like an intimate time instead of somebody in this group? People that I don’t know at all and I’m not sure. I mean I know I know what our biological connection is, but I’m not sure what else. Well, that was the other thing to do. I don’t even know if I mentioned this, but like I Tattoo
Speaker 3: (24:16)
for a living and I’m very heavily tattooed and I’m kind of very vocal about my political opinions. And this is a group of people I don’t know that are in the Midwest. I have no idea what they’re like. And I was like, Ooh, they might hate me.
Speaker 1: (24:30)
Yeah. Cause they might be like, this girl is weird. Pretty sure I’m me. Like prayed about, prayed about it, prayed for like, there’s definitely, Oh God, there’s a group of people that are trying to save me from afar. For sure. I think,
Speaker 3: (24:47)
I think I’m okay. Um, with that side of the family, I think I’m all right. I mean, if I can like grow up in an Italian, Irish, Roman Catholic, Republican,
Speaker 1: (24:59)
New England family, and they still all, yeah, none of them have said anything. I just, it’s just all from Internet stalking. I’m like, Ooh. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um, so yeah, I sat on getting in touch with this person and I finally texted her. We set up a time to call and that like came and went and we had a little miscommunication [inaudible]
Speaker 3: (25:23)
and I felt like, I feel like I’m dating through this whole thing, which I was never good at ever. Like I’m married because of okay fucking cupid. Like I just would, I’m terrible at it. I would rather work than go out on a date.
Speaker 1: (25:40)
I’m trying to think if I know anybody that’s like, I was good at dating. Like I loved it. Sign me up. There’s one thing I miss being in the dating world in the 21st century. I’m like, Oh, I sent a message and I hadn’t heard anything back. What do I do?
Speaker 3: (25:53)
Do? How long do I wait? That’s how I feel with this. Um, so I messaged her, I was like, I know it’s kind of like hard because you’re in New York and I’m here and you know, my schedule is not really a schedule and crazy. Um, if email is better than trying to set up a phone call, let me know. And she like immediately called me. I was like, oh, hi. She’s like, I’m sorry. We must’ve gotten things mixed up, you know, I thought you were gonna call me when it was a good time and I was like, no, I thought you were gonna like let me know. So it was totally innocent and like no one was doing anything weird and I didn’t need to get
Speaker 1: (26:30)
concerned like I do about everything. So we talked briefly, she said she had a class to go to but she was sitting having coffee in New York and she gave me a call for a few minutes and a bunch of us before
Speaker 3: (26:44)
this phone call had had suspicions about why my father passed away. Um, he was in the arts, he was in New York City who was dancing and singing in the theater. He was 32 when he died in 1988 so we had some suspicions. Um, so she, you know, we started talking and she was, she said that she was his partner in the show. They were in, not only did she know him, right, she was in la fall with him. That was the touring us company when they say, and she was like, he was so handsome and so tall and you know, red hair. And she’s like, I have red hair too. But his was like a little lighter than mine. And you know, whenever we would come up like, um, the director would always say something really nice about the way we looked. And like she just spoke so warmly of him and saying that he, um, both she and my aunt had said that he was very quick witted and really funny and a big personality.
Speaker 3: (27:54)
Um, you know, and I won’t go into details cause I don’t wanna like blow up anybody’s spot if they don’t want to be talking, you know, don’t want this stuff public. Um, but she, she said that, you know, the first time that he met her, he was way more grandiose about it than like normal people where and like just a little extra and we’re like talking back and forth. And then she goes, you know what? You sound like him. Oh. And I was like, what are you talking about? Cause I sound just like my mom and she like no, the way that you talk, she said the brightness and the vibrancy in your voice sound just like him. And we had been like two to three minutes into the conversation.
Speaker 3: (28:37)
Weird. Like it’s kind of like the same thing. Finding out that he was in the arts and finding out that he was in theater and that he’s saying and was a dancer and all of these things. I did all of those things growing up. I still like do all of those things, just not quite as like publicly [inaudible]. Um, and I always felt when I was a kid because I didn’t grow up with anyone else in the theater, in the family, nobody else, like we’d sing around the house, but it wasn’t like no one was making up a guitar and singing. Right. Um, and that’s what I was doing. I was playing my guitar that I begged my parents to let me buy for like eight hours a day on winter break until literally my fingers bled. Like teaching myself stuff, um, and recorded demos and all that stuff. Did Theater or whatever, but I always felt like I had to be perfect because it was like I didn’t have a right to it. Oh, I didn’t come by it honestly. So I’ve had to be extra and I didn’t like, I didn’t know that then this is me saying this in the last six months, I put it back over your experience.
Speaker 1: (29:42)
Um, so it’s like now I feel like, oh, I’m allowed to do this. Like it’s OK that I can, so I’ve found myself like kind of gateway to permission. Yeah. Like I found myself singing along
Speaker 4: (29:55)
a little louder in the car and not like worrying about it so much. And you know, just, it’s been like a weird freeing thing that I was not expecting at all. Because remember I didn’t give a shit. I was like, I don’t care who the dude was. Thanks for the sperm by me. Yeah. So it’s just been this like whole Oh, okay. And like finding out that he was like silly and like would joke around and make like a big display of things. And
Speaker 1: (30:26)
you know, like I’m always the one that’s like making jokes and trying to make everybody feel better. And so it’s just, it’s been really interesting. Weren’t missing any pieces, but it’s like pieces fell into place. Yeah. These things happened. That’s so crazy. I’m just checking the battery power. We’re growing. Okay. And because you know, I live in La now,
Speaker 4: (30:45)
I got a therapist last year. Um, cause that’s what I’ve heard you do. Or you get a vape 10 and a therapist and you’re good. How that’s sage. Oh yeah. I have that in house all the time. How about some smoothies? Okay. Yeah. All of that’s your Kale intake. Well, I lived in Brooklyn, so I mean that was fine. You already met your quota. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Um, therapists. Yeah. Um, I’ve talked to my therapist about this, a lot of Bruce Lee and she’s like, you know, it’s really remarkable how much nature, virtue versus nurture will come in. Right.
Speaker 1: (31:26)
And [inaudible]
Speaker 4: (31:28)
I just think so many people are wrong when they’re saying there’s not that much nature. And I’m like, okay, well you explained to me like, why I like these things and why, you know, I’m obsessed with red hair for no reason,
Speaker 1: (31:43)
no my own, I had a therapist that used to just, he just was fascinated studying like twin studies and identical twin split at birth and then who grow up to have the same careers with the same interests and he was just very, very pro nature. [inaudible] that’s unreal. He used a really fascinating, um, so I, um, I continue to talking to her for a couple more minutes and um, she did say, she said, well he was gay and he did die of aids. [inaudible] and I felt like a whole bunch of things at the same time, like, Aha, you know, like, okay, that’s what I was suspecting. Um, God, that’s so sad. Oh Man, I’ll never meet it. And like just all of these things all at once that I had just shelved. So there’s all stuff now coming up
Speaker 3: (32:40)
where it’s like, I’ll see somebody walk by and I’m like, I wonder if that’s what my dad walked like. Or like somebody will just like catch my eye. I’m like, that kind of looked like him from the side. Like maybe, maybe that’s how he moved and I won’t, it’s not like I go out into the world and I sit down with all that free time I have and go, let me just people watch and see. It’s just like I’ll be shopping at target with my kid and they’re like, oh, that guy kind of felt like my dad feels at this idea of him that I have in my head. Yeah. Um, well there’s something even about the way you described him that made me feel like like, oh, I want to meet this guy. Oh my God. No, I mean, I don’t know, like just the little information on like I want to go hang out with my dad. I feel like he would’ve been a good fucking time. It sounds great. I was watching like the studio 54 documentary. I’m like, is he in the background? [inaudible]
Speaker 3: (33:37)
it just seems like any, he, what they’ve described, him being as seems a lot like, um, people that I enjoy spending time with, which is another weird thing cause I like, I’ve had a number of gay friends and have spent a lot of time like at gay bars or hanging out with the drag queens and it’s like, oh, I love it so much and it makes me feel good. And this is a nice warm space and I feel comfortable here. Oh, weird. My weird man. And there’s a lot more, like growing up I’d always classified myself as straight, but girls are hot. [inaudible]
Speaker 3: (34:20)
but I’ve made out with girls, but I wouldn’t date one. So I guess I’m straight because it’s rough. I mean, I’m 40, so when I grew up, gay straight was a thing. Um, that was still gay was still frowned upon where I grew up, but it was still a thing that existed, you know, like you could be either and then in high school people start off. Right, right. And then in high school people started saying, Oh, well I’m bi. And I was like, hold the fucking phone. So that whole thing happened. But it seems still like there are just these categories. You can’t feel like you’re in the middle somewhere because I grew up as a tomboy and I grew up, you know, I started a business when I was really young and I would get called, oh you’re too aggressive. And like if I had a dick, you would never use that word to describe how I’m conducting business.
Speaker 3: (35:09)
So now there’s like all these new emotions attached to that where I feel like it’s okay for me to feel like, not straight but like not have to put a label on it. And then I see all the kids now that are just so fucking fluid and it makes me so happy. I’m like, yes, wear that fucking eyeliner. I don’t care what is in your pants. It looks like it looks great. Just fucking do it. Um, I want that. Like I go out with my son and he is like, I want these rainbow glittered like rain boots. I’m like, get them. Cool. That’s the one. There’s also dinosaurs and there’s also firetrucks. And there’s also these plain blue ones. Whichever one you want. Yep. No, I want the rainbow. Alright, cool. We’re getting and let’s go. Yeah. Like I just love that whole feeling of not thinking certain things are only for you because of your genitalia.
Speaker 3: (35:59)
Right? Yeah. Like my family was like, you can do this because you’re a girl. You can’t go skateboard, you can’t go play hockey even though you want to do those things. And then in the same breath it was, you can be anything you want to be when you grow up. You can be president if you want. Right. And I was like, but I can’t skateboard, skateboarding president, wait a minute. Never has president before. Escape. No. Impossible. So there was a lot of that. Like I just don’t know where to put myself. Yeah. I feel like I’m not this damsel in distress. I feel like I saved plenty of people on the rigs. Like I’m not that person. Um, so yeah, I haven’t, I haven’t heard a ton back. Um, I have exactly four pictures of him that my aunt sent and then I did a whole bunch of like crazy internet slew thing on the show that he was in. I finally found a recording of one of the shows.
Speaker 3: (37:02)
I mean, it’s been hours of me like, yeah, there’s been like hours of like Google searches of let me just take this keyword out and put a different one in and that, and his name is the same as an author that’s out there. So trying to go through the searches is just maddening to comb. Yes. Wow. Um, what, when, what’s going on with your sister? Oh my gosh. She has her own story. Oh, she does? I mean, you should probably talk to her. She’s, if I can ever get her out here you shouldn’t. But she has found three half siblings. Okay. I’ve found no half siblings, so I don’t know if that was the only time he donated or the only child that happened from it. But I have seen nothing else. I’m sorry. And did his, so did his family know that he died of AIDS?
Speaker 3: (37:55)
My aunt said that he did tell some of the family that he wanted it to be a donor. Okay. So some of them knew and it was a thing that the family knew. And when I first corresponded back after she told me about him, I kind of like sort of apologized to just be like, I didn’t want to come out and say anything because I grew up with it being such a secret that if it was a secret for you guys, I didn’t want to like mess that up for anyone. I didn’t want to ruin anyone’s relationship or idea of their, you know, whoever. Um, because you didn’t know that he decided to do this. Right. Um, and so was very like,
Speaker 5: (38:37)
yeah,
Speaker 3: (38:37)
just played everything really close to the chest and almost like, oh, what do you mean? Like kind of a little dumb because I just didn’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings. Um, and then what about him dying? Did they know? She has not told. Okay. Why? No. Yeah, I, but I haven’t said a few of US suspected. Yeah. I mean, like I didn’t know my husband, like people that I’ve talked to about it just because the timeline. No, no, no. And I was like, oh man. Yeah, yeah. Um, but he was in a show touring like less than a year before he passed away. So whatever it was, I, I don’t have details about it, I’m just speculating, but you know, whatever it was happened quickly. Yup. Um, so I have a few pictures of him and my aunt sent me a picture and she’s like, this is a picture of him from one of our ski trips wearing his favorite coat that he named
Speaker 4: (39:34)
a specific name that I’m not going to say cause I don’t want to and just in case, but it’s like this amazing picture of this very tall, handsome redhead, the beard wearing giant fur coat. Oh my God. Like holding a drink and I’m just like, oh yeah, people don’t one that is your people so much. That’s, I really love that. It’s just amazing. So I’ve like taken the photo collage, like apps and put like his pictures and my mom’s and mine in the middle. And just [inaudible]
Speaker 3: (40:05)
cause I’ll show people pictures of him and they go, oh my God, you have his smile. You have the shape of his face. And it’s stuff that I don’t see readily because I’m so used to just seeing my mom’s face on me. Right. Um, so it’s been this like, just, I don’t know, this like crazy thing where now maybe all of this time I’ve lived in my room,
Speaker 4: (40:26)
mom’s shadow, and just kind of thought that I was this. And now I’m like, oh no, I’m, I’m my own person. Like I’m 40 and I figured that out first.
Speaker 3: (40:37)
Your therapist must be so proud. God, she’s amazing. Wow. Okay. Yeah. So it’s obviously not a finished story. No, no, no. I mean, nobody’s yet, that’s not true. I want to say nobody’s is, but no, the, I mean, my loose ends and a lot of the, some of the people that my sister was in touch with, um, I’m not going to go into hers too much, but she had
Speaker 3: (41:06)
not the greatest experience with some of them because they reached out saying, oh, we’re related. Let’s find out how maybe you’re related through this avenue. And when she presented information that they didn’t like, they said never contact us again. I don’t know what’s wrong with you, why you would say these? Like extremely rude, horrible things that drudge up all of those. Like I want to protect my sister. Yeah. Till these people work for Mama bear comes out. Yeah. Yeah. Um, no, there’s a lot of that. There’s a lot
Speaker 1: (41:34)
morality, morality and judgment that comes out and it doesn’t, and there seems to be the only person that people can like project it at is the PR, the, the, the you like the other person and you know. Yeah. And it’s really not fair. Well, she was so upset about it and I like read, she screenshotted the correspondence and I was like, you know what, this sounds like exactly what mom would say to someone. [inaudible] sent this to her that like older white lady.
Speaker 4: (42:10)
Hmm. Entitled kind of like, how dare you? A little like
Speaker 1: (42:16)
parents really know. My Dad, my dad did and my dad did. Amazon, no, my dad had ancestry. Um, my dad did ancestry on his own like a long time ago or a few years ago and he said that people contact him all the time and he gets messages and that him and my mom are like, oh no, don’t look at them like don’t those are, and he did it for heritage stuff, but he’s like, oh no. I mean you just never know who’s out. You just don’t know who to trust and true, but you’re in control of what information you’re getting. And so now like maybe we should take a look at that as yeah, what’s going on? Or He’s like, well, it’s just, just seems like they’re, they’re very distant, distant relatives. I don’t know. Just, I don’t contact them like the seventh, eighth, like whatever distance stuff that was coming up, I was like, Hey Myra, I’m going to help me. But this is like the uncle that came up as a close relative has a higher sense of Morgan Count in common with me than my sister and my mother’s brother. Right.
Speaker 4: (43:20)
So I’m like, oh, well we’re all clearly in the same category here. And I don’t know how that works. I should go. I mean, I should just ask my dad if I’m him
Speaker 1: (43:29)
take a look. But it’s, it’s just, I mean I, it’s so confusing for everybody and it’s, it’s, so, I feel like generationally it’s so much harder to, because we’re on this, like we grew up without all of this tech and we’ve figured it out and we kind of have that idea of like rolling with things changing and it’s just so much harder for the generation before us. Totally. Yup. Mom’s like, I’m, you can’t shoot. She won’t buy stuff online. You know? Like she won’t use Etsy because she’s afraid that like something’s going to get stolen. And I’m like, all right, just give me your address. What do you help send it to you, you know, whatever you want, mommy. Yeah. I always wonder what it will be for us in 30 years that we just are terrified by robots. I can’t tell like it’s fun.
Speaker 4: (44:18)
Yeah, whatever it is. Like, Ooh, I’m freaked out all the time and my phone knows where the fuck I am. Every moment I get a blood sample everywhere I go in 30 years that we’re just like retinal you right.
Speaker 1: (44:32)
Cool. No, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 3: (44:35)
Yeah, I know. It’s weird. Yeah. Do you feel like you, if somebody were in the same shoes as you now and came to you and said like, this is the stuff I just found out. Do you feel like you have advice? Yes. Um, don’t overthink it. [inaudible] relax. Go on with your life as usual. Um, understand that it’s going to take awhile. You know, like you might drop off for a little while. Like these people in my, like new family, that whole side of the family, I haven’t heard from them in a few months. I also have not gotten back with the woman who was in the show with my dad in like a month or so. [inaudible] not because I don’t think about her every day, but because I just don’t, it’s hard. Yeah. So there’s lots of stuff going on and just, I was listening to the episode, you did one of them where, you know, it was from the other side where someone is talking about how their family found them and they were pushing to talk to them and pushing them.
Speaker 1: (45:35)
Awesome. They’re like, I don’t even know if I want to talk to you that this is, I didn’t have you.
Speaker 3: (45:39)
You have to look at it from both sides. Yeah. It’s terrifying for everybody in a different way. Yeah. Um, and it causes more emotions than you’re expecting.
Speaker 1: (45:50)
Yeah, totally does. Cause I always try to prepare for the worst and like hope for the best and I,
Speaker 3: (45:56)
I’ve just blown myself away with the stuff that I think about. So yeah, take your time. Don’t make it a priority. Don’t like, I don’t know, don’t be that Weirdo that’s going to text a hundred times because they didn’t answer you.
Speaker 1: (46:13)
Yeah. Yeah. Give him some space
Speaker 3: (46:16)
a man like, yeah, Yup, Yup. I’m taking a really long time to get hard to keep, keep in touch or get in touch with these people and, and um, yeah. And so then I’ll read about people that are like,
Speaker 1: (46:28)
I’ve emailed them a hundred times. Yeah, just copying what you just said a hundred times but, and, and no one has done that to me, but I’m just like, oh, like I promise I’m not ignore. I don’t know how they’re feeling. If they’re like she won’t get in touch with us, she won’t respond and I don’t know how yet. I, that’s what I keep doing, how I want to like messages swimming
Speaker 3: (46:47)
woman in New York back and we had gone out east and I was like, oh, maybe I can like meet up with you. And she happened to text me, hey, when you come into New York. And I was like, that’s really weird. I’m in the airport right now on my way there. And I was like, let me text you in a few days. And my husband got an ear infection and we had to go to urgent care and things were just bananas. And then I got back and I just started feeling worse and worse about it. I just haven’t had the, I don’t know, backbone to like sit down for a minute and say, I’m sorry I’m coming back this time. If you want to talk on the phone, give me a call. Like, you know, basically just say I’m a jerk even though I
Speaker 1: (47:29)
know that I’m not, because it’s just hard. It’s loaded and it’s, that’s, I really feel like the number one thing to take away from all of it is like it’s not the priority. Yeah. It’s not anybody’s like you’ve made it this long. Without this information, you could have had a completely happy, normal life without any of this information. Don’t go crazy short. Don’t go. That’s when I say all the time to my fault, don’t go crazy as a bumper sticker. Yeah. Don’t go crazy. But it’s crazy. Even though it’s totally crazy. Yeah. It’s a mind fuck. But just stay focused.
Speaker 1: (48:20)
Awesome. Thank you so much. And I do plan on meeting up with her at some point again in New York, so maybe we can talk again as an update. Maybe I can get her on here. Oh my God. It’d be amazing. It’d be someday I’ll go visit my cousins in the Midwest. Yeah. I would do that. I’d be fine. I have a super fantasy of like a major tour. Yeah. Um, and we’ll just see. I just see it’ll happen when it’s supposed to happen. Time and resources I can get together to make that happen. Um, but yeah, not a priority. Right. If I were to really list what’s going on in my life right now, um, yeah. A couple of the things [inaudible] pressing one need to have his baby any day now, um, to, you know, a job like, you know, whatever. Okay. I’ll stuff who will feed the children. Alright, I’m gonna turn this off. Okay.
Her Adoption Story Keeps Changing
Speaker 1: (00:02)
Alright, I’m just gonna go ahead and start recording. Um, so we have about an hour, just so you know. Um, so I’m here. This is, um, hold on. Let me wake up for a second. Um
Speaker 2: (00:17)
hmm.
Speaker 1: (00:18)
Oh, okay. Um, alright, so welcome to everything’s relative. This is Easter Sturgis. I’m sitting here with Krista. She’s going to tell me her story. Um, we’re here on a foggy, foggy early morning. I’m in Orange County and she says that she also has a DNA discovery and, um, identifies as having an NPE experience. So you want to take it away? Tell me how, let’s see, we can start with, um, how did you find out
Speaker 2: (00:54)
that you were not related to all the people you thought you were related to? And I think everybody has their own unique story with this. And so mine’s not necessarily unique, but it is. So I was actually adopted, so I grew up with the mystery of my biological parents. [inaudible] has adopted just before my fourth birthday. So when I was 20, I met my biological mother and it was closed adoption until then. Um, kind of don’t we just start at the beginning? I’m just going to keep asking. I’ll just do that here. Yes. Okay. So my birth mother was 15 when she had me and homeless, living in a van and um, she was arrested when I was just months old and I went to juvenile hall. I mean, God, let me start it. You can cut this, right? Yeah. Okay, good. Okay. So my birth mother was being in juvenile hall, so I know as an infant that would be kind of fun.
Speaker 2: (01:57)
Um, okay. So my birth mother was 15 when she had me and homeless. She was on drugs and just couldn’t take care of a baby and she went to juvenile hall and I went to foster care. So I spent the first four years of my life in foster care in California, in San Diego. And it wasn’t a big mystery to me. I knew that I was adopted. I knew that, uh, I didn’t know my biological family, so I had years to marinate in that and wrap my head around the mystery of it. Were you an only child? No. Am My adopted family. They had two biological children and then multiple foster kids. So I was surrounded by kids. And uh, growing up, my biological mother did have another daughter three years after I was born and that sister was in and out of foster care, but she always managed to get my sister back.
Speaker 2: (02:51)
And you knew about that? I did not know. I did not know. Okay. So fast forward, you’re 20 years old. Okay. You get to meet all lemme let me back up for a second and tell you, you know how in uh, elementary, junior high, they give you those assignments to do your family trees. And so because I didn’t have real information to put in there, I just made stuff up. Like my parents were missionaries in China, like outrageous stories. But that was how I handled not knowing. And uh, so when I was 20, I was in Grad school and they gave us an assignment to do your family trees and I decided to really try to find the information. And so I located a, a biological aunt and made arrangements to go down and meet with her. And, and how did you find her? Um, oh, I had found her through a phylogeny.
Speaker 2: (03:42)
Uh, when I was 13, I decided to find my biological family from watching an Oprah Winfrey show on adoptees and half of unions and one of that myself. So I didn’t tell anybody I was doing this. I just went and did my own research and found my biological great man, great grandparents. And they told my parents at the time, I docked the parents not to have anything to do with my biological mother. She had problems. Don’t let her meet her. And so I did. This will not be an Oprah episode. No, no. So when I was 20, I reached out to them and they put me in touch with this biological anthem’s going to help me fill in the family tree. And it sounds great, but she decided on that day it was a good idea for me to meet the rest of the families. So, you know, I walked in the fantasy, I walked in thinking I was going to meet this aunt and be able to fill in these gaps.
Speaker 2: (04:32)
And she had her mother, their brothers, and she arranged for my biological mother to also be there. Okay. And so that was, you know, a shock and unexpected and, um, you know, a lot of emotions that I really wasn’t prepared to deal with wasn’t mature enough really to handle that. That night, my biological mother told me that Michael was my biological father. And so I set out to find Michael and I did, I met him, his family, he gave me all the medical information, like, you know, think this guy’s my dad. He’s in San Diego also. Still there. Right. And so for 26 years I’ve thought that Michael was my father. And when this ancestry have relationship with him, no, not really. I mean, there was, you know, Christmas cards exchanged and things. Um, I really wasn’t looking for a relationship. I mostly wanted medical information because, you know, we’d go to the doctor and they say, does this run in your family?
Speaker 2: (05:28)
I don’t know. Don’t know. So when the ancestry DNA test came into my, my life, I really was doing it for the heritage and for medical information, which you don’t get from ancestry, you get more from 23andme. But so I was not expecting, I wasn’t expecting anything other than 50% Italian and everything that would go with Michael being my biological father and he wasn’t, oh yeah. Surprise rights as so when I got the results, I didn’t recognize the names you want answers, you will match you to people that make their profile public. And I didn’t recognize any of the names that were coming up as a match for me. How many were there? Several. There was um, you know, answers you to commit to titles. They may say close family or first cousin, but it’s an, um, it’s an estimate. So it came up at first.
Speaker 2: (06:29)
Cousin really ended up being an aunt, but I didn’t, I didn’t know any of these names. Family trees. I didn’t know who these people were. And so none of them are my goal. None of them are Michael. None of them were Italian. So I knew something was off thing was a myth. And your mother’s side of the family hadn’t done it at all. So they coming up on there, they weren’t coming up some on their yes. Yeah. Um, and so when I got the results, I, uh, I, I messaged them right from ancestry and it was kind of this moment of what do I say? Hey, um, somebody in your family knocked up my mother, like you want to talk, let it get together. So, and how many years? I’m sorry, 26 years after you’d met Michael, right? 26 years as Italian. Michael was your biological dad, right?
Speaker 2: (07:19)
And now he’s clearly not exactly. And so I messaged straight from ancestry and just said, you know, I just got my results. It looks like we’re related. I’d love to talk to you some more. Just a very simple message, not knowing will seems to be better on the other side of it. And what is the circumstances in their life. I didn’t want to blow up anybody’s family, you know, or whatever. So it very simple message. And uh, they responded a couple of days later. And that the aunt, it’s her brother, this my biological father, and his name is Thomas. Oh yes. And Thomas is not Michael Thomas is my yes. Not like definitely know Michael and he’s at Scandinavian and you know, British and not Italian. So, which was really disappointing because I love Italian, so, oh yeah. I mean, I, I mean I’m laughing, but I know that for a lot of people, identifying with their heritage is so important.
Speaker 2: (08:19)
And to discover that they’re not from the land they thought they were is really, really upsetting. It can be traumatized, traumatizing for people, traumatizing. And I think when we look at human nature and human psychology, we are pack animals. We are, uh, we have, uh, an intrinsic need to be connected to a group and identify with a group of families. So when that doesn’t happen, it sets your whole world, you know, it, it just confuses them. The whole, you know, I don’t know what I’m trying to look Italian. You, I would’ve gone with it. Well, I’m clearly not. But anyways, so, um, I’m, I text message my biological mother and we had had, uh, you know, we weren’t really close, but we communicated and I texted her and said, hey, who’s this Thomas Guy? Cause apparently he’s my biological father. And she never answered. Oh, she would not tell me anything.
Speaker 2: (09:18)
In fact, she never responded to my text ever again, ever. And then a few months later that sister, my half sister with my biological mother didn’t text and said she was ill and they thought she was gonna die. But this had been happening. Like, you know, she’s going to the hospital, she’s going to die. And after so many times of that, I stopped rushing down there when they said that. And this time she really did die and she took the secret to the grave. And I have no understanding from her guys a few months after I find out Thomas Information with her. Yes. Yeah. So that was in, um, um, let’s see, I found out in June and she died in January. That was fast. Very fast. Yeah. And never told me. And have you been able to connect with Thomas? Um, no. Let’s see. So, um, I met the aunt, she flew out from the east coast and met her, was really wonderful lady.
Speaker 2: (10:19)
Uh, I met with an uncle that lives less than a mile from my house, has lived there for 30 years, have mutual friends with my parents, like six degrees of separation. This man lives so close and he’s my uncle and I was able to meet him and his wife and, uh, funny at the lunch I said just just off the cuff like, hey, any relationship to Dick Cheney? He was like, well, as a matter of fact, we are, I was like, Dang, it could’ve been anybody else. I did Cheney. But, um, but they’re just really great people that are very accepting and open and welcoming. I couldn’t have asked for a better experience. Even with everything being positive and being a, you know, good. I still had emotions that came up that I was not expecting. And it really, um, it may be wobbly in my life for awhile and I’m pretty centered. I’m pretty stable in my life. But it, it was an unexpected emotions. And that happens. I hear it from so many people. Right.
Speaker 1: (11:26)
I mean, it happens to me and I still, they still am surprised because intellectually or something, if you ask me any day of the week, I’m like, no, I’m, I’m fine. It’s all very interesting, but I’m fine. And then something will trigger. Yeah,
Speaker 2: (11:40)
it could be. I didn’t think it could be a song. It could be just anything. So for me there was a lot of [inaudible], I wouldn’t say negative emotions, but just difficult or challenging emotions. And some of those were like, um, when I met my sister for the first time, so I have siblings with Thomas, there’s, there’s three of us that we know about. There’s two more that they’re kind of out there somewhere. But when I met the sister for the first time, it was really great and wonderful. And then I had this feeling of, oh my gosh, we will, we will robbed. Like I could, I could have had a lifetime with this girl. And she’s funny and smart and artistic and you know, I’ll never have those. Those first breakups are their first and your prom or their wedding or the birth of her first child.
Speaker 2: (12:28)
Like those experiences that we could have had as sisters. We’ll never have. And it was this [inaudible], she’s in San Diego and um, you know, it’s nice and wonderful to have her in my life now, but it’s of like, ah, we could have grown up together, you know, so, and there’s this helpless feeling that the adults in my world and globally as well made choices that affected us and we didn’t even have knowledge of it or a say in it. It’s really difficult to navigate that in current relationships with their families. Right. So how was your, your adopted family, how have those parents been about this whole there? My parents are really great. So when I say parents is my adopted mom, I have a Stepdad and then my adopted dad and his, his wife. So they’ve been great in accepting and accommodating and I’m sure it’s challenging for them in their own ways.
Speaker 2: (13:24)
But this isn’t our first round with this. So I met my biological mother at 18, so now we get to go through it again on the other side. But, so a, the Thomas as denied paternity, oh, he’s denying that he, uh, fathered me, which actually is okay with me. I don’t need a relationship with him. I really mostly wanted medical information or things like that. So you were able to get that? Yes. Yeah. So, um, that’s my experience. It’s wow. Okay. So, so Thomas remains industry man. And have you, have you maintained a connection with um, Michael? No, I probably shouldn’t exact to him to let them know. Yes, you’re not my dad. I mean I should probably loop back them and we haven’t spoken in many years, but, um, I’m, I don’t know what his life has been like, but I should probably let them know, hey, you’re off the hook or not my dad.
Speaker 2: (14:24)
Um, well, okay. So I always ask if people feel like, if you feel like there’s an age that you would have preferred to know and you have a different kind of story. So, I’m not sure how that fits in, but yeah, you did run with this Michael Idea for all that time. All the time. Um, for me, I always had knowledge that I didn’t know. So a bit different than somebody just finding out. Yeah. But research has shown in studies have shown that the earlier the conversation happens with a child, the better their trajectory of, uh, assimilating that information into their life and, and, and really developing a solid identity around that information. So the earlier a child’s told that they were donor conceived or that they were adopted, really? Um, I think speaking of this is my sister texting me. Oh, funny. That’s funny. I’m turned on set. But anyway, so we should show that the earlier the conversation happened the, the more solid that child is growing up. So I would, I would do say as soon as they,
Speaker 3: (15:34)
I can understand that the conversation should at least begin with them, then you’ve always known you were adopted. I always knew though that wasn’t, yeah, that wasn’t part of the surprise. But yeah,
Speaker 1: (15:46)
cause I think of, I mean it’s a discussion often on the, on the online support group cause I want to tell my children yeah. Um, and my, my, my oldest nose and couldn’t care less. And part of that is being a teenager. So he just is like, what does it have to do with me? [inaudible] um, but I don’t, I don’t know. I mean she knows about me. I don’t know if there, if I would have understood it as a teenager. I don’t know.
Speaker 3: (16:15)
It’s a hard question. Yeah. No I don’t. I think at any age is, it could, it could be more difficult when you’re older and you already have a set understanding of your life. Right. And then have to change that up. Right. You know, is it age appropriate to tell a 13 year old that their father is a different man? I don’t know. I mean we know we’ve lived with this secret. Yeah. And understanding that secrets do make us sick. Right. You know, so, and then really, why do we keep that secret from a child? Usually it stems from shame or guilt or something. That’s a negative thing. And if we could change the dialogue around this and not make it such a shameful thing, you know, the women are mothers and you know, they made choices in a time that maybe that was the only choice they can make or who knows why or what societal pressures were on them to do what they did.
Speaker 3: (17:12)
So you can kind of understand. Right. So it’s nice in 2019 they have the hindsight or look back and say, well they did this, but it was a terrible thing. But really would we have done the same thing? We don’t know. Yeah. 15 years old making those decisions and then having to remember later. Yeah. Um, it’s a lot. It’s totally a lot. So tell me about the book that you want to write. The ebook. So the book that I’m working on now is about this whole DNA. It’s more of a self help kind of what to expect book. Yeah. I have my story in there. So it, it gives the, the platform of me as an NPE and understanding just uh, personally how that is also my clinical experience. And some research around, um, this, this new phenomenon that’s emerging and overall the bleak outlook or whatever you want to say.
Speaker 3: (18:16)
There’s, there’s no data, there’s no empirical research has been done. So really drawing attention to that and um, that’s great. We need that so bad for somebody. Like when you take a DNA test, what do you, what do you look for? You look for the center Morgan. So what does that mean? So I explained that in the book what a to Morgan is and how the higher the number, the closer that probability of your matches. So kind of the nuts and bolts of navigating this. Oh that’s awesome. Yeah. When you’re done, do you have a title? Ah, well you never know what your title is going to end up being cause it goes through your publisher and things. But tentatively is who’s your Daddy? Which it sounds so elemental, but really we’re dealing with basics of life,
Speaker 1: (19:03)
right? No, I mean that I think like everything, everything like that’s around this subject. The WHO’s your daddy joke comes up, right? Cause you’re like, oh. And it just comes back around.
Speaker 3: (19:14)
Well and I think it lends some humor to this whole process and right. If we can have [inaudible] it might, it might make the journey just a little bit softer for us. And so that’s the title that I’ve landed on, but, okay, cool. Keep me updated. You never know.
Speaker 1: (19:31)
You can let everybody know when it’s available and what it’s finally called. Yep. Very cool. Awesome. And what is the advice you would give somebody who has just discovered, just gotten the surprise results?
Speaker 3: (19:44)
[inaudible] mail? Any, any, I mean, well in tests or any, any kind of information that has surprised them. I think it just, and, and I’d be, I really want to hear you a story as well, but there are a lot of emotions that come up. And so just like people that are going into recovery, you know, starting AA or whatever they say, don’t make any life decisions in the first year of your life. I would say the same thing to somebody who just found out that father is not really their father. Don’t make any life changing decisions like, you know, don’t sell your house and move or anything big. You just kind of let the sit with the emotion. They lean into it a little bit. And when I say lean into it means understand that emotions are normal and you’re going to get to the other side of them and just feel them for a minute, but don’t make any life changing decisions because sometimes that’s what we do. Right. To distract from this, I’m going to go, I don’t know, sell my car and get a motorcycle. Like something impulsive and yeah, some would say universe response.
Speaker 1: (20:46)
Yeah, we quit there. Quit jobs or
Speaker 3: (20:48)
fate start new relationships or end relationships. All sorts of things happen. I think that’s great advice. Yeah, that’s awesome. I mean, I didn’t do anything major. I caught my limp mid midlife crisis and I have them periodically. It’s, I’ll go buy a Newsmodo home or something or you know, tear up carpet in my house or something that I think is productive. But, um, this is living room, you know, it has the potential to really disrupt someone’s life and just that knowledge alone will disrupt it. So, yeah. Cool. Great. So straight forward, um, I love it. It was so much, I’ll just go ahead with that. Let’s see what else. Is there anything else? Um, I can tell you why are you in a secret Facebook group? Uh Huh. So the secret Facebook group, uh, you know, I first joined there was about 3,500 members and uh, now it’s like 7,000 and, and growing and growing.
Speaker 3: (21:46)
And you know, I read Lievable, I’ve read some articles cause there’s, there’s very little information out there about mpes or this whole phenomenon. But one estimate I read said one in 25 people are taking DNA tests and that 10% of the population are getting surprised results. Yeah. That’s a lot of people that are getting this shock. Either they’re finding out their father had an affair and has had the other kids out there, whatever the variation of the story is. Uh, but there’s not really anything in the mental health community supporting this, specializing in this. And I, and my research for my book, I couldn’t find anything. Even at, um, a psychological theory on personality or development addresses, lean into attachment theory or finding the therapists that are good at adoption adoption. So that adoption was a closest thing I could find. But there are still some nuances that are unique to mtes, you know, the grief is a different kind of grief than losing somebody that the trauma of it is different than the trauma that we know.
Speaker 3: (22:49)
And we’ve studied today, but there really wasn’t anything I found. I did find a theory that comes out of the UK that fits, you know, my perspective. It’s called identity process theory and uh, Briquelle as the originator of that. And of course it’s, it pulls from vendors and different psychologists, but it really, the premise is that your identity is attached to the groups that you’re attached to. So external and internal. So as we go through life and new information comes in, we accommodate that new information to keep our identities whole. And when something comes in that’s so big that just knocks us sideways. It’s your identity. It’s a really, what I think NPE is experience is an identity crisis. It’s not just a, I found out this information, oh, isn’t that interesting? It really calls into question our entire identity. And people that aren’t nps don’t understand that, right.
Speaker 3: (23:52)
Those are all let it go. Or what does it matter? What does it change? Right. And people sitting in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones because they’re probably the people that went to the doctors and said, Oh yeah, breast cancer runs in. My family had that information, or yeah, I’m, I’m, you know, French. And they had that information for somebody who, who finds out that they, they don’t have that information or what they thought was, was it it that, that, um, could traumatize their identity? Or is that the word I’m looking for? You know? Yeah. I don’t know. I don’t know. I know what you’re saying. And I don’t know if we even have the words yet. I don’t think so. I tried. The unsettling is discombobulating. But yeah, it’s beautiful and wonderful. All these great, exciting, and it’s almost like being bipolar with your emotions when you find out you’re an NPE because you have, you know, maybe anger towards your biological mother or your family or you find out that, hey, yeah, mom’s sister and best friend all knew that this was my circumstance, but nobody told me to the betrayal.
Speaker 3: (25:00)
There’s so much for trail. Yeah. And then how do you actually have a relationship with them with this new information wanting to understand or, you know, wanting to understand people’s choices as just people and humans, but being affected by it as a child or a relative of these people can be really conflicting by and extending grace to them, but also somewhat holding them accountable to it. It is, it’s an interesting path. And, um, I think more people are going to find themselves on it. And you know, I think when people were donating, you know, donors years ago or I know just from donors, whatever, they never anticipated that in 30 years there’d be a DNA test that would reveal their identities. So, you know, and now with so many people taking the test, it’s not a matter of if their secrets come out. It’s a matter of when I think people need to understand.
Speaker 3: (26:01)
So when we are doing it, you know your, your work around, um, dusting the podcast and getting the word out there and bringing awareness to this, the more we can shape the national dialogue around this and even global, I mean you are singing my Song Krista and I actually, what I’m trying to do, I’m the UK seems to be, yeah the UK, UK seem to be a little bit ahead of us. So in 2005 they made anonymous donor sperm donors illegal so they, they can no longer be anonymous and England and the UK. So if we could just catch up to that and what I, what I hope I saying shaped that national conversation and global non conversation is so that we don’t go to the polar opposite end of that and people stop donating or people stop adopting or putting their children at for adoption. Didn’t even think of that because, yeah. Because of the negative whatever surrounded me and NPE what I would rather is that there’s just a clear understanding and the sting is taken out of it so that people can make informed decisions and the children can have knowledge and information as they develop.
Speaker 1: (27:16)
Yeah, absolutely. What, yeah, what, yeah. I keep, I keep trying to explain it. Um, to some people who, who don’t think this is a very good, this podcast is a very good idea. And I’m like, if I could just offer some kind of relief to the people feeling shame more than anything, it’s like this happens, this happens in, in specific circumstances or different for every person. Yeah. But if we could, yeah. If we could make it some kind of, if there was an opportunity for conversation around it night, and I know there’s,
Speaker 3: (27:51)
I think your podcast is, is a vacuum. I think your podcast is excellent idea, not just for people discovering their mpes, but also people on the other side of that. Yeah. People who, um, maybe just friends or family members or professionals in the community or a mental health community that are working with as individuals. So, um, for me, uh, I think the more awareness is brought to this and the more the conversation shows both the good, bad and the ugly. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (28:24)
Well, and I also would love to get people to come talk to me who are from different perspective to have it. Like I would love to get some mothers who made the decision 30 years, 30, 40 years ago. Yeah. To keep it a secret. And what they’re thinking was I have, um, I would love to get some of them to come talk or, or a sperm donor who has this like surprise phone call that’s like, wait, I did this thing for 50 bucks. Yeah. 50 years ago and now this person wants a relationship and I feel fill in the blank. Um, yeah, I would love to get all sorts of perspectives about it because I just think we all need to talk about all of it. I agree. Yeah. Great. I had a thought and now I, so, um, yeah, we’re, we’re actually sitting on, maybe you could pick this up listeners, but crystal works in the mental health community. Um, and so, and we’re actually sitting in a, in a mental health clinic facility. Um, rooms, rooms have counselors here. And um, have you had anybody come through?
Speaker 3: (29:19)
Yes. So what happened when I had my own experience and realizing there wasn’t a place to really go and get specific specialized services or counseling around this, I started looking at our own agencies. So I, I am the CEO of a nonprofit counseling center in Orange County and we work with trauma and grief and anything on the mental health spectrum, substance abuse, we serve about 3000 people a year through our, our programs. That’s a lot. But there wasn’t anything that I was finding. So I talked to the leadership team here about opening a group for mpes and just seeing, you know, what, how it worked or what would the interest was. And we opened in February and our, our groups are full and we get calls, we get calls and people that are in the groups that are now wanting individual work. And so there’s definitely a need.
Speaker 3: (30:14)
We are starting a virtual platform and in the next month or so to be able to offer services across California, across the United States for people really specializing in this area. The Orange County register did a piece on me and my story and the groups that were starting at Mariko sense. So from that article, there’s been a lot of interests and we’ve actually had people coming in that are mps. We’ve also had people on the other side of that, that our siblings are, they share a biological father, but they’re on the other side. They’re not the NPE, but they’re in groups together. And it’s been really beautiful because they’re able to help each other have empathy for the others’ story. So it blends it and it’s, this ended up being a really good group.
Speaker 1: (31:06)
This is so cool because Christa didn’t tell me any of this before I showed up, so I just came. I’m doing a whole bunch of interviews today. Um, so this is a whole side that I am so excited to talk about and so excited to connect with somebody who’s also trying to broaden the conversation and actually be of service in that community. This is so cool. I’m so excited.
Speaker 3: (31:27)
Yeah, we did the first four weeks, we scholarshipped everyone. So we were able just to kind of pilot it and see what the interest was and the interest was so wide that um, we ended up opening up more groups. So, um, here we are and we have a group here in orange and also San Juan Capistrano and we are looking to do by a pilot with cat, you know, broadening into California and then across the United States. And my interest isn’t just in providing the services for mpes. Uh, it’s also to provide training for counselors who may come in contact with
Speaker 1: (32:03)
so much on that Facebook support group that we are both a part of people post about disappointing experiences with therapists.
Speaker 3: (32:10)
Right. Which is heartbreaking. It is. And, you know, but then the psychology, well then and the United States hasn’t caught up to that yet, so it will, it will. And so Mariposa is really emerging as that thought leader and um, and provider. And so hopefully we can get more people just trained on what it is. Yeah. And so, um, are you comfortable saying the name of the program or a number they should call or, or email? So our number here is (714) 547-6494. And you can also look us up
Speaker 1: (32:46)
on our website. It’s Mariposa center.org. Okay, great. And I will put that, I’ll put all that information, uh, on the website or on the blog. I’ll, I’ll make sure that that’s available and if anybody doesn’t catch it, um, either re listened to the episode or, um, send me an email, he, that everything’s relative, podcast.com and I’ll make sure that you get connected to the right people. Yeah. Yeah. So great. Thank you so much. Yeah. Um, anything else you want to tell me about the way you’re changing the world,
Speaker 3: (33:14)
taking out the world? Um, interesting. No, uh, I did approach a university and ask if they would be interested in doing a study on this because there really isn’t or hasn’t been especially conducted yet. So impressed. Um, you know, they haven’t, they didn’t bite, but they will, I think the more there’s chatter in the media and the more those chatter and, um, in print material and perhaps they, the, there’ll be funding available for a university to do a study on this. So I think that’s important for us to be able to really direct, um, even treatment for individuals, but really a broader understanding of the impact of this. We haven’t seen it yet. You know, you’re starting to see, hey, I’m so glad you used the word phenomenon. Right. When I, when I remember when I took my DNA test and I was spitting into the little vial, I had the conscious thought like, oh my God, please don’t let me be related to a serial killer. Like that was one of my biggest concerns is that I would be, and like shortly after I did my test, they caught the golden state killer, right through DNA testing. [inaudible] Australia rapists through DNA testing. So forensics are going to be able to use this as well. So it’s gonna have good implications, but it could also, you’ll have what negative implications for individuals and their families. So that,
Speaker 1: (34:36)
no, the fallout, I mean we’re, yeah, I think you’re right. We’re just at the tip of the iceberg of just watching this whole thing shake out.
Speaker 3: (34:41)
And Technology has advanced us, meaning we haven’t, we haven’t really prepared adequately for the advancement in technology around this. We’ll catch up, but right now we’re just reeling from the how expedited these things are. When I say I had years to marinate in the idea of not knowing, people that get that surprise DNA test may have minutes to realize that their life was alive or whatever. Right. Minutes. So they’re experiencing this compact life altering, you know, information quickly. And we’re in an age where everything has to be immediate, you know, but this might be an instance where maybe time is your, is your ally. You know what I mean? Many people
Speaker 1: (35:33)
in the group, I’m sorry, I keep talking about the group. Um, but that, that’s my biggest pool of understanding of what’s going on. So many people are like, Hey, I just found out last week and these are the things I’ve done or, and yeah, if, if there could be some kind of, um, message to, to just pause with this stuff and take the time, take some time to process it and not even before making big decisions,
Speaker 3: (35:58)
but then the small decisions. It’s true. And, um, I think the Facebook group is really good for people to go and, and know they’re not alone, know that what they’re experiencing is widely felt by others. And, uh, it’s a, it’s a great place to connect with other mps is not a replacement for mental health services. No. I’ve seen people on there that are relapsing, that are suicidal, that are having really adverse reactions to this and there’s not the level of support. And they have a disclaimer on the Facebook page that it’s not, it’s not to replace mental health services and if you need help to do how to get that. So, um, but I think it’s an excellent place for people to, to make that first connection.
Speaker 1: (36:47)
Yeah, no, I think you’re right. And I think that they just, um, they came along at the, the, the few people that, um, that started the group like came along at the right time. But there are tons of support groups probably out there if you look, and this is not the only one and they are not, I don’t know. Everybody needs different things. So I don’t want to say that they’re the best one or that they are the authority on this subject. They just happen to be, um, a group that’s got some [inaudible].
Speaker 3: (37:12)
Yeah. I think Katherine St Claire was one of the cofounders of that Facebook group and you know, she’s got her own personal story with it. So, um, the, the impetus of it was her own discovery and um, she’s done a phenomenal job at bringing people together in the community together. And there have been offshoots of that. I haven’t seen many other online support groups for this, just that the one that Catherine and they’ve started subgroups. So they’ve started groups for people that are single and finding out that people that are you just a male, you know, just men only. And so they’ve started subgroups of the little group or whatever, the whatever’s younger than yeah. Millennials. So they’re onto something that they’re trendsetters in a way of of this. And with everything being online now, it’s, it’s a perfect opportunity for people to conduct. So, um, for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (38:12)
Did I? Yes. You’d be, everything you just said is true. I just, um, I also want to make clear to people that don’t have to be a part of this group. Um, or it’s not the only way or going on there is not, it’s, it’s one representation of this experience. Um, but it is some people,
Speaker 3: (38:32)
right. And then as we get more professionals that are in this, there may be a in person support groups or other avenues for people. I have seen in their people that are in remote parts of the country that don’t have access to. And so an online version is indicated for them, you know, or you live in a small town and maybe they don’t want people to know because of the shame and the guilt and you know, there’s, there’s other options for them.
Speaker 1: (38:59)
People like the people that find out all this stuff and then it turns out they’re still, they’re friends with all the people like in the small towns or it was their next door neighbor growing up or, yeah, I mean, yeah, layers and layers of possibilities.
Speaker 3: (39:13)
Oh my gosh. Located and if anything, this should kind of raise the, um, the need for maybe like getting DNA tested before you get married. No. Right, right. They’re getting another question about that 70, maybe you should do a swab and just make sure we’re not like cousins, everybody just spit. And especially in a small town where you know, the, the pool is limited. I’ve seen people or heard people say, oh my God, I just found out my ex husband’s my brother. Like this stuff happens. So, you know, and for me as an adopted person, that was always in my mind because you never know if this person’s really related to you. That could be a brother, it could be you. So I’ve lived in that and I’m going back to my search as a, as adopted individual searching from my biological family. This was in the day before the Internet.
Speaker 3: (40:05)
Yeah, it was a card catalog and microfish, you know what I mean? Yeah. It was days or months and weeks, writing letters that meet your male doctors. So there was time in between to wrap my head around it and, and process that weren’t, if you sent a DNA test off, it’s like a matter of weeks before we get those results back. And we’re in May. So they, they estimate they sold 1.2 million kids over the holidays. Those results should be rolling in about now. So there’s going to be thousands of people that are going to 10% of that hundred and 20,000 yeah, yeah. That took me a minute. Clearly. Yeah. Clearly I’m a therapist, not a mathematician. Right. So a lot of people, and I would say it is phenomenon that we, um, we’re not expecting, but it’s here. So now why are we going to deal with it?
Speaker 1: (41:00)
Yeah. Oh, good. Yeah. Well, thank you. And I’m so thankful for people like you who are really trying to do something.
Speaker 3: (41:09)
I think the more we share our story and the more we normalize it as abnormal as it is, and the easier it’s going to be for those that come behind us and find out
Speaker 1: (41:18)
[inaudible] that’s great. Absolutely. Amen. Thank you so much. I’m gonna go ahead. Turn
Speaker 3: (41:24)
this off. Okay, good. Now you’ve got to tell your story. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (00:00)
Okay. Great. Awesome. We can just dive in if it’s okay with you. Sure. Cool. Um, so I’m here with Amy and you are going to tell me about your NPE experience. So why don’t you go ahead and just start where you want to start and then I’ll ask questions about, about the stuff that’s missing. Sure. Okay. So, uh, I think we’re like most people, my husband and I did ancestry.com for fun. Um, the people that do the data, it was one of his clients. So he, um, you know, bought to the kits for Christmas a couple of years ago. So we did the test and his came back as expected. And um, I had grown up in a primarily Ukrainian home and mine came back with no Ukrainian, knew nothing at all. So it came back French and German, which my mom was. And then I came back Irish and Welsh.
Speaker 1: (01:00)
I love Scandinavian and I, that’s so not Ukrainian. So not your granted at all. A good thing as we all like potatoes, so it’s fine. So anyways, we honestly thought nothing of it really. I just, I didn’t know to look at matches. I didn’t know really much about it. My husband, it was all under his email address. I, I wasn’t paying attention to anything else really. I just didn’t think about it. Kind of laughs at, oh my grandma was left with the milk man. Ha Ha. Never thought about it again. Other than once in a while we would joke about it. Like someone would say, Oh, you have nice skin and I can’t, it’s my Ukrainian. Ooh, no, it’s not my Irish skin. And I would laugh and just didn’t think anything of it. And you didn’t say anything to anybody in your family know, didn’t, didn’t occur to me, just it was just like whatever.
Speaker 1: (01:46)
Um, and then, um, my husband got an email from someone again, I didn’t know there was even a match, but, and I, I hadn’t really paid him at the test that was so, um, he got an email from a woman and she was saying, I really need to talk to your wife. Um, I also did my test and we show up as matches. And again, my husband told me, and we just kind of said, well, my mom, um, her dad had had a first wife and she’d had a baby, died during childbirth. My grandfather at the time was in the war, so he couldn’t come back and take care of his baby. So he gave the baby to her parents, like up for adoption. And then that was that. And he never saw the baby again. And my mom knew about it, but w so she had a baby that died in childbirth and then another child she gave up for adoption?
Speaker 1: (02:39)
No, no, no. So my, this is my grandfathers on my mom’s side. My grandfather’s first wife had a baby gate, died during childbirth during surgery. I had the baby died and I was like, how did they give the baby? Okay. The woman died, mom died, died and so could you take care of the baby? So gave the baby okay. Pains. So he couldn’t, I’m with you. Yup. We somehow, again, not thinking this through, obviously not well, this first have to do something with my mom and that whole thing. So my husband forwards the email to my mom who, right, who says nothing about it. She says, this must be spam. Um, you can’t trust anything on the Internet. Um, all these kinds of things and never spoke to me about it. Never told me that type stuff. Did you know this was happening at all?
Speaker 1: (03:33)
No. No, no club again, because we, he and I just didn’t clue. Well, when something, I mean we actually just talked about this so much with the other, with the previous person. It’s like when something is unfathomable, like it’s just not on your radar. It’s not on your radar. And I don’t know, like the absence of it is rest. Downing. Yeah. And there’s, there’s other things that after this, the same thing. It’s just like nobody thought, never thought about this. So in the meantime, I started getting friend requests from this woman and I didn’t know, again, we hadn’t talked about this, I didn’t know this woman’s name that had sent these emails. That was the same woman that was friend requested me on Facebook. I owned a dance company for many years traveling all over the country. So I have friends all over the place. It’s this woman was in Texas and I’m thinking, well, it must be something that happened to do with that, but I’m not an industry anymore.
Speaker 1: (04:27)
I’m just going to decline, keep declining these requests. She emailed my husband one or two more times on the, on the ancestry site and said, and you know, I’m really looking, I think for your wife and I’ve been looking for her for a long time. This has a sense of urgency or desperation. Yeah. But again, he wasn’t really saying much to me about it because we just didn’t like, we thought this is some crazy person and our daughter was a former actor and so we, we dealt with crazy email. Things would be faster, but we just kind of brush it off again. So one night I did not know that on Facebook you can have a, like some can send you a message if you’re not friends and it goes into a separate little inbox is June, I’m upstairs. It’s like 10 o’clock at night.
Speaker 1: (05:20)
Um, husband’s out of town. I’m looking through this. Like, if I’m somehow click on this inbox and there was about like eight messages from this person saying, I really have been looking for you for 11 years. Oh my God, I’m pretty sure I’m your sister and we need to talk. And I said, I don’t have any sisters. I don’t have any brothers. I don’t know who you are, but like you, like what are you talking about? This doesn’t make any sense. So you have no siblings? No, I mean until right up until that moment you had no siblings. So, um, I again, I, I kind of just, I was irritated with this person. I thought, I don’t know what you’re trying to do. I went to bed, you know, got up in the morning, more messages from her and I find this like, what would you written back at all?
Speaker 1: (06:16)
Yeah, just saying like, you don’t understand. I don’t understand what you’re, what you’re trying to say here. I not following at all. So the next morning, the email or the message is, Hey, um, my dad, this is his name. I know that he had a relationship with your mom in 1968 this is where they were working. This is the town they were living in. This is, you know, how what I’ve been told had happened. My Dad told me 11 years ago, I’ve been trying to find you. Wow. So it was those, those details that made you realize that this person was serious. Right. Right. So I, uh, what, what do you want from me? You know, kind of thing. And she’s like, I mean, I’m just so excited and I’m so thrilled to meet you. And like, you know, I, where do you live? She’s asking me all these questions.
Speaker 1: (07:07)
She really wants a sister. Yeah. And I’m like, Whoa, hang on. Like, I don’t know you, I don’t think I want to right now. And you’re, I think you’re walking a little crazy. So when she goes in and she had, she was certainly anxious, very anxious. Yeah. She’s just, she’s still very anxious. This was a very happy girl. Um, but, but I, I didn’t, uh, you know, I get off the, I finally, like, we exchange all these messages. She had too many details for it not to be accurate. Um, you know, again, she knew exactly where they worked, what town it was in, and I knew those things to be true about my mom. Yeah. That happened to me where like it all seemed bananagrams until, until the mention of a neighborhood. Yeah. And it was like nobody knows that neighborhood. This is whatever this is.
Speaker 1: (07:53)
It’s got to be. And I, and I grew up in Canada. Um, this happened in Royal Oak, Michigan and I now live in Los Angeles. The person’s contacting me from Texas, from Texas, and I grew up in a really, really small town in Canada, so that, you know, she had, she had to know all this. There’s no way that she could have even stopped me enough to probably figure all this out. So, uh, I get off, you know, finished messaging her. I call my husband and freaking out a common best friend and freaking out. And I’m like, I like, what do I do? Like I, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with all this information. So, um, that I was just really angry with my mom. Uh, and, and part of that anger was my dad that raised me died 30 years ago, 29 years ago.
Speaker 1: (08:41)
Um, so I’ve been out with without a dad for all that time and he died with crazy health issues. I thought that I had inherited, oh, that’s serious. And I also are, we have a 20, almost two year old daughter. And she had had said it, these are all kidney issues. And she’d had some blood work done at one point in time a couple of years ago where her kidney levels were a little bit wonky. And I mean, I lost it. I, you know, and I shared that with my mom that, oh my God, I think she has the same thing as my dad. Like, you know, oh my God, he died. He was 46. I mean, is she gonna get married? She could have kids. Like, I mean, I’m losing my mind. This is horrifying over these health issues. Um, my, my parents, I was an only child.
Speaker 1: (09:30)
They tried to get pregnant for a year or more before I was born or before I was conceived. And then they try for 10 years after me to have another baby. So I’m a one and if I have slept with two different people in the same week and I’m suddenly pregnant and I hadn’t been able to get pregnant all of his time and I never got pregnant again, you know, um, that’s a different kind of science. That’s pretty clear. Yeah. But it got to put together. So, um, my husband said, I’ll talk to your mom because I, I’m was not able to. And where was your mom at this point? My mom still lives in Canada in a small town. Um, we’ve had a troubled relationship my whole life. Um, I would describe her as a narcissist. Absolutely. Um, and most people would. Um, so I just knew that if I tried to have this conversation with her, it just wouldn’t.
Speaker 1: (10:27)
So my husband was very clear and concise with her and that’s super supportive of him. Yes. And had the conversation. Um, I didn’t talk to her after that for about six or eight weeks and then I flew back to Canada. I hired a therapist to sit with, she and I for three days in a row for an hour and a half each time to facilitate the conversation. So you really thought about this, you really like to know her and I needed that. It would be no way to get any answers. There would be no way to actually have a conversation with how her trying to take it somewhere that she wanted it to go or to twist it in a way. You know, that sounds that to me seemed so brave and so smart. I mean, I don’t know if it was brave. I would say it was, it was for me the smart decision to the way to do it.
Speaker 1: (11:14)
We had originally planned to go back to my hometown for like a week and a half and then we had a cottage rented and all this, but I wasn’t ready to do that because I didn’t know how to talk to rest of my family or anything like that. And it was still too fresh and I was too mad. So I just, that was the best way to kind of go, okay, we’ve, we’ve got three days, we’ll talk about it and then I’ll come home and process, which is what you said. Um, and then we actually offered for her to stay working with that therapist for quite a while afterwards as well. That’s really nice.
Speaker 1: (11:53)
Take it feels a nice the but um, so in the meantime, um, this, this half sister that now I realize I have is very communicative and wants to meet me and is so excited and she’s Gung Ho ready to go. Like let’s do it. And she contacts my birth father who’s not as Gung Ho, uh, at all and in fact is very angry with her for messing with everyone’s life. So he didn’t know that this has been an 11 year project for her? No, because as it turns out, I’m not the daughter that he told her about. Oh No, the daughter, he told her about this disease before her. It’s not funny, but it’s amazing. His name is hope. And we all just keep laughing, looking for her sister for hope. Amazing in this. Um, so, and I, between two girls, I’m the middle girl of this family.
Speaker 1: (12:52)
Um, but there’s someone out there so that there’s no love children. So the sun was still out there, um, that would, we haven’t found, so that’s why I think my mom was super confused because she didn’t, she claims she didn’t know it was his, but he had told my half sister that I existed. Right. And then he knew about me. So are there multiple women in the F in the knee that he knew about? It was that somebody else. He had gotten married and he was working for a summer in Florida for an ad agency, was, had a little tryst with this other woman. She got pregnant. He knew she was pregnant. He knew, he found out was that she’d had a girl and, and that he named her hope or that they named her hope. But in the meantime, he went back to his wife.
Speaker 1: (13:39)
She, this other woman said, go back to your wife. Um, and he had, uh, another, another daughter. So my older sister, the sister that I said, I would wait until you were done with the story to ask questions, but I’m jumping in. Um, the sister that found you when she listed like living in this town and they worked together at this place, she was incorrect about that because she was looking for hope or he worked with, he was sleeping with all the women who worked with, no, they weren’t at the same time, but he mixed up the women, like he got up. Got It. Okay. The time, the place, I mean he’s, you know, 74 now. So at that time you would’ve been 60 something and he had the woman with the wrong event. Yeah. It’s hard to keep track, so I don’t get it.
Speaker 1: (14:28)
I imagine. Yes. I got to get back there. Um, so he had a daughter at this point. My oldest sister was an infant when I was conceived. It was a one night stand in the back of the car after a party at an ad agency or mom’s mom running and he was working very mad men. That’s exactly what he says. He said, if you saw the show mad men, that’s exactly what it’s like. Um, and then as soon as he was after he’s with my mom, his wife found out she, you know, freaked out. They were living in Michigan and she’s like, that’s it. I’m pulling the plug, we’re moving. And they moved out to California and then they went on to have another child and um, and then that woman passed away and then he remarried and that one passed away and his third wife, um, so he, he was very upset with her because he just, he thought, you know, why are you messing with everyone’s life?
Speaker 1: (15:25)
And she’s like, well, you told me all this information, like you set me up to want to find this. So she was surprised that he wasn’t happy about it. Yeah, she thought she, she was ecstatic. She was like, I found her, I found her. And he’s like, who would you find any? Oh, no, it was, no, her name’s Amy. He was a little confused. Um, she also then told her younger sister, so my other half sister and who was also not particularly excited by this whole situation is just like, why are you messing with everyone’s life? Um, and I, it was really angry with her too, just like, you know, cause he’s, every night you go to bed and you think like, can I just, can I just wake up and pretend none of this happened? I just like those just go back to the way that it was and it’s fine. And you know, yeah, I relate to that. Yeah. Yeah. But over time, I guess kind of, you know, she, she kind of wore me down, so she would text me and email me every day and, you know, good morning and how are you?
Speaker 1: (16:31)
I’m great and I’m not great. You just totally destroyed my life. But, you know, um, so I’d set up a meeting with her. She was coming to California, her daughter’s southern California. Um, and then I backed out. I just was like, you know, I’m not ready. I hadn’t talked to my mom at that point. So I found out in June, this was probably in July, August, and I just July and I said, I’m not, I’m not ready. That’s really fast. Yeah. So then, um, I don’t know, my husband was great and super supportive. We’re kind of pretty pushy with me about this whole thing, you know, like, this is your family. You need to, you need to at least meet them. Like they’re open to meeting you, you need to meet them. So I, in the meantime I had emailed my birth father, um, and just said, hey, you know, here’s my story, here’s about me and my life.
Speaker 1: (17:30)
And um, uh, you know, and I guess more than anything it was kind of want to know about your health, you know, what are, what are, what am I looking at now? Because everything I thought that I had to worry about, I don’t, so it was great, but you know, what’s your, what’s your scoop? And he kind of was like the same way. Like just, hey, yeah, this is kind of really weird and I don’t know either how I feel about it and, you know, yeah, I’d be open to meeting you one day and here’s all the health information. So not rejection. No, no, no, no. But not super enthusiastic, but then maybe you could relate to, it’s not exactly, he didn’t run the guts in here. Yeah, I know. Right. Uh, in the meantime, I, again, my husband was kind of pushing me towards this and then I went and saw a therapist and they, you know, same thing.
Speaker 1: (18:22)
They were kind of like, you know, you really should at least explore this. They lived two hours away from you. Right. Wow. Yeah. Like, you know, meet them. You don’t have to have a relationship, but you should just see what this is. So I that I email my other sister, um, hey, hi, I’m your sister. Um, and to two nieces and said, hey, I’ve never been an answer before, but you know, hi, uh, don’t know what to ask you about really. Um, and so we, uh, set up a day that what we were going to go down or up and meet them. They live in northern California, so central, so I’m my husband and my daughter and I, um, we went and, uh, we decided that we would just go on our own. We have a son who’s almost 21 and he has autism. Um, and we just didn’t know he’s high functioning, but I wasn’t sure how I was going to explain who these people were to him because he just knows that, you know, his grandfather is in heaven and that’s that.
Speaker 1: (19:28)
So it wasn’t really sure what to do, do that. So we just decided not to. I of the gate in case of it never went anywhere anyway. I didn’t really want to mess with him. 100% makes sense to me. So we drove up, uh, I was freaking out the whole time and I was meeting my, my younger half sister, my other half sister, hurry to go back to Texas. So she was really bummed because everyone got to meet me first. She’s like, wait a minute, I’m the enthusiastic one. I did this and now, you know, um, so it was going to meet my, um, my younger half sister and her husband, um, two, four nieces and they’re two of the nieces, their significant others. And um, you know, so like a family reunion. It’s cut me off. They rented a room in a, in a like a winery restaurant.
Speaker 1: (20:25)
They live in solving and um, we describe it as so first we get there and I, I really think I’m going to maybe throw up, I mean, I’m just not sure how to handle this. And My, and my biological dad is wanting to make me alone separately. You didn’t want to do it with everybody else. So we’re meeting them the first day. Um, and I, we get to the restaurant and I mean, I don’t really know what anybody looks even looks like. Yeah. Really know them. So it, except that I’d seen a couple of pictures where that my other sister had sent me, you know, when we, Gosh, we look alike and yeah. Can we do so anyways, we get there and there’s nobody there in this restaurant, really like a couple of tables of people, but obviously not what, how they expect it. And they said, oh wait, are you Ashley? I’m thinking, Oh yes, yes. That’s be my niece’s name. I to know these people. Oh, they, they’re in the back room. So that opened the door and we describe it as a surprise party, except you don’t know the people that are there to surprise you. Yeah. Like we opened the door to this room and they’re all like, hey, I was like, wow, okay.
Speaker 1: (21:39)
Thank goodness this isn’t a wine restaurant. Yeah. Like I don’t know these people and they’re all there to meet me and my husband and you know, uh, and our daughter and I’m thinking, I terrified. I mean I don’t, it actually turned out hysterical. They’re there, they’re funny. And we all just went and had some wine and laughed about, you know, my biological dad and his escapades and you know, they laughed about that. It was easy for me cause I thought, I don’t know how to handle this one. Your Dad, John Hamm. Yeah. Yeah. And um, and my nieces were great with our daughter and two, like our daughter and my one niece look like they could be twins. Wow. Um, and then there’s things that I will be doing and they were, they would say, oh my gosh, that’s right. Exactly. Like Sonia. I’m like, my older sister, uh, she had, I look a lot alike so it was kind of like cool, but super weird.
Speaker 1: (22:41)
Super Surreal. Super Surreal. Did it feel like there openheartedness and like open and through openness and enthusiasm felt, um, like really? I mean, that sounds like it. It was really nice, but to me I would feel nervous for them. For them. Yeah. Like they don’t know. Like I would be like, you don’t know me. I could be, I could be, I could be an expert. I might not be somebody. You’re so happy to see. Yeah. Like it was weird. It was just weird. Just weird. [inaudible] it’s the next morning I go to breakfast to meet my biological dad and he’s sitting at the restaurant like on a golf course and he’s just sitting there, you know, I’d seen pictures of him. So anyway, look like he’s just sitting there waiting for us. And I, I really then thought I was gonna throw up getting out of the car. And, uh, he gave me a great big hug and he just said, welcome. We sat down and kind of just talked about it, you know? And His story was the same as the story my mom had given to my husband, you know, how I came to be. Um, and he was super warm and like easy. I think I was nervous, but it was easy and he’s very inquisitive. He wanted to know about me and things like that. And so I thought, okay, well the at home and I’m thinking now, now what? No, no.
Speaker 1: (24:13)
So, um, my oddly, my best friend lives about 20 minutes away from my older sister in Texas, so, wow. Okay. Okay. Yeah, he keep saying, wow, I know. So I decided, okay, well I feel bad now. I’m out of reality. Chicago meet her. So, and at this time she’s still like messaging me all the time. And in the meantime, now my younger siblings and my nieces and my biological father are, you know, texting me from time to time, I get the emails, the phone call and like,
Speaker 1: (24:48)
okay, I mean I’m not mad. Right. It’s, it’s interesting. So when I met her and her husband and her and my nephew, her son, and again that was just like funny, weird, but oddly easy. Um, and then we get any laughed and then, you know, I got invited back up. My, my niece was having a baby, so there, you know, you should come in up and meet the baby and do all this kind of thing. And I said, okay. So yeah, I, that time I went by myself. Um, I stayed at my niece’s house. People started to call me aunt. This is, Oh yeah, this is my aunt. How did that feel? Weird. And then kind of then kind of, okay. Okay. Um, and my, we were at a winery and my, my sister’s like telling these people, oh, you know, they ask like, I dunno how they asked the question of what we were doing there.
Speaker 1: (25:55)
Sure. Oh, this is my sister. Well, I mean my sister that just found out I had and we laugh. These people are like, what? And then she asked me, do you mind if I tell the stories? No. So we tell a story and these people are like, oh my gosh, like this is a television show. And you know, he kind of laughed again just, but it was fine. It wasn’t weird really. I mean, and then we went up again, a southern again and then it was Christmas time. So my, the time before Christmas by biological dad had gone out with him and my step mom for dinner by myself. Um, and we just talked a lot about our lives and that he was, you know, the next that that they said they asked if we would come for Christmas Eve. And I said, I actually use the excuse that I wasn’t sure if our daughter could get off of work because I needed to, that I would need to process that.
Speaker 1: (26:56)
Yeah. I need to sit on that one for a minute. So I, um, you know, I can home and again, my husband with much encouragement. It’s like Amy, like let’s just do it. We don’t have to do it again if we don’t like it. Although I was thinking they do Christmas, I’m kind of, I’m kind of in, I’m kind of committed, um, and written for Christmas. It was my step mom, mom’s birthday, so I sent her flowers and um, you know, she was just all super touched and those kinds of things. And also in the meantime, my sisters had put pictures of all of us meeting on Facebook. Oh, okay. That didn’t label it just there we were and my dad raised me sisters and they would like the photos, but they didn’t know. Oh my gosh. Liking. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Okay.
Speaker 1: (27:46)
Which stresses me out and I keep saying to my mom, you need to tell them, you know, what are you going to say something? Cause I’ll call them, she would love, she said no, she wants you to it. So it was, we get to Christmas so we get there for Christmas. Um, and you know, they’re saying, okay, so we’re all going in on the golf club for you know, Grandpa, all the grandkids and we’re, you know, this is kind of how we do it. And you know, what do live and Spencer are kids like, do you know, what do they like? And I’m thinking, Oh okay. All right, we are, we are in, in, in, in, in, in, in, so I’m buying Christmas gifts and things for people that I don’t really know, but it kind of learning to know. And I, and then I decided, you know, okay, I kind of, you have to go all in or I have to kind of bow out.
Speaker 1: (28:35)
So I decided to go in and actually made my biological data book. And it was pictures of like my whole life story and pictures of me from sport and as a child and I wrote and things that I liked and you know, the other games I like to play and then you know what I did. And then when I met my husband and our wedding pictures and pictures of our kids being born and then at the end I had pictures of all of us like, wow, that sounds really nice. Yeah. So, uh, but we got them for Christmas Eve and on the mantle was all the grandkids stockings, all embroidered and our kids names were all in birth order. So they even know that. All right. Um, and you know, we, we pitched in and what we’re supposed to bring in Nice, wonderful people and what you can’t see because this is a podcast is I’m making a lot of uncomfortable faces after she says, wow.
Speaker 1: (29:38)
Um, yeah, I mean it’s, it’s super crazy. So we brought our son and um, all the grandkids call my biological dad buzzy and I was just there a nickname for him. So I thought, well, I’ll just tell him this is his buzzy buzzy and this is Lindy, his wife and these are, I did tell him these were his aunts and things like that because that I figured he could figure out, but you know, but, um, our son brought his Santa Claus suit and, uh, had everyone’s singing, you know, Christmas songs. And my niece was on the piano or son was on guitar and everybody sang Christmas songs. We had a full on Christmas dinner.
Speaker 1: (30:22)
I’m serious. I am, because I’ve never had it cause it was like that. So, and our daughter, you know, she’s freaking out cause she’s like, I wouldn’t do it. Is this because we don’t, we never had any of this. So she’s just like, I don’t really see that was on television duty is, but we did it and we laughed and I all went home was getting text messages from everyone’s saying it was the best Christmas that they like everyone’s had. Of course, like everyone was like, this is awesome, this is great. Um, you know, and, and I mean, it was, it was just so surreal. Uh, and then I got an email like maybe three weeks, four weeks later. And it’s a, from my biological dad and step mom and it’s to me and my two half sisters and my step mom’s son. So my step brother and it’s like, Hey, you know, we’re selling the house. We have an offer. We haven’t offered a new house. Here’s the address Lah, Lah, Lah. Can’t wait for you guys to see it. Love Daddy and Lindy. And I was like, and I’m on the seat now.
Speaker 1: (31:34)
And, and honestly like that’s it. Like they text me, it’s, I mean, I’m going up again, I’m not this coming weekend, next weekend we’re going for the weekend and we’re going to my one sister’s house one night and two my biological dad’s the other night and go to another shoe. Didn’t drop, revealed some no motive other than we finally my mom, we’d given her a date that she had to tell my, my aunts, my two aunts and my uncle that I’d grown up with. Um, and like, you have this, you have to tell them like, we had pictures all over from Christmas. Like my, my, My, my biological dad had posted pictures saying my eight grandkids and my kids are tagged in a picture and I’m like, we have embroidered stockings. Why not? Why is no one picking up on this? And again, back to the, because it just wasn’t, you want crime to them?
Speaker 1: (32:27)
No. So, um, there’s lots of things on Facebook. Yeah. But it’s a whole group of people that look alike and he’s putting like Chris was his great with eight grandkids, my kids for the picture. Um, so I finally did call my dad’s sister, you know, just said like, you know, I even, not my mom but don’t mean that in a mom. It really was a one night thing. Um, here I am, you know, hope you still like me and, and, and uh, and they all except for my dad’s brother, they were all like, okay. Wow. And were you nervous calling them more? Actually nervous about my mom, the wrath of my mother, which I did get the next day. Um, you know, because I just didn’t bother to call her and tell her I had given her the day. You get another boundary. I said she didn’t want to, you know, do it.
Speaker 1: (33:26)
So, um, you meant what you said? I did. Yeah. She wasn’t, she never very good at that, so, so I told you, I told them and uh, they were like, wow, are you okay? Um, and that is a considerate question that my mother never asked me or asked my husband if that was okay. Um, it’s all about her. Well, that comes up that I’ve know I’ve, that’s a pattern I’m noticing is that it’s the people that asked are you, how are you that stand out? Yeah. Yeah. She’s my mom. She’s supposed to ask me. She did. Um, she was just more worried about what it was going to think about her. So, you know, they all seem to be fine. It was her birthday on Sunday and I saw on Facebook they all wished her happy birthday. And I mean, you know, she’s mad at me because I spilled the beans.
Speaker 1: (34:24)
How old are all day? All of them. My Dad’s sister would be 74 maybe and my aunt would be probably like 60 something. It’s nice to imagine that by that time you are just accepting as a person about things that happened years ago. Again, I would think it would be. Um, and I, and I said the same thing I, you know, in, in the therapist is just my mom. I said, look, I’m not, I’m not mad at you. She was, she was 20 years old, you know, um, when she slept with this guy and she was drunk at a party and she was mad at my dad. And you know, like if I didn’t speak with any, every person I know that has had some kind of indiscretion in some way or done something really that they shouldn’t have done, I probably wouldn’t have very many friends, you know.
Speaker 1: (35:16)
So I’m not, I don’t judge that. Um, I don’t like it, but not mad. I’m mad that after he died, you know, that she had 30 years almost to tell me, especially watching the agonize over the health stuff. Yeah. You know, you may have had a relationship with a man and yeah. And the health stuff just sounds agonizing. Yeah. You know, and I had all this time that I could have had siblings that had never had and actually known my niece and nephews from the time they were born. You know, and my kids could have had cousins cause they don’t have them, but now they do. But they never had, they’ve never, none of us have ever had that. You know, our, our Christmas is like, you know, Miss School and we’ve always just, there’s almost, you know, especially since we moved out here and we’re far from our parents.
Speaker 1: (36:05)
So, you know, it’s like why, why? I just don’t understand. You know, why? And She just claimed it. She just, it never occurred to her that that wasn’t that I was his. Oh, okay. So her version of events is that she just insists she didn’t know. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. And again, I’m thinking if you tried to get pregnant for a year, you all of a sudden get pregnant after sitting with one person another time and then you can’t get pregnant again for the next 10 at what point? I don’t know. I’m a woman. I know how it all works. You know, I’d be thinking like, Oh, who’s the Daddy? I just imagine she wouldn’t let herself. Yes. She, that was just another thing that you, she couldn’t, yeah. So it was not a reality. Right. Cause she said it wasn’t done right. So, yes. So I know my, my stories, it’s funny because I read all the stuff on the, the um, the page and I, and I had never kind of come out and said mine on there because I almost feel guilty because mine has been,
Speaker 1: (37:14)
yes. Pretty lovely. Yeah. Yeah. I’m super accepted. I’m part of the crew, like my sister, you know, for Christmas got me an ornament that, you know, it’s like first Christmas, his sisters and the other one’s sent me a mug. Good. That has our initials on it and you know, like they’re all so like, alright, well this is it. And here we are. And I really taken family, I want to say take family seriously, but that’s not the word I want. Like lovingly is just, excuse me. Um, like lovingly or I kind of think, you know, wholeheartedly my biological dad and he’d had the affair are like obviously with my mom on his first wife and then he was having an affair with another woman. And then, you know, like he has had a history of not being super faithful to his spouses. Uh, except for oddly this last one, they’ve been together for 12 years or something and everyone’s like, nope, whatever reason, this is the one that stuck. It doesn’t have so much game anymore. Maybe. Probably, um, you know, he doesn’t, um, I know when I see him with her, he’s wonderful to her. You know, they might my, uh, half sisters or, yeah, particularly,
Speaker 1: (38:33)
well, lovely to hurt, but they have a history, you know. Right. And you know, a couple of times when they tried to say things about her, I said, I don’t, please let me make my own, you know, judgment. I don’t have any history. I don’t, you know, I don’t, I don’t need to know any of the backstory. I’ll figure out my own opinions. And in doing that, it’s been interesting because my nieces and things have said to me, you’ve softened everybody up. Like, oh, I kind of think I kind of came in at a time when my sisters weren’t getting along that great. You know, one of my sisters was kind of mad at my biological dad. They both didn’t really like their step mom. You know, there was a lot of tension and, and so I think my story kind of defused all of that cause I was new story.
Speaker 1: (39:26)
That’s a new city, new thing to focus on the news flash. Um, and I’m the shiny toy, you know. So I think it kind of just having a time for all of them that maybe made it easier then if they were this perfect tight knit and everyone was getting along crew, I think me coming in would have probably rocked a boat. You might really be on to something. But I think my coming in just gave everybody a new focus. Um, and that’s when like at Christmas, like every single one of them said this was the best Christmas we’ve had and years and years and years, you know, and Spencer are sun coming in with a Santa Claus suit and singing Christmas songs and he had everyone doing the 12 days of Christmas. You know what I mean? Like these are things that hadn’t happened before, but he’s just so joyous that, uh, I mean he’s never not in a good mood.
Speaker 1: (40:22)
Um, that, you know, I think they just kind of were like, oh, okay, well these are new traditions to kind of, you know, hopefully. Yeah. I think that’s kind of why to all, and the funny thing is, is there our sudden you’ve never told use the word grandfather or told him anything like that, but he came home and told people that he met his grandpa. Oh. Which is weird. So he was picking up on it. Oh yeah. So what are he was whatever he was seeing and observing and feeling yeah. On his own. Yeah. So it’s just, that’s what I, I haven’t posted it because I almost feel bad. I feel like I can read so many that are so yucky. There are a lot of hard stories to read on there. Yeah, no know. And, and, and I’m really lucky that my dad raised me is not alive. I feel super fortunate about that because I wouldn’t want to have to write, you didn’t even have to go, you didn’t even have to go there. Didn’t have to go there. No. And that’s the one thing that my aunts, both of my, his sister said that that’s the thing that they were really, that they would’ve broken his heart. So they’re just like, okay, well, you know what this is then this is great and we’re happy for you and we want to hear about them and, you know, don’t leave us out and,
Speaker 2: (41:41)
okay.
Speaker 1: (41:44)
So it feels like everybody else is expressing like real confidence in the situation. Yeah. Except for your mother, but also, I’m, I’m curious how you feel at this point
Speaker 1: (42:01)
as you’re kind of, I mean, it sounds like so much of it you’re moved through with like bewilderment and openness, but caution. Um, yeah. I, I mean, I have probably the best group of friends. You haven’t gotten tired of hearing about it. That’s so helpful. And that was more for me than the therapist was for sure. Because, I don’t know, I just felt like the, at least the present I talked to all he really kind of in a way wanted to do was like just make me mad at my mom, which I was already mad. I didn’t need any help. Right. Um, and so I just didn’t feel like maybe he was asking me the right questions where I’ve been able to have friends that I can just, you know, go, I’m sorry guys, but I got to talk about this again. Yeah. Um, and my husband’s been great and my daughters amazing about it too.
Speaker 1: (42:48)
So I think that’s so lovely to hear. Yeah. And even like my Gung Ho half sister when I, you know, want to kind of say like, I still find this very weird and freak out about it. She doesn’t, she’s, she’s really, I think she’s probably apologized to me probably 200 times. You know what I’m saying? Like, I am so sorry. I did not our intention at all, but I’m happy that it happened, but I am so sorry that I put you through that whole thing. I’m an apple cart. She wasn’t thinking about, you know, and, and she feels bad and she’s like, I’m just, I’m so, it’s just, it’s always been my problem. I’m impulsive and I didn’t think it through. And I guess that’s like what my, my dad said to her too. It was like, what, what are you, what are you doing?
Speaker 1: (43:31)
Like, you know, you didn’t know if this other man was alive. You didn’t know their story. I get, how would you do this to somebody, you know, kind of the way he presented it to her and he was really upset with her. All Fair questions. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, now I honestly, it’s, it’s, it’s pretty cool. Like, I’m, you know, like I said, we’re going up next weekend and, you know, we’re taking my two nieces wine tasting, you know, one afternoon, and then we’re going to see the new house of mine, the data, then we’re all going out for dinner, and then we’re driving. And my sisters the next day, I mean, it’s, it’s weird. Sounds Nice and fun, but it’s, it’s, it, it’s fun, you know? And, um, we were like, oh, should we, you know, get a cottage here or there this summer for a week? Because now, well, they’re all there. So, you know, like, it’s just, it’s kind of, it’s kind of neat. And I do find myself saying, oh, my sister or my dad, you, because I know who raised me. Right. You don’t have to, but, but when I’m talking validate things to other, yeah. You know, oh, we’re going to my dad’s, you know? Yeah. I don’t have to say, oh, we’re going to my, you know, my bio daddies.
Speaker 1: (44:47)
I did that at the beginning and now it’s just, it’s easier. And, you know, um, when I gave him the book and I, I sat in the back, you know, something about, well, you know, I hope that over the course of time we’ll have together that, that you’ll be proud, you know, that I’m your daughter. And he cried, you know, showed everybody the bulls. Very, very sweet. Um, you know, he wants me to call him dad. I haven’t done it to his face, but you know, do it like, and my sisters, my sisters will be like, Oh, you know, well, when are you going to dad’s at, what time you get to dads? I have that too. Yeah. And you’re like, and you’re like, right, because that’s my dad, right? Yeah. So it’s, it’s kind of that, but I haven’t done it. I haven’t said it to him.
Speaker 1: (45:33)
I, and I assume that I will, you know, I mean, he’s healthy. He’s, you know, 74 but you know, strong these days. Yeah. And he plays, plays go off every other day and you know, he does his thing and hit me, you know, so he’s, he’s still a going concern and I, you know, so I feel like I probably will, um, our daughter, it’s interesting cause you know, she’s, she’s 22 and um, my husband’s parents are quite a bit older and they’re not in great health. And for them to travel out here again, it probably may not happen. They’re just, they’re, you know, they’re going to old and my mom’s not in great health either. Um, and so she said to me one day, she said, he knows is going to be weird because I think when I get married, those are the grandparents that are going to be out there, you know, not the ones that I’ve grown up with.
Speaker 1: (46:22)
And like a whole separate experience for your children to have to gain a new family as well. And we’ve lived away from Canada for 20 years. I’m not quite 20, 19 years. So our kids have always seen their grandparents like twice a year, sometimes once a year, you know, all of a sudden now we go up, you know, every couple of months. So for her, Christmas was weird when she first walked in, she kind of freaked out, which is all the stockings because it’s two totally break out. She’s never had them do, never had stockies was our grandparents before, you know. And we usually spend Christmas here, like just us. So, and that was our big thing. We were, we said we need to drive back Christmas Eve after, like we’ll do the festivities, but we need to be home. You know, for Christmas, Christmas morning, we’re not, we’re not going to deviate off that far from where our norm or norm is.
Speaker 1: (47:18)
But well your traditions are important too. Yeah. It’s important to take each thing. I would imagine step by step and figuring out where your comfort level is for everybody. Yeah. You have a lot to consider. A lot of comfort levels to take into account. Yeah. You know, especially with your son. Yeah. It’s my nephew’s birthday the other day. So, you know, it’s his 21st I sent him a check and a cart and you know how a drink on us kind of thing. And I’m thinking, I’ve never done any of this before. I’ve never had to, she didn’t have any of them. Right. You know, my, I had a grand nephew born, I was like, oh I’m okay, I need to take stuff. Well at least you can do something like that and then decide how it felt. Yeah. And then the next birthday that comes along you can decide.
Speaker 1: (47:59)
Yeah. How you feel this time, like, yeah. Yeah. I think, I mean, again, maybe because I’ve never had them before, so probably a bit of a novelty for me too, to have nieces and nephews and well, it’s like you get to decide what kind of anti you get to be. I know. Yeah. So it’s, it’s, you know, try something different every couple years or something. Yeah. Like now I’m nice to aunt now. Yeah. You know, so, and it was funny because this year for Christmas, cause we agrifood Canada, although now I’m actually Canadian, I have two American parents. But I thought it was Canadian. Um, oh, that’s funny. Yeah. And I’m not Ukrainian either. I bought them all stuff from our favorite store in Canada, so they all got like roots, sweatshirts and socks and you know, perfect is Canadian thing because I know that nobody else is going to get from that.
Speaker 1: (48:53)
So that was kind of fun. Be like, okay, well this is, you know, a little part of me. Well, and who you are, whether it’s scientifically real or not is important too. Yeah. Like I’m, they, they clearly are competent in their, their presentation, but I feel like that’s important for you to say, Hey, I, I’m, I’m me and this is my experience and where I’m coming from as well. Yeah, it seems, and they, they’ve been, again, just so great. Like it’s, it’s weird again, I, you know, I’ve talked to other people and you know, the other day I went for lunch with the other three ladies and I’m the only one who had a story. A good story. Yeah. Well and I can, I can, I understand what you mean when you say that you’re feeling guilty, but I also know that this is blowing up so fast that, uh, that I think that it’s going to, I imagine, I don’t know.
Speaker 1: (49:51)
I don’t know. But I imagine it’s going to even out like statistically, and that by nature of the group that, that you and I met through, it’s a support group and so, so many people are going to it because they’re, they’re having negative feelings. So it’s, it’s a skewed perspective. When I went in, I mean, when I joined it, that was exactly, yeah. So you know exactly why. Um, and it’s funny because it was a colleague of my husbands who, oh yeah. Does he know this is a colleague know about all this now? Yeah. Yeah. Everybody knows. Um, so my, my husband had tool to colleague and then this colleague, you know, had seen something about the support group or read about it, send it to him that he sent it to me. And you know, so that’s how I found it. Um, you know, and that was before the stuff had been on TV about popular.
Speaker 1: (50:48)
Yeah. Yeah. So I found it and I think I probably would, I joined it was like 800 or 900 members and we’re what, 5,000? Yeah. So it was like a year ago that you joined a more than a year ago. Yeah. So then maybe that’s what, 1100? I was June. Okay. Yeah. So not that long with that much growth. Yeah. And that is really fast. Yeah. You know? Um, but I do feel like those are the people elsewhere I’m reading, they’re coming onto the beginning of their journey. Yeah. That’s it seems like, and I think I wrote more to, yeah. When I participated more weight when it was in the beginning and now I do much more reading then. Yeah. You to participating. Do you feel like you have anything that you would want to say to somebody that is just finding this information out that you didn’t know?
Speaker 1: (51:41)
I, I guess it just depends on every person for me and I had a lot of encouragement to do it. I, I would’ve, I would’ve gotten to where I’m at and went to me a lot longer. I think I just had, you know, my husband who was really instrumental and at times I was a little bit irritated with him because I thought he was being pushy. Yeah. Uh, with it. And I was just like, this is a fine line between persistent and pushing it. You don’t, you don’t get it. Um, nothing for you is changed. This is all changed for me. And you know, I think that whole part of it just,
Speaker 2: (52:14)
um, I don’t know.
Speaker 1: (52:17)
I, I would encourage if, if you have the opportunity and if it’s an option for you to explore it, you know, I’m so glad I didn’t, even if it didn’t turn out the way that mine has, right. Think just having that knowledge of, of that part of who you are for me has given me a lot of peace. Yeah. That’s wonderful. And you didn’t even, I mean, you’re not even bringing this up again, but like the health history stuff, I didn’t even, I mean, when I found out I did, that didn’t even occur to me. Like I’d like, there’s so many layers that I’ve done that I’m still like, Oh yeah, oh yeah, I got to like call somebody about that, I guess. Yeah. Um, and for older people older than me, uh, an older than you, like, that’s a much bigger concern. Like these things are very important later in life and that, that part was a big one for me, but my dad that, you know, he’d died and there’s so many complications and things. So for me that was a huge, a huge one. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (53:22)
Yeah. And do you think, and um, I’m just curious, there’s not, uh, do you feel like there is an age or a time in your life that would have been a good time for your mother to tell you? Yeah. You do. Yeah. I really wish you had told me when I probably, when I had kids. Okay. You know, I think that makes a lot of grandma yet, but I’m assuming that when I become one, um, hopefully, um, no pressure, think pressure. Uh, but you know, I would assume that when your child’s in there having a child that it reminds you of when you had your child. I can only imagine. Yeah. Like it seems like you wouldn’t like to me that when I am having a baby or when she sent me a baby, it’ll be, it’ll remind me when I had her. Um, and so I think their head, I don’t, I still don’t buy.
Speaker 1: (54:19)
And then in my eye I operate very differently than my mom, but I don’t buy that. It never occurred to her. I don’t believe it. Right. I just, I understand burying things, I get all of that. But so many situations along the way that maybe if in that moment she didn’t want to believe it. Okay. So then what about, you know, 10 Oh, 10 years after they were trying to have a child, they found out he was in fertile, like, oh, they did find that out. I mean, cause that’s kind of what I was just assuming he’s a fertile, they were told he’s a fertile. So again, you know, she said, well we just thought that anywhere a miracle baby because of his, of his kidney diseases and things like this. And I’m like, again, my brain maybe is just works a little differently. I’m thinking that if I know, I find out that my husband is a fertile and I have a child, like nobody thought didn’t occur to you that right.
Speaker 1: (55:16)
I saw that guy back then. You know, when my husband brought him up, she knew exactly who he was talking about, what his name, you know, Oh yeah, no, this is his name. And this is when he drove me home and he used to drive me home sometimes and we worked together and he looked like this. I mean she had very clear memory of this man. So it’s not like, you know, I wouldn’t understand if it was a situation where she was unwilling participants. Sure. But she was very willing. So again, you know, or you find out he’s in fertile. It doesn’t occur to you then, you know, uh, I have kids. It doesn’t occur to you then I’m freaking out.
Speaker 1: (55:55)
You know, when I was 46, I honestly, the whole year I’m stressed out. I might die this year. Like it just, it was always in the back of my head because he died at 46. Um, and you listened to me talk about that. You watched me freak out. You, you heard me. You know, he’s stressed. At what point, you know, did you, could you not put yourself aside for a minute and care? Put me first as your child, that’s really hurtful. You know, that’s where that, that’s the stuff that’s still for me. You know, I can’t, you know, we have, I talked to her, you know, twice a week I listened to her talk about her to appointments or whatever she’s doing, but I will never, you know, I don’t trust her the same way at all. You know, she had opportunity to tell me, not really makes me mad.
Speaker 1: (56:46)
So I think, I think when I had kids, she should’ve told me, I mean, ideally she should have told me after he passed away because I had all this time and I could have had, but um, you know, and, and her reply to that as well, maybe it wouldn’t have gone well, maybe he wouldn’t have wanted to have a relationship with you that could have hurt you more. Okay, fine. Sure, sure. I’ll take that shit. Whatever. But, you know, once the whole health stuff came in and when I had kids, like that’s what you should have told me. Yeah. You know? Um, and the fact that I had to find out because, you know, someone came looking for who they thought was me, um, you know, like I should know. And you no one has connected with this hope. No one, there was a doctor.
Speaker 1: (57:27)
So there’s a fourth daughter. Amazing. The oldest one. So we’ve tried, we’ve all done like 23 and me as well. Maybe she did that and we don’t know if she’s alive. I know that my hope out there. Yeah. Yep. Um, my dad did look for her for time. Email me eve searches@gmail.com. If you’re out there hope and you think it’s you. Yeah. Um, my dad did look for her on Facebook and things like, cause he knew her name and you knew her mom’s name and he, he looked for her for a little while, um, after he told my older sister and never found it. And it kind of just, you know, yeah. Okay. Wow. Well, cool. Well this is actually nice to hear a story that’s not so, I’m so sad. Like it gets a nice, um, it’s, I think your story is as important and should, should, should, um, you know, represent the optimism that is present in these situations.
Speaker 1: (58:26)
I know I’m, we’re lucky and I, again, you know, my, my daddy raised me is not alive, so he never had to feel the hurt. My Biological Dad likes me a lot, things some great, you know, we, we, we have a whole relationship that’s, that’s emerging and growing and all that kind of stuff. I’m, I’m super fortunate and so for me, I’m like, cool. To be able to say the flip side of the story because I know that most of them are, or not most, but a lot of them aren’t quite as simple as mine has kind of turned out to be. Right. Because it really is like, okay, well what time do you want to be at the house? That’s so cool. Yeah. I mean, I would argue there’s nothing simple about embroidered stockings, but I know what you mean. Yeah. Who was, it was a little freaky.
Speaker 1: (59:11)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we got, oh, Mike, Mike, do they know it’s a little bit freaky? I don’t think so, but we all got equal. Like I got equal gifts is siblings, the parents and, and my kids got from their aunts and uncles, we all, it was all same. Wow. It was, you know, it’s not like, oh, there’s the new ones will give him, you know, something kind of, we don’t know. Cool. I am like, they, they, they, they did their research, they do their homework and you know. Yeah. That’s really nice. Cool. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story. Um, it’s weird. No, no. I mean, they’re all a little weird. So far, no ones has been weirder than another in one way or or another. Okay. So, yeah. So thank you so much. I’m going to, I’m going to go ahead and turn this off. Okay. Um, that was just, but so awesome. Thanks for giving me your afternoon.
Speaker 1: (00:01)
Um, okay, cool. Cool. Cool. All right, so we’re gonna start in, I’m just double checking to make sure everything’s on
Speaker 2: (00:10)
great. I’m here with Charlene and her dog penny. There’s
Speaker 1: (00:16)
a beautiful swimming pool. It’s a foggy day. It’s my last term view of the day. She’s going to tell me her story. Do you have a plan of how you do it? Always tell the story the same way.
Speaker 2: (00:28)
Um, yeah, I think I, I kind of do. So, so my NPE story started with not me doing my DNA, but family members. So it started with my daughter and my niece and they decided to do DNA. My, my daughter is all into ancestry and my daughter is, yeah. Okay. And then my sister’s daughter, you know, did her DNA and she came back, you know, half Italian and which I thought I was all my life. Um, and, and so, yeah, well actually she was half of something and then there was Italian and Portuguese and her, which I thought I was half Italian, half Portuguese. My daughter does hers and she comes back and says, mom, why is there no Italian in my DNA? And I’m like, I don’t know how accurate are these things. Everybody said, brand new, you know, she’s just starting to do this anyway.
Speaker 2: (01:23)
And she’s like, oh no, this is really weird. So my daughter’s really kind of getting into this. She’s learning about all these numbers and how everything connects, but she’s still a little confused. She talks me into getting my mom’s DNA done, but she says she can’t spit in a tube. So do this one where there’s a swab. So it’s a different, a different DNA than that we did for her. That was not hers. We, hers, it was originally 23 and make, and I talk about that. Yeah, you can say them all, I guess. Whereas I did my moms on family tree DNA, so I did my mom’s and you know, she comes back, you know, all this Portuguese, like almost all Portuguese and, and that was all right. Um, and then my daughter’s smart enough where she literally uploads her 23andme data onto this family tree.
Speaker 2: (02:12)
So she knows how to work this. She knows interconnected system. She’s good at getting created. Good. So she comes back and says, Gee, you know, mom, there’s this Portuguese lady now. My original Portuguese family came from Madera Islands through Hawaii. And then my grandmother was born in Hawaii, but then most of them immigrated to California. Okay. California, um, you know, Santa Clara area. And she said, this lady has the same history, but she is not related to grandma. Okay. And I’m like, well, I don’t know how that can be cause grandma’s the only port again, this family that, you know, we have, she says, well it’s, she’s, she’s related to me but she’s not related to grandma. And I’m like, well that’s weird. Totally weird. Like are already confused. I mean a following, but it’s, yeah, it just gets, I’m like seeing really fast how accurate is this stuff.
Speaker 2: (03:07)
So in the meantime, my brother up in Oregon, um, does his DNA for, for medical reasons. He wants to know some medical things and then he does 23 and me, he connects with my daughter and he connects with my niece. He should be related to them identically, but he’s not. And he says, why am I half his related? He tells me this to your daughter as I am to our sister’s daughter, right? Like it’s 24% to my niece and 12% and you haven’t even done the test on my desk. In fact, it’s, it shows him as a, as a cousin, not an uncle to my daughter. Oh. And in the meantime, my son does his DNA and it’s the same story with him. So these two niece, niece and nephew are not as much related to him. So my daughter calls me and she says, mom, something’s wrong.
Speaker 2: (04:07)
And I think it’s you. And I’m like, what? And she told me this and she goes, grandma’s got a lot of splaining to do. Right? And I said, well, now that you mention it, I think I’m the only child my mother ever told these stories to. But she always said, you were meant to be me. Oh. She said, because your dad and I were separated. She had my two brothers and they were separated and she said, I got pregnant with you. And that’s why I went back to your dad. And 11 years later they had my sister. Okay. Right. Who is the one with the daughter? The cousin that’s matching the DNA. Yeah. So I’m like, well now that makes me wonder, because she also told me about this really tall, dark, handsome guys she dated that was like woo. And, but she never told me any thing else and I never even questioned it.
Speaker 2: (05:07)
Right. When I used to question, I always did all my life is why I look nothing like my dad. Oh, that all your other siblings do? All of them do. Okay. And my sister, you know, all of our lives, people say, wow, that’s your sister. You don’t look at all like her. Well, the answer to that was, well, she looks like my dad and I look like my mom. Right. Which I do. And then that happens. It happens. Totally. But what I didn’t know was that this man who is now I know is my dad. My DNA dad is also a hundred percent Portuguese, came from the same island, immigrated through Hawaii. His family and my family were close. Like literally my great uncle is somewhat related to them. So it goes back to Madeira. So there’s a lot of features that are similar. Right?
Speaker 2: (06:06)
It’s the same, you know, Portuguese family and you know, different family but very much similar looks, well I didn’t know this right when she told me this. I’m like, well this can’t be, but maybe it is. So she’s like, get your DNA done now. Right now. Right now she gave me my, for my mom’s order it online right now, so I get it or it get it and she’s calling me everyday. Did you get it back? Did you get it back? Did you get it back? I said, look, here’s my thing. You log on, you check it out. And how were you feeling at that point? Um, I was feeling a little like, it was kind of funny. Like, like, I don’t know, you know, maybe, maybe not. I mean I really wasn’t making the connection in my head that this could be real. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (06:53)
Does that make sense? Or what real would feel like? Yeah. And my sister is laughing. She’s like, Oh my God, you are somebody else. You have a different father. This is so cool. And I’m like, I don’t think this is cool. This is weird to me. And she’s laughing, cracking up. Well, the results come back. My brother’s my half brother and my niece is like a cousin to me. Like a distant niece. Exactly. My kids are obviously my kids. And then she uploads my stuff onto the family tree DNA. And the same thing happens. This woman is related to her and I, and not my mother. Um, and my daughter says, mom, she’s our connection. Yeah. She is the missing link. So how did I feel when I found this out? I was devastated. Yeah. I mean, you have been through that, right? It’s like I felt like I lost half of my identity in a day.
Speaker 2: (07:57)
Yeah. It’s, it’s a, um, yeah. I mean, I’m just, I just, I don’t, I don’t really have the words, I keep saying we don’t have the words like it, but yeah. And, and people always say, well, it doesn’t matter. Your Dad was your dad. My Dad was no longer alive at the time. And what, what does it matter? You know, your family’s your family. Yes and no. Right. It’s like having the rug pulled out from it. Totally. It’s a rug pulling out or uh, yeah, half your half, your understanding of who you are just is gone. Poof, vanished. And, and not just vanish, but almost like a lie. Like who knew somebody must have known, how could this be and why am I 63 years old finding this out now? What have I missed? And now it all started to make sense about the looks. Right?
Speaker 2: (08:50)
And I used to literally go back to grandparents and see my dad’s parents and my mom’s parents. I would see me in that. I couldn’t find me in my dad’s family anywhere, ever, ever cousins, nothing. So now I’m kinda devastated. And when people say that to you, well, what does it matter? That’s almost hurtful. Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree. So, but now I, I’m thinking, okay, I need to find out where I come from. And so my daughter, this Luth starts Facebook stalking and Instagram stalking people, starting with this lady, right? Starting. Okay. And in the meantime, I go on a trip. I’m, I’m up in Seattle. You haven’t said anything to your mom? Not yet. Um, no, not yet. I haven’t said anything to anybody except my siblings and the family that knows that we’re looking into this. So, uh, Sarah is doing all this flu thing.
Speaker 2: (09:53)
In the meantime, I’m up in northern or up in Seattle. I get an email from family tree DNA from this woman. Uh Huh. So she, she was also making connections. She made that. She said to me, you just popped up on our DNA and you, I am more related to you than anybody I’ve ever found. How can this be and who are you? Explain yourself, explain yourself. Well, my daughter had done a lot of research. She is one of five kids and three brothers and one sister. And so my daughter is doing all this research on those kids, those, those sons and her father because she didn’t know. She was like, Whoa, we don’t know which one this is, but it’s one of these men in this family. And through process of elimination, one of them was deployed at the time. The other one was way too young and a process of elimination. We came out to this one brother named, um, uh, I knew that was gonna happen. You can answer it if you’d like. No, actually turned off these ringers. You can cut this out, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let’s cut that. I’ll take the opportunity to check the battery power. Good on battery. Why does this keep turning yellow?
Speaker 2: (11:25)
I don’t know. You’re doing great. I changed. Okay. Okay. Ready when you are. I’m ready to go. Okay. Gilbert, the brother Gilbert. So I, I emailed her right back and I said, well, we think that your brother Gilbert is, um, and my mom had met in 1953 and I am the product of that meeting. And she emailed me back and she was so excited. Oh really? Oh my gosh. She was like, this is so exciting. Oh my gosh. I can’t even believe this. We need to confirm this right. In different ways, which we did. Yeah. So it turns out he’s no longer alive. Gilbert. Right. He died. Um, I think he was in his mid to late fifties. Um, all, everybody else’s alive. He had three kids later after me. Um, two girls and a boy and the one boy, the son had done his DNA on, I think it was 23 and me might’ve been ancestry.
Speaker 2: (12:34)
I’m not sure which one it was, but he had it private. Oh, okay. So she contacted him and said, can we see it? Yeah. Can we just connect with us and see if this is a match? Came back. He’s a half brother, so now we know who it is. Stephanie Gilbert, Definitely Gilbert. And she starts sending me photos and I was floored. I was amazed at the family. Resemblance is like almost scary. Like you finally, I finally need that. I found the missing link and all of a sudden I felt almost immediately like I belonged. It also helped that she was so warm, warm, and accepting and I was very lucky with that. You know, cause it, I can choose to have my glass half empty, but I feel like it’s half full. Yeah, absolutely. I think that makes such a difference for now. Um, I, I met her, um, last year, so she is an aunt and she is my full aunt.
Speaker 2: (13:43)
Okay. Yes. Full-Blooded aunt. Um, and, and she was just thrilled. She was like thrilled. And she told my siblings new siblings about me and they were thrilled. Wow. And the reason why is they said they feel like it’s a little gift from their dad. Oh, that’s interesting. Even though he’s gone, um, that, that they had more, that there was a surprise that they were kind of excited about. Wow. That was a really, really lovely perspective. And, and what’s funny is my grant’s, my oldest grandson is 18, almost 18. And we showed him a picture of Gilbert when he was about that age and he said, is that me? The resemblance is amazing. It’s almost scary. Wow. So, you know, now I know. I mean, I really, I know, I feel, I feel like I’ve gained so much because yes, the dad who raised me, I adored and I always will, but now I have all this new family that I just met.
Speaker 2: (14:49)
I feel like I just met all this new, like they’ve always been there. Like when I found family in Hawaii that I never knew and all of a sudden we’re family. I feel that way. You feel it. You feel a connection. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to ask you where they’re all located. They’re all located up in northern California. Okay. I’m near where I was born and raised. Um, and where my mom had lived at the time, my mom and dad. And um, I recently went through, it, kind of took my time with this, you know, communicating back and forth, getting friends on Facebook and Instagram and, and, and all that. And you know, Kinda got to follow these people, get to know him a little bit. And then I, I contacted, um, my aunt Donna and I said, I’m going to come for a visit. And uh, and we did. And she had family members there. We met at her house once and there were family cousins Galore. One of the cousins says, I’m so glad I’m not the oldest one now you are.
Speaker 2: (15:47)
I’m like, thanks for that is a gift. You’re welcome everybody. And, uh, and then we went to a restaurant and more family members showed up. Wow. So really huge family. It’s a huge family and I haven’t even met them all. I have not met my, my DNA brother. I met a sister, a half sister, my half brother lives in Manhattan beach. Oh. So close, close. So I need to arrange a time to go and meet him. When did all of this go down? When did you find all this? About a year ago. Okay. Year, year and a half maybe. And since then we’ve grown closer. In fact, I just, I just emailed my aunt today because we’re going back up there. Um, we’re going to take my mom’s ashes and the family plot, you know, with everybody there, but we’re going to go back up there. So I want to see her again and she’s like, I feel like I’ve known you all my life. Oh Wow. And this the sweetest thing. Yeah. That must feel so special. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a little, my sister wants my, my older, you know, my sister that I’ve always known wants to meet her. She says, I feel like it’s part of my family too, but not everybody in my family feels that way. I was, that was my next question. How’s it going for? Yeah. Um, some, some family is a little intimidated by it.
Speaker 3: (17:10)
Um,
Speaker 2: (17:11)
I don’t know why I, I think feeling replaced, um, replaced or left out kind of. No, they shouldn’t be left out there. They’re included in everything.
Speaker 3: (17:24)
Um,
Speaker 2: (17:25)
I think feeling like they have to share me now when they never did before. And that’s a hard thing for me. That’s been my, probably my most difficult thing to deal with is too,
Speaker 3: (17:42)
um,
Speaker 2: (17:44)
make them feel that nothing’s changed. Right, right. My love for them has never changed. You know, you’re always gonna be that special person to me. In fact, you’d been there all my life, so that makes you even more special. But I need also this in my life. This is my family and, yeah, and you can hold both. You can do both. I should be able to, you know, I don’t want to make people mad over here, but you get, they have to understand that they have both halves of their family and I think both halves of mine. It’s my story. It’s really, yeah, it’s my story. I have a good story. I’m sure there’s a lot more controversy that other people are dealing with cause I’ve read some of these things on the NP. But um, yeah, it was, it was devastating. It was, I felt like I felt like an orphan at first and then I got a little bit angry because I felt like, what am I going to do if this family doesn’t accept me?
Speaker 2: (18:54)
I don’t know. Right. Where does that leave you? Before I actually got in contact with them and then I said, well, I have a right to know my history. I have a right to know my medical history, which also was an issue. My, my DNA sister has informed me of some things I need to know about now. Oh. Which is great. It’s, it’s really good to know this. Um, and then feel kind of scary. It is scary. It feels a little scary to me. Just you’re talking about it like, Ooh, it is scary because all my life, you know, it’s like you, you go to the doctor and you say, no, no, no, no. On those lists and all of a sudden I have to go, yes, yes. In fact, I have an appointment with a Jean Gin genetic counseling, um, because of something that has come up in my DNA that is also in my sister’s DNA.
Speaker 2: (19:42)
Oh Wow. That could be very serious. But I don’t have the condition. Neither does she, but it’s something that needs to be always watched for if you’re carrying it. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so that, you know, but that’s good that I know that I actually have the ability now to know this. Um, and I wondered, I wonder how this happened because my aunt tells me that her brother, his downfall was, he was extremely handsome. I was going to ask if he was as handsome as your mom described and women went after him all the time and he was very good looking quality problem. I think. So he was younger than her. And here she was, you know, a separated women with two kids. Um, and I think she found herself at a crossroads. You know, she hasn’t told me the story, but I’ve kind of put it together and I’ll tell you why.
Speaker 2: (20:40)
I think she so many interruptions. I think she found herself at a crossroads in life. She, she was having trouble with my dad. You know, they’d been married a few years. They had these two boys and she always said as we were growing up, you know, never, nobody should ever have a stepfather. Um, cause she didn’t like her stepfather. Oh, okay. So I think she was thinking, I don’t want these boys to have a stepfather. And my dad was older. He was more stable. He had a job, you know, he had the ability to take care of us. So I think she made the best choice. Yeah. But I think she knew, they made the most sense. And I think she knew, I think she knew and, and I’m pretty sure he did. Pretty sure he did. Now that I know what I know. So my oldest brothers are four and five years older than me, and my very oldest brother obviously was five years old.
Speaker 2: (21:40)
He remembers a lot. So that’s a lot. Yeah, that’s old enough to remember what’s going on. He remembers a lot. He remembers the times when they were with the grandparents and mom was out. Um, he remembers it was your mom. Yes, she was young. She was, uh, 24. He would’ve been 22. So they were young and my, my dad was like 27. See what’s the older guy? The Dad that raised me. So, um, he, many, many years later, this was not too long before he passed, but he spent some time with my oldest brother and he told him, oh, he said, you know, Charlene isn’t my daughter. And My brothers said, Oh dad, don’t be crazy. You know, that’s how it goes. No, she’s, she’s not my daughter. He thought maybe, you know, he was kind of losing his marbles a little bit, but um, no, he knew.
Speaker 2: (22:39)
Did your brother tell you that at the time when that happened? Not when it happened. I told you later, I have this all came up, this happened. He was like, Ooh, that reminds me. I think that I think that my dad was protecting me in his own way. He didn’t ever tell me. Um, he, I know things were a little different in my life when my sister was born and one of the things that was different as my relationship with my dad and he obviously, you know, a little cute little girl. I mean, he’s got this nice little cute daughter, which is normal. And my mom would always tell me that, well, you’re just the older daughter. It’s okay. You know, you’re feeling a little left out, but the baby of the family. But I never felt that way with my mom. I did with my notice as the shift.
Speaker 2: (23:24)
Huh. There was a bit of a shift away from our closeness because we were close. He loved me, he adored me. But there was a change when she was born and I think because he knew this one’s mine. Yeah. Yeah. And who knows? Knew that I wasn’t, and as much as he probably never admitted to himself that there was a difference. It was a little thing that I sensed some kind of primal, primal connection that maybe couldn’t be vocalized. I didn’t understand it. Well of course not, you know, I’m a kid. In fact, I was kind of devastated by it for a while till I got get to be an adult and then, you know, we got close again and everything was okay. But he never told me. And I love him more for that. I really understand that because I think he was protecting me.
Speaker 2: (24:12)
I think they did what they thought was best. And I’m not angry at my mom. I’m a little disappointed cause her and I were extremely close. And in fact, in her final days I’m more or less her caregiver, you know, and all this going on. I wish that as an adult when she was telling me those stories that she would have told me, you know, she had an opportunity and she chickened out. And that’s my mom. That’s my difficult, my mom, you know, I don’t want to go there. And this was 1953 53 and imagine 1953. Yeah. Small Town, little Portuguese community. Whoa. That would have been, that would’ve been a big deal. A big deal. A big deal. That’s not something you admit to anybody. So I, you know, I have a cousin, um, who is my age and it was my mother’s brother’s wife is still living.
Speaker 2: (25:16)
And I asked, my cousin asked your mom about this, you know, and she said, you know, we didn’t talk about those things then. Um, but she didn’t say that they didn’t know anything. No. I’m picking up on the subutex for sure. Yeah. And there may have been something that everybody has. I have a great uncle who’s my mom’s age who was just sharp as attack. And I asked him, and the crazy thing is he went to school with this guy. Oh, he knows him. He has him. He knows my aunt. He knows the whole family. And he worked with my aunt’s husband and he said, wow. He was a really great guy. He said, I, I remember when your mom and dad were separated, but he said I was also deployed at the time, so he doesn’t, he wasn’t actually physically there. Men notice different things maybe too.
Speaker 2: (26:06)
Yeah. How long were they separated? Your parents, your mom, Dad, I wish I knew. I wish I knew. I would love to find out from somebody, sit down with my aunt, my cousins mother. Um, my dad’s sister’s still living and uh, she was my mom’s best friend since junior high school. Oh. I’m thinking she knows more, but I have not, that Italian side of my family was always very distant and we actually got her contact information and spoke with her back when my dad passed away. We’re trying to get ahold of her right now because, you know, we want to let her know about my mom, but we can’t seem to get ahold of her. But I would really like to ask her, you know, what do you know? Yeah, yeah. I think there’s a lot. Yeah, there’s like a whole world of does like a whole life that our parents lived with, their friends and their siblings.
Speaker 2: (27:08)
And as a, as young adults that we just don’t even think about. And I wish that I would have known earlier when my mom was more lucid. You know, we’re talking just a few years would have made a huge difference. It made a difference because I would have asked her all these questions. It’s come on mom, tell me that. Just tell me, you know, how did you meet? How did it happen? You know, I know it wasn’t a one night stand. I know that, I know there was a relationship going on. Um, and I think that she ended it when she found out about me and she went back to my dad and that’s probably the best I can come up with. Right. And you’ll know. Yeah. I don’t know timing. I know she was living in my grandmother’s, well they had like a basement apartment. She was living there at the time, next door to my grandmother’s house.
Speaker 2: (28:00)
Um, and I was born when I was living, when they were living there. My Dad must move back in there, but I have nobody to ask. Yeah. So you seem kind of a piece with that though. Some for some people that’s really, really, that’s really agony to not be able to know for sure. Yeah. I guess what I know for sure is that I have an incredibly large new family that has really accepted me. Yeah. That would one ways that I really can’t even be more thankful for and what I don’t know are details that I really don’t. I guess I don’t need to know. I would love to know, maybe that’s an important difference to note to understand about yourself though. The difference between wanting to know and needing to know that’s true or curiosity. That’s true. It doesn’t define me either way. What defines me now is that I’m kind of special, right?
Speaker 2: (29:02)
Well that when I said that your other siblings could feel left out, it’s almost, that’s what I was thinking about that like all of a sudden it was a little bit funny that you might have a different dad, but it’s not so funny that you get this like twice as big family and this really cool story. I do. I do have a cool story of my issues. Might, my siblings were really cool with this earlier. Oh No, no. I imagined that they were, but, but, but yes, feeling a little bit left out. And my sister, she’s just, she’s so funny about it because every time we talk or something comes up, you know, we talk about, well, who had a, especially lately, you know, with my mom just passing, we’re going over all old stories and we’re talking about, well, what was your, and what did you, who called you what? And you know, I said, well, my mom always called me Sherlyna and my sister goes, I never had a nickname. And I said, well, you know, your name is so pretty. Her name is Dominica
Speaker 1: (29:53)
[inaudible], which is my grandmother telling grandmother’s name. Good thing. I didn’t get named that name. Right. But, and she always says, Gosh, this is no fair. You had, you had nicknames and now you get a whole new family. Totally, totally. I was saying earlier to somebody that like someone, they get what, you know, they, everyone always asks like, did you feel different as a kid? No, but I thought that the idea that I could be adopted was really cool. Yeah. That’s, it just seems really cool. That’s true. Second Grade. Yeah, but that’s second grade. I always wanted to be a twin. Yeah. That too. I mean, we handle our cool kids were adopted. We’re cool. Every families that all looked exactly alike.
Speaker 2: (30:30)
I thought that was cool. Yeah. Or, or just really different than ours. Yeah. I, I, I would have liked to feel like I fit in physically. Obviously I fit in, you know, my, my siblings and I all, you know, we love each other and we’re a pretty close family, but I would’ve liked to look like them, you know? Is that funny? Is that odd?
Speaker 1: (30:54)
I don’t think so because I almost everybody I talked to has that same desire. It has something to do with belonging.
Speaker 2: (31:04)
I think so. And I, and I felt like I belonged, but I felt like something was missing. You know, these all start talking about this and about that look and about that look. Yeah. Look like mom. I looked like mom. I look like, mom, why don’t I look like anybody else? And suddenly I find this huge family that I look like and my kids, my daughter a lot, the one who’s the sleuth looks a lot and her kids. And it’s so easy to embrace that when you have that.
Speaker 1: (31:34)
Yeah. I wonder if that really like, I wonder if it just touches on how people look. I don’t know. I like I, I have, there’s some kind of theory forming, but I’m, I don’t know how the words for it, but like we’re supposed to look more like our families, you know, then we’re not our families. I don’t know. I think that we are naturally drawn to familiarity. You know, when you’re a baby, a baby sees their mother’s face
Speaker 2: (32:02)
all the time and that familiar face when they’re in a room and they can’t see mom, they cry. They’re looking for that familiarity. And I think as they grow up, it’s like a tribal thing. You know, we, we
Speaker 1: (32:16)
kind of tend to go toward familiar faces. Yeah, no, absolutely.
Speaker 2: (32:21)
And I’ve always thought, this sounds silly, but you know, most babies are just adorable. When they’re born. Some babies like you know that Seinfeld,
Speaker 1: (32:32)
right. But the parents don’t see, right, totally. Yeah. Because every day when they look in the mirror, that’s what they see. Yeah. And the familiar face with this baby is they can’t help but love it. It doesn’t matter. Right. It just doesn’t matter. So I think, yeah,
Speaker 2: (32:48)
that that whole familiar face thing is kind of a big tribal human thing that we do. It runs really deep for sure. Yeah, for sure. What you want. Yeah. That’s why probably you know, when people immigrate you notice that they of course the language is one thing, but they all end up in like the same place. But they like to be together, you know, like communities. And we had this Portuguese community up up there in Santa Clara. We had the Italian side too, which is how my mother met my dad because my mother, her best friend was my aunt. And so she would go over there to eat the Yummy Italian food and my dad came walking in one day and she was like, who is that? And what’s funny is there similarities in there? And the type sure. Oh yeah. I like to be a such a common, she loved curly hair. Oh my gosh. And I have this wild hair that is has to be straight. And so she always said, well, you got your curly hair from your dad. But now
Speaker 1: (33:55)
my dog’s at different dad. Yeah. Different Dad with curly hair. That was the only thing I could lay claim to is that at least I don’t have my mom’s here. I got this guy get this great curlier. Yeah. Um, so you wished so you do wish that your mom could have, could have told you.
Speaker 2: (34:09)
Yeah, I do. I have a regret there. I have a regret. My aunt tells me, I really wished that Gilbert would have known about you.
Speaker 1: (34:21)
He would have adored you. Oh, that’s hard to hear. Or what he says. I know
Speaker 2: (34:26)
he never knew because she was always at his side when he was dying at cancer and she said he would told her death bed kind of thing. Um, and everybody talks so much about him. You know, my, even my uncle said he was a great guy. I wish I’d have met him.
Speaker 1: (34:51)
Yeah, that sounds when you said that earlier that year, their uncle said he was a great guy. I thought, Oh, I wish I, I wish I’d have met him. I wish he would’ve,
Speaker 2: (34:59)
he would not have missed out when he passed away. He didn’t know he had grandchildren already and at the time his kids had not had kids yet. He would’ve been so blessed by that. Then the flip side is that my life would have been very different, especially if I’d found out young. Yeah. And a lot of things would have changed. So I can’t regret the way my life panned out. I’m happy with my life. I still would’ve liked to find out as an adult. Yeah. Just to go back and step in time and say, hey, did you know this? You know, tell me about it. [inaudible] and I couldn’t because it was already too late. That happens to so many people, but that doesn’t make it less painful experience. Yeah. To be common. I see on the Facebook page when, when people meet their dad and I get a little jealous and then I hear the bad stories and then I feel like, oh yeah. You know, thereby the grace of God. It could,
Speaker 1: (36:12)
oh man. Alive. I mean the spectrum is just so broad of what could happen. Yeah. Do you have any advice for people that have just found out or people that, like people that are just entering this world? Is there something that you wish you had known?
Speaker 2: (36:33)
Um, I think, I think that the best thing I could say is that, do what you can to find out the truth. But don’t let it change who you are. Don’t, don’t let this be a life changer for you. That’s gonna spiral you into somewhere that you don’t want to be. If, if it doesn’t work out the way it did for me. So be it because you had a life and you’re in a good place. Even if that life you had wasn’t what you wanted wasn’t the best. It’s what you had. So you gotta make the best of it. And I feel like it’s not what happens in our lives that defines us or that makes us who we are. It’s what we choose to do with. So choose to use it wisely. Right. The information. And the other thing I would say to anybody out there going to get their DNA is, you know, be ready, be ready.
Speaker 2: (37:35)
And I went into it knowing I had no desire to do my DNA before that, but I went into it knowing, I can’t imagine if somebody was just saying here, let’s just give this up to all the family and this will be a fun Christmas game. And then Kaboom. And all of a sudden your world is rocked. So be ready for them. Right. And you knew when your end, you still described feeling devastated and right. Confused. Yeah. So really good idea. Yeah. And the other thing is you got to go let your doctors know. Right. And you know, every single yes, whole, um, it’s a whole different ah, animal changes, party, whatever you want to make us an LG. It’s why I think it’s important to know, you know, we, we have so many preventive things we can do nowadays. Our medical fields are getting so good that, um, it’s good to know.
Speaker 2: (38:31)
I had actually told my doctor about it and his daughter in the front office, so he came out and he, you know, he’s writing things down and he says, we’ve got to change some things in her file. You wouldn’t believe her story. So we told her, she went and bought DNA kits for the whole family. Oh my gosh. We did our DNA. You inspired me. You didn’t find out any surprises. She’s like, I think this will be fun. And you’re like, no, no, you didn’t. You clearly weren’t listening to the devastation part. Yeah. She said, well, you know, my dad said that he had a few indiscretions in college and he was a little worried about that. And I said, well, I’ll have you be prepared and buckle up. Yeah. That is wild. Yeah. So here we are. Here I am. Um, and I just hope that everybody, I just wish everybody had a story like mine.
Speaker 2: (39:18)
Yeah. It’s too bad that they, they can’t all be that way. No, they can’t all be that way, but they can still make the best of it. No, absolutely. No, I think, yeah, no, I think that’s really important that you can choose. Yeah. Choose what to make, choose what to make of it or what to do with it, which is a process you have to, it’s not like you can just wake up the next day and decide like, I’m going to make this, you know, and that’s positive and move forward and everything’s great. Take your time. You know, I didn’t really do much of anything with it right away. I started exchanging emails and making friends on Facebook, sending photos, getting photos back, you know, by an email. My aunt sent me like a little handwritten family tree that sweet, you know? Um, and I just had to kind of slowly absorb it.
Speaker 2: (40:12)
Yeah. I um, just sent a note this week to somebody and said, okay, like I think I’m ready to connect. Here’s my email address if you don’t mind being the messenger to the other people. So we’ll see. We’ll see. If they reach back out. And how long has that been for you? It’s been a year. Yeah. Yeah. It took a year before I decided maybe. Yeah, that’s just to exchange the emails and I often wonder what was I waiting for? I don’t really know. I think, I think it just needed to kind of settle in me, am I ready for this? Am I, you know, even though I knew I was being accepted and then I get all excited if I friend a new cousin or somebody on Facebook and they accept my friend request, I’m like, Yay me. You know, it’s kind of silly stuff, but it matters if it matters.
Speaker 2: (41:15)
It matters. We had the, within about six months, we had a 23 in may contact us to do like a big event in New York and bring people together that had found this out through DNA. And I contacted my new relatives and asked him if they were interested and they said, well, it was like Christmas time anyway, they were too busy, but they said no, now we’d rather meet Ana, you know, quieter basis. Right. So they want, so 23 and you wanted it to be the first time you guys all met. Exactly. Yeah. And they wanted to record it and make it kind of a public thing. And I was like, well, you know, how do you feel about that? And they, they weren’t okay with that, but it was also kind of new. Right. And it was a little bit early and I’m not sure we were already yet to jump into that idea who you’re meeting.
Speaker 2: (42:06)
You have no, I mean you got, you exchanged some notes and things like that, but you still don’t know the kind of, cause I think of the worst case scenarios, uh, which I’m sure, you know, I wouldn’t, despite what 23 and me was maybe said or, uh, you know, they, everybody’s hoping for something a little bit wild if it’s going to be stuff to watch and true and, and they don’t know. They might be expecting drama and maybe there wouldn’t be in my situation, you know, maybe there’s not enough, I don’t know. Right. But, uh, it was a little bit weird, so, yeah. No, I think that your, you and your family are right to be cautious. Yeah. And we needed to do it slowly. A little bit at a time. So my aunt, you know I was, I was saying her husband’s not real well, but I was saying we’re coming back up north, I’d like to see you.
Speaker 2: (42:57)
And she said, okay. She says we can either, if you don’t have a lot of time, just come over. I’d love to see you again or I can bring more family members over. It can be a community event. Right. Either way. But my sister wants to meet her, which I think is very sweet. Yeah. That’s really sweet and supportive. Yeah. That’s really cool. Yeah. It sounds like you’ve just got like support. I do on so many sides. I’m very blessed. I really lovely. I have a lot of support and if there’s anybody in the family who really is not okay with it, nobody said it. They haven’t said it to you. The only, the only thing I’m getting, you know from a family member too is, is that little bit of jealousy kind of a thing. Like, you gonna stop loving me now, but I’m dealing with that, you know, in the best way I can will time will tell full time will show them.
Speaker 2: (43:51)
Yeah. Yeah. It’s hard, you know, to be the only one in this person’s life and all of a sudden there’s more. Yeah. Uh, yeah. So, yeah. They’re cool. Yeah. It’s so funny. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story. I welcome that. Um, I don’t have a lot of drama to show, but every story is different, but I have a story. Yeah. It really is. Yeah. I want to see a picture of this Gilbert Guy I can show you. Yeah. Just wonderful. You know, I think it’s so important to, for people to hear the good stories with the bad stories and, or to not categorize them as good or bad and just understand that anything can happen. This our story, right? They’re all different, but they’re the same story, right. There is surprise. They’re like, amazing. This would never be happening. How many people have been born and died and never knew.
Speaker 2: (44:46)
I mean, so many. For now, DNA is available. It is a phenomenon. And My mother and my dad never dreamed that this would come out ever. Why would it have ever, I’m going to take this to my grave? You know, she didn’t. Yeah. But it would have been easy to do. Yeah. If it weren’t for that Pesky Internet. I understand too. Why, um, why they do that? I give you them a lot of grace. I know the world was way different than, and I, I really feel for people who are angry with their parents, I feel sometimes I, I try to reach out to them on the Facebook page, you know, give them a little grace. You know, they were scared. Yeah. Yeah. I think, um, I think it is so important to remember, yeah. To remember the age of your, you know, I talk about that a lot on it with everybody and say, how old was your parents or your parents?
Speaker 2: (45:42)
Um, and I know that it’s not age is just a part of it, but to just put yourself in the sh in the shoes of being well agent and social norms, being being young and being scared and being, trying to figure out what the best decision was and world was so different, so judgmental. So you know, nowadays, uh, there’s really not a reason to keep these things secret, but personal reasons maybe, but not like it was back then. There was no, my mom always said she actually tried to have my, uh, tea to drink tea. My grandmother was a midwife, gave her a tea that would make your uterus contract and she said, if it’s not a strong pregnancy, you’ll lose it. She was lifting furniture and she said, you know, she says, I’m really glad at the time that abortion wasn’t legal cause I don’t know.
Speaker 2: (46:35)
I might have. And I thought, well Geez, you know, so you really were. So there’s lots of reasons that, or ways that she could see you as like a miracle baby. Absolutely. A marriage together and you weren’t going anywhere. She was determined. Yes. She never said it in a negative way. Not once. She always said, I’m so glad I had you. You know, you’ve turned out to be such a blessing in my life and I didn’t want you at the time. So, you know, I mean that doesn’t hurt me at all. It makes me feel special. But now I know what she’s talking about. What she was also going through inside had to be frightening. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. So here we are. Here we are in 2019 in a new world, in a world where that just, our parents never imagined. No. And nowadays in this world, in this day and age,
Speaker 1: (47:29)
don’t try to keep those things secret cause they will come out as they should. I also feel that people have a right to know. Yeah, no, I agree. It’s, I think people, I think it’s going to take a while for the, I think it’s going to take a long time for people to understand that these are secrets that cannot be kept anymore. But I agree that should not be, the shift is going to, I think the shift will be slow.
Speaker 2: (47:54)
[inaudible] but I think it will happen. It shouldn’t be kept. And the thing I really like, the fact that you’re doing this for people who aren’t in this situation or who have an NPE in their life to understand what they feel and why. You know that always, I think the first response is, well, what does it matter? Your life was good. You had a dad, you know he loved you. Yeah. So many people say that kind of thing. It’s like, I don’t know. It’s like telling a person who knows who finds out they’re adopted and if they want to find their family, well, what does it matter? No, you, you adore your family. None of that. None of that changes. None of it. You can hold both guys.
Speaker 1: (48:35)
Okay. Yeah. I recently talked about it in a group and it was women people, Group of people I didn’t really know very well, but we were just discussing projects and I said, oh, I’m doing this podcast and this woman like interrupted me to clarify that I still loved my dad or something. It was, it was so interesting she asked you that question. Yeah. Well. Well, it was like, it wasn’t a question, it was like a rhetorical question type statement where she was like, I said something like, well, my dad, you know, I, it’s always confusing for everybody if you say your dad or your biological dad or your, and I was just getting the tiniest summary and she interrupted to be like, well, your dad, the man that raised you is your dad. And I was like, well, yeah, you know, you don’t need to clarify that with me. Like I, yeah. But she was a little combative. She was clearly rattled by the, by the, by the concept. Um, they’re a little like protective of her dad while you’re yeah. And this woman, I don’t know, this woman is like, you don’t know my dad. I do love him, but,
Speaker 2: (49:37)
and it’s funny because when I say my dad, that’s the man I talk about. Right. Um, and I, I always say there’s my DNA Dad, and there’s my dad. That’s another thing that goes on the questions about what do you call them? Uh, no, there’s my dad and there’s my DNA debt. Yeah. I have my sisters. And my brothers and then I have my new
Speaker 1: (49:58)
sisters and brothers. That seems like a pretty clear and simple way to categorize it. But it’s really hard for some people.
Speaker 2: (50:05)
[inaudible] none, none of the feelings that I have for any of them is any different. And I don’t know how any of them could ever think that or how anybody on the outside, like you were saying, could even dream that you would consider that. No, it’s the same. Um, yeah. Don’t, and don’t be angry. Don’t, don’t, don’t be mad about it is what it is. Yeah, it is. It is what it is. Yeah. If you only her emotions, but man, yeah, if you can move through the anger, it’s really better for it for sure. And talk about it. You know, you do need to talk about it. Yeah. It’s funny cause whenever I share my story, like we’re on a hike one day and I shared my story, people love it. They think it’s the coolest thing. They’re like, wow, you know, but I always share it in a positive way.
Speaker 2: (50:58)
Well, it’s a cool story and everywhere I go, um, there isn’t, I mean I haven’t always, somebody else knows someone who’s had this experience really every, I mean wow. Yeah. Just feels like everyone I meet is like, oh that my neighbor is going through that. My friend is going through that and my husband is going through that. My cousin is going through that and, and finding out through the DNA, like finding it out through paperwork and not somebody actually telling you is also a different way. It’s not like somebody sat you down and said, I have something to tell you. Right, right. You are blindsided. Yup. The blind side it is. Um, yeah, it’s all different. Just like, it’s like fingerprints are like no two are the same. I wasn’t as much blindsided as most people cause I kinda saw it coming, but I still am not until your daughter did hers.
Speaker 2: (51:53)
Right then. Then when I went to do my DNA. Right. You saw it coming when you did your test. I kind of saw it coming, but you know, you really can’t emotionally prepare yourself for that. It’s like, you know, my mom was 89 years old and I, I knew she was, she was declining, but you’re still not ready for that to happen. And this was like that. It’s a good description. Yeah. Very similar. Like, oh my God, I didn’t know I’d feel this way. Right. Like on paper it’s very simple or intellectually it’s very simple. But cut and dry emotionally is a whole. Um, it’s a whole experience. There’s just not for coast something, you’re just not, things you can’t fathom are not things you can prepare for. No. No. And my new aunt, you know, she said, oh, this must be so exciting for you.
Speaker 2: (52:46)
And I said, well, it’s funny because at first it was kind of scary and I felt like I didn’t even know who I was. Yeah. You know, my identity was gone. Half of it, what’s the rest of me? But now that I’ve found you now, right? Yeah. It’s like those books that are like, fortunately this happened. Unfortunately this happened. At least I have that some people are really still just looking for the family. They haven’t even found him yet, which is, that would be really hard. That would be kind of good thing. My daughter’s such as sleuth. She just, she knew what to do. I wouldn’t, I don’t know that I wouldn’t know what to do.
Speaker 1: (53:26)
Yeah, exactly. So, yeah. Yeah. That probably will be a, well my mind was going to say it’s probably will be a growing profession is people that help other people find. Absolutely. But then I might, and then I’m like, why don’t we, it just depends on how long this phenomenon lasts. It’s true. It’s a short, it could be a short lived profession because then everybody will just start telling everybody and figuring it out on the Internet yet. Well maybe people just won’t keep those secrets. Right. That’s what I mean. No, they’re going to come out. So, hey, so it’s a couple generations profession. I don’t know. It’ll be interesting. Do you find that a lot of the people are older? Like in my age group, I would be so interested to see like a full statistics statistics of that. Um, cause I want to say yes.
Speaker 1: (54:16)
But then I also know that I also know that it’s just a matter of, it doesn’t mean they don’t exist. It’s just a matter of time. But I do think it has been, I think traditionally it’s been a little people a little bit older than me that are interested in ancestry.com I don’t know a single person my age, a peer of mine that has done it, but in a lots of parents, lots of people’s parents, um, have done it. You have done it. This is interesting because you’re in the same demographic as my daughter. Right. And I know I’m so interested that she did it so, and I wasn’t interested in it really. In fact, I know a few people that have described family, like older family members being sort of addicted to it and like, oh my God, my mom is just obsessed with ancestry.com and she won’t stop.
Speaker 1: (55:00)
And, and I was always like, oh, I am just not, I don’t feel attached to, to any sort of heritage. I’m not a person that has like a heritage pride. I’ve always just been very satisfied. That’s in the present. And so they’re always a family historian. Somebody that’s kind of interested in it. My Dad looked into it, why? You know, he went through a phase. Um, yeah, there’s probably always there’s, you know, and just some people are interested in history and some are great uncle is that man, he, he has it written out the size of this table with the family tree. Now he’s got to change it. Right. And he’s also on Facebook and I love it because he literally sends pictures and puts things on Facebook and tell stories that are just priceless. Yeah. I mean that’s, I guess it’s it. I don’t guess I, that sounds wonderful. It’s, it’s awesome. And he’s 89 years old and this guy’s on Facebook and he’s putting all this stuff out into every go through old photos. I see all these coming up on Facebook and this is so and so. And he names the class. Oh, his student’s classmates in the pictures. I’m like, how do you remember that? So people like that too. So valuable. Yeah, no, it’s absolutely like a trait that people, that certain people have that I don’t have. So I, so the world is new to me for sure. Um,
Speaker 2: (56:25)
but yet my daughter has kind of gotten into that. So I connected her with my great uncle a while back before all of this so she could get more family history from him. And she was doing family history on my husband and who is not her DNA dad, but she knew that can and so she was kind of one of those people really interested in it.
Speaker 1: (56:49)
Yeah, it was, I was going to say, wait something about the people that are into that. Oh, I think this is what I was going to say. I think you have to keep in mind that the, a lot of the people that are willing to talk about this to me, um, their parents have passed away and so there’s a, they feel more free to talk about it. So younger people who still have parents, um, there may be a layer of complication that’s preventing them from talking. So just because only older people are talking to me doesn’t mean that the younger people don’t, aren’t there experiencing it. There’s just a different level of comfort.
Speaker 2: (57:27)
The point, that’s a really good point. Of course my mom was still here when we were, were talking about it, but you know, for the last year and a half. But, um, but I, I could see how people would be hesitant, especially had my dad been still living. Right. Cause I wouldn’t want to hurt him. So I think that would be a little harder. Yeah. I have to think about it. But I think almost every single person I’ve talked to almost maybe seven, seven of the 10 so far or something, every parents have passed. Interesting. That may put, that may play a big role. Yeah. You’re going to have to find some who still have parents to talk to them, put on this podcast. I know. I’ve got to find every, I gotta find everybody who would be such a different perspective from their view. Yeah. Um, I also think that, uh, that back in the day, you know, in the 50s and stuff, I think a lot of this that we’re talking about after the war, oh my gosh, there was a lot of this stuff going on. So I think you’re going to find a lot of people in that situation totally. Like a whole baby boomer world of secrets. Whereas later, I think people were just more free to say, I’m free to talk, cause the social norms were different. Right. Yeah. I’d be interested. Yeah. It’s all stuff I’ve got to figure out. Yeah. Because we had to research it. Well, I appreciate you doing this to finally try to figure that out because I think talking to people and getting into the stories is the only way you’re going to, yeah.
Speaker 1: (58:54)
Yeah. It was fun. It’s been really educational. It’s been amazing. I’ll go ahead and turn our mics off. Yeah. Thank you so much. It’s been great.
Speaker 1: (00:00)
Knowing in our Canyon. Oh really? Oh, that sounds, sounds so nice. So nice.
Speaker 2: (00:09)
Beautiful. I like the cooler, but I’m not ready for the snow yet. So
Speaker 1: (00:13)
yeah, snow it. Snow is its own animal, but, uh, but I am ready for cooler days in LA for sure.
Speaker 2: (00:21)
I bet. How’s your baby?
Speaker 1: (00:23)
Um, she’s good at it. She’s really good. She’s um, yeah, she, I’m like, I’ve got to say, I don’t, I don’t even know. Uh, she’s, you know, like seven week old baby, so she’s, uh, sleeping and eating and crying and that’s about it. Right. Exactly. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And we were just starting, I think the whole family’s starting to finally settle into kind of a routine, uh, get the feeling for how things are going to go for a little while. Oh, right. Yeah. But we’re waiting. We’re so grateful. She’s a pretty easy baby.
Speaker 2: (00:59)
Well, good. I’m glad to hear it.
Speaker 1: (01:01)
Ah, so tell me, um, we can just dive right in if you want or we can talk some more, but you, your story is a little bit unique because it includes like birth certificate discussion. Yes. Yeah. So we can, we can just dive right in. I’m gonna tell ya, tell me, tell me what’s going on. And I may interrupt you. I’m sorry, but I have five questions. Um, but, uh, yeah, otherwise I’m, I’m here to listen.
Speaker 2: (01:34)
Okay, perfect. Um, well when I say I kind of tell you like how I grew up
Speaker 1: (01:40)
like that, or do you want me to tell me everything. Okay. All right.
Speaker 2: (01:46)
So my mom, um, had me when she was very young, she had me when she was 17 and I was her second child. She had my older brother right before she turned 16. Wow. So, yeah, you know, kind of a lot going on. And she, my grandmother, um, took custody of my brother because my mom was so young and you know, kinda said like, Hey, you’re not going to be able to do this type thing. You know, my mom was still very involved and his father was actively involved in his life and he and my mom kinda continued, you know, on and off for quite awhile. And then my mom met the man that raised me and he was not ready to take on somebody else’s child. So at that point, my grandmother legally adopted him, like took full custody of my brother and, um, my mom found out she was pregnant with me.
Speaker 1: (02:50)
[inaudible] and how, how old was the, was that man
Speaker 2: (02:54)
just out of curiosity? Um, the man that I believed with, my father, he was much older than her. He was about six years older than her, so she got pregnant with me when she was six. Well, 16, seven, let’s see. Yeah, she got pregnant with me when she was 16, had me when she was 17, so he was in his twenties at this point. And um, you know, so she found out she was pregnant with me and my older brother’s dad asked, you know, is it my child? She said, no, you know, it’s his child. Like she was young, naive. I think she genuinely, you know, honestly didn’t know at that point how close it had been and you know, kind of what the, so she, you know, stayed with this man that she believes was my father and went on to get married three years later, had two more children and they, you know, they ended up getting divorced when I was a teenager and she went on and had one more child.
Speaker 2: (03:54)
So I had four siblings total. Two I believe that were full siblings and then two half. And you know, kind of through my whole life, I honestly, I never really knew where I fit in. And what I mean by that is that, you know, I, I constantly looked in the mirror and I didn’t see that I looked like anybody, like my older brother and I looked a lot alike. Like I saw that for sure because we both have very unique ties. We have yellow, green eyes. Like that’s the first thing that people always say about us and you know, so I always was like, how do I have these eyes yet my full siblings have like these deep blue eyes. You know, and I have thick hair, they have thin hair, you know, I’m, I’m much curvier than the girl that I thought was my sister.
Speaker 2: (04:50)
Like, you know, my full sister. And so, you know, just kind of all these things that I always ask these questions and my mom just always said, you know, you favor my side of the family. But I, I never saw that either. And you know, sadly I grew up in a house full of addiction and you know, a lot of, a lot of stuff there. But the man that I believed was my father, he and I never, like we always butted heads. We’d never going to have on that. Okay. I never fit. Like I could never fit into the box, if that makes sense. Like, you know, here I was trying so hard to fit into this box that I didn’t fit into. No matter how hard I try it. And you know, I was just always more outspoken. I was, you know, I just had a mind of, you know, I always just had a mind of my own, I guess.
Speaker 1: (05:44)
So you always had these ideas and you felt like you wanted, you wanted to fit into the box. You know, I think I could, if I wanted, he could have, you know, I think I just his approval,
Speaker 2: (05:58)
you know what I mean? Like I never got that approval that I feel like I thought my whole life [inaudible] and you know, he and I just constantly butted heads, butted heads. And when my mom and him got divorced, I left with my mom and my two siblings stayed with him. And you know, that that causes even more strikes like right. You know, when me and him continued to have issues. And
Speaker 1: (06:27)
how old were you at the time?
Speaker 2: (06:29)
Um, I was 15 at the time and then when I was 17, I got pregnant. And um, that causes even more issues with, between him and I because basically it was, you know, you’re, you’re going to be like your mom type thing. You know, you’re young, you’re pregnant. You’re,
Speaker 1: (06:51)
that’s so interesting. Cause I thought I had hoped when you first said that, that he would have maybe understood, I had empathy for the situation because he had been so close to it. No, no.
Speaker 2: (07:02)
Okay. Well you know, and that was exactly, that was, you know, I mean, you would hope so. And unfortunately that, that continued through the years and he and I always just had this very turbulent relationship butted heads. It unfortunately fed into my relationship with my siblings. Like a lot of now after going to counseling and stuff, I see it with a lot of triangulating relationships because yeah, they have unhealed trauma of their own. Right. Right. And so, um, when I would, you know, fast forward, um, 2012 I went to go get my, um, driver’s license renewed and I could not find my birth certificate everywhere. So I go to vital records and I get a copy of my birth certificate and [inaudible], you know, I didn’t even look at it. They’re like, put me on below. I get to the DMV, I sweat in my paperwork. Right. Yeah. So I’m sitting there at the DMV, I like pull it out while I’m waiting for my number and there’s no, it’s just has my mom’s name on it. Huh. And I was like, that’s weird. So yeah, I get my driver’s license, I call my mom and [inaudible]
Speaker 1: (08:20)
did it. Sorry, did it say unknown or anything or just was blend it just, no even, huh? I didn’t even know you could do that even now. That was,
Speaker 2: (08:29)
well, yeah, kind of like, I was a little bit surprised. So you know, I call my mom and I said, Hey, I just got a copy of my birth certificate. This is a little bit weird. Why is my dad’s not listed? And she said, well we fixed it. And I said, you fixed it. What do you mean? And she said, you know, which I kind of the situation a little bit, but like when I was born there was questions about, you know, basically like the man who raised me was like, Hey, am I really the dad type thing? And, but she, she said that when after they got married, they went in, fix my birth certificate and had him added. And so I just kind of shrugged it off. Like maybe they gave me the wrong copy. Right. Like, do they give me the amended copy?
Speaker 2: (09:23)
Right. You know, I’d put it in my space. Right? Yes. You know, so I put it in my face and I honestly just kind of shrugged it off. And you know, as the years go on and I continue to have all of these different, you know, issues, everything with the man that raised me. And in 2016 ironically, after a very big fight with him, I called my mom and I was like, you know, can’t you just tell me that? Like, you know, maybe we butt heads so much because he’s not my dad and you know, I didn’t, I didn’t mean it in like, you know, I meant no disrespect, I’ve met no anything by it. It was just, I genuinely could never understand why we couldn’t connect and why, you know what I mean? Like, I just felt like I was treated very different than my siblings with him. Huh. Between, you know, I wasn’t invited on a certain vacation or, you know, just random things that really hurt my feelings. And I’m, I’m not saying I was the perfect child and I made things easy on him by all means, but I was the child. Right,
Speaker 1: (10:41)
right, right. Yeah. I mean you don’t have [inaudible]
Speaker 2: (10:43)
does this explain it to parents and yeah. You know, not, not my job to facilitate the relationship and I know this now, but then it really hurt me, you know, over and over again. So, you know, she laughed and she was like, you know, there’s no way. Cross it off again.
Speaker 1: (11:05)
Only interesting. Only interesting. Cause we may already know the end of this story, but,
Speaker 2: (11:08)
yeah, exactly. Well that’s good though. No, we laugh about it because it’s, you know, I mean I was actually on the something, so, um, so in 2018, um, you know, everybody starts doing all the DNA. Well, I, I’m guessing people were doing them long before that, but it kind of blew up on social media. Right? Everybody’s like, Hey, look what I did. Right. So, you know, my husband and I are like, Hey, this will be fun. Let’s jump on this bandwagon, you know? Sure. So we got our tests and we did them. I got my results six weeks later, you know, no big surprises about my ethnicity. Like it’s 100% European, you know, I’m held really led eyes, like it fits. So I honestly glad for that. I think once or twice and then I didn’t do anything else with the app. Like I didn’t know that there was like a messaging feature on there. I didn’t, I knew there was the relative feature. Like I went in and glanced at the relatives, but I didn’t see any names that I knew. So I was like, okay, no big deal. So
Speaker 1: (12:21)
Steve, you’re not looking for it if you’re just not expecting it. I just, yeah, I don’t see, sometimes it’s right in front of your face.
Speaker 2: (12:29)
Well, and that’s what’s so funny is I was just like, okay, I have no idea who any of these people are. But it didn’t shock me just because like when it came to the man that raised me, we never knew any extended family outside of like our immediate cousins and stuff. Right. And, you know, I mean, I knew a lot of my mom’s family, but you know, I still didn’t see any names or anything that jumped out at me. Right. And so I, uh, I ended up getting a new phone and I didn’t even download the 23 and me app at the, you know, at the end of 2018. I was like, Oh, I’ll download it later. And, uh, on January 3rd of 2019, my husband and I went to a comedy show
Speaker 1: (13:12)
and the chameleon was just soaking about January this year.
Speaker 2: (13:16)
Yeah. You know, he’s talking about his 23 and me results and you know, just funny stuff and we’re laughing about it and we get in the car when we leave. And I was like, Oh, I keep getting emails from 23 and me that I have new relative matches, I should really check that out. You know, I didn’t even really know what it meant.
Speaker 1: (13:36)
Yeah. And so [inaudible]
Speaker 2: (13:42)
so we get home and you know, we get into bed and I download the app and I log in and um, you know, I’m trying to figure it out because I hadn’t really taken a lot of time and I was like, Oh, here’s the relatives. I click on it and I have a first cousin match and I see it. And I just kinda like stopped because I immediately recognize the last name. It’s my older brother’s last name. And I just sat there and I was like, huh, that’s a coincidence. Like, you know, my first thought was, Oh wait, right. I was just like, huh. And so I like turned my phone to my husband and I’m like, do you recognize that name? And he goes, yeah, that’s the plus name. And I was like, I was like, it’s saying this person is my cousin. And we’re both like, huh. And so I screenshot it and I texted my brother, I’m just hoping he’s awake because it’s almost midnight. Yeah. And I texted my brother and I’m like, Hey, I’m like, really weird thing. I just matched with this call, has your last name. And I sent this screenshot and he goes, Hey,
Speaker 1: (14:57)
I know her, that’s my cousin. And I said, I said, well that’s my cousin. And he goes, Oh my hell, like in big letters like,
Speaker 2: (15:10)
and he goes, you know what this means? And I was like, you know, I just sat there for a second like kind of I think just like everything, like almost like a movie reel in my head of like all these random things in my life. Like, I don’t know, I just sat there and I thought of all of these things that I had like asked questions about or, you know what I mean? Just random things. And I was like,
Speaker 1: (15:38)
how many forgettable moments that become
Speaker 2: (15:41)
crystal clear? Like exactly. You know. And I said, we sent me a picture of your dad because I hadn’t seen him since I was much younger. And so he sends me a picture and like my hands were like shaking at this point, like you don’t, me and my husband are just sitting now, we’ve got like the lights on, we’re sitting here and my hands are shaking. And I opened that pitcher and I think both of us just like our jaws, like wow. Because it was, I mean everything, my lips, my cheekbones, my smile, my like round her face, like just everything. And I was just like, Whoa. Yeah. And my husband goes, that’s your dad.
Speaker 1: (16:29)
That’s okay.
Speaker 2: (16:31)
You know? And I just kinda like,
Speaker 1: (16:33)
and you block, I guess your, your brother just didn’t had never thought of it or hadn’t seen, hadn’t, wasn’t close enough to hear
Speaker 2: (16:45)
like, yeah, like we, so here’s the thing, like once we start talking, he goes, this all makes sense.
Speaker 1: (16:55)
Like, you know, you start kind of putting it together of like, you know, he and I looked like twins when we were little, like, yeah. Identical. Oh wow. And you know, we’re only 15 months apart, so it’s your like, we’re not, you know. And so, you know, at this point it’s like 1230 and I’m like, I have to call my mom. Like I can’t wait until the morning. Oh wow. Uh huh. So I, I, yeah, I was just like, I have to ask. So I send her a text and I said, Hey, are you awake? And she called me. Right. You know, she called me right back and she was like, are you okay? What’s up man? And so I kind of go through everything. He goes, what? And I, I’m like, hang on, I’m going to send you a picture of this. I want you to look at it on your phone. And she says, so she, I think first she was shocked and then she laughed and she goes, you know, well, DNA could be wrong.
Speaker 1: (18:00)
[inaudible]
Speaker 2: (18:01)
and I miss like the DNA. I don’t, I don’t know how DNA can be wrong. Like, and so then
Speaker 1: (18:09)
even if it was wrong, it would be such an amazing coincidence if like it was wrong and it identified this other family. Right. Amazing. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (18:20)
And so she goes, well, I hate to break it to you, but this, this isn’t incorrect. And she said, because we did a DNA test when you were a baby. And so then I’m like, Whoa, that’s new information. Like I remember you telling me that he questioned, but you know, so she proceeds to tell me that it was actually my, his parents. So my, you know, I still consider it my grandparents of course, but they, they were suspicious that he wasn’t my father based off of what I looked like, that they hadn’t been together for so too long. So on the down-low, my mom’s mom, my mom, me, and then my alleged father, his parents, they all went and took me and got me a DNA test that supposedly came back and said I was his child. Um, this was a 1980 so I don’t know what DNA testing was at that point.
Speaker 2: (19:27)
Um, you know, I don’t know the specifics there, but you know, that’s what she tells me and I was just like, well, this is really suspicious. Like, I’m looking at this picture of this man that I look like, like I’m telling you, you know, and she says, yes. Well, you know, she’s like, it’s just, it’s not possible. And I’m sure she was just in shock at this point. And so we hang up the phone and you know, my husband has to go to bed, he’s got to be up for work in the morning. And I’m just like, really? And you know, my mind is just like, Whoa. And so, you know, my, you know, my kids are all night owls and so start talking about with my kids and then we start digging out photo albums, like, look,
Speaker 1: (20:12)
looking at me as a kid, how different I look
Speaker 2: (20:17)
absolutely. Like it’s just, I mean, standout, you know, I’m there with the, the dark hair, the led eyes, like it’s just very obvious. And so, you know, the night my mom called me back actually about an hour later and she’s like, I’m, she’s like, I’m just tripping out.
Speaker 1: (20:38)
Yeah. He, yeah.
Speaker 2: (20:40)
You know, she’s like, I don’t know how this could happen. I don’t know. I don’t think this is true. And you know, she always maintained a very like good cordial relationship with my brother’s father. Um, despite my grandmother having, um, custody, um, her and his dad always just talked and you know, they stayed in touch all these years. And so she said, you know, I actually talked to him today and she said, I’m going to call him in the morning. And I said, well, I’m sure Jay will want to call him. Yeah. My brother. Yeah. And kind of give him the heads up. And so, you know, we hang up and the next morning, you know, I’m getting, I start getting all these semesters because my brother is very excited for a couple of reasons. Number one, you know, he kind of always felt like the, um, I don’t know if I can say this, so bleep it out if I can’t.
Speaker 2: (21:42)
He kind of felt like the bastard child, um, you know, he, he didn’t ha, you know, the whole situation with my grandma and my mom. And then the man raised me, didn’t want to raise him, you know, full siblings, you know, just kind of this whole thing. So he’s just excited. Like he’s just like, Oh my, you know, it makes sense and he’s so happy and we just, you know, and so, you know, the next day we’re just talking and I said, okay, well to settle this for everybody before, you know, it kind of explodes. I’m an order, we’ll do like a sibling DNA test. [inaudible] you know, it’ll be me, my brother will do my mom’s DNA as well because that makes it more accurate. So I get online, order the kit, do all of that. And then my, I was contacted by somebody else in the family that, um, basically told me that I shouldn’t like open this door.
Speaker 2: (22:44)
Ah, okay. I know that I’m, I’m opening a door that I shouldn’t open and I’m going to, you know, I should keep this on the down low. It’s nobody’s business. It’s, you know, and like I stopped right there and like I called my husband after and I was like, you know, first my first emotion was I was angry and I was angry. I know because I was upset that it’s like my truth that I should get to share. How I want like, but other people are trying to, I dunno. I felt like I was raised that way a lot. Like you keep stuff under cover, right? Like let’s just sweep it under the rug type thing. Like, so, you know, I actually contacted my, I, I had been going to counseling for a while at this point anyways because of my issues with the man that raised [inaudible] me, you know, and just my own stuff.
Speaker 2: (23:38)
Oh. I actually texted my counselor and kind of gave her the rundown of what was going on and she said, you know, it’s your decision. Like, you know, your choices, you can, you can say what you need to say in a respectful way that’s not, you know, shaming anybody or you know, all of these things. And so she just said, remember like, this is you, this is your story. You don’t have to do what anybody else wants you to do. Yeah. Oh yeah. And you know that I, I understand that perspective for the fact that it was different times in the seventies and eighties right? Like women were shamed a lot more for, you know, having, you know, multiple partners. Like it’s not like my mother was out sleeping with everybody at once. It was two people in a very short amount of time. And you know,
Speaker 1: (24:28)
yeah. About like, Oh no, I drink pot type of thing. Like I think that was,
Speaker 2: (24:36)
but I was going to make her look bad in a certain light or something. Right, right. You know, which was never mind.
Speaker 1: (24:44)
Right. People would say things when people don’t mock or, yeah, yeah. I know how people do it. People talk. I think that’s so, I think people, people, a lot of people on the podcast talk about like, which, what era it was. And I still, I’m not sure that we’re, we’re that much more progressive now really, honestly. But I agree 100%. I believe we haven’t made much progress. Continue. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (25:09)
So, you know, all of this is kind of going on and then I start getting messages on Facebook because my brother’s excited. He’s talking to people. Um, some background on that is that I knew a lot of my brother’s family, like his uncles and because me and my brother were always really close too. Right. Not growing up in the same house. I would go and hang out with him.
Speaker 1: (25:34)
Pam. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (25:36)
A lot of our uncles are our age [inaudible] so, right, right, right. Yeah. You know, and so we were always close, like, so I started getting messages and they’re like, Hey, we just want you to know we love you, support you, we’ve always raised you like in our family, like your little sister type thing. And you know, so I felt so welcomed because then everybody starts reaching out to me that I didn’t even know. Yeah. And so sweet. And so we, so fast forward to Sunday, like we had gotten the DNA test. We did, we went up to, my mom’s all met together, did it. I shipped it out on Monday morning. And then my brother called me on Monday morning and he said, Hey, my dad wants to talk to you. Are you ready for that? And I was just like, I don’t know, what do I say?
Speaker 2: (26:30)
What if it’s weird? Like, you know, I just kind of panicked and I was like, you can give him my number. I said, you know, tell him to call me in a couple of hours. Like I need to kind of get my mind. And I think my whole underlying thing, there was majority of my interactions with a man that raised me were always so tense. And I always felt like I had to be on guard, I guess. Like I could never let my walls found because no matter how hard I tried, I wasn’t successful, you know, in, I never got what I wanted out of the relationship I guess. Like I never got the praise or you know, any of those things that I wanted so badly and [inaudible] so, you know, I kinda waited like on pins and needles. Like what if he doesn’t call? Like what if he doesn’t want to talk to me or, yeah.
Speaker 2: (27:23)
You know, I kinda start like building it up in my head. Like it’s going to be a negative experience. And I got a phone call and I answered. And the weird, like the sense of calm just kind of went through my whole body. Like I heard his voice and it was just so, he’s just like McKell and I just like, I wanted to cry because I, I felt so instantly, like connected to somebody that I didn’t even know, like, Oh my gosh. And it was just like, how, how does that work? Do you know what I mean? Like, yeah, I’ve met this man a handful of times in my life with a child and I can talk to him on the phone. And it was just, it was, I was so worried about like, awkward pauses or, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: (28:13)
Yeah. I mean, it’s the, the idea of it is awkward. Undeniably.
Speaker 2: (28:17)
Exactly. And it wasn’t though, like it was just, it just flowed. And it was, you know, he asked me, you know, just about me. And he was like, are you okay? Like, how do you feel about this? Like, you know, and then he was very honest with me and he told me, he said, you know, we were young and he said, when your mother found out she was pregnant, I asked if you were mine. And you know, he says, I truly believe that she didn’t know it was such a small window. And um, you know, then he just proceeded to tell me about like his wife and then about, you know, I have eight other siblings from him. Gosh. And, and this is the crazy thing. So my dad has 10 children total. And so we range in age from my older brother’s 40 and then it goes all the way down to us having a seven year old brother.
Speaker 1: (29:12)
Oh wow. Isn’t that crazy?
Speaker 2: (29:18)
Yeah. So, you know, he’s, he’s telling me about everybody and he’s asking about my kids and he’s asking about my husband and you know, I just, it was such a genuine conversation and it just like when we hung up, I felt so, like my heart felt so full because I, I had always like wanted that.
Speaker 1: (29:42)
Yeah. So I was thinking was like finally you finally got the conversation you wanted or the or the relationship.
Speaker 2: (29:49)
Exactly. And that was our first conversation, you know, and we talked for an hour and it was just, it just was fine. It wasn’t awkward. It wasn’t tense. I wasn’t worrying about, you know, like being reprimanded or something for, you know. And so, um,
Speaker 1: (30:09)
that sounds exhausting. The other kinds of conversations.
Speaker 2: (30:13)
Yeah, it really was a bit, you know, I mean, it’s still makes me sad and so to go back to the band that raised me at this point, he doesn’t know what’s going on because we wanted to wait until I had the DNA.
Speaker 1: (30:25)
Right. That makes sense. That makes sense to me.
Speaker 2: (30:29)
You know, in the same sense, like I have not had a consistent relationship with him for many, many years. Like at this point when this all went down in January, I had not talked to him for months
Speaker 1: (30:42)
and he wasn’t even married any, he hadn’t been married to your mother for so long and forgot it
Speaker 2: (30:47)
many, many years. Exactly. And so, um, you know, just, that’s just kind of how our relationship went, like here and there. And it’s not like we talked on the phone, it would be a random text here and there. And so the day, um, like that Tuesday I had melded the results on Monday and that Tuesday I text him and I said, I said, Hey, you know, I would like to talk to you. I said, I, I would, I would like to do it in person. And I said, I know that, you know, we have our issues and stuff and you know, but I would like to come and see you. And my ultimate goal there was, you know, me and my husband go and meet with him. And that way I could sit down with him, I could explain this situation. And you know, this man has been in my life for 38 years. So it’s not like I just want to say, Hey, see you regardless of our relationship. And you know, my, my whole goal was, Hey, maybe we can sit down, I can explain everything and then we can maybe move forward. Like, we can try to build a relationship. Like, you know, my hope was that he would be like, Hey, you know, you’re my kid. It doesn’t matter. You know, I still love you. Like I do need to try harder I guess is what I want.
Speaker 1: (32:06)
Which I cycled about unrealistic expectations. Well, well I was, I was, yeah, I was imagining that the two of you might find a connection over both being being sort of surprised and both being accidentally sort of accidentally tricked or you know, [inaudible] not that your mom was malicious, but of course though, and that, you know, this would be, this would be, this could be a way to come together. I could like opening the door, I can tell them, see, I can totally see where your optimistic came from.
Speaker 2: (32:41)
Well good because
Speaker 1: (32:42)
right, no, I look at it and I’m like, Oh my God. Yeah, sure.
Speaker 2: (32:48)
So, you know, he responded hours later and he, you know, he was like, why, what’s going on? And so, you know, at first I was just trying to be like, Hey, you know, like everything’s fine, but I want to talk to you in person because I felt like this needs to be something that I said face to face, not a phone conference.
Speaker 1: (33:09)
Yup. That makes sense to me.
Speaker 2: (33:11)
So we kind of text back and forth and then, you know, I, it was late, I didn’t hear from him again. And the next day I got the results.
Speaker 1: (33:20)
My brother and I were full siblings. Huh.
Speaker 2: (33:23)
So, um, I took, I took a screenshot of the results and I sent it to, um, my mom. Um, my biological father, I included my brother. And then I also had my step mom’s number. I had talked to her the night before. My dad had called me back and said, Hey, you know, I would like you to speak, you know, with my wife. Like, are you comfortable
Speaker 1: (33:46)
on that? And when you see a step mom, you say step-mom meaning like your, your biological dad’s wife
Speaker 2: (33:52)
Y yes, yes. And so, you know, I sent a text basically what the results, and I said, it’s a girl, but the pink card
Speaker 1: (34:01)
don’t
Speaker 2: (34:03)
like I, you know, I was kind of shaking like, Oh, I don’t know what to say at this point. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: (34:08)
LOL,
Speaker 2: (34:09)
you know, and you know, everybody responded very well. And, um, at this point, the only, well, so my youngest sister knew at this point, um, from my mom and cause I had talked to her and then my, my sister from my, um, from my, the man that raised me, she, she and I had talked, I had updated her and um, you know, so she and I spent some time talking and she, she and I had many years where we had a really rough relationship because of that kind of triangulating. So we both, after going through counseling, like she and I have a very close, very positive relationships that we were able to, you know, like she’s been a huge rock for me in this situation. Soundboard. And you know, so I made sure to tell her. And then I text the man that raised me and I said, you know, I still would like to talk. Are you able to get [inaudible]
Speaker 1: (35:10)
yeah, there’s night. And
Speaker 2: (35:12)
he ended up, he ended up like panicking type thing thinking that something that’s wrong with my health. And so, you know, I guess I needed to be, I was trying to be vague but not, you know what I mean? It’s kind of a hard line, like
Speaker 1: (35:24)
totally hard. Yeah. Especially in this day and age of text messaging.
Speaker 2: (35:28)
Exactly. You know, and we had not talked on the phone for almost a year at this point. And so finally, like I was going to go over to his house at 11 o’clock at night because he was pestering me and pestering me. And then I finally just said, you know what? I’m going to call you. And so I called him and you know, he’s like, what’s wrong? What’s wrong? And I was like, I said, you know, my health is fine. I said, but this is something that I really want to do in person. Can we talk tomorrow? And he was like, no, no. And so finally I was just like, okay. And so I just kind of blurted it out. Yeah. And you know, he sat there for a minute, really quiet and then he said, um, he said, how do you know for sure? And I explained like we did the DNA test.
Speaker 2: (36:17)
Okay. Question 23 and me. Yeah. And then he said some, you know, not so nice words about my mom, which I can understand like his probably frustration at that point. And I said, um, you know, I just kind of sat there for a second cause I didn’t quite know what to say. And he was quiet. And then I said, did you know I wasn’t yours? Which I felt like was a third question based off of our relationship. And yeah, he said, well, I suspected it when you were little, like when you were born and you know, then I asked him if he knew that they did a DNA test on me when I was a baby and he said, no, he knew nothing of this. And, um, I kind of felt almost in that moment, like back to being like a teenager between them, like triangulating the parent relationship because it was just kind of, you know, and I, I didn’t want it to go there and I explained to him, you know, where I stood on things.
Speaker 2: (37:23)
So, you know, I did plan to meet my biological father that I did plan to pursue a relationship with my family was, yeah, exactly. You know, and he said, you know, I think that, you know, and then he goes, why? Why would you do that? Ah, I said, why, why wouldn’t I do that? You know? And I, I tried to explain to him like, I’m not doing this to hurt anybody or to do anything, you know, like, my intention is not to hurt you and asked you out of my life. And I explained, I hope this is like a stepping stone that you and I can actually genuinely try to build a relationship now. And you know, he said, you know, you’ve, you’ve been my child. You know, I hear my child, you know, which it did. It gave me kind of that little, that little spark of hope that we could actually build something.
Speaker 2: (38:13)
And um, you know, he and I texted a lot those first couple of weeks. Um, you know about everything he was, that was the first time that he told me the reason, you know, that he was in the wrong when it came to like my brother Jason, he’s like, I was a coward. Like I wasn’t ready to be a father. Oh sure. [inaudible] you know, and that, so that, that was huge. Like I thought that was very big of him because he’s not the type to admit he’s wrong and you know, so we talked a lot those weeks. Then I told him where I stood and that, you know, I was going to meet my family and then kind of radio silence, you know what I mean? Like we, I still haven’t, I still haven’t seen him. I don’t really talk.
Speaker 1: (38:57)
Okay. So this, cause, this all, I’m still reeling this. So this all started this year in January, so yeah. Okay. So it’s only been, it’s only been eight months total that his entire experience. Okay. So when you say you haven’t talked to him, it’s like that. Okay. That’s like all this is
Speaker 2: (39:16)
okay. It’s still new. Yeah, it’s still fresh for sure. And, uh, so fast forward to like two weeks after I found out, um, my biological father, my step mom and six of my siblings.
Speaker 1: (39:29)
Okay. Is anybody, is everybody in Utah or in the area?
Speaker 2: (39:34)
Um, they’re kind of all over. So I have a sister that lives in Boise, a sister that lives in Virginia and then a brother that lives in salt Lake. And then my other, like the younger siblings based the limit at home with, with my dad and stepmom in down South in Utah. So. Okay. Um, so they came into town, we rented, we got like a banquet room at a hotel close to my house, just because you know, my husband and I have five kids and then, you know, you’ve got my dad and my,
Speaker 1: (40:06)
no, that makes perfect sense to me. If a lot of people.
Speaker 1: (00:01)
Okay. So is there anything else you need?
Speaker 2: (00:04)
No, I’m good at talking when you start out and you can always edit it, right? Yeah. Oh good. Good, good. Now it’s my job to hold the mic. I forgot. Um, okay. Um, Oh well I didn’t ask you if I can say your name. Yes. Okay, Randy. So I’ve got Randy here. Um, so, all right, so, so I never know really where to start except to just ask you where you like to start so you can tell the story how you want. Um, and then I often interrupt when I have questions, but, um, but let’s see. I definitely don’t want to start with what just happened. I want to get to the beginning. Yeah. Okay. Well I could start from the beginning. Great.
Speaker 1: (00:45)
Um, in 2006, my dad, my birth certificate dad,
Speaker 2: (00:51)
I just spilled my drink all down my shirt while Randy began. It’s warm up. I was like, I just completely missed my mouth. Amazing. Randy, would you please begin again?
Speaker 1: (01:07)
Yes, yes, yes, absolutely. That comic relief was very, very important.
Speaker 2: (01:13)
I wish I could have. I wish I just could say I planned it. Like every time I have a guest I do something really silly.
Speaker 1: (01:18)
Good. That’s good. It creates an, an easy fee. It more of a relaxed interview as a result. Um, in 2006, my birth certificate father died and my mother tried to tell me after he died that he wasn’t my father, but she couldn’t, she didn’t really, she just said red, I have to tell you something. I, I, you know, dad wasn’t around and I had to do what I had to do. And I was like, what is she talking about? TMI. I don’t know. And how old was she at the time? She was 80. She was in her early eighties. I think she might’ve just, yeah, I think 81
Speaker 2: (01:57)
I’m just asking, cause a lot of people say that that happens, but they’re their mother or parent that knows is so old and says kind of off the wall things anyways, so it’s like, Oh, did, was that real? Was it dementia? What was that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: (02:10)
I felt like I, I thought, I don’t believe her. I did. And then she ends up telling my partner at the time, years later, like maybe three years later, well whatever, I think it was two years later that he wasn’t, that Murray was probably not my father. And she said, tell Randy for me. And my partner was like, I’m not telling her she couldn’t. She eventually she made, she had my mom sit down and two of us were next door. She goes, Vivian, you have to, you should tell Randy the truth. I can’t keep it a secret. And she was shaking and she goes, dad’s probably not your dad. And I went and I had a feeling I did. I did.
Speaker 2: (02:49)
You always had had a feeling I had a feeling. I think
Speaker 1: (02:51)
she tried to tell me when I was a child, but I couldn’t deal with it or something came up. Cause when I was 30 I thought, I feel like he’s not my father, but I have no one to ask. So
Speaker 2: (03:00)
I never, and that just came out of the blue, that feeling I was doing all this spiritual work and looking at stuff. I thought, Oh, next question. Did you, do you have siblings that you grew up with? Okay. Okay. Right. Where was she during this conversation about she was that she was in Los Angeles. Oh, she was around but not in, but not like in the room. Okay. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (03:19)
Okay. And I think she also tried to tell my sister too, what my sister just didn’t, you know, think it was real because my mother at that point was at pretty much out of it, you know, had had,
Speaker 2: (03:33)
right. That throws such a wrench into these experiences. It does.
Speaker 1: (03:39)
So my friend, my, my partner, uh, you know, said tell Randy the truth and my mom was shaking and then she said, he’s probably not your dad. I said, well, was he nice
Speaker 2: (03:50)
guy? Did you have a good time? I don’t know. I didn’t know if, yeah, I said great.
Speaker 1: (03:55)
And I didn’t even, I don’t even think I asked her who it was cause I didn’t believe it.
Speaker 2: (04:01)
And then later on like, Oh, I didn’t believe so you just didn’t believe it and believe it. And then eventually I did ask him
Speaker 1: (04:07)
was his name. I don’t remember. She didn’t remember. I don’t remember. And at one point she’d say, well, I, there was a furniture salesman. And I said, Oh, okay, do you remember his name? And she just, she just didn’t, she just didn’t remember. I guess maybe she believed it for so long, believed the why for so long. I had to cover up because it was protecting her marriage, protecting me. Who know, you know, in 98. Yeah,
Speaker 2: (04:32)
I 100% believe that that you can just, that you would just kind of blanket, draw blank, you know, or cross that out in your mind and then just not remember. Also, I’m suddenly at the age where I can’t remember classmates in high school. Like I can’t remember their names and I never thought I would ever do that. So if I think it totally makes sense that people, these, these people, when women especially who are, who we talked to the most, the moms, um, who, when they say they don’t remember their partner’s names, it’s like from what, 60 years ago, right? From one night. Yeah. Right. It could have been one night.
Speaker 1: (05:07)
It’s completely possible. It was one night, but I’m feeling it was more because my dad that raised me and my dad, I knew it was gone a lot. He’d be gone for six weeks at a time and she was, she was lonely and, Oh, that’s really hard. Yeah, that’s hard. And she had a baby of six, you know, should a young child. And my family, her mother and aunts and uncles were all in New York. She was by herself on the West coast and she had had a nervous breakdown, um, after my sister, there were problems and she wasn’t happy in her marriage. And she even told my sister,
Speaker 2: (05:40)
do you think probably postpartum depression at this point
Speaker 1: (05:44)
when she was, I think when she moved to California, she was upset that she left her family and it’s hard. It is very hard and yeah, very hard. And they said, well, stay in the marriage and take this. They gave her something to take. So she became kind of an addict, but she was, she had like anxiety and which I could have been a combination of things. But, um, she, you know, self medicated and uh,
Speaker 3: (06:12)
I don’t know.
Speaker 1: (06:13)
She was a lovely woman, but she was troubled, you know, sad. And I, I love my mom, but [inaudible]
Speaker 2: (06:20)
and keeping the secret too. Right. That’s what I was just thinking was yeah, you’re only as sick as your secrets they say. And if you’re just holding in all this shame and fear and worry and an unknown, that’s a lot to carry for years and years and years and years. Yes. And she was,
Speaker 1: (06:37)
she got pregnant in 58 and she got jabbed me in 59. And you know that you didn’t do that. I mean, my sister had said to me, the one I grew up with recently, she goes, what? It was bad enough she had an affair but then to get pregnant,
Speaker 2: (06:50)
right. Well, we’re finding out everyone did that, but, but the idea is that nobody did that. We all believed that nobody was
Speaker 1: (06:58)
right. And I had for a while was saying, well, she took care of herself and then I thought my poor dad, how he had to deal, but then who knows? He might not have been loyal when he was on the road, but, um, but you know, it’s interesting cause I thought if I was in her position on my dad’s, which I would be, it would be hard to deal with a spouse.
Speaker 2: (07:17)
I’m going to fair. Absolutely. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: (07:20)
Decided to stay together regardless. And um,
Speaker 2: (07:23)
so he, you think he knew, he knew
Speaker 1: (07:26)
he did, but they made a decision,
Speaker 3: (07:29)
uh, you know, that no matter what,
Speaker 1: (07:33)
I was still his, he was going to raise me as his baby, his child. So, um, and then I, I just was, I would think about it and think, well who am I and what was his name? And I, it took me years to take the test. I finally decided in 2017 to take it. And sure enough, my sister that I was raised with shows up as a half sister. So that’s when I knew,
Speaker 2: (08:01)
okay, go ahead. How did that feel to see those results? It was confirmed. Validating. Okay. Okay.
Speaker 1: (08:08)
Didn’t want to feel, I felt crazy. It made me feel crazy, you know, like, cause I didn’t have the facts. Um, so it was, it was definitely validating. And then I, uh, what happened, I decided to up upload my raw DNA to five different sites. I
Speaker 2: (08:25)
had his surgery, dove in. You
Speaker 1: (08:27)
dove in exactly. And had this one woman from Australia, Irene, who was helping me. She was great. She was so great. And she’s the one years later, not years later, I mean it was January 3rd, I’d get a message from her. I hadn’t talked to her in six months and that, why is Irene contacting me, you know, and um, she said, how are you, how was your holidays and you know, have you checked your matches lately? Well, I had just gotten home from being out of town for the holidays and I hadn’t checked in three days and she goes, check your matches. Your job may drop a little. And it was my other half sister. She is, I’m more, I’m more, uh, cinema Orbens with her than I do with the one I was raised like a hundred more or something. So I was just, this was it. I finally got a high match
Speaker 2: (09:19)
and before then, no matches at all. I have more just like distant, distant cousins. Okay.
Speaker 1: (09:24)
And I would reach out to them and so a couple of them tried to help me and so, um, yeah, it was real. It was wild and so right away. And my sister was looking for, her name’s Gail. She was looking for our half-brother who she hadn’t talked to in a really long time. Years. And so,
Speaker 2: (09:46)
okay. And this was this, I’m sorry, this was the sister, the new sister that you just discovered? She was looking for a brother. Half brother would have been my is my half brother, but not okay, but not somebody you grew up with? No, but she knew there was a half-brother out there. It was looking and you popped up as a surprise sibling. I wrote to her.
Speaker 1: (10:04)
So do you want to, is it okay? Would you like to, you know, I’d love to communicate. Um, I’ve tried to, I tried, I was being very gentle and I, and she said, well, I’ve hit the jackpot and looking for my brother, you know, and it turns out he was, he was, he would’ve been my half brother too. And they were mean. They were like three miles from me for years
Speaker 2: (10:25)
in LA, in California. Oh my God, not Gail Gail. It’s funny cause my father was from doing
Speaker 1: (10:29)
and from Massachusetts, you know Cape Cod and then in Medford but, and Gail is in North Carolina. But my dad moved to California and my biological father in Florida and then the forties and he’s married to two women at the same time. I mean he knows he’s very colorful guy. Character total. So what happened was she was willing to talk and then I called her and you know she’s 79 and she can’t be on the phone for two and a half hours. It was wild, you know. So I got named, it was, I was blown away cause I thought I would never find a name. So it was this whole other universe Eve that I discovered.
Speaker 2: (11:09)
Right. So you went from having like just this iota of an idea, like the stranger is out there to having named family sisters history. Yes. All the information you needed
Speaker 1: (11:20)
and I have like instantly. Yeah. And then I had, I fell, I had another stepsister that I was, Oh God, I can only deal with one at a time. So eventually I, she was, she’s my, you’re younger than me. She FaceTimed me immediately. See she was with [inaudible]. I grew up with my father since she was 12 because her mother married Wallace, his name was Wallace and she had three, her mom had three kids. She, yeah, and she, she had two half siblings and then, and they also, Wallace brought my brother Adam to the mix. And Adam, it was kind of like a Brady
Speaker 2: (11:54)
bunch of 2010 I think it was a drug overdose.
Speaker 1: (11:58)
Sad. But he was, he was, he had problems. He was, you know, fetal alcohol syndrome is so can be very subtle. And I think that’s bad cause his mother was pretty bad alcoholic because he could not, he was, he had a lot of problems, but he appeared normal.
Speaker 2: (12:16)
Right. Am I just manifested itself in some kind of self destructive way? Yeah.
Speaker 1: (12:22)
So my sister and I would talk, talk and talk, and she’d tell me stories. And then I saw another tree on ancestry and it was my, a friend of my cousin, friend of my cousins, my first cousins, two males. This woman was helping him, helping Mark May, uh, May 3rd, that’s the, my dad’s last name. And I contacted her and I said, my father’s in your tree. And I told her the whole story, who I was, and then immediately he called me.
Speaker 2: (12:54)
Wow, this is so interesting that all these people are so interested and enthusiastic. I was lucky. Yeah. Wow.
Speaker 1: (13:03)
So funny because my sister and my stepsister who don’t even know each other, so the same thing when they found out about me, they said, Oh, I’m not surprised.
Speaker 2: (13:13)
Oh. And my is my sister who’s from, you know, Matt’s, because I’m not surprised with our five.
Speaker 1: (13:22)
He did what he wanted me. Everybody loved him. So he was a really interesting guy. He was the cleanup guy really for Bing Crosby. He was his, that’s why he didn’t have to go overseas. He was, because that test, Shay, I guess you call it, I don’t know,
Speaker 2: (13:35)
he has valet or attache or something
Speaker 1: (13:37)
and he put on the USO shows in California and he didn’t ever had to go overseas. So,
Speaker 2: (13:44)
so that was his role in this service was to be okay. That was his role. So that kept him traveling all around as a handsome service man. Yeah, yeah. That’s kind of a thing. And then he worked with us closely with a star, which is impressive, right? He was, I’m seeing how this all worked out for him.
Speaker 1: (14:06)
Yeah. Worked out for him and he was married five times and so my sister told me five times, twice to the same woman is Latin, the last one when he was with, but he was married to two women at the same time and got in trouble for it, but got out of it. He didn’t have to go to jail. My girl’s mother said to get said, give me a divorce and we’ll, you know, we’ll move on. But
Speaker 2: (14:26)
do you ever feel like, or do you ever think about people that get married that many times and just think like about their belief in marriage and like they really believed in it? Like he really, he just really liked getting married. I think he did. I mean there’s more to it than that. And I’m not trying to be flippant, but, no, I just am fascinated by, um, by, by the commitment to marriage despite evidence that it’s not really maybe for you or, right, right. But that’s a different subject maybe.
Speaker 1: (15:00)
Yeah. He, but he always cheated. And my sister said, gal, who you, I knew sister said, well, if you couldn’t deal with it, you can’t be with them. But I found out that his second wife left him. I didn’t know Louise left him for like an oil man.
Speaker 2: (15:15)
Oh, left him. And she showed him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: (15:19)
I did. And my, my S uh, Gail’s mom was really hurt by the fact that the grant, my grandparents covered for Wallace. They said he was missing overseas while he was married to this new woman.
Speaker 2: (15:33)
Forcible am I. And then my Gail’s mother found out, this isn’t, go ahead. That’s just really sick. And that’s, I know. And then, then she [inaudible]
Speaker 1: (15:42)
found out she left and they were so worried. They loved Gil so much. They had, you know, since she was a baby, they, and, and then they tried to steal her away and, and, but it didn’t work. And then my grandfather kept writing to Gail’s mom and to apologize. But it was very, it was difficult situation and complicated. And Wallace tried to take her away when he, when she was 13. And so he was, um, he was an interesting guy. He was, I mean, he was the type that he would do all these horrible like, you know, betrayal things and, and then you walk in the room, this is according to my sister and my cousins. You’d walk in the room and you’d forget all about it cause he knew, I guess he knew how to really,
Speaker 2: (16:21)
John. Yeah. I mean, I think we all know those people, right? Like we’ve all met, we’ve all met that guy. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. And so, and it turns out a lot of them are our fathers, you know, and my mother, it’s like a side effect of this personality trait. And my mother couldn’t
Speaker 1: (16:41)
not resist him obviously. And I w I’ll never know the true story of their relationship, but I think he, he gave her a lot of attention
Speaker 2: (16:52)
and that must’ve felt so good.
Speaker 1: (16:54)
Did and, but I think she knew he wouldn’t have made a good husband. She wasn’t ready to leave him, leave my dad for him, but my dad, he was a salesman, so it was my dad that raised me. They were a year apart and I yet everybody a year apart. So, and um, so it was really, really interesting. Um, and to hear more and more about how he was an athlete and how he competed and had a F he, he had a um, record I think in the 50 yard dash that nobody broke. It took 50 years and I was obsessed with that one of the kid 50 yard dash.
Speaker 2: (17:27)
Oh really? Is that specifically the 50 yard dash?
Speaker 1: (17:32)
Well, he was a sprinter. You know, I just have a new picture of him as the sprinter when I was a kid. It’s really, it’s very cute. So, and um, yeah, so it was, it’s been quite the process and then telling my S talking to my sister that I raised with talking to her about it and she thinks he, she, she doesn’t like him. What I’ve told her about him, she thinks he’s her. She, she’s just focused on the, I don’t want to say like focused on the negative, but that’s what she’s taken from it is the, the pain he caused. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think sure. The dark, the dark side of this whole character. Right, right. But I also, when I think about it and what I’ve heard about him, that he was there, he was, there was a lot to him and he was a great guy in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: (18:20)
He was very caring. Like my cousin was telling me his story, how he was so loving and can be very caring when he was sick. He did all these things for him and he didn’t say that. One bad thing about him and my step sister to go, I’m not going to trash him. But she did say a few things. Let’s see. They got into drugs and that’s what brought them down. And you know that rude destroys everything right in the 70s. And yeah, I don’t know. The kids got into the kiln, dad, the dad would be, Wallace was into, he was like a drug dealer to freebase I can say this. He’s said they’re all dead based to the stars. He made cocaine and he was doing this in the 60s and wonder, he died at 75. Right. It, you know, so and so. It was hard. I came with a lot of movies about men like that. I feel like I have a very specific visual, that kind of man. Yeah. It was like, yeah. So, and my sister hadn’t seen him in years. She didn’t even hear about them here. Here. She didn’t even know when he died. She saw it online or something. But she had lots of stories to tell me about him.
Speaker 3: (19:28)
Um, anyway, so it’s been really interesting to like to get over the shock of it, but I still feel it. It’s like this process, I don’t know if you went through this, but it’s like this shock feeling like the shock will come back. Yeah. It kind of comes back at times. Like, cause I, I was sitting with my new family, you know, I just went to see them and I thought, is this really happening? Is maybe there’s a mistake, maybe that. And I have two friends that don’t believe the test. They’re like, yeah, it does not real, you know, and it’s invalidating in a way cause but science, it doesn’t lie. The site, you can’t eat DNA doesn’t lie at all. And I look like him and I, my cousin said, you know, I could see Wallace in you and there’s certain things about my body I can tell where like his and
Speaker 3: (20:21)
um,
Speaker 1: (20:22)
yeah. And my sister and I have certain expressions that are sending, I looked at our baby pictures, you know, we look alike in my, you know, my partner had said, well, you and Gail really look alike in these pictures, but she’s, yeah. So it’s, it’s been really quite the experience. So there is now. So I decided to go see my family. I’ve, cause they, you know, they have this house that my great grandfather for $25 a on Cape Cod and [inaudible] and they redid it. They re, you know, they redid it and my dad was bought out years ago. So, um, it was, it’s not, it’s in a little town called Truro and it’s beautiful. So I went there and I stayed there for five days. I just got back and my sister came from North Carolina. They drove and it was, there was a lot of like tension built up. There was all this expectation and all this, Oh my God. You know, even though we talked on the phone, but when we met it was great. Oh God. They were lovely people, lovely people.
Speaker 2: (21:24)
So it was the, it was the sister, sister,
Speaker 1: (21:27)
my cousin and his wife, and then my other cousin, his brother marks Martin.
Speaker 2: (21:32)
And those were people you would also connected with via the site or your sister had done that. Okay. They hadn’t taken the test but got it. Okay.
Speaker 1: (21:40)
Grew up with them either because of the split and the grandparents side with Wallace. And this is uncle uncles, children. So, um, anyway, so it was a, they wanted to, you know, they, they weren’t surprised and they wanted to tell me all about Wallace and, and uh, they gave me [inaudible]
Speaker 2: (22:00)
so everybody knows Wallace, but nobody knows each other. Right. They didn’t, they didn’t,
Speaker 1: (22:04)
I really know they knew about each other, but they hadn’t spent time together. Maybe they cited to their grandparent’s funeral. So it was a big deal for my sister to go and see them too. So, um, it turned out, actually, it was very nice. It was lovely. And you know, I F I felt a little like the odd California girl, you know, I’m half Jewish, I’m darker than them. Oh, I’m Jewish. You know, they’re all, you know. But Wallace was supposedly dark with green eyes and I mean, but you know, there are blue up blue eyes and blonde hair and co toe heads, a couple of them. Um, so, you know, and they mentioned that they talked about that
Speaker 2: (22:46)
in a nice way. I mean they’re, they’re all educated.
Speaker 1: (22:51)
Um, and there, there it, it was very nice. It was, it was, you know, I F I felt comfortable in a lot of ways because I knew they were family, but at the same time, that feeling of, well, wait a minute, I don’t even know these, I didn’t grow up with it.
Speaker 2: (23:06)
What does that even mean anymore? Like what does family even mean? If, I mean, I’m with you. I don’t know. I don’t have the answer. It’s like, I right, I know what, like you or I don’t know what, and I can’t imagine what it would be like to meet somebody as an adult that, that maybe looked like
Speaker 1: (23:26)
my dad.
Speaker 2: (23:27)
If I, if my NPE experience had not happened, I don’t know what it would be like to have grown up with my dad and then to meet someone else that looks just like him or, and so there’s no emotional feeling of family, but there’s a very literal like biological connection that’s in your face and that’s disgusting. And then there’s like this existential thing. Yeah, it’s exactly, it’s, it’s hard to describe.
Speaker 1: (23:53)
It is. And my half brother died in 2010 and I cannot find a picture of him. I, there is my, uh, step sister’s brother has the pictures, but she’s not talking if she goes, Oh, he has all the family pictures. So I’m working up the courage to try to call him and see if he has any of Adam cause I, I, I want to see what he looks like, you know. But um,
Speaker 2: (24:17)
so that was how you got recent pictures of your, uh, of this Wallace though, is because of this trip you just went on. They had some pictures for you? They have pictures, but not recent one? No, no. Stepsister who lives in Concord, which I’ve, I’ve stayed with her twice. She’s, she gave me more recent pictures. He died in 92 so she gave me
Speaker 1: (24:34)
pictures of when he, you know, at her wedding, um, a picture of him winning. He was a major golfer. He was a, like a really, really good scratch golfer. And there’s a picture of him in that house in Hawaii and he, there’s a picture of him in this book on the 50 year anniversary of mana K. I don’t know what it is. And he’s in the book and I could see, he looks really happy. He’s in his fifties. He won the tournament. But I, so I have, he, I have pictures of, you know, more recent pictures of him when he wasn’t well, two, when he looked, he looked like he didn’t feel good or he didn’t look happy.
Speaker 2: (25:09)
[inaudible] what’s it like to look at pictures of him?
Speaker 1: (25:16)
Uh, it’s weird. It’s weird like at that, so my dad, actually, my father, no, Cathy, you know, you’re my entire life. I thought my dad that raised me was my dad. I would think about things. How Oh, you know what were similar? I would think, Oh, I look like him. But some of them would say, you don’t like your dad at all. And I say, but I do. And then you know, I have a, but my sister would say that’s from dad’s side. My grandmother had it, but you know, so these little things that I, okay, I do look like him, but
Speaker 2: (25:50)
I don’t write it all just, well, you might look like him, but it’s not, it’s just a coincidence. It’s not biologically, it’s not genetic. Right. Right. And we share so much energy. You live with so many things you, but when I look at it,
Speaker 1: (26:04)
Wallace, I, I think, Oh, I do look like him. And it’s really weird. And looking at him when he was younger as an athlete too. I thought I do. I was an athlete, you know, am I most of my life? I still am. But, um, so it’s, it’s wild. It’s really interesting. Um, so I’m, uh, I, I felt at one time, I, at one time I feel like I would have to talk about it and talk about it because to convince them
Speaker 2: (26:33)
it’s real. There’s something to be said about like processing. I think for me, I think it was like a processing mechanism was to talk about it. I had say it out loud. Um, or else I would explode or something. And it wasn’t like, I don’t know, it had something to do with my brain. I don’t know. I don’t have the, what, you know, like it’s, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a comprehension process too, I think for people, for some people to say it. So they talk about it
Speaker 1: (27:03)
over and over and over again because the lie believing a lie for so long, it’s message, it’s kind of screwed with me. Might mess me up, you know? I mean, but I’m, I do know I’m okay, but it’s, so anyway, it’s been very interesting. So I have this new family and they’re, they’re lovely people and uh, you know, I’ll probably see them again. And it’s so weird to think I, my dad was, you know, from new England, but you know, he, I don’t think he, he wanted to get out of there and he, he loved California, you know, and it bothers me. I have moments where I think he was so close, why didn’t I do it? But they say my cousins and my sisters say, Oh, he would’ve, he would’ve been looking for you. He would’ve made a major effort to see you. But I don’t know, because my mom was married and he was in the intelligence part of the service. He knew how to keep a secret. He, you know.
Speaker 2: (27:59)
Right. So they, so if he had known about you, he would have, that’s what they are saying is that if he didn’t, if he had known about you, he would have come and found fun to find you. And since he didn’t, he must not have known about you. Right.
Speaker 1: (28:09)
I think my mother, I th how, I mean they live so close. I’m a feeling she did see him and maybe they did talk, but
Speaker 2: (28:16)
like the just must’ve been at grocery store run in at some points. Right.
Speaker 1: (28:21)
Oh God. I ran into each other at Gelson’s or something. Who knows? I mean, so I, uh, but anyway, it was not, not meant to, it wasn’t meant to be that I, you know, and I had more stability as a result, I think, you know, um, that’s what I tell myself. But
Speaker 2: (28:42)
I mean, I’m nodding. I the, yeah. Like that’s, I can, I don’t think there’s anything to argue about with that. Like, yeah.
Speaker 1: (28:48)
Oh, but yeah, it’s just, I think the hard part I think is the lie or the being lied to, you know? [inaudible]
Speaker 2: (28:59)
yeah. And your mother has passed and so,
Speaker 1: (29:03)
Hmm.
Speaker 2: (29:04)
So there’s no way to get answers from her,
Speaker 1: (29:07)
but I did call it random versus alive still. Oh. Before I knew that was brilliant. That’s brilliant. I found her number. She’s 92 names. Rini she got really angry with me. Oh, she said, you’ve destroyed me. I [inaudible] said that I kept, your mother didn’t look at another man. I said many, I’ve taken two tests. She goes, you don’t believe those? And then she said that, you know, she got very upset and it’s, I could, she mentioned Wallace, his name. She could’ve been Wallace or Bruce, our bosses Ann, but she had a
Speaker 2: (29:41)
different last name. Huh. And they maybe knew each other in New York and then she wouldn’t call me.
Speaker 1: (29:47)
Oh, I’m sorry. I love you. I didn’t mean to upset you. I left her message and call me back if you like. No, that’s it.
Speaker 2: (29:53)
Hmm. This information, I wonder if it’s really, really scary for people. Um, and I’m trying to think of like what kind of information could come my way that would, that would make me angry and I can’t think of anything, but I [inaudible] but I don’t have any morals. Like I, that’s not what I mean. But like, I’m like, what, what, you know, right. Like people really like, like you like to suggest that a friend, not even, you didn’t even suggest that, that she did something. You’re just suggesting that your mom, you know, her friend did something that she didn’t agree with and it’s that upsetting. I don’t know, like if maybe if somebody suggested, like if somebody called me and said, I know that your very best friends that you grew up with is a murderer, like in that would maybe really shake me. Like, I’m just trying to think of what really, um, what was it?
Speaker 1: (30:47)
Yeah. I mean, she goes, I’m like a second mother deal. Well, I haven’t seen her since my mother’s funeral.
Speaker 2: (30:52)
I, I’ve seen it. You know, you’re like some mother. So she goes, well, you’ve just destroyed it
Speaker 1: (30:59)
with this. You’ve just, you know, devastated me. And uh, you know, I think she, I don’t know, she might’ve known, but they kept it a big secret or I don’t know.
Speaker 2: (31:13)
Well, I’ll never know. And the shame, the shame and the secrecy might’ve run that deep that she didn’t even tell her very best friend.
Speaker 1: (31:18)
That’s right. The shame and the secrecy. That’s it. That’s it. So she had to keep that to herself. So sad. Yeah, I’m sad. But anyway, so, and I think I, she couldn’t go to the grave with it. She had to say something. But she, and thank God for the DNA test too. I mean, this, it’s given me, you know, giving me a name. I had this family, but yeah.
Speaker 2: (31:46)
Yeah. And for you, it turned out to be a real tool to go to get the answers that you wanted.
Speaker 1: (31:52)
Yeah. Yeah. And, and I think I think about it, I thought, did I feel different? You know, not really, but people would look at me. It’s interesting. eBay a couple times, quite quite a few times, you know, that people didn’t think I was really Jewish or, or even you’re not fully Jewish. I heard that a lot growing up, growing up. Even my friend, my best friend, I remember her parents said to me, they were drinking or partying, Randy, come here. You’re not, your dad’s not somebody who wasn’t Jewish. And you know,
Speaker 2: (32:26)
it’s interesting like what they were suggesting that based on your looks,
Speaker 1: (32:29)
by the way I looked, I, you know,
Speaker 2: (32:33)
that’s bananas and it’s rude. It is rude. And I’ve had other, like,
Speaker 1: (32:38)
I remember this, the one was part of, um, very religious, uh, had said to me, no, you’re not, you’re, you’re not, or that you’re not someone parent isn’t for sure that I thought this was like 20 years ago. I mean, I hear these things that would really upset me. Yeah. That was kind of kind of like, what is it, first of all, the whole thing of like, you know, how do you look Jewish, you know, the Jews, it looks a medic. So it’s very, it’s very interesting. So it’s a kind of screwed with my identity. I think it, you know,
Speaker 3: (33:12)
um,
Speaker 1: (33:14)
so I’ve now I know, but I think, uh, you know, and I think about my dad that raised me and my family, you know, and I think I start to feel more relaxed, less. And this new family, I am trying to like navigate, I don’t know. [inaudible]
Speaker 2: (33:32)
so the thoughts, thoughts of your dad that raised you relax is relax. [inaudible] was, I was ready to know that and that’s a solid, yeah.
Speaker 1: (33:39)
You know, that’s what I grew up with. That’s who I, you know, the whole nation.
Speaker 2: (33:44)
And it was a solid, it was a solid experience.
Speaker 1: (33:46)
Yeah. And he never really gave me any reason to think I wasn’t his
Speaker 3: (33:50)
child, you know. No, he never ever, you know, he was the normal kind of family man at that time who would [inaudible]
Speaker 1: (33:59)
you know, they don’t know how to communicate. He would blow up and have raid, you know, you know, normal kind of crazy stuff.
Speaker 2: (34:05)
Right, right. That makes sense. But you’re not, you don’t fit into the category of people that really sort of like resent who they’re the man that raised them. No, it wasn’t the dad they wanted or something and no. Yeah, he was very,
Speaker 1: (34:19)
um, we got close to when, when he was older we got really close. Yeah. He was a,
Speaker 3: (34:25)
it was a good guy and he was very good to my mother.
Speaker 2: (34:29)
That’s really important.
Speaker 3: (34:30)
Very good to my mother. He really took care of her, but he enabled to do, but he, he really took care of her. And um,
Speaker 1: (34:38)
so anyway, so it’s been quite the experience. And I realized when I went to the East coast how brave I was and how, how, what, you know, adventurous I was doing
Speaker 2: (34:48)
absolutely.
Speaker 1: (34:50)
I mean, and then I wanted to go to North Carolina to see my sister in October, but I think I’m going to wait.
Speaker 2: (34:56)
Oh, maybe give it some more time, process it a little bit more. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (35:00)
It’s okay. You don’t have to come, you know. Um, I think I’ll [inaudible]
Speaker 2: (35:04)
like he knew it might’ve been overwhelming in the end. Yeah,
Speaker 1: (35:07)
I think so. Yeah. And you know, she’s getting used to the fact that she has a sister and you know, we both bought each other presents.
Speaker 2: (35:15)
Yeah. Did you love each other? Yeah. That’s a lot. Yeah. It’s nice. But it’s a lot. You brought, did you bring like the key chains or something? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That’s so, that’s so sweet. So you gave,
Speaker 1: (35:29)
then I came with all these groceries. I came, I brought my cousins cause it’s my cousin’s house, him and his wife and I brought her a, I wanted to just, you know, really, you know, come with, cause they were hosting us. I wanted [inaudible] gifts and, and I also got my sister in the, I bought a necklace, you know, that had this little poem about being sisters and, and she got me this stat, the statue of two sister stash or these two women together. Wow. Yeah. You very sweet. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (36:00)
It’s free. It’s like sweet and it’s, it really like those all, all those things sort of like symbolize or represent like the intention. Like there’s really an intention to
Speaker 1: (36:12)
okay.
Speaker 2: (36:12)
To be sisters, whatever that means. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (36:15)
And, and she brought folders of family history. Um, she loves to dig and she’s really interested in genealogy. So we each got a folder and she gave me more pictures of Wallace too. And Oh, he was so good looking when he was younger. He was like, just really, you know, women liked him or he could charm, you could [inaudible]
Speaker 2: (36:36)
right. See it. She said dark hair with green eyes. Like I started to think, Oh, he was probably very handsome. I think a lot of these men I think were a lot of us are or a lot of people are finding out that these men were salesmen were charming and were good looking. Yeah. I think that’s like a very common denominator.
Speaker 1: (36:54)
Yeah. And my sister told me more stories. Got him when, well she had with her husband, she was supposed to meet him somewhere and he always would stay at some really expensive hotel. I wish I could remember the name of it in New York. I can’t now. It’s slipped my mind. But [inaudible] one time she said, let’s go meet my dad and you’re going to S you’re going to see something, it’s going to be wild for you. And he walks in and he’s with Barbara Streisand.
Speaker 2: (37:28)
Okay.
Speaker 1: (37:28)
And so my, my sister’s husband’s like [inaudible] I know it’s driving me crazy cause he met her on the plane and said you need to stay at this hotel, which I can’t run that she’d so she went right. I can only think of the rents in New York that’s got it. Some other in the most, must’ve been in a six. Must’ve been in the seventies Oh, it’s bugging me now. I’ll think of it. But um, you know, he hadn’t, they just knew each other. They just met, you know, he was that kind of guy. Oh yeah. He can charm. He would come in and just come out in the room and he would be going to these really expensive restaurants in LA and in the 70s and a lot of Pudge joint, nobody stopped him. He was the type, this is kind of obnoxious. They don’t, you know who I am. Yeah. I’m Wallace made there. Yeah. Do you know who I am? And he fired get, get somebody fired on them. You’re on the
Speaker 2: (38:21)
spot. I’m imagining a lot of really, really crisp suits. Oh, that were just so great in the 70s totally. This is what I heard. I bet he had a pinky ring. Oh wow. Wallace Allen made their hand. Oh God. I should put together images of that time to show you what I imagined him. Oh yeah, you’re right. That’s right. He did so. And he’s a great cars. Totally.
Speaker 1: (38:53)
Always had like a Corvette or a Benz, you were saying when they were doing it, when they were still in a lot with the dog, you know, so much money selling. But he did very well as a salesman before that. But then yeah,
Speaker 2: (39:07)
he just applied his salesmanship to a new um, product and did really well. People still do that. They do
Speaker 1: (39:18)
good at that. But the fact I didn’t know, I didn’t hear that story about Barbara starts out though. I hadn’t, didn’t know that one. Hello. Yeah, he and he was a great storyteller. Really, really good. So that, you know, I kind of missed, it would have been nice to know to have known him, but you know, I can’t, I mean I’m getting to know him through my family, through my sister and my cousin. So, but so it’s wild.
Speaker 2: (39:47)
Yeah. You see, but you seem really at peace with some of the, I don’t know those re the harder realities of it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (39:53)
Well, you know, I feel sorry for my mother. I feel like, and I’m not, and you know, I’m a feminist, so I, you know, I have sympathy for her. The fact that she, what she went through and she was lonely and um, and I’m not angry with her really. You know, she, um, and may, you know, she knew when I think about it, she knew he wasn’t, he wouldn’t have made a good husband. He was so unreliable in a lot of ways. I probably, I, this is what I tell myself to feel better, but that maybe I would have, he would have disappointed me. Maybe, you know, he might [inaudible] me.
Speaker 2: (40:30)
Yeah. I mean, well, I mean if like, if, if, I don’t know where you were in the, in the timeline of all those marriages, but he certainly, um, wouldn’t have been present for you. Right. Supposedly, he, he loved having kids, but he did not let them get in his way of what he wanted to do. You know, that he liked the idea of kids. He did like, yeah. And he also,
Speaker 1: (40:56)
he, he spoiled my brother so badly that it made him, he was even to him, he was so excited that he had a boy and he, he really, he bought him a car before he was 16. [inaudible]
Speaker 2: (41:08)
really, but you know, will kind of crazy thing and let him be an asshole. And you supposedly a real jerk. So you know a lot about that because of the other sister could tell you like what it was like to grow up with.
Speaker 1: (41:19)
Yeah. Wow. Right. Yeah. So, but he was born in 63 and I’ve only seen baby pictures of him then when he was a little boy. But um, yeah. Well I will see, I will find other pictures and my goal now is to find video of my father like, Oh, because of course he was on jeopardy.
Speaker 2: (41:40)
He was on, of course he was probably wasn’t even that smart. He just talked them into it. Totally. And he was on match game. You’re killing me right now. You are killing me right now. Right. And he was a writer on some TV,
Speaker 1: (41:57)
Michelle, but she couldn’t remember what show he wrote for a while. Cause his neighbors, you know, were in show business.
Speaker 2: (42:02)
Yeah. So he just was like, I can do it. Let me sleep.
Speaker 1: (42:05)
What was his name? The guy from, um, the Jefferson’s Helmsley. Oh yeah, you’re so young. But he was close with this guy who was in the Jefferson thing. He’s very close and so he, you know, he hung around with Holly types. So, um, yeah. And I want to find that footage. And I went to, um, the Paley center, the media center, but they didn’t have it. But I think I kind of, I feel to find it if I dig enough, you know, make some calls, write some emails or something. I’m hoping, I don’t know.
Speaker 2: (42:39)
Yeah, I feel like you must, you must be able to do it somehow. I feel like there’s gotta be archives of all that stuff. Yeah. And who can help us? Can you help us? Are you out there? Yes. Contact me quick.
Speaker 1: (42:53)
That would be so cool if I could, um, find video of him. And then to see his personality. And here I really want to hear his voice, you know, and um, my stepsister might have video of him because she took all this video of the baby and he loved her first job when, when he was a baby. So they’re, you know, her husband’s editing stuff now. So I’m hoping she’ll come across it at some point. And then her, she has an uncle that’s in Glendale that supposedly has a ton of video, but she goes, Randy, I’m going to get it when he dies. And he’s, he’s not going get it yet. No, no, but, but I just would love God. I mean the fact that I was able to even get a name and find, you know, this much. I think I will, I’ll find video. I think I will. I’m, I’m, I’m ha. I really, I, I’m hoping,
Speaker 2: (43:44)
yeah, I mean maybe Babs has something you could, you know, he was kind of a,
Speaker 1: (43:54)
you and me. We would remember him if you met him. He was that type. Honestly, I know. Maybe balancing, you know, you never know what went on. And also there was, my sister is convinced that he was part at one time, part of organized crime because
Speaker 2: (44:11)
that seems very likely to say I’m not a historian, but I can say from the little I know, Oh we’re doing great. Okay.
Speaker 1: (44:20)
Um, yeah. Cause he would go to San Juan when they had the big meetings and it was always that time of year. Um, and he was the type that would make so money and then it’d be gone. So when he claimed bankruptcy, big deal and then he’d have it again. [inaudible] you know, to me that means this, but not like, you know, not like how we see in the movies, but
Speaker 2: (44:46)
the kind though [inaudible] well, yeah, but he would, he maybe wasn’t, he wasn’t dangerous. Maybe dangerous. I hope. I hope not. But he would get away with stuff and it wasn’t violently dangerous. He was dangerous in other ways. Maybe
Speaker 1: (45:01)
he wants to be, he beat up, he wants to be, my stepsister told me some stories.
Speaker 2: (45:06)
Oh, okay. I take it back. This man was on real character.
Speaker 1: (45:10)
Someone touched his stepdaughter, his, her sister that he supposedly adopted. We cannot find her name. Her name is Linda and she’s about 65. We don’t know where she is in the Mayfair. We can’t find her. She was in Hawaii and somebody touched her on the behind.
Speaker 2: (45:26)
Oh, he just lost it. Yeah. The guy couldn’t even walk when he won. Oh my gosh. And they were high at the time. Of course. So he would,
Speaker 1: (45:39)
but he, yeah, so he had, he would get angry and he blow up, you know, like that. Um, and he was the type that would say, don’t you know who I am? Can you know, they were going to Hawaii, they were all going to Hawaii and my stepsister was 12 at the time and she was so embarrassed.
Speaker 2: (45:56)
He was, you messed up our tickets. Don’t you know who I am? He threw a fit. They all live first class. First class. Oh, can you imagine? No, I just liked the first class part, but the rest, yeah. Like so embarrassing when you’re a 12 year old girl. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: (46:10)
he was, yeah. Very interesting in her. So anyway, I am, I really want to find that video. Some video of it and I do have to call somebody at the media center who was also from [inaudible] from Medford where my dad was from Medford, Massachusetts and he was also on jeopardy, works at the media center and he said he was his context at the game show network. So
Speaker 2: (46:36)
and a follow up. Yeah. It’s just a matter of connecting all the dots. I’m excited for this sort of sleuthing. It’s kind of like Nancy drew or something new went from one piece to the next. It’s really exciting. And you know,
Speaker 1: (46:53)
they were all, well I have another cousin, second cousin, my uncles daughter, my great uncle’s daughter. When she found out she’s 87, she said just one.
Speaker 2: (47:03)
There’s just, Hey, I better keep checking for those matches. I’m there is supposedly [inaudible]
Speaker 1: (47:11)
the another one but not maybe in this country. I mean, we don’t know. So, and my sister and my sister gets, it’s like, you’re enough.
Speaker 2: (47:21)
Wow.
Speaker 1: (47:22)
I know. But so, um, yeah, it’s been a really wild, interesting and wild [inaudible]
Speaker 3: (47:33)
parents and I really wanted to know, and now I know, and now I’ve been,
Speaker 1: (47:38)
you know, it’s a process, it’s quite the process to deal with.
Speaker 3: (47:43)
Um, but I feel like I would
Speaker 1: (47:46)
really, really want to see his, I want to hear him, I want to hear him and see what he was like.
Speaker 2: (47:52)
Give me like one more piece of, of who he is and yeah. Understanding. Did you ever, did you get to meet your dad? No. Father, no. But you’ve seen pictures of [inaudible] and there’s lots of, there’s lots of stuff. Yeah, I can hear him. Yeah. Wow. Um, yeah. And I, yeah. How’s that for you? Um, well I hadn’t thought about it in the way that you’re just, you’re sort of exploring it right now. So I’d have to read, I’d have to like go hear it again and think like, okay, what does it mean to hear his voice? Um, [inaudible] [inaudible] um, but uh, Oh wait, before we go, before we end, um, let’s, uh, do you have any advice for people that are new? Yeah. Going through this, either new to it or,
Speaker 1: (48:46)
or not new to it? Well, my advice is that there’s a lot of support, get support to support online and P E DNA, NPE group, which is so
Speaker 3: (48:57)
awesome. It has helped me tremendously. Um, and
Speaker 1: (49:02)
yeah, and there’s groups that w you know, where we meet in person that really, you know, that really has made a difference. The meetups, the meetup. Yes. Yeah.
Speaker 3: (49:10)
And um, yeah, that it’s, you know, that it’s,
Speaker 1: (49:15)
well, it’s not our fault and we weren’t even there. We weren’t even around at the time, you know. Um, and to be gentle and easy with yourself about it, you know.
Speaker 2: (49:26)
Yeah. Yeah. That’s good.
Speaker 1: (49:28)
Yeah. Not be, not, it’s, it’s okay. It’s a lot of emotion. It can be a lot of feelings
Speaker 3: (49:34)
they come up, so, yeah.
Speaker 2: (49:37)
[inaudible] take it easy. Take it easy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Was going to say thank you so much. Thank you so much for coming. This is, so is there anything else you want to tell me about your story? I tell everybody this, but, um, definitely like contact me if you think of something that you didn’t put in or something bothers you that you want to change or okay. Et cetera, et cetera, definitely contacted me right away. Um, but thank you. Thank you. Yeah, your story is, it’s intro, it’s, it’s interesting, but it’s also got this sort of fun element because we’re choosing to be, it’s cool because you seem to be able to hold like sympathy for your empathy and sympathy for your mom and recognize the really hard side of this and, and also see that the personality traits of this guy are not actually, um, something we would look for in a father or maybe a partner. Right. But still sort of enjoy the stories of it and still consider it, um, what it means for you or how it’s a part of you. Well, I did [inaudible]
Speaker 1: (50:45)
think about, I’m sorry. I did think about one more story when I had to come back to [inaudible] because he was married to two women
Speaker 2: (50:52)
[inaudible] he walks in this, that’s hard. I imagine
Speaker 1: (50:55)
it was 1947, I think. And he had, you know, they wore spats then and he comes in late to the court, to the court and he’s swinging a watch walks in and says, what seems to be the problem here? I mean, he was, you’re married.
Speaker 2: (51:12)
I’m fighting to get rid of one. What, you know, that’s how they thought of what it was. No big deal. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (51:19)
And he did. He ended up, well, he finally did. He, you know, my sister’s mom wanted the divorce, so he gave finally gave it to her. But you gotta write all this down. I know. I could I, and she was going to write a book, my mother, my sister’s mom was going to write it cause he was, you know, couldn’t be, can’t believe how things, anyway, yeah, I should, I need to write it down. This is true. Anyway,
Speaker 2: (51:45)
thank you. So, yeah. Oh my gosh. So fun. So fun. And I’m so happy to have you here in person. Think I’ve been to, had to do, you know, I, I’m so happy to talk to anybody and I really, um, I’m so glad technology has made it possible for me to be able to do the telephone and the, the computer interviews, but it’s just such a difference to be in the room with somebody and be able to look you in the eye while you’re telling the story and hear your voice and feel your energy. It’s really great. So glad you came over here. Yeah, I’m going to turn it off.
Speaker 1: (52:13)
Okay. Is it off.
Speaker 1: (00:00)
All right. Amazing. Cancel my doctor’s appointment. Yeah, we’re good to go. Okay.
Speaker 2: (00:08)
Amazing. Amazing. Yeah. For now until something else happens. But also it just makes me make the struggle. Makes me appreciate it all the more.
Speaker 1: (00:19)
Fair enough. All right. So what’s up Aaron? Um,
Speaker 2: (00:30)
how have you, you know, have you been in the past 20 years? 20 no, 26
Speaker 1: (00:36)
six years. I left. I left California in 1995 so yeah. Okay. 2024 whatever those years have been, you know, a net positive. It’s a really amazing, it’s amazing, you know, it’s like an amazing frame of reference that create a ups and downs. Sure. Okay. Well, so the last, the last,
Speaker 2: (01:06)
the last thing I remember, is that you or not that I remember, but my, my understanding is you and your brother came to Petaluma from New York
Speaker 1: (01:19)
and is that correct or did you come from, you mean initially like in 1992 yeah, we moved there from New York, from New York. Great. Yup. And then,
Speaker 2: (01:31)
and so then you were, we all did sort of middle school together. Your brother was a little bit older and then,
Speaker 1: (01:37)
and then, uh,
Speaker 2: (01:38)
and then you moved away, you moved back to New York.
Speaker 3: (01:42)
Okay.
Speaker 1: (01:43)
Yup. Yeah, after that was the last I ever heard of. Um, I came back a couple of times. I met, you know, uh, yeah, I mean I came back at least a couple of times to visit, I mean, and hung out for a couple of days or whatever. But the last time I was in Petaluma it was, Oh, it was right before I went to graduate school, I guess 2000 fall of 2007, I guess. Um, I went to see some friends in San Francisco [inaudible] who weren’t, who were, I had nothing to do with, you know, my time in Petaluma, although one of them, one of them, I mean it’s people I met in college, one of whom happened to have grown up in Sebastopol.
Speaker 1: (02:33)
So I convinced them when I was visiting them and hanging out with them that we should like, Hey, what if we went to the North Bay for a day in your car? And I dragged them around Petaluma and had memories. And feelings. Um, yeah. But then we moved back to New York and I went to high school there. And it was compared to, compared to what, you know, my Petaluma experience was, it was pretty miserable. Um, there’s a chance it was the town I grew up in, which is fine. It was in the woods and I like the woods, but it was like, it was not if, you know, I didn’t, I wasn’t able to, I wasn’t able to skateboard anywhere. I lived on a dirt road, but like I couldn’t skate into town. I could ride my bike into town, but it was a tiny town with nothing going on.
Speaker 1: (03:19)
And my friends all lived down other various dirt roads and other towns. Um, so then somebody gets a driver’s license and things sort of open up. But I was, I’m a November birthday, so I was young for my grades, all this stuff. Right, right. This is more than I would say about high school in general. But, um, yeah. So it was definitely a less, and I resented my parents for years and years for moving back. My brother went to, my brother went to college anyway at that point. So it didn’t matter really. Right. I mean, he, while he was, yeah, he, we arrived in Petaluma and he was entering 10th grade and I was entering sixth, whatever. Anyway. Um,
Speaker 2: (04:00)
so your memories, I mean just, just the Deena here nor there, but just, yeah, it’s just interesting. So your memories of Petaluma are at the end of middle school are that,
Speaker 1: (04:12)
yeah, and some of that I think is because it was nice to suggested that they were incorrect. Right, right, right. Um, and some of that I think is also because of the sort of what I built up in my mind around it when we left. Um, and just came to a less, I mean, where I came from in New York was like a bedroom community for New York city. And so in theory it was very cultured and very, um, I mean it was certainly well better, you know, better off town or whatever than Petaluma. Um, but ultimately that meant a bunch of like preppy jackasses and a couple people, a couple people I, you know, was good friends with, but, um, it was not as diverse or interesting as Petaluma and, and I think I knew better Luma was those things when we were in junior high, um, mixed with all the horrible bullshit in junior high of everything’s steaming like the end of the world at all times. Yeah. Just being a teenager. Right.
Speaker 2: (05:12)
Yeah, for sure. Definitely. Um, okay. And then I remember that you always were wearing blue doc Martins.
Speaker 1: (05:21)
Yeah. At that time I was, I’ll have those blue doc Martins tied to nut and my feet are much larger. I have not worn a pair of doc Martens, uh, probably since well, well that was the other thing is I arrived in high school in New York to this sort of like hippie white, preppy white hat scenario in my full kind of Petaluma, like third wave Skog gear, which I make no judgment of me or my classmates in New York. It was just not something that they recognize. Right. Um, uh, yeah, no, I uh, went on to be a person wearing other kinds of shoes. Um, yeah. But yeah, I mean if you want to brief what the hell I’ve actually been up to Burlington, I’m happy to tell you that and I’d love to know the same.
Speaker 2: (06:17)
I want you to want to know that I have one picture of you that I, that I is like my permanent image of you and it’s at my, my, we had a huge birthday party for my 14th birthday and it was with two other girls. Um, and uh, your S and there’s just a picture of you there sitting, sitting next to another girl that we went to school with named Tara and she was wearing a hat with a propeller on the top and you are in a flannel with sort of a, yeah. Nineties skater bull cut. That’s a little bit lady and your braces. Uh huh. So that, yeah, that’s so it’s, so it’s, it’s like, it’s not hard to imagine you as a grownup, but it’s a very, very different idea. Right. It’s like incongruent in my mind.
Speaker 1: (07:10)
Yeah. I wish I could remember that party. I look at them every day. Sure. I’m sure you do. I have, I have very, my memory is not, um, I don’t know. I guess I don’t have a very good memory. Um, I remember like very little about almost my entire life. Um, and, and so like, it’s more impressions. Oh, I can remember being at like certain shows at the Phoenix or hanging out in work or whatever. Um, anyway, uh, after all that, um, and after high school, which was like, I also later on turn, you know, realize that, you know, like, Oh, high school was going to be high school anywhere and everything was going to seem awful because teenagers. Right. Um, and do you have one of those I think, right? So you’re the same. Yeah. And you’re getting to relive that through or I guess, um, terrible. Uh, so yeah. So I went to college, um, in Western Massachusetts at a place called Hampshire college, which is in the town of Amherst, but is not connected to your,
Speaker 2: (08:14)
yeah, I know Hampshire. Who do I know that went there. I’ll figure it out. I know someone that went there,
Speaker 1: (08:19)
I almost feel like there’s a pedal in my person. Um, but, uh, say I went to Hampshire and I studied, uh, well you get to the, make your own nature there. So I studied experimental music and cultural studies, so I was doing, um, kind of avant garde music stuff and as well as kind of film and literature theory stuff. Um, uh, you know, kind of all right. Um, so, so the music I was making at that time and since, um, this was pretty open ended and, and often improvisational and, and often about kind of repurposing materials that aren’t intended to be musical or so it could be some pieces of metal or it could be some something that was intended to be musical, like a Casio keyboard, but it has become broken and makes the wrong sounds. Um, or, and really this is something that I really do at the moment, um, in my music practice.
Speaker 1: (09:21)
And I also am a sound artists and make sound art. And the main thing I do now is field recording, which is why I have all this recording here with me. On the patient that I’m not using because it didn’t work with the computer. Um, but so recording natural sounds, uh, human made sounds and leaving them be and presenting them as they are or repurposing them and editing them. Um, I have an installation that just opened at, uh, one of the art museums in Louisville, um, created some from mostly from field recordings around Kentucky. Um, and that’s something that I do, but that is not my job. Cause you work at the library. Yes. I work at the Louisville free public library and I could say that again later if we could go to a part of this that isn’t just catching up. Um, but to get us from here to there.
Speaker 1: (10:17)
Um, yeah, so from Hampshire I moved, I was playing music and touring around a lot and I moved in the early two thousands to Louisville, Kentucky for no particular reason other than people were nice when I played shows there. And, um, let’s see. Well, before that even I worked, um, I worked in the public library in the town of Amherst, Massachusetts and then moved to Kentucky and eventually worked at the university library at the university of Loval. And then from there I figured, um, that I had an utterly useless, uh, bachelor’s degree in experimental music.
Speaker 1: (11:00)
Yeah. Not useless to my, you know, wellbeing or even ultimately to my skills. I mean, I would, well, or honestly to my ability to do good work. I’m definitely saying that as a joke and not a reality, but it wasn’t going to, but there aren’t any jobs in it for sure. Um, directly. Um, and my process of becoming a librarian is that I had been working in libraries as a paraprofessional. Um, I figured that I was not a good enough person to become a teacher, but I figured that I was, I was the next step down. Um, I was a good enough person to become a library. Good enough. Uh, I, I mean, I think, I think dedicated enough would be another way of saying and watching all the teachers that I knew and know. Um, I don’t, I just didn’t think I was had, you know, what you had to put in to be a good teacher, even though that’s something that occurred to me in the past.
Speaker 1: (12:04)
Right. But I felt that I did have what it takes, what you need to put in to be a good librarian. Um, so I moved from Kentucky to Montreal in 2008 to get a master’s degree in library science. And I specialized in archival studies and spent most of the last decade as an archivist, which relates to what we’re talking about today. Um, and, um, and really enjoyed living in Montreal. And I would, I would like to have stayed there. Um, but, uh, I met my wife. There is also a nice important thing that happened and she is cubic was um, and bilingual and, um, she was the music director of the campus community radio station at McGill university where, where I was a volunteer starting in my first semester of grad school. Um, and so, and she makes experimental music to say in real life. Exactly. Um, uh, so yeah.
Speaker 1: (13:21)
And then from there, uh, I needed the job and I couldn’t find one there. So I worked, moved to New York city, um, for a couple of years after finishing grad school and worked in the archives of, um, this Jewish aid organization. And there is actually a relevant, uh, relevant to the podcast. Part of that, that will probably come up. But, um, yeah. Meanwhile I didn’t really want to be in New York. I didn’t have any special love for that organization though. They certainly did good work. Um, so I was kind of frantically trying to get to back to Montreal cause my wife, we weren’t married yet, she was still in Montreal. Um, she was in Montreal and we’re, I just want to do somewhere I had lived before because I was getting too old to make new friends. Uh, and uh, so I was looking in New York or in New York. I was living in Montreal. I was looking in Maine or I happened to be sitting right now, I was looking in Western Massachusetts and I was looking in back in Kentucky and the job came up in Kentucky after like two and a half or three years in New York. Um, so I’ve been back there since 2013. Um, and my wife came down, we got married so she get her green card and she came down and we bought a house. So we adopted a dog and uh, Oh.
Speaker 1: (14:44)
Yup. Sorry about that. I’m going to close. I am next to an open window because it was quiet outside and it’s hot, but I’m going to close. Um, there we go. Um, yeah, so, and then I got, you know, this is relevant to any relevant to the podcast, but I pretty much never loved archives. It turned out there were parts of it I liked. I, I kind of positioned myself as a multimedia archivist, so I was working on film and audio archives and that interested me, but, Oh man, it’s, it’s, it’s a lot of deal turn out to not be a detailed oriented person in the way that is relevant to that job. Um, and uh, and I found my way back into, um, this job at the public library in Louisville that I, that I really, really am, am enjoying doing adult programming, um, and basically booking lectures and all these things.
Speaker 1: (15:41)
And the skillset comes from the 20 years of putting on kind of music shows at bars and basements and art galleries and like, it’s booking, people would call it curating now, but it’s booking and I know how to do. Um, and it’s sad that I paid so much for my master’s degree, but, um, so that’s what I do. Um, sound art, library stuff. Um, riding a bicycle, walking my dog, um, trying to read and stuff like that. What have you been doing since? Not since our, do you love Lowville people? Some people that I talk to that Novo, no, I don’t, um, what Louisville has going for it, um, that I’ve not found anywhere else really. Um, it’s a place that I, there are a lot of ways that I really dislike it, but the people, it’s very hard to leave. It’s just, it has an just a phenomenal community of human beings that in the, at first ever set foot there in 2002 when I first ever lived there in 2005.
Speaker 1: (16:47)
So, uh, you know, coming up on 20 years, um, I just, you know, the community of people is so strong and renews itself over time and something that I noticed moving there from Western Massachusetts and I don’t know, um, how much you know about Western Massachusetts. It’s a very progressive place. Um, and probably one of the most progressive places in the country and the rhetoric is all kind of great there, but there’s not a lot of necessarily chances to live that rhetoric. So for instance, the word community, um, was bandying about almost endlessly, but I didn’t feel there was one. And in Louisville at least. Then in the early two thousands, you know, you’d never hear the word community, but you would just experience it. And I had a lot of, I still have, you know, a lot of friends in Western Massachusetts and they form a community in a way, but, um, Louisville was great for that.
Speaker 1: (17:46)
Uh, I am not suited to the climate. It’s just so hot and humid in the winter is disappointing cause I like winter and um, that stuff’s tough. The politics are tough. I mean local politics are the most progressive in the state, but, um, it’s, it’s, you know, grading and wearing and now as a public employee, um, of course being attacked left and right and trying to be denied a pension and all that. Um, that’s pretty grading too. Um, it’s, it’s, it’s lovely, but it’s not California beautiful and it’s not a Massachusetts or Maine beautiful and it’s not right. But you guys have created a life there. I do have to say to you, because you are as far as I know in Los Angeles that my wife and I own a 1200 square foot, two or three bedroom bungalow on a quarter acre. That costs,
Speaker 2: (18:44)
yeah. Priced. Yep. Totally sure I’d be said.
Speaker 1: (18:54)
I mean, I, yeah. I don’t say it to upset people. I do say it though to suggest that even though I don’t love Louisville, but I do like to always tell people in the very big cities that like, I’ve also spent a lot of time in Nashville and Cincinnati and lots of in Minneapolis and like Americas, midsize cities really have a lot to,
Speaker 2: (19:17)
yeah. Yeah. And one of the things we have to recommend them is that you can live there and they turn out to be culturally. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. No, I, I fantasize. Yeah. I find if I fantasize all the time about those, those, those city, those places. Um, how far is Louisville from, uh, from West Virginia? How long does it take you? Is it, do you have to drive across the whole state?
Speaker 1: (19:41)
Uh, yeah. It depends where in West Virginia. Um, so we have friends in Charleston and that’s a good four hours, maybe a little more. Um, but there’s, but there’s more of West Virginia than that. And the problem once you get into West Virginia, um, and Eastern Kentucky is that it’s very vertical. Um, so there’s a lot of things that on the map look close together, involve a lot of going on. Um, uh, but yeah, I mean West Virginia itself is not incredibly far. That’s another neat thing the local does have going forward is it’s three hours to Nashville and it’s four hours to st Louis and it’s five hours to Chicago and it’s five hours to Memphis and it’s an hour and a half to Cincinnati. You can go to a lot of other similarly sized cities and see slightly different things. Um,
Speaker 2: (20:33)
yeah, that sounds great. Um, my, my daughter, the teen, the teenage daughter, she lives in Huntington, West Virginia now, um, which is a, yeah. And then there’s a long, long and exciting story that goes, goes along with that. But, um,
Speaker 1: (20:48)
but she, yeah, so I’ve been, I’m actually going there next week. Um, but I’m, I’m just starting to become familiar with that region. Well, Huntington’s a college town, it is a college town. Um, go heard. Yeah. Or something like that. All of the mountaineers, right. I guess, I don’t know. It’s a bowl of some kind. It’s like a Marshall. Oh, right. It’s a marshal. It’s not a West Virginia state, which is some kind of bowl with your, with, with ears bulletin boards. Um, yeah. Well great. Yeah. I heard like heard pride or something like that is what they say. Say. Yeah. So that’s why I was asking just to, well, if you’re ever, if your flight has ever diverted to Louisville, please stop by and we’re happy to have, you know, I never know where, you know, starts just starting the college discussion with my, with my daughter, um, to, there’s some weekends where we’ll be driving around to various various university places, but right.
Speaker 1: (22:06)
Uh, well for real, if you are looking in and around, you know, Louisville or some part of Kentucky and you need a place to say, uh, plus. I mean, I don’t, I don’t know if to being an Huntington as indicative of wanting to remain in the, in the upper South or the East or whatever it is. But, um, Kentucky has some, some pretty interesting. Um, yeah, it’s liberal Berea and center and I know alumns of all those places for sure. Yeah. No, she, she, that’s definitely like her vibe. She’s, she, she has fantasies of or, or plans or dreams of being a, a creative writer. Um, so, so we’ll go to Berea and hang around books. That’s what I’ll tell her to do. Um, no problem. Well, she doesn’t have to take my order. Sure. The town of Berea, Kentucky has one very good, uh, East Asian noodle restaurant more than most small towns in Kentucky.
Speaker 1: (23:14)
Totally. Uh, that’s awesome. And what has your brother, he’s good. Um, so he now splits his time between New York and Rhode Island. Um, he’s right. So he went off to college when, when we were leaving California. Anyway, he also went to Hampshire college, um, before years before me. So I guess I also went to Antioch college. Um, he was in theater initially doing like electric and lighting and stuff. Um, but then he and my sister in law started, um, we started a number of businesses, but first they started this business called the Brooklyn kitchen in Brooklyn, um, at a time when, when food was just being invented or you know, by people. Um, and so he had, he had actually, you know, very good foresight to see a, a whole, I mean, my brother and sister in law have both really deeply care about food and are great cooks, um, and, and really interested in, in all of the aspects.
Speaker 1: (24:23)
But they saw that in North Brooklyn where they live, there was nowhere to get, uh, basically quality cookware or anything. So they started to kitchenware store. And then that grew into a kitchen where store with a butcher shop in it and a small grocery and then in a cheese counter, all this stuff. And then it grew into a school. Yep. And, and a cooking school. And what survives of the Brooklyn kitchen. Now eventually they got out of the stuff business and are now just in the, uh, you know, teaching and experience business. So they still run the school and, um, they, you know, also rent the school out for, you know, cooking, cooking classes as corporate retreat or as party, you know. Um, and my brother, my is also the U S sales president or something for a Japanese for an 800 year old Japanese label company, um, through a relationship built through that, through the store.
Speaker 1: (25:18)
Um, and they are, they split their time with Rhode Island, my sister in laws from there. Um, she was an engineer, uh, like a, like a building engineer, um, before they did the food businesses. But they, she’s from Rhode Island, her family’s all up there. Um, my brother and sister in law very smartly, um, bought a building in North Brooklyn about 12 years ago and sold it about two years ago. Um, and I guess you can avoid, I guess if you buy more real estate, you never have to write something like that. So they brought, so they bought a neat house in Rhode Island on the water. We’re not on the water, but near the water. Uh, that’s, um, basically to use on, you know, on weekends. And they rented out a bit and so they could go and see family. Um, but then they just like last week, I don’t know when school starts in California, um, but here it usually starts right around labor day, right after labor day. And like basically last week they decided, Hey, what if we enroll the kids up here instead of in New York? And so in the course of like 48 hours, they enrolled their kids in school, in Rhode Island and now are now, at least one of them is in Rhode Island with the kids at all times. Um, and the, and, and the other goes to New York to do their business and then they trade off. Um, so that’s pretty weird to
Speaker 2: (26:44)
[inaudible].
Speaker 1: (26:45)
Uh, it’s about three hours to the part of Rhode Island where their house is, um, and a little bit farther to, to Providence where her family is. Um, and they have two kids. So I have a niece and a nephew. Um, my niece, my niece’s name is Moxie and yup. [inaudible] but my nephew’s name is Frank. So you know, different kinds of [inaudible] names.
Speaker 2: (27:07)
Brooklyn, right.
Speaker 1: (27:12)
Yeah. But they’re great. And, um, occasionally they come to Kentucky or I go see them and yeah,
Speaker 2: (27:17)
that’s really cool. You guys, it seems like you guys have done well by I buy some one metric or another. Um,
Speaker 1: (27:29)
I think we’ve done interesting things and, and you know, squandered our, you know, immigrant great-grandparents endeavors to the best possible outcome.
Speaker 2: (27:42)
Cool jobs. Right, right. Your, your brother’s carrying on the line. You’ve got a great dog, you know it. Great. Cool. So, yeah, I mean, yeah. Uh, I did other things too, but he’ll tell me a few of ’em. I got a C I M I just, uh, I, um, tried quickly grabbing, quickly grab, like grabbing and discarding different moments. Um, I, I went to, I went to UC Santa Cruz and did not like it. And, um, so I stayed, I stayed long enough to, to qualify to go to a France program and for a program and for, and a for a program in France. And, um, so I lived there for a little bit and really loved it and came back and never went back to Santa Cruz. Um, but went to San Francisco and then, um, got pregnant pretty quickly, um, with, with a guy. And, um, and so, so Lily was born when I was 22 and, and then we moved, we moved to New York for a minute cause he, cause he was from New York, her dad’s from New York, Brooklyn, uh, Irish Catholic, firefighter family, um, original parks, slope people.
Speaker 2: (29:19)
Um, and we lived there for a minute and that didn’t, didn’t work out for lots of various reasons, lots of reasons. Um, and so I moved back to California with, with Lily and then we, um, made our way down to LA and we’ve been here now for like 13 years, which is crazy. Um, and I’ve been, I’ve been writing for that time and, and waitressing for a lot of it. And then, um, at some point my husband and I, he’s also a writer to sort of like discussed that, um, at least one of us needed to get, get, be in a position to get a job anywhere at any time if we needed it. So I went back to school to become a therapist. Um, so I’m now a licensed marriage and family therapist. Um, yeah. And uh, we have, we have some kids and um, we have, uh, we have, uh, uh, Dallas is almost four and Margo is seven weeks old. And uh, yeah, the new one, the new one is new. Thank you.
Speaker 1: (30:36)
Well, congratulations. I don’t, I mean, I think I knew about, uh, the other two from social media, but maybe chose to not post as much on social media this time or something or I don’t pay attention.
Speaker 2: (30:50)
I posted once, once or twice about Margo, but that’s it.
Speaker 4: (30:53)
Um,
Speaker 1: (30:55)
good. I’m not gonna encourage anyone to post anything on social media ever. Um, well congratulations. That’s great.
Speaker 2: (31:03)
Yes, we have a, we have a pretty good time. I have a pretty good time here, here in LA. And my husband is a writer and I’m on a show right now, so that’s great. And uh, and then my daughter, um, are you a year and a half ago? Uh, she, it, I won’t get it. I won’t get so into it right now, but uh, she, she went from like zero to 60 on the teenage rebellion, wild self destructive behavior thing so fast, so fast. Um, it was just,
Speaker 1: (31:41)
I mean, Huntington, West Virginia is, is beyond 16.
Speaker 2: (31:46)
She uh, yeah, she just started, she, we couldn’t get her to just start, we couldn’t get her to reel it in and she was getting in trouble. And more importantly, we were extremely worried about her and her dad now lives there in Huntington, West Virginia, so, so, so at some point it just became clear that that LA was not, the, was not a good place for her. So she, uh, so she went there and it’s been like a year and a half. She started her junior year. She did her sophomore year there. And now is doing her junior year.
Speaker 1: (32:20)
Oh. So teenager and I, you know, it’s the kind of thing that I hope we’ll all kind of come out in the wash for her and it’ll all be experienced to lead her to be, you know, when I look back at any of no, I mean, I whatever, I didn’t get, you know, I don’t think I was much trouble my parents or anything, but all the things even like moving back to New York, which was like such a drag at the time and it made me so angry. Um, you know, ultimately it’s like, well now it just doesn’t, the cool thing is it just doesn’t matter at all. I wish it hadn’t gone and gotten a master’s degree, but also right away. So, but then it’s like eventually what happened? I don’t know.
Speaker 5: (33:05)
That’s the like we just, the, this, the struggle, um, nah, right now or the like, the sort of emotional struggle is just to hope it’s a phase, you know? And there’s no way to know until we’re there. So it’s like we’re just in it and we assume it’s a teenage thing. And we can, we’re all assuming this will be a time that we talk about in the future, you know, but I think to do in the meeting and nothing to do about it, this is kind of, well if she’s still like this when she’s 25, we’ll have a different kind of conversation.
Speaker 1: (33:39)
Right, right. I know that this, I know that this happens everywhere with teenagers, but there is a very, but there is also, um, and this could be a conversation for another time or another podcast, California. Oh, I mean I guess you’ve lived almost all of your life there. California is such a goddamn weird place and just the combination of everything. California is supposed to be that. I mean by the time you and I were growing up there, whatever it wasn’t, it wasn’t being sold as the garden of Eden to dust migrants anymore. But even so, just the reality, and this is Manson and this is the Yahoo after, you know, father yod call and this is all of the cults and everything and the germs and the LA punk scene, like all avail, all of California’s culture ends up coming out of this. But like, Whoa, that’s a disparity between what California is supposed to be and all of that sunshine and all that sea breeze. And then you have to actually like be a kid and grow up in it. It’s, it’s easy to imagine how it doesn’t,
Speaker 5: (34:42)
How it goes to skew fast in LA. I mean everybody, you know, everyone’s like, Oh, LA LA is a hard place to grow up and be a kid. I mean, because there just isn’t a lot of space for kids. They really, they really ask you to, the city asks or suggests that you grow up pretty fast. So, uh, it’s not as bad as it especially is especially shocking. But, um, but it’s not fun. It’s not fun anyway. But, uh, but I think 10 is a new kind of culture and that we’re learning about.
Speaker 1: (35:15)
Yeah, there’s all kinds of truffles a way. It’s probably not trouble. That’s not available in LA. Yeah, it’s funny, you know, kids die all the time in mud logging accidents. No, no, no, no. I know I it out of the trucks into the mud, but then they die
Speaker 6: (35:38)
anyway. Turned out fine.
Speaker 2: (35:45)
We just, I just keep making her promise me that she won’t take any pills.
Speaker 6: (35:52)
Yeah. That’s a good place to start.
Speaker 2: (35:55)
Um, that anybody’s offering you anywhere. Uh, yeah. So. Okay. All right, let’s get to this. What, alright here. Uh, Aaron, you’ve got your masters in library science with, uh, explain that to me again and with a specialty in archival.
Speaker 6: (36:17)
Sure. I have a master of library and information science and I have a specialization in archival studies that led you to work.
Speaker 6: (36:33)
I worked, uh, for a couple of years in New York at a place called the American Jewish joint distribution committee, which everybody there and elsewhere calls JDC for short. And JDC was this eight organization founded around world war one a to help Jewish refugees from that conflict. And of course worldwide one was not just in Europe, it kind of stretched into the present day, you know, middle East and North Africa where there were Jewish communities. And so the organizations sprung up to to bring American Jewish communities and American Jewish philanthropic communities together to provide aid to those migrants. So they did that and world war one and then this other world working him up. That was kind of, uh, impactful to the Jewish community, especially in Europe. Yeah. Right. Um, so what I did there for the most part, uh, was processing archival records of, of mostly the immediately post world war II era.
Speaker 6: (37:38)
But something that JDC did, and this was not specifically my project, but something JDC did was to help connect people. Right. People were fleeing Europe. People were people who came out of, um, concentration camps and military prisons were just kind of being sent to places and ending up where they ended up. And there’s no internet. And if you’re those folks, there’s no telephone or nobody to call. And so JDC compiled lists of who was where, who was on what ship, you know, going where going to America, going here and there. And they had this, this
Speaker 6: (38:18)
ability to help families connect back to each other after world war II. Um, you know, help survivors connect with their families. And those lists have lived on the physical lists and the physical passenger lists, any kind of ID cards for different people that came in contact with JDC and those who’ve all been digitized. There’s a great digital project@jdc.org probably slash. Archives. I can’t actually remember, uh, call this names index, uh, based on these lists. And you can go now and see kind of who was, was moving around where and see the original kind of cards, people that were, that were typed up or written up whenever someone came in contact with JDC in any of their, um, kind of services.
Speaker 6: (39:10)
And, and that’s a huge reference now for, um, Jewish American folks doing family history and genealogy. Who may know well, my grandfather, my great grandfather, my great grandmother, they came after the war. I know they showed up in New York or they showed up in Baltimore or wherever they showed up. And, and I don’t, I don’t really know. They didn’t tell stories or died before I was born or whatever. Um, but you can, you can figure out, you know, when they showed up and who else from the family might’ve come and things like that. So it’s really powerful tool. I was working more with the administrative records, which were, um, powerful in a very boring way. Uh, and they spoke to the, just really the dedication of the JDC staff in that era. I’m just working tirelessly to, to provide for displaced persons and refugees, um, but not as, not as thrilling in a kind of one by one name by name sense. So it was the JDC. So they had branches or, um, or agents working, um, in places beyond New York city.
Speaker 6: (40:20)
Yeah, absolutely. So, and you know, and I should say it’s currently still active as an international aid organization. It is less, um, it’s nondenominational now. Basically they do all kinds of aid around the world to Jewish communities and to other communities. Um, but no, I mean, during world war II, after world war II, there were offices everywhere and there were, I mean, agents makes it sound like, um, sort of spy thrillers saying that they had employees or, or what we would now call, I don’t know what we were drawing on program coordinators, program coordinators. Yes. Right. We exactly. I mean it’s very much social work. Exactly. Um, so case workers, um, for in established offices. And then also, um, you know, as things would pop up. So there’s, there was this massive evacuation of Jews in Yemen and now I think 1948 I could be wrong on the year.
Speaker 6: (41:28)
It’s been a while since I looked at all the records related to it. But, you know, JDC I think was known and probably is known for being able to kind of mobilize very quickly and develop a plan and implement it. So they contracted with these, um, airlines, you know, commercial, you know, freight airlines or, or just kind of a, what do you call that? Nope, there’s my dog working. Um, so they were able to, you know, contract with airlines, get planes to, you know, make some agreement with the, whatever government was in Yemen to say, Hey, if we come and bring air transport, can we move these people out? Okay, we can, we’ll, we’ll hire turned out to be Alaska airways. I don’t know why it was Alaska airways, I guess. I mean, whatever. A lot of the air travel in the North, uh, and the work, Jake is this kind of hired, you know, cargo, et cetera. Um, so charter, that’s the word I’ve been looking for. So this charter, you know, so they chartered a bunch of planes and they evacuated all these folks out and then, and then I think they were out of Yemen and probably did not have anyone there as soon as they were done. Um, but yeah, they responded all over the world in, in that era.
Speaker 5: (42:43)
Cool. Uh, good, I guess. Great. So, so, so talk to me, um, a little bit about what, uh, what, none in a, this is not my, this is not my ego asking, but what, what about my podcast? Uh, did you sort of feel connected to or that, that thought you thought you’ve got something to talk about and it’s, and it’s about being an art archivist in this place and, um, and working with people on genealogy. And I have to admit that I actually, uh, I’m, I, I’m sort of like struggling with this, but I just, I don’t, I, this whole experience has came to me so unexpectedly. Um, and part of that is that I’m not, I wasn’t interested in my ancestry, so the, the, the people that are, I definitely, um, I don’t, that’s not something that, that I understand. So you, you may understand. Right,
Speaker 6: (43:46)
right. Well, I don’t know if I do. So it’s really the following job in Kentucky before my current job at the public library, um, that brought me much into much closer contact with genealogists and family historians. So at JDC, they were mostly kinda interacting, you know, we had digitize most of this stuff so folks didn’t have to come see us. But when I moved to Kentucky in 2013, it was to take a job at the Filson historical society, which is the oldest and largest private historical society in Kentucky. Like most States, Kentucky has a state historical society that’s a public institution, but the Filson started in 1884 and that’s before there was a Kentucky society run by the state. And it is a pretty major geological library for the upper South and the Ohio Valley region. It is a pretty major repository for paper collections, manuscript collections, historical photos, and lots of other materials, artifacts, a great museum collection. And again, I want to clarify, I don’t work there anymore. I worked there for about five years and
Speaker 6: (45:03)
I worked in a department that was partially about archives and manuscripts and cataloging. And partially it was about a public facing referenced services for our researchers. And those researchers were academics and academic historians and people coming to look at our collections for whatever, uh, extremely obtuse academic purpose. And I say that with love. I mean, it would, there would be really, really bizarre requests that were fascinating. Um, but the other large part of the Filson’s patron group or researcher group are genealogists and family historians. And that was new for me too. So I’m part of the American Jewish experience that kind of starts in the lower East side of Manhattan in the early 20th century. And I know what countries my ancestors came to the lower East side from. And sometimes I know what part of what countries they came from. And that’s kind of enough for me personally. I is that information that you grew up knowing or you yeah, no, I mean the, you know, stories where they are in my family and I knew that I had German ancestors and Russian ancestors and Hungarian ancestors. Um, and, and, and again, I think the specifics of that were less interesting to me. And maybe it’s because I grew up in New York, not far from New York city that it really, but to me kinda history begins in that immigrant experience as the lower East side
Speaker 7: (46:43)
[inaudible]
Speaker 6: (46:45)
of Manhattan turn of the century. That’s, that is my grandparents. My grandparents were all but one were the children of immigrants. One was an immigrant and that’s where they, they grew up there in Brooklyn. And their experience to me I think is, was kind of at the beginning of time as far as my family is concerned. And that’s not, cause nobody would talk about the war. And my family absolutely lost, you know, lost family members in the Holocaust. Uh, again, directly my direct family had come over in the teens mostly even before, before and after world war one. But that just, that’s just seemed like were history began to me. And that’s still, it’s still kinda does. I mean, I’m interested in the European Jewish experience. I’m interested in European history, uh, and I’m interested in American history, but it, it wasn’t something finding my seventh grade grandfather on whichever side was not something I even realized people did.
Speaker 6: (47:40)
I was coming in as ed. So at the Filson I was coming in as an archivist and I was coming into catalog materials and preserve historic film. There’s some really neat amateur film from that, that even the twenties and then the thirties and forties. And then here I was put at this reference desk and was asked to, you know, serve folks, working on their family history and genealogy. And Kentucky has a long history. Uh, I have a friend who’s, uh, his brother is the, I believe the eighth generation to live in their, in their family house, their family homestead in Louisville. I mean it was when it was farmland and woods and it’s now part of suburban Louisville. But you know, people have been in the same place for eight generations, which to me, again, just based on my experiences is kind of dumbfounding. Um, I imagine, I imagine your family hasn’t been in California for a generations cause now a lot of white people have been, um, Oh my gosh.
Speaker 6: (48:43)
No. Right. Yeah, that’s uh, yeah, it’s like unfathomable to me. So, so that was interesting. And, and so I was there for about five years and throughout that time I would spend part of every single week on that reference desk answering questions for genealogists, helping them find resources, answering phone calls and emails, um, looking at County histories and state histories and tax lists and cemetery indexes. And census records and all of the tools that we’re and, and really still are the mainstay of genealogists and family historians, which I’m finally answering your question. What I heard in your podcast was, was this kind of interesting, you know, the genetic part of genealogy is, has definitely, you know, it’s become a big factor in genealogy and family history. Um, but it’s replacing, we’re not gonna placing it’s there in addition to all of this kind of, uh, you know, pounded on the sidewalk looking for that one district advocate and that one birth certificate and that one naturalization record and that one land claim that people spend not just years but decades on. And so I just, I hoped maybe that it would be of interest to kind of turn some of this on its head and show what it even, what genealogy has been about for a long time. And I don’t think it’s all about, I’m very wholesome things necessarily and to kind of just,
Speaker 5: (50:31)
okay.
Speaker 6: (50:32)
You know, look into that a little bit and, and have folks who are just starting to think about what genealogy is because of genetic testing. Because of finding relationships with the living relatives to think about some of the other things it does. And is
Speaker 5: (50:49)
[inaudible] Nope, absolutely. Um, I am, I’m, I’m so excited. Um, and if I feel so stupid, cause I, I w when you, when you, when you contacted me, I was like, Oh, of course. Like why haven’t I thought about talking to, to someone who, who knows about this, about genealogists beyond just a person that says like, I’m the, I’m a family historian and then I did ancestry.com and this happened, um, because I, yeah, I don’t even, um, uh, understand how, how it gets started. I sort of, I mean, I, I’m not, I’m not like so, so blind to, to, to family interest, but um, but yeah, people, people that are digging and digging. And then when you said spending, spending decades to, to unders to map all this stuff out, um, I’m, I am
Speaker 6: (51:47)
well, right. Um, and I want to say that I worked with just darling, wonderful, lovely researchers who were doing family history and genealogy and I worked with darling and lovely people who were doing academic historical research. And I worked with less easy to work with people in both of those regards and really nothing that I want to say about genealogy is, is you know about and you know the individuals pursuing this. But it is about what it’s what it’s for and what causes people to get into it. And, and to me, I guess, and this is relating back to my own interest or lack of interest in not in family history but in, in genealogy, is that it’s about specificity, right? So I can say that my ancestors almost certainly lived in, you know, shuttles, Jewish communities in Eastern Europe in the 16th and 17th and 18th and 19th century.
Speaker 6: (52:56)
And so to me that means, okay, I want to go read a book about that experience of which there are many and I will learn what that experience is like. And then I will in my mind, place my ancestors there because it’s not about a sin, you know, an individual ancestor in an individual place for me. Right? But what is going on in genealogy is not well, were Scots Irish? So there’s the Scots Irish experience and I don’t want to say that people with lineage aren’t also interested in the general experience. They often are, they often travel to the places where their family came from. But it’s about saying my sixth grade uncle four times removed was this person. And for the kind of, you know, a pretty inevitable place for that to go. Not all, not all genealogists I think we’re looking for this, but a pretty inevitable place for it to go is that my sixth grade uncle four times removed was King Edward or King James or, or you know, someone else important role Royal to their lineage societies.
Speaker 6: (54:05)
Right? Um, you know, lineage societies, which um, the example people probably know in America are the daughters of the American revolution and the sons of the American revolution, right? There are, there’s a whole, there are whole constellations of lineage societies, the may flower society. And when you get back across the ocean to, to um, especially England, but other countries as well, you have these lineage society saying, well, we are all the people descended from this Monarch or this family. And you know, I think it’s fine for people to take pride in that. For me personally, uh, it comes up against kind of, um, just this difference in how I see history and, and kind of your own place in it because many people who came in to do research were descendants of people who fought in the civil war and as often as not you would be descended from people who fought on both sides of the civil war. That’s not at all unusual. And I’m not saying anyone express any particular preference for either side, but
Speaker 7: (55:14)
okay.
Speaker 6: (55:16)
Nonetheless, I guess what’s important to me when looking at history, it’s neat to be related to Ulysses S grant, but at the same time you neither, or Sherman I guess would be a better example. So, um, you know, by today’s standards, Sherman was a worker, I’m an honor. It is March to the sea, kind of really bringing the war to civilians all across the South. Right. And if you are descended from Sherman, I guess my point would be that you neither, you’re not, I would not hold you responsible for what he did. That would now be called war crimes. Right. And I also wouldn’t credit you for his, um, ingenuity if that’s what that was. And a creative way of, of waging war that was very effective for the union. So the personal relationship to history is an interesting concept that I think operates differently for, for different people where I, you know, pride in your ancestry. I don’t, I think, I think you can have a healthy pride in your ancestry. Um, but I also think it’s necessary to kind of, um, marry that to an understanding of the limits of, of that, of the impact of your ancestry, I guess. Right,
Speaker 8: (56:45)
right. Okay.
Speaker 6: (56:54)
Yeah. So, okay. And so you, so and so in your, in your position where there was, there was people that were coming in just, just looking for their own, their own, um, just like private citizens coming in, looking with everybody, right? Yeah. Right. For the most part. And, and there’s something really important that I, that I want to say about that, which is that for the most part, it was individuals. It was individuals with time on their hands. I’m often retirees, but that requires being able to retire. And it’s also very often people who can travel. The Filson had in-person researchers and does now from, from all over the world. And, and that might be a, you know, the most distant visitors are probably academic researchers. We get researchers from Scotland and from China and from Germany and from all across the U S and from Canada.
Speaker 6: (57:53)
And, and that’s not so unusual, um, for a researcher to be on, um, sabbatical or, or coming for a conference and doing research where they are, that’s relevant to their topic, but many genealogists too. We’re coming from certainly around the U S and sometimes beyond. And so you have to have the ability to do that. And then, and then world’s more important. And I think really related to to what I think you’re interested in is that in order to do genealogy or family history, the, the paper way, I mean, the research way, you have to have been documented, right? So I don’t, well, I kind of do, but I don’t mean that immediately in the sense of documented or undocumented like immigration, although same thing. Uh, but you have to be somebody who, your ancestor has to have left a trace on paper and your ancestor has to have left a trace that has a first name and a last name and a location.
Speaker 6: (58:54)
And so at the largest part of that in North America in the 18th and 19th century is white people, right? Male people, landowners especially. Um, and there it’s harder to do genealogy of women, right? It’s certainly harder to do genealogy of non white people, especially black in the United States before and after the civil war. It is in some cases possible to use the records of slave owners to do genealogy for black families. That was one of the most fascinating and interesting. And, and to me personally, meaningful things that I was able to do while performing that kind of reference service. Yeah. That was my goal was to work. Yeah. Okay. Right. So black family historians obviously hit a roadblock because their ancestor probably only had a first name. [inaudible]. Um, the way that we find names of people if before they were on censuses is in the records of these families.
Speaker 6: (01:00:06)
The, you know, historical societies across the South have family records, family manuscript collections, and you would have wills and estates and tax inventories and human beings. Slaves were taxable property. They knew where you’d be, right? They could be willed to other people. So you’ll be looking at a will and it’ll say, you know, the furniture and the livestock and the carts and you know, three men ages, you know, 1920 and 25 and two women ages 17 and 33 and two children ages seven and nine. And they have a value assigned to them. Yeah, I mean, it was, I mean, I’m not, yeah, I mean, forget, you know, my experience, the more important experiences is the experience of that black genealogist or black family history. But I don’t know what their experiences was. My experience was that I went from JDC in New York where my daily existence was looking at records of an organization trying to deal with the aftermath of the Holocaust and traded that for,
Speaker 6: (01:01:26)
I mean, I should say the Filson has collections stretching right into the 21st century and going all the way back to the 17th century at least. But most of the, you know, a lot of the research was antebellum Kentucky, which was a slave state. And looking at stuff, you know, picking up a shred of paper, truly just a shred of paper that was a receipt for a human being’s life. And um, point being, it probably said, you know, the relevance here is that that piece of paper, other than being horrifying because, Oh no, Oh, am I still here? Why would I, that would be the worst moment to lose you. I’m still here as far as I know. So I’m sorry, the slip up.
Speaker 7: (01:02:19)
Right.
Speaker 6: (01:02:20)
So, you know, part of the experience was defined, you know, a slip of paper that’s a name and a dollar amount and it’s signed by the owner or the, or both. The former owner and the next owner of this person. And that’s not a lot to go on for a genealogist to get back to the point here of, of finding your family and where you came from. Um, so the roadblocks are, are pretty incredible for non white and to some extent non-male genealogists and family historians. And there’s an inequity there I guess. I mean, nobody has to go do their family history. Um, I, this is, but this is where something like genetic testing, when you have a large enough data set comes in and really allows, um, I know that that um, black people interested in this kind of history or going to a genetic test to find out more about where, for instance, in Africa, their ancestors might’ve come from if their ancestors were slaves, Africa.
Speaker 6: (01:03:26)
Um, and that to me, I mean, is, is great because it allows access. So again, I think we’ve covered that. You and I were interested in finding our, our, you know, deep genealogical past. But if you are, and if you’re black woman whose ancestors were in the South during slavery, you now have an Avenue open to you that you know, where before at the very best you might find the papers of the family who owned your ancestors. And that happens. And then you can learn about the family that owns your ancestor, you know, something and you can learn where their land was, but it’s not learning about your family.
Speaker 5: (01:04:05)
Right, right. You know, it did, it didn’t, it didn’t ever occur to me until you described it that way, as having gone from the, from the JDC to the, to the, to the place of Kentucky. Um, that those are both, it’s both lineages, um, and is a grand generalization, but like both lineages are like rooted in trauma. Like there’s so much diaspora in both. Um, and I’m suddenly wondering if there’s something too people’s need to, um, to organize data in order to process trauma. Um, I don’t, I don’t, I, I’m just suddenly,
Speaker 6: (01:04:55)
yeah. And I think
Speaker 5: (01:04:57)
considering this through, through the trauma lens, something, something about you saying like specificity,
Speaker 7: (01:05:05)
um,
Speaker 6: (01:05:08)
trick triggered something. Yeah, I mean, I think, I think definitely in the case of JDC and just as being an organization created around these traumatic, right, disruptive events in the lives of families and individuals and communities. And in the case of the Filson, it’s a little hard to say. I mean, I want to say, I mean the Filson continues to have a really incredible staff and a mission that is ever growing in its scope in terms of, of who had documents. I’m not, I mean, in 1884 it was founded by a group of white men, older, well-to-do white men. And that’s what it was about at the time. That’s not what the Filson is about now. But I do think, at least in the, in the founding sense, less so in the case of the Filson, but in the case of, of white or black genealogists yeah, absolutely. I can, I can see that. And people, yeah. Needing together, gather this information and organize it probably fills, you know, fill some need to do that and create order. Right. Or even even if,
Speaker 5: (01:06:29)
I don’t know, I mean I’m, I, there’s something about even understanding that your lineage is a part trauma. I don’t know. I’m, I’m, I have to like cook this idea a little bit more, but, um,
Speaker 6: (01:06:44)
something I will say that I perhaps shouldn’t. Um,
Speaker 9: (01:06:51)
okay.
Speaker 6: (01:06:51)
You know, I just, there are definitely people I experienced, you know, people coming to look for their family histories, bringing, bringing a kind of full lens of, of the implications of, of their histories to it. And, and people who seemed not to be, and I don’t know, I don’t, they were there to get information. I don’t know what they thought about their research when they got home, but it definitely seemed like there was a spectrum of, of concern or interest and, and you know what the slave holder in Virginia might just be a stepping stone on the way back to King Charles. So maybe, maybe it doesn’t weigh on your mind. Um, and there were definitely people, you know, for whom it did matter. And in fact, finding out, you know, what kind of implication their family had in, in slavery was, was an important step for them and they wanted to directly address it. Uh, so I think there’s a whole spectrum for that in family history and genealogy. Yeah. That’s so, yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um, that makes, that makes sense to me. Um, and, and my brain, sorry, my mind
Speaker 5: (01:08:16)
now I’m just, I’m feeling so blown away that I’m almost speechless. Um, but you said some of these ideas, but, um,
Speaker 6: (01:08:25)
you’re sure you’re not blown away by having a seven week old being a totally acceptable reason. Sure. I’m tired. So I don’t know the lab that last time I took a shower, uh, but, um, I don’t either cause I’m on vacation.
Speaker 5: (01:08:43)
Yeah. Uh, what, uh, okay. So do you know, just out of curiosity, do you know if you, you do end up being a descendant of, of somebody important? Um, is the primary purpose, just the family pride? And then I know you can be a part of the group of like the daughters of the American revolution. But does that, um,
Speaker 6: (01:09:06)
do you get, or is it, is it, as far as you know, pride more than anything, you just get to be in the club? I think in an extremely small number of circumstances. And I definitely had researchers coming because of kind of family estate questions or having to do with how land was partitioned, but that sure, first of all, the further you go back, the less likely that is to bear any, any fruit. And I, you know, I don’t think that’s the motivation for most folks. I think. I think there’s a lot of pride, um, involved in being able to join the lineage societies on the way a lot of lineage societies work is that you prepare your application and you document everything to the best of your ability and you send it in and then their in house genealogists see if it all adds up.
Speaker 6: (01:10:05)
And so there’s a, there’s a challenge aspect. I think there’s a kind of a reward aspect. So, so having correctly inadequately documented yourself to be a descendant of someone who fought in the revolution, um, is a big task. Your reward isn’t having it. I think the reward is having external validation. That’s, that’s going to be instant reward for the lineage societies. But they also have, you know, they have annual meetings and they have get togethers and they have, you know, it’s a very, as far as I can tell, you know, convivial and congenial thing, you know, you kind of join a club, right? And again, a community with very noticeable limits. I mean they make them, they make those limits very obvious, um, by being the stated structure. But, um, but it’s also, I mean I will say a, you know, I can be critical with that, but I can also say from people I have known involved in them that it is not, it is not the only thing that those people are involved in, in that. So, um, I think it would be unfair to say that they exist solely to exclude anyone who doesn’t meet some criteria in their life. Right? I mean, nothing is, but nothing is black and white, black or white, except to the issuers. Speaking of that, amazing.
Speaker 6: (01:11:36)
I just like looking over my notes. I have so many words like scribbled everywhere. Um,
Speaker 2: (01:11:42)
so did you, and while you were working there, did you have any experience with people with genetic [inaudible]? Like did you watch anything change with genetic testing as far as people’s genetic,
Speaker 6: (01:11:55)
yes. Scary genetic genealogical experience. So, so yeah, I mean the historical society was not directly involved in genetic testing and anyway, I wonder about ways we might, researchers might, a historians might use that data eventually, but what, what I would hear and see would be genealogists and family historians talking about it and discussing how it had impacted their research because it, it, it can be a powerful tool for confirming, you know? Right. So really that’s about as making, it’s kind of saying, well ancestry DNA are 23 and me says I’m related to this other person who’s already in this lineage. And I think my paper work lines up with theirs and this is a good confirmation that it probably is. Right. I should say, I have no idea how each or any of the lineage societies look at genetic testing or if they do at all when they look at kind of admissions or however it works.
Speaker 6: (01:13:06)
But it was definitely a topic of conversation in the reading room of, Hey, this really helped me confirm and it told me that I should keep looking up this alley and not down this alley. And then the flip side of that is that if you have a genetic test and it’s a, and you’ve been hunting in Scotland and you know, been hunting in, in Kentucky and back to Virginia and back to Scotland or England and it looks like you are mostly central European, then you know, something’s up. And I, and this of course, this kind of in, in, in the most headline attracting way leads to things like some of your interviews with people where something, something really comes up that was unknown or that was hidden or you know, couldn’t possibly go along with, with the stories that a person has been told. I have not heard anything like that. I’ve heard more subtle, you know, well I’m 75% out of Eastern Europe than, than it really couldn’t be all of these ancestors and in England or Northern Europe or wherever. So maybe one thread of this is accurate, something like that.
Speaker 5: (01:14:29)
Did you find if, if G if genealogist ran into that kind of thing, um, once, once our research was combined with DNA results, a R is that exciting because it means your, your research changes a different direction or is it devastating or does it just case by case basis because you’ve done all this research and it turns out you were wrong.
Speaker 6: (01:14:51)
I think it’s case by case. And I think another part of the concern that relates to that was the idea that it would be because like with all new technologies, people got, people have ideas about it and they don’t quite know how, you know, it works until they, until they go look and they find out. Um, but the idea that the hundreds and hundreds of hours spent might be replaced by a cheek swab. Right. And that’s not, that’s not the case. It’s certainly not the case yet. But that was part of the kind of hubbub as well that I certainly experienced was even a little kind of blow back of, Oh, these people think they can just do a cheek swab and they’re going to learn anything. But I know because I’ve seen, I’ve been to the County courthouse in 45 of Kentucky’s 120 counties and I’m going to go to the rest of them and I’m going to know. And, and there’s something, you know, from a kind of historian, researcher perspective, there’s something to that. And I think, you know, it’s hard to, I can’t look down upon the legwork that I’ve seen genealogists do and the, you know, the doggedness in pursuing things. Um, but I think overall it has mostly moved to, this can be a tool, this can help, concerns, things that will be exciting if it confirms something that I’ve been looking to confirm for a long time.
Speaker 6: (01:16:15)
And I, you know, I did not see any, I don’t think I was ever present when someone, you know, got the email notification on their phone and don’t forget and found out that they’re Irish and not witnessed
Speaker 5: (01:16:29)
and present for the, for the, for the biggest surprise. Yeah. Interesting. Cool. This is so much to think about. Thank you so much. Um, uh, yeah, I, uh, is there anything else you want to tell me that you were waiting for me to ask about?
Speaker 6: (01:16:52)
Yeah, I mean, there’s something, again, and I want to say this as many times as possible because I still, I’m and dear friends with people at Filson historical society and I believe in what they do and at JDC and I believe in what they do and they are both great organizations. This is more of a, uh, you know, Southern historical, you know, this is more of a Filson historical society thing that I witnessed happen, um, and again by well-meaning people. But there’s a desire that I think might play into, to some of them were living family relative stuff that you’re interested in. I have witnessed this intense desire for people to, or in people to make these connections happen no matter what and kind of no matter whether they exist. So handwriting in the 19th century, in the 18th century, it was a lot different than handwriting today.
Speaker 6: (01:17:57)
Spelling was a lot less standard eyes including with names. And something that I would see with, with some frequency would be someone looking at a document sometimes, you know, pretty rough, sometimes an original document. I’m on original paper and sometimes that’s pretty rough facsimile or microfilm of something that was already deteriorating when it was filmed 60 years ago. And they need, they need to find, um, you know, Sarah Smith in eight heir County around 1795. And here’s Susan Smith in eight gunny in 1795. And, and I witnessed that. Overheard quite a bit of don’t you, don’t you think this could say Sarah doing it too? Couldn’t that say Sarah and not Susan or don’t you think that they must’ve just gotten it wrong and, and, and it really is the person I needed to be. I’ve definitely have seen that desire drive genealogists and that is an emotion and a motivation that I assume is kind of shared with folks now looking for living relatives, looking for a biological parents or children. And, and I, you know, it was, if I was asked if it was, if it was, excuse me, reference librarian, Aaron, can you come and look at this and see what you think is, I would give my honest opinion always of what I thought it said. And, you know, and, and sometimes, I don’t know, sometimes it looked really unclear and it could’ve said Susan or Sarah. And sometimes it definitely looked like it said Susan or differently looked like it said, Sarah.
Speaker 6: (01:19:56)
And that goes in and, and so there’s a part of genealogy and family history that absolutely is people taking what they want to from it. Yep. And, and you’re the host of the podcast. You can figure out what that means, but I do think it’s relevant. Do you think it connects these different processes? You know, finding someone 300 years ago and finding somebody now, um, and wanting it, you know, in the way wanting it makes you, you know, yeah. Makes you move ahead.
Speaker 5: (01:20:30)
Yeah. And it makes you, makes you see things, see things and think things and understand things in a very particular way when you don’t even know it, you don’t even know what’s happening. Wow. Aaron, this is amazing. Right? Uh, this is amazing, right? There’s like so much I want to like, we could keep talking I think for hours cause I, I feel like I’m just barely, like, my brain is just waking up to this, this whole universe that you’ve just introduced to me. Um, but we can’t, we can’t talk for hours. Uh, so yeah. So, so I like, I may just think about it and I may email you some questions or I’m, I, I don’t, um, this is shit, this is amazing.
Speaker 6: (01:21:15)
I could also, I mean, I want to say as a, as a person who left that world, um, and who was never quite in it for the genealogy and family history, but was there for the, the, you know, the archives and the, and the sort of academic history. I can, I mean, I’m also happy to, you know, you could possibly have a more productive conversation with somebody is much more a part of that world. You can point you to some people,
Speaker 5: (01:21:44)
you know, like they’re like, I’m sure there’s like lots of different genes or just like everything, there’s different facets to all elements. So this is, this is one of them. Um, and, and I just, that’s, that’s what I want. I just want to talk about all the, all the things. Um, right. So, so, uh, don’t worry, I won’t say you’re an expert, but yeah. But yeah, no, this is just so, so fascinating and has me sort of thinking largely about, about groups of people and then about my, and then it’s hard. It’s impossible for me not to consider my own identity and my understanding of genealogy or lack, lack of interest. Um, and now suddenly wondering now, but then, you know, like as soon as you started to describe handwritten papers, I was like, well, that sounds totally amazing. Um, I don’t know. I’m just,
Speaker 6: (01:22:41)
yeah, I mean the, the thing about, I mean, something else I can describe that happens. I mean, whether you need more here or not. Um,
Speaker 6: (01:22:54)
you know, when did you neological resources exist as you know, published things like tax lists and, and, um, you know, cemetery indexes and all these different things. And then, and that’s kind of the censuses and that’s the meat of what family historians are, are looking through. The Filson happened to have family papers from hundreds of families from, from Kentucky in the Ohio Valley. So sometimes, you know, a researcher will be working on a family that we happen to have the family papers of. And interestingly, sometimes that was of intense interest as you would guess. And it, wow, I can see my great, great grandfather’s letters and see his handwriting. That’s incredible. Yes, please. I’ll move to the archives reading room, which is more secure and stuff. Right. And I’ll call up that stuff and I’ll get to look through the wonderful, but sometimes that’s not, again, if it was just a step on getting back to King Charles or whomever, you know, sometimes folks not interested didn’t want to see that stuff. Um, right. Cause it was not, it wasn’t about even kind of who the person was. It was about who that person was descended from, which I’m not, you know, I’m not judging that. I just, I witnessed both and I think for me, I would have been delighted to see that human aspect. Um, but that’s just me.
Speaker 5: (01:24:28)
Yeah. Yeah. So interesting to like learn about what different people are, are, are interested in for lack of a more articulate way of saying, saying it. Um, awesome. Uh, I have to go because I have another, I have another interview coming up, but um,
Speaker 6: (01:24:54)
Oh, there you are you there? Yup. You went away for 20 seconds or so.
Speaker 5: (01:25:02)
Yeah, I see that. Um, anyway, um, yeah, this is amazing. I have to go because I have another interview coming up. But, um, this is, this is just like,
Speaker 10: (01:25:13)
okay,
Speaker 5: (01:25:14)
this really, this was like informant, it was informational, but it tip, it sort of tipped into, um, into me thinking about a lot of, a lot of bigger things than a lot of more emotional things. Um, so thank you. And I’m so glad we did.
Speaker 6: (01:25:31)
Yeah. And if it’s only that yeah. If it’s only informational and, and, and, you know, helpful to help think about other things. Great. That’s fine. I’m glad that it could be of interest.
Speaker 5: (01:25:43)
Absolutely. Yeah. Um, yeah. So, yeah. So I’m just gonna keep saying thank you over and over again. If anything keeps you up in the middle of the night or wakes you up in the middle of the night, uh, that you want to change or amend or edit out, just send me a message and I’m going to, um, this will be edited a little bit, just a little bit, um, for clarity and stuff. But, uh, I don’t know. Like I’ll be in, I’ll be in touch. I’ll let you know when this is coming. It’ll be pretty soon. Uh, thank you so, so much. All right, Aaron, maybe I’ll talk to you again in less than 26 years. 24 years, six years. I know. So. All right. Thank you so much. Have a wonderful day.
Speaker 9: (01:26:29)
Alright, bye. Bye.
Black Man Talking: An African American Experience
Speaker 1: (00:00)
How are you? Do you want me to call you Spencer or Mr. Warren or Lauren?
Speaker 2: (00:06)
I’m sure it’s perfectly fine. Perfectly fine. But people always got my name backwards. They want to call me warn. Excuse gives me flashbacks back to military days.
Speaker 1: (00:18)
Oh, uh, um, how long were you in the military?
Speaker 2: (00:23)
Uh, too long. How about that? No. Um, six years. But you know, I did well in it, but that was not my thing. So nonetheless, let me get myself set up here and I’m going to ask a favor of you. Absolutely. I tend to ramble. I know I talk a lot, so if I start, you find me rambling, just push me in the right direction. I will not take offense because I have no perspective and I’m going to yell at my son one last time. Hey Alex, come here. Do me a favor please. Sir, can you watch this for me and try this for me? Thank you sir. All right, doors closed or it’s locked. No one will bother me and we can begin whenever. [inaudible]
Speaker 1: (01:17)
awesome. Uh, yeah. So we’ve been like trying to get ahold of each other over. I’ve been trying to try to schedule an interview for awhile. Um, I’m so glad this finally happened. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (01:30)
Yeah, I’ve been, um, honestly I’m a little nervous and tense about it and thinking about it and how I want to approach it and so forth. Um, of course I’ve listened to the first season and I absolutely enjoyed it. And plus the NP group, you know, kind of been in and out of the group, um, for a while. Um, but I’m reading everybody else’s story, which has given me insight. So hopefully my story will add a different perspective. Cause I know everybody thinks their story is different, but it’s just, you know, there are similarities that help each other. Right. And there are differences that give people perspective.
Speaker 1: (02:08)
Right, right. That’s a really great way of putting it actually. Yeah. Great. So, um, so we can just, we can jump right in if you’d like.
Speaker 2: (02:18)
Sure. Because I mean if you’re already recording and then you edit this out later,
Speaker 1: (02:22)
yeah,
Speaker 2: (02:26)
go with it.
Speaker 1: (02:28)
Yeah. So, so what, so let’s just start with, um, let’s start with some basics, which is just, where did you grow up?
Speaker 2: (02:36)
Um, I was born in, uh, North Carolina and, um, a small place called Tarboro, North Carolina where there is a, you know, pretty relatively if anybody grew up in a small area, a lot of families history had been there and a lot of
Speaker 1: (02:53)
my, uh, I’ve just gonna interrupt you to tell you that my best friend moved to Tarboro like two ago and lives there now.
Speaker 2: (03:01)
Sorry for your best friends.
Speaker 3: (03:02)
And, um,
Speaker 2: (03:03)
I call it the, I call it the mosquito capital of the world.
Speaker 3: (03:06)
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2: (03:07)
Honestly, I don’t, I don’t, I’ve never spent a lot of time in Tarboro, but there’s a larger city called Rocky Mount that’s right near it. Um, just a bit West of it and that’s where I spent a lot of my summers growing up as a child. Okay. Um, but, um, just, just to tell, well, eventually I ended up moving to Richmond, Virginia with my mother. But just to tell the story, let’s start from the beginning. Um, one of my earliest memories is just me and my mother. My mother was a teenage, uh, how to teenage pregnancy. She was 17 when she had me. This is back in of course telling my age, 1972 things were a little bit different. Now it now, today we’re expected to go to college, or at least we want to go to college. Back then that wasn’t necessarily the highest thing that was reserved for people who had money and so forth.
Speaker 2: (03:55)
But, um, my mother had me single mother. I’m 17 years old. She, uh, from what I can put together, knowing my little history, um, she left me with my grandmother, um, and Rocky Mount North Carolina, and she went to Richmond, which is a large city to the North of that, and she lived with one of her older sisters. My on my mother’s side, which I know very well. Um, it was my mother, my grandmother and her husband. They were together for many years and he passed 1971 a year before I was born. And my mother had 13 siblings. Very, very large. Yeah. So she had older siblings, there were adults when she was pretty much a child. So that was the dynamic that my family went through. So as my mother being one of the youngest, actually my mother, which this is important, she’s the 10th of 14. We’ll come back to that later and a couple of get to remind me, write that down. Yeah.
Speaker 3: (04:51)
Okay. Okay. Writing it down.
Speaker 2: (04:53)
So nonetheless, she, uh, left me with my grandmother, moved to Richmond with one of her older sisters. Then she stopped for me later and from age two on, she and I lived in Richmond together. So it was just she and I and then, um, and, and, and I didn’t grow up with a father around. And of course, being a smart child, knowing that, you know, I had a father somewhere. Eventually she met my stepfather, who has been in my life since the age of three and he has been the father figure in my life, good or bad, we won’t get into all that stuff, just knowing that he’s out there. So he was my father figure. And around the age of eight, um, my mother introduced me to a gentleman by the name of Calvin and she said, this is your father. And of course there are a lot of things. I know I’m rushing through this, I don’t want to.
Speaker 2: (05:50)
But um, Calvin became was my, he’s my father. And in that same breath I met wife and his son who was younger than me, Calvin jr, which of course caused some issues for me because I’m thinking I’m the oldest, why am I not jr yes, yes. So that kind of threw me off a little bit. Plus it was just a lot to take in for any, um, to have to deal with it. And one thing I learned quickly, um, is that Calvin, like the title, but he didn’t like the job. So he wasn’t much of a father figure that to go a little deeper into it when a child in my case or I would like to think in my case, not knowing who my father was growing up with just my mother. You kind of romanticize who your father is and good or bad with your stepfather.
Speaker 2: (06:43)
Um, some people have stories about step parents and so forth like that. You always romanticized that your father would come and steal you away or rescue you or something like that. And it was basically a big disappointment cause Calvin was not that person. He was a person who went to work every day and he paid his bills on time. It wasn’t like he was a drunk or anything like that. He just was more into himself than anything else. But he was good with his son Calvin jr just with me. It was very sporadic. So nonetheless,
Speaker 1: (07:12)
or do you know how do you know his, I’m sorry. Do you know how old he was when, um, when he was with your mom, when they got [inaudible]?
Speaker 2: (07:19)
Um, so I, I not knowing exactly how old he is, I would assume he was about a year older, not more, more than a year or either the same age,
Speaker 1: (07:28)
17 or 18, something like that. Okay. Around that age. But when you met him, he was 25. Okay. Yeah,
Speaker 2: (07:34)
he was, he was, he’s already established in his marriage and had a kid that was a year and a half behind me. Of course doing the math you think, okay, if I was born and then Calvin jr was born within a year or two, there was breakup or whatever. We just kind of fill in the pieces. So I spent a lot of time, I would spend some time with, uh, Calvin and his family and I got really close to his wife, Eva. Okay. Great lady. Um, Calvin jr and I had a time of it because me being an older child, I had a, I have a half-brother through my mother and my stepfather at this point. Um, and I’m being the oldest between Calvin, jr and myself and Calvin junior already being an only child and having all of the attention. It was kind of a weird dynamic process.
Speaker 2: (08:22)
It’s a lot to this and there’s so much more to it. Um, I really need to write all this stuff now. Um, but things didn’t work out very well between Calvin and I. um, and going forward, uh, when I got to be about 18 years old of having Calvin in my life and him not putting forth the effort which I had thought he would or should, or I finally got to a point where I gave up on that relationship and decided to move on with life and I went on and got married and had kids of my own and Calvin was never a part of that. He was never part of my children and so forth. Now I’m going to stop. I’m going to put a pin in it for a second. Let’s talk a little bit more about the dynamic because this comes back to the end.
Speaker 3: (09:06)
Yeah, great.
Speaker 2: (09:08)
When I met Calvin, um, well before I, before I met Calvin, the reason why I would go to North Carolina, we were talking early about the fact that I spent my summers in North Carolina is that one my family, my mother’s family came from that part of North Carolina. And every summer I would go back and spend the summer with a cousin of mine by the name of Derek and his mother and my mother are sisters and they were only separated by 11 months. They’re very close.
Speaker 3: (09:34)
[inaudible]
Speaker 2: (09:35)
older and they went to school together. Um, Darren and I spent our summers together. We ran through creeks, we did everything and play with bugs, play the dirt, dirt bike, all that kind of thing. And we grew up really, really close. Um, one of the, one of the more, I don’t even know the word for the or times of the summer, which great experiences was that Darren’s father who wasn’t with his mother, would come to pick Darren up and take them away for the day. All right. And I would sit around going, why doesn’t my father do?
Speaker 3: (10:09)
Yeah. You got this other father modeling interest.
Speaker 2: (10:14)
I’m feeling sad. He picked him up, tickets for haircuts and all that stuff. And I remember one particular time not knowing who this man was, um, and not having any affection toward men. Cause all I had was women in my life at the time. My mother, my grandmother, my aunt, um, I had some uncles, but they had their own lives. But my mother and her sisters were really the mother, like tight to me or to my, my, uh, in my life at the time. One particular time, this man whose name was Jimmy Earl, we call him general. It’s our country way of mashing to work together. So we’ll come and pick up Darren, my cousin one time he picked both of us up and I was elated. I was, and I’m like, I’m hanging out with Darren father and he took me around different places. I don’t remember much about it. I just remember one time going, well, this was the catalyst of why Calvin came into my life. The reason being is that I found out later on that Calvin and tomorrow we’re brothers.
Speaker 3: (11:13)
Oh, okay. So my mother’s
Speaker 2: (11:17)
mothers or sisters, it usually takes people time because our mothers just sisters. And now I’m looking at my bestest buddy, my closest cousin, which I have like thousands of cousins cause I have
Speaker 3: (11:29)
right. Oh my gosh. Yeah, the biggest family.
Speaker 2: (11:31)
Yeah. Um, my closest cousin, we’re three weeks apart in age. We practically grew up together. Um, um, it was affectionately he’s darker skin than I am. I’m an African American male and I’m lighter skin colored than he is. And they would call it salt and pepper.
Speaker 3: (11:50)
Awesome. That’s cool. So this is showing the, hold on, I’m sorry. Can you hold on one second? Close the tour. Okay. You need to go talk to dad about that. Can you please close the door? He’s probably with Marco. Close the door all the way. Thank you. Alright. Sorry. Four year olds, four year olds. Just don’t get it. I have two of my own. I get it. Okay. Salt and pepper was you and sorry, you and Darren. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
Speaker 2: (12:32)
And so when we found out that our fathers were brothers,
Speaker 3: (12:35)
Oh, made us even closer. Right.
Speaker 2: (12:39)
So every summer I would spend in Rocky Mount North Carolina with my cousin Darren. I would go see him every summer. I would always have to spend a week with Calvin and his family because they lived there. I hated it because I didn’t want to be away from Derek. He was like, I loved it. Yeah. But I loved it because now I have my father in my life and I’m happy about this and this is great. I’m trying to move forward. But also sad because Calvin’s not really paying any attention that I think he wants. He should pay to, again, me romanticizing as my father was also just side note, I’m a very feeling person, so you’ll, I express myself a lot. Um, so most people and side note as an African American male are in the, our sort of culture, and I’m sorry if this sounds weird.
Speaker 2: (13:30)
It’s very, it’s hard for men to express their emotions cause they were like, you know, if you scan your date, get up, stop crying, there’ll be a wimp. You know, those kinds of things. Right. I feel like it’s more so in the African American community. So me being this way tends to be a little bit more offsetting to people. I dunno. It’s really weird. Really stupid. But you, you understand that. Yeah. So anyway, I go through life. Darren and I are best buddies. We spend summers together where birthdays are three weeks apart. We’re the same age. We go through the same things at the same time or dating girls at the same, you know, we’re just connecting and we’ve got the same grandmothers in the same grandfathers and the same lineage. We’ve got everything the same and we’re so proud of it.
Speaker 3: (14:14)
That’s so fun. Yeah. Yes it is.
Speaker 2: (14:16)
It’s like we’re, you know, and most people are like, that’s weird. Cause double cousins, I don’t get it. But that’s where we were. And I was happy about it. Better to be closer to them. My, my best, his buddy in the whole wide world. Now, whenever I would go to visit North Carolina, my cousin would say, Hey, let’s go to grandma’s house. And he met. Now I’m confused. Which grandma is it? Our mother’s mother or our father’s mother, you know, and he would say, Oh, let’s go visit our father’s mother. And I would try to connect to this woman. And she didn’t seem to have a very big connection to me. Also. It was neither here nor there, you know, and it kind of shattered my idea of what family was. It didn’t make sense to me. Why are they so offset to me? Why is Calvin so pushed off or why is his mother so pushed off?
Speaker 2: (15:01)
I’m right now going through life, got to age 21, 18. I decided I had enough of Calvin. This is not working out. I’m moving forward in life. Um, I just felt like he tweeted Calvin jr and I differently. The whole lot of dynamics were going on and I needed to move forward in life because life was starting for me. Um, by this time, his first wife who I had connected with, Calvin’s first wife who I connected with Eva, she had divorced him, but I still kept a connection with her just because she was such a good influence in my life. And she welcomed that connection to me. And she also helped build a connection between myself and Calvin jr to keep that going because she felt like the brother should have that connection even though her Calvin wasn’t fostering that. So I go through life.
Speaker 2: (15:53)
Let’s skip ahead a few. Okay. Now I’m married late twenties, early thirties. I’m married now. I’m having children. My wife, my beautiful wife. I’m married. Uh, she’s from Barcelona, Spain and learning more about her culture and wanting now having a child. I wanted our child to know his side of the family in Barcelona, Spain. So we ended up moving to Barcelona to live for a few years. And while we were there, we were tracing back our family history and we were, he was meeting a lot of, uh, his family and cousins and I was very happy for that. And I started to think to myself, I need to do that on my side, right. For my son. He needs to know our history on that side. And by this time we’ve taken,
Speaker 1: (16:42)
I was gonna say you just wanted it to be like a whole, a whole experience. Like a holistic experience like from both sides. Yeah, correct.
Speaker 2: (16:49)
Now w by this time we had moved back to America, um, and we’re setting up roots again and this is where the whole ancestry had started to take off. And I was very interested in genealogy and I started to do our family tree. So what I did was, is I went to my mother and I pulled her aside and I said, Hey mom, listen, I’m going to do, I really want to do the family tree for your side of the family. Not for Calvin’s side of the family. Cause I don’t know anybody on his side of the family. He didn’t, he didn’t really put forth the effort to spend time with me or to put me in front of other people. I don’t know anybody on his side of the family. I’m just going to not worry about that. Just worry about my mother’s side of the family.
Speaker 1: (17:31)
Right? Yeah. He didn’t promote it.
Speaker 2: (17:34)
Correct. Now mind you, when I was born to my mother on my birth certificate, there is no father listed on the, on the birth certificate. And I never knew why. And I got a copy, you know, when I got married and I probably put passport, I seeing this and I started saying, started questioning in my head, but I just put that in the back of my head. So I said, mom, I’m going to start doing the family tree now, not to be hypocritical. Tell me the full story of my conception and birth and so forth. So that in case I find out something embarrassing about someone else in the family, then it wouldn’t seem like I’m putting out their garbage rather than putting out my own garbage. And so I thought that was noble reasons and I said, please, can you tell me? So she decided to tell me the story of my consumption.
Speaker 2: (18:27)
So the story of my conception was she was a young lady. Um, she was doing really well in school and she, uh, was really focusing on her schoolwork and the opportunities that were presented to her. Um, and this very poor area of North Carolina. And she did really well in school. So there was a summer program coming up where she could do extra schooling and for gifted or whatever they wanted to call her. And she was dating a young boy named Calvin. But she found out through the grapevine that Calvin had a need to have many women in his stable. He was quite the player, very centered on himself and what he wanted. And there was a rumor that he was chasing a very young lady by the name of Eva who went to a different school or was a lot younger, um, rather than they went to the same school.
Speaker 2: (19:21)
And so my mother got tired of the rumors and said, Calvin, it’s over between you and I, and broke up with him that summer. She went away to this, this special program at a school, it’s not that far away, but if you live in rural North Carolina, before there was internet before, there’s a lot of maps. Uber’s that was pretty far away. So while she was there, her roommate introduced her to a much older young gentlemen who was, um, that she decided to start dating my mother’s mother. My maternal grandmother was not very happy with this. And so she spent a lot of time keeping my mother in check from dating this older woman, older man.
Speaker 1: (20:00)
Well cause he was older or he or he was a bad guy or what was your
Speaker 2: (20:05)
I really didn’t know at the time and I, I ended up pressing later what it was is, I think it was just because of the fact that one, my, um, my maternal grandfather had just passed away. So now my grandmother is trying to put everything in perspective. She’s gotta take care of these, what she had now, she had six kids at home and she was just trying to keep things under control the best she could. She didn’t have her husband around and a lot of the older siblings had already moved on and moved away from the house. And it could have been, could have been a lot of reasons. I can only, I never got around tasking. My maternal grandmother, she had passed in 89 before. I got to bring her into this whole free of asking her questions. So, um, and part of this was done to honor her because she’s like the matriarch of the family by my, my perspective. So, so my mother said that she started dating this gentleman, um, and things went, went on for a while, but Kelvin was constantly trying to get back with her, trying to entice her back into a relationship. Um, but, uh, I got the impression it was sort of in a weasel way. Like, I don’t want to be a boyfriend, but I just want to be around you. I know you’re dating this other guy.
Speaker 3: (21:26)
I want the most attention from everybody. So yes,
Speaker 2: (21:29)
yes. That was his nature, which, which totally played true and his seeing him as an adult and now I’m in being his life. So
Speaker 3: (21:36)
sounds like attracts for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (21:38)
So then my mother of course, and we all know that when people tell stories good or bad, they tell stories that Dennis said can not make it seem like they’re the bad person. But I just took it with a grain of salt. And my mother said that she eventually had been in a romantic relationship with this older guy and then he would, he actually lived in Washington, D C he would travel back each weekend cause he was from this area because his mother was dying of cancer.
Speaker 3: (22:05)
That’s awesome.
Speaker 2: (22:07)
And so he would come home every Friday after work, after he finished working in Washington, D C he would drive the three, four hours back home. He would pick up my mother, he would take her back to the house, they would spend time with his mother as she was, you know, getting bedridden or so forth. Um, and then they would go out and do things or whatever. They went, what kids did back in those days, that part of McConnell. So they would do that every weekend. But during the week, my mother would go to school and see Calvin. So Calvin’s constantly hounding her without this older gentleman being around. Right. Um, so my mother said she admitted she succumb to his charm and she was intimate with them. And then she said in her own words, you know, I could have had a BA, I’ll never do that again. And walked away, you know, just like, yeah, that was great.
Speaker 3: (22:55)
And so she continued to see the older gentlemen
Speaker 2: (23:00)
and so she continued to see the older gentleman until his mother passed away. And around the time that his mother passed away, um, which is around October of 71 or no, I’m sorry, November of 71 she realized that she was pregnant. Now put a pin in that for a second. Yup. I am a male. I understand women through women. So I have questions, but I didn’t want a question at all. People, my mother, like, why didn’t you do this? Did you, I don’t want to ever put anybody in that. So if I ever sound like I’m being the typical, you know, um, hardheaded male, forgive me. It’s just me learning through my mother, through my wife, through my daughter, through, you know, things like that. So to me it didn’t make sense. And I said, okay, that’s what happened. You found out you were pregnant.
Speaker 2: (23:46)
And she said, I told the older gentlemen and her impression that she gave to me not knowing her exact, what herb, remember her words, but that he basically said it’s not my child. Goodbye. And never came back around again because of course it’s mother’s passed on now. There’s no need for me to come back. That’s the impression she gave me. So now I don’t like this older gentleman. How dare he treat my mother this way? Totally, totally. Um, and then she said, you know what, I’m just going to go through life and I’m going to raise my son. Good for you, mom. And powerful. And of course, that makes me more loving to my mother, that she took care of me. And she raised me and made me into this wonderful gentleman that I liked, the big guy. Um, so I said, that’s your story.
Speaker 2: (24:31)
And she says, yes. I said, well, where did Calvin come into this? And she said, well, as time went on, um, and you would spend time in North Carolina, Calvin’s brother [inaudible] would see you all the time and said, you look like hell. Even when he was a little boy from pictures and so that it went to, came together and they came up with four but two and two together, they came up with for that one time, that general picked me up. He actually took me to Calvin for Calvin to see me. So there was a underhandedness to it. Like, let me, I’ll take, I’ll take a fencer out with them, you know, and so forth now. Now, um, from that point, that’s when Calvin decided to get involved in my life and do the right thing. That’s my son. I want to meet him. He contacted my mother through my aunt cause they live in the same city because Jerome connected to, um, my aunt, my mother’s sister, and that’s how this all worked out. And I, and I remember seeing her, okay, great. Now I know right now I can move forward. It’s not the most pristine story. It’s not without some fault, but that’s human life. Nobody’s perfect. We can’t,
Speaker 1: (25:45)
do you feel like, um, Calvin’s brother sort of pressured him to participate?
Speaker 2: (25:52)
I don’t know.
Speaker 1: (25:53)
Okay. Or maybe he just felt it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: (25:56)
I know. Calvin’s brother, I could contact him if I want to. I just don’t know what, who to believe. Cause everybody tells me knowing how things are falling into place, I can feel him so much. Never, ever know the real truth or intention or motivation.
Speaker 1: (26:14)
And it may not matter.
Speaker 2: (26:16)
Yeah, it may not. They may be neither here nor there. So life has gone through, um, life has moved forward. Um, and I’m now married and I’ve got, I’ve moved, I’ve lived international. I’ve come back and now I start my whole quest. Now this portion of the story is a little bit off away from the whole NPE, uh, thing. But, but when I started going through my ancestry, it was very, very frustrating for me as African American. And I don’t know, I’ve listened to your first, uh, the, the, the other people’s stories. I don’t hear enough of this, but I can only imagine for other African Americans, um, or people who are adopted of different ethnic backgrounds like who’s Asian who was adopted by American Caucasian American parent, but he has no connection because China doesn’t share their DNA per se or something like that.
Speaker 3: (27:09)
Right, right, right. No, I, you know, I don’t, um, I don’t have a lot of that in the first season. And that was something that I really, that we really like re, uh, wanted to, to change about about the second season for sure, was to start inviting in and representing more diverse stories. Cause it’s so different.
Speaker 2: (27:26)
It is, and it tells and everybody has a different story and there’s a perspective that we may not even get because we don’t, we can’t put ourselves in other people’s shoes when it comes to different ethnicities or religions or, or, or situations. So it’s good that we hear these different, the round it out. So when I started my journey, of course the ancestry had just started, there wasn’t much of a database compared to now. There’s much more of a database. Um, I started with ancestry.com and I started searching. Now I have done, I’ll say this out loud, I’ve done some comedic work. I’ve done some standup, something as a hobby. So sometimes I’ll tell a joke, please just laugh and move on from it.
Speaker 3: (28:13)
Sure.
Speaker 2: (28:14)
And one thing. And if you think these various, just laugh and move forward.
Speaker 3: (28:18)
Okay. All right. I’m, I’m bracing myself, getting ready for the, for the awkward humor.
Speaker 2: (28:25)
Well, this is part country and this could be part of the African American culture, but I was going on a lot of things that my ancestors or my aunt and uncles were telling me. And it was hilarious to me. They were like, Oh yeah, your uncle Pooky, Pooky. And I’m like, Pookey somebody.
Speaker 3: (28:41)
I can’t find a record for a Pooky or Ray Ray or a little John
Speaker 2: (28:48)
real name. And it was hilarious because I had an aunt tell me, I don’t know what my grandfather’s real name was. We always called them this. And it’s just like, so it was very frustrating on that set. Right. But then also for the African American community, we didn’t get to own property.
Speaker 3: (29:06)
Yeah, for some,
Speaker 2: (29:09)
but there wasn’t a lot. We didn’t, we didn’t get to register to vote, so we weren’t on the census. And then one of the, one of the most heartbreaking details of the research is that I would find census record and I would read through the census records and they, my grandmothers, my maternal grandmother’s name is lo theme lot, H. I. N E, very odd name. I’ve never heard of it before. And I’ve never heard it used in other ways. It’s not a very, it’s not a name that carries per se, but they write her name and they couldn’t spell, either they couldn’t spell Lutheran or they didn’t understand leucine or, or were, you could only imagine was it that her mother called her leucine and couldn’t read and write so she couldn’t spell it for the census taker to write it down. Right. So they just worked with the Cod or did the citizen like or not have an education to the point where he could write or she could write? I’m sorry. I’m assuming. He said they could write and I would assume it would probably be heat for it because they were traveling a lot. It was unsafe for women to travel sentence workers.
Speaker 3: (30:13)
Yeah. Or they didn’t care. They didn’t care enough to make sure they had it right.
Speaker 2: (30:17)
But the one part that really broke my heart is that my family were from a long line of sharecroppers and they would work a part of the land that was owned by say, and not to be controversial, anything owned by a white landowner.
Speaker 3: (30:31)
That’s a controversial,
Speaker 2: (30:33)
controversial, but I don’t want to, you know, you know, I’m sorry, I don’t even, I’m just muddling through this.
Speaker 3: (30:39)
No, you’re doing, you’re, you’re just telling the truth.
Speaker 2: (30:44)
A sharecropper and instead of going to the black family’s home to ask them, who lives here, how old are they? You know, all these questions they asked. They would just ask the white land owner and white land land owner would only give him as much information as they do, whether it was a lot or little or if they made it up themselves. I don’t know. They had six kids or whatever. The reason, whatever the motivation is. So it found it very frustrating to sign any type of information. So for a couple of years, three or four years, I’m on the side, I’m off the site, I’m frustrated, I’m trying to find things, asking people, I’m moving around, just a lot of work to it. And, but at the same time, my Caucasian friends are like, Oh, you’re doing that. Hey, show me how to do this. And I’d pop in their name, I pop in their grandparent’s name, and then next thing you know, we’re in the 15 hundreds within six hours. And I’m like, wow, we’re only back to ancient, you know, Ireland. Right. Comparatively, it was very frustrating. So crazy. Built up a lot of frustration for me. Um, but on the flip note, I started to do my stepfather’s side of the family and his came back relatively quickly. He’s African-American. It came back relatively quickly, but mostly because his family was mostly from Baltimore, the city. So a lot of records, a lot of jobs, a lot of things were there. Whereas if you lived in rural North Carolina motor side of the family, you didn’t have it.
Speaker 3: (32:08)
Right. More administrative records. Correct.
Speaker 2: (32:12)
Back to say. It just led to a lot of frustration on my part. But I’ve given up, I’d come back, I’d given up. So I built up a lot of frustration. So I got to a point and the reason why I said all this, cause I got to a point that the DNA test came out and I was thinking, Hmm, what if I do the DNA test that may show me that I’m connected to people that I might not even known about? Yeah, I know humans do things that are not necessarily the best things for each other. We have extramarital affairs and so forth. I know that could be a possibility. I was not afraid to put my DNA out. Some people are and I was very, I was going forward, but I didn’t want to be selfishly spending the money for the DNA test, which was great because come Christmas time of 19 I’m sorry, 2006 was like five years ago, four years ago when it first came out. That first Christmas we were sitting there and watching the melt. Weiss and I were watching a commercial and it said, Hey, do the DNA tie, and my wife says, Hey, that’s what I could get you for Christmas. And I believed that I didn’t have the money for it. Well, it’s our money, but nonetheless that she gave me permission.
Speaker 1: (33:23)
Right. It felt like a selfish, a selfish project or something.
Speaker 2: (33:27)
Yeah. I said correct. She knew my frustration. She knew how bad I wanted to do this. I had already gotten to a certain point, hit a brick wall, so I ordered the kit. The kit was in the mail. My mother and I spend time talking to each other on the phone all the time. I love making her laugh. We connected as best we can. She called me after I decided to buy the kit in the mail. It’s on its way. My mother. Hey, what
Speaker 1: (33:51)
you guys, I’m sorry. You guys live in Richmond at this point and she, or where do you live at this point?
Speaker 2: (33:56)
I live in Richmond at this point,
Speaker 1: (33:57)
right
Speaker 2: (33:58)
for about an hour and a half away. She’s in the Tidewater area of Virginia, Virginia Beach. And so my mother is, she calls me, Hey, what are you doing? Blah, blah, blah. We’re talking. And she says, what are you getting your wife for Christmas? And we had this and then I said, guess what? My life is getting me. And she’s helped. And I tell her and she laughed and nonchalantly goes, Oh, you young kids know how to waste her money. She thinks it’s a waste of time and money. I’m not giving much. She’s old school. She still has a PCR that still flash. It’s 12 o’clock which says once she has a VCR and second she hasn’t learned how to program.
Speaker 1: (34:35)
She doesn’t know how to program it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (34:37)
She’s laughing at me at spending money on technology. So end up conversation. We laugh,
Speaker 1: (34:42)
please. Just so you know. Oh wait, maybe I’m not [inaudible] okay, continue. Sorry.
Speaker 2: (34:51)
Um, so the next day, 25 hours later, my mother calls me, she’s on the phone and her voice, Oh, everything’s fine. I just wanted to, I just thought we should have a conversation. I said, what about, and she says, Oh, about your consumption. And I said, we’ve already had this conversation. She goes, no, I think I might have left some things out. And I’m laughing to myself thinking, you left some things out. I gave you an opportunity. Tell him what could you have possibly left out. So she tells me your story all over again. But she tells me pretty much word for word the same exact story. And I say to her, I said, mom, you’ve already told me this story. This is the same exact story she tells before she’s at the, why are you telling me this in the bathroom? I’m thinking, she’s telling me, because about to do the CNA test.
Speaker 3: (35:38)
Right? Did you feel scared? Did you feel scared or did you ha, did you have any strange feelings about this when she was telling you?
Speaker 2: (35:46)
Not at all. But to answer your question about strange feelings when you grow up through life, especially us, the, the group of people that are in this situation today that we know now, we can always look back and feel some strange notes. We just didn’t know what it was. Right? And, and when we find out the truth through these tests or what have you, then it all clicks and falls in the slope. So the strangeness was there. I just didn’t know what it felt. Um, I didn’t know how to express it. So, um, I said, mom, you’ve already told me this story and why are you telling me this? And she says, well, I got really sick last night after I got off the phone with you. I got really, really sick to the point I thought I needed to go to the hospital. And I panicked.
Speaker 2: (36:32)
I felt like I hadn’t told you everything that I deserve to tell you about your life. And I said, I said, well, mom, I’m really sorry you got sick and feeling about him today, but I’m thinking if you were that sick, you wouldn’t be on the phone or you’d be in the hustle. That’s, that’s what I consider to be real sick. Like I had a heart attack. And she goes, I just, I just thought I’d share that with you. And I said, well, and I’m a very perceptive person. When people talk to me, I read between the lines, which people call me paranoid, but they’re just hiding something, which is fair, no in itself.
Speaker 3: (37:05)
But if you’re not, if you’re right, when you’re right, it’s not paranoia. When you find out,
Speaker 2: (37:09)
you get facts when you get true. So when I said to her, I said, well listen, you’ve been talking a lot and you’ve told me about Calvin and you know, I have no connection with Calvin whatsoever. I don’t talk to him. I have nothing to do with them. Um, um, I said, but I said, you’ve talked about a lot about this older gentleman. Can you, what? What is the deal with him? I said, who is he and to be honest, I don’t know if she told me who he was before or told me his name before. I think she did, but my memory, you don’t have memory as you remember something, you add things to it and it things just change, so I don’t want to, I don’t want to misrepresent my mother. I think she told me before and I got over the fact, but I’m going to tell you this now because this is the continuity of my story. She told me what his name was. Okay, and this is the mind blowing part. His name is Spencer.
Speaker 3: (38:04)
Ah, okay.
Speaker 2: (38:07)
She tells me his name is Spencer. Whether she told me at that moment after we had that conversation about me getting a DNA test or she told me years before she told me his name was Spencer and I remember asking her because of all of this has gone on, I cannot remember the timeline anymore. My brain has blown a fuse because we’re going to get to in just a second. When she’s telling me his name was Spencer, I said, why did you name me Spencer jr cause you know how I’m sensitive this junior?
Speaker 3: (38:35)
Yes.
Speaker 2: (38:36)
Yeah. So I’ve already experienced that to a certain point. Why did you name me Spencer? And she said, I said, did you name me Spencer? Because you thought I was his child? And she said, she goes, um, I just liked the name. And I said, no, nobody’s got no woman in her right mind. I don’t care if she was 16 or 17 is going to name her child after her ex boyfriend.
Speaker 3: (39:00)
Right. The guy that dumped her. Right. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (39:03)
Um, that either shows it a little bit of craziness or something else is going on here. I said, why did you name me that? And she said, Oh, because I liked the name. And of course it’s my mother. I respect her. I didn’t push it. I let it go. But I would get the reconcile the fact that I’m named after a man that basically deserted her.
Speaker 3: (39:20)
Right? Yeah.
Speaker 2: (39:22)
This is, this is my story. It’s a bit shameful, but at the same time I’m laughing about it. I’m making a joke out of it. I’m, I’m making, I’m doing standup comedy about this, about the fact that I name, you know, so I go on stage and I said, is anybody here named Spencer? I just want to know if you’re my dad or not.
Speaker 2: (39:42)
So I said, mom, listen, you’ve talked and now we’re the conversation where we’re having around Christmas time, after I got the DNA test ordered, I said, mom, can you please tell me something seems weird here now I’m getting really weird feeling. And I said, well, what’s his last name? And she tells me his last name. And while we were talking on the phone for some stupid reason, thinking this guy has gotta be like 67 68 at the time, I just had to go on Facebook and look him up. Sure. I go looking for a mom. My mother’s just talking. I’m not even here. And all I hear is Charlie Brown adults. Mom.
Speaker 3: (40:18)
Yes.
Speaker 2: (40:20)
Pulling up his name and up pops several people with that name. The first listing, I click on it and I look at the picture and it’s me 20 years older.
Speaker 3: (40:31)
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2: (40:34)
Do you know the Alfred Hitchcock movie or, um, he passed, I think he patented this, this, this, this vision. It was in vertigo where it looks like the world is pulling up. The camera’s pulling away, right?
Speaker 3: (40:44)
Yeah. That’s what it felt like. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: (40:48)
Got it. It was vertigo just sitting in my couch feeling, I don’t hear anything else from that point on and I’m stuck. I cannot even think straight at this point. And my mom’s like, no, he’s not your father. Calvin’s your father. I’m sure of it.
Speaker 3: (41:03)
No. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (41:07)
I’m dealing with the fact that my blood type, no, my mom’s blood type. I used to study biology in college. I’m thinking anybody could be my father. That’s the way the genotypes workout when it comes to the blood and so forth. So I’m not mad at her that she doesn’t know who my father is. I’m not shaming her because she had two boyfriends or it might’ve been intimate with two men within the same week. I’m not throwing that type of shame of my mother. That would be wrong with me. Um,
Speaker 4: (41:34)
I’m not mad about that at all. I’m just overwhelmed by what this might mean if Spencer is my father, right. The, I deal with that. I get off the phone with my mother and I’m looking at his picture on Facebook and I’m looking at his wife and I’m looking at his children and I’m going, wait a minute. And I’m just, all of this is coming to me. Like, what could this possibly mean? But I’m looking at this man’s face and I’m, it’s like I’m looking into a mirror. Yeah. Funny thing. Funny thing is that I’ve never, I had at the time, I had never been able to grow a beard. It would come in and patches, like I felt like this, you know, like hormonal teenager with weird facial hair. Um, soon after side notes, soon after, probably within a year I was able to grow a full beard after seeing his picture of a full beard. It was so hilarious.
Speaker 3: (42:24)
Oh,
Speaker 4: (42:26)
and it’s like my brain released,
Speaker 3: (42:30)
right? Yeah. It was just waiting for you to make the connection. Wow.
Speaker 4: (42:35)
Looking at this guy and I’m trying to convince myself that he’s not my father. Now this picture doesn’t look like me. No, that’s good. No, that, you know, and I’m just, the test comes, I do the test, I send it off and I totally forget about the test. This is Christmas of the text. And if anybody had did one around that time, I can’t remember what year it was. What year is it now? 2020. So it might’ve been 2016, 2015 or something like that. Um, there was a real backlog. It does allow for the results that come back. So I think I did it right before, right after Christmas, and my results didn’t come back for like three months. The whole time. During that three months, my brain is just working. Just how do I deal with it? I even forgot I had done the ancestry test, not even on my radar anymore. I’m trying to process all of this. Um, I’m quizzing my mom. I’m asking her for more information. She’s like, look, I’m telling you center is not your father. And I’m like, mom, I just, something’s weird here. And of course I’m not talking to Calvin. I’m still close to his first life, but I’m not telling anybody about this. I’m just dealing with it. And so
Speaker 3: (43:47)
did you tell your, what do you tell your wife?
Speaker 4: (43:49)
Oh yeah. I told my wife, this is the blurry part. This is, this is the joke part. I’m going to preface it by saying it’s a joke. So my wife being a Spanish, she’s Caucasian. I look at her and I said, honey, look at this picture. And she’s there when I’m discovering this. And I showed her and she looked at it and she just looked at me and she just shakes her head left and right. She doesn’t say anything. And I go, tell me this doesn’t look like me. I need you to help me with this. I need your perspective. And she just looked at me like I’d spoken a different language that she didn’t understand that she speaks two languages and I go, you know what? You’re no good. Get away from me. And I’m just so distraught. I go to work the next day. And um, I work with a lot of Caucasian people in my field. Okay. The only reason why I’m telling you this because it leads into a joke. I am bursting with this and I tell all the people at work, Hey, this is what’s going on. The slip, my mother told me last night, does this man look like me? And they’re like, they, he looks like you and I’m laughing to myself and I’m like, all black people look alike to you. And
Speaker 3: (44:51)
yeah,
Speaker 4: (44:51)
well I’d go to ask a black person and they go, yep, he looks like your father. And I go, crap. And it’s true. Black person knows I look like this person. So I’m laughing about this years later about the fact that that happened. Um, so anyway, I am dealing with this over the next three months trying to get this in my head. Totally forget about the DNA test and I’m trying to figure out a way I need to know if this guy is my father and I so I can just get this out of my head and move forward in life. So I asked my mother, does he have any siblings? And she says yes. And I said, did he have any sisters? And they said yes, her name is Alice. That I remember. And I said, great. My theory one [inaudible] she Alice would probably be more discreet than say a brother.
Speaker 4: (45:34)
Okay, I don’t want to ruin this man’s life. I don’t want to introduce myself to him if he is this crappy person who deserted my mother when she was pregnant for 16 yeah. So I’m going, I’m trying to be a even keeled and nice about this without being disruptive in any way. I figured if I can talk to her, maybe she’ll do a DNA test with me like a home kit. I’m not even thinking ancestry has anything to do with it, cause I don’t know what to expect. I don’t know what’s going to come by. We all know what comes back now, but I didn’t know what. Right,
Speaker 3: (46:06)
right, right. Yeah, that’s true. You know, it was when it was fresh, it was like a, yeah.
Speaker 4: (46:10)
So I reach out to her. I see his profile on Facebook. I changed my name to encompass my full name, not just Spencer Warren, but my middle name and also to, in case she knows me because I’m sorry I didn’t tell you this before. Everybody on my mother’s side calls me by my middle name, first name Spencer, but you know me by is, is my school name. It’s my professional name and so forth. Nobody calls me Spencer. I’ve never liked the name Spencer. I’ve a got teased on being called Spencer because Spencer pre-hire the show came out, I got [inaudible]
Speaker 3: (46:44)
it affected
Speaker 4: (46:44)
me, but kids are just weird like that. But um, I never used Spencer before so I changed my name to, to shows my first middle last name. I’ll put it on Facebook and I find his profile and I find his connection to a friend who has the same name as his sister. And I reach out to her and I say hello. Now we all know if you’re a Facebook user, if you’re not friends with someone, if you send a message to them through messenger, it used to go to their spam or to another folder. I did not want to friend her because I didn’t want Spencer to see me as her friend. If he’s active on Facebook, obviously he’s up a profile. I just didn’t want to cause that stir. I just sent her a simple hello Ana thirsty that whole day. Nothing return that Friday, nothing in return.
Speaker 4: (47:33)
That Saturday I’m having a cookout with my friends and we’re all at my house. For some reason I pull up my email and I see, Hey, your ancestry results are back sometime in the spring now, April, March, no March, um, three months. I totally forgot about this DNA test, which I’ve said a couple of time and I say, let me read it and it shows me my genetic makeup, which was surprising. I had, you know, I’d never do that. I had this genetic makeup and so forth and told me great dandy. I’m making jokes with my friends because it turns out that I’m 23% great Britain and so I’m laughing and I’m going, I’m a quarter white. This is why I can’t dunk a basketball. This is why a whole bunch of things, making jokes and so done with that. Uh, the cookout is over with. I clean up, I go and sit down again.
Speaker 4: (48:27)
It’s 11 o’clock at night and I go through my results again and now it tells me I do it on my laptop this time. And now you have some genetic relatives are to look at them. Now of course my, my piece size brain is not processing very well. I’m overwhelmed and you have a close relative relative new to this. Don’t understand what close relative mean. And I see their screen name and I go, who is this person I can’t even imagine what could be. And then I go and I send that person a message and I don’t even know because I want to be discreet. And I said, um, you know, I’m just seeing that we’re close. Would you like to talk cause this is all new to me, blah, blah, blah. 11 o’clock at night I send a message, I don’t expect to respond to court.
Speaker 4: (49:16)
Then I looked through the rest of the list and it says, you have a first cousin. And it has a picture, but of course you can’t really see the picture. It doesn’t let you expand it at this spot. And I see the space and I can barely make it out, but it doesn’t look like anyone I know. Now mind you, I know everyone on my mother’s side of the family, even though I’ve got, my mother has 13 siblings. I know all my first cousins. We get together all the time. I really close to Darren, but I know all my first cousins. I’m not even thinking about Calvin’s family. I’m not even thinking about that. I’m just thinking, who is this person? How could it be my cousin? And I’m blown away. So I send that person about such as well. And then I go to sleep, sleep.
Speaker 4: (49:56)
The next day I get up, I had to travel, uh, two, two hours away to, I used to coach, uh, competitive soccer and I had a game the next day that was nearby my mother’s house. I was going that direction anyway. And I get in the car and I start driving and my mind is just reeling about what I just learned about the night before. And on one of my breaks driving down, I check my email and it’s that first cousin replied, not the close family, but the first cousin. She goes, Hey cousin, it seems like we’re first cousins, um, are your people. And I’m thinking, I really don’t know at this point,
Speaker 3: (50:30)
right? But I need you to help me out. You need to tell me.
Speaker 4: (50:34)
So I’m blown away. And I, and I, and I go and I’m playing Colet and she’s playing coy. This is the internet. You don’t want to give too much information away. And I just finally, we go back and forth while I’m at this break and, and my driving and I’ve got time built in and I’m going, let me just get this over with. I said, Hey, listen. Um, I really think my father’s not my father. And gee, are you related to anybody named Spencer who lives in this area or North Carolina? And she goes, she replies almost immediately. That’s my brother’s youngest brother. I’m floored. That’s her father’s youngest brother. So she is definitely my first cousin through our mother’s side. And I’m just sitting there looking at this email, reading it over and over and over again. And she says, well, if you need any help, here’s my number. Call me. I won’t be, I’m not home today. I’m traveling, but call me next week. I need to know today what will be the next week. So I now know that I’m related to someone who’s related to Spencer, which makes it less unless Spencer and Calvin are related. Spencer’s my father and Calvin’s not right. And I really don’t think Spencer and Calvin are related, but at the same time, I still don’t know.
Speaker 3: (51:46)
Right. I don’t think it happened. Anything can happen. But at this
Speaker 4: (51:49)
point, so I drive down, um, my head is in a fog. I coached the game, by the way. I had some pent up aggression. It seems like we killed that team. I don’t know. My coaching abilities came on, came to life, finished the game, did our cooldowns, and then I drive back to my mother’s house, which is on my way back to Richmond. I get to my mother’s house. Oh, what a pleasant surprise. Hey blah, blah, blah. We’re talking blah, blah, blah. I stepped out there. Um, and the reason why I didn’t do this in front of my stepdad is cause my stepdad and I had a very, very difficult relationship growing up now or an adult. Um, it’s a little bit more respectful. Um, but we’ve not throwing any daggers at him. He’s, I consider him to be my father. He was the one in my life.
Speaker 4: (52:34)
But good or bad, he’s my father. That’s the way I look at it. Um, now I didn’t want to say this in front of him because I needed to get my mother to not lie to me. I needed her to understand what I’m learning today. And I needed to tell her that. And I, and I didn’t want to bring my stepdad into this. He’s not very good with drama and controversy is very earthy punker to himself. So I, I said, Hey mom, didn’t you want to go to this place? And she kind of picked up on that clue like I needed to talk to her. So we stepped outside and got in the car and went somewhere and I told her what I learned and she was in genuine shock and she said, um, she said, I’m sorry. And I just looked at her expecting something else to come out but nothing.
Speaker 4: (53:18)
And then I just kind of went, okay, I still need to process. Took her back home, got in the car, drove hour and a half back home, got home, told my wife, my wife just looked at me blankly again as if I was, she didn’t know what to say. And I spent that Sunday night dealing with that. Okay. And thinking of the ramifications and saying still, I’m not sure I could still be Calvin’s child if Calvin and Spencer are related in some way. I just don’t, I can’t, I’m trying to figure this all out. I go to work on Monday, my head’s in a fog and I opened up my laptop and I start work. And I know some people are probably amazed by this. I get on Facebook while I’m at work. Sorry,
Speaker 3: (54:00)
I work in it. I can get through these things, you know. So I sit there,
Speaker 4: (54:04)
I opened up my laptop and open up Facebook and there is a message from Alice, the sister of Spencer, and she finally responded after five days and she said, hello, I have been looking for you. My whole world just fell apart.
Speaker 3: (54:20)
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4: (54:22)
So I respond, you’ve been looking for me. And she says, yes, I lost contact with your mother when you were a baby and I’ve been looking for you all this time. But I could not remember her last name. But now that we have basically now that we have the internet and all this stuff, and I go, wow. And I’m still responding being a child of the internet. And she goes, can you just call me? Go?
Speaker 3: (54:43)
Yes.
Speaker 4: (54:45)
So I get on the call and I call her. Now, um, a lot of people may already know this. When you talking to someone who’s older, you of course talk to them with respect. Yes ma’am. No ma’am. And so forth. But another thing that I do, I’ve always learned to do what she would say yes ms, whether they’re mrs or not usually yes ms. and then their first day, Mr. Howard [inaudible], no, miss Alice, I’m being totally respectful. And she finally got tired of me calling her that and she says, she says, would you stop calling me miss Alice? I’m no stranger. I’m your aunt and I’m going, you know me to be your nephew. This is blowing my mind. So now my whole world is destroyed cause I’m thinking Spencer was like, that’s not my child and I’m gone. So why would his sister still consider, maybe this is really bothering me. So I am at work and I’m like, I really can’t get into this, but I, I needed to know something. So I say to her, do I have any siblings? And she says she, I could hear her smile through the phone because you don’t know. And I said, no I don’t.
Speaker 3: (55:45)
And she goes, I don’t know anything.
Speaker 4: (55:48)
She says, you have four siblings, you have three sisters and a brother. And my heart just exploded.
Speaker 3: (55:54)
Huh?
Speaker 4: (55:55)
I’m just like, really? Now one thing you’ll know about me or learn about me or if you want to later on in life.
Speaker 3: (56:02)
Love the women in my life. I was raised by my mother. My grandmother is very important to me.
Speaker 4: (56:08)
Darren’s mother.
Speaker 3: (56:09)
She was very important to me because I spent my summers with her second Spencer. Hold on one second. Something weird just happened with my recording. Hold on.
Speaker 5: (56:48)
[inaudible].
Speaker 4: (56:49)
Hello? Are you there?
Speaker 1: (56:51)
Okay. That was very strange. My other, my podcast recording.
Speaker 4: (56:56)
Sorry to play in my ear
Speaker 1: (56:59)
like an old podcast, but it’s done now. I’ve got it. I’ve got it turned off. All right, so you knew, you’re telling me that you, you, you love the women in your life. That was right. Lost.
Speaker 4: (57:11)
I love the women in my life. I have a very fond affection to the women in my life. Men have been disappointing to me. My stepfather and I didn’t get along very well. Calvin and I didn’t get along very well. So I have this very, I’m very apprehensive around men per se, even though I have a boy and a and a girl child. I’m very close to both of them or like feel like I am. I don’t treat them any differently, but I just don’t tend to congregate around the men, older men in my life. So I’m very affectionate toward the females in my life. I coached girls for 20 years, that kind of, you know, I just get it. So now I found out for the first time, mind you, I had Calvin jr who was my brother, my mom, my mom and stepdad had a son.
Speaker 4: (57:56)
Uh, he’s my younger brother. We grew up together, um, where it’s cow Calvin jr and I didn’t really grow up together and met each other later into our childhood. Um, so there’s no real deep connection, but there’s a connection between us. I now have three sisters and I’m like over the mirror. I can care less about the extrovert, but I’m just lead it of having the sisters and I’m going, I have sisters. And then I started thinking to myself, what if we look alike? I’m going to see what I look like as a girl. To me, ugly, hugely ugly picture of me looking like I’ve just female. Uh, cause I’m not, I don’t think of myself as like overly handsome guy. Like I’m thinking this isn’t going to be interesting cause now I get to see things. Now going back, you and I were talking about the fact that how did we feel anything strange?
Speaker 4: (58:45)
And I alluded to the fact that you go through life, things feel strange. You just don’t know what they seem like. I never felt comfortable around Calvin and it was from the day we met. And I don’t know if it was, I don’t know if it was nature or nurture. I don’t know if he, he set me off or what happened. I always feel comfortable with his wife. I just never felt comfortable with him. It felt like there was this, this, this energy between, um, they didn’t work out. But then everybody would always say, Oh, you look like them. And that would always go, I’ll go, okay. But now in hindsight, when saw that picture of Spencer on Facebook, I knew instantly that that was my face. That was my nose. That was everything. And so for child, which is a phenomenon that a lot of people take for granted, cause they’ll never experience it when you grow up in this situation and then you find people, you look like you become a part of that tribe just by your genetic makeup, it satisfies something inside of you. It’s like a piece has been missing for so long and you go, wow, that’s where I got that from. That’s who I look like. So that was very satisfied.
Speaker 1: (59:55)
All right. So that’s, yeah. Well yeah, I was going to say, so that’s what happened to you is you felt like a peace settled into place. Okay.
Speaker 4: (01:00:02)
I knew I looked like my mother, but I never had my father around to figure out which one I looked like the most or which where’d I get this from or what happened. But I never felt like that came from Calvin. So that kind of meeting my sisters or wanting to meet my sisters, I would see the other side of me. I would, it would complete, it would make me whole, that’s the feeling that I got and I was rushing to that point. Um, not to get too much. Not that I don’t want to, but not to get too much into it. There is a reading other people’s story on these, these, these NPE groups that uh, you and I had been a part of or that you’ve talked about before. Um, you find that some siblings don’t want anything to do with you. You find some siblings are like, Oh yes, please bring them, bring them.
Speaker 4: (01:00:50)
We want, we want to give you love just because you’re genetically related and you find out that you may be culturally different cause you grew up in different folds or you grew up in that secret. Um, this was odd in the sense that I finally went to meet my sisters. They are both adults and they both have children of their own. And I went and they were living in Rocky mountain, North Carolina where I had my son. And so I go down there and I finally meet my aunt Alice. She’s the one who the conduit for me because, because, and we’ll get into it. She hadn’t told Spencer yet. So I said, I need to meet you as soon as possible. Nobody’s guaranteed tomorrow. I’m coming down there if you have a problem with that. No, I drive down. I’d leave work in the middle of the day. I tell him I’ve got to go.
Speaker 4: (01:01:39)
I drive down. No, Kelly and I go to her house and as I’m pulling up to her house, when this rural railroad in the back of North Carolina’s Woodlands, whatever, I go past the sign that says their last name towing company. So I’m seeing that the family has a, has a business and that makes me feel like, wow, you know, this is what I come from and I’m starting to feel it. Like that’s my spirit, my entrepreneurial spirit. Maybe this is where I get it from. Is this genetic, is this, is this nature or nurture? And I pull up and she’s so warm to me and she’s so sweet and she says, okay, we’re going to go visit your sister. And she hops in the car and we drive on through and she’s telling me stories
Speaker 2: (01:02:20)
about, yeah, when you were a baby, I used to babysit you and [inaudible]
Speaker 4: (01:02:26)
and I’m taking, I’m not stopping, I’m just letting her and I go,
Speaker 2: (01:02:30)
you used to babysit me? She said, yeah, when your mom had to work, I would babysit you. Because my daughter would always ask me, when she was talking about her daughter, she says, my daughter said, Hey, do you remember that? Or you remember little center? You know, we used to babysit him, whatever happened to him. And she was like, I dunno honey. I’m looking for him. And she would tell me these stories. I’m looking at her going, what is this woman?
Speaker 4: (01:02:49)
There’s no way that it should be lying to me. I don’t know these people, but I’m, I’m, I’m curious. I want to know what I want to know more about me. So we show up at my sister’s house and I’m huggy. I’m a hugger. I’m very affectionate. And I’m like, Hey, how are you doing? And I look at her face and she looks like, and she’s gorgeous. And I’m thinking this is the most beautiful face I’ve seen and she’s got, and this is funny because I have a dimple in my writing, but I don’t have one of my left growing up. People always said, you know, um, um, your mom couldn’t afford to, you know, we’re so poor you could afford to temple. She has a temple in the same cheek. So it blows me away that I’m sitting here looking at her image. I see our simulator
Speaker 2: (01:03:38)
and I’m, I’m in her house and I’m, she’s got three daughters. And of course, again, I coach girls for a long time. I’m being affectionate with the daughters
Speaker 4: (01:03:46)
climbing all over.
Speaker 2: (01:03:47)
So nice sweet. And I go outside and play basketball with the, with the, with the [inaudible]
Speaker 4: (01:03:53)
one and it’s just, it was just like a home. And the sister, her name is Olivia, she goes, you look just like our uncle Brooke. And I go, what? And she goes, yeah, you look just like me and you look like that, but you look like Brooke. So now I’m feeling even more of a connection, right? Cause now I look like more people. I see my genetic makeup and this is great. And then she says to me, you know, dad used to talk about you all the time, what? He deserted my mother. And I don’t say that
Speaker 2: (01:04:30)
because I don’t want you tick anybody off. But I’m going, huh? And she goes, yeah, he’s telling us about you. We go to bed, he tell us about you. I’m like us. He goes, yeah, my, you know our the, well actually first she goes, my sister, our sister, she corrects herself because now this is new for her. But I’m thinking, I’m thinking now in my head as a woman, why did she
Speaker 4: (01:04:53)
with her motherly nature come looking for me?
Speaker 2: (01:04:58)
And she never did. She knew I was out there. She just never came looking for her. And, and I said to her, why didn’t you come looking for me? And her knee jerk response was, and I think this has started a bad blood between us.
Speaker 4: (01:05:11)
She goes, why didn’t you come looking for us? And I looked at her and I go, cause I know you existed. And right. Then that moment I started to feel something toward my mother. I’m starting to think something bad here. It started to sink in and I said, I’m not going to go down that route just yet because maybe I don’t have all the full story. Now I realize this is going to be a very sinister or possibly dark reason behind. And I need to figure this out. I need to figure out who Spencer is. I need to figure out really who my mother, right? So the other sister comes over, they’re a bit standoffish. The kids, their kids are all over them. But, and I’m warm, but I feel this coldness coming from my siblings and I just kind of let it go. Now
Speaker 4: (01:06:03)
my father finally calls me and I hear his voice for the first time, which of course nearly made me explode with tears cause I’d never heard his voice before. And, um, I laugh to myself because I, uh, coming from North Carolina, we have a very distinct dialect, just like if you’re from Alabama or Georgia or whatever. But if you listen to my voice now, I don’t think that comes out. I think a lot of people can’t tell where I’m from. They think I’m from the Northeast or from some major city or something. I learned how to get rid of that accent. But every now and then I can bring the accent back if I’m around my family alone and his voice has that accent. So I’m laughing to myself that, you know, he’s got that accent that I’ve been trying to get away from, but it was so warm to hear her voice for the first time and he’s very coy at first and he says, Hey, there’s some things I’ve got to take care of, but you know, I’m going to call you very soon and we’re going to get together and I would love to meet and I’m glad you found me.
Speaker 4: (01:07:03)
I’ve been waiting for this day to happen and I’m like, wait day. You knew I was out there. What? And I don’t want to be angry because I want to get family history. I want to get medical history. I want to get, I want to be amicable without being divisive. There’s some points to this. So, um, moving forward, um, I ended up meeting him. He finally tells me the story and his thing was, is that
Speaker 4: (01:07:34)
he and my mother, his story is that he and my mother were connected all the way through my childhood. My mother even came to live with him in Washington D C actually after I was born. It just didn’t work out. And my mother ended up going back to Richmond to live with one of her sisters and over times he eventually would tell me more information. He just was very coy about what he was going to tell me. And I think, and I respect him for this, I think he didn’t want to say anything had about my mother not knowing who I was, knowing that that’s all I had my mother and I respected them for that. I appreciated it. But I also told
Speaker 2: (01:08:15)
them, I said, listen, not everybody’s [inaudible] I, I don’t know you, but tell me your side. That’s all I need. And I’ll try to figure out what’s real, what’s up. You know, what I believe, what I feel, what, what would happen. He just to this day will not speak ill of my mother. So part of the story is missing. But the reason why this has been difficult for me is because hearing his side of the story doesn’t match it with my mother’s side of the story. Right. But it makes my mother’s side of the story seemed to be
Speaker 4: (01:08:52)
right. Right. Just because it didn’t make sense
Speaker 2: (01:08:55)
if he was in contact with my mother for so long, why did my mother erase that history by telling me that story of my conception twice, admitting him both times, paying him in [inaudible].
Speaker 3: (01:09:08)
So interesting. [inaudible]
Speaker 2: (01:09:11)
so the reason why I decided to have this conversation with you and hopefully,
Speaker 4: (01:09:17)
yes,
Speaker 2: (01:09:21)
there have been some NP situ NPE situations that had been from, from from a fair, um, from less than desirable reason. But one of the aspects that I think is unique in this situation, and there’s so much more to my, my story, um, one of the unique situations is the, the amount of guilt. And shame that women
Speaker 4: (01:09:43)
when this happened, and
Speaker 2: (01:09:47)
historically, culturally we’ve put women on a certain path to be a certain way, whereas men get a,
Speaker 4: (01:09:55)
all right.
Speaker 2: (01:09:57)
Um, and if a woman were to have an illicit affair or if a woman were to be, um, on alcohol or drugs or a partier or, or such and this were to happen, it shames the woman when she has a child out of this situation where she has to say faith. Um, to a point where, you know, what if, um, she was, you know, following a band and she decided to sleep with a band member and the band member doesn’t even remember,
Speaker 4: (01:10:27)
or the child finds this out machine that they have to deal with. The mother protects the child by lying or the mother protects the child by having a fare and lying to them. And then even when found out by DNA, there are some mothers who are like, I don’t believe in DNA. That’s all a lie. And it’s like, well, how did it pick out this person out of 330 million in America who lived in Utah? How did you know? And you happened to live down the street from them back in 1960
Speaker 3: (01:10:52)
right, right.
Speaker 2: (01:10:55)
The amount of guilt that our mothers in these scenarios are carrying, they start with a lie and they live that life for the rest of their life, not knowing that DNA was going to [inaudible]
Speaker 4: (01:11:08)
catch them in that line and end the mental [inaudible].
Speaker 2: (01:11:14)
We don’t even understand our brains and our personalities and our psyche. The fact that a woman has told a lie in my case for 47 years, yeah, it’s hard for her to release herself from MetLife because everything she’s built on it that helps a card she’s built on, it comes crumbling down. And so their defense mechanism is to say to the child, don’t tell anyone they want us to carry that weight. Which my mother said to me, don’t tell anyone. And I said, why not? This is my story. And she says, but it’s none of their business. Right. And I’m thinking, no, you don’t want the shame of this. And I, and I’ve even given my mother a path to the point where I’ve said, listen mom, you were 16 years old. That’s a major decision to have made at the age of 16. You would just lost her father.
Speaker 2: (01:12:06)
You had all your other older siblings who had left the home. There was no one there to look after you. You had a, you had a, you had a mother that was reeling from losing her husband of so many years, you know, at least 20, 30 years. Um, you were growing up in a very poor sharecropper situation where now the breadwinner who had been stricken with brain cancer and sick, most of his last few years of his life finally had to leave. I mean, I don’t blame you for that, but let me let you, let me release you from that. And she says she basically deal with that. Now another response is the mother will turn on the child and basically go out and go out of their way to poison everyone else with their version in order to vilify the child who learned them. And what doesn’t help is when the child learns out this new truth, whether it’s from a rape or whether it’s from, um, incest or from an affair or my case, it was not conventional rice.
Speaker 2: (01:13:14)
Yeah, maybe it was a little sketchy in the sense that she was between two men, which some people might turn our nose up to even to this day. But back then even more so you have more people would probably turn the nose up to the fact that this young girl was sleeping with two different men. Um, that guilt she carries from 1972 to now, you know, and, and that guilt has built up this 42, this, this, this wall around her that she has stuck into. And I feel bad for my mother because now she can’t let that go. She can’t just live in the truth. And, and the aftermath of all this is that my mother and I have had an argument and, and I think it built from the fact that I was not going to hold her secret anymore. And she knew this and she was feeling it and she felt the pressure. And now she and I haven’t spoken in about, Oh no. Which is, yeah, it’s been, she’s found a reason to be angry with me. And she’s used that as a reason to not speak to me. And it’s one of the most ridiculous small reasons I’ve ever seen. But she had to find something in order to justify hiding her shame. Right.
Speaker 2: (01:14:31)
And, and sadly, people are allowing this to happen. And I’ve just basically just said, okay, eventually she’ll, this’ll come back around. But I just want her not to live in that shaman. I know a lot of us, a lot of us and P people are dealing with mothers who are living in that shame. And it’s almost like the truth.
Speaker 1: (01:14:52)
Right? And you know, I know
Speaker 2: (01:14:53)
trying to help them, even though we’re, even though we’re suffering because our whole world got rocked and now we see the world in a different way. And you know, my case, I’m 44 I had children and now this whole quest to bring a gift to the family turned into a life changing thing for me. It’s a bit of trauma from, it’s almost not to discredit anybody else’s ailments where they’re, they’ve been a victim of violence or rape or anything like that where they’re dealing with that trauma. No one knows what you’re going through unless you go through it, but nobody knows how to help us grow it where they’re telling us things like, Oh, get over it. Oh, you already had a father. What do you complain about?
Speaker 1: (01:15:33)
So isolated. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (01:15:36)
Yeah. So it’s almost like they’re patronizing us when we don’t even know how to deal with it. Also, I don’t think the mental health, uh, um, the mental health community is necessarily prepared for this too. I’ve seen a therapist and she had no idea of how to,
Speaker 1: (01:15:55)
yeah, that’s annoying.
Speaker 2: (01:15:59)
Telling this story over and over again. It’s been very difficult through different therapists and each therapist is like, ah, well let’s deal with your mother’s issue. No, let’s deal with mine. And dealing with the fact that I have a whole new family now. That’s the reason why I decided to come on and tell my story because maybe it might help someone else to know they’re not alone, even though this wasn’t a sense of, you know, infidelity or whatever. Um, I’m dealing with, uh, siblings who don’t want anything to do with me at this point. And I think that comes from the fact that, uh, other issues, but I’ve seen it’s a phenomenon where if your situation is because of, um, infidelity, your existence tarnishes their father. Right? So that’s why they don’t want anything to do with you. You, you’re a reminder of the negative.
Speaker 1: (01:16:55)
Yeah. It’s like, well, I think a lot of people for this other person that appears, you know, even though they knew about you, like, uh, I mean, I sort of had the same, a similar situation with siblings and I, I, I just get the feeling nobody knows what to do with me and I kind of don’t know what to do with them either, to be honest. It’s like, it’s all weird and there’s no, because this has never happened before. There’s no language and there’s no like platform, like there’s no protocol. It’s just
Speaker 4: (01:17:25)
totally unchartered territory. And, and in the end, I’ve looked for all these ancestors and I feel like I’m left with because I went looking. And that’s the part that destroys you the most, you know, so, and the aftermath, I don’t have a connection with Mike. The two older siblings and I, I kind of skipped around my father. He, um, the story I got later on too, if anybody’s ever wondering if anybody’s listening, remember, wondered when I met. My father is a really nice gentleman. I look just like, um, he’s very warm. He’s very sweet. I, I’d get a good feeling about him. Um, he won’t speak ill of my mother. That’s great. He’s married. He’s on his second marriage. Um, his first marriage was around when I was about five years old, um, and he ended up having a child, which was my sister, Olivia.
Speaker 4: (01:18:19)
And then later on about 13 years later, they had another time. Um, my other sister, um, they had a very Rocky relationship. They got divorced. He married another woman who misses hilarious to me. Um, he was, I think in his late thirties, early forties. I didn’t cause my head was hurting. Um, but she was, she was 18 and they ended up having children. So I have a sister who is a month older than my son and her name [inaudible] or something, which I thought was, Oh my gosh. And then the other part is I have a brother who’s 13 years old, you know, near 15 and he’s 13 years old, so he’s like my son or could be my grandson. But the sad part about it is that his name is center.
Speaker 1: (01:19:08)
Ah, right. Okay. Here’s the story behind that. Yeah.
Speaker 4: (01:19:15)
If you go look at it, you’re going to find crazy. Ricky married his first wife. She was aware that I was in existence and that’s why he told his first two daughters about Mike distance and my mother decided it wasn’t going to work out, but for some reason there was a falling out between my mother and him and my father. Spencer decided it was best. He stayed away. You can read into that whatever you want, whether the threat or whether whatever it is, I don’t know. But he decided to stay away for the safety of someone or some sanity or piece of whatever. So he’s always known about me his whole life. He just decided to wait until I found him after I turned 18. Speaking on that, I think that’s a cop out, but at the same time, I’m a father. I do things differently. I if was in that situation, I would probably press, but again, male rights to their children and custody in 1977 was a lot different than 2000, you know, um, he had a divorce from this woman and he married this other woman. They had children, but he never told the second wife. So when I pop up out of the blue, the reason why he didn’t come to me right away was because he had to break it to her that she had done out there and also this
Speaker 1: (01:20:37)
and so,
Speaker 4: (01:20:39)
which does not make any sense because why would he let his second wife named the child, Spencer, if he knew he had a child out there, unless he didn’t know my name was Spencer or unless he just was hiding a secret. Again, here’s another secret that people hide that comes back to me.
Speaker 1: (01:20:57)
Right, right. He just couldn’t, couldn’t, couldn’t reconcile all these different narratives. Yeah.
Speaker 4: (01:21:04)
So here I am stuck in limbo. I’m feeling like a eight year old child again and dealing with all of this. It was just not a very pleasant, it is still something I’ve gone through. It’s still up and down. It’s still all over the map. Um, so my mother, I’m going back to her, I confronted her, I asked her questions. She’s very coy. She’s having a pawn. She’s, when I tell her stuff, she says, no, that’s not true. And I’m thinking, okay, this is the woman who raised me and my father is telling me something and I go back to her to confirm it so that I can put this on my store. This on my head is being true, and she tells me no, that’s not true. And now I don’t know who to believe because now I have reason not to believe my mother because she’s lied about.
Speaker 4: (01:21:51)
She’s totally erased the first five years of my life. And here, here’s this man who’s gentle and sweet, but I know nothing about. But I’m thinking I already have a father, good or bad with my stepdad, but I’m trying to reconcile this, this piece of my life. And it’s just been, she’s been a tornado of a moment where sometimes I’ve got to drop out. Sometimes I stepped back in, but everybody on his side of the family, Spencer’s side of the family knew I existed, but nobody came to look for me. And now that I’m here, nobody’s putting forth effort to keep me here. They’re just basically like, Oh, you’re there.
Speaker 1: (01:22:33)
Curiosity. Lots of these. Satisfied. Okay. Yeah. Right. So
Speaker 4: (01:22:38)
that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. I think I rambled and bounced around enough.
Speaker 1: (01:22:43)
No, you stayed very coherent. I was, I was with you the whole way. It was great.
Speaker 4: (01:22:48)
I’m there. There’s so many points. That’s the main Mark.
Speaker 1: (01:22:52)
Yeah. So many little points. No. Yeah, no. I mean every story has like all, it’s like digressions that you can just sort of rabbit hole down. But um,
Speaker 4: (01:23:01)
yeah, Nope. It’s just a matter of trying to, I hemmed and hawed about what I wanted to do with this, how I wanted to portray the story, what would it benefit and I was hoping that it might help someone else to know. Of course they’re not alone. Um, that there are different scenarios. I like to think of my situation as being unique. Um, but there might be people out there who are going through this, so it’s not so unique and I would gladly offer my support to them as well too. So.
Speaker 3: (01:23:32)
Yeah. Yeah. That’s really nice. It’s just one of those. Yeah.
Speaker 4: (01:23:39)
So, but if you have any questions or clarifications or,
Speaker 3: (01:23:44)
Oh, I know one thing. I was gonna I you hadn’t, you told me to ask you about and so I wrote it down. Why does it matter that your mother was the 10 to 14 children? Oh, this is where it gets bad.
Speaker 4: (01:23:57)
So as I’m dealing with all of this, and of course I still got my ancestry going to make a long story short, um, my mother is also NPE.
Speaker 3: (01:24:06)
Oh, find out her father.
Speaker 4: (01:24:11)
It’s not her father. Now this is where it affects me. I have my mother’s last name, which is her father’s last name. Okay. Um, and that’s the only last name I’ve ever had. I’ve never had Calvin’s last name. I’ve never had my stepdad’s last name. Nobody’s ever like my stepdad always talks about, you know, I wanted to adopt you, but I did. Yeah. Whatever comes tells me that unless you really go through with it.
Speaker 3: (01:24:35)
Right.
Speaker 4: (01:24:37)
I took pride in having my life
Speaker 3: (01:24:40)
[inaudible]
Speaker 4: (01:24:42)
this was the last name of my family because I didn’t know Calvin until I was eight. That was my family. My mother got him. I didn’t know Spencer. That was my last name. When I found out after doing all this family research, I researched and I couldn’t find much information. Again, African-American sharecroppers are hard to find information. I started to find some civil war information about ancestors that carry the same last name that are connected to my paternal grandfather. Um, I never met this man. There’s only one picture. Um, and my mother never really talked about him that much. Um, and which I thought was odd that she didn’t have that sense of telling me about my lineage was almost like life started with her and that was it. Um, so I’m drawing a very close connection to a man I’ve never met before, but he is the patriarch of our things or what I know to be.
Speaker 4: (01:25:43)
And I realized that my mother, um, not to get into in the African American community as a classes are more colorism, we like to call it. Have you ever heard of that before? Um, um, my mother is a fair skin, more fair skin than most of her siblings. They’re dark, darker. They all have the same facial features and so forth. Um, but everybody kind of kept it to themselves. And it wasn’t until I realized that my mother father was not her father through this that had started to come out, that some of my cousins and aunts and uncles are like, you know, we always wonder that my grandmother being that mother was 10 of 14, what story? Why did this happen again? I don’t want to judge my grandmother. Yes. And, and part of this journey, which may be going a little bit off topic, I know we’re going close to time, so forgive me if I go too long, but part of this story of anti street is that we romanticize history. Yeah. We’ve remained by as history. Like, Oh my grandparents got on the ship and they came across. They were,
Speaker 3: (01:26:56)
yeah.
Speaker 4: (01:26:58)
Oh, it wasn’t, it wasn’t Leonardo DiCaprio, you know, on a boat, you know, drawing pictures of whoever the character worlds. And this was hard. This was, and they came and they met opposition and humans are not nice to each other and there’s racism. There’s a lot, there’s a lot of parts of the story that we’re not aware of. Right. You start to see the ugly side of being humans by researching your ancestry because you start seeing things that are not very prestigious. And so I found a part of Mike history. Let me go back. The whole part of this whole journey was to tell my story of how I got here in order to pass it off to my children do, I’ll do the work for them. Knowing where you came from, who you came from, what you came from again, which is romanticized. Um, knowing the adversity that you went through, whether you are a minority or whether you, you know, when you come from adoption, whatever that reason is to know that your family life overcame that, to become the person that you are today is an uplifting story. I think to know that your, your, your grandparents were immigrants from Lithuania and they came here and now you’ve got this great home, this great family and that is a, uh, an inspiring [inaudible],
Speaker 3: (01:28:21)
right? We love that. We love it here in America especially.
Speaker 4: (01:28:25)
Um, but when you find the dirt, if it’s in a perspective where you realize that your grandmother who is a Saint next to mother Teresa, she wasn’t the same. You don’t show up. And, and a lot of people want to hide that. They don’t want that to, um, to be safe. They don’t want that to be, to be put out there. And I think that also led to my mother being a little bit more, you know, defensive like, Oh, what else was she going to? And my mother, I was aware that her father wasn’t her father too. She finally confided that she, she, she’d heard grumblings about that growing up. But then you wonder what happened.
Speaker 1: (01:29:03)
Oh, that’s interesting. Well, my grandfather,
Speaker 4: (01:29:05)
I was sick with brain cancer. My grandmother was having an affair or there’s a lot of stories that come in from the King could pop up.
Speaker 1: (01:29:13)
Yeah.
Speaker 4: (01:29:15)
That was important. Telling you that part about her being 10 or 14. So not only am I NPE
Speaker 1: (01:29:21)
in too. Yeah. And it’s too bad. I think it’s really common when this happens. It’s too bad that you guys can’t connect over that, connect over that disconnection, um, that, that these other, all these other details are muddling are muddling the, um, the basic sort of like existential crisis of identity.
Speaker 4: (01:29:43)
It’s almost, it’s almost like you can parallel like AA or NAA meetings, people who are going through it can help you through it cause they’ve already been through it, you know, like how do we support each other? How do we help each other? And that’s why I love this podcast. I love what you’re doing and that’s why I love these groups. Um, good or bad. I love these groups that we finding out here on Facebook that are helping other people to connect on different levels because as humans we’re not ready because we are still writing these romantic books about, about history, which is not always so prestigious.
Speaker 1: (01:30:18)
Yeah. Wow. Great. This is so awesome. I have two, I have two questions for you. One is the regular question that I ask everybody, which is, um, do you wish your mother had told you and when would that have been inappropriate time?
Speaker 4: (01:30:36)
Um, that’s [inaudible]
Speaker 1: (01:30:38)
yeah, it’s super hard. There’s not always a straight answer.
Speaker 4: (01:30:41)
I wish she, I wish she had told me and when I say I wish she had told me I don’t want it because it would have saved me some grief because I had a lot of grief with Calvin. Um, pain builds character and I like who I am today. So I don’t wish it went a different way. Cause I like who I am and what I am, what I stand today. So when was an inappropriate time, when I asked her, I said, Hey, tell me the story. Am I conception? If she said, if she had said at that point, I’m really not sure who your father is. I’m more confident. It’s Calvin. Right. And we’ll never know. Cause at the time there was no DNA. There was no,
Speaker 1: (01:31:21)
right, right. Easy paternity. Yeah.
Speaker 4: (01:31:24)
They’re, the fraternity’s has was up to a certain point. There was more.
Speaker 1: (01:31:29)
No, no, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 4: (01:31:33)
So, so with that being said, there again, there’s no regret. I, the only regret I have today is I still believe she’s living in that shit. And she’s living in that loss and she’s not ready to let it go. And, and that shame has caused her to remove herself from my life over something ridiculous. But now a lot of things make sense. A lot of things make a lot of things that happen in life that I never, those pieces didn’t fit, but there were always fragments in my memory. Now they all fit. They all make sense. So some of that was unnecessary, but here we are and in the end I’m a better person for it. Also, I’ve met some really great people and that I might not have met in the NP world. And um, I, I’m going to toot my horn a little bit here.
Speaker 4: (01:32:30)
Um, I’m going to brag a little bit. I think I can do it. When I originally joined the NP group, a coworker, she was going through the situation. She turned me on to this one group we have on Facebook. And I joined the group and I was reading everybody’s story and realizing I wasn’t alone and so forth, but I was at a point where I had discovered I had dealt with it. I was moving through it. Everything was going in a positive way. So I decided to roll love back off and this is going toward meeting people that I probably would’ve met before. I’ve realized that a lot of siblings are pushing us away. A lot of half siblings out there pushing us away. So I reached out and I said to blanket it, put it out there. If anybody’s looking for a brother, even if your genetic siblings are not accepting you, you’ve got a brother here.
Speaker 1: (01:33:17)
Yes, I remember. Yeah.
Speaker 4: (01:33:21)
Yeah. From there I have reached, I am sure other people have done it. I don’t think of myself as any more special anybody else, but it was me giving out that love because I follow a lot of people hurting and I was hurting because I got rejected from my siblings. They don’t want anything to do with me. Um, that was beautiful to me. Again, Pat myself, I felt that was my gesture to give that love out to people who might have needed it at that time. And from there, I’ve made friends through Facebook that are still my friends and we still talk. We just don’t talk about NPE, so we don’t need it because now we’ve got a bigger connection than that. That is a positive that comes from that came true that, that problem, you know, so yeah.
Speaker 1: (01:34:06)
Yeah. That’s cool. Uh, yeah, I know people really appreciated that when you did that. Um, and then my last question, um, is just did you, because you talked a little bit about the struggle of, um, of getting records and in general, um, the history of African American genealogy is, were difficult. Did you, is there anything that you found that you felt like was a good resource or was a tip that you would give other people of African American or people of color or minorities, like a way that they, um, that they can do it or just, um, or is it just that everybody has, you just have to keep trying.
Speaker 4: (01:34:50)
You just have to keep drawing? Sadly, I don’t have a tip for anyone. I just kept trying and of course my search stopped because of this NPE situation. So I haven’t been looking anymore.
Speaker 3: (01:35:01)
Yeah, that’s so common.
Speaker 4: (01:35:04)
But I, but I, I’ve kinda gotten to a point now where I kind of see my family, my warn families to certain point. I’ve already done Spencer side of the family as well. Um, and I see where I came from and so forth, and I put that together and I kinda got to a point where I’ve, for lack of a better word, I’m burned out so I can’t, I’ve kind of stopped. I just don’t do it anymore. I don’t, look, I don’t, I, I’ve seen too much of the negative that it’s made me stop. And I don’t want to discourage anybody. If you want to look, if you want to keep searching, please keep trying. New records come up all the time. You never know what’s going to happen. But if it’s not there, if there’s a, there’s landowner records and you just don’t have that as a minority.
Speaker 4: (01:35:43)
That’s just, that’s just a part of our history. But we need to add many different perspectives culturally. Um, as Americans, we need to understand that this is just another perspective of our history that we need to be aware of. I think we should speak more on it and we should be aware, but it doesn’t mean that we need to, you know, vilify any group of people because this is what happened, you know, 10, three, 400 years ago. This is just what it is. But we need to be honest about it and that goes into a different realm. But, but yeah, we just, just being honest about the fact that there aren’t a lot of Rutgers, it’s not ancestry.com 23 and me or whatever reason, it’s just what it is. Here’s the weather aspect. I’ll throw this out here and this is not to vilify anybody.
Speaker 4: (01:36:29)
This is just my experience that might connect with somebody else. Being African American. I know that along my historical line, there have been some Caucasian DNA to mix up that was already aware before you even got the time. I have lighter, lighter, a lighter complexion than say a lot of my, um, my, my aunts and uncles and siblings, one because I kind of know that my mother was NPE and also, um, just the fact of historical, we can go back to Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings if we want to talk about all that, which is part of the MPE story to a certain point. Um, but knowing that the history of our country with slavery, with, with a lot of things that happened, we understand that there were some mixing of the DNA between one class and the other slaves and the results for, um, now with that being known, um, I think I’ve talked myself out of a point. I forgot what [inaudible]
Speaker 3: (01:37:29)
that is so embarrassing. There was a point of history.
Speaker 4: (01:37:35)
I knew this was going to happen. I told you to keep [inaudible]
Speaker 3: (01:37:37)
no, you’re doing great. You’re doing great. I was following right along. Um,
Speaker 4: (01:37:43)
here’s the point. So I’m looking through my DNA, right? And part of the reason why I wanted to do the DNA, and this is going to sound outlandish, but it made perfect sense to me that if I did the DNA test, I thought one scenario let’s say with me on that once scenario is that if I found someone who was Caucasian that was a fourth or fifth cousin, maybe they know their lineage. Because like I said previously, a lot of Caucasian people know their lineage just a little bit easier than say, African Americans here in the country. Um, which is not 100% always the truth. Just in my scenario being the South North Carolina being the police state, so forth, um, that maybe they could trace themselves back to say plantations where they might’ve had a Bible that wrote down all the slaves. One of my heart heartbreaking points of looking for my ancestors is that I can get back to the 1861 and then it just goes cold and it goes cold for the reason that slave owners didn’t necessarily write down in their sentences correct synthesis and the sense of they didn’t break down.
Speaker 4: (01:38:55)
Um, they didn’t write down, say they had 10 slaves, they didn’t write down their names. They just said, boy, girl 14. So that girl 14 could’ve been sold from one plantation to another and then girl 14 on another plantation. But there’s no way to back that record. So 1860s is where it stopped for African Americans right before that you would be lucky. So I was hoping that if I did a DNA relative to DNA, that maybe there were a Caucasian person who shared DNA with me that knew their lineage and maybe they told me, Oh, well, you know, fifth grandfather owned a plantation in this area of North Carolina, which would have been on our area and here’s the list of the slaves and this is the other name. And I could match it with someone that I knew from the 18th, which I found a name that went back to the 1860s.
Speaker 1: (01:39:48)
Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 4: (01:39:49)
and this is all based off of census records, but again, that person might not be genetically related to me because a lot of slaves, like they were sold and traded. So say scenario, um, a female got sold but her baby,
Speaker 1: (01:40:07)
right.
Speaker 4: (01:40:08)
Unfortunate part of it. And someone took that baby in as their own and raise it as their own child cause there was no way they were going to see the mother again being the slave assault somewhere else. And so the census over years just added that person as a
Speaker 1: (01:40:22)
family. Remember they’re not my genetics. Yeah, sure. Totally. Yeah. So
Speaker 4: (01:40:28)
I was hoping to connect. Now here’s the point that I’m trying to get to my experience. Whenever I look at the faces, the pictures of people on ancestry.com and I see one, of course they, they, they, they put them in groups of close family, first cousin, second cousin, you know, F but then when it gets half, I think it’s fourth cousin, they just go fifth to eighth.
Speaker 1: (01:40:50)
Correct. Right.
Speaker 4: (01:40:53)
You might share a little DNA that you really, the trace that back a fifth or eighth cousin. You can’t even really trace that back unless everybody had pristine levels. So I start at fourth cousin, third cousin, second cousin. I would reach out to a Caucasian people that were four cuts or third cousins. I don’t, I don’t think I have any second cousins that are Caucasian or visibly or look Caucasian and when I reach out to them, I didn’t reach out to every last one of them, but of the 10 of ones that I reached out to, I had 0% response rate.
Speaker 1: (01:41:29)
Huh. That’s interesting.
Speaker 4: (01:41:34)
My whole perception on that controversial and not take somebody off or not. I think a lot of us, again, we romanticize history. I think maybe they may feel threatened, may not be the right word or uncomfortable, that if I reach out to them and they respond, then they’re worried. I’m going to be like, well, your ancestors did this.
Speaker 1: (01:41:57)
Oh yeah, I guess,
Speaker 4: (01:41:59)
and they say, I’m not going to get involved with that, and I can be as sweet as a pop. Hey, Hey, finds out where genetic related. I just wondered if you could help me. I’m just doing this. Maybe they go, I don’t want to talk to that person because of his race. Maybe I don’t want to talk to that person because they’re third cousin away. Maybe I don’t want to talk to this person because I’m only doing this to figure out who I am. Like where my people come from, Italy or Germany or whatever, but, and they don’t sign up for the restaurant. Or maybe they just don’t want to be involved in something that could be of a Thomas Jefferson, Sally coming. Right. So that’s the heartbreak.
Speaker 1: (01:42:37)
Yeah. That’s really hard.
Speaker 4: (01:42:38)
American we were still not dealing with,
Speaker 1: (01:42:40)
we’re not talking about, they can’t talk about it. Yeah.
Speaker 4: (01:42:43)
Well talking about it, we’re not dealing with it. And when I, when I mentioned this to people, they go, Oh wow, that’s bad. So tell me about your dad again. And I’m like, no, no, no, no, no, forget that. Let’s talk about that. That’s an uncomfortable situation for a lot of people and that it’s heartbreaking as American. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: (01:43:00)
interesting. And it’s so frustrating that you can’t, you can’t follow up with those people. Let’s say like, Hey, like I’m just doing it. Like you can’t survey them and say like, why won’t you respond to me? Well ABC, I’m trying to, I’m trying to understand if this is personal or cultural or
Speaker 4: (01:43:18)
it could be like, like if I was on Tinder, Hey, why would you swipe left?
Speaker 1: (01:43:22)
Right, right, right, right.
Speaker 4: (01:43:24)
You can’t hide behind the internet. And that’s a heartbreaking part of this whole process as a minority in this country. Now mind you, if this was Spain where everybody was Catholic and everybody was, that might not be the issue. Even though they do have their own personal internal insurance that we don’t know. But you would think, you know, if it was, I don’t know if it was, uh, after the Holocaust, um, there were a bunch of projects and I can’t remember their names right now, but there are a bunch of projects to document and, and historically write down everything that happened, all the Jews that went into and so forth. And they’ve done a really good job of keeping that legacy alive so people can go back to that repository. That’s not happened here in America, even though you could say ancestry.com, but it’s not happened for African Americans, for a lot of Asian Americans who’ve come here, native Americans, so forth. Um, that’s just one of those things. It’s just, it’s a, it’s another sad part of the human experience, but it is the human, right. So anyway, I’ll call.
Speaker 1: (01:44:25)
Thank you for giving me both. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (01:44:28)
But I do talk a lot. That’s just [inaudible]
Speaker 1: (01:44:29)
it’s just you. Um, which is what this is all about, right? Figuring out who and why we are who we are. Um, yeah. Awesome. Thank you so much. This is so great
Speaker 2: (01:44:41)
and thank you so much. I’ve been looking forward to doing this and you are so awesome for doing this and I appreciate you and I wish you continued it.
Speaker 1: (01:44:50)
Thank you. This is, I’ve really liked, this was really a joy. Um, and really fun and really like, it’s always a, it’s always like a little bit of a relief when like just the basic technology is working. And then also when the person, uh, has a great story and knows how to talk and it makes it easy for, it makes it easy for me, but mostly more importantly, it makes it more enjoyable for me. Like I just get to, um, kickback and, and enjoy an amazing story. So thank you for sharing that and [inaudible] and there’s vulnerabilities and thank you for sharing the unique parts of your story and,
Speaker 2: (01:45:24)
and my care for you because I know you’re taking on a lot of this on your shoulders, just listening to what it takes a lot out of you. So I, as long as you’re taking care of yourself, I hope the best for you. And of course, you know, you can always reach out.
Speaker 1: (01:45:36)
Thanks. Cool. And if anything comes up that you remember that you eat or you, you know, if something occurs to you that you either are uncomfortable with that you said that you want me to take out, just let me know or if there’s anything else you want to add, let me know. Um,
Speaker 2: (01:45:55)
no, we went, I think we’re good. Um, and I think if I second guess myself, I’ll probably take [inaudible].
Speaker 1: (01:46:01)
Okay.
Speaker 4: (01:46:02)
I didn’t use any last names and no, no, no names have been changed, but
Speaker 1: (01:46:07)
right. Cool. So I will, um, I’ll be in touch with you and if you don’t hear from me, like definitely reach out and just ask me what’s going on or, um, I’m not sure what, what the lineup is going to be, but I’m getting, getting ready to send a bunch of material to the editor and, um, get this ball rolling for season. So. All right. Thank you so much. Have a great rest of your weekend. Bye bye. Bye.
Julie Dixon Jackson of Cut Off Genes Podcast
Speaker 1: (00:12)
[inaudible]
Speaker 2: (00:12)
Trying again. Hello? Can you hear me? Yeah, I can totally hear you. Sorry. Hold on. I’m going to plug in my just cause it feels more present when I do that. Can you hear me? Yeah, I can hear you. Great. Okay. Hold on. They’re awesome.
Speaker 2: (00:40)
So what’s up? How are you? I was like, what a weird way for us to reconnect, but, um, but it’s, but I’m, you know, I’ll take it. How are you guys holding up over there? We’re fine. It’s fine. Um, now that’s what I keep saying. Like, we’re fine. Like everyone asks it’s like everyone asks everybody and we’re all just fine. It’s like, it has to be, we don’t want the choice. Right? I mean, it was for me, it’s not that, um, cause I I’m, I’m very much a home body anyway. And I worked from home and work wise. I’ve been busier than ever, which is crazy. Oh, that’s great. Yeah. But then my kids are, of course they’re off school. My, my daughter missed her senior year of college and her graduation. Yeah. So, so there’s that and my son never comes out of his room anyway.
Speaker 2: (01:37)
So, you know, right. That’s pretty normal, frankly. That’s funny. What about you guys has a baby. She’s great. She’s great. Um, but yeah, we’re the same. It’s like, we’re fine. We’re managing, uh, we’re as good as one can be. We’re you know? Um, so yeah, so, uh, she’s good. She’s almost a year. She’ll be a year old in three weeks. Oh my gosh. So she has like teeth and she’s holding on, you know, she’s doing that thing where they stand and hold on to everything and cruise along the furniture and it’s pretty cute. Yeah. Yup. That’s minor elderly. So let’s talk about dr. Laura for a minute. Yeah. Let’s shall we the worst? I know. Um
Speaker 1: (02:39)
[inaudible]
Speaker 2: (02:39)
Yeah. So here’s my question. Did you, I mean, I have a lot of questions, but um, did, uh, before I get to the, how did you hear it about the clip? Um, I saw it on one of the DNA pages pages. Okay. And I was like, Oh, dr. Laura. Cause I’m like you, I, I, I know who she is. Yeah. You know, so nothing is surprising. Um, but of course I had to listen because you know, it’s a train wreck type thing. Um, yeah. So I listened to it immediately.
Speaker 1: (03:19)
Okay.
Speaker 2: (03:20)
I started shaking. I was so angry even though none of it is surprising, but it’s so triggering, especially the ungrateful part, that stuff is so triggering for me, especially because, uh, I I’m, you know, I have, uh, my most recent trauma is based on that. Um, so it just takes me from zero to a hundred immediately and I want to cut somebody. So yeah. Yeah. It sucked. Yeah. It was way more triggering than I same thing. Like totally. It was like, all right, how bad is it? You know? And, um, listen to it and just felt like I was on fire. Just, I mean, what, what the hell is it? Because, I mean, she’s always been awful, but maybe just because, well, the fact that she can, she can swear it was, that was shocking to me. Cause she’s so, she’s so uppity, you know? Um,
Speaker 2: (04:24)
But just the judgment and the condescension and just all of it was so much to take and I’m just wondering how she lives with herself. Yeah. You know, and the fact that she, she people think that she’s a doctor, that she’s a psychologist. Yup. That I, yep. That’s going to be the next part of this. Um, the end of my podcast is me just listing, like all those things she’s done in life, you know, she’s shady as hell. Yeah. Oh yeah. No she, yeah. She’s the twit. Um, she is the twist. Yeah. So, okay. So here’s the, the bites I want, um, as, so for you, um, as an NPE, but also as a genealogist, um, what is your experience when people find out that the man or a parent who raised them is not their biological parent? What is my experience? Um, Can you be more? Oh yeah. Well like,
Speaker 1: (05:34)
Mmm.
Speaker 2: (05:35)
Like Tori said, I feel, she said like, I’m struggling with my relationship with my mother. Um, which is totally understandable. Right, right. As you would know. Yeah. You know, I mean, I’m a struggling, I’m a different kind of NPE obviously. Um, cause I never had a mother daughter relationship with my mother in the first place and you know, and I still, it’s still up in the air as to whether or not she even knew that she was giving me the wrong information. Um, so, you know, it’s the only struggle in that respect for me with her is that I just, uh, uh, the indifference is hard for me to take. Um,
Speaker 2: (06:26)
And I I’m, I’m leaning more towards, she just, she honestly didn’t know and doesn’t know what to say and yes, lied, but doesn’t know how to get out of that lie down right. About there never being anybody else. I don’t know. Um, but just the fact that the part where she said, it’s none of your business, it’s her private business. That that’s the that’s super, super BS because it’s absolute, it’s half of her DNA. I mean, what if he has Huntington’s disease? What if there is it’s there was absolutely no excuse and it is absolutely not her private business, uh, to keep that a secret from another human being about what they’re made of and who they’re made off.
Speaker 2: (07:21)
And I just, I just the fact that she couldn’t, that, that, that she made that so important. And the fact that she jumped to the conclusion of that the guy was a dead beat. She didn’t even know the story. That part is very strange. That’s a very strange element. I don’t know if maybe there was like something that she was reading that told the story and she just wanted to get to the, you know what I mean to the meat of it. Um, but no, she assumed she made up the whole story in her mind that, Oh, she got knocked up by some guy and he was a deadbeat and didn’t want to be involved. So she found another guy and he was great by end. Yup. It’s totally odd. Yeah. So weird that she would just assume that, and, and that, that narrative is okay to lie about. Right, right. As if that justifies the whole thing. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, yeah. And so it’s, what would you, what do you wish Tori? The caller could know? Oh, I wish Tori could know that she is not alone. And I, I so hope, uh,
Speaker 2: (08:42)
That she, I mean, I bet she was in shock and I bet she was retraumatized by the way. And I hope she finds, you know, the, the NP community, um, that is supportive and validating and based in reality and real life. Um, because I feel so bad for her. I feel, I wouldn’t, I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if she wanted to self harm because that was so degrading and so disheartening to hear. Uh, then I just want to wrap my arms around her poor thing. She just sounded like she was in shock. Um, although I’m, I’m, I’m wondering, I’m wondering if she knew, knows who dr. Laura is. If it was just kind of a random thing. Yeah. Like she was like, Oh, this person, she could help me. Like whether or not, I mean, somebody was mentioning this today. Actually my producer was mentioning this today.
Speaker 2: (09:44)
I mean, if you know, dr. Laura shtick, right. And what she stands for, you’re kind of asking for it. No, absolutely. Yeah. It’s totally yes. Weird. Yeah. Like how people call in for that stuff. I don’t know, but it’s like, they’re glutton for punishment, but it’s interesting how quiet Tory is. And doesn’t, I don’t know. The whole thing is I think she was shocked. Totally. She was absolutely shocked into silence. Maybe she, maybe she was hoping to just, I mean, I was so grieving at my computer. Yeah. Like responding for her. Yeah. I wonder if maybe she thought that dr. Laura would focus on the mother line and thought that she would say unkind things about her mom. Like, I don’t know why you would call. I just don’t know how or why you would call for that. But yeah. I know. I agree. It’s like, well, and that’s why he doesn’t really know who dr.
Speaker 2: (10:35)
Lori is. And I think if she, maybe she was like scanning around on our radio and was like, Oh, doctor, Oh, I can call in. She’s a doctor. Okay. Maybe she can help me. Oh. You go to a psychologist for comfort. Right. Um, and, uh, yeah. And just something that she needs to be called out, um, for calling herself a doctor. Yeah. In the first place. Yeah. And I, I just, I can’t with her. Yeah. Yes. You’re not alone. Um, yeah, no, that’s great. That’s all I just wanted, just wanted you to say it so that there’s more people know that I’m not just like yelling into it. I don’t know. I just think anyone who was anywhere near to this, I, you know, the, the NPE, they, um, the ungrateful thing is, is the, is the clincher for me. And it makes me more and more, I need for people to know that it is not okay to call somebody on a grateful for wanting to know their truth. And I can’t emphasize that enough. And I’m so tired of it. I’m so tired of that BS narrative.
Speaker 2: (11:54)
Yeah. Yeah. I’m with you. Yep. I’m totally with you. Um, great. Well, I’m just gonna, I’m just gonna whip all this together and figure out what to figure out, how to make it a story. Um, thank you so much. Thank you so much for your time. Sure. No problem. This was, this was, um, this was, uh, this was good for your podcast. It’s timely. Yeah. I’ve never done anything. So like timely urgent, so yeah, I’m excited. I’m excited today to good. Good, good. Yeah. That is going to be in this weekend, um, episode. So, um, and in fact, I think I mentioned, you know, funny. Um, cool. Oh, I did. I did. I mentioned you and your podcast. Um, I’m not sure how, but I did so. Yeah. Oh, great. Well, thanks. Thanks. Thanks for the shout out. Um, great. Yeah. The other, um, I mean, I totally have to go and work on this, but, uh, you’re I haven’t talked to anybody cause I’ve been working all day today, but I’m in this like crazy sequence of events. My half sister is going to be in LA tomorrow and I’m going to meet her. Yeah. And she’s like one of seven siblings and she’s the youngest.
Speaker 2: (13:07)
Oh my God. So I just knew you would understand how that’s a big deal. Why that’s a big deal that I can’t even like look up a place to tell us to meet yet. Cause like I’m working so hard on this, on the edge she keeps being like, did you figure it out yet? And I’m like, no, just hold on. I’ll tell you, I’m working on this podcast. She lives in, Oh, she told me Arizona or something, but no, I know. I asked her if she had a mask. Um, she is, she’s a get this though. She’s a long haul trucker. Yeah. She’s 23. Oh my God. Yeah. It’s all totally. We can’t make it up. Totally. Like so I’ll let you know out a Trumpster yeah. Oh Jesus. Yeah. I’m sorry. Yeah. Yeah. We’ll see. She’s young though. She’s young. Yeah. They’re all. It’s I’m nervous, but I’m excited. Yeah. Yeah. God be careful though. I will. I know. I’ll keep you updated. Yeah. Keep me posted on that. Alright. Thank you so much.
Biology 101: Brown Eyes and Big Feet
Speaker 1: (00:01)
Okay. Cool. Cool, cool. Cool. Okay, so you tell me a story is a little bit different. Um, just why don’t we just dive in? We have about an hour, just so you know, but you’re going to edit. Yeah. Okay. Well my story is this. I grew up in north Georgia. Small town mom from a country, southern family. Her grandfather was a southern baptist ministers. She was baptized in a lake, if that gives you a sense of my family. Um, and my dad was um, from a kind of a more silver spoon family manufacturing company. He was a catch, oh, okay. Aspect. Here’s the catch. And um, so right out of high school, my mom got married. Um, I mean she graduated in June, she married my dad in August and moved from her daddy’s house right into my daddy’s house and was very young. He had gone to college, she didn’t.
Speaker 1: (00:55)
So here we are in this small town and she really is in retrospect ill equipped to handle her marital problems. Not, not good at conflict resolution to this day. So she was like 18, 18. Yup. 18 and a half. So she gets married, but they have one car and he works for his family and he’s a college boy and he’s kind of spoiled honestly. And he’s staying out late. All according to her. He’s staying out late, not coming home. Sometimes the bills aren’t getting paid. He’s partying a lot and she’s stuck at home. So she gets a job. And her, um, her boss with this much older man, she was, he was like 40, maybe she’s 18, 1918. When you’re 18, that’s much older for sure. For sure. So, um, she said the first thing he said to her was, you know, something like, well, look at you.
Speaker 1: (01:46)
You want to wrestle like right away. He was flirting with her and um, caught a me too story, honestly. So she, um, you know, I think she found comfort at work, but she wasn’t getting at home like many stories and had an affair with this man for a couple of years. It’s a couple of years, couple of years. I think it’s a small town. So, um, and in the carpet manufacturing industry, everyone knows everyone. Everyone does business with everyone. And so my dad knew this man. And um, I have a picture of what was your Dad’s business? Was his family business? Um, rug manufacturing. Okay. And who was loaded this guy do, he worked in the carpet street in my hometown in Dalton, Georgia as the carpet. Everyone’s in carpet and textile industry in that town. Okay. Okay. So, um, so I even have a picture of my mom and dad and birth father and his wife together on New Year’s Eve three months before I conceived.
Speaker 1: (02:48)
Oh my gosh. Which I used to think was a really big deal, but now that I read some of the stories of other people so much, but back then it was a big deal under your own notes. You did this. So that was anybody I knew. I would think it was a big deal. Yeah. So Dad knew this man, but never knew anything was going on between them. But my mom has blonde hair, blue eyes and fair skin. And my dad has sandy brown, blondish brown hair and blue eyes and fair skin. And my little brother who’s 18 months younger than me, he’s a toe head, blonde, blue eyes and fair skin and chunky little thing. And we looked at zero alike. I look like no one. And so all my life people would say, are you adopted for anybody? You can’t see her right now.
Speaker 1: (03:32)
But Laurie has very big brown eyes. Definitely not blue eyes, blue eyes, they’re not blue. And my skin is not fair. So, and my hair’s normally brown, not this bright red. So, um, so when I, when mom got pregnant, she told him when this child comes, if she has brown hair and Brown eyes, you need to go far for our way. Cause if anyone ever sees us together, they will know. By the way, he was married with a wife who was sick with Hepatitis C, so she would come out of remission sometimes and be really sick. Mom remembered it as cancer, but either way, um, I’m sure that’s how she justified, but she was doing well. His wife was sick. They’re both lonely, right. And maybe he can probably was. So, um, but he also already, he already had children 15 and 18 years old at the time.
Speaker 1: (04:23)
So I’m born and there I am just round eyes, Brown eyes, Brown here I also have brown eyes and brown hair. And that connection may have never been made in my family. I’m not sure their parents have, they both have blue eyes. Blue Eyes. Yeah. Well it didn’t occur to me. I mean all my life people said, are you adopted? People would joke with my parents about the Milkman’s child, you know, we were all for that. And at one point, I remember when it was five or six, my mom caught me climbing the bookcase in our house to get my baby book. Cause I wanted to look at my birth certificate and see my real parents where it didn’t occur to me. It didn’t occur to me at five or six. Then they worked. Okay. The truth is up there in a book, way up high on the shelf.
Speaker 1: (05:06)
So did he go far away when you were bored or did everybody just stay? I mean he lives like take 1520 miles up the road. I’m not sure where he looked at him was, but she stopped working when she started having babies. She stopped working. Um, and so, um, what was I going, you’ll have to edit this part. He, um, she doesn’t go for far away. She takes me home, but maybe book at five years old says my last name is Edwards, I must be an Edwards. That’s what she always told me. And so, um, kids would continue to say things, but I just not adopted no. And my mom would say, well honey, you know what, your aunt Janice on my side has brown hair and your daddy’s sister has brown hair. They both had blue eyes, but we just, she just explained it away.
Speaker 1: (05:53)
And you know, my sister, she tans really easily just like you do the rest of them bird. Right? Yeah. So, um, so I just believed it because what else? Um, and then my mother, um, always treated me like a best friend, not like a kid called cross generational boundaries and shared with me, thanks. Probably you don’t share with your children. So at 15, she did confide in me that she’d had an affair for many years after my brother was born. You were 15? Yeah, probably not. What you share with a 15 year year. I was really good though at convincing my mother I was mature enough to handle things cause I just always felt something wasn’t right. And like many in our groups a little bit narcissistic your mother. So, um, I, you know, I when she told me that I was very supportive and oh mom, you know, well, you know, you and dad never been happy.
Speaker 1: (06:54)
This is, you know, you, you deserve to be happy and I can understand why. And I really almost encouraged her because I wanted her to think that she could trust me because I wanted to know what the heck’s going on. It’s way the way of me, I guess, feeling in control. So did you already, you already, we’re putting pieces together. When she said that, I walked away and I started thinking, you know, over time it started occurring to me, well, if she had an affair later, maybe she had an affair sooner. You know, looking backwards. Oh right. Maybe, maybe there was an affair and I dug through her closet and I found pictures of a man who had, that I knew who had dark brown hair and dark eyes and dark skin. And I decided he must be the one. And I almost walked up to him at a wedding and said, Hi Dad.
Speaker 1: (07:37)
And they got, I did it because it was not him, but it was not, it was not him saying no, but the seed was planted and then, and then I took biology in the 10th grade. And um, you know that exercise where you, you cross jeans? Yeah. I mean you figure out who this SF, yeah. So I put in mom and dad think about that. All the touring because I did it and didn’t you start, you’re doing it wrong. Just Gee, I just didn’t occur to, yeah, it just didn’t, I don’t remember. I don’t remember any discussion about it. Did you already suspect? No. No. But I wonder if Mr [inaudible], my 10th grade biology teacher took one look. It was like, well knew right away. He must see it all the time. Yeah. I don’t know. I think about that exercise all the time. But you weren’t looking for it.
Speaker 1: (08:19)
No, I won’t. No. Unvaluable yeah. So when I did it, that was just more supporting evidence. Um, and I think I haven’t raised my hand, you know, excuse me, I think I’m doing it wrong. And he probably was like, oh, I’ll get to in a minute. But I knew that after class, I mean, I probably did that exercise over and over and over, just looking for how it could get brown, but you just cannot get brown eyes from a blue by child. I’ve googled it so many times in the past year to Brown eyed people can have a blue eyed child in one of their parents has blue eyes. But it was, this was not possible. And so I’m back to my mother mom, I did this, you know, tell me who my real dad is. Laurie. I swear you’re an Edwards. I swear. I swear. Okay, mom.
Speaker 1: (08:58)
But I did this. It’s not possible, honey. You know. No, look at your aunt. Look at your aunts and your honey. No, I wonder what she thought. Oh my God, this kid’s figuring it out. But still she denied. So I just continued to press and the older I got, the more I would say, okay mom. She’d say, honey, I swear, I swear you’re an Edwards. I’d say, fine mom, you swear telling me the street before you die. I have a right to know. And that just became like my standard mantra mantra. And where was your dad this whole time? I’m just married to her. And you’re all living in the same house for, you know, they were married 22 years. He didn’t know this discussion was going on. Um, she had toward the, turned me against him anyway, I think to justify why she was doing the things she was doing.
Speaker 1: (09:45)
She was pretty much otherwise engaged there on during their entire marriage if got to me. Yeah. Um, and maybe he was too, I don’t know, small town. I don’t know. But, so I went off to college and, and then, um, after call, well while I was in college, I got a job at a child abuse shelter just as a childcare worker. And then when I graduated, um, they brought me on the professional staff. They were just starting to offer a position as a case manager. So now I went to the professional staff and was case managing for these children in the shelters that were, there were homes, were abused, neglect, but I’ve worked for children’s Home Society of Florida and they’re much bigger organization. That was just one contract they had was running the shelters. They also had, um, foster care placement and they did adoptions and they reunited adoptees with parents.
Speaker 1: (10:31)
Oh my gosh. Okay. So real in Florida at this, in Florida, Tallahassee. So, um, and I was dating a guy who was adopted in south Florida, Catholic private adoption. He could not find out anything. So we kind of bonded over, you know, I’m pretty sure my mom’s not telling me the truth and you’re adopted and can’t figure anything out. And, um, one day my mom gives me a phone call and says she was taking, my parents had divorced at this point. They divorced when I was 18 and left for college. So now I’m 24. Okay. My mom calls and she has a boyfriend, but they’ve not been getting along very well. And she says, hey honey, can I come down and visit you? I just need to get away. Bill and I aren’t getting along. And I go, okay, well what time will you be here?
Speaker 1: (11:14)
Says, well, I have to work when I get off at the six hour drive. So I think we’ll get there around 12. We, who’s this wheat? Well, Bill striving the bills driving me down like, okay, wait a second you guys, you guys aren’t getting along and you need to get away. You need to get away from him. But he’s driving you down. Well, he just doesn’t want me to drive alone. Got It. This makes no sense. This is stupid said, but you’re staying with me. Yeah, he’ll just get a hotel and go, this is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. But okay, so that midnight my mom rolls in, Bill drops her off and in she comes for all I know he was waiting down the street, but I’m so we sit and talk and like we would do, we were prone to staying up till all hours talking when I would first get home from school or she would visit and we start talking and she brings up a friend of hers that I known my whole life and she says, well, you know, so and so is not his biological child.
Speaker 1: (12:08)
I don’t want to name names. No, no, no, it’s fine. And I said, I said, well that’s just wrong. You know that she has had, does she know she’s going to tell her she was, I don’t think so. And I said, well that’s just wrong. She was, well, why is it wrong? She sending me out. Here we go. Yeah, he’s setting me up. And I said, well mother, we’ve had this conversation a hundred times. You know how I feel about it. It’s wrong because she has a right to know and to what if there’s medical things she needs to know about. What if there’s a medical history, what if there’s some disease that she could be, you know, planning for planning around. What would you want to know? Oh my God, I’m rolling my eyes. Um, yes, mother, you know, I would, well, since you bring it up, since you read yes, there, there was someone before, um, before you were born and she proceeds to tell me that it was this man who was her boss.
Speaker 1: (13:04)
My first question was, was he in the military? I really wanted, why was that your first question? No, I think I wanted, I think I wanted him to be this big, strong, virile, tough cause my dad was an engineer, my husband’s an engineer and my Stepdad’s and everyone’s an engineer in my life. Maybe this guy was John Wayne. Yeah. Right. So I don’t know. Bionic man something. So, um, no, he had not been in the military that she knew of, but that was the question she would ask. But so, um, she, when she decided to come down and tell me the truth, she tracked him down. He was living just 15, 20 miles away before she came down, before she came out. So she knew, she tracked him down and said, um, he answered the phone. She, she’s, hi, it’s me happy. It’s been 24 years since we’ve talked, but, um, I’m going to go down to Tallahassee and tell Lori the truth.
Speaker 1: (14:01)
Is it okay if I tell her your name? Which I thought was an seriously, is it okay? Right? You would, you’re going to come and tell me this and then not give me my whole truth. It’s a secret. It’s if you have the right. So he says yes. And while you’re there, I’ll tell my family too. He’s got to, at this point he has, well now they’re 15 and 18 years older than me, so my sister’s 39 and my brother’s 42 and they’re married with children. So, um, so after his wife had passed by then, nope, still living, still working. She was at work the day my mom and he was retired. He was a, she was at work the day he called. She called. So he’s going to go tell his family and yes, you may tell her my name and you know, she wants to talk to me.
Speaker 1: (14:51)
I love that. So I said, yeah, give him my phone number. Haven’t given me a call. So mom drives home Sunday and on I think Monday morning, Monday night he called me and I get this call and I said, Hello Laurie. Yes, hi, this is Jean Buffington. Do you know who I am? I said, yes, I know who you are. How are you? It’s good to hear from you. And um, we just became friends right away. Wow. I, I didn’t ask a lot of questions about the past and he said to me, you know, we thought you would hate us. And I said, well, I don’t know where in my 24 year little brain this came from. But I said to him, I said, I don’t, what’s the point of that? It’s not going to change anything. It doesn’t solve anything we’ve lost all these years. It’s a waste of energy.
Speaker 1: (15:41)
Let’s just move forward. And so we did. But, um, after a couple of days he would call me every day as soon as this is why could go to work, he would call me a racist. Okay. Did she know? So I guess he had told her, um, but obviously it’s uncomfortable and as I’m coming to learn, spouses don’t handle this very well. They don’t handle it well even when it was before them, but certainly when it was during their marriage. So that’s fair. So, so fair. And so we started this relationship over the phone. This was 1994 he had a home computer, which nobody had. He was really into genealogy research. A funny, yeah. And I had majored in criminology, was working at the shelters. Um, but it was really tired of the job and was thinking about going back to graduate school for Library Science. Nobody understood why and even he didn’t, it didn’t library, why would you do that?
Speaker 1: (16:40)
But that said, there’s this thing called the internet coming in. It’s going to be big. This is a hot degree to get into that field. I don’t want to begin the library. I want to be on this internet thing. He didn’t get it, but he was a researcher and into computers and information management. So today he would get it, but he didn’t get it. And so, um, and maybe just became friends and we talked all the time, but after a couple of days, weeks, I don’t remember now, he called back and I said, look, I told my kids, but um, I’m really sorry. They said, dad, this is your mess. You deal with it. We don’t want anything to do with her. And I was heartbroken because I was the only artist in my family and, and I, he’d brought, well at this point I hadn’t seen pictures yet.
Speaker 1: (17:21)
Um, I didn’t have email yet. It didn’t really exist for me yet. Um, but I was really excited at the prospect of having older siblings and they didn’t anything to do with me. So that was heartbreaking. But, um, I don’t know, week or so later I get this phone call. Hello Laurie, this is Robin. Do you know who I am? Just like that. Yes, Robin, I know who you are. I’m a little surprised to hear from you. She says, well, I know she was, I know what daddy told you, but that’s not the truth. Okay. He says, you don’t know. I’m like, we do and this has been hard for our mother. I said, I can imagine. Totally understand that. And she said, you don’t know him like we do if we accept you. He’s wanting to rub it in her face and say they can accept her.
Speaker 1: (18:07)
Why can’t you? And that’s just not fair to ask of her right now. I said, totally get it. She said, I do want a relationship with you, but right now I prefer that he not know about it because I don’t want him to do that department other, I said, totally get it totally down. Okay. So he and I talked on the phone all the time and he got me, he wanted me to come up and visit, but um, and I was going at Christmas, but I did not make plans to see him. I made plans to see my sister instead. So she and I started this relationship behind his back. The brother though. Really? I called him at work one time, but he really wasn’t open to a relationship because his wife, what’s her dog in this fight? She wouldn’t permit them to have a relationship with me.
Speaker 1: (18:55)
She didn’t, didn’t like Jean. My birth father thought it was a scoundrel. I don’t know for whatever reason didn’t like him. He represented something that she didn’t seem as like comfortable with. Yeah. And so, um, so denied her husband. The relationship with me, it didn’t have any empathy for this young woman who just needed some answers. She was a jerk. So I didn’t get to have a relationship with my brother, but birth father, gene told us wife one weekend that he was going to go away for a genealogy research trip. Okay. And um, not, not a lie. Not, not alive. That’s true. Um, and he came to Tallahassee and to visit me and meet me for the first time gallery with the Hampton Inn rolled into town, I don’t know, late morning I knew in any way called me, says I’m here. I said, okay, I’ll be over in just a little bit.
Speaker 1: (19:45)
Six hours later when I finally had cleaned every base board, every window in my rented apartment, the tops of the cabinets, I mean, I had Washington probably behind the washer and dryer I had when I couldn’t clean anything more. I said, okay, I guess I have to take a shit. And he’d called multiple times, are you coming? I said, yes, I’m coming. I’m just, I’m getting ready. I was getting ready mentally ready and all sorts of way. I got there and I think we sat on the Sofa in his hotel room and talked and told me this, you know, he told me his side of the story, which I don’t really remember many details of that. It is what it is. You want a fair with my mom. Um, I had nobody in my family ever had hands like me or feet like me. And I said, would you do me a favor?
Speaker 1: (20:27)
He goes, what? I said, take off your shoes and socks on your feet. He says, really? I go, yes. No one has feet like me and these Flintstone feet, he’s boy feet and I’m so he did and we just compared feet and then look where they solar. Oh yeah. Same hands, same feed, same fingernails, which these are not them, but I cover them up for a reason. Um, but yeah, I had the same hands as him. And um, how’d that feel? Felt amazing. Weird but amazing. You know, you, it’s not like a lifetime movie or anyone’s not met their birth parent yet. It’s not like a lifetime movie where you go running into their arms and it’s, oh my long lost daddy and my long lost daughter. Why don’t like that for me? Um, this isn’t a person that I grew up with having a father daughter bond.
Speaker 1: (21:11)
He felt like a great uncle. Somebody that, somebody that I’m told I’m related to and that I look a little bit like I had all this color. Again, his features and all those things for sure. But really it just feels like a great uncle. Didn’t feel like they more, but we had a nice visit and we went to dinner and I took him to the tree house shelter where I had worked and showed him around to come to my apartment until my mother later that it was neat as a pin, which is exactly what you want to hide it as much. Yes, I did. Um, and then we continued our phone relationship after that, but he was always asking me to come home and visit him. And by the way, I mean back up, I remember I worked at the tree house shelters yet under the umbrella of children’s Home Society where at my office I’m surrounded by therapists whose job it is to help families going through foster care, terminating parental rights adoptions, reuniting adoptees.
Speaker 1: (22:02)
But they, my mom dropped this bombshell on my lap. I went to work just shell shocked I was going to get back to that because he just kind of gliding what kind of glossed over to the phone call. And I thought, okay, so you were having a lot of feelings and reactions even though you’d always suspected to bombshell. I mean suddenly I look like people, but what do I do with this? How am I supposed to feel? What about the siblings that don’t want me? What about this wife? What about my dad? And my mom by the way, expects me to keep all these things. You can never tell your daddy. Okay. That was coming as a question. Yeah, you can take some heat it and now I’m supposed to keep all these secrets. Um, this point. Yeah. My grandmother is still living. I’m very close to her.
Speaker 1: (22:43)
His all my grandparents were off, but one, we’re still living at this point. Um, so I’m supposed to keep this secret from everybody, which felt really unfair. I’m excited. I finally looked like people, I finally, I, my dad and I love my dad, but we never had a lot in common. We didn’t quite click. And suddenly I have people that get me. Belonging is important, so important. And you know that round peg, I mean I had been saying to my mother for years, you know, what do I have to do to get daddy to pay attention to me? What I have to get dad to want to spend time with me. We just don’t, I know we get along. Why don’t we click? And she didn’t really have the answer, but that was part of her wanting to tell me the truth. But she realized that I was struggling and there was real, there was no answer she could give me other than the truth that was going to solve this.
Speaker 1: (23:30)
Do you think he knew and that was part of the distance between you do? No. Okay, I’ll tell you that part. Okay. But so I have these therapists that got me through it. And meanwhile, that boyfriend that’s looking for his birth family, um, found that adoption support group. So we started going to the support group together. There was some really ugly name for what I was back then. Nobody had talked about NPE. It was, um, something with the word bastard and it was so ugly. I was just this illegitimate bastard or something or I don’t know, um, adulterous bastard or I don’t know. It was something awful like that. But that’s what, those examples are. Terrible. They’re awful. But what else? Nobody had ever heard a case if a case like mine, nobody, because nobody talks about these, we have as a secret, not until these DNA tests where there’s thousands of people finding out.
Speaker 1: (24:18)
There was no one to relate to me. No one who understood this was a book worthy story. It was Oprah worthy. It was even Oprah hadn’t found out about her NPE situation yet. So these therapists got me through it and then it support group got me through it and this boyfriend John got me through it. Um, but gene birth father was always saying, come home and visit me, come home. And I said, it’s cold, it’s rainy. I hated there in the winter time. I’ll come in the spring. So one day in the spring, despite the fact that I was home at Christmas and met this sister, but so it’s Easter weekend coming up. I go to work and I find out I have a three day weekend. It didn’t know we’re off on Monday. So I was like, oh wow. You know, I did. I want to surprise him.
Speaker 1: (24:57)
So they let me off work. I go home, pack a bag, a jump in the car, and I take off driving with my brick of a cell phone and I get about 45 minutes out of Tallahassee. And I think, well, you know, surprises aren’t always a good thing. What if he’s going to be out of town? What if he’s going to South Carolina to visit my brother at our call? So I called his house from my brick of a cell phone on the side of the road and my sister answers the phone, which is odd. It’s mid day. She should be at work. And I, my first thought was, oh no, he’s going to recognize that she’s familiar with me and he’s gonna figure out, we’ve been talking, we’re going to be outed. And I said, hey Robin, it’s Lori. I called to talk to your dad because it’s her dad, not mine.
Speaker 1: (25:36)
And she starts to cry. And she said, Lori, daddy died this morning. Oh my gosh. So I had a phone relationship with them, but I don’t like getting to meet him the one time. Um, so I’m distraught because he had less than a year. Less than a year. Yeah. Maybe the winter. You have the winter. Yeah. Um, I forget what my mom told me now, but yeah, it was less than a year. I feel like it was willing to six months or something. I think she told me in the fall and then I think it was less than six months. So there I am on the side of the road. I said, well, I was on my way home. I was going to surprise him. And um, I had mailed him some pictures that boyfriend John had taken. They were still in the mailbox when he died. He never saw him. So, um, I hang up with Robin, my sister, I called my mother devastated.
Speaker 1: (26:20)
I turned, I called John, I head back to Tallahassee. I’m a mess. My mother couldn’t afford it, but bought a plane ticket and put me on an airplane home. But can I go to his funeral? I don’t know. I want to, so my sister says no, that wouldn’t be appropriate. Oh my gosh, I’m still a secret. Oh Wow. Okay. Now I’m not allowed to go to the funeral and be hired. By the way, my best friend, while I was in college and Tallahassee, and for the 10 years I’ve lived there, had recently gotten tracked, transferred with her job at the gap to all places Chattanooga, Tennessee, where my mother lived and where he lived. And the funeral home that was handling his arrangements was directly across the street from her apartment. It’s like she was magically placed where I needed her. And so, um, I went to my mom’s, but I didn’t know if I was gonna be able to go to this funeral or not.
Speaker 1: (27:09)
First, my sister says no. Then she says maybe, and let me talk to mom and back and forth and back and forth. And I don’t want to disrupt anyone’s world. I just want to. So finally she says, you know, there’s a visitation tomorrow night. Why don’t you come? So my mom jumped on the phone to her brother. Hey David, I can’t really give you all the details now, but Richard is not Lori’s biological father. Lori’s biological father has passed away. She’s home from Tallahassee. She needs to go to the funeral home tonight for the visitation. I for obvious reasons, cannot take her. I need you. He says, I don’t quite get it, but I’m putting my suit on and I’m on my way. So that’s a nice uncle. I will never ever forget what this uncle did for me. I love him so much for doing this for me. And he came and got me and he drove me to the funeral home and he held my hand as I walked in shaking. And here I stand for the first time among 150 people all who look like me.
Speaker 2: (28:02)
That’s never happened. It was like a soap opera right here I am amongst all these people, excuse me, and it looked like me and I quickly find my sister because we’ve met once at Applebee’s or something. She recognizes me and my uncle just kind of stands off to the side and my sister comes over and gives me a hug and we chit chat. And then a few minutes later this guy walks over and he reaches out his hand. He says, Hey, how you doing? I’m Mike. And my sister says, Mike, this is Laurie. He didn’t recognize it. So my sister, oh, he didn’t, he wasn’t being polite, being polite. Um, and my nieces were there, but, and I’d been to Robin’s house, I believe. I’m just, I’m just mom’s friend from church because I’m a big secret. My Mom’s friend from church, but I’ve met my nieces and so brother doesn’t recognize me, but we, um, we chat for a little bit and my uncle just stance there politely for several hours while I just stand there and look around and chat with people.
Speaker 2: (29:00)
And I met my uncle, my dead father’s brother, cousins and lots of people, but they have no idea who I am. So, okay, you’re not, and obviously you’re not saying who you are, but are you saying anything about who you are and just Robin’s friend from church for everybody. Okay. I’m just Robin’s friend from church, so I’m there to support Robin, my friend Robin, who’s 15 years older than me. And so, um, his wife’s there and I see her across the room, but I steer clear this poor woman, the last thing she needs to deal with right now, she’s got to bury her husband in the last thing she needs to deal with as illegitimate daughter from an extramarital affair. So I avoid her. So next day I say to my Robin, I said, my sister Robin, I’d like to go to the funeral home tomorrow and visit with him by myself before the funeral.
Speaker 2: (29:49)
What time is your mom going? She goes, oh, well the funeral’s at one, she’s not going to go to 12. I said, great. I will go early in the morning. So my best friend Kelly and I walk across the street to the funeral home and we go in and I, for an hour I spend with them. I hold his hand. Like I just stare at our hands, my hands too, but he’s like, just stare at those identical hands for an hour. And I talked to him and you know, thank him for the time. We’ve had to get to know each other. Friends creeped out that I’m touching a dead person, but I don’t care. This is my dad or father. It’s my last chance to ever touch them again. So I visit with them and then she and I go back into the main parlor and sit at the end of the room.
Speaker 2: (30:25)
There’s only one way out of this room. I said the other end of the room, this big rectangle, and we’re sitting there on this bench just chatting and I might go back in and talk to him one more time before I go, but I’ve got hours. It’s nine o’clock in the morning hours and I look up and they’re at the end of the room and the doorway is my brother with his mother on his arm. I knew that was coming. I have nowhere to go. I panic because all I can think is this poor woman does not deserve this. She’s not supposed to see me. I don’t. I don’t want to hurt this woman and be a problem to anyone I was raised. Don’t be a problem. Be Polite, don’t be a problem for people. I threw my hat in my friend’s lap, excuse me, I just spent, and through my head and my friend’s lap and I, and I tried to hide.
Speaker 2: (31:12)
I tried to make myself as small as possible, but obviously at the end of the room, there’s this 24 year old woman with her face and her friend’s lap. And I, and I can feel these people around me and I can kind of see my eyes, but I can see shoes in front of me and my friends saying, Laurie, Laurie, Laurie, you need to sit up. Laurie. I kind of look up under my arm and just kind of pick up through my hair, threw my arm and I see them and, and, and my brother and I think the wife Betty is touching me. And I look up and I’ve got these tears streaming down my face. And I said, you weren’t supposed to see me. And she said, it’s okay. And she held her arms and I stood up and she gave me a hug and said, come on, let’s go see him together.
Speaker 2: (31:54)
And we walked in and we stood in front of his casket together and we chatted for a few minutes and she shared with me, you know, I don’t know why you came back into his life now. And I didn’t know. You know what it means that your mother contacted him, you know, are your parents divorced? Was she trying to get back together with him? I said, none of the above. My mom’s in a relationship. She’s happy, but you know, she does. I’ve been asking for years. I’ve always suspected she decided to tell me. So I, you know, hopefully helped her feel a little better. She gave me a hug. She told me she loved me, her, she said, she said, you know, we’re all gonna get together at my house. He’s going to be interred at a crematorium, but we’re all gonna get together at my house this afternoon.
Speaker 2: (32:36)
Why don’t you come over later? So, Gosh, I mean, what more could I ask for? So I left, went back to my girlfriend’s apartment for a couple of hours, fixed my bank, fix my face. So I’ve decided, okay, the funeral’s at one, we’re going to get there at 1255 we’re going to sit in the very back. I don’t want, I don’t want her to see me. I don’t want her to be distracted by me. I just want to sit in the very back and not be anyone’s problem. So we get there at five minutes till all the family is seated down front and they seated it all the guests from the back of the room forward. So the only remaining seats are in the front or in the front with the family. So I’m at the very front of all the guests with the family. I’m sitting next to cousins on the binge.
Speaker 2: (33:27)
I try not to. Right. But that’s what happened. That’s how the cards fell. So, um, I, I, it feels like so much of this is how the cards fell. Yeah. So I sat through the funeral and um, that was that. Let me back up. Okay. Back to the funeral home or learn that morning after Betty and I say your goodbyes and I’m leaving that parlor. My girlfriend and I talk and we’re talking walking down the hallway past other parlors, but I’m starting to lose it. I am falling apart. This is just so much. So it was so much and so we ducked into an empty parlor and I’m standing there and just sobbing into my hands with my face down in my hands, solving, solving, solving, and I heard the door and I felt these warm hands on my shoulders behind me and I can tell it’s a bigger person. So I think it’s my brother Mike and his cry for a minute and then I pull it together and I turned around only it’s not him. It’s a man who looks a whole lot like my birth father. It’s his brother Richard. Oh, now I’ve panicked. Why is a friend of Robin’s so devastated at the loss of Robin’s father? This man’s going to think I was having an affair with Jane, my birth father.
Speaker 1: (34:44)
That’s what’s on my mind. I’m a product of an affair, right? Everyone’s going to think I’m having an affair with this man because, right. Why would Robbins 24 year old friend from church be so devastated when I turned her head and even thought of that? You see where my mind went, right? So when I turned around and I, you know, I panicked. He goes, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. You know, are you okay? I said, yes, I’m fine. I’m fine, thank you. And I just, just
Speaker 2: (35:09)
bolted. He didn’t know what to do. And so we left like a fixed my face. They go after the fee, after the funeral, they go and to do nothing. I said crematorium and it mean that the muzzle Liam, the interment, Amazon, Liam, and then, um, I know three or four hours later I’m panicking or are they going to call it, they’re going to call it, they get a call. I just didn’t expect it to take so long. And what if they forget about me? I think I was calling her house like, like, uh, the scorned girlfriend. I don’t know. They keep calling the boy. Yeah. So anxious to be so anxious. Yeah. So she invites me over and I sit at the table with her and my siblings and we chat, but everyone’s standing around and no one has any idea who I actually am.
Speaker 2: (35:56)
And um, she, she and I, she said, come on, let’s go for a walk. And we went for another walk and talk to some more. And she said, well, I hope you just stay. I want you to stay in touch with me. I said, sure. I didn’t think she meant it. I really wasn’t going to try to, if she reached out to me, great. But I was not going to assert myself into this woman’s life. And so I didn’t. And my sister and I carried on and I hung up my brother and my nieces and my nephews and I got to meet my brother’s wife, who was very nice to me, but I already knew I didn’t want a part of me. Right. Nothing changed after the funeral. I thought maybe something would change. Nope. She’s still want to know part of me. And so I wasn’t allowed to know him or my nephews, but my sister and I continue to build our relationship.
Speaker 2: (36:37)
I would go visit her at her house and so now my sister, uh, months have gone by. But living with these secrets is awful. It’s so hard. I, whenever I would come home from Tallahassee, my parents are not divorced at a visit. My Dad in Dalton, my mother lives 30 minutes away in Chattanooga. You know, why are you spending so much time with your daddy? You’re spending more time with him than with me. You mean you’re going back to your mother’s? Why are you spending more time with her where we want to see you too. I was up and down the freeway, back and forth, back and forth, just yanked back and forth. Now I’ve got this third family, which is amazing as an adult to the experiencing that children get torn. But, but I’m home from college. Everybody wants a piece of me and I mean I’m glad they did, but now I’ve got this third family that I’m spending time with.
Speaker 2: (37:21)
It’s a secret. It’s a secret. And my dad is saying, I feel like you’re spending all this time with your mother were barely getting to see you. I can’t say I’m spending time with a sister that you don’t even know exists. So I’m lies, lies, lies. Meanwhile, my mother, when I’m tuning [inaudible] is exhausting. It was exhausting. And when I’m with my mother and her family, you know, they kind of know. My grandmother knew, her mother knew this whole time. Um, we’re at Thanksgiving and I’m, and I’m saying to my cousins and my brother, guess what? Guess what? I found out my dad, I love my dad, but he’s not my bio dad. I have this other debt and I look just like him and Yadda, Yadda Yadda and our hands and our fate and you know, blah, blah, blah. And my cousin goes, oh, I know Mama told me years ago.
Speaker 2: (38:02)
Oh, can you imagine? I mean, add insult to injury, right? No one had a right. My brother knew before I did. Oh Wow. She told him, everybody knew. No one had a right to know before me. That was, that was like, just adding insult to injury. It was more betrayal. How dare you. No one had a right, so that would make me feel so crazy. Yeah. And and my mother selfishly, she wanted to test it on other people. Just see how it was going to go over before she told me, Oh, did couldn’t take the what? This doesn’t go well. Maybe I just won’t tell Laurie. I think I asked her a few weeks ago, practice confession. I asked her a few weeks ago, I said, mom, you know, I’m seeing all these stories and some of these groups I’m a part of and people are getting surprises. Boy, it sure is a good thing you told me when you did, because if we were, you know, you guys, you said to me back then, we always thought you might hate us. And I didn’t. I go by and tell you what, if I was finding out now 24 years after he died in a, from a DNA test, I would hate you. It’s a good thing you told me the truth. I said, where are you ever going to tell me? Yes. I was going to tell you when you were 21 but I was 24.
Speaker 2: (39:16)
She was never going to tell me. That’s her plan. And it was her plan. Right. So, um, so funny. So I had a relationship with those people, but my sister from all the secrets that she was also having to tell how to break down. Oh, went to a therapist and was no more secrets. This is not my secret to keep, this is my sister. I want her to be my sister. I didn’t do this. I didn’t create it. She didn’t create it. He did. He’s gone. I can’t live alone anymore. That have felt so I’m validating to you. I felt terrible for her that she was having a break. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yes, of course. But I just, but what came out idea, she wanted to be open about your sister relationship. Oh, wonderful. Wonderful. I was no longer a secret to cousins and aunts and uncles.
Speaker 2: (40:00)
So that uncle, the one that put his hands on me and tried to come from me when I thought he was afraid I was having an affair with the deceased. Um, said I knew it, I knew something, but I didn’t know who to ask when I s and I found out from him later when I saw you guys all sitting around the table after the funeral, you look identical. I was just wondering that if you said it when you said everybody was standing around, I was like, it was everyone in the room going like, look at those guys. Look at those. He did. Cause we all have the same outcomes. And he said, I knew. He said, but I didn’t know. Do they all know? And you’re just Robin’s sprint from church and you don’t know. And how am I going to tell you? I would’ve been twisted?
Speaker 2: (40:42)
How am I going to tell you they’re including you and they know you’re their sister, but you don’t know. I can’t be the one to break it to you. Your Dad’s not your dad or do you know? And they don’t know. That’s like a southern gothic novel. He said, I, my friend says, your life is so Tennessee has, so he had to keep a secret. He knew, but he had to keep his own secret cause he didn’t know. Who knew. He didn’t know. We all knew and he couldn’t take the risk. So once he knew, he said, um, well are you coming home for Christmas? I said, I am. He says, well I would love for you to come over and meet your cousins, Karen and Laurie, he has a car. Turns out it was brother has a daughter named Laurie. And coincidentally he lives right around the corner from my mother walking distance.
Speaker 2: (41:29)
I have for years, I’ve been looking at his backyard from her kitchen sink from her kitchen window. So, um, he says, why don’t you come over and meet your cousins and you can bring Robyn, she doesn’t normally get together with us on Christmas, but you can bring Robin if that would make you more comfortable. Said yes, please. So, um, it’s Christmas Eve Day and I’m here, I’m going over there. And um, he calls me, he says there’s been a little change in plans now, by the way, their mother, my grandmother is still living, but she’s in a, she’s in a nursing home. I said to my sister, could you take me to visit her? Sometimes she doesn’t need to know who I am, but I’d like to meet my grandmother. So we talked about it, but I didn’t think she was really going to do it. I don’t know.
Speaker 2: (42:09)
I didn’t push it. I was trying to be nice. It’s what we do in the south were nice. And, um, he calls his change of plans. I’m thinking, oh no, they don’t want me to change their minds. I don’t want me after all as so fragile, fragile. And he says, I know I told you that I thought my grant, my mother was too fragile to handle this, but you know what? I think she’ll be okay. I think you deserve to know your grandmother and I think she has deserves to know you. So I’m going to go to the nursing home and get her and bring her home for Christmas. Whoa. What’s his uncle’s name? Richard from core. Richard. By the way, my dad is Richard. So many coincidences, right? So I, um, I called my sister and one of the nieces answers the phone. I said, hey, Devin, is your mom home?
Speaker 2: (42:58)
She goes, hey. I said, hey, it’s Laurie. Is your mom home? She goes, hey, aunt Laurie, say, hey, is your mom home? She just did it. You notice it calls your aunt Laurie? I said, I sure did. Why’d you call me that? Well, I know now that you’re, my aunt said, okay, well how do you feel about that? She goes, I think it’s great. And I said, okay, can I talk to your mom? You probably seem so young and hip to them. Oh my gosh. My sister says, takes the phone. She says, surprise and said, oh my gosh. So now I said, well, there’s another surprise uncle Richard just called and they’re bringing me home for Christmas, so don’t bail on me now. I need you. She says, okay, no problem. So we go to uncle Richard tells for Christmas. She picks me up at my mom’s house and we go and I get to meet my cousins, Lori and Karen and their sons and my uncle Richard and his wife and my grandmother Mymy [inaudible] people, the nicest people.
Speaker 2: (44:01)
They just welcomed me with open arms. Side note, there’s a, their last name is Buffington. I’m a Buffington, not an Edwards. I went to high school with a girl named Buffington. I thought, what a stupid name Karma. Right? So a few weeks ago I’m doing DNA stuff. I found a second cousin and I reached out to her and just sit and she likes to sing and I liked to sing and I reached out to her and she’s adopted. So she’s just gotten another Buffington family too. And she says, Hey, there’s this Buffington family group. And she invited me in and it’s a bunch of second cousins. I mean my, my birth father was one of 11 kids who was one of 11 kids. There’s a lot, a lot of cousins. Oh Wow. But they invited me into this group and announce my presence. Is everyone welcome Laurie to the group? She’s uncle Jean’s daughter. So this is recently? Yes. Recently mass when you were 25 and they all welcomed me and said, you know, our family keeps growing, but we’ve got enough love for everybody. Oh, just been the nicest Waltons. I think those are good people. I’m sorry I missed your name.
Speaker 2: (44:59)
I don’t know where that girl Buffington he and I got to find her, cause you might be, you might want to check back on. So, um, so, okay. So the last part of the story, you know, I work at children’s home society. I’m out on her side of the family, but I’m still having to lie to my dad and it’s just not fair and it kills me every time I do. So I talked to you. Good. I just change the battery. And then the same when I, so I, I talked to the therapist and said, I can’t do this. How am I going? My Dad had to tell him the truth and, um, how I can I do this to them and that him and they say, well, you’re acting like this is a negative, but it doesn’t have to be a negative. Maybe we can treat this in a positive way and still tell him the truth. And so let me just change the battery really quick while I’m thinking about it. Okay. Hold on one second.
(PT 2)
Speaker 1: (00:00)
Okay, great. All right. So she said, um, this information doesn’t have to be bad. It doesn’t have to be bad. She says, let’s not treat it like a cause I just thought I was going to devastate my father. She just doesn’t have to be a negative. Let’s, let’s approach it differently. Okay. So we started working through like how to tell my dad and I needed to do this the next time I would go home and home is six hours away and I work now and I can’t just get away anytime. So we figure out how I’m going to do and how I’m going to say it. Um, just gentle and I look at the calendar and I realized the next time I’m going home, father’s day it his birthday, but I wasn’t gonna be able to go home again after that per month. It’s probably not till Thanksgiving and I could not live with this lie anymore.
Speaker 1: (00:48)
So they said, okay, well again, it doesn’t have to be a negative. Let’s treat this positively. And they got me all prepared and I was staying with my grandmother, his mom, and he came over. It was father’s day morning. He came over and I went out and delivering him and I said, Hey dad, I need to talk to you about something. Can, would you mind going back home and let me come to your house? We shouldn’t talk. I don’t want my grandmother’s house, you know, and we never told my grandmother, by the way, this was, I was her pride and joy. He didn’t want her to know and I have to respect that. So, um, so he says, okay, is everything okay? I said, yeah, everything’s fine. I just would be better if we talk at your house. He said, okay. He didn’t understand, but he left.
Speaker 1: (01:30)
About 30 minutes later, I went over there and sat down and I said, dad, I need to talk to you about something. I said, mom recently shared some information with me that I need to share with you. And I don’t know if you already knew this or not, but did your mom know that you were going over to tell him? Oh yeah. Oh, okay. Oh yeah. She was not happy with that. No, because she’s embarrassed either. Um, I mean, you got to remember when this, it’s never okay. Infidelities. Never. Okay. Conceiving a child and infidelity is insult to injury. But thinking about the times too, in a small town, it was a scarlet letter. And even though she’s divorced from this man now for six years, she still doesn’t want him, doesn’t, yeah, no. Yeah. It makes sense. It makes sense and get it. So, um, I said, mom recently shared something with me that I need to talk to you about.
Speaker 1: (02:29)
And he says, okay. I go, well, she told me that you’re not my biological father, that another manager as, and he said, okay. Did she tell you who said yes? I said, okay. I said, do you remember a man named Gene Buffington? And he said, yes, I know who that is. I said, well, okay, I’m a Buffington or something like that. I said, he’s my bio dad. He said, okay. My Dad’s not an emotional. He’s, um, you know, he’s, he’s never wanted to be duped, you know, so I said, did you know this? And he said, well, I always suspected, but I wasn’t sure. Hmm. But I’m not sure. I believe he ever really suspected. Yeah, I think that might’ve been just saving face. I don’t know. I’ll never, I’ll never really know. I don’t ask him these. He’s still living, but I don’t really ask him these questions.
Speaker 1: (03:28)
We don’t talk about it a lot. I don’t hide them, but I don’t to get up when they’re discussing it. And so, um, so I treated it like maybe he had suspected though, and I said, okay. I go, well, you know, if you knew, you know, I don’t know how, I don’t know what I said, but he said, you know, but I wanted, I loved you and I wanted you for nine months. And when I saw you, I’ve wondered, he said, but I already loved you and wanted you for nine months. He said, in a new, you didn’t have a chance without me. And that part’s true. That’s true. Well, as true, my mom hadn’t gone to college. She married him because he wanted to get married. So if he had denied me, it would’ve been, I mean, she could have done it. Plenty of, plenty of women do it.
Speaker 1: (04:10)
But it would have been a very different life for sure. And I grew up, I was very well taken care of growing up, so it would have been a different life for sure. Um, but remember it was father’s Day, so I made him a father’s day gift. I had called my mother and said, I’m going to tell dad, sorry, please. I wish you wouldn’t do this to, you know, first she was angry, then it was pleading vested mother, no, I’m sorry I can’t live this lie. It’s not fair to ask him to live with this lie. I’m sneaking around. It’s not fair. And I said, and I said, you go to your photo album and you get me every picture you have of me and my dad. We just like this. And I said, and you send them to me. I want every picture. You have.
Speaker 1: (04:49)
Just the two of us. And I made him a photo album and um, I gave it to him and after I gave it to him, I mean, he didn’t, he’s an emotional guy. You got to just put it aside. And for a long time I thought, oh gosh, that was cheesy. That was stupid. He, he didn’t like it. But, um, I don’t know, a year or so ago he, he mentioned it. I mean, it’s been 25 years now, but a while back he meant, she said, you know, that photo album he gave me, because I can’t tell you how much that means to me. Yeah. Oh Wow. All these years of like second guessing myself, he does like it. He likes me, he really likes, and so, um, you know, so hard for him. It was, but he didn’t want, um, the day he didn’t really want to tell his sister, my cousins on his side, my grandma, he says this, don’t tell your grandmother she would not be able to handle this.
Speaker 1: (05:40)
And by the way, she always hated my mother. Okay. So, yeah. Don’t tell her no. She says she doesn’t like it was best. So I, but it’s funny, all my, when my, when my dad’s sister’s son son had a child, um, she kind of resembles me a little bit. And so all my life they said, oh, well, Rachel always was so much like you. I recently had to tell them the truth because Rachel’s all grown up now. And, um, I had some issues with my adrenal glands a couple of years ago and Rachel has Addison’s disease. It turns out she had a near fatal, um, situation and I recognized her symptoms and called them and said, here’s what you need to do for her. Her wedding was almost called off as a real result. And they were like, she was always just so much like you. So they were sending her off for all these testing.
Speaker 1: (06:27)
And I had told my cousin when we were vacationing together and in Arizona, and he had no plans to tell his kids, but when this came up with her about her Addison’s disease, um, he said, he messaged me and said, look, Rachel’s going in for all these tests. And you know, I don’t know if they’re going to ask her about family history and heredity and she’s going to blurt out, Oh yes, my cousin Lori has this too. And that’s not going to be true. And I don’t want to mislead doctors and helping her. So he says, you know, if you’re comfortable telling her I’m okay with that and he’d rather us or if you’d rather not, we’ll just roll the dice and see. Maybe they won’t ask. No, I’m happy to tell her. So I did, you know, medical history is a complicated variable in this situation for everybody.
Speaker 1: (07:15)
It seems like for, she keeps coming up over and over. And do you know one time a while back asking my mother about this, she said first her boyfriend that she ran it past told her yeah, Lori does have a right to know what if there is something medical. She does have a right to know the boyfriend bill boyfriend bill who poor bill has don’t pass. The bill passed away two weeks before gene, my bio dad. Oh yeah. Two weeks before, um, as almost like his purpose in her life was to convince her to tell me and then his, his work, then his work here was done. It was the last thing he needed to do. Um, but so she said she, the bill had convinced her. And then, you know, if a few weeks ago she, she’s me. She was coming to tell me when she was 21 but another time she told me I was always just so afraid. What if Laurie gets into an accident and she’s in the hospital and she needs blood and Richard gets there and finds out he can’t donate to her? What if, what if? What if she and she find out that way?
Speaker 1: (08:12)
What if you just told us the truth because we have a right to know. You know, how about let’s just do the right thing. But no, it was always, because she had all these sorts of what if’s in her mind but never in the right one is right, but never, never just never enough to just say, what if it’s wrong to not tell them what if it’s morally wrong to not tell her the truth? What if it’s morally wrong to deny her? I guess some of that did come into play because at some point she said, you know, Laurie’s anguishing over here trying to figure out why her relationship with her dad isn’t great. So I guess she, maybe I should cut her some slack. She had some of that was on her mind, but she was, she was terrified. And my mom and I were always very close growing up.
Speaker 1: (08:55)
I said, cross generational boundary, shared things you shouldn’t have early on, codependent relationship. Um, so she was terrified. I would hate her and that she would lose me forever. Right. I think it does. I think that’s a fear. I think that’s very common. It didn’t happen. Yeah. You know, not everyone I’m realizing now, not everyone is emotionally mature enough to handle it. I’m not sure how I was except that I was surrounded by therapists, um, and good friends, and maybe I was. Yeah. He support system sounds so strong in at all. So say this, people have always said to me, God didn’t, you just don’t, you just hate your mother for not telling you the truth. Don’t you hate that you were lied to? Don’t you resent her? It’s true. I was lied to. It’s true that she didn’t tell me at 21. She told me at 24.
Speaker 1: (09:42)
But in all honesty, I was not emotionally equipped to handle it any earlier than I was told. Yeah, I hear I, yeah, I totally hear that. I don’t, I, I every, every person I’ve talked to you I ask, do you feel like there was a time that would have been a good time to tell and it’s a really hard question for everybody to answer. Yeah. I, and I’m, I was not prepared before that age and honestly, if she had told me maybe I would have reacted in an emotional way that might have soured the relationship with my birth family and made it impossible to have a relationship today, maybe I would’ve sabotaged it and study away or being 21 with that information. Right. I was, I was at that age, I was unraveling and reparenting myself out of codependency, so I probably was not prepared at the time.
Speaker 1: (10:36)
So I just trust the universe or whatever you believe in. I just trust that things happen when they’re supposed to, how they’re supposed to. My girlfriend was placed in Chattanooga across the street street. I was, I was meant to love people named Richard because I have them. The name Laurie was meant to happen because there’s two of us. I mean all these little synchronicities, whatever you want to call them, things have unfolded like they were supposed to. So, and now I have my, my sister and my brother, my brother. Um, eventually I got an email you’ve warmed up 15 years ago I got an email, subject line said yes, hell has frozen over. And my sister had told me that he and his wife were divorcing. So here I get this email one day. Yes, hell has frozen over. I still have this email. I’m really sorry.
Speaker 1: (11:22)
Do you know Lori I want to do in my life, but my wife just would not permit it and it was going to make an already difficult marriage, even more difficult and I feel terrible. But if you’ll have me in your life, I’d like to get to know you. And now we do. That’s so cool. And um, when I got married, well 15, 12 years ago, um, they both came to my wedding. Oh, cool. And, um, my sister, we had a brunch at my house the next day and my sister settle in my living room floor looking at old pictures of me. Come on. Oh my gosh. You look just like me when I was a baby with my dad’s sister standing right over her. Who still doesn’t know. Oh yeah. So panic, panic set in Yappy. Pick it up. No, she didn’t. And I’m shooting Robyn looks because here we are all this time later and there are still secrets to this day.
Speaker 1: (12:15)
25 years later, I’m still having to live with secrets and until my aunt passes on, it will continue to be a secret or until my dad passes away because I still have to protect him. I feel like he has friends and he wouldn’t want this to be advertised to co colleagues, people. My birth father, by the way, right after I was born was that textile rug, rug industry convention in Chicago or New York. It’s like a three day conference, but he passes my dad on the escalator. Hey Richard, how’s it going? Hey Jane. Good to see you man. He says, uh, Jane says to my dad, you heading back today? No, I’ve got one more day. He says, Oh, I’m going back tonight and I’ll see you on the other side. So she knows that my dad’s going to be in New York for another night. He went to our house and he helped me the first and only time.
Speaker 1: (13:11)
Oh. And then he told me that from time to time, because he worked in Dalton where I grew up, he would drive by my elementary school or drive by my house and see me playing in the yard or my mom picking me up from school just once in a while. Oh, that’s really sweet. He also, when my brother was 18, said, yeah, guess what? You’ve got a sister. I got, I had this affair. And you get this cute little sister almost bragging. Yeah. So for a suite as it was that he wanted to hold me, wanted to come see me, some narcissistic piece of him too. I thought it was cool. It was crowded. It was brown. Yap. It proud of you for what it represented. Proud of me or proud of, hey, look, look how cool I am and come virile. I am. I got another girl pregnant.
Speaker 1: (13:55)
I don’t know. I didn’t know. I asked my brother recently and he said, yeah, it almost seemed like he was showing off. So, um, yeah, none of this stuff is easy. It’s so weird. And I had a great conversation with my mom and my siblings, Mike and Robin, um, after the whole baby picture on the floor incident, you know, I could see that we were all standing together talking them, talking to my mother, and I could feel a little tension, you know, because this woman all these years ago with their dad. So, you know, did daddy did Daddy, what did daddy tell you about mom? You know, that kind of kind of pointed questions and mother said, well, you know, he told me that she was sick with cancer. No, she had hepatitis, but they ring nice. But you know, a little bit of little bit of guardedness there.
Speaker 1: (14:41)
And I took this opportunity. I said, Robin, your youngest daughter, how old is she now? She’s 22. 21. I, Huh? I said, no mom. How old were you? I was 21 when you were born, how old were you when you met gene? I was 20 1920 I said, Robin, can you imagine your daughter going to work? She got a boss who’s 40 years old, seducing her, making her feel special and get her pregnant. Can you imagine how she would handle that? She goes, I had never thought of it that way. I said, mom has her. I think so much of this process is about thinking about how old your mother was at that time and having empathy. Yeah. You know, realizing that where you able to make any better decisions at that age. I don’t know if I was, I did lots of crazy things.
Speaker 1: (15:32)
Oh my gosh. And it was funny. Yeah. Yeah. Hence the reason I wasn’t prepared to have the information anyway. I was not prepared. I was not making good decisions in my own life, so that’s why I’m able to forgive her and then I’ll fast forward. So I got married, I got married late though I was 37, so my husband and I tried to have a family and it wasn’t, I wasn’t able to get pregnant. And so we did IVF and first two tries didn’t work. My sister was so disappointed and cause that she was going to get more nieces and nephews and I said, no Robin, it’s just not going to be possible unless I use an egg donor. She goes, well, my girls would donate. I said, okay, down boy, you know, whoa Nelly and I, but I said, you know, do you think, I mean, it’s not like I hadn’t thought about this because I was looking at the prospect of using an anonymous donor and I grew up my whole life wanting to look like people.
Speaker 1: (16:26)
I wanted a child that would look like me and be like me are things in common with me. And I said, do you think she has two daughters? One has, um, sandy blondish hair and blue eyes and the other has dark brown hair, dark eyes. And she says, Oh, I’m sure this one would. And I go, well, how about that one? She goes, oh, she’s really young. And I go, I know, but she looks like me. It goes, let me ask her. And she donated x for me. Oh Wow. Yeah. I still wasn’t able to carry, but that, that little girl, I mean just to call her a little girl, she calls me Auntie bestie and she her second mommy and we’re very close. But yeah, she donated eggs for me. That’s really, really nice. So that was really special. We’re a good family. I mean my sister feels like a second cousin, not a sister.
Speaker 1: (17:15)
We all live in the, in this app, except my niece now lives in Texas. Okay. Yeah. But they’re all still back in that area. And that Buffington family that welcomed me into that face group group that last week someone said, where does everyone live? And all over the country, but a large percentage, I’ve been tracing the genealogy back to rising Fon Tennessee rising fun, Georgia large percentage are still right there. Small town. It’s not south. Yeah. So, and then tell me a little bit now about what you do to, to as a search angel. Well, when I first did the DNA test, I had never really thought about how many cousins we have. And so I did, I made my, my graduate degrees in library science. So I kind of have that analytical research mind and all these random people are popping up and I’m related to them.
Speaker 1: (18:06)
But I’ve never considered that I’m related to a thousand people out there. How is this thought? My Dna was like that so many people. My DNA is, you know, my cousins, my aunts, my uncles and all those people that died before my mother and father never really considered the branches and how far they reach and how many people until I saw all these third cousin matches and I was like, well where did I put you on my tree? And that’s when I started understanding how big it is. So I started really getting the genealogy bug and the puzzle of it all. It was interesting to me. But then one day I get contacted by a young lady who’s 24, same age I was back then. It says, hi, you matched me as a second cousin. Um, I’m looking for my birth family. I was adopted outside of Atlanta in 1993.
Speaker 1: (18:51)
Can you, can you help me figure this out? And I said, well, if you’re a second cousin to me, your birth parent is my mother’s first cousin. My mother is 70 years old. That really narrows the field of people that were parenting children in 1993. It was one of her really young cousins. And long story short, I helped her figure out who her birth father is, my second cousin. And then I’ve continued to help her. Meanwhile, as I was doing that, another friend of my husband’s has been looking for his birth family, um, thought he was Italian his whole life. Turns out he’s Puerto Rican and through doing history I learned about in dogging me crazy tree. If you come from Puerto Rico and my husband’s part Icelandic. So the family trees from isolated places like that really have a lot of it. So it’s a complicated tree to figure out, really tangled.
Speaker 1: (19:37)
Um, and then, um, and then another cousin reached out and said, hey, I was adopted. Can you help me? Not related to the first cousin that popped up a different side of the family. People found you over the Internet and found me through DNA matching. So I’ve started trying to help him peace his story together. And then remember the boyfriend John, whoever. Yup. John and I became Facebook friends, you know, 10 years ago when Facebook happened and he stayed in touch. And as I was helping these other people and I abandoned my own tree, I forgot about my own third cousins cause now I’m solving all these mysteries. Right. Um, I messaged John, I go, hey it all this DNA testing, whatever happened with your birth. Did you ever find your birth parents? He says, funny, you should ask. I have matched with a person who appears to be a sister or a cousin.
Speaker 1: (20:28)
And, um, he says, go look at my Facebook friends at this person. And I started immediately building like a tree. I said, yeah, I think I know who your dad is. Oh my gosh. But when he reached out to her, she says, oh, no, no, no. You know, like a lot of people, hey, do you know of anyone that gives the child for adoption in 1969? And I’m like, don’t lead that question. Because either yes, they know and they gave it for a reason and it’s a delicate question. Or B, they don’t know. So if somebody says no, it doesn’t mean you’re not there is, it just means they might not know. And they came back and said, no, no, no, you’re not my dad’s. Um, we think you’re the, we think you’re the, I’m the son possibly of his brother who was kind of a wild guy in those days.
Speaker 1: (21:10)
I said to my friend John, I said, go look at the number of Sinta Morgan’s you and this person to have in common. Tell me how, what does that even mean, Laurie? I said, just go look at, tell me what the number is. He says, 1,689. I said, she is not your cousin. She is your sister. She’s your half sister. He says, you sure? I said I’m sure. Yeah. So let’s put that on hold. Let’s work on your birth mom. Let’s get the story and then we can go back to them. And that’s where we are now. He met his birth mother last Sunday. Oh Wow. And she welcomes like happening right now happening right now. Yup. How old was she at the time? She was 19 and um, we found her because he matched with a first cousin and I said, if this person is your first cousin, one of her birth parents, siblings is more birth parents.
Speaker 1: (21:52)
So close. Yeah. And if we believe this person, this guy over here is your birth father, then let’s go, let’s go look at this person leads, build a tree for the cousin. Her mother only had sisters and I said, I think we found your birth mother. But the two sisters, one was 19 when he was born, when was 12? And I said either, I mean, well, I said either, I mean, either this one’s your birth mother and she gave me up for adoption or something tragic happened and it took several messages. And um, I learned, I’ve learned through helping both of these people now because now we’ve made, I’ve connected to different people. I’ve learned that it’s not enough to build a tree and just discover who the person is. But there it is a really delicate approach you have to take because you don’t know what the stories are.
Speaker 1: (22:38)
You don’t have to secrets are there’s reasons people were given up for adoption or if it wasn’t an adoption, it’s a, it’s an affair or some sort of a secret that is not going to be easy to bring up to anyone. So, um, I’ve learned a lot already with, but we’ve had two great successes, well three really because he’s found his birth mom and in the meeting with her after an hour and a half of him getting her backstory, she says, okay, well you have a sister and two brothers, would you like to meet them there across the street? And he has Facebook friends in common with his half brothers and the cousin alone because he was adopted right in the same area where he was given up. Another twist on that one is all of his life. His parents mentioned they’re good friends down in Miami, patent rich.
Speaker 1: (23:26)
Guess what? His maternal grandparents names are patent ranch for them or just we think it is. We’re looking for photos. His adoptive parents have passed away. His God mother has passed away. The maternal grandparents have passed away, but um, the birth mother was taken. She was hidden away by her parents when she got pregnant. Catholics hidden away, took her to the hospital two days before he was born. She was sedated. She woke up two days later, not pregnant. I was told it’s been handled, never speak of it again. She didn’t even know what the sex of the baby was. Whoa.
Speaker 2: (24:01)
Yeah.
Speaker 1: (24:03)
So when she first responded to him, she said, okay, I understand this isn’t a scam, but I have some questions of my own and this is causing some unease and my family, I need some time to work on this, but give me a few weeks, you know, of course he’s saying, what does this mean? What does this mean? I go, she’s not saying, I have no idea when these go away or I have no idea. I’m willing to help you. But I don’t know. She’s not saying that. She’s saying, I have some questions of my own. Maybe something tragic happened. Maybe she was told you died. She believed he had died. Oh, she and she, there’s another twist. She believes the birth father is someone else. Oh my gosh. We still have that issue to work through because we’re pretty sure it’s not, oh my gosh. Yeah. Yup, Yup, Yup, Yup, Yup. She believes his birth father is, uh, as an Italian man, but his ancestry says he’s 52% Ashkenazi Jewish and she’s Italian and Jewish. Yeah. So, yeah. So now I just really, I’ve abandoned my own family tree, much to my family’s dismay. They were like, come on, we’re counting on you to pieces all together. But I’m just so interested now. It makes me feel so good
Speaker 1: (25:09)
to help others find their truth to, um, and because I’ve been through the funerals and the, and the rejections and the reconnections and, and the cousins and the grandparents and the, just the, the rips and the truth telling and there’s still secrets and the no more secrets. I’ve, you know, I’ve already lived all of that for 25 years. So yeah, it really feels like the community needs people like you who have been through so much of it and can bring so much experience. And I got a lot of counseling experience and that first job with the child abuse shelters, I spent lots of times and therapist’s office helping the children in the child of shelter. So it kind of, and I’ve had a lot of therapy of my own. So, even though I’m not a trained therapist and I think people should try to work with someone, what I’m finding is that there aren’t a lot of even therapists out there that have ever dealt with this and know what to do. It’s a whole new field. It’s a whole new field that’s emerging. So maybe the, maybe in 10 years I’ll be a therapist too. Right. So cool that you’re, you literally have you though you were out there and oh, it feels good. I mean, selfishly it feels good to me. It’s, you know, I feel like it’s all come full circle. So, and maybe I can move on to crime fighting too. Yeah. It sounds like a lot of fun, but one thing at a time. One thing at a time. Oh, cool. Thank you so much for coming your awesome story. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being interested. I hope it helps someone. Oh yeah. I mean it, I’m sure that it will and if nobody else is helping me, so thank you. That’s really cool. Thank you. Appreciate it off.
Speaker 2: (26:45)
Okay.
Where Do Babies Come From? Donor Conception Today
Speaker 1: (00:00)
Start recording and I’ll edit it. Um, but won’t, it won’t, won’t just be like so raw right now. But, um, okay. So what I’ll probably, what I’m going to do is like say why we’re talking and then, and then we’ll get into it. I don’t, we do, I don’t know how much you’ve been listening, but, um,
Speaker 2: (00:21)
I’ve, I’ve listened to everything, but I have, um, I haven’t paid it under that specific part of like the lead in or anything. Okay. You don’t know the details of the mechanics of how I’ll be honest. You’re my first podcast. This is really exciting. We can do this together. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (00:41)
All right. So here is what’s been going on on my side of things. Okay. I started this podcast because, well, okay, wait, let me back up. Let me say that again. I, so let me talk about it from my side of things and then, and then we’ll you talk and then it will be clear why we’re like merging together. Um, so, so do, Oh, not two years ago, but a year and a half ago, a man called my husband and said, um, I think that I’m Eve’s real dad. And he was correct. And we figured that out through DNA testing. And in that process I discovered this whole world of people that are, um, connecting and discovering all of these things about who their real parents are. And, um, and, and it’s because these mail and DNA kits are so easy to do so much, it’s so much easier. And then also, um, so many people are finding out as a surprise.
Speaker 1: (01:49)
Like it’s a shock and it’s a surprise and it’s devastating. And it’s uncovering generations of secrets and varying degrees. And you know, all this, and everybody knows all this, but it just makes sense for me to like kind of go over the history of things. Yeah. Because in the process, I, my, my biggest concern really like in my heart is about people that feel shame and all. So many of these secrets are, are born of shame, you know, and we have this so much of it, I’m like totally fascinated right now about our moral code in this country world and, um, and what we’re allowed to do and not allowed to do and what it means if people are do this, do this, which is mainly what I’m talking about is sex. Although, although in my process, so then I, um, I wanted to talk to people who are finding out the surprise because there’s a lot of shame and emotion and unfamiliar territory about the surprise itself.
Speaker 1: (02:52)
Um, sex not withstanding. Uh, and then I, um, I met, uh, my interview Carla interview number five, and she talked about how what she discovered unexpectedly was that she was donor conceived. And when I talked to her, she, I, and that was something I had never ever thought about. Um, she sort of acts sort of like exposed or revealed to me like this whole world of what that means to her or what that experience has been like and what the history of that is or some of the history. Um, and then, and then simultaneously like I follow, you know, these different groups on Facebook and the internet and these message boards and stuff, um, of these communities of people and a lot of the donor conceived people have a lot of things to say and a lot of feelings about. Yes, yes, yes. So, so, so that was my journey to you and then you listen to podcast and then yep.
Speaker 1: (03:57)
So graciously offered to talk with me about donor conception in two. You know, like now like Martin donor conception and I do have a lot of, not a lot of questions. I mean I do, I just, I’m very, and I know that you’re not like representative of the, of like the same sex community. But yes, I do want to know if like, is this stuff getting talked about at all? Because I never thought of it. And I have lots of friends that are in same sex relationships that have adopted or, um, use surrogates or used donors. So, so maybe you could just, you could tell me with more detailed or intimate IX, um, perspective.
Speaker 2: (04:35)
Yes. Well, I do, I do want to make that clear that I am just, this is my experience and I had no way consider myself like the gay spokesperson. Um, that would be a really excellent business card. So if someone wants to hire me for that, I am in. Um, but so, um, yeah, so I am married to a woman and so when it came time for us to start talking about having a family, you know, it was not going to happen naturally. So when we went out, we started looking at, um, sparring bags and all of that. But at the time when we first started working with the fertility clinic, they had a sit down with a social worker to discuss the potential implications of having a donor conceived child. Um, but that was about the extent of it at the time. Um, I found out about the donor, the feelings of some donor conceived individuals. Um, well after my first daughter was born, um
Speaker 1: (05:29)
Oh, okay.
Speaker 2: (05:30)
Yeah. And then, um, and so it was one of those like those barn doors already closed for that one.
Speaker 1: (05:37)
Right. And what did the social worker tell you? What was the gist of what and which is not fair? I’m sorry, say that again. I thought I wasn’t, I was assuming that the social worker was a woman.
Speaker 2: (05:49)
It was, you were correct. Um, so basically she said, you know, when you have a kid with a, you want to at least give him the ability to have coffee with the individual, which we kind of nodded and said yes for. Um, but we did not, we kind of not said yes and then left. And we’re like, that’s actually not going to happen. We didn’t bring it up with her because we were just trying to get something checked off that we had to spend money on. We didn’t want to, to get to be able to work with the clinic. Okay.
Speaker 1: (06:18)
Right, right, right. So when, so she said you want to at least give the, the child the option to have coffee or the okay, yes. With the donor. Okay. Yeah,
Speaker 2: (06:29)
no about who they, you know, got their, their genetic makeup from.
Speaker 1: (06:33)
And I’m so sorry. Um, okay. I’m gonna interrupt you a lot. Okay. I’m this, so first of all, I have a lot of coffee, but secondly, I’m so or reverse those. Um, did they, did the social workers suggest if that should be as, as an adult for the child or as a child?
Speaker 2: (06:51)
Let me back up a bit and talk to you a little about how, how you can buy your, uh, your sperm if you’re interested in purchasing. Um, you, there’s a bunch of different options. So you can go with a known donor, which is just then like you have Bob who’s young uncle who then you explain is actually like the kid’s dad and they get to have a relationship. Um, or you can purchase, um, a sperm with ID options, which then says when the child turns 18, they have the option to reach out to the bank to get the donors contact information. Um, and then there’s also the completely anonymous donation option where, um, you just, you don’t get to know who that is. They are number one, two, three, four, and that’s who, that’s who fathered you. Um, so that’s, those are those three options.
Speaker 2: (07:42)
Um, and of course, uh, having a known donor means you have somebody in your life that produces sperm that you would want to have do this for you. We did not at the time. Um, I have two brothers, but I wanted to carry on. My wife was not particularly interested in that, so, you know, and she didn’t have any male relatives like that that she would want to bring into this. Um, and so the, the other thing is there is a very significant price difference per unit between ID options and anonymous. And at the time, um, at the time the Supreme court had yet to recognize the legality of my marriage. So we were receiving no insurance support for what we were doing. So we were paying everything out of pocket and it was just not financially in the cards for us to be able to purchase something with ID options. I’ve since learned that, um, a lot of banks don’t try to maintain contact information for donors. So even if I had gotten someone with ID options, they would not necessarily be someone that like I, they may not be able to reach out and like 13 years and get a phone number that works or something like that.
Speaker 1: (08:55)
Right. I was just about
Speaker 2: (08:56)
to say like, who even knows what contact will look like in 20 zero email might not be a thing anymore, or Facebook. And definitely like home addresses and land lines are such a, like our archaic system for tracking people in those. Yeah. Um, Hmm. Okay. So, so when we were sitting down to start baby making for our first round, um, we basically decided, okay, there’s just no way we can afford to do this with, um, with the ID option. So we’ll find someone to be like without the ID options. And, um, we’re just going to be very active in the donor sibling community. And so when they’re old enough to understand what’s going on, you could say, you know, look at this point, we can’t give this information about your, um, you know about your biological father, but here are all of your half siblings. Um, and we can have relationships with them. Like let’s have a family reunion, all of that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: (09:54)
Oh my gosh. Is that always an option with the, the anonymous IDs? They always go to all the siblings.
Speaker 2: (10:01)
Well, so it’s not you, it’s an opt in. Like we are stressed informed the bank when we have a pregnancy, which we have done. Um, but there’s the donor sibling registry, which is I believe donor sibling, registry.com. This is something my wife has been a lot more in than I have. Um, and then the individual banks have their own registries as well. So I believe we are on both. And from that we are now Facebook friends with five other families who have kids from the same donor.
Speaker 1: (10:27)
Oh, that is fascinating to me. I know it’s both really cool and really weird. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Um, so, okay, so is it like, so it’s like an ancestry.com, but just for donor siblings, I think actually even Carla talked about that in episode five.
Speaker 2: (10:48)
Um, so I, so here, here’s the part where I am, I’m not, I haven’t done any DNA testing. I’m not a part of ancestry.com, so I don’t even really know what that looks like, but it’s, as far as I understand, it’s literally like just a message board where you go to the individual bank and you say, I, you know, I had kids from this number and then someone else can chime in and say, I also had kids from this number. And so they can just, they connect that way. And so once we got names, we all just became Facebook friends and now we have a group chat
Speaker 1: (11:17)
that we all right. Pop in and out of. Wow. Wow. Wow. And are they, um, are they all local ish? No. No. Okay.
Speaker 2: (11:28)
Um, I have one local, we just connected with like six months ago that we still have yet to have a play date and we’ve been talking about it for that long. Um, and then I have one, one’s in Rhode Island, one’s in Iowa, one’s in I think Illinois, once Minnesota.
Speaker 1: (11:45)
And my next question is did they, but did everybody connect initially with that donor at the same place? Like the donation get purchased at the same place? Yes, yes. Is he traveling? Is he traveling or is the no, it’s, it’s the, the units are traveling as far as I understand. So I believe what happened is, so we went out of Fairfax Cryobank um, and so I believe what happened is they purchased another bank that was in the Midwest. Ah, okay.
Speaker 2: (12:14)
So some people picked up from Midwest and we did Fairfax because um, shipping for units is like 200 bucks a pop. And again, affordability was an option, was a concern for us and my wife works for herself so she could go pick up the unit, drive it to the clinic and drive the tank back. Once they took the stuff out. So,
Speaker 1: (12:34)
well, wait a minute, now I’m understanding that, that that sperm can be donated at one spot, one place, but then shipped all over the country.
Speaker 2: (12:46)
That’s, and that’s what they all do. Yeah. So I am on the East coast. I could, um, I could order from California cryo, which is a very popular bank. I could, um, I mean, yeah, all over the place. That’s when people do now known donors. Sometimes they’ll like donate at a clinic in California and they will fly it across country to the clinic in New York. Or sometimes I’ll just like, I guess FedEx it in a specimen cup. I have not been into that side of faith. I’m not sure exactly how they do that.
Speaker 1: (13:17)
Gone are the days when, um, when the man was just like in the next room. Oh gosh, no. Yeah, that’s okay. Okay. Or the doctor was leaving for 10 minutes and saying there was a man, but really he was the donor.
Speaker 2: (13:33)
Yeah, no. So it’s, it’s actually kind of like speed dating. So if you ever go into a, um, fertility clinic website, you can look up all of the donors you can classify by, by race, hair, color, eye color, whether they like cats or dogs, they’ll give you their sign. Um, they have a complete medical history of everybody and then they have like staff impressions, which we always like, you know, staff say that this donor is very handsome and some say staff remark on this donors remarkable eyes and we’re like, okay, so they’re not, they’re not cute, but like they got pretty eyes like that kind of stuff and like dating. Okay. Yeah. And the one we did only give baby pictures and so there was a lot of like, okay, this is a cute kid. Do you think it’s going to be acute? It’s all, I’m not sure. Um, and then they also break it down into preparation types. So, um, you can, there’s like a bunch of different kinds you can get. You can get one if you’re succeeding like an interest, cervical insemination, intrauterine insemination. If you are doing IVF, um, it’s a different amount of motility, which is like live sperm per unit. And the other weird thing is like for each donation that the person makes that could be broken out into multiple vials. Um
Speaker 1: (14:49)
Oh I asked that. No one knew the answer. Okay. Yes, they can definitely can. Okay. And that, I mean, at least that’s what I’ve, my understanding of it. Again, I’m not an expert. I have to spend a lot of time looking at a website. Do you know? Okay. Okay. Okay. You’re not an expert so I will not ask you too many. No, you can go for, I mean like I’ll Google the lot. How many vials? One donation can create that. I don’t, I’ll stop my head. I think it depends on the person. Okay. How much, how much skirt?
Speaker 2: (15:17)
Yeah, exactly. Cause if you’re doing, um, exceed, which I forget what that stands for, but basically that’s, if you’re doing IVF, the harvest your eggs and then they literally take one sperm from the sample and inject it into one egg to fertilize. So, you know, when we, when we did IVF for my second kid, we actually had them refreeze the vial so we could use it for later. [inaudible]
Speaker 3: (15:41)
okay. Amazing. All right.
Speaker 1: (15:44)
So, um, so, so are you comfortable telling me what you and your wife did? Did choose? Yeah, so, well
Speaker 2: (15:53)
we um, we ended up getting a specific number, um, and we went through three different donors because you know, it was one of the, for whatever reason they were all like at the tail end of their donations or they only had a certain amount of ICI vials available, which were the cheapest kind. And the fertility clinic goes like a thousand and does a Washington account anyway. So it doesn’t matter if you buy ICI or IUI, you’re still paying for that service. You might as well get the cheaper one. Okay. So it started out like, um, the other part of it is, um, I am CMV negative, which is a specific kind of virus that you get where if the donor is positive and you’re negative, it can cause some pregnancy issues. And so they just told me to get all CMV negative. And so that actually winnowed the pool down a lot because there were not that many.
Speaker 2: (16:44)
Um, again, I’m not quite sure why, but it’s like a, it’s like a cold or something like that where it’s, you know, if you, if you don’t have it, it’s fine. But if you do like, yeah, that’s what I was like, if you have a cold when you’re a kid, it could be a problem. But when you’re an adult it’s not, I don’t quite know [inaudible] cut that part out. Um, but so that winter, the pool a lot. And so like starting out, my wife went out and made like a spreadsheet of all of the different donors and who did this and who was artsy and who was studying engineering and all of that. And so we had these very in depth discussions and we picked one and then, um, ordered like four units, blew through those in two months, no pregnancy, more arguing, what not argue more discussion, picked another one, ordered a form of aisles, blew through those in a few months.
Speaker 2: (17:33)
Um, and then I moved to, um, I moved to, uh, IUI with Clomid, which is where you could get put on a fertility drug to produce more, um, please more eggs. And then, you know, they do an IUI when you’re ready and all that. And so that went down to one, just one vial. And so we had, we were finally like, okay, I just gotta pick someone. So someone tall, that’s all, that’s all make one, because no one really looked like her. And she’s got, you know, polite hair and blue eyes. I said her name. Oh, well we’ll just leave it. Um, she’s got red hair and blue eyes. I have Brown hair and Brown eyes. So like that’s not, it’s not going to physically look like, or in any way. So someone tall and then we feel like this one’s tall and he looks like Tom Hardy done long ago enough said.
Speaker 2: (18:21)
Yeah. So we, um, so we picked him and uh, it was the last unit of him on my, I am my second medicated IUI. And like the day before I went to get my blood tests, we were like, I don’t know if it works, like should we talk about adoption and all of us. And then of course I got the call the next day and they’re like, congratulations. And I freaked out for the next nine months. So, so that was what happened with my first, um, my second he’d stopped donating. And so I, we were on the wait list for units for him. We got a call when I was eight months pregnant with my first being like, we have units available. Do you want some? He said, you know, I can’t make that financial commitment right now because you also have to pay for storage, which is like 80 bucks a month.
Speaker 2: (19:10)
And yeah. So we were like, fine, whatever. We’ll just pass. That’ll be an OB. Oh yeah. Okay. Easy. Okay. Yeah. And they’re like, well, if you buy six units, you know, you get a year of free storage. Like what’s six units is like $3,500. Like, I have that in my back pocket, you know? Right, right. Oh my gosh. Okay. So, um, so then we got to the point where we were starting to think about having kids again and then the donor miraculous had six units available and they were having a sale. And we’ve talked about doing it on Wednesday night and we weren’t sure. And then we went to go purchase on Thursday and they work on, um, so, so yeah, so we started up doing that. We ended up having to pick another donor. Sorry. Yeah, apparently. Um, so we picked another donor and I went through this for my second.
Speaker 2: (20:05)
I went through five rounds of medicated IUI is, um, I got pregnant, had a miscarriage, and then we were discussing IVF. And so this is the fun story. So all of the donor siblings I talked about that we’re Facebook friends with. Yeah, no, they were all in the process of baby making their seconds as well. And so we’re all just IMing each other like, does anyone have a vile? Do you have someone? And so I had, I had one, um, couple who was like, you know, we’re, we’re, we’re trying, but we’re, you know, we’re not gonna need this file, so I’ll, we’ll send it to you if you want. And we were like, we’re not sure yet. Um, and this was like September and then in, you know, like, I’m like, actually we do want it. And they’re like, well, we just had a miscarriage and we’re going to start doing IVF, so we’re not going to do that right now.
Speaker 2: (20:54)
All right. All right. Then one of the other families came forward, like, we have a vial, you know, if you, if you want it. Like, how about that? So, so we like, got the vial from them. They did the paperwork with the sperm bank, they shipped it to us. I was like, you know, we’re going to do IVF and refreeze it. And so then, uh, the other, the other family, another family came through and they’re like, so do you have any, cause we’re trying to make ours. I’m like, yes, I do. And so we ended up sending that to them. So it just was this kind of like game of telephone
Speaker 1: (21:28)
or like musical chairs or stuff? Yeah, exactly. I’m of four here that,
Speaker 2: (21:33)
yeah, so the funny story is I was friends with were like friends with um, three other main donor families who’ve added two and recently, but of those three families, um, one had a baby, one had babies in November. I had my daughter in December. One had a their son in March and then the other one is having theirs in this December. So yeah. So it was just all of our baby making time I guess. And it is worked out very nicely.
Speaker 1: (22:08)
That’s awesome. Yeah, that’ll make it so fun to hang out.
Speaker 4: (22:13)
[inaudible]
Speaker 2: (22:13)
so, so yeah. Um, I I keep saying when they’re older like in are better able to understand all of this because mine is a be oldest and she’s not quite five. So in like five years or maybe seven, I want to do like some kind of get together. Like let’s run a, a park somewhere in the middle and we can all drive and meet up, like meeting up with each other. Now the kids have a chance to like talk to each other and get along.
Speaker 1: (22:38)
Right. Wow. Uh, intro. Okay. So, so I’m so sorry. So just to clarify, your daughter and your second daughter [inaudible] yeah. They both have the same donor? Yes. Okay. So both of my kids that, okay. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (23:00)
Kids are 100%, um, same genetics.
Speaker 1: (23:04)
Um, okay. So, okay. So, and you and you will, there’ll be no way for you to, to track there who the donor is on behalf, on behalf of your children. Okay.
Speaker 2: (23:22)
Nope. I mean, I, yeah, not, not at this time.
Speaker 1: (23:26)
Okay. And um, and then so what are the, and then, but if, but if your children choose on their own to do 23, eight, 23 and me or ancestry.com or any of the, um, oodles of companies that are tracking people, they may end up connecting with this donor.
Speaker 2: (23:45)
Yep. They may and they will probably, if they do that, they’ll probably find more donor siblings. Um, I suspect, let’s see. So I the once we know we have probably hand counting three thank we now eight siblings from those five families. But I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s another like 20 out there.
Speaker 3: (24:07)
Right.
Speaker 2: (24:08)
Which is one of those things when you discuss it in the hypothetical, you’re like, that’s crazy. There’s no way that could happen. But in reality, these banks only lip limit donors to siblings only when they hit I believe 20 recorded pregnancies.
Speaker 3: (24:25)
Wow.
Speaker 1: (24:26)
Yeah. So like not even including a recorded. Yeah. All right. And so do you feel like you, you, you and your wife, have you guys discussed, um, how you’ll explain like the birds and the bees to your kids?
Speaker 2: (24:43)
We’ve done it a little bit. So we’ve done Cory Silverberg, Silverbergs what makes a baby, which if people don’t know what that is, I highly encourage you to go look for it. It is a gender neutral way of explaining conception that talks about all the different ways that you can do it. Whether or not you’re doing it with a doctor or different, you know, if you’re doing it the old fashioned way or whatever it is. Because, you know, the reality of today’s world is that, you know, yes, sometimes mommy and daddy come together with a special hug, but also mommy and daddy go to the clinic or a mommy and mommy ordered some broke college student from a website that got delivered to, you know, a clinic. Like there’s just so many ways that it happens now that it’s just part of, should be part of the conversation.
Speaker 1: (25:28)
[inaudible] so we’ve [inaudible]
Speaker 2: (25:29)
we’ve discussed that. And so sh, you know, my older daughter knows that some people have a sperm and some people have an egg and that’s what makes them baby. But we haven’t gotten more than that. We have gotten, um, why don’t I have a daddy, which, you know, like you just, you have two moms. Some people have, you know, Mamita Johnny’s move left you dad. Some people have two moms, maybe we’ll have one mom or one dad. Um, and so she’s, you know, this is one of those with kids, they kind of accept the world as it’s explained to them. So she’s understanding that she wanted a daddy for awhile because she thought a daddy wouldn’t like make her go to bed on time or enforce rules, which are like,
Speaker 1: (26:07)
is kind of like an imaginary friend or somebody really fun. I get it.
Speaker 2: (26:12)
So we, we, you know, we explained that that was not, you know, plenty of daddy’s enforce rules and make kids go to bed on time. And so we have a very, um, close friends who have a daughter who’s a little younger than ours. And so it’s like, you know, well, uncle [inaudible] makes, makes his daughter go to bed on time. So why did you think that? And that cleared up pretty quick. Right? But yeah.
Speaker 1: (26:38)
Um, all right. And is there, um, is there a lot of sort of discussion about the, um, to me new, but I don’t know if it’s new controversy, but, um, sort of like these, all these feelings being expressed by adult donors now, is that, um, no, that’s what, one discussion among the same sex community?
Speaker 2: (27:01)
Um, again, I don’t speak for like the community as a whole. Um, I have seen that discussion had in a lot of different queer parenting groups, um, as just, you know, understand that this is part, this is one group of people who feel this way. Um, trying to figure out how I want to put this. You know, there’s, there’s many different ways that people come to parent children and regardless of how they come to parent them, some people have negative feelings about that and some do not. So I am hopeful of the fact that if we are open and honest about this and we make sure that our children are raised in a loving environment and get the experience that they want with two parents, that it will be a good experience for them in the long term. And like will they probably have to have therapy about it at some point?
Speaker 2: (27:57)
Yes. But most people should if not do need to have therapy about something in their lives. Um, so that is, that is my hope. Um, but it is, it is in the back of my head. And this was actually a question that my wife brought up when we were starting for our second and we did not have our original donors. Do we want to go for ID options for our second in? My answer was no, because I did not think that was fair to our current thought to our elder daughter to say, you know, well your sibling gets to have a relationship with their, you know, genetic father, but you don’t, I didn’t think that was fair. And so I said, no, we’re not gonna. We’re not going to do that to, to our eldest. I think we should just do the same for both.
Speaker 2: (28:45)
Um, yeah. Well, so this is, this is interesting part. I was part of a large queer parenting group on Facebook and somebody this, this is how I found out about this community. Somebody asked, you know, what did you do when you conceived your children? And so I just like middle of a Workday, quick comment. Like we used anonymous, we used an anonymous donor because that was all we could afford. Sorry kid. Like you have good donor siblings. And unbeknownst to me, because I hadn’t read through every comment in a sub thread, someone who was a child of donor conceived parent donor conceived child had been very Frank about how their feelings were about this and that they were upset and they, they didn’t get to have this relationship and that donor siblings weren’t enough. And so they laid into me in the comments and said something along the lines of like, you know, how dare you, you’ll pay for this in therapy later.
Speaker 2: (29:37)
Like it’s really unfortunate that you feel this way. And I said, you know, I’m, I’m sorry if this came off with a flip comment. It was actually something we put a lot of time and thought into and I’m pregnant now and I wanted to make sure that we didn’t, you know, that we didn’t do this for this one because I wanted them to have equal experiences. And then they commented like, Whoa, kind of therapy together. Yeah. And then, and then they would comment and it’s like, well, you know, your second kid should have this child have to suffer from your bad decisions. And then I just kind of apologized if I hurt their feelings and it wasn’t my intention. And then I miscarried like two days later. So those, those two things have always been very connected in my head because of that. Um, and so I, I try to have a lot of thoughts and feelings behind this. Um, you know, just in terms of there’s nothing I can do about it now. My, my children are here. Um, and if I had used a different donor who had, would you hang on one second.
Speaker 3: (30:38)
Okay.
Speaker 2: (30:41)
Hey, what’s up? I am but it’s okay. Okay. Come on. Oh yeah, him, we wrap in life.
Speaker 3: (30:48)
Her,
Speaker 2: (30:50)
you’re all authentic. Yeah. I’m here all afternoon to you. I’ll just stop by when I’m done.
Speaker 3: (30:53)
Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 2: (30:56)
Sorry. I had like, um, I had like an anonymous, well not anomaly. I had an off the offsite download work lunch with someone and she just wanted to finish up. So, um, yup.
Speaker 1: (31:04)
No, that’s totally okay. I understand you’re at work. Thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 2: (31:09)
Um, so where was I? I was thinking.
Speaker 1: (31:12)
So you were saying that you have a lot of, you are aware that, that there’s some people that are really upset about it or sort of bye bye. Variance of trying to discuss it with somebody and having the same song as close to the thing.
Speaker 2: (31:29)
Yeah. So inflate all those things. Yeah. And so, you know, this is one of those where like I, that’s what I’m saying, like my children are children and you know, if I had tried to, if I had known about all of this in the beginning and tried to find money in the budget to, um, do to purchase ID options, then I would not have the children that I have now. Right. And so I can’t regret those choices because that would mean that I would regret my children and they are amazing individuals and I feel very privileged to parent them. So I feel that’s, you know, I can’t, I can’t regret those choices. Um, I understand their feelings behind it. Um, and I want to be very open and honest with my children about how these things came about and how we did what we did. And you know, it’s getting to the point now with my kindergarten or I think it’s time to start having a bit more of these discussions with them. Um, but even then it’s still, it’s going to be hard. Um, and, and maybe it’s not, maybe she’s just gonna roll with it and be like, okay, that’s how it was made. And then at like 16, I’m going to hear, hear about it. I’m don’t know. Um,
Speaker 1: (32:46)
well you can I ask what you think is going to be hard about it? Um, I think,
Speaker 2: (32:53)
I think it is going to be the, you know, the lack of, I won’t be able to have that experience with him necessarily, but that’s also not necessarily the case. You know, I’ve seen so many stories lately about people who do something like ancestry and find their donor and then get to like, they have, you know, the family reunion and reach out and get to know him. And then there’s that story of the woman who conceived with, uh, with a donor and is now dating him, which I think
Speaker 1: (33:20)
it’s hysterical. Oh, I still find the link to that. I should put that up. Yeah, that was a, that was one of my favorites. Right. So, um, okay, so you are imagining that that’s doing, you’ll explain to your daughter. Well, like we, we picked a man that had, that had some things we liked and he, we, we got his sperm and that’s,
Speaker 2: (33:43)
yeah, he wanted to help other people make babies. And so, you know, we were happy, we wanted help and we put him, you know, we, I mean we, you know, we chose him. And so, you know, you may not get to meet him, but you do have these people who can be parts of your lives. So now you, you know, you’re lucky enough you have like five or six new aunts that we can start talking about.
Speaker 1: (34:04)
Right. Or she may say, so she or another or children might say like, Oh, so I do have a dad. And then you have to say, well, yeah, well that’s, there is a faint, there is a man out.
Speaker 2: (34:16)
Yeah. And that’s a correction that I’ve had to make with like my parents and other parents where it’s like, no, this is the donor, this is not the father. Because for me, a father is somebody who is involved in the raising of the kid and you know, plays baseball with them and talks to them about family stuff and you know, helps them mow the lawn. And me you’ve got,
Speaker 1: (34:45)
well actually I just had not thought of that. Um, the importance of rhetoric around variance and how, because also in the like adults and you community, there’s a lot of people that feel like the term donor,
Speaker 5: (35:01)
um,
Speaker 1: (35:02)
is D is a offensive to the donor kids because it,
Speaker 5: (35:09)
um, it means that
Speaker 1: (35:11)
I don’t, I it, it means that the, the men that, that contributed the sperm art even worth a name and therefore they as their offspring are less than, Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: (35:25)
See, I’m not, I’ve not been as involved with all of that because I have not had the emotional bandwidth to be completely fine.
Speaker 1: (35:32)
I mean, I wouldn’t have expected you to, but that’s interesting because I think that goes to show too, like a generational difference maybe than like adults now, you know? And, and these are also people that, um, they’re all, they’re not everybody, they’re not. No one has said, I’m the representative of the adult donor community. This is just like one sliver that I am seeing. Um, and, but that, it makes me really think about rhetoric and how for them and, but how important that is, the difference between a donor or donor or father or, um, and then I definitely foresee your daughters getting super grossed out when they’re like 14 or 16. One thing I’ve learn about sperm, they’re going to be like, wait, what? And they’re gonna be like, wait, a man had to like, Ooh, like masturbate. Ooh, you a lot. I can see a lot of like girls squealing about that. Um, at least, I mean, I’m still squealy about the whole topic. Um, yeah,
Speaker 2: (36:44)
I mean, and, but that’s, that’s one of those where, you know, regardless of the conception story, the act of, of their conception is kind of terrifying to a kid, you know, whether it’s, it’s, you know, like having some, having some fun times or going to a clinic regardless. There is some part of it where you go, wait, what did you do?
Speaker 1: (37:04)
Yeah, he’s what were, yeah.
Speaker 2: (37:08)
Or, or with something like ICI or a IVF, it’s like they do what? It’s like the world’s worse pap smear. Oh my God. That’s horrible. It’s like, well, it was not my favorite. No,
Speaker 5: (37:19)
no.
Speaker 1: (37:21)
Wow. Christina, you’ve given me, oops, I didn’t name, we’re gonna trace that. Um, you have given me so much to think about.
Speaker 2: (37:30)
Well, I haven’t even gotten to the part where I have embryos on ice that I have to figure out what to do with,
Speaker 1: (37:35)
well, I was about to say, I was just checking over our notes about what we were doing out and I was like, okay, mechanics, we did that. What we choose, we’re making our family and then donor can, and then,
Speaker 5: (37:47)
alright.
Speaker 1: (37:49)
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So tell me, so you have stuff on ice.
Speaker 2: (37:53)
Yeah. So when I did my retrieval, um, they got nine eggs and all nine fertilized, which is very unusual. And then, um, only one was ready at the five day transfer. And that is my daughter. Um, we’d like to joke that you volunteered. She was ready, she was ready and everyone was like, that is a beautiful embryo. And we said, I don’t know what that means, but okay. Um, and so, you know, the next day they’re like, okay, you’ve got four that are ready for you if this one doesn’t work. So we’ve got, we’re going to freeze them, you know, two or a double a quality ones like, uh, AB and the other one’s like BA or something like that. And so they, they grade two different card kinds of quality. I don’t know. But so potentially, um, you know, we gave ourselves a year after our daughter’s birth to figure out what we wanted to do with them and she was born in December, so I have to decide soon.
Speaker 2: (38:47)
Um, okay. So, uh, we have to figure what we want to do with them. And so I have considered donating them. But again, this is, I don’t know if that would be fair to my kids to say, you know, here are all of your half siblings. You also have full siblings but we don’t know where they are. Like I would only feel comfortable doing a known donation for that. But then that’s also, that’s also strange. It’s got its own things like do I like pick a nice lesbian couple in the Midwest somewhere that I just stay Facebook friends with? Do I offer it to, a friend of mine I know is going through fertility issues but we’re not that close. Like does anyone really want my genes cause we get nearsightedness and a pre high reliability of diabetes. Like all of those strange questions, I’m just um, I’m wrestling with or do I try to have a third kid, which probably I don’t, but
Speaker 1: (39:46)
[inaudible] is a possibility. Wow. So, yeah. And I’m, I am suddenly imagining what it would be like to stay if there was a, if you were staying in touch with a family and they had used your, your eggs and then, and then they were making choices that you didn’t agree with, um, like in their life. And that was on Facebook. Like for me, that would be really hard. So I’m wondering how much of this,
Speaker 2: (40:14)
for every, hadn’t even thought about that. Yeah. That could also be,
Speaker 1: (40:18)
it might just be odd to watch. Um, but, but that makes me think that all of this is kind of about control and what, what we have control over and what we don’t. Yeah. And um, there’s like this,
Speaker 5: (40:37)
uh,
Speaker 1: (40:39)
conflict of an end, maybe a paradox of con of control, which is like a human animal, emotional need [inaudible] combined with science and biology and just cells meeting other cells.
Speaker 5: (40:59)
Um,
Speaker 1: (41:00)
and I, and um, so I don’t have a conclusion about that. I just, um,
Speaker 2: (41:08)
no, I mean it’s, it’s very strange for me to think that like, I have never met the person who helped me conceive my children. I have just and I may never yet to,
Speaker 1: (41:17)
right. Yeah. So that, that feels strange to you.
Speaker 2: (41:21)
It does now that now that we talk about it, um, you know, because my children will have two parents and my children will always have two parents and then something strange happens and we divorced in 10 years, then they may have four parents. They will always have two parents in their lives who love them. And that to me is the most important part of that as will, will my children be raised with love. And you know, I also don’t want their conception story to be a surprise. So whether we get out in front of it or whether they go, wait a second, how do two women make a baby? And we go, well, I mean we’ve talked to her about the fact that we wanted to have a baby and we went to a doctor and the doctor helped us. Yeah. And then five-year-old land, that is enough. Totally. Um, and at some point, you know, like, I, I feel like I remember several times if when you’re told something, when you’re a kid and you go, Oh, okay. And then like later you go, Hey, wait a second, what is going on with that? And you delve into it more. So I suspect that that’s
Speaker 1: (42:22)
flexible work. You take what it said. Um, my friends, Maggie, his parents one night told her that, um, they needed her to stay up really late for a flight and so they told her that that beats were caffeinated and so she ate her beet salad and then was wide awake for hours cause they were caffeinated. And then like didn’t know that beets were not caffeinated until like recently, like as it said something about someone and they were like, wait, what? Yeah, that’s hysterical. I uh, I was told that, so I, we went to the fair, it went to the Petaluma County fair. Um, what’d you think is called? Yeah, the snowmen Moran County fair in Petaluma and on the fairgrounds. And I got cotton candy and we got home and I had to take a nap. So I put my cotton candy in the fridge and when I woke up from my nap it was all gone. And the adults told me that it was because cotton candy dissolves in air. So I thought cotton candy dissolved in air until very recently. Like I thought it would just descending, like evaporate. Yeah. So I can totally see you being told like, yeah, my parents went to the doctor and doctors help you and that’s how you, that’s how you have babies. Like that’s it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (43:41)
[inaudible] yep. Yeah. Uh, my story like that is that, you know, McDonald’s had signs up that said, um, no loitering. You have to be out after 30 minutes and then till I was like 15, I was worried that someone was going to call the cops on us. Yeah. If we were there for too long. Yeah. You were like, let’s go guys. Like we have to go like everybody, watch your guys. We’ve, well, there’s one time we were at, at, uh, we went up to Lake Tahoe and we got caught in a blizzard on the way home and so we were hanging out in the McDonald’s for a long time and I was seriously worried that something was going to happen and I was 12 should’ve known better, but, and now I look back and go, gosh, look at my entries and anxiety. So
Speaker 1: (44:23)
yeah. Great. Your adherence to authority. Yup. Yeah. Wow. Oh, that’s
Speaker 2: (44:32)
kind of a tangent, but no.
Speaker 1: (44:33)
Yeah, sure. But, um, what a fun one.
Speaker 2: (44:36)
Yeah. So
Speaker 1: (44:39)
yeah, I really am thinking a lot about this idea that, um, that, that um, it’s not, it’s not, not new to me today, but like this idea that that love could be enough and, um, and, and that, and that honesty still is [inaudible].
Speaker 2: (44:57)
Yeah. I mean, regardless of anything, honesty is best, even if it’s honesty that you curate for the person that you’re talking to. Um, you know, I, I don’t need to go into all of the graphics of what an IVF retrieval looks like for my child because I don’t even want to tell you everything that happened with that because it was not a fun experience and it should, there’s someone there considering going through fertility treatments. I don’t want them to be like, Oh gosh, what’s going to happen to me? No, nevermind. I’m going blind people going blind. Oh yeah. Honestly, I would, um, noted or earliest, a little bit blind, like some things shouldn’t be a surprise, but like, yeah, it’s the whole, the whole fertility experience basically is just like plan for the worst and plan for it to take longer. And it costs way more than you ever thought.
Speaker 2: (45:49)
It would. Just basically how that works. Our first one took seven months to conceive and our second took six, but we had to do IVF, so, right. You know. Yeah. That was not, yeah, that was not fun. Um, but it’s worth it. And then you go through pregnancy, which has its own fun thing and you know all about that. Um, but yeah, I don’t, I don’t want my, my kids ever to feel the lack and I don’t want my kids to ever, I want to, I, you know, this is the one that’s like, you know about this because you’re a parent. My parenting goal is that my kids can come to me if they have questions like this and they can get honest answers. Um, so I try not to shy away from things like this. Um, I also try to make sure I ask my kids if they have questions about things.
Speaker 2: (46:40)
Like my daughter did a dance recital a few months ago and so, you know, she was talking about what, what you wanted to do. And I said, well what are you going to do if you get upset? And she’s like, well, I’m going to go give mom a hug. Cause like, well you’re going to be on stage and mom is not. So what else could you do? Like those sorts of things. Talking to her the day before I was induced, I asked her if she, she, any questions and you know, she wanted to know if the new baby can wear her cabbage patch dolls clothes, um, could not the next day. I was gonna follow up with that. What, yeah. No little little too small patch. Okay. Yeah. But you know, like that was what, what her concerns were. Yeah,
Speaker 1: (47:18)
totally. Um, uh, so do you within the, within the community that you are in these days, um, among, um, people that are considering donor conception, um, different parents have different ideas about that or is the general trend towards [inaudible]? So,
Speaker 2: (47:41)
um, I’m not, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve left most of my trying to conceive groups because I’m pretty much done with my baby making now, so I don’t need that support anymore. And it was just bringing up a lot of feelings for me to be back in there. So I was like, we’re gonna move on. But basically from what I’ve seen is when people start talking about how they want to start their conception journey, someone will bring up, um, like the donor conceived support group on Facebook and share that there are people who have these thoughts and feelings and to consider that when you are making your choices. And so I think it’s a lot of go in with your eyes open. Yeah. But you know, again, however you, however you choose to make a families, how you make a family, right. As long as you’re open and honest, you know.
Speaker 1: (48:28)
And, and just to clarify the thing that you said in the beginning, which when you met with the social worker and she said it’s really best if you can provide the opportunity to have coffee with the donor. Yeah. And, and you and your wife said, uh, well, no. Um, and that was because of the cost. Correct. That was because of the cost that you’re not anti have coffee with donors. You just know. You just thought, well, I can’t afford that option. So yeah. So that would be nice. But it was unknowable. It’s not realistic for us.
Speaker 2: (49:01)
Yeah, I, I would have loved to have, have that option. Um, it costs us about $8,000 to make our first child. Um, which, you know, if you’re discussing adoption, that’s like a third of that cost. But if we had done the donor, the identity options, I probably would have been in the 12 range and that would have been out of reach for us. Right. So.
Speaker 1: (49:24)
Okay. Okay. Do you, um, Hmm. All right.
Speaker 2: (49:30)
What else? I will say that, um, the other part of that is, um, we live in Maryland and so Maryland has laws that say if you use a donor, you can have two moms on the birth certificate. Like if you use a, um, B use donor and you’re married to a woman, you can have both parents on like both parents have a brush certificate. Um, I believe my donor sub family that’s in Rhode Island, they have very specific things about, you have to have a specifically anonymous donor. I’m not sure if those details, I probably shouldn’t even be mentioning that cause I could be extremely wrong, but I think that was why they went for that specific choice. So there are sometimes are issues beyond that, but um, for us, yeah, I would have loved the idea options, but once we did it for one and had a kid that was that door closed, I don’t think it’s hurt the other ones.
Speaker 1: (50:23)
Um, and so on your children’s birth certificate, it has both of you on it? Yep. Because me and my wife has no mention of anyone else. [inaudible] how does that feel?
Speaker 2: (50:32)
Awesome. Yeah. Um, I, you know, it’s one of those where, um, I know a lot of people who still pursue second parent adoption for the non-gestational parent. Um, because in our current sociopolitical climate, it’s not, it’s getting a lot less queer friendly. And so the concern is similar to before when Domo existed, um, if you go out of state and something happens, could they deny you the right to see your children? Right, right. Um, we have not. Of course it is. Oh no, it is. Um, but that’s one of those where it’s a horrifying thought because it’s happened. Um, and there are multiple stories about, um, people being very, very ill and in the hospital and the children or the partner being kept away because, um, they were career in the people. The hospital isn’t like that.
Speaker 1: (51:28)
I have always thought about it as from partner to partner in that scenario. I have never considered what it would be like for a parent. Yeah. I had not
Speaker 3: (51:40)
thought of that.
Speaker 2: (51:44)
Yeah. Um, and I always wanted to make sure that we put my wife on the birth certificate in case something happens and I go crazy and decide that I want to cut her out of our lives. I didn’t want to do that to her. I wanted to make sure that something, we had something in place to make sure she had the same right as access to our kids as a heterosexual couple. Not that I foresee myself doing that, but you know, people change and it doesn’t seem right to me to have her invest, you know, or afraid to. Our kids have had this relationship that grows. I mean she’s, she’s wanting to stay closer with my daughter than I am. She’s been home with her a lot more than I am because I am the person who goes out and works the most. And so, um, to take that away from both of them because I could just seems like I just wanted to ensure we have legal protections in place for that. Um, which is why I should probably pursue a second parent adoption. But that again, that is like thousands of dollars that I don’t really have to spend right now because I’ve got two kids in daycare. So,
Speaker 1: (52:52)
um, so you don’t, okay. So you don’t have second parent adoption, but she is on the births are too.
Speaker 3: (52:56)
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay.
Speaker 1: (53:00)
And there is a lot of this, is your marriage recognized in Maryland? Yes. Yes. Okay. It’d be, yeah, it would be, it was a record where like, we don’t recognize marriage, but we do recognize birth certificates, but I just, yeah. Make sure. Okay. No. So what happened was, um, DC legalized it. So we got married in D C like literally we drove across the street cause he lived right on the DC, Maryland border and got married in a little park. And then we had our big marriage ceremony in Maryland.
Speaker 2: (53:26)
And then the next year Maryland passed, um, same sex marriage and that it would recognize out-of-state marriages and that, that was like 20. We got married in 2011 and 20. What’s the 2014, it may have been 2014. Um, so like four months before my daughter was born. That don’t look good. It returned
Speaker 1: (53:47)
[inaudible]
Speaker 2: (53:48)
and that was a huge sigh of relief. Like we all, we all kind of knew it was coming, but you can’t take anything for granted. But yeah,
Speaker 1: (53:55)
we were all, we all heard, I’m sure we all think we know what’s going on right now and it feels like, I don’t know if there’s any lesson in not knowing what’s coming. It is right now. That’s, yup. I mean for everybody in different, different aspects, I don’t just mean presidency [inaudible] yes. I mean just think about this thinking your podcast. Yeah. And then like the Supreme court and the Oh yeah. And state by state and marijuana versus, it’s just, um, and I guess my podcast, I guess my podcast is about not knowing what’s coming too. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That is, this is all so interesting. Is there anything else that you want to say about it that I didn’t ask or that you,
Speaker 2: (54:39)
I dunno. So the one thing that I have always kind of maintained on my own is that I don’t want my kids to do, I had mail and DNA test until they’re 18 I’m not because of the donors, but because I find it some of the terms of services for those very strange and that it’s, it concerns me that like another company might own someone’s DNA, right. Or like the way that they’re like batching DNA to S to share with pharmaceutical companies or even the way that they caught the golden state killer.
Speaker 1: (55:10)
Just like, that’s
Speaker 2: (55:12)
great. But also
Speaker 1: (55:15)
okay. Yeah, it’s both, I don’t know. It’s, it’s like, it’s like an unforeseen vulnerability. Yeah. To have our DNA as a, as a commodity that gets traded and bought and sent. But also identifies us. Yeah. There actually was, uh, a discussion the other day because somebody said they didn’t believe in DNA tests because, or they didn’t want to do the DNA test. The Mormon church owns all the companies and the Mormon church to have all their information. Um, so then there was a whole thread of like clarifying what that meant. Um, and, and so that’s not exactly true, but it’s also not exactly wrong. Yeah. Um, and I, yeah, it’s, it’s capitalism meets science meets government [inaudible] and now meets the church of latter day saints. Yeah. Well
Speaker 2: (56:17)
the other part of that is, and I think I shared this story with you a couple of times cause I thought it was very pertinent for our discussion is the story of the woman who, um, did like a 23andme for her five-year-old through a donor, um, through a sperm bank. And they found, identified a close relative that I think was like the kid’s grandma. And she reached out, um, through like an ancestry site and then the donor bank like threatened to sewer and took away her vials. You’d paid for, for future kids. Um, Oh, and so that’s, yeah,
Speaker 1: (56:49)
I’m sorry. So wait, let’s, let me go over that again. She okay. Okay. So she, she did a deal, he did, she got a 23 meet for her daughter.
Speaker 2: (56:58)
Yeah. I mean it was conceived through a clinic or she and then, and then so she did that through the clinic and you know, the same way that it pops up, um, your close matches that we all, you know, so a close match, um, popped up. Uh, so the test popped up in the close match for her daughter and so she, she reached out and just said, Hey, we’re here, we’re open to contact if you are. And that closed match responded and said, I don’t know what you’re talking about. And then like a week later the sperm bank called and was like, what are you doing? You said that you wouldn’t try to contact anyone until your kid was 18. We could see you for like 40 grand. And also you have like four files on ice with us. You don’t get access to those anymore.
Speaker 1: (57:42)
Oh, okay. So she, so she inadvertently exposed a donor situation that those people didn’t appreciate it.
Speaker 2: (57:52)
Yeah. Oh, so I mean, you know, layered man layered lots of layers. So I’m, I’m all of this is stuff that goes on in the back of my head that I think about and then sometimes I’m like, let’s not think about this right now because your children are very young and you things you should worry about in a few years. But for right now, let’s just get through today. Um,
Speaker 2: (58:19)
so yeah. Yeah. I’m still want to just get through today, but it’s been in the back of my mind that we need to start figuring out better ways to do this. Better ways to do donor conception or then donor. Oh, no. Better ways to discuss donor conception with my, with my little. Okay. Okay. Okay. Um, so I’m pretty sure what’ll happen is I’ll explain it to the first one and she’ll tell the second one all on her own, you know? Yeah. Did you know Santa isn’t real. Like, I expect that my, my younger daughter will not get to discover anything on her own because my older is, I’m just very, very involved and very into sharing. Um,
Speaker 1: (59:02)
this was so cool, this whole giving so much to think about and I hope that it gave, I hope it gives people that. I hope it gives, I don’t know. I hope it gives everybody involved something to think about, but I hope I get, um, like adults who are discovering their donors, things to think about. And then it’s also information for everybody. Yeah. To know how this works a little bit more. I never realized how much I didn’t know. I just never [inaudible] just never thought.
Speaker 2: (59:27)
Yeah. Um, I, and this, this might sound terrible, but it might, I hope I don’t get hate mail, honestly, like this. This is something that I, you know, I said I would talk to you about this and I actually, I talked to my wife before. I said, yes, let’s, I’m in because I wanted to make sure that sharing our kids conception story with the internet as a whole was okay with her. And she was like all, I mean they’re gonna find out anyway. So, um, yeah. So, but it was, it was a concern for me because, you know, I didn’t realize it at the time, but this, there are a lot of feelings or, or from a donor conceived individuals that I had not taken into account and that is from my place of privilege. All I’ll own it, you know, like it just hadn’t occurred to me to look for that. And so I’m hopefully people
Speaker 6: (01:00:18)
well, well, well
Speaker 2: (01:00:21)
have compassion for that I guess. Um, or maybe not. Maybe that’s another privileged thing to do. Maybe I’m asking them to do my, my emotional labor for them, but I just hope I don’t get, Hey mail.
Speaker 1: (01:00:31)
I hope you don’t get hate mail. I’m definitely not gonna provide any contact information for you. Yeah. I mean, I don’t think it was going to like, you know, hunt me down somehow. Right. If anybody has anything to say, you can say it to me, you can contact me. Uh, my email is Eve ATT, everything’s relative, podcast.com. Um,
Speaker 1: (01:00:52)
and, uh, what I really appreciate is just how vulnerable you’ve been. Like, you, you’re right, like you’ve come on to discuss this really hot topic and you’re really being honest about it. And I, I just think that’s really incredible and a gift. Um, so I’m really, really grateful and, and I think that the whole point of all of this, and, and it’s in, it’s in, in implicit, in my pursuit of, you know, lessening shame and it’s implicit in my, I hope in my podcast in general, is that like, we have to start talking about all of this, um, because, because like you had never thought about it. It never, and I had never thought about it. So [inaudible]
Speaker 2: (01:01:33)
yeah. And it’s, it’s one of those where, you know, when you’re a queer couple, suddenly everyone is very interested in how you can see you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: (01:01:41)
I bet. In a way. Uh huh. Oh, that’s in, I think maybe that’s an a practical wedding article. Yeah. Say once or it was like, that’s the number one party question when you’re a gay couple or whatever. Like,
Speaker 2: (01:01:51)
yeah. Oh yeah, I remember that one. That was like when people offer you sperm at dinner parties. Yeah,
Speaker 1: (01:01:55)
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: (01:01:57)
I actually, I’ve had not at a dinner party, but I did have that happen. Yeah. And I was like, thanks. I’m gonna leave that alone. Um, but yeah, and then the one person we considered asking and had kind of like low key felt out and he was like, I don’t ever want kids. And so then we got pregnant. He’s like, why don’t you guys ask me? And I was like, yeah, we did. But we were all kind of drunk at a party. But anyway, um, yeah, it’s yeah, when you’re, when you’re queer people are very interested in how you can see and then, uh, you know, are you guys to do it? Like the kids are all right. Like that was one movie that some, yeah, no, that was just a movie. Now we don’t do, we’re not going to do it that way. I hadn’t even, people can make different choices.
Speaker 1: (01:02:47)
Okay. But what if it really is Mark Ruffalo?
Speaker 2: (01:02:50)
I mean, if it’s Mark, well if it actually is Tom Hardy, right? Cause I don’t think Mark looks like Tom Hardy. So if it actually is Tom Hardy, I’ll be ecstatic. But I’m pretty sure it’s not. Probably not. Yeah, it is. It is really funny though. Looking at the, um, the donor siblings, like some of them definitely look similar like our, our youngest when she was born, like very similar to one of our friends, one of our donor siblings when they were born. Um, my daughter, my older daughter and one of the other daughters, um, have like the same face shape and knows like it’s, yeah, it’s interesting. And that’s been one of the things I’ve been listening to your, you know, your podcast about, and everyone talks about how like no one looked like me or no one had feet like me. And I’m like, okay, well they can, they could do that with the, but their siblings, they can, they could get that. I’m there. So,
Speaker 3: (01:03:38)
yeah. Cool.
Speaker 1: (01:03:41)
Thank you so much. I, um, gosh, I like, I feel like I come to the end of these conversations so often and I’m just like, I don’t know what to say except this was amazing. Thank you. Thank you so much. Um, I sort of want to like, I sort of feel like if, if we were, if we were together, like not on the phone, I would just be walking around the house all day and just coming back to your, coming back to you, like every couple of minutes that you know as like I did, came to hear your thoughts came to me and I would just, I’d be saying, yeah, this is a trip man. Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: (01:04:14)
I rehearsed everything I was going to say in my head for like weeks, which was when we pushed this, I was like, Oh no, I had it all on my own. And then of course none of it came out the way I was.
Speaker 1: (01:04:24)
No, you sounded so articulate. I’m so appreciative. Um, the, this was really, really helpful. I feel, I feel like thrilled and excited to have, okay. Have new information and have a stimulating conversation and have all these things to think about. I’m all about is all about the way the world works around DNA, not, yeah, it’s just not black. It’s just not black and white. Yeah,
Speaker 2: (01:04:50)
it’s not, and you know, as, as reproduction gets more and more medical I’s we’re going to have more and more of these conversations. Yeah. It’s just something now.
Speaker 3: (01:05:00)
No. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (01:05:05)
And yeah. Okay. So great. Wonderful. Um, I, you can go back to work, like this is amazing. I’m, um, I’m gonna yeah, we can hang. I can, I’m going to stop recording. Okay. Stopping recording now.
We Are Donor Conceived: Erin Jackson
Speaker 1: (00:00)
Okay.
Speaker 2: (00:05)
Are you there still? Yes,
Speaker 1: (00:07)
I’m. Okay.
Speaker 2: (00:08)
A while sudden. I was like, what if she’s uh, hi, thanks for meeting with me today.
Speaker 1: (00:14)
Yeah. Thanks for having me. This should be fun and possibly weird and yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (00:19)
I, I hope so. I hope we can get some, I hope we can get some weird stuff in. Where are you? Where are you located?
Speaker 1: (00:24)
I’m calling from San Diego, California. Oh,
Speaker 2: (00:27)
I didn’t know that. I didn’t know. We were so close. Yeah. Okay. Oh, how far, or maybe I, I mean, I’m sorry. I apologize if at some point I suggested that I did know that, but today I did not know that. Um, oh, that’s so cool. Okay. So we’re in the same time zone, we in the relatively same climate can’t understand that. Um, did you grow up there?
Speaker 1: (00:47)
No, I grew up in suburban Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and I’m. Yeah. And I moved to California about 11 years ago. I actually married my high school internet boyfriend that I met in a chat room.
Speaker 2: (01:03)
Yes, you are the one.
Speaker 1: (01:05)
Yep. And, uh, and I thought that was the gonna be like the weirdest story I had to tell about my life until about six years ago and everything
Speaker 2: (01:13)
Changed, everything changed. So before we get to the everything changed, can you just tell me like a little bit more about growing up? Did you have two parents? Did you get along with that? How would you describe your childhood siblings? All that
Speaker 1: (01:25)
Stuff. Yeah. I grew up in a dead average middle class, suburban existence with an older sister and two heterosexual parents. I mean, it was kinda like a, nothing to see here kind of situation. That’s, that’s how I would just , you know, idyllic childhood. And I am really grateful for that. Now I’m old enough now to look back at my childhood and, and think actually, yeah, that was, that was great. I really have no complaints. I had great parents and yeah, there’s just not a lot there other than, um, you know, what we’re, what we’re gonna get to. Right,
Speaker 2: (02:01)
Right. And yeah, it takes a to age in time to get the perspective of like, oh, maybe boring was good. yeah. Maybe learning about what your takes, learning about the world to be like, well, um, okay. And you were Canadian, so, uh, I presume maple syrup. And what else? Mounts, what else is that? Maple syrup?
Speaker 1: (02:25)
Uh, Tim Horton, Swiss craft dinner. The Canadians listening will understand all these things. Okay, great.
Speaker 2: (02:31)
Good. I’ve got Canadian listeners. That’s perfect. Okay. And then you had, uh, and, and did you have a, um, like a career pursuit or like dreams when you were young?
Speaker 1: (02:44)
Um, so many different things. I wanted to be a veterinarian at one point. I wanted to be a dolphin trainer at another point. Yes. Um, yeah. And then, um, I’ve always been interested in writing, so that’s what I actually followed. mm-hmm, , there’s not a lot of dolphin training opportunities, you know, in the real world. Right. Um, but definitely writing and, um, I got more into web content as the internet became a thing. I kind of grew up with the internet. Um, I was born in 1980, so that’s like right at the end of generation and ex
Speaker 2: (03:19)
Yeah, me too. When’s your birthday?
Speaker 1: (03:21)
Um, it’s in may.
Speaker 2: (03:22)
Okay. I’m a little bit older than you. Okay. but otherwise, otherwise we are really CLO really close in age. Yeah. Um, okay. Yeah. So I, yeah, I know exactly. But the how, and when of technology, when you grow up, when growing up, did you have a computer room when you were in your family?
Speaker 1: (03:40)
No, I had a, well, we actually, yeah, we had a computer in the basement. I remember the, the year we got it for Christmas mm-hmm it was like, it was a huge deal. I mean, looking back it was, really not, didn’t really do much I a dot matrix printer and mm-hmm, , mm-hmm , you know? Um, but yeah, um, definitely I’ve definitely been interested in the internet since I learned of its existence. That’s what I wanted for Christmas one year and, uh, and I really had no idea how much it would impact my life, not just meeting the man I’m married to now, but just in all the other ways with the DNA testing and, you know, being able to look up information about people. I mean, it really was revolutionary. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (04:26)
Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I think probably, yeah. And you have a very unique take on that experience on that experience, or like experiencing the evolution of how it affected you personally. Um, so let’s, let’s get to, to the how it happened. Tell me what was going on for you six years ago.
Speaker 1: (04:46)
Yeah. So it was like, I can’t remember what day of the week it was, which is a, a, you know, a work day. I was having this really normal Skype conversation with my mom and I, I was asking her, you know, why is dad being so cagey? He was just like hard to reach, hard to get ahold of. And I, I was just, I was just sort of like confused basically about what was going on. Um, my parents have recently separated and I think to give me context to help me understand why he might be acting differently. She told me that he’s, uh, I can’t remember what word she used, but I think she said, you know, essentially she said, he’s not your biological father. And I said, I knew it, which, which was, which was weird because it just kind of came outta my mouth. It wasn’t like a thought that I formed and then confidently said, it just sort of flew outta my mouth. And then she said, I know you did. And we just had this really bizarre moment. My wow. My brain just exploded. I mean, Uhhuh , it was really strange because it was shocking, but it also made complete sense at the same time, which is a weird head space to be in mm-hmm
Speaker 2: (06:04)
mm-hmm I relate wholly to that description. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (06:08)
Mm-hmm yeah. And I’m, and I knew, like I had done lifeguard training when I was a young teenager and I identified, oh, I’m probably a, in some deep shock right now, so, mm. I should probably do my attention to, uh, my heart rate and maybe, you know, put a, put something warm on because even though I feel fine and I feel like weirdly calm, I know that this is really big news. Mm-hmm mm-hmm
Speaker 2: (06:36)
wow. That’s so self aware of you. Yeah. My goodness. Lifeguard training
Speaker 1: (06:40)
it comes in handy. Mm-hmm mm-hmm I remember this is funny. I got onto Google chat or whatever, and I messaged my husband and I said, um, we need to go to our fam our favorite burger place for dinner. It’s like, this is, you know, sometimes you will we’ll say that like, when things are good, when things are bad, mm-hmm these are boring. Mm-hmm I need to go to this, you know, this ho dads in San Diego, just for anyone who’s familiar. Um, and I didn’t say anything else. And I spent the next, he was coming home in 20 minutes. Mm-hmm so I spent that time just like preparing, you know, like getting a speech, ready, getting myself calm. I was walking around, I was practicing what I was gonna say, cuz I knew I didn’t wanna freak him out. Cuz as soon as he came in, he would see my face. Right. And it would give it all away that something was wrong and I didn’t want him to worry. Yeah. So I was,
Speaker 2: (07:31)
Yeah, go ahead. Sorry. Um, uh, uh, first my first question is, can you see me or you not even like, I can see you. Yeah. Okay. So I was gonna raise my hand and then I was like, I don’t know. She can see me. Um, that way I don’t have to go. Um, had you, when you talked with your mom and you were in this shock and, and she said, I knew you knew and you said, I know, did she then, um, fill in all the gaps of the story and give you all the details of the how and why and who’s and what’s so, or were you guys just like, okay, we’ll talk later.
Speaker 1: (08:01)
Oh yeah, no she, okay. So she said your essentially, uh, your dad’s not your biological father. And I said, after I said, I knew it. I said, who is my biological father? Which I think is the obvious follow up question. And she said, I have no idea. And that just made my mind right. Crazy. I’m like, I’m like, what is the, what do you mean? Is this some sort of like eyes wide shut orgy situation? Mm-hmm like, how do you not know? I mean, I, it never occurred to me that I might be, you know, conceived using, uh, donor sperm. Like I, it just, right. That’s not a possibility that I ever occurred to me. I don’t, I think, I didn’t think it existed back then. I don’t know. But so yeah, she did fill in the details yeah, but for, for a moment there, I was like, I have,
Speaker 2: (08:51)
I have, I have no idea. Like, uh, yeah. Oh moms. Oh, moms.
Speaker 1: (08:57)
It was very dramatic.
Speaker 2: (09:01)
Okay. So you knew that. And then what about your siblings? Were they also donor conceived?
Speaker 1: (09:05)
No, my sister’s regular.
Speaker 2: (09:07)
Okay. She’s regular. Okay. Yeah. All right. Regular conceived. Um, okay. And did she tell you what had led to that decision?
Speaker 1: (09:17)
Um, I prefer not to get into that. Okay. I, uh, I just don’t wanna talk about, you know, my, I feel like they should, my mom should answer her questions like that and she’s not here, so I don’t wanna speak for her. Yeah,
Speaker 2: (09:27)
Absolutely. That’s her. That can be her story. Um, okay. Just, I was just trying to place myself in your mom. What your, what your mind. So you did have, have some context for the entire, uh, pro process process. Okay. So that’s okay. So I’m sorry. So I’m back, I’m back with you. Your husband is coming home. You’re preparing your speech.
Speaker 1: (09:47)
Yeah. So I’m pacing around getting ready to, you know, calmly deliver this information. And soon as he comes in, I blurt out my dad’s not my dad. Um, yeah, so we immediately went out and I had a cheeseburger and, and I just knew this is gonna be a process. And it’s gonna take a while and I need to just give myself time and space and grace to fall apart or, or do what I need to do. And that’s exactly what happened. mm-hmm,
Speaker 1: (10:22)
Mm-hmm, the other thing that I did that was like immediate, after hanging up the phone with my mom was order a 23 and me DNA test mm-hmm . This is something that I was interested in just cause I feel like it’s kind of nerdy and fun to see what a bio, your spit will tell about you. I mean, that’s just really strange and interesting. Um, but in the past, I, I thought I knew everything there was to know. Um, but this, you know, this bomb dropping made me realize, oh, there’s actually a lot. I don’t know about myself. And it’s all important stuff. Like the missing health information and, you know, what’s my actual ancestry and, and I wanted to find answers as quickly as possible. So it was $200 at the time. And I didn’t, I didn’t blink. I just was like, mm-hmm I, I will pay whatever amount of money it, it costs. I need this information immediately. Mm-hmm did
Speaker 2: (11:16)
You, you, did you that are like medical history? Um, immediately.
Speaker 1: (11:22)
That was the first thing. Wow. Yeah. Cause I mean, I was like staring down 40 at the time. Mm-hmm and just like aware of my impending demise and just thinking about my health in, in that way. Um, I did not know that I could find siblings. I didn’t know that I could find a, um, this was before I was in any of the communities for donor conceived people. Mm-hmm so it was Mely, like what is hiding in my body and what am I
Speaker 2: (11:48)
right, right, right. Right. Just like from a personal iden. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The cells, the biology. Um, wow. Okay. So you ordered it.
Speaker 1: (12:01)
Yep. Ordered it. It came, I spat results came back way faster than I was expecting. And you know, I, this story has been told many, but I, yeah. I opened the results and I saw no, there was nothing in the health section. I was just kind of like boring it’s like, maybe this is a waste of money, you know, it’s just nothing mm-hmm back to suburbia. And then I, I clicked over to the, um, um, ancestry estimate or whatever, and it said 25% Ashkenazi. And I, this is how dumb I am. I’m like, what does that even mean? mm-hmm so they literally Googled it and I went, oh, Jewish. Oh, that’s hilarious. It was funny to me. Cause I grew up in a neighborhood that was like predominantly Jewish. So most of the people I went to school were Jewish. I was like really familiar with the culture and, and it was one thing that I hadn’t considered as a possibility I was expecting maybe Greek or, you know, Mediterranean of some sort mm-hmm anyway. So that, that was the first surprise. And then I clicked on the DNA relatives tab and I saw the name of a half brother. Wow. Yeah. And again, like, I didn’t know. That was a thing mm-hmm that happened? Mm-hmm was not, I was expecting, you know, fifth cousin just right,
Speaker 2: (13:22)
Right. Like what everybody says, like, oh, it’s just a million people from yeah. From so far. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (13:26)
And I just, it, yeah. And I wouldn’t have, I would’ve been like act whatever who cares, you know, half brother that’s half brother is that’s a little different mm-hmm he had his full name listed. So I immediately Googled him mm-hmm and I found an article that his wife had written about their wedding. So there were like wedding photos and a little story about their marriage and relationship and I’m staring at his face. Wow. And it was, it was so amazing because he’s the first person I’ve ever seen that look like me. And I was just, I mean, it, I mean, my, my brain blew up again. I thought it was already du, but now it was like particulate matter at this point. and I was, and I was just like, okay, all right. This adds a new dimension to this whole thing.
Speaker 2: (14:14)
Right. And it was in that moment that you realized, oh my gosh, there could be many of us.
Speaker 1: (14:21)
I don’t think I thought about that. I still didn’t think that. Okay. I mean, I feel like the human mind wants to make things easier to digest, you know, mm-hmm, like, mm-hmm, we, we wanna assume, oh, maybe there’s such a, a couple or something like that. But when I, you know, over the years as more matches have come in and I’ve seen that there’s an eight year age gap between the oldest sibling and the youngest. Now I just assume I have a hundred siblings. Mm-hmm
Speaker 2: (14:51)
Mm-hmm . Why not? When you saw the brother, the half brother, when you were looking into him and, and looking at the wedding pictures, were you imagining oh, he’s donor conceived as well? Or were you thinking he was a social?
Speaker 1: (15:06)
I didn’t know. I, I, I remember trying to find photos of his dad. I mean, I was really, yeah. I just didn’t know. I, I thought this is like the moment when you get shocked to a degree like this, you, you become unshockable mm-hmm and it feels like anything is possible mm-hmm so that’s, that’s, that’s how I was operating. Um, it just open to any, any possibility. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (15:33)
That’s such a good way to describe it. If you’re, when you’re in shock, you become unshockable. Yeah. Um, I think so many people in our communities would under understand or relate to that, that feeling, that description or that experience. Um, okay. And then and then where, where, well, where does your story go from there?
Speaker 1: (15:56)
Where does the story go from there? Um, well, I, you know, initiated communication with, uh, this half brother and we started to build a friendship and it was . It was, it’s hard to, to look back at that first year when everything was going on. Cause it’s, it is kind of a blur. There was just, it was so emotions were so high and there were so like, there was so much that was going on that when I look back and try to remember exactly what happened in what order mm-hmm, , it’s just like really fuzzy. But one thing that happened is I became very interested in learning everything I could about donor conception, what was going on when I was created what’s going on now. And how do other people feel about this? Um, so I just went into research mode. Mm-hmm mm-hmm I hunkered down, I, I was reading, you know, academic research papers, watching every documentary I could find and reading newspaper articles and just like just trying to learn everything and not, and trying not to form any opinions or, or ideas until I had all the information I possibly could because I, I realize, I don’t know anything about this and I have a lot to learn, so I better get, I better get started.
Speaker 1: (17:14)
Mm-hmm and, um, around this time, people, some donor conceive people in Victoria, Australia had managed to, um, retroactively, um, stop people from being able to donate sperm anonymously. There’s probably a better way to phrase that, but they, they had ended anonymous sperm donation in one, you know, um, province or state of Australia. And that was really encouraging. I was amazed like, you know, yes, there is this community of advocates and they’re, and they’re doing things out there. And, and, um, you know, it was incredibly validating to know that there were other people who found this information important and life changing and wanted to know their siblings and learn more about themselves. Um, cuz I don’t get, we don’t get any messages from the culture mm-hmm about, about what it’s like, so you’re, you’re really just operating blind. So when I found that out, I was, I felt really empowered.
Speaker 1: (18:13)
Yeah. And, and I also felt like, uh, you know, kind of a crushing responsibility to do my part, um, in, in this world and having a background in web content creation and writing and journalism and it just became clear that I should make a website or, you know, try to just try to get some information out there. Mm-hmm for the next person like me, who’s like Googling sperm, donor, baby, like, Ugh. Mm-hmm I don’t even know, like I didn’t know the word donor conceived when I first found out wow mm-hmm so I created the weird donor and see website and the main thing that was there at first was just all of the research mm-hmm that I had found. And it’s a very long list, the resources page. I mean there’s tons of stuff there. Um, and then I just, and then I, uh, I thought, well I need some way for people to find this information. So let me start a Facebook group and I can share web content in that group because it is a very niche, you know, area of interest to average person, isn’t gonna be looking at this website.
Speaker 2: (19:22)
Right. Well, and I think that that speaks to the problem of how there’s nothing in the culture about it. So you can do every single person feels like they are in a vacuum because there’s no, there’s no reference you. Like you said, you didn’t even know the words, Don are conceived. Like you don’t even know where to start, so right. Yeah. Yeah. But, and yet you’re everywhere.
Speaker 1: (19:40)
There there’s so many of us, we were Legion yeah. so I graded the Facebook group and there were like 50 people in it at first and there were 200 and now there’s like, you know, 3000 or so mm-hmm, , mm-hmm, grew very fast. And I thought it was going to be a place where I would just share web content, but it turned into so much more than that. And now it’s like this amazing community where people come for support and help with their DNA results. And just, just a least for people to talk about all the weird, wonderful aspects that come along with being donor conceived mm-hmm
Speaker 2: (20:19)
Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. It’s such an, it’s such a neat resource. Um, and, and it, it also, it seems like it’s also, it’s it’s resources and it’s a community for people, people, and then it’s also, you also feature other people’s writing about it, like essay, um, sort of essay, blog type posts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: (20:39)
Yeah. Right. There’s there’s yeah. There’s some personal stories on the website. I just identified as a writer that mm-hmm that donor conceived people have the most fascinating stories. I mean, who, like, I mean, it’s hard to explain what it’s like to realize you have dozens of siblings that you never knew existed. Like that’s pretty mind blowing. Um, and I wanted to, yeah. I wanted to feature other people’s voices. So just to increase public awareness, um, of our experience because the, the fertility industry narrative is very focused on parents getting the baby. They want so much mm-hmm and, and it’s almost like that baby is just an object that is the fulfillment of their desire. And that’s not reality. Mm-hmm , I mean, it’s so much more complicated than that and, and so much more amazing. I feel like our stories are way more interesting than, um, you know, than just someone who wanted a baby and then got one.
Speaker 2: (21:33)
Yeah, absolutely. Um, yeah, that’s such a, yeah. Yeah. That’s such a, that’s such a, a, a needed paradigm shift is that these sort, these objects of dream fulfillment are actually sentient beings that have their own experience, um, their own experience, their own life and have with a voice mm-hmm . Um, and so what, um, what do you think is the most, what do you think is the most surprising, or, or let me ask that a different way. Um, what do you wish people knew about donor conception that you think like everyday life people don’t know?
Speaker 1: (22:20)
Um, well, I think that people need to know that donor conceive people do not support anonymous donor agreements. This has seemed to be the normal way of doing things. You know, like if you need some sperm, you go onto a website and you order some and you get it delivered to your house. And somehow that’s, normal. I don’t, I find that I find it all very strange, but you know, when I, one of the things I really wanted to do was, um, some research into the perspectives of donor conceived people. Because when I looked at what was out there already, a lot of it interviewed parents of small children who didn’t even know they were donor conceived. Parents were reporting back. I’m like, I’m not research, but that seems well, not very conclusive. It’s like skewed data,
Speaker 2: (23:15)
As they say.
Speaker 1: (23:16)
Yeah. So the parents were like, yeah, my kid’s fine. He’s well adjusted and then the, and then the headline he became, oh yeah, they’re the donor. They’re fine. They’re well adjusted. It’s like that kid didn’t is five. First of all, doesn’t even know their donor conceived didn’t know they were part of a study. So I found that bizarre mm-hmm mm-hmm and then, and then the, a lot of the research that was out there that was better. Um, didn’t ask the questions I wanted to know, like, how do you feel about the fact that, you know, one of your biological parents is anonymous to you and, um, how do you feel about the fact that you have all these siblings that you have no ability to connect with? And so I asked people starting in 2016, I did an annual survey of, of people in the group who are interested in taking the survey mm-hmm mm-hmm .
Speaker 1: (24:03)
And I have a, a really, really voluminous report on, we are donor conceived.com from the 20 data. And it, and it dives into these subjects that other researchers weren’t asking, like, like I said before, about the anonymous donation agreements, I found that 94% of respondents believe all donor conceived. People should have the option to know their donors. I identity if they choose. Wow. Yeah. And the system is set up right now to deny us from getting that information. A lot of us, or some people have to wait till they’re 18 mm-hmm . And, you know, I also in the 2020 survey, I asked some questions that I hadn’t asked before, such as do you, you know, do you, have you been harmed by not knowing your, you know, biological parent or donor’s identity and 70% of people said they had been harmed. Wow. Uh, which I found surprising mm-hmm um, I’m, I’m not surprised it’s over 50, but that that’s notable to me. Mm-hmm I mean, mm-hmm
Speaker 2: (25:06)
Yeah. That’s um, I’m trying to find another word for notable. Yeah. Like, uh, but, but bigger than that, that that should really raise some alarms.
Speaker 1: (25:19)
Yeah, I think so. I also asked if people think it’s a basic human right. To know the identity of both of their biological parents. Mm-hmm and 88% agreed. Yeah. And that’s a, what, that’s what this is for me. Like, I feel like this is a human rights issue. Mm-hmm donor, you know, um, donor conceived people. We don’t choose to be created this way, and yet we have to live with all these consequences that I don’t think anyone would choose for themself.
Speaker 2: (25:45)
Correct. Yeah. Yeah. I couldn’t agree more. I couldn’t agree more. And, um, and so, and, and on that end, um, are you, um, I think this is like, I think this is the one thing I don’t know is, does we are donor conceived? Um, or do you work with legislation or with, um, the, the other people sort of working to make those big changes or is it more, um, or is it more collection of data for you and, and community?
Speaker 1: (26:12)
It’s more community for me mm-hmm I feel like I’m on an empathy mission to educate people, you know, mm-hmm, , I feel like that’s the first step to changing the law law changes happen really slowly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The first step is to open hearts and open minds. And that’s my mission with we are donor conceive, but there are some other groups that are, are working on the legislative stuff. Mm-hmm and they’re led by people who have that background. Mm-hmm , mm-hmm I don’t have that background. I’m a food writer. Um, that’s a bit of a stretch for me. Mm-hmm but I’m good at the communication piece. So that’s what I’m focusing on.
Speaker 2: (26:43)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I just, wasn’t sure. I was like, did I see that on there or not? Um, wow. Okay. So for all these resources and community definitely go to, we are donor conceived.com. Um, but I wanna talk about the other part of your, of your project, the other, um, and that is your magazine of call. We are donor conceived. Um, so I, I ordered it on a whim and, um, I have to say, and I, I think I messaged you about it when it, when it arrived. It’s beautiful. Um, I, I don’t know what I expected. I mean, I just, I didn’t have expectations, but if it had come as a pamphlet that I would’ve been like, okay, a great, cool, or like a stapled, you know, some stapled papers you print. And I think you said, like, I’m printing it out, I’m getting it printed now or something like that. So I was like, I don’t know if this is coming from her home Xerox machine. Um, so I, I mean, I can’t, if any, if you, if anybody has any appreciation for printing for graphic design for aesthetics, um, and then for we writing and journalism, this magazine is awesome. It’s so awesome. Um, and I just, I love it. Um, and so what, when did you start making a hard copy magazine from the website
Speaker 1: (27:59)
Or thank you so much, first of all, thank you so much. I, my whole heart into this magazine and, um, the, the first, the front cover of issue, number one is basically a self-portrait, it’s like a girl with her head exploding. Mm-hmm, basically, um, I, this was my pandemic project. I finally had a ton of time to do a project and I thought, okay, this is it. So I had to teach myself how to make a magazine. I’ve never done that before I’ve worked. Wow. I’ve worked for a magazine, but I’ve never, you know, opened up in design and created something from scratch and printed something. So, um, yeah, that was, it was my pandemic project. I have, I had two issues come out already, and right now I’m working on issue number three. Awesome.
Speaker 2: (28:52)
Yeah, I can’t recommend, um, any to enough to anybody in the, in, within the community that this is something that you should, you should have, you should just have it in your library, um, as, as, as, um, as a token of this and of this journey. And, um, it, it’s really beautiful and it, and you’ll see, you know, like if you’re in this community, you’ll see, you’ll see some familiar faces and then meet new people and there’s always more information to be had. And there’s all, it’s always a different experience to read something on paper than it is on the computer. I like, I can’t, um, suggest like diversifying your, your resources, um, more, just your experiences of how you’re absorbing things. This magazine is so cool. Um, I can’t get, I can’t get enough of it. so I’ll be ordering the other ones. Um, awesome. So, so if people want to know more about this, the number one resource to go to is we are donor conceived, correct.com. Yeah,
Speaker 1: (29:47)
That’s right. You okay? Yeah. That, that’s where that’s the main website. So you can find the 20, 20 survey report, you can order magazines and you can read personal stories. There’s also the resources page that has links, podcasts, and newspaper articles and research studies. I mean, you could spend all day there.
Speaker 2: (30:06)
Yeah. I mean, it sounds like you’ve really created like a hub, like a hub, a hub for this existence. Um, so it’s just awesome. Um, in lieu of, in lieu of an actual building, you’ve created a place that everybody can come. Yeah. Um, and, and find all sorts of things. It’s so great. So great. Um, is there, is there anything that I didn’t ask you that you wished I had asked you, or that you are used to talking about in these interviews?
Speaker 1: (30:38)
Um, no. I mean, I thought, I think that was really thorough. I would like to, I would like to, um, give a recommendation for something that has nothing to do with my work, if possible. Mm-hmm please.
Speaker 2: (30:48)
Yeah. Give it to me, give it to us.
Speaker 1: (30:50)
So I recently, re-watched a documentary called future people, and it’s about a group of siblings from a, a donor from, I believe it’s California Cryobank. Um, I started crying at about 30 seconds in the documentary and pretty much didn’t stop for the whole time. It’s just so heartfelt. Um, the producer of this documentary got the most amazing clips from, from the offspring of this donor. And I think he was working on the project for something like nine years. Oh, wow. So you see them grow up. Mm-hmm like they’re 13 in the beginning and they’re 21 at the end it’s it really is a beautiful, capturing of the unique experience of being donor conceived and the power of the sibling bond that we have with each other. Mm-hmm . And I think that is something that people maybe outside of this community don’t understand. I mean, in addition to a parent or parents getting the child, they want so much, the practices of sperm banks are separating the siblings from each other mm-hmm . And, um, and that just,
Speaker 2: (32:08)
I never thought of it like that. Yeah. No, I didn’t think I’ll, I’ll be honest. I’ve never thought I’ve yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (32:13)
You know, somebody said that to me and I was like, wow, that is brilliant. You’re so right. And it’s, to me it’s, I mean, I, I just think that’s a huge issue. I mean, the one thing I hear all the time from adult donor-conceived people, or like late discovery, people like myself who are deep into their thirties when they found this out is that they are aware of all the time they’ve lost with their siblings and they wish they grew up together. So these kids in the documentary future people, they have the benefit of having grown up together to some, to some degree mm-hmm, , you know, they are separated by geography and, and, um, you know, it’s, it is still difficult to create relationships with like 37 siblings, but they do have the advantage of, of growing up together. And you can see in the film how much that has positively affected all of their lives. And I, I want that for all donors conceived people mm-hmm . And the only way to do that is to reform the industry so that we have the right to access information about our own families.
Speaker 2: (33:18)
Yeah. Yeah. I have to say Aaron, that brings tears to my eyes. Um, sorry. no, I’m,
Speaker 1: (33:24)
It’s heavy. Um, excuse me,
Speaker 2: (33:27)
Please. Don’t please. Don’t please. Don’t evoke emotion. Yeah. Um, during this interview, no, um, yeah, I mean, I have my own story with, with siblings and, and recently I tell you just this okay. We’re just gonna talk about me now for a minute. Um, but I just, I just connected with a sister, um, through ancestry.com a half sister, and, um, I’m not done or conceived, but, but I have a complicated story and, um, not complicated within the NBE community. just mean that its, I, we don’t need to get into it right now, cause this is about gender conception. But, but I do relate to connecting with someone you didn’t grow up with. And she said, I don’t, we both were talking about our, our biological father. And she said, I didn’t feel like I had much in common with him except um, my eyebrows and I, I burst into tears.
Speaker 2: (34:22)
I’m probably gonna cry talking about it now because that’s the only thing, that’s the, that’s the one thing that I recognize immediately looking at a picture of him. Um, it was confirmation, it was a hundred percent confirmation of, of, of this story and this DNA and, and I thought, and I I’ve always wanted to have a relationship and um, and I we’re, so we’re trying to connect and we’re working on it, but the thought, the thought that that experience could be so powerful and is happening all around all over the place or is being taken away from people or they’re being prevented from that kind of experience is it’s a big deal. It’s um, I dunno if heartbreaking is the word I want, but it’s heavy. Um, family connection is really important yeah. You know? Um,
Speaker 1: (35:11)
Yeah. And something people don’t really talk about, you know, you hear these happy stories of, oh, I met my brother and it things amazing and we’re so alike and da da, da, da, but it’s like, there’s always grief that comes with mm-hmm these reunions, um, you know, part of, it’s an awareness of the fact that you weren’t there for all these milestones in their life. And, and then there’s just this, like, I mean, I, I have to sit with the knowledge that I will never know all of my siblings. Right, right. And I, I don’t know how many there are, there are, I don’t know where they are. Most of them have no reason to expect that I exist, which is really strange. Totally mm-hmm but I feel like, you know, I, I just, I, I just feel like the people who created the system that created me didn’t think about what I would need as a human being. Right. And, and I’m trying to change that by, you know, educating the public that we grow up, you know, were that perfect baby for like one second. And then we started becoming our own person.
Speaker 2: (36:20)
you are a wish fulfillment for, in my case,
Speaker 1: (36:23)
I started second. I started talking young and I was always, you know, really confident in my opinions. And um, you know, we’re not other people’s children, we’re born whole, we deserve to know who we are. and we deserve know our family.
Speaker 2: (36:39)
Mm-hmm yeah, yeah, absolutely. Uh, well, thank you. I almost can’t talk right now. Uh, Ugh. Um,
Speaker 1: (37:02)
I cried so much during the first year that I found out I would just, I would just be sitting on the couch, just crying, just tears, running down my face. Like not even like regular crying. Right. It was just, it was just like a soul cleansing. Oh yeah. Shower of tears. And, and half the time it was like happy tears, Uhhuh . Um, so I’m like, I’m like, yeah, it it’s, it is a really super emotional thing. It’s been enough time for me that I don’t do. I don’t sound, tears ran randomly, but I tell people who are new in the community, like you are entitled to five breakdowns. Like anytime, any place you wanna do it in the grocery store, do it. That’s yours, you earned it. You have, you have that card, you know, like a punch card.
Speaker 2: (37:49)
I have to say, like, I think I’m three I’m three years in, and this is still, I’m still in my top five. I mean, I still would be in my five breakdown, like breakdowns in, and not this isn’t an inappropriate place, but might as well be the grocery store because I’m trying to get through a podcast. Um, I haven’t, I haven’t done that so much, but, um, yeah, you really that’s something about this really is really moving the, um, I mean the donor, obviously this it’s my it’s the personal part. That’s really moving me, but, but the overall, um, thought and the concepts and, and siblings, um, yeah, it’s, it’s the sibling connection can be really powerful and it’s something I’ve always, uh, wanted
Speaker 1: (38:31)
Mm-hmm did you grow up as an only child?
Speaker 2: (38:35)
No, I have siblings. Um, I grew up with siblings, but it’s kind of complicated and so we’re not, we’re not very close. Um, so I, I, I had always wished for, for what it seemed like everybody else had mm-hmm um,
Speaker 1: (38:51)
Yeah, yeah. That’s, that’s, that’s on the positive side being donor conceived, uh, you know, knowing there are all these people out there, it’s like a, it’s like an opportunity it’s like forever. Right, right. You know, any day , there could be a
Speaker 2: (39:08)
New person. It is not finite.
Speaker 1: (39:10)
And there are so many people in our, in my community who waited like a decade before they got anything before they got a crumb. Yeah. Leading them to a sibling or leading them to their biological parent. You just never know. And that’s, , that’s a, mm-hmm, reason to be excited and optimistic, but it’s also, uh, you know, mess with your head. Right. Cause, cause it’s like, I, every time I say that, I’m like, I should probably check my results right now. Cause it’s
Speaker 2: (39:38)
Like, do you wanna just stop a podcast and go check, check
Speaker 1: (39:40)
Time of the year people, I dunno, people are getting their Christmas present DNA tests. And, um, I haven’t had a new sibling in, in quite some time. So I don’t know if that’s a COVID thing or right. People just don’t wanna like, think about spitting in a tube, but it’s kind of sanitary. Yeah. Um, any, any day now, I mean there, there have to be more totally actually the eyebrow thing I have to say. I had that too. Um, huh. Yeah, my, my dude, um, well I had his smile. I have his eyebrows if I hadn’t plucked mine to hell in the
Speaker 2: (40:14)
Nineties, in the nineties. Thank you. Late nineties.
Speaker 1: (40:17)
And uh, and I found, um, a photo of him on classmates.com is his grad photo from high school. And I, at the time I had sort of a similar haircut cause I had short hair and we, we like, I never not, I never would’ve thought that me a 35 looked so much like a iTune year old man. right. But like the, it was undeniable mm-hmm and, and you know, people use the word surreal a lot. Mm-hmm and that, and that’s what it was. You’re just like, it looks like you’re like looking through a time portal, it’s an alternate, you know, version of yourself in a weird way. You’re like, that’s, that’s where I came from. mm-hmm um, yeah, those, those first photos that you see are, are so powerful. And in my case it was a classmate’s photo where he looked pretty dapper and I was like, that’s cool. Mm-hmm and then another photo from the seventies, right? Yeah. Yeah. Big collar and the way too much hair. And it, it was like really funny that was the second photo I saw like the glasses with the tint in them. And I was like, okay.
Speaker 2: (41:26)
Mm-hmm yeah. Yeah. It’s so funny to, to, to try and get to know someone through, through photos cuz there’s so much of the evolution you don’t, you don’t get to mm-hmm know, we don’t get to know. So you have nothing but your imagination to fill in the gaps. That’s so cool. All right. Well, thanks again. Um, thank you so much for joining me today, Erin. Um, yeah, I just, uh, everyone get the magazine, everybody go to the website. Um, keep us posted about, about things about, about where we are donor conceived is going. Um, and, and I’ll put everything up on my I’ll put anything and everything up that you want. Like on my Instagram, when I, when I put the episode up, um, so all the resources be available via me as well. Um, yeah, I think that’s it. Great. Thanks
Speaker 1: (42:19)
For doing this. Yeah. You know, these, these conversations, I know they’re really helpful to people who are brand new in the community and also people who are looking to learn and, you know, donor cane people and everyone who’s, who’s involved in this, this, the adventure of, um, who am I? And mm-hmm where do I go from
Speaker 2: (42:37)
Here? Yeah, absolutely. Um, yeah. I’m so I know I’m just so glad you were available and I’m, um, I’m, I’m really dedicated to sort of expanding cuz I expanding my connections with people beyond, um, the, the, the quote unquote like general description of an NPE and really trying to dive into the, to the nuance of, um, donor conception and late discovery adoption and um, all the different sub communities, um, within the, within the larger one. So this is just awesome. Um, okay. And I’ll be in touch. Okay, great. Yeah. And, um, I’m, I’m making everything now and hopefully we’ll start, um, episodes will start coming out, um, in February, but I will totally let you know and be in touch. Great. Yeah. All right. Okay. Have a great rest of your day. Have a good holiday season. You too. Thanks. Whatever that was. Yeah, absolutely. All right.
Speaker 1: (43:33)
Talk soon. Bye. Bye.
Speaker 1: (00:00)
There you go, and then it will ask your permission. I believe was a little, so there’s no surprise, kinda a,
Speaker 2: (00:09)
Like a robotic voice, like recording in progress. Uhhuh okay. Calm down. Uh, I know she said, so
Speaker 1: (00:18)
Recording in progress. So like many of my guests I’m I’m, uh, coming in, coming in pretty blind. I don’t know much. I don’t much know much about you or your story. You just emailed me and said I’ve been li I I’ve been listening. Uh, I’m navigating the communities. I really feel like I need to tell my story. Um, so, so tell me, tell me it. I’m I’m here. I’m listening.
Speaker 2: (00:44)
Uh, yeah, I mean, this has all been pretty sudden as far as like finding community out there. I didn’t know that there were a lot of people mm-hmm um, in fact, when I found this out, I sat in a coffee shop before meeting my real family. Uh, like literally a couple of days I’ll get to that in a minute after I found out and I couldn’t find anything. Yeah. And this was just a few years ago and I found some old articles from like the nineties, um, where, you know, late discovery adoptees were finding out about, you know, their life. And I’m like, okay, well, this is gonna be new and I’m navigating on my own. So, uh, let’s do it, you know? Um,
Speaker 1: (01:30)
Yeah, I think you, part of the prob part of the problem, or, and you tell me if you think, if you agree or disagree, but for, for me, one of the problems is that because these concepts are not talked about or like acknowledged in general culture and, and the paradigm, we don’t have the words for it. And so Googling ha like I just found out I was adopted surprised. Like, like, I wouldn’t know how to yeah. You know, like LD, how would you know that? There’s like, oh, they call thes and like, oh, you know, like there’s a whole like language that we don’t that is not like, uh, familiar to our like on our lexicon.
Speaker 2: (02:16)
Right. Yeah. And, and, you know, there just wasn’t, you know, I was, I was looking for, for anything, right. Asking like, Hey, how do I handle this? You know, mm-hmm, , it’s like, mm-hmm , there was nothing out there. It was all for children’s how to tell your for children. Yeah. How to tell your children you’re, you know, they’re adopted. Yeah. You know, and it’s like, yeah. A little late for that. , you know,
Speaker 1: (02:40)
I’m 45. Right, right.
Speaker 2: (02:43)
Um, so you, yeah. I mean, it just, it’s, it’s been a journey, but I mean, it’s, it’s cool because I, I met a woman who was like, oh yeah, I deal with that. Sometimes I’m, you know, kind of a therapist and you should check this out. So I checked this out and then that led me to another thing to the Celia center. And then I got a, you know, in a big zoom group meeting with them and, and, uh, they recommended books and there were other people who were kind of in my situ I’m like, okay, so there are people out there. And then of course the podcasts and I was like, okay, let’s listen. And I was listening to some of yours. And it was interesting because all of the ones that I was trying kind of picking ’em at random, but it was kind of like, oh, I found out my uncles, my dad, or I found out that, you know, the neighbor down the streets, actually my dad and there was kind and, but nobody was like, oh, by the way, you were, you know, stolen as a baby. And , you know, nobody ever told you, you know, so, right, right. I was like, oh, see if maybe she’s being interested in learning about me.
Speaker 1: (03:55)
So, I mean, I wanna learn about everybody. Um, so yeah. So when you tell the story, do you usually start with like, what I, what often people wanna talk about how their childhood was before they knew any of these things? Tell me what it was like to grow up. And then they tell me about whatever the surprise is. That’s coming spoiler. Um, you’re adopted, but , but, um, how do you tell, how do you tell it? You tell me how you,
Speaker 2: (04:23)
You leave. Um, I mean, it, it’s hard to know where to begin it mostly, you know, I, I, I made a, I wrote a, uh, an essay on it and I, one of the things that I said was, you know, and maybe other children do it too. But I remember when I was a little kid and being mad at my parents and going, you know, I, I must be adopted because, you know, my real parents would never do this to me. And, and someday I’m gonna find out and, you know, I’ll, I’ll be adopted, you know.
Speaker 1: (04:59)
And did you say
Speaker 2: (05:00)
That out loud to them? I never said that to them. He just thought it was always in my room to the closed door. After, after I sent to my room to, you know, play with my toys instead of going outside and playing with the kids, you know? Right. Um, but you know, I got that feeling like I wish I was adopted or something like that, you know, because my parents wouldn’t be so mean to me. And growing up now that I look back there were, I, I mean, I’ll say I was never abused. I, I was raised, I, I never lacked for anything. I always had food to eat and, you know, clothes. And, um, you know, my father was strict. My, my mom was a Karen before Karens were invented. I, I would say, um, I, I, I mean, she is still a Karen , but he was a little bit overbearing, but she always looked out for me, you know, mm-hmm, no one did me wrong.
Speaker 2: (06:04)
Um, I had two sisters and a brother, uh, my brother, he, uh, was in a, an accident as a child. They were all much older than me. My youngest sister was 16 years older than oh. Uh, which relevant later on. Yeah. When I work things out, mm-hmm , uh, so, you know, they weren’t around my youngest sister was around a lot. And I remember her taking me to the park with her boyfriend who would want, you know, they’d get married later on and have kids. But, um, my brother, he was in a car accident when he was young, uh, like a teenager. So he had a, a traumatic brain injury and never was right. Mm-hmm , he was always cool to me. And, and, you know, out of everybody, in my family, he’s the one person that I can stand to be around for. , you know, as far as that goes, um, my other sister, uh, is a horrible, horrible person. I haven’t spoken with her in probably 30 years. She was very abusive to me every time that we would go and visit her, uh, she had a family already and just treated me horribly. And I always, she made me think that I was a bad child because I, I was always doing something wrong and getting in trouble for it in her eyes. And my parents never really stopped her or mm-hmm or told her no. Um, and to this day she still hates me. I, you know, for whatever. Well, now I know why.
Speaker 1: (07:30)
Weird, weird, weird, weird growing up.
Speaker 2: (07:34)
And my parents
Speaker 1: (07:34)
Were much older. And you said you moved around, you said, you said you moved around a lot. Um, we did. So, and that was just cause they liked you. What was, what was going on there?
Speaker 2: (07:43)
Uh, yeah, my, my father was 54 when I was born. My mother was 39. Um, yeah, 39. So or 35. I can’t recall now. Anyway, um, in her, th in her thirties. In her thirties. Yeah. Um, so we, we moved around a lot. I remember moving, we never stayed much past two or three years, which, um, for people out there, especially, you know, children of very personnel, they know, you know, that you, you can’t form friendships. Mm-hmm . Um, and this was, you know, in the seventies, when, you know, you didn’t have cell phones and texting, if you didn’t write, you know, you were outta luck cuz long distance, you know? Right.
Speaker 1: (08:34)
Facebook FA yeah. Facebook wasn’t yeah. Wasn’t making the world really small.
Speaker 2: (08:38)
Right. Um, so, you know, I, I didn’t have many friends. I, the longest we stayed anywhere was I think four years we moved from, uh, two or three different places in Oregon to Florida, to Missouri, uh, finally where I went to high school.
Speaker 1: (08:57)
Wow. So all across the country. Oh yeah. Yeah. Wasn’t like, you guys were just like hanging out, hanging out
Speaker 2: (09:05)
In neighborhoods, Midwest or something. It was like, right, right. Oregon, Florida. That’s huge.
Speaker 2: (09:11)
Exactly. Yeah. And I mean, you rip a kid to school, you know, we, we lived in, uh, temporary places and I don’t know why. I, I have no idea why they like to move. My mother would just be like, oh, we’re moving to Florida. They’d take a trip down there for a week and decide this is where we’re going, you know? Hmm. Um, and I, you know, a little kid you shut up and got in the car and that was it, you know?
Speaker 1: (09:37)
Totally. What were their job? What were their jobs?
Speaker 2: (09:41)
Uh, my, my father was already retired. My mother never worked. Oh. Um, so great.
Speaker 1: (09:47)
Okay. Easy. That makes easy. That makes moving around really easy then. Exactly.
Speaker 2: (09:52)
Yeah. He, I remember as a little kid, he used to, uh, I mean, this is back in the seventies, but he was a, a house flipper. He would buy a house. Uh, he would go in, he would fix it up himself and then he would sell it. And you know that back then, that wasn’t a thing. It wasn’t on TV. It wasn’t, you know, get rich quick. That was just what he did, you know, uh, cuz he had the skills to do it. So we did different things. When we moved to Missouri, we had cattle and other farm animals and things like that. And I am not a farm guy. uh, no of offense, kids who are, you know, raised around it, but getting up at five in the morning to go feed cattle, uh, that sucks. Mm-hmm and you know, that’s I, and I don’t do that. So, uh, yeah, that, that was uh, not a great experience. That’s
Speaker 1: (10:42)
A big, that’s a pretty big transition to go from not being a, a real farmer to like real, real farm life is that’s really huge. It was a huge shift
Speaker 2: (10:52)
And when we moved, we moved to small town, Missouri, uh, where everybody knew everybody and I’m the new kid and I’m, I’m short. I was skinny as a kid. Uh, I’m five and tall. And I think in high school I might have weighed 98 pounds. I was the 98 pounds weekly. Mm-hmm
Speaker 1: (11:12)
what, how tall, how tall did you say you were a cut out
Speaker 2: (11:15)
Five, five foot, six, five and a half. Okay.
Speaker 1: (11:17)
You’re five, six. You said five and a half. That’s where it cut off. I was like five and a what? Yeah. Five and a half 98 pounds. Mm-hmm
Speaker 2: (11:25)
yeah. So, and that was a lot of issue because my father was, he was like five, almost five 10. Um, but he was a big guy. He was a boxer when he was young, back in the forties, you know? Um, and my mother was little she’s tiny mm-hmm but you know, my brother he’s like six foot tall. Right. Um, so I’m this little kid and that was one of the things that, um, you know, I’ve pieced together and, and some of the, the actual trauma is the, the responses that I got, you know, to some of my questions about why I am like, I am, oh,
Speaker 1: (12:11)
Uh, I hate that for
Speaker 2: (12:12)
You. But yeah. And, and, and, you know, that’s something that, uh, that’s one of those things, you know, kids are cruel, you tease each other mm-hmm , but I was, you know, teased and bullied and mm-hmm , I, I, you know, grew up and, and grew out of it. Uh, you know, but is still there and sure. I despise being short. I despise it with a passion and people are like, oh, well, you get used to it now. You really don’t. Um, and life’s tough when you’re short. It really is sure , uh, and, and enjoy your life. You know, mm-hmm, obviously, there’s a lot of, of, uh, there of pre, uh, preconceived notions about short people and you know, that I’ve been through all of ’em, so mm-hmm, uh, sorry, I’m rambling here.
Speaker 1: (13:04)
No, it’s ramble away. This is all a part of it, right? Like this is, I wouldn’t right. Being short, wouldn’t have been a thing if it made sense or whatever, you know, like if there’s, you know, something about it, um, became a part of your identity and then, and, and which is complicated, further identity complications.
Speaker 2: (13:24)
And, and that’s something that I learned later. I don’t know that I would’ve been better for it, but I learned that my real family they’re all short mm-hmm for the most part, most of them are short . Um, and yeah, so not to get ahead of myself, but anyway, um, I grew up, I, when I was a little kid, there were two things that I wanted to be. One was, uh, a pilot before I found out that I have a horrible, horrible fear of Heights and flying, so that didn’t really work out, but I also wanted to be a cop mm-hmm from the time that I was five years old, I used to watch chips on TV, original TV show. That’s a pretty,
Speaker 1: (14:13)
Pretty great, pretty great pretty gig they got.
Speaker 2: (14:16)
Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I would see the, the California highway patrol when we drive down to California to see my parents’ friends and mm-hmm, , you know, other family down there. Um, and I, you know, I, I remember getting in, into an argument with my dad that I was gonna be the richest cop ever, cuz I, I would arrest more people than everybody else. And he was like, son, it doesn’t work that way. And I was like, yes it does. You don’t know,
Speaker 1: (14:43)
That’s funny. I have a six, I have a six year old son and I absolutely like can imagine that conversation. Um, and the way that like little kids see the world and like that makes total sense that like the more, the more you do, the more money you make.
Speaker 2: (14:58)
Right, right. Mm-hmm and unfortunately that’s not even close to how it works. So, um, but yeah, nobody else in my family, uh, my, my dad was in more world war II. Um, he was drafted, um, he was there for, I mean, it was late towards the end of the war. So it was like, he was, he was maybe, uh, uh, in like a year mm-hmm , you know, before the war ended and, you know, tossed him right back out. Um, but uh, I wanted to be military. I wanted to be a cop. Those were, were my things mm-hmm I turned 16, uh, joined the, you know, I, I signed up for the military with my parents’ permission when I was 17. I graduated high school and I was out the door and in the military mm-hmm and, uh, I, uh, eight years in the military and then I became a police officer and spent 19 years doing that before I couldn’t take it anymore and, and retired. Um, nobody in my adopted family was even close to that. And, uh, no college educations, most of them didn’t graduate high school. Um, so, you know, no determination to, to better your life or to go any place or to see anything. Hmm. Um, and I wanted to go everywhere. I wanted to see everything, you know, I wanted to learn and, and you know, I got to do a lot of really cool things over my career. Yeah. What
Speaker 1: (16:30)
Was your, what branch in the military were you in?
Speaker 2: (16:32)
I was, was in the air force.
Speaker 1: (16:34)
Okay. Okay. So you switch is interest. I mean, it’s interesting thinking about being a pilot as a little one and then going and yes. Heights. Yes. Airplanes. I imagine you weren’t a pilot, but , it’s interesting that you still sort of stuck stuck with a theme.
Speaker 2: (16:50)
Well, kind of, it wasn’t really my choice. So my dad was in the army in world war II and 40 years later never really thought that it had changed any mm-hmm 45 years later. And so he told me that under no circumstances was I’m going to join the army, which is what I actually wanted to go to do. Hmm. Uh, he told me to join the Navy or the air force. Well, I never learned to swim. So I joined the air force. Um, glad I did, but you know, even still, uh, it, it wasn’t, you know, it was kind of a, no, you’re gonna do this. Mm-hmm I, I grew up yeah. What he said. I, I did. So I was just
Speaker 1: (17:33)
Gonna say you mention earlier that he was strict. So, um, it sounds, it sounds like doing what he said was the best way to get to the, to the end goal in that case.
Speaker 2: (17:43)
Yeah. And he died in 89 a year before I left, so I very well could have switched up, but mm-hmm, again, uh, 98 pounds and five and a half feet people were telling me, yeah, it’s probably best you go in the air force. You don’t wanna be in the army. Um, which is not true because I, you know, got better, got stronger, you know? Right, right. Um, but, uh, yeah, so I, I left, I had a career, um, in 2013, um, I think it was, no, it was 20 15, 20 15. I took the DNA test from ancestry.com
Speaker 1: (18:28)
Question before we get to the, we’re gonna, I mean, we’re right there. But after the military, uh, you came back to the same town in Missouri or
Speaker 2: (18:38)
You, uh, no, you
Speaker 1: (18:40)
Put yourself somewhere else.
Speaker 2: (18:42)
I didn’t really have any place to go, but I knew I didn’t want to go back to Missouri. Mm-hmm uh, so a friend of mine, uh, that I was in the air force with, he was from, uh, west Memphis, Arkansas. Um, which if you know anything about that area, horrible area. West Memphis three, okay. Up, uh, uh, the three kids that, that, uh, were convicted of something they didn’t do. Right. Right. Um, and I met some of the cops that were on that case, so oh, wow. Yeah, yeah. That were, but, uh, yeah, he convinced me to come up there, said, yeah, Memphis is a great play. Memphis is horrible. I didn’t enjoy my time there, but I spent 15 years there. So, um, went up there. Uh, I got, uh, got on a police department there in, uh, just north of, of west Memphis, Arkansas, and, uh, spent 15 years there. Okay. So
Speaker 1: (19:50)
It was a place to be a place to settle and get your career going. And, um,
Speaker 2: (19:55)
Yeah, I mean, it was, it was one of those things where it was like, well, I’ve never been there, so let’s go there and mm-hmm, , you know, try it out. And then I kind of, you know, got stuck. Uh, it was a lot of fun. I enjoyed it. I didn’t get, you know, paid much, but I was young and I was getting to do what I always dreamed of as a kid. Totally. Um, 15 years later I decided, you know, what, it’s time to, to have some me time and take care of myself. And I moved to, uh, Western South Dakota where I was living when kind of this journey began. Okay. Um, met an ex-girlfriend there and she convinced me to move with her to Northern Maine. So I lived up there for a couple of years. Mm-hmm um, but, uh, yeah, that was right around the time that that I got started.
Speaker 2: (20:46)
Um, and I’ll say this just to preface it, preface it before we, you know, talk about the DNA results, but I was raised, um, my father was half Jewish, half kind of Swiss German mm-hmm . Um, my mother was, or is, um, Italian, um, native American, and I think some Scottish mm-hmm okay. This is how I was raised, uh, you know, uh, proud of all of that. Right. Took the DNA results and I am white than white. I have no native American, uh, no Southern European, it’s all, um, well shy, uh, German and then fully half Jewish, which was kind of like, well, I don’t know a lot about DNA, but I know that if my father was half Jewish, I, I’m not gonna be half Jewish. Right. You know? So, uh, the first thing I did was, was call my mom and I’m like, uh, Hey, I thought she said we were Italian. And she said, well, yeah, like, no, cuz I’m not Italian. And if I’m not Italian, you’re not Italian. Well, that’s what I was always told and still would not come off. Mm-hmm of course, of
Speaker 1: (22:09)
Course question. Why did you take the test?
Speaker 2: (22:13)
Um, I have always wanted to know, uh, I love history. Mm-hmm , mm-hmm, , I’ve always wanted to know where my family was from. I wanted to know, um, how far back we went, because my other side, uh, is from New Hampshire and the Boston area, New Hampshire. Um, they have a house that was built in 1790. That is just, you know, I mean, ancient, you know, so
Speaker 1: (22:45)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. I mean even just saying like I’m a history guy, like, like I understand. Yeah. You love history
Speaker 2: (22:50)
That makes yeah. So, I mean I wanted to find out mm-hmm and yeah. So for whatever reason, and I don’t know if it was just denial or what it was. I was just like, okay, well, uh, she’s not what she says, she or she thought she was, can’t ask my dad because of course, you know, he’s you gone now? Uh, so I started tracing family history on his side. Uh, I was gonna do his side first and then swing back around to her side and I managed to find out, um, little bit of disturbing stuff. He had a whole family before us. Uh, he had a wife in and kids. Your dad did. Yeah. Yeah. I had a wife and kids in like the, the, uh, thirties and, and uh, forties. Whoa. And I actually reached out to one of his, uh, what would’ve been his grandkids. Mm-hmm the son of, one of his kids, uh, who was older than me. He was, he was, you know, in his sixties, uh, never got a response from him, but I was like, okay, this is kind of weird. And I was like, oh, I’m not gonna tell my mom about this. Cuz this is, you know, whatever. Maybe she didn’t know, maybe she did. I mean, right.
Speaker 1: (24:10)
Cause he was, he was much older. Right.
Speaker 2: (24:11)
Yeah. Right, right, right. I mean kinda a Dick, you know, abandoning one family and going after another, but you know, we’ll, we’ll find out, you know? Right. Um, but I managed to trace, you know, that side of the family back to like the, the 1670s, 17 hundreds, uh, ancestors that were in New Hampshire during that time. And I was like, wow. And they were, you know, farmers and you know, not, not anybody rich, you know, they were all poor, but uh, you know, still, you know, to be, go that back or go back that far. And you know, the us is pretty impressive. Totally.
Speaker 1: (24:51)
You are AER can
Speaker 2: (24:53)
For he. Right. Right. So I have a whole family line, you know, listed out I’m, I’m getting all these names and these documents and things like that. And I’m like, wow, this is so cool. And then I put that away for a little while I was concentrating on work, I was kind of getting burned out. So I was like, you know what, I’m, I’m ready to go. I’m I’m ready to leave law enforcement. And at that time, my, my ex, um, who was a surgeon, she was like, well, you know, I’m, you know, she was working remotely. Uh, well not from home, from what South Dakota she was in Maine. Right.
Speaker 1: (25:29)
I was gonna say, that’s like pre pandemic, pre pandemic remotely. Like what we mean before, before everybody started working from home. Right.
Speaker 2: (25:36)
She up there. Yeah. And she was like, look, there’s a college up here. You know, you could go up here, you’ve always wanted to, you know, go to college and, and finish your degree. And, um, you could come up here year, you know, and then get a job doing something else, you know? So I was like, okay, let’s, you know, do this. So I left law enforcement, uh, went up there, went to college and I started swinging back around as I was doing, you know, uh, some of the coursework I was swinging back around to, you know, I, I really wanna find out some things. Um, and what really did it is I found out I was diabetic.
Speaker 1: (26:13)
Oh, um,
Speaker 2: (26:15)
Now, you know, I’m still, you know, I’m not huge. I’m a small guy. I was 98 pounds, but I haven’t gotten much, much bigger than that. I’m about 145 pounds, which is normal weight mm-hmm . So I was in decent shape, uh, drank a lot of soda, a lot of sweets, things like that. But, uh, you know, nothing that, you know, would cause me to just overtly be diabetic. It wasn’t obvious. It wasn’t like course you’re diabetic. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And they’re like, well, this is all genetic. Um, and I’d been told things like that before I had high cholesterol, high blood pressure, all genetic. Hmm. Cause I, I always stayed in shape and
Speaker 2: (26:59)
Nothing like that on my side of the family father died of cancer. So I did have a history of cancer. Okay. Mm-hmm so every time that I’d go to the doctor, every time that I’d do something else, every time I’d have a health screening for a job, do you have a history of cancer? Yes mm-hmm and now that’s always gonna be in the back of my mind. That’s a worry, Hey, you know, I could get cancer and die. This sucks. Um, as it turns out, no, no, no cancer in my, you know, but there is a history of other things that I have, you know, mm-hmm, , mm-hmm uh, so I’m pretty about that, honestly. Um, I can tell, but, uh, well, yeah. You know, I mean, you have a family member, father dies of cancer and you, you know, now that’s in the back of your mind that, oh boy, this could happen to me.
Speaker 2: (27:51)
Mm-hmm I better watch, you know, and I don’t smoke or do anything, you know, uh, dangerous like that, but still, you know, it’s a real anxiety. It, it is cancer’s yeah. Cancer’s a, a very big word. So yeah. So I, I call my mom again, like, oh, Hey, by the way, just, uh, found out I’ve got diabetes. Uh, anybody in our family have diabetes? No, no, I don’t think so. Uh, nobody on my side, I don’t think your dad had anybody on his side and I’m like, at this point, you know, future me is going just, why can’t you just say it? You know? Um, so, you know, I’m just like, man, something’s not right here. This is genetic, you know, this is nothing that, that, you know, I’ve just done. This is, this is something that’s, you know, in my DNA. So I talking to my doctor, girlfriend, and she’s like, you know, something’s going on here?
Speaker 2: (28:53)
And I sat down and I started thinking, you know, my 16 year old sister used to take care of me a lot when I was a little baby mm-hmm seventies were the time when, you know, a teenager would get pregnant and grandparents maybe raised the kids. And I started in the back of my mind. I started working on this theory that maybe my mom is my grandmother. Yeah, yeah. Uh, maybe my, you know, my sister, you know, and, and it’s all from my father’s side, you know, mm-hmm she got pregnant by it. Um, I’m like, you know, I, I gotta go when I talk to her, you know, she lives in spring hill, Missouri. So I got on a plane, flew down there. Uh, we went out for a drive cuz I wanted her undivided attention. Mm-hmm and as I’m driving, I’m like, look, something’s going on here. I, I need to know what’s what’s up, you know? And I’m thinking, oh yeah, I’m your grandmother.
Speaker 1: (29:50)
Nope. Or I’m your mom? You thought she was gonna say, I’m your mom?
Speaker 2: (29:53)
No. Nope. I, well, I, yeah. I mean, I, I thought that, but you know, kind of, I still had it in my mind. I was convinced she’s my grandmother. I, I have to this,
Speaker 1: (30:06)
Your sister or your mom? My mom. Okay. I thought you flew out to see your sister. You flew out to see your mom. Got it. Okay. Sorry everybody.
Speaker 2: (30:17)
Yeah, this will come back later. Stop talking to me when I turned to 18. So all of them, uh, my other one. Yeah, my youngest sister. I never, I hadn’t talked to her since I was 18. My oldest sister, the last time I spoke with her was I was trying to do a, um, a background check for a job and needed her information. My mom didn’t know it. So she gave me her phone and she literally said, I don’t have anything to say to you. I’m not giving you anything. Don’t call me again. Hmm. Um, and I was young and mean, but I said, you know, someday, I hope you need a kidney. And I’m the only person that can, can provide it. And I slammed the phone down back when they had, you know, you could slam phones. Yeah. You could slam phones.
Speaker 1: (31:01)
Yep. Yep. Um, all right. So, okay. So you’re in the car with your mom in the car, not your sister. Sorry. That was my mistake. And you’re like, tell me what’s going on.
Speaker 2: (31:11)
Yeah. Tell me what’s going on. So I’m thinking, yeah, I’m your grandma, you know, something like that. Mm-hmm uh, she says, I’m not your mother.
Speaker 1: (31:23)
Mm.
Speaker 2: (31:23)
So, uh, there, there was only a little bit of a swerve there cuz we weren’t going very fast. Um, and I said,
Speaker 1: (31:30)
That’s an amazing, that’s an amazing statement. Yeah. It’s an amazing way to present the situation.
Speaker 2: (31:38)
Yeah. And I’m, I’m like, okay. And I just, you know, let her, and she says, but your dad was your dad. Okay. And then she tells me now, remember my dad was 54 when I was born. Mm-hmm she says, your father cheated on me with an 18 year old girl and got her pregnant. And my first thought was he’s 54. She’s 18. Okay. It happens. Sure. But does it, you know, did it,
Speaker 2: (32:14)
So she then tells me the story. He got her pregnant. Her family was from California. They cuz we all lived in California. They lived in California, uh, in Los Angeles. And she said that, uh, they were very prominent. Her parents were like politicians and they absolutely did not approve. And she had to give the baby up for adoption. And so we took, you know, we took you in blah, blah, blah. They absolutely don’t want you to ever contact them or find them. And I’m like, well, that’s kind of a weird statement, you know? And, and I know what’s, what’s coming is, you know, don’t go looking for the truth, you know? Um, and I think part of it was, I think she thought that I would, uh, suddenly leave her mm-hmm , you know, you’re not my mom. See ya. I mean,
Speaker 1: (33:13)
That’s such a, that’s such a common anxiety. I think that experience that, that is what motivates that like don’t go looking
Speaker 2: (33:23)
is right. Right. Exactly. Happens all the time. Yeah. My first thought was I was a police officer for 19 years. You’re right. I’m gonna go looking, you know, mm-hmm so I got a few other details and you know, uh, she, a bunch of, oh, wo is me, my father was a serial cheater and I’m like, okay. But you know, again, was he, so I drop her off at, at her house. I go back to my hotel room and I just had a freak out. I mean just worst anxiety attack I’ve ever had. I think, um, I was like, my first thought was who, who even am I mm-hmm was I born on the day that I was born? Uh, is my name Matt? You know, is my name Matthew? Uh, no, it’s not Jackson. Is it you, you know, uh, do I have, you know, other family, you know, what, what is going on here?
Speaker 2: (34:29)
Um, so I, I was like, you know what, I, I, I called my now ex my girlfriend at the time and she’s like, you know, if we have to get a private and investigator to, to, you know, hunt things down, we’ll do it. Just, I was supposed to get on an airplane the next day and go home. She was like, just relax today, try to get some rest, come home tomorrow. We’ll start, you know, trying to figure it out. So I’m like, okay, cool. So that day, um, you know, I stayed the rest of the day. This was early afternoon. I stayed the rest of the day in my hotel room and it, I remembered that probably three weeks before I got a message, you know, you always get on ancestry, Hey, you have a new relative or you have, you know, I got an email that said you have message from so and so on ancestry. And I thought, okay, whatever, you know, I, I looked at it and she was like, my name is, uh, Kathy. Um, we’re supposed to be first cousins. I, all my family is from Wisconsin, uh, or originates in Wisconsin. Now we’re in Omaha. And I’m like, I don’t know anybody from this, from these people.
Speaker 1: (35:47)
And I’m, this doesn’t make any sense.
Speaker 2: (35:49)
Yeah. Yeah. And this was before, you know, I went down and found out, you know, so I, I just put it outta my mind. Didn’t even think about, well, now all of a sudden I’m like, wait a minute. Maybe she knows who my mother is. So I write her this email and I’m thinking, I’m just gonna tell her the story that I got, you know, prominent politicians in California. Don’t want me to find em, blah, blah, blah. Uh, um, you know, Hey, do you have any idea what, what I could be talking about here and
Speaker 1: (36:21)
What an amazing, what an amazing email that must have meant to get from for her? Because she she’s like, yeah, like, Hey, let’s connect. We’re from Wisconsin. And you’re like, cool, here’s this like major drama I’m gonna send you. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (36:35)
Yeah. Here’s this weird story. Yeah. Yeah. Trying not to judge, you know? Right, right. Um, instead what I got the next morning I woke up, uh, she’s an early riser, as it turns out, I, I tossed and turned and probably about six o’clock, six 30 in the morning. I look at my phone and I’ve got an email. Hey, you’ve got another a message. Mm-hmm so I’m like, okay. Um, and she says, my name is Kathy. Uh, hang on.
Speaker 1: (37:08)
mm-hmm yeah.
Speaker 2: (37:09)
Take your time. Uh, sorry. I, I thought I’d told this story enough that I was cool.
Speaker 1: (37:17)
No, I mean, I think like, I, uh, is it this how, I mean, you know, that this happens, but, uh, the stuff cuts really, really deep. It really, and, and emotions can come up when you just least expect it. Um, no matter how wrote the story, is
Speaker 2: (37:34)
It? Yeah. Um, so she writes me back and she says, um, my name is Kathy. I’m positive that I am your birth aunt. My. My sister had a child, uh, around the time you were born in California. Uh, my email is this, my phone number is this, please call me, I’ll answer questions that you wanna know. Wow. And I’m like, okay. So 24 hours ago, I didn’t know what was going on. And now I have a link to, you know, my birth. One of my birth parents, like direct
Speaker 1: (38:19)
That is
Speaker 2: (38:20)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, no investigation need
Speaker 1: (38:25)
You’re like, I’ll put my fingerprint kit away.
Speaker 2: (38:28)
Right, right. I couldn’t believe, you know, how, how fortunate I was just like, wow. I only get to be anxious for 24 hours. Awesome. Um, so I write her back and I’m like, uh, yeah. Okay. You know, let’s do this. I’m like, is it okay if I call cause typing right now is, is insane. She was like, yeah. So I called her and uh, she said, um, your mom was an 18 year old hippie. You know, she moved away from Omaha, uh, to, you know, see the world, move to California. Uh, got pregnant. She said that they’d been looking for me for about, uh, 30 years. Oh my God, Matt, that her mom had actually posted, or my mom mm-hmm her mom. Mm-hmm my real mother had actually posted on some, uh, on some old message boards, you know, start of the internet, uh, some old message boards about adoptions.
Speaker 2: (39:34)
Hey, my name is, as I had a boy, little boy named Matthew, if you’re looking for me, she had no idea. I didn’t know that I was adopted mm-hmm she assumed I just didn’t wanna talk to her. So this was 35 years. Um, she convinced me, cuz I wasn’t gonna ask Kathy convinced me that mm-hmm Kathy convinced me that Liz, my mother, uh, did wanna talk to me and I got to talk to her. So we chatted same day, same day, same day, same day. Jesus Christ. Yeah, I know. Wow. Yeah. Turns out. So here’s here’s Kathy lives in, in California. She was just happened to be home visiting, uh, her mom, my grandmother mm-hmm and her two sisters, my two aunts or my mom and my aunt mm-hmm mm-hmm um, and she just decided, you know what, I’m gonna stay an extra week. And this was like four days before I contacted her. I’m just gonna stay an extra week. I feel like staying an extra week before I go home. And she, so she got the message. She was right there staying with her sister. Oh
Speaker 1: (40:52)
My God. I can’t. Yeah. Can’t handle.
Speaker 2: (40:57)
Wow. I mean, I’m just like, okay, so I’m gonna talk to this person. That is my real mother. So I talk to her, she tells me a little bit about what’s going on. She’s like, yeah. I think it was probably about 10 years ago. The last time that I spoke with your father, I’m like, well that’s not was my not. And she goes, no, no, he’s still alive. He’s an, but he’s still alive. Oh my God.
Speaker 1: (41:27)
Oh my God. Yeah. You’re still not even home. Are you in a hotel? You’re in the hotel room.
Speaker 2: (41:31)
I’m in a hotel. Yes. Yeah. So like
Speaker 1: (41:33)
You’re not even with your girlfriend. it’s like solo experiencing as the world continues to just implode and spin in all sorts of different directions.
Speaker 2: (41:42)
I, I am literally pacing back and forth in about a six foot area in front of the, between the TV and the bed in my hotel room now and again, walking over and looking out the window and then walking back and forth some more just to
Speaker 1: (41:57)
Double check the Missouri parking lot looks the same. Mm-hmm yes. Mm-hmm .
Speaker 2: (42:01)
Yeah. Um, so I I’m like, okay, so now I have a living father, um, and a mother. And so I start getting a little bit of the story. Yep. She was 18. She met another hippie and she gets pregnant. Well, she is ashamed to go home. She doesn’t know what to do. She can’t support me. Uh, now I’ll say right now I am not bitter in the least about being given up for adoption. Mm-hmm not bitter in the least about being adopted. You know, I, I, you know, didn’t come from an abusive home with the exception of my sister who was an. Um, so I’m not, not upset about any of that. Uh, just about being a lied to for so long and, and sure being kept from me. Um, and, and there’s more to that here, uh, coming up, but mm-hmm, , you know, she, she didn’t know what to do. Well, her, my father belonged to this shady church. Um, and
Speaker 1: (43:19)
Where were they? Los Angeles or San Francisco?
Speaker 2: (43:21)
Los Los Angeles. Los long beach,
Speaker 1: (43:24)
Actually long beach. Okay. I was just trying to imagine, like which hippie kind of crew they were, they were sort circling.
Speaker 2: (43:30)
Um, but he talked her into giving me up for adoption and the stories she got was it was this older couple. They had had four girls and had never had a boy, which was total. Mm-hmm um, well to do, they were gonna put me in the best schools, I’d have a good education, which, you know, was important to her. Um, and talk to her into giving me up to these people. So at two days old, uh, the day after I was born, my birth parents or my, my birth mother was still in the hospital, said goodbye. And I was whisked away from the hospital and taken directly to Oregon where some shady doctor up there who was involved to this church, um, you know, wrote out a, an affidavit of live birth and, you know, I was never gonna be told.
Speaker 2: (44:31)
So, wow. Now the reason I, I know that this was all illegal. Uh, I, I have two birth certificates, one from the state of Oregon and one from the state of California and in an adoption, they would normally be, I assume, sealed mm-hmm , uh, $54 for night shipping from the, from the county of Los Angeles. no problem, uh, applied birth certificate for Matthew Merrill, uh, you know, no middle name. Uh, so she, my mother did name me Matthew, but, uh, so, but she didn’t gimme a middle middle name. And in her thinking, she said I was 18, don’t expect much. But I thought if someday I met some guy named Matthew and he didn’t have a middle initial, I would know it was you and I was fine. Oh my God. that’s, that’s so awesome. That is so
Speaker 1: (45:24)
Sweet. And so like totally an 18 year old’s logic of like, I’ve got this figure out, like the best clue ever.
Speaker 2: (45:32)
But yeah. So I was given a middle name, uh, after, you know, I was taken up there, but, uh, so yeah. Um,
Speaker 2: (45:43)
So I, I got, you know, I didn’t get all of this so far. Uh, but I was, you know, I talked to ’em and they said, well, when do you have to go? And I was like, well, I’m getting ready to fly out. I, I was actually flying out Monday morning. I, I take that back. I was flying out first thing Monday morning and they said, don’t go, uh, we’ll, we’ll come down and pick you up. So my aunt and my mother drove on Monday. I returned my rental car. They drove down, um, from Omaha to Springfield, Missouri, and picked me up. I met them for the first time on a road trip, going back to Omaha. Wow. Um, met my grandmother, um, who was pretty awesome. I met my other aunt who is nice as could be, uh, her name is Karen, but she’s not anything like a Karen, uh, Uhhuh poor thing.
Speaker 2: (46:43)
Yeah. Yeah. Poor. Yeah. I feel bad for her, but she is the, the least Karen person out there. So, um, I met three cousins. Uh, one of whom is adopted and he’s always known mm-hmm , um, and learned a whole bunch about, you know, my family, my great uncle graduated west point became a pilot in Vietnam, uh, retired and then became a test pilot, uh, which was awesome. My grandfather, he was career army he left as a Colonel. Um, I have a picture of him and I look exactly like him mm-hmm and I was told, you know, all my life growing up that I resembled my father, you know? Mm mm-hmm and I didn’t really, um, but you get to thinking that, you know sure. Oh yeah. I, I do kind of look like my dad in this picture from an angle, you know, mm-hmm um, no, as it turns out, I look, I mean, spitting image of my grandfather.
Speaker 2: (47:49)
It was scary to look at the, the picture, you know, I was like, wow. You know, mm-hmm, , um, you know, learned a lot about my, my mother, she, you know, has been to different places in the world. She, um, was an actress for a little while and New York, uh, you know, my, my other aunt, uh, has lived in New Zealand. Her husband’s from New Zealand now. They live in California. Uh, my aunt Karen, she, you know, is a teacher, uh, has a husband, has kids. I don’t have any siblings. Uh, well, I think I have a halfs sibling on my mm-hmm mm-hmm father, but it we’ll talk about that a little bit. Mm-hmm um, but, uh, yeah, I mean, I came back up and, and it was amazing the night that I contacted. So that would, would’ve been that Sunday. Um, that, that night, they actually had a, before I got there, uh, celebrating that, uh, that they found you yeah. That they found me that it had been like, you know, 30 some years and, uh, you know, that they’d been looking and, and it was my aunt Cathy, the, the one that I initially was contacted by that my mother had given up. Uh, but she talked her into like, Hey, let me put my DNA on ancestry and see if we get lucky. Yeah. Um, and it was only because, you know, Liz, my mom agreed. She said, okay, you know, just go ahead, whatever mm-hmm , uh, that this happened. So,
Speaker 1: (49:31)
Wow.
Speaker 2: (49:33)
Yeah.
Speaker 1: (49:34)
That’s the first time I think I’ve thought I hate to, to admit it because it makes, uh, I hope it doesn’t sound shallow, but it’s the first time I’ve thought really about what it’s like on the other side for the people searching and that you are you showing up would for them is like the end of this saga. Yeah. It’s totally, that’s been happening. It’s totally different. You’re not even in the narrative, but it’s been happening your whole life. I that’s is amazing. That’s amazing to, I mean, I, of course they celebrated.
Speaker 2: (50:07)
Um, yeah. Yeah. And, and, but what a trip to,
Speaker 1: (50:10)
To be the focus of celebration you didn’t know was ha you know, didn’t
Speaker 2: (50:14)
Exactly. I mean, I was just like, they had a party mm-hmm, Woohoo. This is, this is what happened. And I’m like, okay. You know, um, but I spent a couple of days up there. Uh, they took me around, I, I met people. I, you know, they were also happy to, to, you know, to see me. Um, and then I flew back to, to Maine mm-hmm and kept in touch with ’em every day. Um, go ahead.
Speaker 1: (50:45)
No, I mean, I feel you’re good. Gonna get to, you’re gonna get to your, uh, your mom . So, I mean, eventually you,
Speaker 2: (50:54)
Well, I, I never told her my, my mom, um, she finally figured it out because being a Karen, she has the absolute worst timing on the planet. Mm-hmm . Um, but it was another year, I guess. Um, we actually went, uh, came to Omaha for, for Thanksgiving that year, uh, where I met, you know, even more people, uh, they made, they knew I was a big star. I’m a huge star wars fan. Uh, they knew I was a star wars. So they got, uh, this picture of a storm trooper helmet on the front of a shirt and said, may the, uh, or Merrill force be with you because their last name is Merrill. Yeah. And then what was awesome was, and I felt a little bit bad, but, um, they put our birth order on the back. So I, I was number one you’re number one. and it knocked everybody else down a number. Yeah. Got you. Made you no, they were like, uh, you know, uh, sorry, hope you guys don’t minds number one. So I have pictures of all of us, all the cousins standing in line, you know, with our birth order and then, you know, turned around.
Speaker 1: (52:07)
So they, so, so for a whole, you are becoming sort of like enveloped and a part of, and loved by and welcomed by this family while you’re yeah. Adoptive family doesn’t even know this is happening. Right.
Speaker 2: (52:22)
Yeah. Right. Um, so I I’ll go back. My brother called me one time cuz I had gone down to visit my mom. Um, and my, my brother had, and I had spoken and he said something that was kind of weird, but we hadn’t seen each other in a long time, so I just kind of dismissed it. But he said, you know, my dad saying our dad, you know, mm-hmm mm-hmm
Speaker 1: (52:50)
or dad.
Speaker 2: (52:51)
Right. Yep. But I dismissed it because he’s not, you know, used to talking to me I’m, you know, it was never, we were not a close-knit family
Speaker 1: (52:59)
And you didn’t grow up with him as, as the same age. So yeah. Right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (53:05)
Uh, and, and just in general, we weren’t very close. My, my dad was always kind of standoffish. I understand that, you know, he really didn’t want another kid when I think my mother, you know, actually talked him into it. Um, but he called me and he said, you know, I never meant to, to, um, make you think that, you know, your dad isn’t, you know, your dad. And I was like, I didn’t think that, you know, what, what are you talking about? And he’s like, oh, I just, I, I thought maybe you misunderstood something. I said, and I was like, no, no, not at all. And I, around that time, I think my oldest sister, the one that you know, was such and asked to me, uh, she, I think she figured out that the story that everybody was given about my dad being my dad, she figured out it wasn’t true.
Speaker 2: (54:00)
And she started making trouble. She’d already turned my first sister against me back when I was, was 18. I realized now that’s why she wouldn’t talk to me. And I was really close to her as a kid. And then, you know, I go away in the air force and this is a time of calling cards and payphone mm-hmm . So I sent her calling cards, you know, I used my, my pay to send her calling cards to and letters to please call me and she wouldn’t do it. And my mother would never tell me why. And this is because
Speaker 1: (54:32)
The, your oldest sister believed you were the product of an affair.
Speaker 2: (54:36)
I don’t know if she thought I was the product of an affair, or if she just, if I took away attention from her kids mm-hmm or was going on, she just always hated me. I mean, hated me. Um, and I don’t, you know, I, I still have not gotten an answer to that, even though mm-hmm, , you know, I’ve got a few answers to some other things. Um, so, you know, fast forward now I’m, I’m, you know, in this I’m, I, I broke up with my girlfriend, had to go someplace and I’m like, you know, what reached out to my family. And I’m like, if I moved to Omaha, would that be okay? Is it creepy? Is it stalkerish? You know? Hmm. And they’re like, absolutely not, you know, move here, change your last name, do whatever you wanna do, you know? Oh, um, I love them.
Speaker 2: (55:28)
So I moved here, um, you know, got a job, uh, and got a better job, great job, what I do now. And so I we’re, you know, we’re all kind of connecting and learning. Um, it’s, it’s kind of difficult because I’m very introverted and he wouldn’t think it probably listening to me talk here, but, uh, in general, I’m introverted. Mm-hmm, my mother, Liz, my birth mother is very, very introverted. Um, so we don’t, you know, we’re not as, you know, just instant close as, you know, some people would think would be, but, you know, uh, we talk and we chat and we text and we joke and they take me out for my birthday and we see each other at holidays. And of course now being the pandemic, you know,
Speaker 1: (56:25)
It’s a little bit difficult. Right. When did you move there?
Speaker 2: (56:29)
Um, I moved here in 2018, so I’ve been here three years.
Speaker 1: (56:33)
Right. Okay. I, for, I, for in a, in all, in the, in the blur of it all, I sort of forgot that this was all still fairly recent. Like this is still very recent history that this was all going down.
Speaker 2: (56:47)
Yeah. So, I mean, yeah, it just, within the last, you know, four or five years that I’ve known all of this about myself. Wow. Um, so I kept it from my mother because she’s old. Mm-hmm , um, you know, she, 88, uh, she doesn’t have the best health. So I’m like, you know, just let her think that, that I, you know, did, as she wished and didn’t pursue it and, you know, whatever, I just moved to Omaha, cuz I don’t know, I’m a fan of the Huskers or whatever for sure. um, I’m not, by the way, I don’t even know anything about football. So for the
Speaker 1: (57:29)
Record, for the record, this star wars fan is not a football fan. He’s not know anything about the Huskers.
Speaker 2: (57:35)
Yeah. My family actually bought me a Huskers t-shirt they said it was required when you lived here. Mm-hmm so they moved here, they bought me a Huskers. T-shirt sure. Um, it, it has since been donated to Goodwill, so there’s some little kid out there cuz there’s not a lot of grown in my size that has a cool Husker shirt, so. Right. Cool. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (57:54)
Uh, and, but meanwhile, your oldest sister is doing her own work research kind of.
Speaker 2: (58:03)
Well, she is, I think she told my mom that she knew, um, who, of course, you know, uh, my brother lives with her. They, they live together, um, with her husband who is really cool. Um, but uh, yeah, I, I think she said, you know, I know and blah blah. And it caused a lot of trouble. My mother will not go into all the details with me. Mm-hmm uh, about what she has said. And I apologize if you keep hearing the OS, my cat is mm-hmm, upset that I’m talking and it’s not him.
Speaker 1: (58:39)
No, no. He can be on the podcast. What’s his name? a Aiden. Hi. Okay. A really cute cat. Beautiful orange. Uh, okay, so right. So your sister’s starting. Yes. In her, in her own way, on her own time at piano camp at the other camp. Right.
Speaker 2: (58:59)
So my mother calls me, uh, this was in April, this last April and I had just had to put Aiden’s sister down. Oh. Um, and they’re, they’re only 11 years old. They were their literal brother and sister. Um, so he was not taking it well, um, I wasn’t taking it well. Um, and this was like two days after that happened. So I’m still pretty raw with that. And she calls me as, as I’m pulling in, I I’d gone out to get something to eat and I’m pulling in my, my, my parking space and she calls and she’s like, I have to tell you something. And I’m like, what? well, everything that I said about, you know, your father, isn’t true. And I said, no and just, I just let loose. Uh, and I, I feel kind of bad. I was like, you know, you have the absolute worst timing possible.
Speaker 2: (01:00:10)
I just had to put a cat down that has been with me for 10 years. And I am really upset right now. And you’re gonna tell me that, oh, by the way, I’ve been lying to you not only for or 45 years, but then only gave you half a story. Mm. I said, I was a cop for 20 years, 19 years. I am well aware of where my family is. As a matter of fact why do you think I moved to Omaha? I’m right here with him. I’ve met him. And she was like, oh, I had no idea. I was like, yeah, no kidding. Because you didn’t wanna know because you didn’t want me to go out and see them. And, um, so I, I mean, I just, you know, was telling her all of this and I was like, why now? Well, your sister called and she was, you know, saying all of this stuff and, and, you know, she’s just being her.
Speaker 2: (01:00:58)
And as far as I’m concerned, you’re my child. And, and she can be whatever she wants to be. You know, I don’t want anything to do with her anymore. And I’m like, okay, mom, whatever, you know, I, I’m just, I’m tired of all of this. I’m, you know, I’m really upset right now, period. And I don’t need this, but just suffice it to say I’m well aware of, of what happened and, and my family, um, it did allow me, I called her, you know, a couple of weeks later when I was feeling a little bit better to get a little more of the story and go, well, you know, how did you find me? You know, how are you told? And, and, you know, just parse out a little bit more information about, you know, how they met up and all through this shady church again.
Speaker 2: (01:01:48)
Um, and I remember as a child going back down there and meeting these people who were church friends. Hmm. Uh, including my godfather, who, uh, the only thing I remember him was him going off about the Dallas Cowboys and great they were. And that, uh, the reason he liked Dallas cowboy was because they were all Christian men. And I was like, okay, , you know, I’m like seven, right? I, no, any of that even means mm-hmm, , I’m just like, like Dallas Cowboys go him, you know, whatever mm-hmm . Um, but I met these people, uh, we stayed with them, you know, I played with their kids and the whole time they knew, they knew that, you know, I was, this kid that was adopt, did from this, you know, probably in their mind, some, you know, mm-hmm, , uh, and, and I’m like, man, you know, just, you know, why, why didn’t I know.
Speaker 2: (01:02:52)
And, and, you know, that’s, you know, all these people that I met, all these people that my parents knew that they took me around and it was like this, they knew this secret that I was never, you know, privy to mm-hmm . Um, and I know that, you know, back then they were told you don’t tell the kids you’re, you know, that they’re adopted it’s bad and things like that. But, uh, one of the things that I did learn while I was sitting coffee shop, uh, waiting for, you know, looking up the, the articles that was the, the morning that I was waiting for my, my real mother and my aunt to come and pick me up. Um, I found an article from a guy and he found out in the nineties, it was an old, old mm-hmm , uh, I mean, like almost micro fish copy of this newspaper article I was on, on my phone.
Speaker 2: (01:03:47)
And, uh, he said something that has stuck with me. He said, I have never known anything good to come of ignorance. Oh. And I come out of ignorance. Yeah. Um, and of stayed with me. That was like one of the first things that, that I ever read about, you know, being, you know, discovered as a late term adoptee and mm-hmm , um, or, or late discovery adoptee. Um, but that, you know, nothing good has ever come out of ignorance. And I, and I thought I’ve never put it into words, but I’ve thought that all my life, I, I wanna know the truth, no matter if it’s bad, good, whatever. Tell me the truth. Um, so, you know, the, the more I learned about my family up here, it, uh, I, I got this story, you know, about my grandfather, my grandfather died in 2006. So there’s somebody that I could have had a relationship with that I missed out because I was lied to mm-hmm , you know, um, I have to,
Speaker 1: (01:04:57)
I have to say you were not that much older than me. You were born in 19 two. Okay. The, of is it’s. So that of children was so cemented. Like I, you know, like I was born in 1980 and my peers knew they were adopted this, not tell your kids thing. It stops being an excuse after, I don’t know, at a certain, a certain point in it’s it’s, uh, I know that that was a, a, but it’s it, it started to change and
Speaker 2: (01:05:42)
It, it did. And now that I know that there was discussion and strife and drama in my adoptive family over me being adopted mm-hmm
Speaker 1: (01:05:55)
Mm-hmm
Speaker 2: (01:05:56)
Why did my mother just not tell me, oh, you know, I have something to tell you, this is why your SIS, your one sister hates you. And now your other sister won’t talk to you instead of me as a 17, 18 year old kid. I, I, no, I was 17 at the time I was in the air force at 17, um, which made me feel like an adult, but now I know that I was a child mm-hmm . Um, and so you’ve got this kid that feels abandoned just
Speaker 1: (01:06:27)
Yes. Straddling, like really straddling the adult world and the chill, you sort of child heart in an adult world,
Speaker 2: (01:06:33)
Right? Yeah. I can’t even vote yet, but I’m in uniform, you know, serving mm-hmm , um, not doing anything dangerous at the time. I was still in training. So, uh, luckily, uh, but I, yeah, I, I, you know, I’m, I’m sitting there feeling abandoned by my sister while at the same time, I’m trying to learn how to be an adult. I’m trying to learn how to be in the military. I’m trying to learn, you know, uh and, you know, talk about added stress, you know, that’s when you need your family, that’s when you need mm-hmm , you know, some stability and, uh, so over the years, yeah, she has come back and she’s, you know, done her best to, you know, uh, cut me out of everybody’s life. So, you know, well done. I mean, she accomplished what she wanted, but at some point, why don’t you just sit the child down and go, look, I have to talk to you. This is why this is going on. Right. You know? Hmm. Um, but I, I go ahead.
Speaker 1: (01:07:37)
Did you ever get an explanation from your mom about why she came up with the infidelity story?
Speaker 2: (01:07:44)
No. OK. No, I, I, I,
Speaker 1: (01:07:48)
Yeah. I mean, I wouldn’t have, I, I respect that. I respect that, but I was just curious if that was part of it. She was like, all right, there was a reason for that or something, something that would somehow make that make sense. And I, um, okay.
Speaker 2: (01:07:59)
You know, the only, only thing that I I can think of was, you know, it’s always somebody else’s fault somebody.
Speaker 1: (01:08:05)
Well, and it also makes her the Saint who, who takes win.
Speaker 2: (01:08:11)
You know, she stayed with this man for 35 years that, you know, cheated on her all the time. And I, man, I don’t know. I, I, I don’t. Yeah. Uh, and it could be true, but it wasn’t in my case, you know? Right, right. It’s not the Matthew story. So, um, but I, I I’ll, you know, going back to missing out on these relationships, you know, I, I never met my great uncle. He, he passed away, uh, just a couple of years ago. Mm. Um, and I never had a chance to speak with him. I didn’t get to meet my grandfather who, you know, the one that I looked just like, but a story that, that I was told, um, my cousin, the next one in line, uh, Daniel he’s about my height. uh, and at some point as a child, he was getting teased about, you know, being short and, you know, it was, it was really, you know, hurting his feelings and things like that.
Speaker 2: (01:09:10)
And my grandfather got on the internet and printed out a, of all the famous people who were short and then sat him down and gave him the list and talked about, you know, all of the great things that, you know, these short people have done. What I got was, well, your brother didn’t hit a growth spurt until he was, well, your brother didn’t get a gross spurt until he was 13. Your brother didn’t get a gross spurt until he was 16. And then it was 18. And by 18, well, I’m already out the door, so, well, I don’t know what happened.
Speaker 2: (01:09:51)
And so I keep expecting, as a child, I’m keep expecting someday I’m gonna be taller, you know, and then I won’t get teased as much. Hmm. Um, baldness runs in that family. Mm-hmm um, my father was bald. My brother lost his hair, my mother thins. I have a great head of hair. Yeah. Um, said for years, it’s the prettiest thing about me. um, I mean, I can still feather it. I mean, like straight outta the eighties, feathering. Amazing. Um, and I kept hearing my mother, I, I would mention it like, man, I, you know, my hair doesn’t look anything like this. Well, there’s still time you’ll lose your hair. Well, Jesus, give me a little more anxiety, you know, first a growth spurt. Now you’re gonna go bald, you know? Right. Get it all out now, cuz you’re later in life, you know?
Speaker 2: (01:10:49)
Mm. Um, so you know, it was things like that, you know, the, you know, oh yeah, you better be careful. Oh no, we don’t, you know, uh, we’re Italian and native. So I run around for years, my entire adult life, you know, I have, you know, a little bit of native blood mm-hmm we have Italian. Nope, Nope, Nope. You know, nothing like that. Uh, I, I mean, it just, uh, so many lies that I had that I, that you know, were, were told to me that, you know, I just trying to get past a lot of that. The short thing really, really bothers me. You because you have one family that understands and cares and is like, Hey, the world sucks. But look at what these people have done. Mm-hmm you have another one that goes, oh, don’t worry. You’ll grow here soon. Mm-hmm and I mean, you know, that, that is, is really kind of harsh, especially when it doesn’t happen, you know? Yeah.
Speaker 1: (01:11:55)
Yeah. I mean, if anybody who knows anything anymore, these days about the lifelong lasting effects of bullying, um, could understand, could understand, uh, how and why that would be an especially, um, hurtful area of the betrayal
Speaker 2: (01:12:17)
Experience. Yeah. It, it, it, you know, I mean, you, you go through it and you know, I don’t have children. Um, I’ve, I’ve consider myself fortunate cuz I think I’d be a terrible parent. But on the other hand, I think I would know, you know, what to say to a child, you know, so that, you know, I wouldn’t lie to ’em, but I, you know, I think I’d know how to make ’em feel better, you know, mm-hmm um, you know, if I had a kid that was short, obviously, you know, unless I married an Amazon woman that I’d, you know, mm-hmm , my kid would be short. So, um, yeah, I mean, so I’m, I’m still going through everything. I’m still trying to figure out, you know, uh, some of the story, most of it I have, um, I did have sort of a relationship with my father.
Speaker 2: (01:13:16)
Um, I, he, I reached out to him. He lives in Arizona. He is a Baptist preacher. Oh my God. Um, and, and I’ve been, Hey, if, if, if you’re a Christian, that’s great. I’ve been traumatized one too many times by the church. Um, I mean bad by the church. So I’m kind of out of there. Um, I don’t believe, you know, like that and you know, we were talking, uh, he gave me a lot of good history on my parentage mm-hmm um, so my ancestors go back to, uh, this little place that, you know, throughout history, depending on who was in power, we were either Russian or Polish mm-hmm , um, full Jewish on that side. Um, I have family who died in the Russian revolution. I have family who died in the Holocaust. I have relatives in Israel, South Africa, you know, several places in the United States, which is kind of cool, you know, um, he decided he didn’t wanna be Jewish.
Speaker 2: (01:14:37)
He wants to be Christian and went full on, um, after being a hippie, after being a hippie mm-hmm and I’m talking like hippy, hippie mm-hmm he had, um, I got my hair from my mom mm-hmm had he’s balded now um but he had like a huge fro mm-hmm . I mean, it was out here, I’ve got a picture of him when, you know, he was a kid or when he was, you know, a hippie mm-hmm , um, huge fro and I’m like, okay, that’s an impressive fro right there. Mm-hmm um, but he was involved in that church and you know, I think he, right, right, right, right, right. My parent, my adoptive parents and set the whole thing up mm-hmm um, I can’t talk to him about it now, because day he texted me and he was like, I, I do wanna tell you about Jesus.
Speaker 2: (01:15:37)
And I’m like, look, man, I want a relationship with you. I appreciate your point of view, but I don’t believe like that I’m I, I don’t wanna discuss religion, you know, you know, let let’s know, take it slow let’s table. That one. And his response was I won’t try to shove it down your throat, but you have to know that and went into preaching. And I was like, okay, thanks for your time. We’re done. And he texted me and said, oh, have I done something to offend you? And I was like, yeah, absolutely. I, I asked you and I don’t think we should continue this. Uh, he is politically way way on the other side of the spectrum for me. Mm-hmm mm-hmm um, I know, you know, I’ll probably alienate probably some of your, your listeners, but I’m live mm-hmm mm-hmm always have been, uh, he is a right wing gun, nut Trump loving I’m sure.
Speaker 2: (01:16:46)
He’s listened to Q on occasion. Mm-hmm mm-hmm I don’t want anything to do with it. Uh, I still, you know, tell him my, my birth mother, Liz, I still blame her for getting with a guy who was so short. Cause he was short as well. I’m like, you know, you were in LA, you couldn’t find a basketball player there wasn’t anybody else. Yeah, exactly. She was like, well, he was, he was a good looking guy. I don’t care I, I, I can be tall and ugly. I’m fine with that. You know? Um, but, uh, yeah, so I got my, my, you know, family tree on that side and I’ve just kind of left it alone. I, I met his sister who kind of leans a little bit more towards my direction and she says, oh, I just, I don’t, I let him rant and, and wear himself out and just ignore it. And I’m like, okay. And she has a son who, um, I met and chatted with. Um, and he called, called me an idiot on Facebook after we became Facebook friends. And I was like, okay, you’re outta here. Right. Uh, over a, a post that I made that, you know, didn’t lean right. Enough for him. Mm-hmm so I, yeah. We’re, we’re not gonna be friends. You and I mm-hmm so that that’s my father’s side there.
Speaker 1: (01:18:06)
Right, right, right. Sort of a short lived interaction experience.
Speaker 2: (01:18:11)
Mm-hmm right. But I do have, you know, my family, so
Speaker 1: (01:18:15)
It sounds like Liz is just ma and her family is, is trying to make makeup for everything. Um, yeah,
Speaker 2: (01:18:23)
They, they are absolutely wonderful. Um, I mean, I, I have answers to my, I have, uh, you know, I’m invited to places, my aunt and I just, uh, my aunt Karen and I just went to see Hamilton, uh, last Saturday. Awesome. My first time mm-hmm oh, God, it’s awesome. I saw it. So, but, uh, I was gonna go by myself and she texted me and she’s like, are you still going? I was like, yeah, she goes, is there a chance there’s another ticket. I don’t have to sit next to you. And I was like, let me see what I can do. And it just happened that there were two actually better seats than what I had, um, that were right together. So we went and, and enjoyed it. And
Speaker 1: (01:19:06)
That’s so cool. My, uh, my oldest is obsessed with, you know, OB, like I like all, I don’t know, just obsessed with Hamilton. And, um, and, and now my younger one really likes to watch in the Heights. So we’re just this like Lynn Manuel Miranda fan crazy house.
Speaker 2: (01:19:24)
Uh, it’s funny because I, I’m a huge west wing fan. Um, mm-hmm west wing.
Speaker 1: (01:19:31)
Yeah. Loved it every single minute of it.
Speaker 2: (01:19:33)
Yep. I’m just finishing binging it again. I, I watch it probably once a year.
Speaker 1: (01:19:38)
That’s amazing. That’s
Speaker 2: (01:19:39)
Awesome. And love it. Mm-hmm and I, uh, Lynn Manuel Miranda was a huge west wing fan as well. And took, he actually wrote one of the songs, says a mind at work. Mm-hmm , uh, that’s from a line in the west wing. Oh. And it’s just so cool. Um, I listened to, uh, a west wing podcast mm-hmm and found that out and I was just like, oh, that is so awesome.
Speaker 1: (01:20:07)
It makes all the sense in the world where you yeah. Oh, that’s great. That’s funny. Cause I hadn’t thought about it, but uh, in, I hadn’t thought about it, but Lynn Manuel Miranda’s writing does have a clip and a pace that Aaron Sorkin also, um, has in the, you know, in the dialogue form, it’s a similar of okay. Like the super fast, super witty, super at a super clip. Yeah. Interesting. That’s really interesting.
Speaker 2: (01:20:36)
Yeah. So yeah, he admits, he stole stuff from, from the west wing and I’m just like, that’s, that’s just making it more
Speaker 1: (01:20:43)
Awesome. Makes it better for you. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (01:20:45)
That this show, I mean, it, it was, you know, of course it’s not the original cast, but I will say if anybody out there has a chance to see the latest tour, the guy that plays Washington absolutely commands the stage. He is amazing. So, uh, if I could have met any of the cast, I would’ve wanted to meet him just to be like you are awesome, dude.
Speaker 1: (01:21:05)
that’s so cool. That’s cool. Yeah. Well I’m so glad. And I also, I also just wanna, uh, follow up just on what I just said, where I said, it sounds like Liz’s family is trying to make up for it. I was not suggesting that any of their behavior is out of guilt I was just, oh yeah. Um, I just said they just sound like a wonderful, open, loving, excited group of people.
Speaker 2: (01:21:28)
They are, they actually, you know, get together for holidays and they talk and they, they do nice things for each other, which is completely foreign to me. Mm-hmm um, so it’s, it’s hard getting used to it and it’s really hard reaching out because it’s like, well, do they want me in their, and they’re like, yes, are you sure? You know, cuz I don’t have to do this. And Hmm. So it’s, it’s, it’s tough finding that acceptance. Yeah. Um, you know, you I’m, I’m not really sure what to make of it, so mm-hmm sometimes. Um, but yeah, I mean we have, uh, you know, we we’ve we’ve fostered a, a pretty good relationship. Mm-hmm , you know, the whole family, uh, you know, my grandmother talks about me apparently a lot. Uh, I don’t get to see her a lot cuz she’s, you know, very old and mm-hmm, , it’s a pandemic still after. All right. Um, so yeah, I mean it, it it’s, um, it’s been a wild ride.
Speaker 1: (01:22:33)
Yeah. I kind of feel exhausted for you. like, I’m just like, wow, this has been a, this is really a lot.
Speaker 2: (01:22:43)
I, I didn’t realize how kind of exhausted I was until I started looking at, uh, that there is some trauma that goes along with this types of these types
Speaker 1: (01:22:55)
Of absolutely mm-hmm
Speaker 2: (01:22:58)
And there’s a lot of unresolved issues that I have over it. You know, the height thing, the story about my grandfather, you know, in the height and the fact that, you know, my whole life I’m like, yep, I’m probably gonna die of cancer. You know, mm-hmm, no deal, you know? Um, now it’s, you know, probably gonna die of diabetes, but whatever, you know, um, I, I watch my die. I take my medication.
Speaker 1: (01:23:27)
I figured if no, no judgments out there. And how many
Speaker 1: (01:23:30)
And how, and, and is it on your mom’s side?
Speaker 2: (01:23:35)
I think it’s on my dad’s side actually.
Speaker 1: (01:23:37)
Cause they weren’t all, like, we’re all diabetic
Speaker 2: (01:23:40)
Part of it. They’re not, but everything else that I have, yeah. Hundred per percent on my mother’s side mm-hmm and it’s like, okay, uh, you know, it it’s, it’s more of a, wow, cool. Now I know, you know yeah. Versus else, but you know, I mean, modern meds are wonders, take them and, and so I live a, a normal life for the most part. Um, but yeah, I mean there’s a lot of issues that have come up that I’m like, okay, yeah, I probably need to deal with this. I, I probably need to read some books and talk to some folks. And of course this was part of that, that journey. Um, you know, I made the joke when this first all started that I would, you know, write a book about it and I was like, maybe lifetime would do a movie, but even lifetime would probably say it’s not believable enough. You know,
Speaker 1: (01:24:37)
So, right, right. Totally. I just want, I just want a, um, somebody to make an indie film about that drive, uh, from, from a, from Springfield, Missouri to Omaha, to Omaha, but your, with your mom and her sister and you, it, it was, I’m pretty, I’m pretty, I’m pretty ready to watch to watch it in, in like a sort of indie handheld,
Speaker 2: (01:24:57)
Um, uh, I, I think version of that film. Yeah. The, the biggest drama that came up during that was that I said that I wasn’t a big fan of the Beatles or Elvis . Um, and if I hadn’t been driving, I think they would’ve pulled over and mm-hmm, said, you know, nice to meet you and left me on the side of the road. But, um, you know, that was just, you know, different generation. So I totally, I have
Speaker 1: (01:25:28)
Seems like you’re able to, you guys have been able to bridge that difference.
Speaker 2: (01:25:31)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. You just don’t talk about it
Speaker 1: (01:25:34)
Anymore. Right. Don’t bring it up. Um, and so I love that you’re here telling this story and, um, and you didn’t even know this, but I’ve sort of set the intention to start to, to start and to try to include more of the, um, adoption community within, um, my, my, my project. Um, so it’s wonderful for that, that you came, you came and did that, and I’m just curious, are you still, are you still like sort of nurturing support for yourself within the, are you you still going to groups or do you have a therapist or what are you doing? What are you doing for yourself? Yeah.
Speaker 2: (01:26:13)
What are you doing? Um, I am, I I’ve attended a couple of the, of the online sessions from the C Leah center, which have, have, you know, kind of opened the door for me. Um, I am reading a couple of books, um, primal wound, and then mm-hmm, , uh, the other one that she wrote, uh, coming home to self. I haven’t started that one. Yeah. Oh, so those are, you know, those, just the, the, the thought and the theory behind, uh, the primal wound mm-hmm is something I’ve never considered and I’m like, oh, oh yeah, that could, uh, you know, that’s, you know, I’m, I’m kind of a skeptic, but I’m like, that could actually be a thing, you know, I’m yeah. I, I think, yeah, I think she’s got a very valid point there and yep. Nine months in somebody’s womb and you’re ripped apart.
Speaker 2: (01:27:16)
Uh mm-hmm kinda leaves some, some issues. Yeah. Yep. Uh, so, and, and not the least of which I, I think, you know, it probably can contribute to some health issues besides just, I haven’t gotten that far in the book. You may talk about that, but, uh, just besides mental issues, mm-hmm and, uh, you know, things like that. I think probably it could be, you know, contributed to some real issues, you know, health wise as well, physically. Um, but I, I I’m, I’m getting into it. It’s slow. Mm-hmm, , uh, I’m not one that I find comfort in a lot of people to talk with. So, you know, it’s kind of, this is a big deal for me. Uh, and I’m not even thinking, I I’m talk to you. Mm-hmm , I’m not even thinking about people listening later on and going mm-hmm oh, what a weirdo, you know, mm-hmm uh, so that, that they won’t think that
Speaker 1: (01:28:20)
no one will think that.
Speaker 2: (01:28:22)
I don’t know. I said I didn’t like football or the Beatles, so that, that, you know, that
Speaker 1: (01:28:25)
May turn into, oh, this is a, we’re a star wars house here in Los Angeles. So yeah. I mean, like, you are not so
Speaker 2: (01:28:32)
Good. Good, good, good. Mm-hmm so, um, I, I dressed up like a Jedi if I’d known that,
Speaker 1: (01:28:40)
Um, that would’ve been amazing. been the weird that would’ve been, that would’ve been the weirdest, but the best thing that ever happened to me,
Speaker 2: (01:28:48)
I’m not gonna say that I don’t have a costume mm-hmm mm-hmm have a costume. Um, can I pause for a minute? Yeah. And I just need to run for like yeah. Two minutes. Totally. I can’t please. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. I, I will be right back. I promise, promise. We’ll take
Speaker 1: (01:29:06)
We’ll I’ll take a break here. Look, I’ll hit pot zoom.
Speaker 2: (01:29:12)
I love that robotic voice. It’s
Speaker 1: (01:29:16)
Mm-hmm recording in progress. Uh, yeah. So, so you were, so, yeah, I mean, I, I didn’t have any expectations when I asked what you were, what you were kind of doing for yourself. I just, um, but I, I know that that the support network, um, is sort of hard to find sometimes with this stuff, like we talked about in the beginning. Um, but it sounds like you’re working at it, you’re working towards it at, at your own pace and figuring out what you’re comfortable with and what feels good and what you want.
Speaker 2: (01:29:48)
Yeah. Well, I mean, you also have to consider that there’s probably not a lot of therapists out there that have any notion of, you know, this kind of topic, you know, it’s, it’s kind of rare mm-hmm so, you know, do I go to buddy and go, oh, this is my situation. And, and they’re going, I haven’t got a clue what to tell you or, you know? Right. Um, so yeah,
Speaker 1: (01:30:13)
Sure. I, yeah, I can understand.
Speaker 2: (01:30:16)
Yeah. I mean, there’s, there’s some websites, you know, out there, um, here’s included that have, you know, resources on ’em and they kind of all spurred around Omaha,
Speaker 1: (01:30:27)
So, right. You know? Yeah. I was just about to say, like, there’s definitely MPE therapists, but I bet they’re few and far between in Omaha to be honest or Nebraska, um,
Speaker 2: (01:30:41)
Omaha is a big place um, you know, but people don’t realize how big Omaha is, but Omaha is a big, pretty big place, but yeah, I think they kind of, you know, since we’re in the Midwest, it’s, you know, we are a flyover state. Right,
Speaker 1: (01:30:58)
Right. Well, I’m glad, I’m glad you, you have found the resources you found. Um, do you have any advice for somebody who, for somebody that’s fresh into the, um, like for an NPE, that’s just found out that they, that they’re not who they thought they were, um, anything you wish you’d known before? Um,
Speaker 2: (01:31:32)
I mean, I was pretty fortunate that everything happened for me quickly so fast. Yeah. So, you know, I mean, I don’t expect that everybody else is gonna have that same, you know, experience as much as, you know, it’s it made my head spin mm-hmm . Um, but I would say, you know, ground yourself in, in who you are, not who your family is. Mm-hmm , mm-hmm , um, you know, like me, I am a star wars fan I’m I, I surround myself with it. I watch movies, I love movies. Um, I have my cat that’s who I am. Um, I’m not like my family, so right. If you, if you find out, you know, Hey, I’m not who I thought I was, you let yourself, you know, uh, even if you, you’re wondering if you can still rely on family and if your family’s been good to you. Awesome. You know, mm-hmm, , mm-hmm I mean, I mean, don’t, don’t yeah. I mean, definitely, you know, take it with it’s, you know, that, Hey, at least I didn’t get abused. And if you did get abused, then you at least know that, Hey, they’re. And maybe there’s somebody better out there for me. Mm-hmm , you know? Sure.
Speaker 2: (01:32:52)
That’s, that’s something that I, that I can at least take away is that I have cousins who, uh, and, and, and aunts and family who are genuinely decent people. Mm-hmm , mm-hmm . So my sister treated me like crap and abused me as a child. And I, okay. She’s not my family, you know, that’s cool.
Speaker 1: (01:33:16)
Right.
Speaker 2: (01:33:18)
But I, I mean, as I’m still so deep in the middle of it, I don’t know what to tell somebody else.
Speaker 1: (01:33:25)
I think that’s one, I think that’s, it’s beautiful advice, ground yourself in who you are. Um, I think that’s awesome. You’re not who you, you. Yeah. Or you are not, you are who you are, not who your family is. I think, um, that’s actually profound. um,
Speaker 2: (01:33:42)
I mean, and, and that’s, that’s coming, you know, that, that if you are like your family and your family’s good, then great, super you’ve got that support system. If you’re not, then Hey, at least, you know, you’re you, and mm-hmm, , mm-hmm, , you’ve come this far tough it out and, and find, somebody know, find out what the truth is. Yeah. You know, I, I still go back to what I, and I really wish that I’d been, I’d had the foresight to take a screenshot of that guy saying that, you know, he’d never heard of anything good coming out of ignorance. Right. Um, I, I just, that has to be my favorite quote ever now. Mm-hmm
Speaker 1: (01:34:25)
Yeah. Yeah. That’s a good one. Uh, did it ever, did you ever think about how Luke Skywalker is an NPE and how you love those movies? ,
Speaker 2: (01:34:41)
You know, I, I never, even to this very second, I never really put that together. Um,
Speaker 1: (01:34:48)
It’s like maybe you knew deep down, inside somewhere, there was like a connection.
Speaker 2: (01:34:54)
I mean, he always knew that he was adopted, you know? Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: (01:34:59)
Well raised by his aunt and uncle. Um right. But
Speaker 2: (01:35:04)
Yeah, that’s awesome. I never even thought of that. that? That is so cool. You know, I mean, it kind of puts me into perspective. At least I wasn’t hanging off some big tower, you know, when I found out who my parents were. Totally.
Speaker 1: (01:35:19)
At least your, your, your dad. Yeah. Like totally like your bio dad is, um, like annoying and Baptist and evangelical, but at least he’s not this like evil overlord for the whole
Speaker 2: (01:35:33)
Galaxy. I mean, he supports one mm-hmm you didn’t cut my hand off or anything. I,
Speaker 1: (01:35:40)
No, no lightsabers, no light sabers.
Speaker 2: (01:35:42)
Okay. Um, wow. No, that’s awesome. Yeah. I, that should be on a t-shirt or something. Yeah. We
Speaker 1: (01:35:49)
Should do something with that. Ooh, I’m gonna write that down in my notes. Yeah. There you go.
Speaker 2: (01:35:52)
Yeah.
Speaker 1: (01:35:53)
Star wars and like a pin or something. Maybe you could just say like Luke’s Skywalker is an NPE anyway. We’ll work on that. We’ll you and I we’ll brainstorm that off, off off camera. Um, all right. Cool, Matt, this is so awesome. I’m so glad that you, you got to talk to me. I’m so glad I got to connect so soon and thank you for your like vulnerability and, um, and, and willingness to share your journey. It’s that you’re even still on, you were on and you are on, um, and I, and I’m, I’m so glad you had the instinct that sharing it, uh, would be beneficial not only to you, but I think it will be good for everybody to hear.
Speaker 2: (01:36:35)
Yeah. It it’s it, I mean, I kind of want it to be a story that other people can go, oh, you know, Hey, he’s, you know, he, he found some good truth and, and, you know, he’s, he’s doing better about everything, but a lot of it is just honestly that that’s my cat hitting my computer.
Speaker 1: (01:36:59)
Um,
Speaker 2: (01:37:01)
He, um, I, I mean it, but yeah, I mean, telling it to, to, for myself and getting it out there and being able to go back later and listen to this and going, oh, I mean, I’m sure I’m gonna, you know, critique myself harshly, but, um, yeah, it, it does help. It may makes me feel better to actually tell other people. And it’s like, you know, out there now mm-hmm, , you know, people will know, and that that’s important.
Speaker 1: (01:37:34)
Yeah. Yep. Good. And I, and I hope God, I just hope I just will want, or look forward to the day that the information about, about the damage that the secrets do, uh, just gets out. Just, I just look forward to a day when everybody knows that nobody would, and people, I look forward to the day when people are like, of course I wouldn’t lie my kid. Um, I dunno, that’s happening, but that’s coming, but I wish the, I, I, I wish the information would spread further and faster.
Speaker 2: (01:38:10)
Yeah. I mean, people don’t know or care what their children are going through when their children yeah. Versus their objects, sometimes they’re seen and not heard or understood. Um, yeah. I’m I’m of bad situations. Mm-hmm of parents and children. And, um, that was always one of the things throughout my career. People knew if I showed up at a scene where somebody was abusing a child, um, things were gonna get dealt with. Right, right. Uh, I that’s. Yeah. Children and, and yeah. Being
Speaker 1: (01:38:58)
Used to, yeah. I’m sure you have a, a very specific perspective on that. Um, coming from law enforcement, um, this is not about the podcast, but have you connected with Brad? U mm-hmm? No. So he’s a late discovery adoptee, and he’s still a police officer. Um, and he was on my show and he’s kind of like in the, uh, just kind of like in the groups, in the community and he wrote a piece in severance magazine. I’ll send you some stuff. Yeah, please. Um, it might be cool to connect with him. He’s in Texas, maybe his name’s Brad. Anyway, he’s cool. He’s a great guy. Um, you might, and it might, might feel good to connect with him and, and have some things in common. Um, yeah. Yeah. I’ll, I’ll um, I’ll send you some, some, some information about him.
Speaker 2: (01:39:52)
No, yeah. That, that would be awesome.
Speaker 1: (01:39:55)
And he had the same thing the same, I mean, well, let you guys talk about this, but like, he wanted to be a police officer, which nobody, you know, to, and didn’t connect with anybody. And then, um, after everything came out and he figured out his story, he has a brother, um, one brother on the other, on his dad did bio dads side of the family who is also a cop. Like, , it like makes all the, sort of all those things that makes sense makes it, makes it all make sense. um, but I’ll let you know. I’ll let you guys get out. Um, cool man. Have a great weekend. Yeah. Thank you. So thank you so much. This will, um, not be out until next year. Um, but I’m putting it all out early next year, but I’ll be in touch with you, um, between now and then. And if anything else comes up, just contact me, um, about anything and everything. Um,
Speaker 2: (01:40:47)
Yeah, no, it’s, I, I really appreciate it. That it, it was, this is the first I’ve ever done, so, uh, it’s kind of cool. Uh, good. I know there’s a lot of ’em out there now, but I’m like, Hey, I did a podcast. I did a thing. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: (01:41:03)
Totally did a thing. You did a thing. You were great. I would never have known it was your first time. Um, right. Keep in touch. Goodbye, Aiden and the cat.
Speaker 2: (01:41:14)
Yeah, just
Speaker 1: (01:41:16)
He’s ready. He’s really ready for this he’s of this. All right. I’ll talk to you. All right. Bye Matt.
Speaker 1: (00:00)
Computer, uh, and that way it’s just recording and we don’t have to worry about it. Um, otherwise I will forget. And
Speaker 2: (00:13)
You don’t want that. That would be
Speaker 1: (00:15)
So super embarrassing when I finish an interview and then I’m like, so I didn’t get any of that. Let’s start over. um, great. This is so fun to have y’all here. Um, I don’t even know. I I’m, like I was about to say, I don’t even know where to start, except I know that I sent you an email that was like, let’s start with this and then we’ll move on to this. But I don’t remember what that was. Um, but I’m sitting here now with four amazing search angels who work toge you guys can correct me, but work together as a group work individually, help one another. Um, and they call themselves the fab four. I’ve been telling everyone all week. I’m so excited to interview the fab four. Um, so I have them on today and, uh, uh, so I have got Deb Elizabeth, Larissa, and Valerie. What, where are you guys located? Can you each say where you are? Are
Speaker 3: (01:13)
I’m Larissa and I’m in Wisconsin.
Speaker 2: (01:16)
I am Deb and I’m in central Florida. I’m Liz and I’m in Colorado. I’m Valerie and I’m in New York.
Speaker 1: (01:29)
Oh, and so have you, have you ever all been in the same place at the same time? Never. Have you ever met, have you met in this, in, in real life at all? No.
Speaker 2: (01:39)
No, just on zoom.
Speaker 1: (01:42)
Amazing. So tell me a little bit, we had talked about what I wanna know is how you four got connected. Um, oh, and I also wanna know if you are, what your sort of relationship to the like DNA world is. If you are an NPE or an adoptee or anything, or just a, a family tree AFIC auto, um, and then how you all met. So I don’t know, um, who wants to sort of lead or take over, but, um, just tell me, tell me everything you guys who wants
Speaker 2: (02:17)
To start.
Speaker 3: (02:19)
Well, I can start, um, I’m Larissa and I was kind of lurking in the background, if you will, at the DNA detective page and some other ones didn’t quite know what it meant to be a search angel. And then Liz reached out to me and kind of took me under her wing and taught me what I know. And then we started doing some cases and then Liz or Val, you wanna chime in?
Speaker 2: (02:45)
Yeah, so I was actually responding to a message that Larissa had posted and she was saying something like, um, she was a really good researcher and if anyone needed help, like, um, researching certain things on their family tree, she would be happy to help. And sure enough, I needed some help researching something because my cousin is an NPE and she found us last year and I was trying to help her for figure out who her bio dad was. Um, she’s well, I can say she’s an Mt. She was adopted mm-hmm and um, so I was like, well, I just so happens. I could use your help. Um, and so then I got connected with Larissa and Liz because of that. And then we met Deb , um, after that happened, she was the fourth person in all of this. So after we solidified my cousin’s bio dad, um, me, Liz and Larissa, all just kind of like, you know, we like working together.
Speaker 2: (03:58)
This has been kind of nice, you know, like we’re bouncing ideas off of each other and it, we just kind of clicked. And so then enter Deb, um, who is, is okay if I share some Deb, not too much, but yeah. And I don’t mind it’s yeah, it’s completely fine. So Deb, Deb en listed our help, um, because she found out that her, the dad that raised her is not her biological dad mm-hmm so we were trying to figure out who he was. And so after solving that, , you know, Deb kind of felt the same way. She’s like, you know, I really like working with you guys. We’re all like, yeah. We really like working with you too. So it just kind of naturally happened.
Speaker 1: (04:42)
Yeah. Okay. And what, so to clarify, um, you, so, okay. So Valerie, you sort of got like brought into this world because you had a cousin reach out that you, you, your family didn’t know about.
Speaker 2: (04:59)
Yeah. Well, my, it it’s funny that, so my dad knew about her. So my cousin is my aunt’s daughter that she had given for adoption, um, back in the sixties. And my dad knew because he was 14 at the time mm-hmm, there’s seven years apart. And so when she contacted my dad on ancestry, my dad was her top match and he knew immediately who she was. And so he showed it to me and he’s like, what should I do? And I was like, oh, I got this. I was so excited. I’m like, I got new family. This is fantastic. So I sent her back like this huge long message, um, wealth to the family. Let me give you some medical information. Sorry. You have terrible jeans. Like you’re gonna get everything. . Um, and then,
Speaker 1: (05:53)
Um, the news is we are your family, the bad news is everything hurts.
Speaker 2: (05:57)
You’re gonna die from a stroke, probably so sorry. Um, so, and then I told her a little bit about, um, her mom, my aunt, who I absolutely adore. She’s amazing, amazing person. And then I called my aunt and I was like, so this happened
Speaker 1: (06:16)
Mm-hmm wait. And I’m sorry to interrupt you be like, like you, how did you, were you, you were already like interested in family tree stuff and ancestry and into all that, like, how did you, so many people get contacted by cousins or, you know, relatives and don’t know that the nice thing to do is to send back an email with a nice mess that says here’s your medical history. So how did you were already like in this world? Like
Speaker 2: (06:41)
A little bit. Okay. My dad has really been into genealogy for at least the last 20 years. And so oh, okay. He had his DNA done, um, probably like four years ago. And, um, but he had a big family treat built up and the, so he was really, really into it and he was actually trying to get me more into it, but I have been interested, especially in like CC more and like the golden state killer, you know, that whole thing. Mm-hmm , that’s when I got into it, I was like, oh, this is such a useful tool. Like, it was kind of like getting the wheels turning in my head. Um,
Speaker 1: (07:17)
So you like mystery and the puzzle pieces? Oh, for sure. Like I love, okay. So this cousin kind of just got lucky that you or her cousin like that you were, I tell her I’m on it. OK.
Speaker 2: (07:29)
You’re so lucky you got the best family. Um, so I filled her in, cause I had actually belonged to some of those, uh, DNA detect groups and they were talking about like reaching out to family members. So I already kind of had like an idea of like the appropriate response and I was genuinely pumped to be begin with. So my dad had responded to her, but his was very vague and like his response. And I was like, dad, I got this let me, let me like welcome her to the family properly. Amazing. And so, um, I probably spent like an hour and a half typing out this long email, like detailing, whatever I could think of as far as like medical and whatever. And given her a blurb about my aunt, I didn’t wanna get too personal with that because I hadn’t taught to her yet. So I just kind of gave her a rough preview. Um, and then I was just, you know, she probably emailed me back about 10 minutes later and she was like, can we be best friends?
Speaker 1: (08:34)
yeah. I mean, oh my God. I was like, yes,
Speaker 2: (08:37)
Brand new family, brand new best friend. This is great.
Speaker 1: (08:40)
Yeah. This is, you’re like a dream, a dream experience, dream contact. Um, okay. And then you, and then, okay. And then you have continued to work on helping that cousin expand her family tree and figure out everything. Okay. Yes. And that’s the, the work that brought you sort of like into this group? Yes. Okay. Exactly.
Speaker 2: (09:03)
Because amazing. As much as I adore my aunt and my aunt has always been very truthful and like very upfront with stuff, but she’s still in that generation where she’ll tell you what you wanna know, but you have to ask mm-hmm and you were both kinda like, should we ask her, like you ask her? No, you’ve asked her, like, we, you know, we were like, well, maybe we can just figure out who bio dad is on our own. Maybe we don’t. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (09:25)
If it makes, if it’s upsetting to her or uncomfortable and
Speaker 2: (09:29)
I mean, ideally you want ’em to be forthcoming, but at the same time, like eventually we did ask her, you know, just to confirm everything. But, um, you know, at first we were just like, I don’t wanna like overstep, you know? And Lisa’s like, well, I just met her. So I don’t know, like , I don’t know. Like I don’t feel comfortable asking that yet, so right. That’s kind of how I got into it.
Speaker 1: (09:52)
Okay. So that’s you got into it and now Deb, you are an NPE
Speaker 4: (09:56)
I am right?
Speaker 1: (09:57)
I am. And when did you discover that your father was not your father? So
Speaker 4: (10:02)
Back several years ago, I had, um, two aunts that passed away from ovarian cancer. Um, one on my paternal side, one on my maternal side and I took a 23 and knee test. Um, just simply because I wanted some medical information, didn’t care, anything about the genealogy. I felt like I knew where I came from and, um, I didn’t see a lot of value in it, but I wanted to know if I carried any of the genes that these aunts had. So took a test several years ago, nothing came up, completely forgot about it. Um, fast forward to January of this year, and I had a cousin reach out to me to tell me that he had taken a 23 and me test. And, um, he was curious about some of the matches. He didn’t
Speaker 1: (10:46)
Grow up, man. He cousins.
Speaker 4: (10:48)
I know, I know he, um, didn’t grow up real close to that side of the family. He saw that we were a match and he and I are relatively close and said, help me figure out who some of these people are. And I said, well, I’m not home right now. I said, but send me some screenshots. And when I get home, if I can remember my username and password, I’ll log into that thing and see if I can help you out. Well, he sent me some screenshots and I very quickly realized, um, that my family had some secrets, um, that didn’t just involve me, but it involved some other people, um, in my family. And, um, I, I think I pretty much knew and solidified that night based on what I had seen from his matches, um, that my birth certificate father was not my father.
Speaker 1: (11:39)
That’s impressive to me, but you could look at screenshots from somebody else and sort of immediately know what
Speaker 4: (11:46)
Kind I, and, and this is probably all for another episode, but I, um, I knew very, very quickly, um, I was able to identify three secrets. Um, wow, very,
Speaker 1: (12:01)
I definitely need to make that an episode.
Speaker 4: (12:03)
and, and when I tell you secrets, I mean, big, big secrets. And the three of them will agree with me. It was, um, life altering, things that I realized and, um, geez. And
Speaker 1: (12:16)
You were just like, send them on, I’ll just get home and figure out my password. Oh
Speaker 4: (12:21)
Yeah. So I, um, I, by the first week of February, I had reached out to Larissa off of a Facebook page. Um, she encouraged me to take an ancestry re DNA test, which I did. And, um, in the meantime, obviously I’m, you know, I’m a teacher by, you know, that’s my profession. So I’m always wanting to learn and figure out things. So the entire time I was waiting on results, I was researching, you know, how do you figure this out? What, what do these terms mean? What is an PE, what is a BCF? What is a BF, you know, um, just trying to figure everything out, got my results back, contacted Larissa, um, gave her access to my results. And I said, let’s, let’s figure this, let’s figure it out. And you were
Speaker 1: (13:11)
Specifically, or like primarily looking for who your father was or just like the, the whole, you just wanted the whole puzzle piece puzzle pieces.
Speaker 4: (13:19)
Well, I, I think primarily when I first reached out to her, it was just a matter of figuring out who my birth father was. Mm-hmm , um, I didn’t feel comfortable at the time. Um, going to my mom, um, knew what her personality was. Like. I knew what her reaction response was gonna be. So I wanted all the balls in my court. Mm-hmm , um, you know, that was just kind of my way of wanting to process and deal with it. When I confronted her, I wanted it to be a matter of, I already know. So you might as well tell me the truth kind of thing. Um, and, uh, they were able to, the three of them worked together and they were able to figure it out. I think through them, figuring out my case, we solved, um, three others within my family, um, that were surprises to, um, everyone. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Like I said, that’s for another episode Eve mm-hmm mm-hmm
Speaker 1: (14:18)
yeah. Wait a plant an Easter egg. Geez. Yeah. Expect check in later for my episode with Deb, everybody
Speaker 4: (14:26)
it’s the really good one. I will tell you. Um, and I just, I enjoyed the, I mean, as difficult as it was, because when I say difficult, I mean, life shattering, um, I found all of this out, right. Be right before I turned 47 years old and to have lived 46 years of your life thinking one thing and out of the blue, while you’re out having dinner with your husband, one night, you find out that everything you thought to be true is not, um, it’s tough. So, you know, not only have these ladies, you know, helped me solve some mysteries in my life, they have been wonderful support and Bridgement, and they have loved me and encouraged me and, um, helped me along the way. And I just, I knew that this was something that I wanted to be a part of. I wanted to be a part of what these ladies were doing, um, for people. I just, I felt so passionate about it, that I knew that I had to get on the train with him.
Speaker 1: (15:34)
Cool. Yeah. I’m, I’m so glad you did too. Um, Liz what’s, uh, talk to me about, uh, about, about your, like your intro. How did you, your entry, I wanna know where, how you got in.
Speaker 5: (15:49)
So, uh, a cousin, um, the we have thousands of them. So, um, but I, I have a cousin who is, he it’s always known, he was adopted. That’s just, um, it’s always been a thing it’s never been a secret. My family is, is pretty vanilla and pretty open, um, about things, but he, he got to a point, um, in his late forties, he wanted to know, Hey, were, do I come from? And so I had already taken an ancestry, DNA kit or test. And, um, so this was about maybe four or five years ago, ish. And so he, he gets his matches back and, and he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know what to do. And so that’s when I started doing my research and started figuring things out and asking question on the different pages. And I, I guess I was bit by the book.
Speaker 5: (16:37)
I couldn’t stop. And after solving his, I wanted more, I needed more, but, uh, I was terrified. Um, I was very terrified because it’s one thing with family. It’s another, when you’re dealing with someone you completely don’t know. So I made a post on one of the many, many pages that I follow and I asked, Hey, what are the conditions? How do I do this? And, and, uh, someone reached out and asked for help. And I declined those. I told her, I said, I don’t, I don’t wanna let you down. I don’t feel, I know what I’m doing. And so, um, I, I really don’t feel, you know, that we should move forward. Then someone else reached out and said, Hey, there’s no credentials. Yes. There are places that offer certain things, but really there’s no credentials. And here’s what you’re gonna do. You’re gonna take this case.
Speaker 5: (17:23)
You’re gonna help her. And that person became my mentor. amazing. Um, it wasn’t until later that we realized that the, that case was actually international. Oh, wow. So , but we did it. And, um, it took us a couple of months and that’s where I learned, I still have my mentor reach out to, um, talk to her about all of my cases. She’s completely amazing. And so she, um, we solved that case. Um, the, the young lady, I hope found her dad. And in turn, he found his dad, cuz he didn’t know he was adopted as well. Oh. And he never knew who his dad was. And um, at 50 years old he found his dad and his dad was, uh, still, still there and excited cuz we found grandpa of course, before we found, um, dad mm-hmm so that’s how we kind of located dad.
Speaker 5: (18:14)
He had a son he didn’t know he had, um, so it was an incredible story. And um, I just, I couldn’t stop. I, I want it more and Larissa made a post kind of similar to mine and I, I, when I saw her post, I, I felt, I was like, this is, was me a few years ago and I have some cases that I’m working on and you can work on them and you get into a spot where you feel this has to be it or this can’t be it. And so you ju it, it’s great to have a second set of eyes on it. So I tell you you’re wrong. Mm-hmm right. And so Larissa kind of made that about, you know, how did, how did everybody get into this? I wanna do it. And I reached out to have some cases, I need a second set of eyes.
Speaker 5: (18:57)
And so I just, she and I clicked and she couldn’t stop either. I was giving her direction, Hey, look at this, look for this. Um, here’s this and we kind of were working together. We just clicked. And then somewhere along the line, she made another post and says, Hey, anybody need help? And then it was a swarm. Mm. And I couldn’t say no. She was like, Hey, I have this case, this case, this case, this case, this case, this case. And I was like, oh my gosh, it was, and that’s where Val and Deb kind of came in at that point. Um, cause we like, we can’t tell anybody. No, like we, we, we don’t know everything. You, you never know everything. You’re gonna continue to learn, but we know enough to give some .
Speaker 1: (19:41)
Yeah. I mean, I can’t, I see it feels like not four people from four different, especially cuz you’re from four different, not just locations, but it seems like kind of four different walks of life. So what you’re looking at, you can all look at the same data, but have different perspectives and different interpretations of what you’re seeing.
Speaker 5: (19:58)
Right. Uh, that
Speaker 1: (19:59)
Is amazing. Um, yeah, that, that seems like that would really be an asset in this and Larissa, how did you get into this? Uh, what interested you, did you, do you have a, a, a, a DNA dis uh, connection or you just were interested in solving puzzles?
Speaker 3: (20:15)
I just am interested in solving puzzles and I always did DNA detective work or not DNA detective work, detective work back when I was in high school due to just some other things I was trying to figure out along the way. And then I took an ancestry test for the fun of it. Two, three years ago for Christmas built my tree started seeing the DNA pages was interested in what it meant to be a search angel. Liz reached out, I worked on her couple cases with her. We got to a kind of a stall and I put that message out. And then we looked over the cases together and mm-hmm, kind of put ’em in order of what would be kind of an easier one to start with to build my confidence. And then it just kind of went uphill from there with Lisa or not Lisa, Val and Deb. And here we are, we all kind of bring unique gifts to the table. So yeah.
Speaker 1: (21:11)
Oh, that’s so cool. It’s like a, you guys are like a, I wanna like a, like, I mean, it’s sort of just a classic grouping, but like where each person is, is bring something else. Like each person is got, uh, skill to the, to the fight, so to speak. We all kinda compliment each other. Yeah. That’s so cool. Yeah.
Speaker 4: (21:34)
I, I think it’s hard lots of times, you know, and I mean, I think all of us being women, I think we can all agree to this. Sometimes it can be difficult for a group of women, you know, to be able to, you know, work together cohesively mm-hmm , you know, we, we do it. And I think what helps is that we’re also passionate mm-hmm about, um, what we’re doing and we get so involved with these families, you know, emotionally, you know, forget about the hours of time that we put into these cases. We, we get emotionally attached to these people. So, um, we just all work great together. It’s it’s been a good blend and mix. Very
Speaker 1: (22:14)
Cool. Uh, and, um, wait, my question. What was my question going to be? How many cases do you have right now as a group
Speaker 3: (22:27)
We’re, we’re waiting for to come back for, you know, to solidify that we, who we think is bio dad or, you know, something along that lines. But right now we’re just trying to tie up a, a really tough, um, Inmy case that we’ve been working on for seven or eight months. And, um, just kind of putting together some pieces and think about maybe looking for some different cases.
Speaker 1: (22:55)
Wow. Okay. Um, is this a good time to talk about how someone would contact you if they wanted your help?
Speaker 4: (23:04)
Sure. Um, anyone that would be interested in, um, getting help from us or asking questions or anything like that? Um, we have a Facebook group that we just started. Um, they can find us on Facebook at genetic truths. Um, and, uh, we’re just gonna kind of just kind of see where that takes us
Speaker 1: (23:26)
Genetic truths.
Speaker 4: (23:28)
Yeah. Genetic
Speaker 1: (23:29)
Truths, the opposite. A lie. Okay. Mm-hmm yeah, I heard, I heard truce at first and I was like, oh, I’m sorry. No, no, no. It’s OK. I just was trying to sort of like be like, okay, so what’s the story about a truce? What’s a truth. OK. that’s
Speaker 4: (23:41)
That? That’s that for the accent coming out.
Speaker 1: (23:44)
Okay. Genetic. Oh, I see. I even wrote genetic
Speaker 4: (23:47)
Truths down genetic truth. They can find us on Facebook. Um, it is a new page, um, but we just decided, you know, that would be something that would be helpful for us, um, in helping others with, you know, kind of funneling things through one way, um, and being able to answer and, um, everything we do pretty much is, is as a group, you know, I mean, we do all of our cases together. Um, it’s very rare that any of us would pull off and do anything on our own. So it just kind of make, is gonna make it nice for us having a central location, um, for people to contact us and get information and help.
Speaker 1: (24:25)
Cool. Yeah. And I’ll make sure that I put all this information up, um, on, on social media and the website, you know, all the, all the, all the places, um, so that listeners can of course, um, go back and find it in other ways, if you didn’t catch it just now during the conversation. Um, and I actually have a, I have a resources for DNA discoveries link on my website, so, and I’ll put you in there on the spreadsheet, um okay. And, and make sure that people can get ahold of you. And if all of that sounds too hard to any listeners, you can also reach out to me and I will direct you in the right place. Um, so, okay. So tell me about some cases then now I know you, you emailed me about one that was extremely recently. Um, so tell me about that and or anything else that’s, um, that just comes to mind as a great sort of example of what you do and how you work together and how someone could benefit from a search angel. Can we talk
Speaker 4: (25:20)
About, no, go ahead, Laura, I’m sorry.
Speaker 3: (25:24)
No, I was just gonna say, can we talk about the one that we recent we solved with, uh, JJ and CC? That’s pretty,
Speaker 4: (25:30)
Absolutely. Absolutely. I think
Speaker 5: (25:32)
That’s a great one. That’s exciting. Mm-hmm
Speaker 3: (25:35)
So we’ll call her JJ. She had posted a post on DNA detectives or somehow connected with me and is 81 years old was abandoned at roughly three days old on a doorstep. And, um, she didn’t know who her biological parents were, where she came from. So she reached out, I consulted with Liz and Liz, you go ahead and share your insight as to what you .
Speaker 5: (26:07)
Um, I think we were on the phone, uh, Deb and Larissa had just recently, they, um, were just wanting to make sure their, their, I guess, ducks were in a row with the cases that they had recently, um, solved. So I was kind of looking over it, which they did great. They solved that one. Um, and so then Larissa said, Hey, you know, I have this case and it’s 81 years. Um, you know, here’s the news article. Um, it would be a maternal and paternal case. Um, and, uh, I was like, yeah, you know what, why not? And so we all kind of agreed at that point. Let’s, let’s do this. Um, but let’s set expectations, you know, um, we always have to set expectations to, um, those we’re searching for, um, about things like, um, you know, we, we may not have that welcome opening, you know, kind of set their expectations.
Speaker 5: (26:57)
So Larissa Larissa is our, um, people person that’s her superpower. She, she can talk to anyone. No one is a stranger. Um, she, she cold calls and does amazing, um, at just talking to people and getting information. And so we, we kind of worked on it together. Um, um, JJ, she had already taken, um, so we had some top matches and, um, we kind of just worked through the DNA, you know, how gonna send some Morgans? Where does this person go? Where does that person go? And, oh, this is, you know, um, good thing is she had taken a 23 in me. So, uh, 23 and me kind of told you what’s maternal. So we were, that was a great, that was a great help. And, um, there was a gentleman we connected with who was a top match. Um, and he kind of was a, a search angel in his own, own way, helping us through it. We all, you know, spoke with him and, um, we narrowed down who mom was. Wow. Um, , we weren’t quite certain who dad was at the moment, just simply because, uh, this was all us, a lot of foreign, uh, names, but Larissa had pointed out, Hey, I think that mom and dad were married. I’m pretty sure look at this. And, um, so we, Larissa actually reached out to who we knew was at least a half sibling. Um, and, uh, just, does anybody else wanna give the punchline here? Cause I don’t wanna take sure,
Speaker 4: (28:30)
Sure. We have Larissa reached out. Um, we’ll call her CC mm-hmm , um, reached out to CE, um, and told her that we thought that we had found someone that, um, might be a relative of hers. And Larissa just asked her if she would be willing to take a DNA test for us to help this 81 year old woman who never knew who her family was. Um, the police, you know, back then, there, there was no DNA. There was nothing to help this woman. So she had lived 81 years of her life if not knowing anyone. So the woman agreed and we mailed her a test and the waiting started. And I think that was, that was really hard for us because we really wanted, um, to know the answers to this case, we were really hoping we were pretty sure she was a half sister, just, you know, we wanted that, that confirmation. We never share anything with families ahead of time on, you know, really exactly what our assumptions are, you know, because we don’t wanna get anyone’s hopes up. Um, I’ll never forget. I was sitting at work one afternoon and my phone started blowing up I mean, Facebook messenger, text messages, the phone was ringing OMG texts. Um, we got the results back and we found out that, um, not only were JJ and CC sisters, they were full sisters. They had the same mother and father. So we were able to, whoa. Yeah, well, I’ve got goosebumps.
Speaker 1: (30:09)
I just did too. I just did .
Speaker 4: (30:17)
We were able to find out that, you know, they weren’t just half, they were full sisters and, um, we’ve been able to connect them. You know, I, I think it’s a little slow, um, CC the sister that did not know anything, had a little bit of a harder time dealing with it, you know, because she had lived her whole life being raised by her parents. They also had a brother, um, you know, never knowing that her parents had, you know, had another child let alone abandoned another child. Um, so there kinda
Speaker 1: (30:48)
What’s the age, sorry, what’s the age difference between JJ and CE?
Speaker 4: (30:52)
What’s the age difference? Larissa, do you remember?
Speaker 1: (30:56)
CE is 77 and JJ is 81. Oh, not, yeah, there were, I was expecting a larger spread.
Speaker 4: (31:05)
So, you know, Cece had a little bit of a harder time with it, just, you know, because she knew her parents and she couldn’t imagine that her parents would have done something like that. So we’ve connected them and they’ve spoken on the phone and those type things. So we, we have hopes that, you know, even this latent life I’ll be able to develop some type of a relationship with one another mm-hmm
Speaker 1: (31:27)
. Wow. And how many, um, like woman hours would you say went into that project? everybody’s face just, oh,
Speaker 4: (31:40)
I think, I think I’m gonna let Liz maybe answer that one. She’s our one that Liz does a great job of kind of recording and logging hours just to kind of have a guesstimate where me, you know, I think Larissa and I, and even Val, we get so much into what we’re doing. You know, we lose track of the time, you know, um, or Liz is a little more on top of that. So how many would you say Liz? How, what, what do you think the hours were we put into that one?
Speaker 5: (32:07)
I would say we were well over 300 hours. That’s just a guess. I do have a time sheet. I have not figured it all up at the 300 hours. It’s well over. Cause we, how many months did we spend on that?
Speaker 1: (32:21)
We solved that in like eight weeks. Yeah.
Speaker 5: (32:24)
So, and it was between all of us. We sat there and just, we were bouncing ideas off each other because the paternal side is much, we only had one paternal line there. That’s all, we had all four maternal lines and we had one paternal line to go off of and everyone is from Poland. So, um, we sat there, bouncing off theories, making it make sense. Mm-hmm um, on the phone, late at night in, through Facebook messenger, through group texting, just kind of bouncing, you know, theories and ideas and maybe his name changed when he came over and, you know, so it was, there was a, there was probably, I would say a, and that’s just a guesstimate. Um, we, we put a lot of time into just sitting there and, you know,
Speaker 1: (33:17)
Notes Andre. Right. And do you all do, how do you all, when you’re all working together, do you, you turn on like a zoom call and you’re all looking at at the computer sort of together and chatting or, um, we do,
Speaker 4: (33:29)
We do do that sometimes. Um, lots of times we use, um, Facebook messenger. We’ll just message back and forth. Sometimes it can be a challenge because with the exception of valid nine, we’re all in different time zones. I was
Speaker 1: (33:41)
Just thinking that
Speaker 4: (33:43)
, you know, I mean, we’re different states, different time zones, um, you know, two of us work full time. Um, you know, so sometimes that can be a challenge. We do a lot of texting, a lot of Facebook messenger mm-hmm and then when we get to points that we feel like we’re really getting close and we really to spend some time together, we will zoom together. Right.
Speaker 1: (34:03)
But otherwise,
Speaker 4: (34:04)
Sometimes we just like to see each other, you know, I mean, just like to be together.
Speaker 1: (34:09)
Yeah. Yeah. And, okay, so you brought, you brought up the, uh, two of you have full-time jobs. Um, so you’re a teacher yeah. By a teacher. And then who, who else is else? Is everybody doing with their days? Liz?
Speaker 5: (34:23)
Yes. I’m human resources, so, okay. Human
Speaker 1: (34:27)
Resources. And then Valerie and LAA, do you have other, um, like focuses whether it’s full-time job or not? I’m a stay at home mom and I sub with public school system once in a great while. That’s a full-time job. Both of those.
Speaker 5: (34:41)
Okay. Definitely. It is.
Speaker 2: (34:43)
Yeah. I’m a, I’m a fulltime mom also and I help take care of my parents. My dad’s a paraplegic, so, um, I’m constantly over there helping out wherever I can too. So yeah.
Speaker 1: (34:56)
Very full day. You guys have very full days. So, so you’re, you’re, you are all fully occupied as already. And then you on your own dive into these, um, mazes kind of, or labyrinths that you’re all working together to get through and, um, correct me if I’m wrong. And I just wanna clarify search angels. You do not charge a fee. This is all stuff you just are doing for fun as volunteers from your heart. Mm-hmm you just love
Speaker 4: (35:29)
To do it. That’s correct. Yep.
Speaker 1: (35:31)
That’s amazing. That’s really amazing. Um, and I I’ve, I mean, I’ve, I’ve known that and I’ve, I’ve talked with other search angels, but every time it’s just, um, it really amazes me and, and I just, I can’t I kinda can’t fathom not get, like, I just imagine that you’re not sleeping very much and I can’t, I just can’t put myself in your shoes. Um,
Speaker 5: (35:55)
Can’t sleep when you have a case and it’s like, just running through your head. Val just had one, um, which we, we were all assisting. Val took the lead on this one, uh, the ado case. Oh, oh my God, you can’t sleep when you, sometimes you’re laying in bed and you’re like, know what? I can’t sleep anyways.
Speaker 1: (36:14)
So might as
Speaker 5: (36:15)
Well yeah. The case on the computer.
Speaker 1: (36:18)
Yeah. I wanna hear about that case, but I, I, I wanna hear about the, the case that, that Valerie had, but I also, I just was just occurred to me, part of the brainstorming about the hows and the whos of everybody has got to also be, um, it’s gotta demand a lot of like cultural education too, right? Like, you’ve gotta know, like, when you talked about the Polish family, you’ve gotta, you’ve gotta know about immigration and you’ve gotta know about what is happening at Ellis island or wherever, and you’ve gotta know about what was going on with different families or what religions were affecting or why choices to give up a baby would, would have made sense or not made sense. Yeah. Um, so I, I think that’s really interesting that that so much of it is so much of it is data. You’re looking at data, but you’re also weaving and, and sort of like digging through, um, human nature, right? Like human,
Speaker 5: (37:14)
What was happening in 1938 in Poland that would make someone just a, a whole family migrate. Right. Um, researching that, you know, mm-hmm, , uh, finding out what was going on his history. Um, not necessarily related to the family, what was going on in that area.
Speaker 1: (37:34)
Right. I mean, I, I can guess pretty quickly what was going on in 1930 Poland, but I can see others. I can see other times being a, being a harder or a more, would take more research. Um, yeah. That’s so that’s, so, uh, that that’s really interesting to me is sort of digging through what was going on for hu the human condition at that time change from family to family or region to region. Um, you
Speaker 4: (37:58)
Learned so much, you know, I mean, even outside of the, you know, genealogy aspect of things, you know, I think we’ve learned so much culturally and historically, you know, about different things, just, you know, depending on the time error and things that you’re focusing on.
Speaker 1: (38:14)
Yeah. Yeah. That is so cool. So tell me about this other case.
Speaker 3: (38:18)
Oh my goodness. It’s maze.
Speaker 5: (38:21)
It’s a big, that was incredible,
Speaker 3: (38:25)
But it’s been one of the most rewarding. So Val jump in because she did take the lead on this and we all helped along the way, but she was the mastermind to come
Speaker 1: (38:35)
Up with our, that was a focus,
Speaker 2: (38:39)
Uh, incredible we’ll call the person that we were helping. We’ll call her Gigi. Right. Let’s just stick with that. okay. Um, so Gigi, um, was she, her mom had died when she was a teenager and her mom was kind of a wanderer, right? Like, so she just kind of bounced around from place to place. Her mom’s family was part of the Mormon church. Um, her third, great grandfather was one of the founding members of it. He had nine wi and he had 59 children. So huge, huge, huge family on the mom’s side. Dad’s family was enormous as well. And her top four matches on the paternal side were either adopted or, and PEs. So , we had to solve all of those just to figure out who dad was
Speaker 1: (39:43)
and why, and why was, um, Gigi? Why did she reach out? What was she interested in?
Speaker 2: (39:50)
Well, she never knew who her father was. Oh, okay. She knew like, the person that was on the birth certificate was not her dad. And like, she always kind of knew that and her mom, because she had died when Gigi was about 13, um, you know, she never could really ask her any questions and because she was kind of estranged from the family, nobody really knew mm-hmm , lots of, lots of secrets. Oh my goodness. I could write a book on this. Um, so yeah, Gigi’s top matches were all NPSs are adopted and it was a lot to untangle because there’s so many that were related on both sides that were related to mom’s family, but, and like to a lower match on our family. And I’m like, this is, this is gonna take forever to solve. And it took probably like six months or so to solve it. And are
Speaker 1: (40:54)
You using, um, are you only on the computer or like note cards and post-its going up on a wall? Great thing. everything. Yeah. Like I, I couldn’t do it without, I think I have a big whiteboard back here. oh, a big whiteboard of course. Okay. That’s for me, I had to draw it. I’m a picture. Right. That’s how I am too. So I was just like only being able to
Speaker 2: (41:15)
See, so I definitely draw stuff out. Um, I’m on the computer. Like anything I can to basically visualize what’s going on. And um, so basically her, her entire family. So we know that it’s funny because in this scenario we actually found out who her birth father was before granddad. Um, because her birth father is an MP of course, because everybody is an MP. It . Um, so we as found a half sister for her and that’s how we confirmed who her bio dad is. Um, and so she’s met her half sister and like, I have been like ugly crying every time I get an update because I’m just so excited for her cuz she always wanted a sister and she finally has that mm-hmm and it just keeps getting Wilder and Wilder. The more layers I uncover because on the dad’s side, um, they came over from Scotland.
Speaker 2: (42:25)
So he was, um, granddad was first generation, but over in Scotland they headed different name. So they changed their name when they came to the states. So it was like all of the Scottish family only had this family up until a certain point. And then it was like, they dropped off the face of the earth. And so then I found them in the states and wow, it’s just, it’s so many layers and they, everyone had so many it’s like, and then one, one wife died, they just remarried and then they had more kids and
Speaker 1: (43:00)
Backup backup wives. I mean that’s
Speaker 2: (43:02)
Right. And grandma was also first generation, but her family came over from Italy and her family was kind of unique in the sense that they all came over at the same time, but didn’t end up in the same area. So one, one of ’em one branch ended up in Ellis island and then the other branch came up through new Orleans and then through Arkansas and then they didn’t reunite until later. And then, so I’m trying to figure out like each there’s like 14 kids and then all of them had like nine and 10 kids and married multiple times. And it was just like,
Speaker 1: (43:44)
That’s like entire villages of people. Yeah. Do you also have bigs up do you, do you like, do you have to have I just, just now talking about, I don’t know. I feel like there also should be, there also would be like a lot of geography pins getting bumped around to try and piece it
Speaker 4: (44:05)
Together. Yes. Yeah. You know, this, this story was so awesome though, because these sisters have actually met mm-hmm um, they, they, we were able to connect them and they, um, the sister that we found traveled across country, um, and they have got to spend time and vacation together and they’ve made a wonderful connection.
Speaker 1: (44:29)
How old are they?
Speaker 4: (44:32)
Um, Laris. I’ll let you answer that one. I don’t Larissa’s good at remembering that I
Speaker 3: (44:37)
Wanna say Gigi is 65 and I’m not sure how old half sister is. I wanna say 73 fourish, maybe
Speaker 1: (44:49)
So not, you know, not, not astoundingly elderly. Um, oh no. Okay. And the
Speaker 3: (44:56)
Cool thing about finding the half sister for Gigi is before half sister’s results were even back, she had booked a plane ticket to fly across country to meet Gigi before the results were even, and to confirm that she was a half sister,
Speaker 4: (45:14)
Because she already, she knew they were related. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: (45:18)
She knew there was a relation and thought that, and that was enough
Speaker 4: (45:20)
For, and there was a relation there. Yep. That was enough for her. She knew that in some way, you know, they were, they were related. Um, obviously, you know, we, we wanna solidify and we always want people to take that test so that we can solidify and confirm it. But, um, half sister knew that in some ways she was related and she was going to meet her either way. Um, and then in the meantime, results came back and we found out that they were half sister. So it was wow. That was sweet. Yeah. It was awesome.
Speaker 1: (45:50)
Pete. Um, I’m so here my neck, I’m gonna tell you that my next question is going to be, what is the hardest thing about being a search angel, but before you answer that, I would like to run upstairs and use the restroom really quick. Oh. So everybody just hold on, talk amongst yourselves about what the answer to that question is
Speaker 3: (46:12)
While she’s gonna take a break, I’m gonna do the same.
Speaker 4: (46:15)
All right. What do you guys think is the hardest thing,
Speaker 5: (46:19)
Val?
Speaker 4: (46:20)
Um, oh man.
Speaker 5: (46:22)
Remember when you had to, um, deliver that news that you were unprepared to deliver?
Speaker 4: (46:28)
Yes. Val would definitely be the hardest thing.
Speaker 5: (46:31)
I think the emotional I aspect of it is the hardest. And, um, Deb, I do feel that is where you thrive at is helping people greet for someone they have never met. And you’re very good at that. And Val, um, I think your case where you had to deliver that, that news, I’m still ponding. Is there even a right way to deliver news like that? You know, like, so I think that those, those two things are emotionally, cuz because that point everybody is emotion, you have invested in it and your emotion cause you have to deliver this and then you have to deliver that news to someone else
Speaker 4: (47:22)
Who’s also emotionally invested.
Speaker 5: (47:23)
Yeah. It’s their life. They’re the ones that are affected by that. And it’s incredibly difficult for EV everybody involved and then the same with, um, you know, grieving for someone you’ve never made it so real. Like that is just a, a real feeling and that’s, and, and Deb, you you’re able just the counseling that you have done that I think is amazing. So I think that those two aspects are extremely difficult. Yeah. So I do think you take, think those are, I think those are both good things that we can share. Yeah. And I think the two of you should take that, um, because it’s something, you know, Deb, you have experienced, it is your life, you experience that and helping gender through it too. Um, was incredible. And then, you know, Val having to, to do what she had to do, that was very difficult, so right.
Speaker 2: (48:25)
So we have, yeah.
Speaker 1: (48:28)
Okay. Thank you for waiting. It just occurred to me like last week that I could just ask the people I’m talking with to wait a second, uh, instead of sitting, sitting here. Um, so what is the, so what is the hardest part about being a search angel? Do you think?
Speaker 2: (48:48)
So the hardest part from, for me that, and I experienced it in Gigi’s case, um, one of the people that I helped along the way who was adopted, um, they, I basically had to solve theirs in order to get closer to, you know, Gigi’s answers. And I was so excited that they wanted my help with this and that they were gonna collaborate and share info that I didn’t do the due diligence in preparing them for what, if the results are not pleasant. And so it turned out that this person was the product of se and I, it still really gets me to this day because like, I just felt like I, I should have prepared. I was so excited. I was so excited to talk to this person. They were so anxious to get some answers. Um, and we clicked and they were so, so nice and so helpful.
Speaker 2: (49:54)
And um, I just didn’t stop to think, wait a second, like this could go badly. Um, so delivering that news to the person was the hardest thing that I’ve had to do. Um, I was just so beside myself, because like, I just felt I let them down by not doing the due diligence in preparing them for a potentially bad outcome or an unpleasant outcome. Mm-hmm um, so that was definitely, that was the hardest part. Um, cuz when you see something like that, your heart breaks a little bit, you know, because it’s like, what did this, you know, what did that parent endure? What, you know, like the things that, um, they went through just to get to that point and then , you know, we have so much empathy for the people we get so involved with the people that we are looking into and the families that we’re researching.
Speaker 2: (50:56)
It’s like, uh, you know, like that’s still like a void in my heart. Like I feel so much for that. I have so much empathy for them and like, I just wanna like give ’em a hug. like, I’m sorry, I didn’t do that. You know? So, and, and that’s something that actually we’re going forward, we’re really making a point to let people know in advance, like this could be answers. So if, if this is something that we find do, do you still wanna know or do you want us just to leave everything alone? Um and we’re giving people that sort of option ahead of time yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm so, yeah, that was the, that was definitely the hardest thing that I’ve had to experience.
Speaker 4: (51:41)
Right. I think for me, I think for me the hard part is, um, and I think because I’ve lived it, you, you know, I’ve, I’ve walked in many of the people that we work with I’ve, I’ve walked in their shoes and um, I’ve had the opportunity to walk alongside of several people that, um, you know, how do you explain to somebody how to grieve something that they never knew or that they never had. And obviously I don’t have the, that kind of degree or, you know, background, I just try and share, you know, my, what my experience has been and, um, how I try and get through it. And, you know, the girls will tell you some days are better than others. I mean, some days I, I mean, I still have really bad days. I mean I’m 10 months into this process and I’m still trying to figure it out and understand how to process it and deal with it. So for me, that’s been, the hardest part is handling all of my emotions and everything I’ve had to deal with. Um, but at the same time trying to help the people, um, that we’re working with. So that’s, that’s my biggest challenge.
Speaker 1: (52:52)
Yeah. I imagine that depending on what kind of variables each person comes across, it would be triggering in different ways for different people. Mm-hmm um, yeah. So it sounds like the emotional connection is what’s harder, harder than piecing together Senti more.
Speaker 4: (53:08)
Oh, I, I would definitely say that. I mean, I think it’s harder than the, you know, the hours that we put in or, you know, the time that we pull away from our families or anything. I mean, we, we all get really emotionally involved and invested in these things. I mean, otherwise, why would we do it for fun, you know? Um, but it does it, and we’ve all dealt with it. We’ve all dealt with different, you know, people that we worked with that, you know, some of them pull on some of our heartstrings a little more than others. Um, but you know, that’s, that’s definitely the toughest part.
Speaker 1: (53:44)
Mm-hmm . Wow. That’s so interesting. Um, is there anything else you want me to know or you wish I had asked about your life as, as search angels, as your friendship, as your group, uh, for people that wanna reach out to you?
Speaker 2: (54:03)
I think it’s just important to kind of know that, like we do bounce ideas off of each other a lot. Um, but sometimes like we will kind of take smaller cases and that doesn’t mean that like we, um, we don’t still like kind of bounce off ideas and get a second set of eyes on it, but we really like, at least I know I personally really like the more difficult, like the challenging stuff, you know, if people have told you in the past, I’m sorry, I can’t help you because of Indo me or because of whatever, like, those are the type of things that really we thrive off of. And I think because there’s so many different eyes looking at it and we’re able just to kind of see different things from a different point of view, it really helps us break through some of those brick walls where other people, if it’s just one person looking at things, it would be overwhelming. Right.
Speaker 1: (55:00)
Um, so even if you’ve been, even if, even if other search angels or people helping have, have felt discouraged or given you discouraging Infor news in the past, mm-hmm, , it doesn’t hurt to go ahead and, and touch base with you because you guys might be, bring a whole new, a, a new, a new research skillset to the
Speaker 4: (55:20)
That’s. That’s absolutely true. I mean, the case that we solved of the 80 year old woman, um, she had worked with someone else that, you know, for whatever reasons, you know, unfortunately, um, wasn’t able to help her solve her case. Um, you know, and like I said, I think there were various things involved in why that happened. Um, you know, I think with four of us, it kind of, you know, I mean, there’s four people, you know, coming up with different ideas. Mm-hmm, , I think one of the most important things that we all feel is, um, everyone deserves to know their truth. Hmm. You know, agreed. Yes. I mean, we, we all agree with that, that no matter what everyone deserves to know their truth and how they write their story and what they decide to do with it is completely up to them. Yes.
Speaker 5: (56:08)
Completely agree. And I think another thing for NPE or adoptees or whomever is to, um, go into this with an open mind, have no expectations and understand that you are not a secret, um, people are not secrets. And so you shouldn’t be, uh, kept that way. And that’s how we kind of operate is we’re, we’re looking for the truth. And, um, you know, and we pick up lessons along the way with each case, there is a new lesson that we get. Um, and we kind of incorporate that to set expectations, uh, for are helping others. But, um, also that we’re looking for the truth and, and that’s essentially what we’re gonna get, uh, to the end until the end. We’ll, we’ll keep searching. We like the harder cases. That’s what we like to do. Um, they take a little bit more time. Um, but, uh, we also make bonds along the way, uh, with, uh, be collected so many, so much family that isn’t biologically family, but they’re family. ,
Speaker 1: (57:09)
Mm-hmm . Yeah. That’s just wonderful. That is wonderful. All right. Well, gosh, ladies, um, thank you so much for spending some time with me this morning. This is really fun. Um, I, yeah, I just, I just, uh, I think you guys are, I don’t know, you’re a fun, you’re a fun group and you’re, and you all have your heart in the right place and you’re working together. It’s just gonna, it’s just, it’s really lovely. Um, so I will, so what’s happening right now is that I’m on hiatus probably till after the holidays. So I’m just collecting all the episodes and then they will all come out, um, in 2022. Um, that’s so I’ll of course keep in touch with you and let you know what, what, and when that, that looks like. Um, and in the meantime, if anything else comes up or you think there’s any information you want me to have, or if you wanna send me any pictures or, um, other there contact information or links that you think would be helpful, um, just send ’em my way and I’ll put it all together when I release the episode. Sounds good. Thank you for allowing us to be on and share our story. Yeah, so great. I, it was so fun. This was I’m. I didn’t, I don’t go into anything with expectations, but this was, um, like so much more fun than I expected a really pleasantly surprise. Really pleasant. Yeah, absolutely. All right, everybody have a great weekend. Um, keep in, keep in touch and I will do the same. Bye.
Speaker 1: (58:43)
Bye.
Speaker 1: (00:02)
That way it’s just, you’re going. We don’t have to worry about it. How are you? I’m okay. Thank you so much and sorry that I was like a scheduling, um. Uh, no problem. I’m going to go quiet. So have you been, I’m fine. I’m good. We’re just trying to, we’re trying to like, get everything together to get Lily, to call it’s a college in New York. So, so, which is fun. Uh, but she’s like super anxious. And so we’re trying to be like, you don’t have to go. It’s totally cool. Like, you don’t have to go, but also be like, try you, you try and go. You should try and go. Absolutely. You know what I mean? So it’s like, you can check, go, and if you don’t like it come back, but then it’s also like, oh, we have to have all these good to have like, just, just like so much, like stuff to do, like yeah, no sheets. She needs sheets, like all the stuff she needs. And then like, they have all the, you know, and then all these things you need to upload and like so many papers, so much paperwork. So we’re just kinda like, we’re gonna like eat that right now. So it’s exciting, but a little bit stressful. You’re ready for her to be on the other side. I’m ready.
Speaker 1: (01:26)
I’m ready for her to be over there, but yeah. Yeah, because you know, like we, I mean, she’s traveled a lot and she lived with her dad for a few years, so yeah. Yeah. And I think we’ll probably be out there. It gives, it gives us an excuse to visit a lot. And then also, um, Caitlin has like, uh, he has one of his shows, not his show, but a show he wrote on his shooting there right now. So, um, so he’ll have reasons to go there and stuff, so sure. You’ll be all right. How are you doing? I’m okay. Getting my house remodeled. Oh, you are. I am my bathrooms. Um, and my basement. Yeah. Are you getting like a finished basement? I already wasn’t, but I’m getting it redone. Uh, and just adding a few things taken away things, you know? Sure, sure. Cool. Um, awesome. Uh, where are you located? Um, I’m a New Jersey. You are, I am up in Western New Jersey. Yeah. Okay. I was going to say that you were in Philadelphia. Well, I’m originally from Philadelphia. That’s how I know that wasn’t like totally left field. I didn’t just like invent that. Not at all. I’m from Philly originally, but I’ve been in, uh, west stepper, New Jersey now for nine years. Oh, okay. So not even that long,
Speaker 2: (02:59)
I mean, nine years is not that long. Okay. No, it’s not. No. Okay, cool. All right. Are you ready? I guess I’m ready. Yeah. I don’t think it’s anything. It’s not going to be anything you haven’t talked about before. Sure. Right. Um, all right. Wait. And I gave you that, that list of questions, I should look at them so that we go in the order that I asked them to write it doesn’t yeah, it doesn’t matter. Okay. So the first, the first question, I don’t know why that made me giggle. The first question is where did you grow up and what was that like?
Speaker 3: (03:41)
Hm, good question. Um, I grew up in south Philadelphia, um, with my mother, her husband and my seven siblings. I am the oldest of eight from my mother. And as far as, um, how was that? Um, I, I had a very traumatic childhood. I grew up in, uh, in a drug ridden home, um, with a lot of abuse, um, and neglect,
Speaker 2: (04:30)
But here I am. Here you are. And, um, when did you, um, first w when did your, the NPE status for you first, first come into light? Or when did you first become aware of it?
Speaker 3: (04:47)
So for me, a little different than most people.
Speaker 2: (04:50)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I know it is. So, yeah, yeah, go do it. Okay. Sorry.
Speaker 3: (04:58)
That’s okay. So, um, I was, um, I guess I, all right. So my mother’s husband who I believed was my father, who I was told was my father. Um, I found out later on that my mother got with him when God got in a relationship with him when I was around two years old. So, yeah. So,
Speaker 2: (05:22)
And like, she was pregnant with you when she met him or something like that. There’s the overlap isn’t like that it was, you were already too. Okay.
Speaker 3: (05:30)
Correct. And, uh, she had, I guess they, you know, they had me call him dad, so that’s all I ever knew. Um, and in about third grade, um, I was going to Catholic school at the time. Um, my mother’s sister, my aunt Betsy, she paid for me to go to Catholic school, um, at the time. And I went to school one day and I had a, you know, they have a very strict uniform policy. Girls aren’t allowed to wear pants. You know, everything had to be, you know, you got to follow this guideline. So I went to Catholic school. Yeah. So I was not in my proper attire. And they told me I had to take off the excess clothing that I had on, which was a long sleeve shirt underneath my shirt. And, um, uh, like pants, like leggings or something underneath my dress. And I was covered in bruises. And, um, my teacher asked me what happened. And, uh, I told her [inaudible] and so they called for a meeting and meeting, my mother was in the office with the principal and he made me go outside the door. But you know, that ain’t going to be that easy for me. I was, I was in there, had my ear to the door, listening to everything.
Speaker 2: (07:03)
I don’t think they’re to this day. I don’t think anyone’s figured out how to make, I mean, not how to make, but to this day, no one has made like a soundproof principal’s office. They just haven’t.
Speaker 3: (07:17)
And I, and I was listening and I heard my mother say, well, that’s not her real father. And from that point forward, I was determined. So determined. Even at a young age, I would ask questions, you know?
Speaker 2: (07:32)
So I thought she told you, she didn’t, you overheard it. I did not know that I had missed miss remembered.
Speaker 3: (07:42)
Oh, okay. And then I confronted her about it. And of course the whole dynamic from that point really changed because it made sense because it was the only one that got the blunt of the abuse. Most of the time it was, you know, said it was behavioral reasons. Um, but it was definitely so much different
Speaker 2: (08:10)
Than what your other siblings were experiencing
Speaker 3: (08:12)Then my other siblings. Yeah, sure. Which all my other siblings are his children and don’t get me wrong. They were her spared. I mean,
Speaker 2: (08:21)
They weren’t living like a life of luxury with cake and delegated delicacy. Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 3: (08:27)
Uh, the abuse was just different. Um, it was more torturous, I guess you would say on my end, rather than punishment, um, you know, it was, um, kneeling in a corner in the kitchen on rice and, you know, um, for hours at a time, and if you got up removed, like I was, you know, that’s another hour, I’m there, that’s another, you know, it was, um, the ELLs, you know, that’s anything like sadistic, just, yeah. Oh, yes.
Speaker 2: (09:06)
[inaudible] stick. Can I ask you something? What did the school do? Anything at that point, other than call your mother into talk? Did something, did anything change at the house?
Speaker 3: (09:18)
Oh, so yeah, the school called, um, DHS, which is department of human services for, you know, the Phillips city of Philadelphia. And they came out and, uh, you know, it was one of them things where we got a lot of kids here, where, where are you going to put all these kids? You know what I mean? I think that’s what, and they just at them. I’m sorry.
Speaker 2: (09:42)
You can swear. It’s okay. I was like, is that why?
Speaker 3: (09:47)
Nah, you know, it was, they, they didn’t care. You know, it was one of them things where, you know, my mother just, oh, she’s just a troubled child, you know, whatever, and yes, I’m not the best mom and I’m poor, but you know, we don’t have use our kids, you know, um, which was totally not the truth. Wow. And they had came out multiple times. Oh. They were out there all the time, even before that.
Speaker 2: (10:18)
And this was, and this was before. I mean, I don’t know what they do. I don’t, I’m assuming that it’s changed in, in Philadelphia. Cause it’s, it’s not that way here, but like there was no time for them to talk to the kids alone or like it was talking to the parents, it was just talking to the parents
Speaker 3: (10:32)
And then get the parent, which is not how DHS functions now. Um, yeah, so it was definitely only talking to parents. Um, they had time for preparation too. They knew when they were coming. Oh, great. Okay. Um, so what happens is, you know, okay, let’s throw some food into here real quick and make it look like we have stuff, which we normally didn’t. Um, or, you know, sometimes it was like the electric or the water, you know, they’d have to check all that stuff. And if she was given enough time, she would call her husband’s mother to, you know, um, make sure everything was right before they came, which was, you know, my grandmother at the time. Wow. And she was, uh, his, he was her only child and she did everything that he said, you know, wow. He abused her too. So it’s not like, um, the abuse didn’t stop at his wife and children.
Speaker 3: (11:38)
Um, it, it, his mother as well, he was equal opportunity. Oh, absolutely. But you know what he was to think about it now. He was such a, um, so many people feared him. Hmm. Just because I guess, because he had a beard and he, you know, was like, I don’t know, you remind you of like a, just a wiper or something. You know what I mean? But he was really the biggest, like when I think about it now. Yeah, sure. And I thought, I’d think to myself, like, man, you know, um, you know, weak people try to create fear and people, you know, oh, I do know. Yeah. They have. And that’s what he did. He created fear in so many people just because he was just such a weak man. [inaudible], you know?
Speaker 2: (12:37)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know that. I know that intellectually. Um, but it’s still hard to hear the stories, uh, and still hard not to categorize them. It’s just a monster. Oh. That he is yeah. Like, or, you know, like, can, can I see a monster and recognize it comes from weakness? That’s a, that’s a strong, I mean, I think that maybe that’s something we struggle with, we all struggle with I’m sure. You know. Okay. So, so the relationship changed when you knew that he wasn’t your real father. So from third grade. So tell me how it changed.
Speaker 3: (13:23)
So third, third grade on, um, it definitely changed because now I knew, and now I understood why I was being treated the way that I was. Um, he was physically, mentally, emotionally, sexually abusive to me. Um, and I guess, you know, it just, it just made sense. So as time went on, I would constantly question my mother, you know, I’d say so who’s my real dad. And she would say, I don’t know. And I’d say, we’re head. I don’t, you know? Yeah. I’m sick.
Speaker 2: (14:03)
So she did it. So she would admit you had, she would admit at as much that, okay, it’s not this guy.
Speaker 3: (14:10)
Oh yes. Because she knew at that point that I had heard her. So she can’t lie to me now. Got it. Um, yeah. And if you call her out on her, she, you know what I mean, either they’re gonna deny, deny, or just, you know, but she knew, I knew at that point and I questioned my family, my aunts and uncles, my grandma there, um,
Speaker 2: (14:34)
It’s kind of sweet to think of as sweet and sad and, and it’s all sorts of things to imagine a little girl going up to just everybody and saying like, so who’s my real dad.
Speaker 3: (14:43)
Yeah. Yeah. Um, so as time went, one, uh, the abuse never stopped at one. He had left my mother for another woman. And when that happened, it was like some, you know, it was like, um, Christmas, you don’t hear. Right. You know? Um, and, and have some normalcy in life, you would think a little bit. I mean, even though the living conditions and stuff were never, um, adequate, it was still a better situation with him not being in the home, uh, that only lasted a couple months. And then he came back and at that point it was, um, he got even worse, you know, it wasn’t just like, it was just him in the house doing the drugs. And like his friends would come over and literally they would sit there and smoke crack on the couch. Why us kids just sit there and watch TV all in the same room, you know, um, drug use got really heavy and then it turned into, you know, he had to find other ways to get his drugs. If you didn’t have money, you know, my mother got welfare for all these kids. Right. And literally the way that the money was sent out was so crazy. So they would get their food stamps, go wait in line, pick up their food stamps, pick up the cash, whatever it is that they were getting that day and, um, come home and the money would be divided at that $0.50 a day for food,
Speaker 2: (16:26)
Not off for all, for all eight kids, all the kids, total $5 total, correct.
Speaker 3: (16:33)
$5 per child, pretty much, you know, per I mean, per, you know, per day, pretty much or groceries. Um, and then most of the money got cashed in, at the, um, corner store, a little Chinese store around the corner that they would, um, they would cash in food stamps for cash.
Speaker 2: (16:56)
Oh, they’re not supposed to do that. The parents or the store.
Speaker 3: (17:02)
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, that would, you’d go around there and you’d give them the food stamps and pretty much it just depended on which store you went to. Or, you know, it got different as time when one, but it would be like 50, 50. Sometimes the one place would do like 75, 25, um, the exchange rate. Oh yeah, absolutely. So, uh, it was either 50 50 or, or, you know, 75, 25 and, um, then that $5 a day. So let’s see, what are we going to get for $5 now I do the grocery shopping. I’ll go to the store. This is what we gotta get. Okay.
Speaker 2: (17:47)
Saying I’m ready.
Speaker 3: (17:49)
Okay. Two for a dollar spaghetti. So you get two bucks, the two pounds of spaghetti for $1 99 cent jar of spaghetti gravy sauce. As some people call it, but south Philly we call it gravy. Okay. And then that would be, that would literally be the meal. Right. And then you’d get a loaf of bread, which, you know, bread, we use bread for everything because it was like the filling it’s been. Right. Yeah, absolutely. Um, and then two packs of hotdogs or, you know, something, or like, um, four cans of tuna fish or something, a protein that other dollar, right. You knew to get a protein. Yeah. So, um, and then that would be like our lunch and dinner for the day. We never re or, you know, vice versa. We always ate breakfast at school. Um, or we just didn’t need it at all lunch. We ate at school too, but we always tried to have that extra, like, you know, food there and, uh, you know, for the younger ones who were home from school.
Speaker 4: (19:02)
Right.
Speaker 3: (19:03)
You know, there’s always someone that’s there. Um, so at this point, we’re going to say, maybe I am in fifth grade. I’m in fifth grade. I am in the middle of school now, uh, public middle school. Um, I will go back a little bit. I was removed from the Catholic school, just say now.
Speaker 4: (19:26)
Okay.
Speaker 3: (19:27)
Okay. So that wasn’t working out for some money for somebody, it wasn’t working out for them reporting them. That’s what it wasn’t. Okay. We’re back in the public school. And I was giving to Steven Gerard, um, school. And then once I was done there, I went to the middle school, which is bare metal. Um, and I I’m in fifth grade. And at this point I am being told that I need to stay home and watch children
Speaker 4: (20:05)
Able to attend school.
Speaker 3: (20:08)
So truancy is coming into effect. Um, they come out to the house, um, you know, a truancy comes out or DHS is involved again, of course. And you know, they say, you know, why aren’t you in school? And, uh, the rest of my mother, why is she not in school? And they’re saying, oh, she gives us a problem. She doesn’t want to get up and go in the morning.
Speaker 4: (20:38)
Oh,
Speaker 3: (20:41)
Now I’m on a edit point. And I know this is going to be really hard for you to believe, but
Speaker 2: (20:47)
I’m like, Nope, lion. I was like, when did you get mouthy? Cause I feel like that had to have started at some point in there. Right. Okay. So now you can speak up. You’re like, now you’re like 11.
Speaker 3: (21:02)
Yes. And they’re looking at me giving me that. I, you know, like I swear to God when they leave your dog and believe me, I always be the consequence for my actions when it came to that, you know? Um, but of course they didn’t do nothing again. They just said, you know, you better be back in school. You need to follow, we’re going to follow up, blah, blah, blah. Again, uh, you know, I went, so of course I was able to go back to school, which was like, yes, thank God. Um, went back to school and then I’m going to say, seventh grade now is where it gets a little tricky. Um, again, I’m not able to go to school, I’m staying home and taking care of kids. You know,
Speaker 2: (21:47)
You’re the oldest, you’re 13, let’s say right. 12 or 13.
Speaker 3: (21:51)
Yeah, I was probably, yeah. Yup. 12.
Speaker 2: (21:54)
And then the rest of them are 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3. Like, are they just,
Speaker 3: (22:00)
So my one semester after me is three years younger than me.
Speaker 2: (22:03)
Right. That would be the biggest gap I’m guessing.
Speaker 3: (22:05)
Yeah. And then everybody from there is, yeah, it’s like a year or two here too, you know? Um, so I am being kept down from school again. I’m taking care of kids. I remember at one point, my sister, my one sister was born and, um, she is, I think she’s 10, she’s 10 years younger than me. Okay. She is 10 years younger than me. So I was 10 years old when she was born. I can remember my mother coming in the room and saying to me, I’m going to the hospital, I’m having a baby. And I remember crying, not want to take care of another kid. Right. She was only the, she was the fourth after me right now. She was the fifth. She was the fifth one. And I, like I said, and we’re 10 years apart. And I could just remember just thinking to myself, I don’t want to do this no more, but she came and you know, it was what it was. But again, back to seventh grade, we’re, we’re going through this again. Now I’m reporting everything that’s being done. I am
Speaker 2: (23:20)
Constantly, you’re on a mission.
Speaker 3: (23:22)
I’m on a mission. I am in a, in a special program school. Um, they called it the a one program. It was like for troubled kids. It was for kids who didn’t attend school regularly. It was for kids who had bad grades or, you know, anything like that. And we were in a special classroom should I say, but they did a lot of afterschool
Speaker 5: (23:45)
Programs with us to keep us occupied, you know? So I would go in and I would tell them, I told them regular, they would constantly call for DHS to come out. Well, my mother, uh, again, kept me home from school and kept keeping me home from school. So then truancy came out and she told them, um, that I was encourageable. It would be best, you know, cause she had to go to court. So she told the courts, I was encouraged and she thinks it would be best that they placed me somewhere. Wow. But again, that was just her trying to, I don’t have no control over her, you know? So I did, I got put into placement. Um, I was in multiple group homes. Um, I never went into a foster care system, but I was in group homes throughout the city or the state pretty much because I did go to ones in Pennsylvania, but not in the city of Philadelphia as well.
Speaker 5: (24:48)
That lasted, um, I guess it was about a year cause I came back, I guess it was eighth grade, eighth grade year, maybe eighth, ninth grade year maybe. And uh, that’s where it really, um, it really got difficult because now I’m coming back into the situation to where the system releases me back into her care. And I’m going back into this situation to where things have been havoc for this amount of time that I’ve been gone. Right. Um, I’m seeing, you know, the effects of that on my siblings. Um, they’re not being cared for. You know, I would literally have routines with bathing, homework, feeding, all these things that now was put onto my sister after me, this burden, which is, was not something she was, um, she wasn’t ready for it. Yeah.
Speaker 6: (26:02)
Right. I mean she, yeah. I mean, I mean, even if she was capable, she wasn’t ready. She’s three years younger than you.
Speaker 7: (26:07)
So
Speaker 6: (26:10)
It’s absurd. It’s like absurd. It’s unfathomable to think of you let alone somebody younger than you trying to trying to do that. And it, it, yeah,
Speaker 5: (26:21)
Correct. Now I’m at this point I come home and she’s pregnant again with my one and only brother. Oh, it’s all girls. Oh yes.
Speaker 6: (26:39)
Finding light in this dark story. But for some reason it’s sweet. Think of all
Speaker 1: (26:43)
These little girls, man, harp and heartbreaking. But yeah. I always wanted a lot of sisters. Yeah. It’s it’s tricky.
Speaker 5: (26:55)
It is. It is unique. It’s, it’s definitely pretty cool. I guess to have one brother, but he is, he’s a piece of work. I’ll tell you, he’s got a personality. Like you can’t even, oh, he’s a comedian like that kid. Um, so now she’s pregnant with him. Uh, she delivers him in December of 90. Yes. December of 90. And um, I am thirteen, fourteen, thirteen when he was born and uh, he is born with his intestines outside of his body. So he is in the hospital and um, you know, he’s in there for a while. Um, I don’t truthfully remember how long he was in there, but when he came home, he needed a lot of care. He was in, um, cloth diapers because, uh, plastic, you know, rubbing against all his incisions. He doesn’t have a belly button. He just has to go straight down his stomach where they put everything back in and close them up. And um, he comes home and of course I’m like, that’s my baby.
Speaker 1: (28:30)
I got a little boy. Right. You know, and like ready and ready and waiting.
Speaker 5: (28:37)
Um, yeah, I think for the first time, in a long time, like I was kinda like, okay, you know, it was like, I’m ready for this one, you know? And um, he came home and of course the sanitary conditions of the home were never child-friendly. So he has, um, a mesh plate in his stomach. Right. Holding everything in before they closed the incisions and, and sealed him, stitched him. Um, he comes home and he’s home for a period of time. I can’t really tell you how long, but it was a little bit and I was doing the best that I could, um, to take care of him and take care of his wounds.
Speaker 5: (29:29)
Um, and his plate inside of his stomach started to protrude and his incision had opened. Okay. Um, not fully, but it had started to open. It was, there was, you know, something, wasn’t something that he needed to go to the hospital and, uh, it just, everything, everything I ever said was just pushed to the side. Nobody, you have to take him to the hospital. He needs to go to the hospital. Okay. Okay. We’ll do it tomorrow. Okay. Okay. I’ll call here. Okay. Okay. I’ll do no. He needs to go to hospital. You think they took them? No. So what did I do? I took them. [inaudible]
Speaker 5: (30:19)
big. I get there and they tell me that I am not old enough and that his parent had to be there for him to be seen, oh my God, it would not take care of him. Um, and uh, our phone was not on at the time we had no phone at the house. So, um, you know, they tried to call to say, somebody has to come up here, you know? So I had to bring them all the way back home, mind you, I lived, um, on 23rd street and the hospital was about 10, 10 blocks, one way and three blocks the other way. So about 13 blocks away all the way back home. And then, uh, told them that the hospital was going to call the police and have the police come. If one of them didn’t go to the hospital with his baby, then they finally took him smart.
Speaker 5: (31:28)
And, uh, you know, that was that, but that’s where it really started to, you know, pick up to where, uh, the neglect was really bad. Department of human services was always out. Um, people in and out of the house, nobody know who, what, when, where sometimes, you know, we had tons of animals, which I can blame on myself. I would recommend the animal lover to this day. I recording strays everywhere, uh, straight cats in the alley, stray dogs on the street. Um, we had tons of animals, tons of kids and, and no way to have to feed everyone, you know? Um, oh boy, the thing about it now. Um, so at this point, you know, I think that the department of human services is tired of coming out to our house. We have a huge hole in our kitchen floor to where you can’t even get to the sink because of broke and you know, it was never fixed. So we knew we didn’t have running water in the house at all.
Speaker 1: (32:46)
And are you still bringing up to your, to your mom or, or to the, to her husband that, that you’re who you’re asking about who your dad is?
Speaker 5: (32:57)
Oh, all the time. All the time. Absolutely. Absolutely. I think every chance I got and I would route through all her paperwork, I would see if I could ever find anything that said anything about anything and um, you know, figure and she’s on welfare, right? So at this point, somebody said to me, you know, well maybe he pays child support,
Speaker 5: (33:20)
You know, something. So I would go through all the paperwork at one point. Um, no, I guess at that young age I was just, so it was just a lot of questions. I’d ask everyone. I had talked to my cousins about it, my older cousins, I would say, Hey, like many of you know, you know, cause they’re closer to my mother’s age. My mother is the youngest of her siblings as well. So she has, you know, nieces and nephews that are not too far from her age, you know? And they would all tell me, Sandy, I don’t know. But you know, people would say that they would try to get it out of her and she never, she would never give them any information. Uh, then at one point, someone had called the house and asked for my mother. And when I asked who it is, he said his name was, um, Michael and I said to my mom, there’s a guy named Michael on the phone for you. She snatched the phone out of my hand, she ripped it out of the wall. This guy was, you know, I’m like,
Speaker 1: (34:30)
Yep.
Speaker 5: (34:33)
So now I’m like, is that my dad? Wait, that’s my dad, isn’t it. You know,
Speaker 1: (34:37)
I did not play that. Cool, cool.
Speaker 5: (34:41)
We ended up, so at this point I’m like, yeah, God, it’s maybe not Tim’s there now. I’m like, did anybody know Michael? Who knows Michael, nobody ever had an answer. So just a little bit past us. I was 15 years old and um, I am still taking care of children, but I’m also doing a lot more of my own stuff on the streets these days. Um, I used to have to go cop there, cracking stuff from the dealers. Sure. You get privileges to be able to do go out or something like that. And when he didn’t have money, I would go to the dealer and ask her if she would be willing to front him. And uh, pretty much just say, you know, for like, please like me, you know? And, um, I was held up at gunpoint. I was held up by knife point.
Speaker 5: (35:48)
You know, it’s the projects you can, you know, so many things happen and uh, all because I’m copping drugs and, you know, doing these things being so young though, I had zero fear. You know, I felt like I had my worst fears were in my own home, you know, never feared anything on the streets. So, um, at this point in my life and, uh, not too long after that, it really got to the point to where I was taking control and trying to take control of everything in my home, whether it be, you know, the kids and just how things needed to be, um, how I needed things to be for myself too. You know, if I, if I wanted to do things I was taking control and allowing myself to do them. Um, so I had asked my mother, if I could go to a school dance, this is, um, December 20th, the dance was 1992. Um, and I had said a winter dance, like a Christmas winter. Yeah. It was like a winter something, you know, a frost.
Speaker 7: (36:59)
Yeah. For us. Yeah. Frost theme.
Speaker 5: (37:04)
Yeah. So, um, you know, I had said prior weeks before, if I could go, um, she had told me, yes. So the date comes and my friends and my boyfriend and all the, you know, they’re all coming to meet me and we’re going to this thing together. And it was the first event that I had ever attended, you know, at the school. And, um, so I come downstairs and we’ll dress borrowed like clothes from my, one of my friends. I come down the steps and the way that our staircase was, it was like stairs. And it’s like a little landing. And then there’s a couple more stairs, you know? So I’m standing on the landing. And um, my mother’s husband says, where do you think you’re going? I said, well, I’m going to my dance tonight at school. And he’s like, no, you’re not. And I said, oh yes, I am. And he said, no, you’re going to stay home. And you’re going to decorate for Christmas, mine just five days before Christmas. And guess what? They ain’t get us. No gifts. They ain’t never buy it. And you know, I’ll use a lot though. And then you get some dollar store stuff, maybe, you know, or whatever, a five and dime back then, you know?
Speaker 5: (38:25)
But, um, you know, he tells me I’m not going in. And I say him and he tells me to stop talking back to him and we continue to, and he gets up and he comes at me and he hits me. So I grabbed onto the railings and I swung my legs up and I kicked him and he flew across them.
Speaker 1: (38:49)
Mm.
Speaker 5: (38:51)
And he got up and he pulled out his gun and he shot me right in my chest. Nila said, didn’t make it to my dance.
Speaker 1: (39:00)
Didn’t make it to the dance
Speaker 5: (39:03)
Now. Not only the dance, but, um, you know, I didn’t know I was shot. So looking around and all my siblings are there and
Speaker 1: (39:14)
Conscious this whole time.
Speaker 5: (39:16)
I’m awake. Yeah. I feel like I just got pushed back, you know? So I get up and I feel like I’m a little tight in my chest. So like, I can’t breathe a little bit. Right. But I am up and I am like, and I’m looking around and all of my siblings are up the stairs or on the couch or like all around. And I’m looking at them and they are all screaming and crying, but I can’t hear not one of them, but I see their faces. I see all their feet and they’re all screaming and they’re all crying. And my mother’s in the kitchen and she comes in and she goes right over to him and she’s screaming at him. She still does not come anywhere near me. She hasn’t called 9 1 1. I stand up, I walked down the steps and I walked out the front door. At that point I passed out and I guess fell down the steps, the rest of the way, because all I remember is going out the door, thank God. One of my friends was right across the street, crossing the street, coming over and he run to the payphone and he called nine 11. My mother didn’t even call the police.
Speaker 1: (40:26)
Wow.
Speaker 5: (40:29)
And then when asked why she didn’t call the police, she was said she was in shock. She didn’t know what to do when she hadn’t checked on me either at that point. But then she did come outside. Um, after the fact, after the cops were called, she came outside and I had passed out and she was smacking me in my face, telling me I better not die. When I woke up briefly, she was smacking me in my face, telling me I better not die. Um, and then after that, it’s like, you would see in a movie I was being rolled through a hospital. And all I seen was all the lights above me as I’m like being rolled in the hospital. And, and I’m 15 years old at this point.
Speaker 1: (41:12)
And you’re in your 1992 Christmas high school dress, which,
Speaker 5: (41:16)
Well, I wasn’t going dry. I didn’t wear a dress. You wear a dress, but you were all dressed up. And I was dressed up, you know, and I had borrowed clothes from my friends, which, you know, her shirt had a big bullet hole and they’re not getting those back. Yeah. They cut off my new, that’s the only thing that I did have that I bought with the course money that I got doing illegal. Right. Um, but I did get myself just a black pair of sneakers, um, BKS.
Speaker 6: (41:48)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally had those Reeboks. Yep. That was the era.
Speaker 5: (41:53)
Yeah. So, and yeah, so I was in the hospital at this point. That’s when they do something, see that it takes for them to, to, you know, it takes for a child to be shot in order for, you know, the system to work for them.
Speaker 6: (42:12)
What a message,
Speaker 5: (42:15)
You know, um, which is really sad. And, um, they took the children from my mother and placed them all with family. So each of my mother’s siblings took a child or two. And, um, I was only in the hospital for four days and I signed myself out. Um, because I went back and, you know, had to figure out what, what, what it was going to be. I was, I was so controlling. I really, um, I that’s all, I can really think, like I didn’t want to lose control. And I felt like if I was gone too long, I lose control of the situation. I didn’t want to do that. Maybe it wasn’t control. Maybe it was fear. Um, probably a little bit of both.
Speaker 6: (43:13)
Yeah. I mean, control, control and control. And fear is such a way to, or control is a way to cope with the fear.
Speaker 5: (43:26)
Yeah. Oh absolutely. Absolutely. But guess what? He went to jail finally. Finally, somebody did something, you know, that’s all I could think to myself. Like it took all these years, all these years of me reporting and telling and, you know, it’s, they always made it seem like it was a lie or an exaggeration, you know, all these things. Like I’d like to know how they thought that I had all this time in the world to just think of all these crazy lies that I go, I’m going to go and tell everyone, you know, no, it was my life that I was living. And, uh, you know, and the people, there were so many people that seen and knew for it, but they were always too scared to say anything. You know, even to this day, if I see like an old neighbor or something, we’re one of the, you know, people that lived in it and it would say, you know, I’m so sorry.
Speaker 5: (44:31)
We could never help you. Or that you had to go through that. And you know, we all, you know, it’s like so many people knew, they knew our house was Roach infested. You walk past the house, the words were just crawling out of the house. You know, it was like they were sitting on a step waiting for you to come home from school. Like, yeah, that must feel so maddening, horrible, horrible. And, but he, he, my mother testified for him in court as well. Right. When I turned 18, I went and got all the transcripts from my childhood incidents and, um, from the shooting. And, um, she, she testified that, you know, it was an accident or something and he didn’t mean that. And at that point in my life, I knew that I, it was time for me to start pulling away. You know, I, I still, I still knew that, you know, it was, I don’t think I was ready. I wasn’t ready to let it go right away. I still had younger siblings. Um, that we’re what three and a newborn, like she was white, you know, and at, you know, I still had to take care of them, but of course, when I got out of the hospital, there was everybody was still with my aunts and uncles. Right. And,
Speaker 6: (46:16)
And to clarify, um, being with your aunts and uncles, while being separated is not ideal, aunts and uncles were safer, better, healthier. And they had also not done anything all this time.
Speaker 5: (46:35)
Yeah. Well, you know, that’s a rough one, right. Because my mother’s family was not very close as it was. Um, there was only one other, my mother’s one sister lived in, in south Philly where we lived, um, not in that same exact area, but not too far. Um, and my mother barely ever, you know, seen her head, they did talk, but not all the time. It was like they see each other. Yeah. But other than that, nobody went out of their way. My grandmother lived in Southwest Philadelphia, which is also where, um, one of my uncles lived and, um, my, one of my mother’s other sisters lived, um, my had one sister who was, you know, just like that one, you know, and she definitely had tried, she was a police officer herself.
Speaker 6: (47:38)
Oh my God.
Speaker 5: (47:41)
Yeah. She’s the one who paid for me to go to Catholic school. Um, she was a police officer in the city and, um, she had tried, my grandmother had a lot to do with, um, keeping them out of my mother’s situation. She catered, she tend to, to cater to my mother and what my mother wanted. So if my mother said they needed a minor in business, it’s like, you know, my grandmother would say, no, everything’s fine. Just, you know, she’s fine. Leave her, go. Let her figure out her own life. You know, stupid stuff like that.
Speaker 5: (48:19)
My grandmother, my grandmother did when she wanted to, you know, um, she got involved when she wanted to, she kind of, um, I don’t think she really ever had the control over my mother and she never wanted to put too much born my mother. I don’t know. She didn’t want to stress my mother out more by her being upset, you know, or something. Well, my grandfather, my grandmother was also very much, um, you know, you go, I go stay at my grandmother’s house. And my grandmother was like that person who you had to do everything for her when you were there.
Speaker 6: (49:04)
Okay.
Speaker 5: (49:08)
To the point to where she just tapped her coffee cup and you knew you had to go get her coffee.
Speaker 6: (49:13)
Okay. So not exactly a respite from right.
Speaker 5: (49:20)
Um, now my grandmother’s husband, which was, is technically my step-grandfather who I called my grandfather [inaudible] was the most amazing man that I had ever met in my life, you know? Um, and he would try to get involved, but they would shut him down. You know what I mean? And pretty much make it seem like he had no say or no place. Hmm. You know? Um, but he literally was the one person who always made me feel like, um, that was normal, you know, and not, um, when I was with him, it was like, the burdens were gone, you know, he’d take me fishing. Or he had a garden over in New Jersey where he was originally from even, um, he lived in the city, his family had a lot of land and they had a Gordon and we’d go over and pick from his garden. He had a boat, he’d take me out in the boat and go fishing me and my cousin. Um, and, and he hated, he hated them all. He hated all, I think he hated my mother. He hated, you know, I don’t know. I guess he didn’t, but he, um, I could tell he had so much resentment for them, you know what I mean? And the way that they handle things and, you know, I think I can remember like when she would keep having kids and he would just say, when’s enough enough yeah. Of these poor kids, you know? And, um,
Speaker 6: (51:15)
It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s hard to think about all the, for me right now. It’s really hard to think about the adults that weren’t doing anything.
Speaker 5: (51:24)
Yeah. Well, you know what, there was a lot of, you know, mind your business.
Speaker 6: (51:30)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that’s still, that’s still happening, but yeah. And it’s hard, but it, and it’s also hard for me to think about a man, this, the step-grandfather being so kind and seeing what’s going on, but not, not doing certain things about it. Right. Yeah. And, and I, but I’m thinking from the perspective of the serenity prayer, he’s, he’s doing what he can, you know, which is to take you, take you to the garden. Right. And take you fishing. And, um, he can’t change so much, but he’s trying to offer you some like peace and fun and normalcy, and that was the best he could do. It was really wonderful, really wonderful that he was there.
Speaker 5: (52:23)
Yeah. And then, um, I re I remember, um, when I got shot, so after I got out of the hospital, I went, um, and stayed at my one aunt’s house for a few days. And then I wound up going to live with my other aunt who was the cop, because now I am in school, I have to, you know, I have to figure out the new school that I’m going to now, because now they’re not letting me go back into the home until there’s a clearance, you know? Um, even I don’t even understand how they got the clearance either, even when they did, because nothing was, the house was still disgusting. You know? Um, our carpets were like cardboard
Speaker 6: (53:17)
That made me drop my pen,
Speaker 5: (53:23)
You know? Um, and it was regular corporate, not even like indoor outdoor carpet, this is regular carpet. And it felt like cardboard because it’s, they’re dirty between the bugs and the, uh, the unscented Terri conditions of, um, you know, not having water right. In the town. I mean, you can just imagine what, you know, uh, that’s a whole nother story, but, you know, but they did allow the kids to get back with her.
Speaker 1: (54:01)
That is unbelievable, Sandy.
Speaker 5: (54:05)
Yeah. So now she keeps thinking, like
Speaker 1: (54:10)
I was thinking, okay, the kids are in different house. Okay. Like there with other family you’re now with the aunt. Okay. Okay. Okay.
Speaker 5: (54:23)
All the kids were returned to her, except for me at this point. Um, I don’t remember how long after it was that they were returned, but they were returned to her shortly after and he was in jail and he was only sentenced to seven to 15 years and served seven on good behavior and good behavior. The most racist man that I ever met in my life became a Muslim in jail. And, you know, here’s the, here’s the kicker. Are you ready for this? Can you imagine being a child, even not even being a child, just being someone who was tormented and abused for so long by a man and he’s finally in jail. And then one day you walk into the corner store and he’s on the front of the inquire. And it says, man helps to, you know, to change prison, whatever, whatever, with his new, uh, wisdom brothers. Right. That, that they say that he’s it’s, it’s it says, um, I wish I could remember. I could pull it up though.
Speaker 1: (55:46)
He’s like a model of rehabilitation.
Speaker 5: (55:49)
Correct. And, and he’s doing something to change something in the prison system. Wow. Good for him. This is, this is like, yeah. Front in front of something. Is it a paper? Um, this is a man who literally had 50 guns laying around our house at any time, anywhere there’s guns, everywhere, guns, everywhere. He would use our washer and dryer in the basement for target practice. Um, he would take stop. He would steal like newspaper, you know, like the newspaper, the things that used to be on the corners.
Speaker 6: (56:30)
10 boxes. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 5: (56:33)
And he would, he would seal them and take all the money out of them, phones old, um, you know, um, payphones. He would take them, shoot them apart, take all the money out of them. Wow. And they would all be in the basement of our house and he would use them as target practice. He slept with a gun on his side at all times. There was one under his pillow. There was one on the table in front of him. There was one underneath the account. There was probably one on his waist at that point.
Speaker 6: (57:02)
I mean, it’s kind of a miracle that you getting shot was the only gun related incident.
Speaker 5: (57:15)
Absolutely. Well, no, my, my siblings were terrified. They would have never have touched one of them. Yeah.
Speaker 6: (57:21)
Right. I mean, but still, I mean, strangers coming in at the house and eight kids and drug use and like, oh yeah, that’s amazing.
Speaker 5: (57:30)
I think that his friends feared coming in the house and
Speaker 6: (57:35)
No, but he was,
Speaker 5: (57:44)
Um, had the balls to shoot anyone else other than a 15. Right.
Speaker 6: (57:50)
Okay. Wait, you’re frozen. I can hear you, but you’re frozen. Oh, it’s saying my internet connection is unstable. I think there’s probably too many people in the house online. Cause my husband has a call. Lily has a call. Okay. Okay. Wait. So, all right. So everybody gets back with your mom. You’re living with your aunt and
Speaker 5: (58:28)
I’m determined to go back home. Okay. You are in an amazing situation. Living with my aunt. I really am the best. Like I had my own room. I had sheets on my bed. Everything was clean, but I didn’t know how to live like that. [inaudible] um, I think it was hard for me to live that way. Sure.
Speaker 6: (58:53)
That’s a really abrupt transition.
Speaker 5: (58:55)
It was very, um, there was always food. There was everything that normalcy there was normalcy. Right. But I didn’t know how to deal with normalcy. And then I could only think about my siblings and what they’re going through at this point. You know, cause even though I know now that he’s gone, everybody’s swarming into help. So my mother winds up enjoying her freedom a whole lot more. And uh, you know, now that he’s gone, you know, her, her drug use was, um, not like his drug use, you know, like, uh, I don’t know that she ever smoked crack herself. She probably did. At some point he wasn’t an avid every day, crack smoker.
Speaker 5: (59:59)
Um, so now she’s, she got money and you know, she’s, uh, cause he’s not taken, you know, all of it all month long. So now she’s trying to live a pro her life a little bit and you know, do things for herself or for the kids. Um, the house is still a mess though. Not clean, nothing’s getting done there, but now she’s taking a vacation or she’s going out to the bar with her friends. And this is stuff that she would have never have done before. So now that lifestyle was kind of, you know, making her feel her oats of freedom. And uh, I wind up leaving my aunts, which I should’ve never done, but I did and went back to take care of the kids and get back to my neighborhood where I, I was really familiar with, you know, and then I had to start figuring out how I’m going to take care of all these kids while she’s out running the streets now. So new challenge. Oh yeah. Same challenge.
Speaker 6: (01:01:27)
New gel either.
Speaker 5: (01:01:29)
We started the buddy system when it came to the kids, you know, it was like a, every other one watched every other one, you know, one watched over the younger one and kind of got a little pattern going that, that worked for us to be able to make sure things were done. Homework’s done. Chores are done, baths are done. You know, all these things that were not routine
Speaker 6: (01:01:55)
[inaudible],
Speaker 5: (01:01:58)
You know, you’re becoming routine. Uh, I am totally skeeved being back in his home compared to being in the home that I was in with my aunt [inaudible]. But now I assume the role of the parent and I’m tired of that more than ever what she’s going to do and what she’s not going to do and what, you know, not necessarily, um, only one, it involved the kids. You want to go out and drink yourself to death or go out and snort 20 lines and kill yourself. So be it. But when it comes to these kids, this is what we’re going to do and not going to do. Um, at that point, I think she knew that she had no power over me whatsoever and that I had zero fear for her. And, um, she didn’t know how to necessarily take that. My youngest sister, um, was a baby still at this point. Um, very young. And she, uh, You know, she was, uh, I had the least amount of care for her. Like I N like I did the least for her, should I say right? Because now we got this buddy system going. Right, right. And now my other sister is caring for her. And I had been away for a period of time. She is, my sister has been the one taking care of her. So, um, when, I guess when, you know, when I did come back,
Speaker 5: (01:03:55)
I pretty much laid it down that I was going to figure this out. And I was going to get the kids and go about my life with them. Right. She was not going to have that. She said, I wasn’t taking the baby. Then your mother did, or the sister did my mother, your mother, not the baby. Okay. That’s not taking the baby. Right. Because I mean, needless to say it was just because she needs to be able, when she goes into the welfare office, she needs to prove that she has children. And that was like her youngest child. And you would, I guess it’s easy for her to say, oh, the other kids are in school [inaudible] or the, you know, and somebody is watching the other one, but I, you know, she has the baby with her. Like, so every time she had to go recertify for her welfare, she wanted to be sure that she had that child, I guess.
Speaker 5: (01:04:51)
Um, but my sister after me, she took on a lot of the burden. She took on a lot of burden with me, you know, because I depended on her to babysit, to watch the kids, make sure they’re all doing what they need to do while I go. And I do what I got to do in order to make money for us to be able to, you know, all these things. And I’m in a one bedroom apartment, one bedroom apartment, and I’m pregnant with my own child, my first child of my own. Wow. And you are in your, how old are you at this point? 17. 17.
Speaker 7: (01:05:39)
Yeah. And, uh,
Speaker 5: (01:05:45)
Yeah. Now it’s like, everything is, uh, yeah, that’s crazy. Um, I wound up having my daughter and, uh, she was only about three months old and, uh, I was arrested for attempted murder. Um, well it wound up getting, it was aggravated assault, wound up getting aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, uh, what ended up being my final charges [inaudible] um, and my daughter was three months old, so I was in jail. I went to jail for a little bit before I was released on house arrest. They did, they did release me on house arrest. Um, they also tried to pick me up and say that I killed my neighbor, who my neighbor was found dead. Um, which they, of course they figured out that it was not me, but I had had an argument with this neighbor prior, like the night before, like they found her in the morning. Um, and I did have a fight with her. Her dog jumped out the window and, um, I can’t even say I had an argument with her. See her dog jumped out the window and ran down the street and attacked my puppy. Oh no. And I was banging on her door saying, I’m going to kill you. You better get the out here and get your dog. She never answered the door. She was already dead.
Speaker 7: (01:07:42)
Yeah. Right.
Speaker 5: (01:07:45)
She had just bad timing. Yeah. She had hung herself in the basement. So now I feel bad because I think that the dog really just jumped up because the dog was trying to, he didn’t know what to do. He knew she was right. You know, but they thought that I had killed the neighbor because I did say that I was going to kill her. But the figure of speech, I surely did not mean that in that way, but because of my record, I’m sure that that, um, didn’t look good on me because I had had the role aggravated assault, simple assault charges that I had accrued over the years. Right. So they caught that caught their eye. Of course it did. Of course. And I was an angry person. Like there’s no, I was that child that everyone picked on, um, w we were dirty or were dirty.
Speaker 5: (01:08:45)
Right. You know, they used to call me dirty Sandy and no one, you know, the kids in the neighborhood would torture me. Um, my hair was always nasty and not taking care of and you know, all that kind of stuff. So when I did get to that point, right. To where I felt like I was invincible, it, it didn’t play out well for a lot of people. You know, some people got some feedback that they didn’t necessarily realize that they were going to get one day, you know, um, the one girl she had tortured me for years. And I used to remember, I used to hide underneath cars when you were coming down the street, because I knew that she would try, they would try to beat me up, but they would do all the time. And at this point, when I’m living in this apartment and I’m like doing everything that needs to be done for, you know, everyone and my daughter and my niece, I was sitting out front of my apartment with my daughter, my niece, and my ex sister-in-law and the girl walks past. She realizes that it’s me sitting there. And she says, ah, there’s some ugly babies. Oh my God. And I got up and I said to my sister and I used to take the girls inside. When I tell you it was relentless.
Speaker 8: (01:10:16)
And this
Speaker 5: (01:10:17)
Was the first time that I had. I know it’s horrible. But, um, she wound up having to have reconstructive surgery on her face. Wow. Because I stomped her face. Oh my God. And that’s when I realized I had way too much anger in me because now all these people who had made me feel like, my whole life, like this is like, I, I have the power that I never realized that I had. And I, I did. I, I was, I definitely did not let anybody walk all over me from that point forward. Nobody ever puts their hands on me. If you put your hands on me, it was the motor story. And I, I, you know, I made sure of that. And, um, yeah, it was rough. It was rough. I definitely, when I think about it now, I think about just the anger that I had and, and the feeling of having control at that point was such a rush. I knew. And I said to myself, like nobody’s ever gonna walk all over me like that ever again, you know, but it just shows you how damaged I was
Speaker 6: (01:11:40)
Just makes it so easy to understand how, how the cycle
Speaker 5: (01:11:45)
Happens. Yeah. Like, oh yeah,
Speaker 6: (01:11:48)
This makes it, you’re just laying out. Like, this is, this is a by step. This is how it happens.
Speaker 5: (01:11:55)
Yeah, it is. And it’s, it’s a very hard cycle to break, especially when it comes to, um, you know, I never got into drugs. Thank God. I never wanted to be that person. The most I ever did was smoke weed. I never did no, no hard drugs, you know, and especially not cocaine or anything like that, you know? Um, but the, when you find ways to make money and you know, that you can make money doing things that are not legal, um, that is an addiction in itself. Right. So even though you don’t have the addiction of the drugs, you have the addiction of the want for something that, you know, comes easy,
Speaker 6: (01:12:56)
Comes easy and you, and you’re coming from such a place of like deficit to not have anything, to not have anything to be, to be budgeting hotdogs, and then be offered this opportunity where you’re like, wait, I do this and I do this and I get this much money.
Speaker 5: (01:13:15)
Oh yeah. Oh yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And then, uh, you know, for a lot of people, drugs come along with, you know, uh, whether it be prostitution or drug dealing itself, you know, um, people find that that’s easy ways to make money when you’re, um, when you’re in a place of poverty and what, yeah. You’re so driven because you know that you need to make that money in order to survive and in order for children to survive. Yeah. Right. Whatever it is do you have to do? And at that point, it becomes very selfish. You don’t, you don’t care who you’re hurting. You don’t care what people think. All you care about is you’re, you’re able to take care of yours.
Speaker 5: (01:14:15)
And to this day, that is, um, you know, some things never leave you. And, and that drive is something that I think is always there. You know, you know, it’s like, I know that if I needed to, I could always find a way to make money. Yeah, sure. Some people think to themselves, like, what am I going to do? [inaudible] can’t work. If I can’t do this, what am I going to do? I feel like I always have, I will always find something. It might not be legal. I have to, I will always have something. Right.
Speaker 6: (01:14:53)
Your, your drive to survive is stronger
Speaker 5: (01:14:56)
Then. Yeah. Then your drive to obey. Correct. Where you need to obey, but I’ll tell you, I mean, it’s definitely has, it’s something that stays with you, the trauma of, of that kind of childhood, [inaudible],
Speaker 5: (01:15:20)
It’s something that comes into you follows you into relationships, whether it be with your relationships in the way that you raise your children. I was so protective of my children and never let them go anywhere. Never let them do anything that I was not there. Least my older three, my younger two. It seems a little more, um, I’ve I have a little bit more of an understanding and I try to be a little bit more, um, lenient with them. And, but my older ones were never, I mean, my son was 14 years old and he wasn’t allowed to leave my street. That’s not normal.
Speaker 6: (01:16:12)
Right.
Speaker 5: (01:16:18)
And I, and I can see that I, you know, that it wasn’t right, but it was a fear and that fear makes that control, um, come out and it’s just, uh, it’s sad. It’s something that I work on every day. It’s never, um, you know, it’s never something that’s fully, um, what’s the word I’m looking for. I don’t want to say fully under control, but fully, um, cause the whole point is that the control fully,
Speaker 6: (01:16:58)
It dissipates fully leaves. You fully heals.
Speaker 5: (01:17:02)
Yeah. Resolves or recovers. Something feeling is always something that, uh, is important. And, and yeah. I think we got off track with my dad a little bit though, right?
Speaker 1: (01:17:16)
Yeah. That’s okay. That’s what these stories do. Yeah. Because it’s all still a part of the story. That’s your thing, you know, it’s like, yeah.
Speaker 5: (01:17:25)
Oh, I just remembered something. Right. So one, remember when I turned 18 and I went and got all that paperwork. Yeah. I went up to family court, family court, if there was ever a custody or anything, you know, and the document that they were able to give me only had a first name. Michael
Speaker 1: (01:17:46)
Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Right. A man named Michael called and your mom ripped out the phone.
Speaker 5: (01:17:55)
So now
Speaker 1: (01:17:58)
That’s so resourceful. How at age 18, did you know to go to city? Did you know to do all that? You just knew? Um, I don’t know if I was 18. If I would know that I could go to court and get records,
Speaker 5: (01:18:12)
I was absolutely very resourceful. Um, I was extremely, I mean, I, I asked a lot of questions. I always ask people, I talked to the, I, I was very resourceful in that matter to where I, I always had to get my answers. I would just keep asking. And so somebody, and then somebody said, oh, how about you check this? Or,
Speaker 1: (01:18:36)
Yeah, we’d have to go to the rec and you have to go to court for that. You have to go the records. Yeah. Amazing.
Speaker 5: (01:18:40)
Okay. Was my public defender or my, my, my, um, the, my, the attorney that I, when I, after I got shot, right. We came very close with her. We stayed in contact. So she would give me little, you know, information here and there on things that I can do to try to figure stuff out. Great. Okay. Let me see. Okay. She would call me and stuff. I had her number at any time I could call her. Um, and she was just like the vendor. She was, you know, an attorney that was given to me through this state. You know, she was, no, she was the attorney, the district attorney for, yeah. She was the district attorney for the state prosecuting him. But you know, of course, because I was a minor. Right. I was not, you know, I couldn’t press charges. So the state pressed charges for him
Speaker 1: (01:19:39)
On your own, in your, on your behalf. Correct. So now, you know, his name is Michael.
Speaker 5: (01:19:46)
Oh, Nellie. I assume his name is Michael. I assume his name is Mike. Right? Right. The things are falling into place. Right. We got this place called. It says just Michael, no last name on this paperwork. And so I am looking for this, Michael. Now at this time I am watching these, I don’t know, documentaries or something on television. And I’m seeing all this stuff about DNA. Right. So now I’m thinking to myself, oh, I could just go take a DNA test. That’s all good. Important. I say, can I take a DNA test number? Like, well, who are you taking a DNA test with?
Speaker 1: (01:20:26)
Oh, that’s so cute.
Speaker 5: (01:20:29)
Can I just give you my DNA? And, and they’re like, nah, that’s not how this works. You know? So I was kinda on my own at that point.
Speaker 1: (01:20:40)
You’re so close though. You’re so close. So close.
Speaker 5: (01:20:43)
I got the right idea here. Totally. And, uh, of course for, for several years it was just like, there, there wasn’t too much that I could do. And then computers came out and I was like, ah, man, I just computer. It’s like, you know, dial up whole nine. And I’m thinking to myself, like, um, I, with this computer, like, I’m going to be able to just do anything I want to do. You know, of course I realized quickly that I am computer illiterate because you know, there’s, I know nothing other than we purchased one,
Speaker 1: (01:21:23)
But you’re right in that you can almost do anything once you figure it out, right. With one finger at a time. Yeah.
Speaker 5: (01:21:31)
Yeah. And I’m, I’m doing whatever. Um, um, getting people to help me who do know about computers to tell me whatever it is, I need to know how do I do this things or this thing. Um, and now I am searching for Michael’s on the white pages and I’m doing all these things. I knew where my mother lived at the time when I got pregnant. So now I’m looking through to the, if you know, um, I want to last name still don’t have a last name.
Speaker 1: (01:22:02)
Michael Scott, could it be a more, I was going to be a more common name to be searching by first name only. It was the worst. So that is the worst. Hold on one second. I’m going to, I’m going to run and go pee real quick. Okay. Let’s do it. Let’s take a break. I’m gonna pause there. Like it’s like, I go upstairs and it’s like, mom, did you get my texts? Because there’s dah, dah, dah. And then the five-year-old is like, mum, what are you going to be done? Are you still working? Are you going to be done? Cause are you going to watch power Rangers with me later? I was talking to my friends when she said like, okay guys, guys, guys, gotta go. Gotta go. Okay. I’m back. All right. Okay. So we left off, you were at you, you got a computer and you’re teaching yourself and getting all the help you need. Because now you’re using the white pages to find like, oh Michael, any Michael, that might be your debt. Okay. So
Speaker 9: (01:23:05)
Then I go to the library, right? Because now the library is doing like some free class, you know, to learn how to type or learn how to use a computer, you know, computer. So I go to the library and while I’m there, I realized there’s this genealogy thing going on. Right. And they have like this group. So now I’m just standing back and I’m listening, I’m watching. And I’m like, these people can help me. Of course, these are just family, tree builders, you know, they’re, they’re not like, you know, so, you know, I quickly learned that you need to know the people before you can add the people. Right, right,
Speaker 6: (01:23:52)
Right, right, right. But it’s amazing to think of you, like kind of one, I don’t know. It’s like one little step clue. Like you’re, so you’re getting there though.
Speaker 9: (01:24:05)
So then I find out that, uh, you know, that there is going to be some kind of this DNA test that is going to be, uh, uh, commercial DNA tests. And I’m like, okay. Yeah. I signed me up. I want all that information. And, and I, and I, I did, I did my research. I got all the information and ancestry. I sent them. Uh, I mean, I don’t think ancestry test actually dropped until 2010, 11, something like that. Um, so before that, what did I do before that? I wound up having a stroke,
Speaker 6: (01:24:58)
Jesus Christ
Speaker 9: (01:25:00)
In 2009 and to come figure out what it was from. And then we realized it was from Chantix. I was taking Chantix.
Speaker 6: (01:25:10)
Sorry, hold on. You’re fine. I don’t think I’ve ever had a surprise coffee. I mean, actually, maybe I was too. Okay. All right. So I’m sorry. So you had a stroke. So you’re also in, like I was going to, I was just about to say before you said that, um, like you’re also, it’s like, you’re also raising five children, you know, having five children and you’re raising your siblings. Right. You’re now raising all your siblings at this point. You’re, you’re, you’re having your own children and relationship. You go to school, you, you gone you’re vet tech at this point. No,
Speaker 9: (01:25:50)
I had not. No. I had not went to school at that point.
Speaker 6: (01:25:52)
Okay. But you, I mean, you’re working so, so hard. And then on your off time, going to the library to learn how to use the computer hooking up with the genealogy group.
Speaker 9: (01:26:03)
Yeah. Okay. And then you have a stroke. Well, yeah. Yeah. I mean, a lot went on in between. There was the court. This is jumping to 2009. Yeah. We’re jumping in, I had been with my husband at that point for, uh, since 97. Um, and we’re not married of course at that point, but, um, yeah. So 2009, right. I have a stroke. Um, here I was trying to quit smoking. I was taking Chantix and that’s actually what it was from, but they didn’t know what the hell was wrong with me. Now I go to YouTube and make you don’t look at me, I’ll either. I swear.
Speaker 9: (01:26:45)
And I make a YouTube video looking for my dad. And, um, at this point my cousin had gotten married in California, right. So I go out to Kelly and some family members went out. My aunt’s husband. Now my aunt, who I had moved in with an amazing one, she had passed away at this point of breast cancer, as well as one of my other aunts had the way of breast cancer. So my aunt’s husband had came out and he said to me, you know, I said to him, of course, cause you know, you knew to leave no stone unturned. So I say to him, so, Hey, did you ever knew who my dad was? Were you around at that time? Did you ever hear any stories? And he says, actually I think that your dad was this guy named James.
Speaker 9: (01:27:48)
Oh, I see. Okay. So that’s a left turn. He says, I think that it was your aunt’s ex-boyfriend you said now can’t say a hundred percent, but I remember hearing something that this guy, James Gookin, you know, um, was your aunt’s ex you know, prior to me, and he was a plumber and, uh, that, that your mom may have dated him at that time as well or something. So I said, oh, okay, then this is what we’re doing here. So I find him, I go to his house and knock on his door. Of course. Yeah. The Glock in house, the Gluck and plumber house. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I go to his house and his wife answers and you know, I just asked if he was home and he was not, but he wound up pulling up in his plumbing truck, pulled up this plumber truck. I look at this guy and I’m like, there’s no way in hell. He’s like five foot six. Here’s my five foot nine S
Speaker 1: (01:29:13)
Yeah. I’m like that right there eliminates, eliminates the possibility right off the top.
Speaker 9: (01:29:18)
I look at him and I’m like, Hmm, no, I don’t think this is not the guy. Right. So I say to him, did you know a woman name? So-and-so my aunt. He goes, name sounds familiar. He’s like I said, maybe back in like seventies, you know, he goes, I did a lot of drugs in the seventies. I said, did you drive a red convertible? He said, yes, I did. He’s like, and I slept with a lot of women. I was like, okay, not a problem. You know, if you think of anything, you let me know, you know, but I, he didn’t know my mom’s name. He didn’t recognize that he believed that he recognized my aunt’s name though. Um, so that was that I, I didn’t feel it. I didn’t feel it. Cause it to say like, nothing is ringing any bells. Yeah. And I feel like I’m going to feel this when that happens. Right. So I continued to just dig and now I’m stuck. This James James is sticking with me. Michael has no relevance in my vocabulary, in my brain. Um, no matter, even if I keep going back to it, it it’s not sticking with me. James is what sticks with me right now at the time I had, um, I had, uh, here’s the funny part, my son’s middle name is James.
Speaker 1: (01:30:48)
Uh,
Speaker 9: (01:30:51)
Okay. So I almost feel like I probably already knew before that, you know, so I’m, I’m digging James, James, James, um, not really finding anything at that point, but ancestry gets back to me and I receive an email. We want you to be one of our first, first 100 people. I think it was or whatever. Like I have, if I can find that email. Oh gee. Okay. Um, and I, and I say, okay, yes, yes. I want to take this him, you know,
Speaker 1: (01:31:30)
Hold on one second, Sandy, you it’s just something about your phone. That’s rubbing on something and it wasn’t doing that before.
Speaker 9: (01:31:38)
It’s okay.
Speaker 1: (01:31:40)
Uh, okay. Okay.
Speaker 9: (01:31:44)
Let me know if you hear it again. Okay. Um, so yeah, whatever I received this email from ancestry, they, they, you know, received my letter, you know, whatever. And they, you know, um, they want me to, you know, purchase the test, you know, be the first step, like, you know, like invite you to give them money. Now I’m like, this is the answers I’ve been waiting for. And I test my results, come back. And I think you already know that that takes up your life, right? Yeah. For a period of time. I mean, I think I want a good seven months of not cleaning, cooking, or just obsession because I sat on that computer, figuring that, figure everything out, building my trees, my, you know, trying to learn what, send them organs and segments and all these things are. And you know, how do I use this and how do I do it? And I’m contacting every single person one year.
Speaker 9: (01:32:58)
And then I realized I got a ways to go. Um, but I had, I had figured out by this point, all, there was a lot of family secrets that were coming out at this point because, um, you know, when I was able to do trees and research and I was like, that’s not what this one’s, you know, I said, this isn’t some, this is not adding up now. Um, I wound up solving many other cases throughout my family. I’m not surprised. I’m not surprised at all before it gets out of my own. My, my, okay. My mother, her sisters and her cousins, all, it was almost like a weird pregnancy pack. Right. That’s not what it was. Did that just rub again? Sorry it did, but that’s not what it was, but they all wound up having kids like right around the same time. Right? None of their kids had their dads, none of them. So now it’s a bunch of women with their children and they all move out to California with my mother’s cousin in LA and they go and they’re out there for a few months. You know what I mean? They’re out there for like six, seven months and mind. You’ve got all these infants, no baby. Daddy’s like user role running from something.
Speaker 9: (01:34:39)
And they’re living out here in Cali, living out there in Cali. That’s what we do out here. We live. And, uh, you know, none of their kids got dads, whether it be a strange husbands abuse of husbands,
Speaker 10: (01:34:59)
Um, husbands that leave because he probably knew that kid wasn’t his, and then my mother who just supposedly doesn’t know her kids, baby dad is so the one, my mother’s cousins child, she was told that her mother’s ex-husband was her dad, but he wanted nothing to do with her. He left when she was one, um, come to find out it wasn’t even her dad. And she’s finding this out at 40 some years old through me doing research.
Speaker 6: (01:35:40)
Right. So you’re almost, you’re like at the forefront, you’re sort of pioneering a lot of this discovery experience. Oh yeah. In the early days, in the early days of this, and not only are you you’re pioneering it for yourself and trying to figure it out, but you are like, you’re like, uh, you’re a sensibly. I mean, essentially a search angel for your family members, but also the bearer of information to you’re exposing NPE situations.
Speaker 10: (01:36:13)
Oh, absolutely. Wow.
Speaker 6: (01:36:15)
And watching the fallout, watching the emotional fallout in, in love,
Speaker 10: (01:36:21)
Adoptions, whatever. And you know, it came to the point where I was telling everybody, I’m telling everybody to test everybody I met, oh my God, you just take an ancestry DNA test. And I am literally saying this to people, not even related to me. I don’t care who you are. I was a, I mean, they should’ve been paying me a ton of people tested because of me.
Speaker 6: (01:36:39)
[inaudible] did you hear that ancestry? Did you hear that?
Speaker 10: (01:36:42)
Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, but I would just tell everybody, everybody takes this test, hoping that one day it’ll come that, you know, um, um, somebody is going to test it. It’s going to be my sibling or my dad or grandpa or same
Speaker 6: (01:37:00)
One. You can get everybody.
Speaker 10: (01:37:02)
So then, but I never, uh, I’ve stopped close to 80 cases that were not my own. That’s amazing.
Speaker 6: (01:37:13)
That’s amazing CT.
Speaker 10: (01:37:15)
Now, mind you, most of the DNAs are linked to me. You know, there are people that I, that, you know, they said, I send them a message. Hi, I see we’re related. Let’s try to figure this out. Well, I don’t know who my, oh, I can help you with that. And that’s how we went, you know? Um, and that’s how it went. And then eventually, um, I received some DNA matches for these women within a month of each other ones matching me at like a, uh, 3, 3 88. The other one’s matching me at like a four 15. I’m saying, who are these? But that’s not a lot, right? No, no. It’s not a lot. It’s not a lot, but it’s enough right? To say, who are you? Right.
Speaker 4: (01:38:05)
So
Speaker 10: (01:38:05)
Then I am doing research and now I know it’s going to sound weird. I’m very intuitive. And when I get, like I said, I stuck with that name, James. It stuck with me. And that’s all that I could play with in my head because that I’m, something’s telling me that that is correct. So now when I am trying to figure out connections, that’s something else that I do, but my brain just tells me when it’s right and what’s wrong. Right. So I am, I’m going through these ladies and I’m saying to myself, this is my grandmother’s line. Both of these ladies are my grandfather’s line, but how is this possible? How’s this possible? I don’t know my grandmother. How do I know this? I just do. I don’t know. So now I’m going, I need to figure out the connection between these two ladies and my grandmother, whoever she is. Cause I don’t know who she is.
Speaker 4: (01:38:56)
You know, it’s her, your paternal grandmother.
Speaker 10: (01:38:59)
I do, yes. Okay. So you somehow you just know, okay. Yeah. Somehow I just know. And um, and, and so I started digging and I tried to find a connection between the two, not finding the connection. I find these lines and, um, they’re not related to each other.
Speaker 4: (01:39:17)
So
Speaker 10: (01:39:17)
How is this possible? But it’s all I kept saying to myself, then both neither one of these women answered me, um, messaging and messaging a response. So now I’m, I’m searching, I’m searching names. I’m searching, looking for phone numbers, addresses, whatever I could find and calling them, calling them, leaving voicemails at every number that I could possibly get. And then I finally talked to them and I say to one, the one that I finally got in touch with first, her name is Adeline. And I say, you know, I add a line, you know, and I tell her who I am. And I say, you know, I’m trying to figure out our connection. You know, did you take an ancestry DNA test? She said, yes, I did. I don’t know how to work it though. You’re like, don’t worry. I got that covered.
Speaker 4: (01:40:11)
But working on it for years,
Speaker 10: (01:40:14)
I said, I see that we’re related through the Barilla line and Tenuto Barilla Tenuto line. And she said, oh yes, my dad’s, you know, Joseph Barilla. And, uh, my grandmother was, I mean, uh, yeah, my grandmother was Teresa Tenuto and my grandfather was Frank Barilla. Okay. I’m definitely related to that line. Well, my, my grandfather had a second wife, uh, Maria. Pesante. Nope. She’s not my line, new dose. I already know it’s a newer line. And she’s like, oh, okay. So then I could only be my dad. So my dad, my grandmother, my grandfather only had X amount of children together. The other children, or from his second wife. Yep. Got all that information. They have, I’ve built this whole tree out. So now I see where she fits in. I just don’t know how she fits in, you know? And I stayed at her, you know, she said, oh, I have two brothers. Really? You only have two brothers. I’m like, that doesn’t make sense. Okay. So maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s my grandfather’s side.
Speaker 10: (01:41:25)
And I just go back and continue to work on, you know, she tells me, her brothers have her one, brother has two kids and her other brothers, no children. Um, but it’s not, it’s not fitting for man. It’s not just not working in my head. So then I go to the other woman and, um, I couldn’t find information on her for the longest time. Um, but because she had her marriage name on there, not her name. Right. So I’m, I’m digging for this woman and it’s not coming up. I’m not finding anything. Uh, you know, her husband was like, everything was in her husband’s name. You know? So now I’m like digging, but I did eventually get to speak to her. And I, she gives me her siblings. She thinks I’m on her dad’s side of the family. So I’m like, okay, so now she’s telling me her, her, I already have her dad and her siblings from her dad. But I’m saying, I don’t know. I don’t see a connection based off of these links to, you know, it, is there any way that you have it? You don’t have any other siblings. There’s your mom or dad didn’t have any other children. Oh yes. My mom had a daughter, her oldest daughter who left when she was 13. She left home.
Speaker 10: (01:42:45)
Okay. What is her name? And as soon as she tells me her name, I knew that that was it. So then I call the other, the other woman, Do you know, a woman by the name of Jeanie? And she says, I don’t know, not when I said, did your dad or mom have any other children? And she said, my dad did have a child, but we weren’t, we didn’t know her
Speaker 4: (01:43:21)
Bingo thinking.
Speaker 10: (01:43:25)
There’s my grandmother. And I searched for her. And I, um, I figured out the way in 2011, but I looked at her obituary, her legacy, you know, like, so I’m, I’m looking at her legacy and I’m looking at this picture. I’m like, this is my grandmother. I’m reading what they’re taught, saying about this, about her. Cause my grandmother, this is her, this is her. So this is my grandmother. So now I looked through her children, I’m finding her children and I find her oldest son, James, what year is this? This was just this year.
Speaker 2: (01:44:07)
Bring everybody up to date. Like this is like really recent. This has been a long journey.
Speaker 10: (01:44:15)
COVID COVID was a blessing and a curse, right? Because I have all this time now on my hands because of COVID to dig into this and talk to these women that I’ve been trying to reach out to for years. Right. And, uh, I, I read this obituary and see that she had passed and I find her children and see that her oldest son James has passed away. And I knew, I knew that that was it. I knew that it was him. I found that her youngest son passed away and that she had one other son who’s only 11 years older than me and three daughters.
Speaker 10: (01:45:03)
So I knew that that was it. That her son was my dad. So I reached out to his siblings and my, uh, I reached out to my siblings and I mean to his siblings, um, one of my aunts and my uncle and my uncle was very receptive. He was nervous, very nervous, but he was receptive to talk to me what I had to say. And of course I think that they thought I was crazy at first. Sure. But then he was able to tell me that my dad had all their children. So, and I had reached out to my sisters two at two of my sisters and um, my one sister, my older sister. And they were, had an older sister. Yeah. I reach out now. I got a sister who’s a year older than me and one that’s 12 days younger than me. Oh, hello James.
Speaker 10: (01:46:13)
Yeah. So, uh, the older sister says, oh, I’ve always waited. I’ve always been waiting. I’ve been waiting for this call. I said, what do you mean by that? I was like, how could you have known about me? Nobody knew anything. Like, no. And she’s like, no, I always, my dad always knew he had other kids. Like, you know, but nobody in the family ever knew who they were. You know, I think my dad was just a major mean. It made as much babies as he could within a few years. Um, cause I, he died. He was killed. He was shot and killed him. Whoa. When I was six, he was shot and killed.
Speaker 10: (01:47:04)
Um, by, by a native American man, um, who he was, my dad was dating his daughter and that was unacceptable. And the man went and hit back on the reserve after he killed my dad. But he was eventually caught off of the reserve and was able to be here. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so I was young. We were all young, you know, he had multiple children within a very short period of time with different women. Um, and we believe that there’s possibly more, that just haven’t, you know, cause my dad was killed in Troy, Michigan. Um, so he was traveling. Oh he, yeah, he went to, he went to Illinois, he went to Mississippi. Um, and he went to Detroit as far as we know, they’re the ones that we know that he was in because when he was killed, here’s the best. Right. So, um, the family had said to me, you know, of course my uncles and all them, they were all young. You know, my grandmother had handled the funeral and stuff for my dad. They didn’t ever know too much, but um, all they did know is that, you know, for some reason it took them so long to, um, to notify my grandmother, that my dad was dead. My dad was killed on his birthday. He was killed on his 27th birthday, 27.
Speaker 4: (01:48:46)
Hmm.
Speaker 10: (01:48:47)
He was killed on his 27th birthday, which is March 19. And he wasn’t, the family was not notified until almost April 1st. I think it was the call. Uh, or no, I think it was uh, like, yeah, like something like the twenty-something maybe, uh, the long time notified. Yes. And then, um, you know why though? Right? Cause they were looking for the family of a Michael.
Speaker 4: (01:49:22)
Oh my gosh, James
Speaker 10: (01:49:28)
AKA, Michael McDowell. Michael McDowell was his alias.
Speaker 4: (01:49:34)
Oh my gosh. He had another name and it was Michael. So your mom knew him as Michael. I don’t know Megan.
Speaker 10: (01:49:47)
I mean, I don’t know. I mean, I just thought that it was really crazy. Right. So his, I got a copy of his death certificate and it says his name, AKA Michael McDowell. So they were looking for the family of this Michael McDowell. Now here’s the vest. Right? Cause now, you know, I had to do this too. I have all the documents from his death. Wow. Of course. All the investigation reports. I have all that six women claimed to have been his girlfriend, Michael Nick dowel, six women.
Speaker 2: (01:50:27)
Yeah. He was a Tom cat.
Speaker 10: (01:50:30)
Only two of them knew his, his real identity. One of them, one of them being a woman in Mississippi who came forward and actually told them, you’re looking for Michael McDowell’s family. That is not Michael McDowell. That is James. Oh my gosh. Yeah. But she knew, she knew him. She met him as Michael. Um, she found out he did tell her his real identity. No. He had told her that he uses the alias because he’s wanted for murder. But I found no proof of that. So I don’t know how to, cause I think I would have found something by now. Right.
Speaker 2: (01:51:19)
I think the research you’ve done, I think you would have found
Speaker 10: (01:51:21)
That family. I was able to find from my grandmother’s line, you know, uh, her uncle was a very notorious mobster who, you know, escaped from Eastern state penitentiary three times and was on America’s most wanted list. The longest of anyone. Wow.
Speaker 2: (01:51:45)
I think that he just told women that to impress them.
Speaker 10: (01:51:48)
Oh yeah. I think so.
Speaker 2: (01:51:50)
He just said like I’m wanted for murder. So we have this other name.
Speaker 10: (01:51:54)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I definitely think that that’s what it was. I mean, I don’t, I don’t think, you know, and if he was wanted, I’d be able to find something like that.
Speaker 2: (01:52:07)
So, so the, and this is, this is so recent, this, this sort of, I don’t want to call it a conclusion. Cause I feel like these stories never end, but this part of it where, why, so, so how did that feel for you?
Speaker 10: (01:52:23)
Oh, I was, I was so overwhelmed when like I S I asked the half sister take the test and she was like, yes, absolutely. I sent her a kit and I sent her a 23 and me, because I didn’t want to wait six to eight weeks. Right. So then her 23 and me, which was two to four weeks and the results were literally back in three weeks. And um, I remember to myself, this is it, I’ve done it. I already know. I feel it it’s done. Like I’m already having that, you know? Um,
Speaker 11: (01:52:55)
Look elated, just talking about it right now. It’s like, your whole energy has changed. Yeah.
Speaker 10: (01:53:02)
It’s so crazy. And uh, so I was like, you know, I know this is it. This is so I have to now, um, I’m like so excited. I’m going to have this test come back and it’s going to say him similar thing. And of course, 23 meet does say you have siblings like ancestry, which says close family. Right? So that day that the test came back, I woke up, it was like, I don’t know. It was like five something in the morning. Mind you, my sister’s in Colorado. So it’s like two hours earlier. They’re running and I get up and we promise that neither one of us would open the results unless the other way. So I’m blowing up her phone three 30 in the morning. I’m calling her, I’m texting her. I’m FaceTiming her. I am, she wakes up. She’s like, can I at least get coffee before we do this?
Speaker 10: (01:53:54)
And I was like, you better make it quick because I can’t wait no longer. The results are in and we need to do Hm. And straight. When I tell you it was dead silence, um, I said, are you ready? Let’s do this. And both of us open their laptops and logged in and went and looked at the match. And, and I, my husband woke up cause he’s like, what the are you? What are you doing? It’s six o’clock in the morning now or whatever. Five, some in the winter. Yeah. And he comes down and then, uh, and, uh, I am just getting ready to, we’re getting ready to hit the button. You know, here we go. When we hit the button and, and, uh, we’re on FaceTime as well. So now I’m looking at her, she’s looking at me and we look nothing alike, nothing.
Speaker 10: (01:54:43)
Um, and it comes in, it comes out and shows and it’s like, yeah. And I just started balling. I’m bawling, crying. And, and we’re on FaceTime. And, and she’s just like, I knew it. I told you I knew it. And my husband’s like, all right, so now he’s comforting me. And he’s like, you know, did it. I did it, Sony did it. You know? And it was great. And it was such a great feeling. And my sister’s just great. She’s um, you know, and she likes to bust my balls and call me her little sister. Cause it was like weird she’s five foot, nothing. So again, she can’t say anything. She’s like, I think she’s like five, five maybe or something, but I’m like, I’m your big little sister. So let’s get that right. You know, our dad was over six foot. She just took it. Their mom, I guess grandmother’s dad. But his family was short. So strong, short jeans, I guess.
Speaker 2: (01:55:49)
And you have since then seen a picture of my whole. Right. And he and James J. Michael McDowell, AKA James. Um,
Speaker 10: (01:56:04)
And you guys were like twins. I don’t know. I don’t think I am my son.
Speaker 2: (01:56:08)
Him and you and your son. Okay. Give me,
Speaker 10: (01:56:10)
My, my son has so many of his features. Um, they have the same facial structure, same Joel structure, his nose, his eyes structure. Yeah. My, my youngest son, he looks so much like him, but you,
Speaker 2: (01:56:24)
Like, you felt like you could see the resemblance.
Speaker 10: (01:56:27)
I knew it then though, even though I feel like, um, when I, like, I don’t look like them, I don’t feel like I look like many of them, even though my uncle and his wife seemed to think, I, they say, I look like my grandmother, um, which I can see similarities, um, between us. But the first time I met my uncle, which was one year ago, yesterday. Oh, wow. I met him and his wife for the first time and she just stared at me and she kept looking at me and I just was a little creepy.
Speaker 10: (01:56:59)
She goes, I’m sorry, but you remind me so much of his mother, just like your face, the facial, um, your, your facial expressions that you make you talk and stuff. A lot of that just reminds me so much of her, the way that you, you know, and I was like, oh, okay. I mean, it’s, it’s been great. My, my cousin actually is down right now. Um, which is my dad’s youngest. Brother’s daughter. We’ve built a great bond and relationship. My sister actually comes in on the 17th and she’ll be here for a week. So we’ll be seeing each other again, we talk weekly though.
Speaker 10: (01:57:51)
And, uh, she did not have the best of life. You know, she, she was another one. She really didn’t know her dad because, you know, she was only seven when he died. She was raised by other men in the foster care system. So yeah, we bonded in a lot of ways. Yeah. Wow. Wow. Wow. Yeah, but I mean, in the process, I, when I was doing all my research, I had joined some Facebook groups, you know, social media groups, and that got me, um, it helped me with a lot of things as well. You, um, just support and information. And then I see neighbor doing a meet and greet in Philadelphia and I was like, oh, I gotta get on this. And, uh, I signed up and signed up for it and thought that that would help me. Cause of course that was a few years back before I had really, I still hadn’t figured anything out.
Speaker 10: (01:59:04)
And so I was still very, um, sad in my heart. Right. I guess, and put it, you know, the not knowing is, excuse me, it’s weighed heavy on me over the yeah. It’s a very long time to carry out knowing. So with that being said, I, um, you know, I found this group and I thought that I, you know, Hey, I’m going to go and meet these people. And, you know, people who could understand how I feel, because it’s hard for anybody who doesn’t to understand, you know, who hasn’t been in that situation. So understand. And so me and my husband went, he came with me and, uh, and that’s where I met, you know, uh, some of the most amazing women that I have ever met in my life at this Philadelphia meet and greet, you know? And, um, I don’t know if I can see names on here.
Speaker 10: (02:00:06)
He can say them. I think you can say them. Oh, am I allowed? Okay. So yeah. That’s where I met Aaron and Cindy and co founders of higher ed hope and healing retreat, correct? Correct. Aaron and Cindy. Yeah. And, uh, you know, some other ladies and it was great. And then, um, when we had stayed in contact, of course, after the retreat, after that meet and greet and, um, Aaron and Cindy had said, Hey, we should start a retreat group or something. We should go on a retreat or, you know, and, uh, and we were all like, hell yeah, let’s do it. And, um, yeah, so I’m an original, I’m like, oh gee. Yeah. Yeah. You’re one of the, yeah. You’re yeah. What’s that called? I want to say you were in, on the ground floor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And on the ground floor. And that has been, um, even after now, knowing it’s still something that gives me such satisfaction and growth for healing, but it’s not like it just goes away once, you know, because there’s always going to be that unanswered questions and emotions. Um, you know, it, it is sad that I will never get to hear his voice or to see his face in person or, you know, know any of these things, you know, and, and you always get them people that are like, oh, but you can’t miss what you never had.
Speaker 2: (02:01:48)
Right. Hmm. Oh. But you can’t,
Speaker 10: (02:01:53)
Especially when you’re like me and you’re just so in tuned with things it’s so weird. Um, hard to explain, to be honest, but I, I just, I feel things just different. I guess I feel like I feel different. I don’t know. Some people, you know, they always say, oh, well just, you know, do this. Or D none of that works for me. I have to do. And the retreat helps me do that. That helps me to work through, I find that talking about my situation helps me to feel. And a lot of times in everyday life, you don’t have time to do that, or you don’t, it’s not a fit situation. Right. So yeah.
Speaker 2: (02:02:39)
The retreat. Yeah. The, yeah, the retreats and the gatherings, like, uh, open, open up the space for, for a whole lot of things that are just out of context, otherwise. Oh yeah.
Speaker 10: (02:02:54)
And you can’t heal if, if you don’t try, you always have to try no matter how you do it.
Speaker 2: (02:03:00)
[inaudible]
Speaker 10: (02:03:01)
So, and that it helps me, it helps me a lot. And that’s why I’ll continue to go No more.
Speaker 2: (02:03:12)
Awesome. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Oh, I’m so bummed. I’m not, I’m not, I won’t be there in October. Um, and I’m sad. I’m sad about, I know, and the house looks amazing. I just, I just can’t swing it, but he can’t swing it, but, but I’ll be there in spirit and I’ll be at the next one. I’ll be at the April one. Okay. Yeah, I’ll be in the next one, but, um,
Speaker 2: (02:03:40)
Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing so much of your story. You’re you, you’re such an open book. Um, I think it’s so important for everybody to, to talk about how these, there’s all these stories and they’re so different, but so, but the connection is this NPE experience or this NPE situation and you, and, and you didn’t, I, you know, like I don’t, I don’t know that you, you even meant to do this, but it’s like, you’ve become, uh, you’re such a like model of resiliency and, and, and healing and strength, but also being true to your authentic. You’re true to yourself. It’s just like, you’re just, I just think the MPE community is so lucky to have you,
Speaker 4: (02:04:28)
I’m lucky to have them
Speaker 10: (02:04:34)
Be who I am, you know?
Speaker 4: (02:04:37)
Yeah. It’s a really accepting
Speaker 2: (02:04:38)
Group. Like people really come from all walks of life and oh, absolutely. People come and really be beat, be who they are. Yeah. Like, yeah. It’s like something I’ve never seen before
Speaker 10: (02:04:50)
Brin. And, you know, everybody can find somebody that they can connect with, you know, not everybody connects with each other, but find somebody that they have some kind of a connection with. And sometimes that’s all you need to help you to the next step in life, you know?
Speaker 2: (02:05:07)
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 10: (02:05:10)
I mean, like, I think I told you before, I’d love to write a book eventually. There’s so much more to tell in some way.
Speaker 2: (02:05:17)
I know, I know. No, I mean, I know I was thinking that the whole time we were talking, I was like, cause I remember talking to you about that at the very first retreat and I would still love to help you with that.
Speaker 10: (02:05:26)
Um, know, I don’t know how to get started. I’m really not a big writer.
Speaker 2: (02:05:29)
Yeah. Well, I, that, yeah, we’ll have to figure that out. We should talk and actually zoom and like the pandemic did open up my understanding of like how zoom can be so helpful. Like we don’t have to be in the same place, but
Speaker 10: (02:05:39)
Yeah. True. Very true. Yeah. But
Speaker 2: (02:05:43)
Man, you have a story. Uh, thank you so much any time. Yeah, it was fun. It was just great to leave. Miss them October.
Speaker 10: (02:05:56)
We’ll
Speaker 2: (02:05:58)
See you in April, but I’m glad it’s fun to just get to connect with you too. Anyway. You’re just like, yeah. Outdoor. [inaudible]
Speaker 10: (02:06:08)
Where’d you go? Are they, are you there? I might have lost the first pin there. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (02:06:12)
Um, all right, go on with your day. Thank you so much for giving me such a huge chunk right in the middle. Thank you. All right. And I’ll talk to you soon. All right. Talk to you soon. Okay. Bye. Sunny.
Pulled By the Root: Heidy Marble
Speaker 1: (00:00)
Okay. Sounds great.
Speaker 2: (00:02)
Yeah. Awesome. Okay, cool. Oh, thank you so much for joining me and thanks for the, I’m sorry. Uh, your patience with my flexible brain that said tomorrow when I meant Friday,
Speaker 1: (00:16)
It was you, you know, you know what, I appreciate the fact that, um, you know, you’re willing to be flexible because I have the same, I don’t even know what the year is right now, so no
Speaker 2: (00:27)
Problem. It’s con I just feel like it’s, yeah, it’s constant that I’m, um, moving things around, but, um, so I’ve, I’ve got you here. And, um, so let’s just talk about you and, and I’m, uh, and what, you know, kind of, I know you’re, you’re working on all these projects. Um, it seems like simultaneously. Um, so I wanna know about that, but, um, also let’s start with sort of, um, if you have a, you know, if you have a synopsis of your adoption story and, or like how you became involved with the adoption community so much, and, and then I also think we should talk about how the adopt, how you are, what you are working on and overlaps with like late discovery, adoptees mm-hmm , um, and what the similarities are for all adopt, you know? Um, yeah.
Speaker 1: (01:19)
yeah, that’s great. So who are, are you well, who am I? Well, my name is Heidi marble. I am a domestic, a adoptee. I was born in 1965 and my childhood, you know, we don’t have enough time for that, but I was very attached. My adopted mom. She was my person, like the love of my life. And I was reassured life that, you know, our love was strong and sturdy. Uh, my grandmother was also an amazing person. My adopted grandmother, my father was a little bit on the rough side so,
Speaker 2: (01:54)
Oh, okay. Did you know you were adopted?
Speaker 1: (01:56)
I always knew that I was always knew a always knew and I felt special. Like a princess never saw a problem with it. Mm-hmm until I went to find my birth family after the birth of my son. And when I made that decision, I lost the love of my adopted mom and it crushed me. Oh. And so some of the important points about this and what led me to the work I’m doing now is when I’ve discovered my BI biological mother, she had breast cancer, genetic breast cancer. A year later, I was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer and had to fight for my life. Um, and had I not met my biological mother, I would not have known to, to inquire about the breast cancer, because I was so young and I would not be here with you now. So that really leads to the point of, you know, like the right to know and how it bridges to all of us who don’t have access to our history. And I think that’s where the bridge crosses with laid discovery, adoptees and NPE PEs, and we are all seeking our identity and the truth so that we can better cope with our own life and the life of, you know, if we’re parents we’re passing it on. So that destruction of that relationship was a 20 year battle. And now my mothers are gone and I’m left with this huge heap of pain. And I started to work through it by writing my book. So that was a way for me to get out all my experiences.
Speaker 2: (03:29)
Yeah. Yeah. Wow. I have another question. Um, I mean, it’s really just about your mom feeling so offended by you, by you per looking for your bio mom. Clearly you would’ve already explained this, but the connection between breast cancer did not calm her fury or help her understand any of that. She didn’t, it just felt like too much of a betrayal all around.
Speaker 1: (03:56)
Yeah. And I really thought that my pending would be, if that’s not gonna work, mm-hmm, , mm-hmm, , there’s nothing really, really left. And so I was wrapped in shame in that relationship for all of those years and just, it was just so painful not to be able to heal, heal that
Speaker 2: (04:17)
I can’t even imagine.
Speaker 1: (04:19)
Yeah. You
Speaker 2: (04:20)
Such a, you were so shocked. I imagine. Right. Like
Speaker 1: (04:23)
I was shocked and I mean, I, I understand the threat. I, I get it, you know, but in my way of thinking, if she could have white knuckled it and embraced it and gone through that process with me, it would’ve made us even closer. There was nothing that was going to replace the bond that we had, but I think what’s so upsetting is it was just the rejection of the truest self mm-hmm because when you’re a person who is adopted or you have, you know, a late discovery adoption or all of these other aspects, you’re a multifaceted being, and you can’t just erase that part of who you are it’s way too strong. So it felt like the ultimate rejection mm-hmm I think we both felt rejected by each other and we could never really resolve it. Mm. And so that, that led me to the work I’m doing now, because I had to step outside of my own pain and start to look at the larger issues and being able to speak about them and realize that a lot of them are universal. It, it has been such a, a healing and eye opening process.
Speaker 2: (05:31)
Yeah. Wow. Heidi I’m already, I mean, you haven’t even gotten to what you’re working on. and I’m already, I’m already moved by your story and your presence. Um, so, so you started to write, um, yeah. And that has led tell me more, tell me more.
Speaker 1: (05:50)
So I wrote my first book about breast cancer in 2006, and I became an advocate for breast cancer. And I really thought that was, that was my advocacy, not really understanding this huge underlying belly that was swaying full of all this other pain. So I started to write my second book as a follow up to my survival to extend that, that idea to, and every time I would sit down, I wasn’t writing about the survival of breast cancer. I was writing about what I was going through with my mom and I have this program called ner and it’s a writing program and it’s almost like a journal and I wasn’t really rereading my writing. So I’m at 10 years, I’m just going to my computer and flooding it with my feelings. And when my adopted mom passed away, I thought, you know what, maybe I’ll just print off that writing and see what I had.
Speaker 1: (06:45)
And it was literally, I talk about it. Like it was a birth I’m standing in front of the printer and almost 400 pages came out. Whoa. And as I, as I held it, I realized that this was a book. I mean, it was obviously rough and we’re still beating on it, trying out of it but I held it and I said, oh my gosh. And that was that epiphany. You know, there are times in our life when we have the turning points and I held it and I literally came up with the, the title right there, I, myself holding this. And I said, I have been pulled by the root. Yeah. And that’s what this is. And so,
Speaker 2: (07:27)
Yeah, I was say it’s also, I mean, just, I, when you talked about how it was like birthing something even pulled by the root is sort of, there’s so much to, to, to unpack about that title.
Speaker 1: (07:40)
Um, yeah. And at that point I felt so untethered mm-hmm and being able to really work on the writing, you know, it was so excruciating. I still have a hard time going to my writing desk. I’m kinda like a cat, you know, going sideways. I’m like, I dunno, it’s such painful work, the soul excavation. So when, to the point where I felt like the book was almost ready to, you know, get out there in the world, it we’re still working on it. But, um, someone advised me that, you know, maybe you should do more with this mm-hmm . Um, and that’s when I started doing the podcast and never thought in a million years, it would be one of the greatest gifts of my life. It’s just been incredible. So that has led us to this journey where we’re able to really be in a sacred space with others and hear their stories and connect globally with, with each other and this big, huge family of people who, who simply just to be seen, heard and, um, acknowledged.
Speaker 2: (08:44)
Right, right, right. Like all the layers, all the layers are important and all these people are asking for that and seems amazing that it’s not, um, not just a given at this point, you know, and I, and I know that it’s partly cuz people are, are operating in isolated family experiences, but clearly there’s there’s um, clearly there’s a message that’s not spread spreading. there’s a, you know, clearly FA know, I don’t know the, the adoption culture is just, um, falling. I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna just say it’s I don’t wanna just talk about it, like the negative things, but it’s falling short because all these people are coming and saying, we have to talk about all these things.
Speaker 1: (09:29)
Yeah. Well, I’ll, I’ll speak for you because I think, I think it’s sadly the, the more that I learn and the more I understand, because I was as a lot of people in adoptee land call it the fog where you’re in this level of denial, because of what you’ve been told, you’re special, you’re chosen, you’re saved society looks at the situation like this baby that was going to be discarded now has a home. And, and all of those narratives have built this false, uh, premises around what is really happening. And what is really happening is trauma at the most vulnerable space. Mm-hmm, trauma of birth mother trauma of baby trauma of adopted families who maybe are inferred or cannot have children. And that’s its own. That’s a very sad and difficult thing. But you know, I, I have to kind of, you know, really push for the baby because the most vulnerable party is, is between all of this mix. And I think what’s missing so deeply in the adoption process is a, I just don’t think people are getting the proper help in counseling. I think because it’s monetized that creates a lot of corruption and a lot of really, um, inhumane choices. And the more you look into adoption history, the more disturbing it becomes. I
Speaker 2: (10:54)
Saw. Yeah. I saw that you interview, I, I saw that you interviewed Gabby glacier. Oh. And American she’s so good. And she’s so great. An American baby blew my mind. If you, if you had told me like adoption is a corrupt industry or I would’ve been like, okay, sure, sure. It is like, everything in America, a few. Right? Like, or whatever, like okay. But reading her book, I mean, I’m getting goosebumps right now. Just talking about just thinking about it. Um,
Speaker 1: (11:21)
I, I completely agree because Margaret, the, the birth mother in the story, you really get to sink into what her experience was. And especially for adoptees in my era, because I’m 56, that baby scoop era where there was, and there’s still shame, but single motherhood and, you know, there was no birth control or you had, you could only get birth control if you were married. So there were all these layers. And so women were just sent away. Yeah. Like my birth mom was sent 3000 miles away and, and shamed in doing so. And so you think about that and in, in, uh, that story, American baby, I think it’s really important to read for anyone to
Speaker 2: (12:03)
Anyone. I think everyone should read that book.
Speaker 1: (12:06)
I completely agree.
Speaker 2: (12:07)
Everyone should read that book.
Speaker 1: (12:08)
Yep. Yep. Definitely. No question. So yeah, I don’t mean to be a naysayer. I just think there’s a lot of work that needs to be done. There’s a lot of suffering that doesn’t need to happen.
Speaker 2: (12:21)
Right, right. So much suffering. And so, and it seems to me that because it’s not acknowledged it then has nowhere to go. So it becomes it. They become, I don’t, I, I, I always do. I always do this. I struggle with vocabulary a lot. Um, or the words or how to describe something, but it just feels like these things are existing. Even if we don’t talk about it or know they are they’re there. So these, so, so, so that’s what I wanna say. You, you and, and these O and a lot of advocates right now for adoption are trying to put language to all of these elements that didn’t, that didn’t otherwise exist. Didn’t exist with language, but were affecting you like on the inside. Um,
Speaker 1: (13:07)
And I, yeah, that’s, that’s very perceptive, thats, very perceptive. Mm-hmm ,
Speaker 2: (13:12)
I, I think that’s really, um, amazing. like, I just, um, it’s really powerful work, um, to create, create the words, create the words of this presence or layer or what, you know, whatever you wanna call it. Um, so you, so you’ve got this book you’re working on pulled by the root. Yep. And that is, um, primarily a sort of journal, uh, a, a journal of your journey with your mom, with your mom and your adopt
Speaker 1: (13:45)
Mom. Yeah. It’s a really unique, it’s a really unique format because I flush out each character one at a time. Each of them have their own space. There’s very little over overlapping. So you get to drop right into these scenes with these really influential people in my life, my birth family, my bio family, my husband, my son, uh, what what’s interesting is my partner. Who’s a friend. She’s not my therapist. I wish she could be, but we’re friends first. She’s a psychiatrist. And so what she’s done, we’ve created this pairing with our chapters, where she does a reflection on what I’ve just written from a really interesting angle. And so you get to read my version and then her interpretation. So we’re really excited to share that formatting because it, it really starts to get into the psychological things that are happening to me. And you can see through the book, how I’m changing and how my thought process is changing. And we hope that that’ll be helpful to people that they can see themselves. Um, you know, from the very real nature of my story. And then from that psychiatric point of view, so we’re really happy to share it, and we hope it finds a good home soon so that we don’t have to print it on our own
Speaker 2: (15:00)
right, right. um, I love that. And I actually just talked with somebody and have been thinking about the way that so many of these books and they’re all great. And everyone’s story deserves to be told, and everybody everybody’s perspective is important, but without bringing in experts, for lack of a better word, I’m not sure, um, who to trust.
Speaker 1: (15:26)
Yeah. And that’s fair. Like, I wouldn’t want someone to trust me. I was in the thick of it. Mm-hmm , I don’t even know how to save myself. so having that OB objectivity, somebody to come in, who can look at it and say, I understand what’s going on, and here’s a way to help move you through
Speaker 2: (15:46)
This. Yeah. Yeah. It feels like there’s a, um, not, not a solution, but a direction. Um, yeah, for sure. That I, yeah. That I really appreciate. Very cool. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. And then you’re doing the podcast and yes. And, um, is that something that you do year round? Do they come out every week? Tell me, or once a month,
Speaker 1: (16:11)
What? Oh, okay. So this has been such a whirlwind. We started in March of this year and we have already finished 70 interviews. This, I was to
Speaker 2: (16:22)
Say, you have so many up on the website. How did you just start?
Speaker 1: (16:26)
I have no idea, but it, it just happened. And it was such an immersive experience and I’m I’m interview almost full time. Um, and so luckily our podcast has to really patient cuz it can take months for their episodes to be released. So we’re doing one a week because we wanna take really good care of their story. So everybody is being so kind, but that way I’m not turning anyone away, people that are coming, I feel there’s a reason they’re coming to us. And right now it’s manageable as long as they’re patient. Sure. But I’m so excited to release the conversations because they are just, oh my goodness, they’re so incredible. And just listening to everyone’s hearts and their desire to make a difference, their desire to find healing and peace in their own lives. It’s um, and it’s so global, it’s so universal and it, it helps pull us out of the isolation of our own experience. Mm-hmm so yeah. I don’t know if that answered your question. Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah. So
Speaker 2: (17:29)
I’m like 70 is amazing. Um, yeah. And, uh, uh, and they’re all coming to you saying they’re all contacting you saying I heard your podcast. I think I have something I’d like to share.
Speaker 1: (17:42)
Yeah. There’s, there’s definitely people that I’ve pursued that other people have told me about. And that’s been really cool too, to learn about other people’s work through other people mm-hmm so it’s almost like this community saying, oh, have you talked to this person? Oh my gosh, this person would be great. And, and so for the most part, I’d say 95% are just finding us, but there’s that 5% that have been recommended or that I’ve discovered in some way. And so it’s all feels kind of oddly intentional
Speaker 2: (18:09)
Yeah. Well that’s, it’s, that’s actually, I think I would probably describe mine the exact same way. 95% is people coming to me, which I just think speaks to, it speaks to the power of talking with someone. It speaks, people want to tell their story, they wanna be listened to, um, for an hour and they, and they also recognize the service being of service in a way, um, that is so personalized to them. Uh, yeah. Yeah. So it doesn’t surprise me that people are contacting you from all over. But, um, I, I think that’s so neat and, and such a, um, if anything, like such a testimony to what you’re doing that
Speaker 1: (18:50)
Thank you Eve, you know, I just feel, I just feel like I’m just, um, humbled by all of it. And it it’s just this experience. I was telling somebody the other day, when I first started, I was so deeply affected by those stories that I could barely recover after an interview, I would just lose it. And I thought, who am I this unhealed person to be here, but I’m like, I’m not trying to give anyone advice. I I’m just here with you sharing this experience of this healing journey. And what’s interesting is I’ve felt my own healing transpire. And now I, I get so involved in the conversation that when it’s done, I almost, what I imagine is this beautiful wind coming through and just, and just taking it off of me, not in a bad way, but in a good way. And just letting it, letting it rise, like the story rise, not all the pain, like infiltrates deeply. And that’s not to say I, I’m not, I feel it every bit of it, but I’m not, I don’t have to take a nap. I don’t have to collapse. I don’t have to. So, and I’m sure as a therapist, you know, you guys are skilled and trained to be able to hear and have compassion for stories, but still have the strength to continue to listen. And I, I realized that I, you know, I’m learning more how to do that so I can show up and be more effective. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (20:21)
my dog just jumped under the table and started being a total maniac, as you were saying. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (20:26)
Yeah. Well, I’ve got my Husty somewhere, luckily, but I think we’re outside. He’s
Speaker 2: (20:30)
Grabbed a shoe. Okay. I’m gonna do it for a minute because ,
Speaker 1: (20:35)
You need to go if it’s a good shoe. No,
Speaker 2: (20:38)
Yeah, I know. Well, I’m just, he’s not really interested in the shoe. Um, that’s funny. Uh, yeah, I mean, I think, I think, I think obvi obviously I think that like my training as a therapist has, has wor has worked out to, to really help me with the podcast, but it still feels like I’m wearing different hats. Um, and, um, and I think all people including therapists, it, it’s always, I think part of, of growing and learning is how to take in other people’s stories and, um, take them in and let them go. And Def everybody’s everybody’s um, everybody has to learn how to do that on their, on their own, um, the wind vision that you just described though. Um, I really like that imagery. I may work on that one.
Speaker 1: (21:24)
Well, thank you. Yeah, no, it just helps. It just helps me be, because I’m so immersed in it that it’s just almost like a, a cleansing feeling and that’s not a bad thing. It’s just like, it’s just a refresh mm-hmm like, I, I felt that I was with you in it, and now we’re going to release it in this podcast format into the world. It’s almost like a balloon that can just, you just let go. And now this beautiful thing we do just did, can go have its life. Right. So,
Speaker 2: (21:50)
Right. Yeah. Oh, that’s beautiful. And um, are you also still, I’m just watching the dog. Are you also still working on, um, uh, a documentary of some kind, is there a cinematic element to your project?
Speaker 1: (22:04)
Okay. So when I was going through breast cancer, we did, we got funding for a documentary about all that. And we filmed for three years. Uh, and then it all fell apart. It was very heartbreaking. So I have all of that footage and I’ve always had the desire to bring it to life. So we have heavily pursued documentary series and it’s just very, very mm-hmm the last news we got is that, you know, if we show up with a million bucks, we’re green lit and I’m like, well, uh, that ain’t happening. so, so what
Speaker 2: (22:38)
We consider, pull out a million.
Speaker 1: (22:41)
Yes. What we’re considering is a team. Now, what we like to do, especially after the first of the year is to be able to film people’s and do shorts mm-hmm where we create our own space for visual content. And it would kind of be in hybrid or a different idea that we could actually still do. Uh, that’s not dependent on three to five years of chasing down something because the time is now. Yeah. And we really don’t wanna wait and we have a team of really two talented people. So I’m excited to see how we can take that visual element and create, you know, really, really embellish the story because for me being a creative human, I love like all the bells and whistles. And, and for me, video is so great because you have words, you have music, you have all of the things. So ideally that would be a really fantastic way to elevate people’s stories. So yes, the cinematic part has always been a huge dream for me. It’s just learning how to modify that.
Speaker 2: (23:42)
Right. The medium is changing a lot. Uh, but if there was any time to just create your own platform now, is it so, um, right. So that’s great. That’s a great pivot. Um, cool. And, and if you, what, what are, if you were gonna give somebody advice right now? Um, what I often ask people if somebody has, cause I, I, I mostly interview NPE. I mostly talk with NMPS. Um, and I, and I often ask at the end, um, if you had one, you know, what, if you, if somebody has just found out what is the advice that you have for them? Um, so if, if that question applies to, to you, like, I, you know, I’d love to hear what you have to say or, um, you know, what, what is, what is the message that you want? You want people to know, um, when they come to the pool by the root community?
Speaker 1: (24:38)
Well, first of all, I, I know that our subject matter is focused on adoption, but there are so many bridges to your, our community, to the NP community, because we are struggling with the same things. Mm-hmm identity, secrecy, shame, the shock of learning that what you thought to be true was not true. Mm-hmm , these are very difficult things. And I think we have a beautiful opportunity to collaborate with each other and, and listen, because it all boils down, you know, with the organization, the right to know where you and I were, you know, that, that statement in my mind, as a human rights statement, the right to know where you came from matters, mm-hmm , if that truth it’s difficult, mm-hmm , we deserve to know where we, and that’s not an entitlement thing. It just should be a given. And the, the identity crisis that we all go through and experience, yes, it has different components and you can plug in different things, but having to rebuild yourself after being dismantled by this kind of news, or maybe the revelation, like the adoptees coming out of the fog, it is a real thing.
Speaker 1: (25:57)
And I think my message is to seek out appropriate help with someone like you, where you can really work on your issues, one on one, and then may being able to join and can community with others who understand. And I think the fact that we, we can listen to these voices. It actually, like you said, in the beginning, it puts words to the things that we haven’t been able to say or articulate, and we can see ourselves in others, in these elements that we are sharing words and film and podcasts. So
Speaker 2: (26:33)
Mm-hmm . Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I love that. Find professional help and become, and, and join a community, um, or find a community. I love
Speaker 1: (26:43)
That. I love that. Yeah. And if, and if you, and if you like chocolate and wine, like I do, you can, that’s not advice .
Speaker 2: (26:50)
Yeah, no, I that’s more of a confession
Speaker 1: (26:54)
Yeah. And those not so good coping mechanisms that some of us have in
Speaker 2: (26:59)
Moderation, everything in moderation. Thank you.
Speaker 1: (27:02)
I, yeah.
Speaker 2: (27:03)
Right. Um, wonderful. Is there anything I should have asked you that I forgot that I, that I skipped or forgot, or that you were looking forward to talking to?
Speaker 1: (27:12)
No. E thank you so much. This was such a special time with you. You are a bright light, and I’m just so happy to know you and to be able to share my heart on your podcast. And I just think that your listeners are amazing and please everyone don’t give up. Um, you’re incredible. I’m so glad you were born. I’m so glad you’re here. We can do this.
Speaker 2: (27:34)
Yeah. You know, I think being a part of this community, the, the, every, the right to know community or the, which you are the M P community, like all of a us, it makes, I’m so glad you were born. I’m so glad you’re here becomes a much more powerful statement. Um, yeah. Than when I just say it to somebody for their birthday, you know, like glad you were born. Uh, but in this world, in this, in our world, that is a, he it’s heavy there’s weight to it. Um,
Speaker 1: (28:04)
There is heavy because I think we asked ourselves, why am I here? Mm-hmm , mm-hmm if I’m this mistake or this problem or this oh, yeah. Thing to fill someone else’s need, boy, it really messes you up. So I appreciate you saying that because we just need to remind each other that our existence is intentional and we’re supposed to be here. Right. And we can honor that.
Speaker 2: (28:29)
Absolutely. I love that. Well, thank you so much for giving me. Thank you. Give you some morning. I’m like, so please keep me posted about pulled by the root book coming out. Um, and anything else that’s happening, um, so that I can make sure that my listeners know. Um, thank you. Yeah. And I’ll, um, I’ll make sure that I’ve got resources on my website, uh, that, that lead people to you. I actually, um, am working on, on buffering up my buffering up my adoption resources. So, um, perfect timing to connect with you today. So I’ll, um, and, uh, we’ll be in touch.
Speaker 1: (29:04)
Okay. You look forward to it.
Speaker 2: (29:07)
Yeah. I was gonna say, um, same, same as you. I have tons of interviews right now, so it will be a few months. I’m probably gonna wait until after the holidays, but yeah. Yeah. I absolutely, I promise to let you know when all the episodes come out in, but especially
Speaker 1: (29:19)
Yours. Oh, thank you so much. Absolutely.
Speaker 2: (29:22)
Heidi have a wonderful Friday.
Speaker 1: (29:25)
Yes, you too. T G
Speaker 2: (29:27)
I F
Speaker 1: (29:28)
T I F chocolate. Okay.
Straight From a Mother’s Mouth
Speaker 1: (00:00)
Okay, we are recording. Um, awesome. All right, hold on. Hold on. Today’s challenge is that the dog is in the room, uh, but it’s cause this is the coolest room in the house temperature coolest. So, um, yeah, and it’s the hip, it’s the coolest room. It’s where everybody wants to be. Uh, so he is on the floor next to me. Five degrees outside. So 95.
Speaker 2: (00:36)
Oh, okay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: (00:38)
95 just to offer a dog. It’s too hot for a dog. He is. So he’s allowed to be in here, but he can be a little wild, so we’ll just see how it goes. Okay. Um, all right. So, um, before we really begin, do you want your name used in this, or do you want to be anonymous for this one or are you K using your
Speaker 2: (01:06)
Name? The name is fine. Okay.
Speaker 1: (01:08)
I didn’t know if like, from a different perspective, if, if you were feeling like more protective of yourself.
Speaker 2: (01:18)
No, no, because I can’t change anything. So it is what it is. It’s true.
Speaker 1: (01:26)
This is true. This is true. Um, okay. So something that I have been saying since I started this podcast, as you know, is that I am, I would love to get everybody’s perspective within the NPE dynamic. And one of the ones that deal is the hardest to, to reach is the perspective of the mother’s mom, who, who, who has a child gives birth and then for, um, and then chooses or doesn’t know, but it is a, is I don’t even know how you would describe it either. Like is a part of the MPE problem or like the NPE discovery, like it’s part of the DNA discovery later is so, um, so it’s so amazing that you said like, Hey, I really want to talk to you. I’m S I could not be more excited, even though it took us so long to finally schedule this interview. I swear. I’ve been, um, so excited that it was getting in the way of actually doing it. Cause this feels so important to me, um, that I was nervous about getting it. Right. So, um, so you’re here with me today and, and I, I’m a man I’m imagining that you thought about how you wanted to tell this story or what you wanted to talk about,
Speaker 2: (02:57)
But I, and haven’t at the same time, because, well, I mean, the story is the story, so there’s, it just is what it is. I just I’ll tell it how it happened.
Speaker 1: (03:14)
Okay. Okay. Tell it.
Speaker 2: (03:19)
Um, okay. So we have to way back when I was 18, which was 18 years ago, 19 years ago. Oh my, um, anyhow, uh, I had turned 18 and I was dating a guy who was 24 and he was my manager at the place that I was working when I turned 18, you know, you’re like, Ooh, freedom. Well, I didn’t really have freedom. My mother wasn’t gonna allow that. I was technically still in high school. Um, so I moved out eight days after I turned 18 in with the guy. This will
Speaker 1: (04:03)
Take care of it. That will totally take care of.
Speaker 2: (04:06)
Oh yeah, totally. And that was in December at the very end of December. So I think I moved out. It would have been right after new year’s. Um, I ended up dropping out of high school in February because I just knew I wasn’t going to pass. And then come April. I found out I was pregnant. Um, like I, I think I, I knew, but I had a, his brother’s girlfriend wanted to go to a pregnancy center here in town. Cause she thought maybe she might be pregnant. But somehow I got talked to taking a pregnancy test while they’re there, I’m pregnant. So I go home and I tell him, and he’s all sorts of excited. Mind you, he’s 24. He already has three children, two from one mother and one from another. Um, and the one from the youngest of them, I think at that point, him and his, that kid’s mom, they had just gotten divorced or something. It’s been a while. So I’m trying to remember that, but he didn’t have anything to do with the other two because the mom wouldn’t let him. So anyhow, I find out I’m pregnant. We tell his family, they’re all kinds of excited. I go over to tell my mom and she literally kicks me out of the house. Mm.
Speaker 1: (05:42)
Not exciting. Not the warm welcome. Okay.
Speaker 2: (05:45)
No, but she, she called herself and later that evening came over and talked to me, I would say about two weeks later, I was like, all right, this is not what I wanted. This is not who I want to have a child with because a lot of really not okay. Things that happened like lying and stealing from the company. And I don’t want to have a kid with this person. And it just so happened that we, we moved, we moved caddy corner on the exact same block from my mom. So
Speaker 1: (06:29)
I feel like only an 18 year old would do out of here, but I’ll be just right across the street. Yeah. So
Speaker 2: (06:39)
When I decided that I was leaving, um, my family came and helped me get my stuff. And it just so happened that exact same day at that moment, he got in a car accident and he kept trying to call, trying to call cause he was at the hospital and I was trying to pack and someone answers my phone for me, tells him what’s going on. He rips the Ivy out of his arm so that he can try to speed race home to get there before I leave, which was incredibly apparent when he got there through blood everywhere. Um, and I finally talked to him for a minute, but I was like, you know, I’m, I’m leaving dah, dah, dah. I was three months pregnant at this time. And so I moved with my mom, you know, get a corner. And for three months afterwards, he leaves a note on my car every single morning.
Speaker 1: (07:38)
All right. Dedicated. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (07:41)
In the meantime, during that three months I met, um, who is now my ex-husband somewhat best friend. Um, and so we got together. I was probably like three and a half, four months pregnant when we got together and we remained together the entire time he was there for the first kick. He was there when I had her, like not in the room, outside the room with my stepdad. Um, and he just absolutely fell in love with her. And I mean, to be honest, if it hadn’t been for her, I don’t know if him and I would have ever made it to be a marriage because he just, he just couldn’t give her up. He called her snuggle baby, um, from, well, from when she was in my belly, like he had a nickname for now. She’s got like 20, but, um, you know, I, after I had her, we didn’t call him dad. We didn’t him and I didn’t live together or anything. And autumn was about three months old. When I ran across the biological, he was already with somebody else who was about seven months pregnant with his kid. And I tried to give him the opportunity to, you know, be a parent. We talked for a while. I let him see her a little bit. And then I ended up, ultimately I let her stay the night with him one night.
Speaker 2: (09:21)
Well, I thought all of that went well, but about two days after that, um, my ex husband comes to my house. He is absolutely livid because bio dad had called him and told him that, you know, I had been letting him come around and that his girlfriend felt like I was trying to get him back. And it was causing problems. Well, at that point, my ex-husband gave me a choice either. He was going to be her dad or bio gab was going to be her dad. Well,
Speaker 1: (10:01)
I did not. I did not see that coming. Yeah. Yeah. Neither did I.
Speaker 2: (10:09)
So, I mean, for me, that was a fairly easy choice, right. Because I mean, I have this nice upstanding person and then I have him. Right. And he hadn’t made an effort really to be a parent, but this person had been here this entire time. So it was like, okay, well, let’s you, um, fast forward to when she was about eight months old, maybe lo and behold, if I don’t find out I’m pregnant again. And one of the things I’m really good at is ultimately him and I, we got married and we waited until she was about four. Before we, before he adopted her, um, that gave four years for this other guy to come forward and say, Hey, I’m your dad. I want to be a part of your life. Um, him and the other woman got married and whatnot. I’ve actually never read.
Speaker 2: (11:17)
We don’t live in a big town, but I never ran across him. My daughter crossed his brother and I kept in contact with his dad. Um, because you know, they were, his dad was, he’s a good person, um, brothers, little shady, but that’s okay. He was whenever he ran across me and saw autumn, he was always polite. You know, during this whole time, everybody in my family, everybody in my cousin’s family, there’s, they’re like, you know, she doesn’t ever need to know. Right. You don’t have to tell her, um, my ex-husband didn’t want to tell her. So we go through this and then ultimately him and I ended up getting divorced when she was seven, I think. And that didn’t change anything between him and her, you know, to him and her, you know,
Speaker 1: (12:16)
She has a sister that’s like very close in age with her, right? Yes.
Speaker 2: (12:21)
Okay. And then I have my son also, um, by my acceptance and when him and I separated it just so happened that at that exact timeframe, bio dad went to prison. He had, yeah. Um, him and the woman after me, I, I’m not positive all the details. Cause I’ve heard bearing story. All I know is that he got charged with multiple counts of internet stalking, breaking of protective, the PFAS, um, and aggravated assault or battery all in all, he got eight years with.
Speaker 1: (13:10)
And the, and the, that was all in con between him and his ex wife, his, him and his wife. Yes. He had been okay. Um, he was a victim in the scenario.
Speaker 2: (13:23)
Well, the assault was with some guy. It wasn’t the assault wasn’t against her. It was against some guy that had something to do with her. Right. And that’s the part I’m like, uh, okay.
Speaker 1: (13:38)
I mean, but the, but the harassment and the that’s all with her or it was between her. Okay. No, why that detail matters. I was just, I couldn’t, I was trying to imagine them like being Bonnie and Clyde criminals together and then realize that probably that’s not what you were describing. Okay.
Speaker 2: (13:54)
When you think about the, the three months worth of notes on my car and then throw that in there and you’re like, oh yeah, okay. Right.
Speaker 1: (14:06)
I believe we call that a pit bull. Yeah. Terms. Yeah. Grips, hold on.
Speaker 2: (14:19)
He goes to prison and I’m like, woo. I have relief. I don’t have to worry about this for a little while because mind you the entire time, you know, obviously it’s not going to be every day, but every now and then it pops in my head, like the fact that in is she ever listens to this she’ll kill me. But she drools when she sleeps. So did he? She has Tourette’s and it’s not on my side threats and simply hereditary, but I don’t know enough about his family to know if it’s from it, you know, just little things like that. And so there’s all these years, you know, I’m thinking about it and, you know, should I tell her shouldn’t I tell her, but knowing that the reason we didn’t is because, you know, I don’t know if you want to call it unfortunately. Or fortunately I had a choice and her dad, I mean the one she calls dad, he chose her.
Speaker 2: (15:26)
Yeah. Um, and so like, I never knew what the correct answer was. And then one day when she was 11, we were in the kitchen, um, talking about my nephew, who was in a situation where he thought that my ex-brother-in-law was his dad. And we all knew that he wasn’t. And we were talking about this and I don’t know, like something clicked in my head and I’m like, this is the moment. And so I told her that, you know, I, I needed to tell her something and I took her to my room so that we could sit down and talk. And I don’t know why I thought that was an 11, this was a good time. But I dunno, something said, do it. Then, you know, I told her, I cried way more than she did because I just, even now I just feel horribly guilty.
Speaker 2: (16:33)
But at the same time, like I have contradicting feelings because I gave her the best dad she could possibly have. She had a dad who was present, even when he was in the military, he would drive hours upon hours to come be a dad. He drove across the country to take my daughters, do a father, daughter dance. Um, yeah. Um, but you know, she still didn’t have the truth. She has, I think now she has four other siblings and oh, that just dawned on me why I felt an urgency. One of the kids in her class that year, he, his siblings or her siblings. Yeah. And he, he knew the truth, but of course, autumn didn’t right. Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: (17:34)
That’ll bring in an imminent feeling to the situation.
Speaker 2: (17:39)
Yeah. And I had talked to the other mom, I knew why he wasn’t allowed to be around those children, that kind of stuff. And I had asked her to talk to her son and, you know, try to not say anything because I want it to come from me and it did. Um, and I explained to her everything that I knew about him, which unfortunately wasn’t all that much. Um, I told her that it wasn’t that he was a bad guy. Yes. He’s in prison. He’s not a bad guy. He’s just not a smart one. Yeah. Uh, but that probably comes from me working in prison so long and knowing that people make mistakes and go to prison. Um, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re horrible person. Um, so she I’d like to say she handled that really well.
Speaker 2: (18:39)
She did in the short term and then about seventh grade. So that would have been sixth, fifth or sixth grade. Seventh grade is when everything just went Wowza. And she had a lot of mental health problems and, you know, we put each other through the ringer and it, it was hard. And she’s, she’s never said that it’s because of this, but I feel like it is, I feel it’s my fault. I did this to her. Um, I made it to where she felt different. And even though, even if her dad doesn’t feel differently, she feels like she’s different. And for a young girl going through her teenage years, that’s a lot, it’s a lot. So when my DNA thing came along, um, you know, she was 17 when mine came through. And,
Speaker 1: (19:54)
And that’s when you discovered just in case anybody’s, uh, unsure, but you discovered that you were an NPE yourself and you can listen to your episode in my season two, but I’ll refer to that later. Um, so you found out you were an NPE and at this time your daughter is 17. So she’s known, but her teenage years have been really hard. You’re feeling very guilty. Yes.
Speaker 2: (20:22)
Um, so bless her heart. She felt like she understood. And to this day she thinks that the situation is the same. Okay. Um, like when you just go at the basis of, I found out my dad’s not my dad yet. It’s, it’s great. Um, but I found out from DNA tests, I’m 38 years old and she found out at 11 from her mom. Um, it doesn’t make either scenario any less challenging. Um, I can’t honestly say that I’d rather know what 11 versus 38. Um, it just it’s different. And so her and I occasionally spat over that, however, because I met my biological family. Um, and I think she wasn’t quite 18 yet, but I couldn’t be a hypocrite because I had wanted her to wait until she was 18 to meet him. I had done it. So I arranged it and we went to the park and I went with her. He’s out of this time. Yes. He got out two years ago. I think there again, there’s no way it would take her to a prison.
Speaker 1: (21:58)
I just want to make sure the park wasn’t a code word. No, I took her to the park.
Speaker 2: (22:08)
Um, I took her to the park. We met him at, uh, like a picnic bench or whatever, and they sat and talked for a while and he oddly reminisced about him and I, um, but all in all it went well. Um, she has maintained a, a little bit of a relationship with them. I guess they go to lunch every now and then that’s the only one I’ve gone to. I left it to her after that. Um, and I told her, you know, if you need me, I’m here. Um, he has been respectful of boundaries, but then like a few weeks ago was the first time he met my grandson because your daughter, your daughter has a son.
Speaker 1: (23:00)
Right. Autumn has autumn is a mom now. Okay. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (23:04)
Um, and, and that was, that was a little, little tough for me because I’m like mine, this is mine. Um, it’s, it’s hard to share. Like I have a hard enough time sharing her because everything in me says that he doesn’t deserve her in all of her wonderfulness because she’s, she’s amazing. Um, but then I also have to realize it’s not my choice. My choice was made years upon years ago. Um, but I don’t really want to share my grandson.
Speaker 1: (23:45)
Yeah. I think most people would understand that. And if they don’t understand it, they will or would if they were grandparents. So that’s a common, I think that is a common sentiment among grandparents.
Speaker 2: (23:58)
However, he is respectful. He has texted me and told me how well I did with her, um, to which my response was, thank you. But it wasn’t just me. I definitely have a village. Um, and then he told me about meeting my grandson and how happy he was. And I was like, that’s, that’s nice. I heard, but I didn’t have a whole lot to say about that one, but that’s just me being selfish. Um, but like, I think I felt it was important that people hear this because like, with my mom, I’m not angry for what took place 38 years ago, because she was 20 girls girl. And I knew that like at 18, when I got pregnant with my daughter, I didn’t know what was best I did what I thought was best. And I still think it was, um, she’s up. She said that I had her entire family life or right. Um, I can’t say that. That’s not that, that something I didn’t do I guess, but I think I would probably do it again, given the same circumstances, because it’s what made her who she is. And she’s amazing. She’s a pain in my butt
Speaker 1: (25:40)
Special place for those of us. Who’ve raised teenagers, teenage girls. I like to think, um, an understatement. Um, yeah, I think, I think it’s so important to think about and appreciate what options you had at age 18. I mean, come on. Um, and, and aye, I don’t, I mean, I feel like I’m sort of speechless. Like I don’t, I don’t know. I, I like didn’t breathe for that whole entire time that you just told that story and to be 18. And given that choice, it almost feels unfair that you were like, that was the choice you were given. And yet I don’t, I think you made the best choice. I don’t know. Like it’s like what? I don’t know. I just accept that. I just feel like I understand you. And, um,
Speaker 2: (26:42)
I, her, what I, well, I thought what I was giving her was a family. And I did, um, for many, many years because had I gone the other way, who knows what would have happened, but I do know it wouldn’t have been a family. Right. Um, I’m a firm believer that everything happens for a reason. Had I not gone the direction I went, I wouldn’t have my other two kids. Right. Because you know, their dad wouldn’t wouldn’t have been able to accept not being her dad. Um, she was, even though him and I got divorced, they were raised with him and I as friends. And so they still got to have both of their parents. He comes over, like, I think this past year he came for new year’s. He came for Christmas, I’m remarried. And you know, he’s still a part of the family. He has another daughter as well. That’s the same age as my youngest they’re besties.
Speaker 2: (27:54)
But with her biological dad, there’s nothing there. Yeah. I couldn’t have given her any of it. Um, she got the most amazing grandparents because right after I had her in November, it was, it was cold out. But I went over to his house. He still lived with his parents, um, her, my ex-husband and he was washing his car. And I sat down on this bench on their front porch. And I was really nervous about taking her over there because I just didn’t know what his parents like. They obviously, they knew I was pregnant, but I figured they probably weren’t so welcoming of it. Anyhow, his mom poked her head out the door and she says she has a baby. Cause I had bundled. And I was like, yeah. And she took her from me and I swear she never gave her back.
Speaker 1: (28:51)
That just breaks my heart.
Speaker 2: (28:54)
Um, they are the most amazing people and they love their little snuck bug.
Speaker 1: (29:02)
I mean, I just, I’m trying, I’m just imagining being, even just having, like, not knowing what an 18 year old girl like sort of looks like and acts like, and imagining like one of my, my own daughter’s friends coming over with like a baby in her arms. And I just, I don’t know. Oh, like it just like, it breaks my heart in like 14 different ways, but, um, I would want it to,
Speaker 2: (29:28)
She was adorable and perfect. And she had just little wisps of red hair and out of four kids, I have one red headed and she said, believer God, her a redhead in the female so that certain people could accept her easier. Yeah, I know. Yeah. Um, I mean, she’s always been the center of everybody’s world. She’s made, she’s made sure of it because she just has that really outgoing personality. Um, and I mean, she says she’s not angry with me. I’m not going to say she has said she understands because luckily she’s never been in that position. Um, but you know, I, I take a lot of the blame for things that like mental health stuff, that type of stuff. One not only is it genetic and gave me I’ve passed it on, but I also didn’t help it any with this situation.
Speaker 2: (30:43)
But we’re always going to look at the, what if we can’t change any of it. I mean, I could say, well, what if I did go with him? And you know, everything just went absolutely wrong. She wouldn’t be who she is. Yeah. Life would be worse. Or she could be a doctor who knows. We’ll never know. And so with her, especially, I try really hard not to look at that so much unless she wants to talk about it. Um, she’s getting ready to meet his girlfriend. Oh, once you get out of prison, he has another baby. Um, yeah. Uh, so he has a child who is younger than my grandson.
Speaker 1: (31:38)
Um, yeah, just trying to remember what that makes, that makes his child is the uncle. The uncle is younger than the, than his grandchild. Okay. Yep. Yep. That’s fine.
Speaker 2: (31:56)
Um, so here’s soon as she’s supposed to be meeting his girlfriend. And on that one, I did ask her if I can go with her, um, I’m protective, very protective and it’s the mama bear in me with this, this person. I don’t know. And she said, I can, she doesn’t mind at all because she’s very much so a mama’s girl, even when she’s mad at me, she like, she’ll forget, she’s mad at me because she wants to tell me this or that. And then she’ll be like, oh yeah. Um, but her and her, her and my ex-husband, they still have a great relationship, even though they’re oddly a lot of like, um, they’re both fighters and having two fighters in the same place, guess what they fight, but she loves her dad and he loves her. And, um, right now it seems like everything is going well.
Speaker 2: (33:09)
She’s forming a relationship with him. Unfortunately. Um, his dad worked at the prison here locally and he worked there when I worked there and he got attacked by an inmate while I was working. And like, I’ll never forget the chopper coming into, pick him up because it was so severe. And so he hasn’t ever been quite right since, because it gave him some brain damage. And so Autumn’s not going to get the relationship with him that she would have had. Right. Um, but he’s still a good person. Um, he is the one that I’ve kept in contact with all these years. And I, I would update and give them pictures, um, because I didn’t feel like it was their fault, you know, but they also had to, they understood that I couldn’t have them around her, his, um, bio, dad, stepmom. So grandpa’s wife did my wedding cake, my gender reveal cake.
Speaker 1: (34:23)
It’s a small town. It’s a small town. Let’s great. Let’s revisit it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (34:31)
Um, so I mean, I’ve never been rude to him. I didn’t feel like that was needed. It wasn’t necessary. I 100% shut him out for awhile. Um, and anything I could have possibly told her about him before she met him. I did. It’s just, unfortunately I didn’t know a whole lot. Right. I never, I never had a doubt in my mind who her biological dad was like I knew. Um, and I, I mean, I tried to think of ways to make it toward, didn’t have to tell her, like, maybe I could fake a book. I tried to think of anything, but all in all. I mean, obviously it wasn’t able to, um, but she still calls. She still calls her ex-husband yeah. Oh yeah. Um, she said that she doesn’t think of her biological dad as her dad. She said in her mind, he is just another person. Yeah. Um, she doesn’t talk about him a whole lot. Um, and when she like last summer, she said something about him. She said that he’ll text her. And like maybe the third or fourth texts after she doesn’t answer, she’ll finally respond. Um, teenagers say she leaves them on red. Aha.
Speaker 2: (36:14)
Right. Um,
Speaker 1: (36:18)
How is it for you as a mom who also is an NPE to read? Uh, well, I mean, I guess what I want to ask is like, what I’m thinking about is that people, people in the groups online,
Speaker 2: (36:38)
When I read the stories, when people are talking about their mom
Speaker 1: (36:41)
Yeah. And people are just really angry at their moms. What’s that like for you?
Speaker 2: (36:49)
I understand it. If my daughter was angry with me, even before I found out I was an MPE, I felt like I deserved it. Um, because everything, when it comes to her biological dad, she had zero control over it. I’m the one that made all of those choices for her. Um, and you know, I, I realized that my husband was obviously right there with me, but had I not wanted to do it, she was my child. And I could have said, no, we’re telling her or no, we’re, we’re going to raise her with this knowledge, but I chose not to do that. And so if she wanted to just be beyond angry with me because of a life and lived, or for me having her entire family lied to her, I did do that. So it would all be justified. And all I could do is sit there and pray that someday she forgave me.
Speaker 2: (37:59)
So when I look at other people and they’re angry, of course they’re going to be angry because there’s so much what if behind all of this that we find out or not understanding. And sometimes there’s narcissism and, you know, just mothers who, you know, aren’t empathetic. So people are going to be angry, but not every mom deserves anger forever. I was lucky that, you know, my daughter is still angry at me and she never acted like she was, but I do believe that has to do with her age. But I think that anger came out in other ways. Um, she tried to commit suicide three times, um, and ended up having to have, well, I call them vacation stays, um, which ultimately made her and I closer by the time it was done. But during it, um, you know, I, I took six months off from work to stay home with her.
Speaker 2: (39:21)
And I think that that was how she acted out her feelings, um, on top of being a teenage girl. Right. So when I read all of those, you know, I, I get it and then having been through it myself and being angry with my mom and my own way, I get it. Um, I just, the thing that I want, I guess, people in general to understand is that, you know, like me, I was 18. I even graduated high school. Cause I was that dumb. I wasn’t intelligent. I wasn’t, I was making the best decisions that I possibly could. Um, I got pregnant 18 because for whatever reason, I thought I was invincible and surprised that not, um, four kids later and still not. Um, and so, you know, 18, you don’t make decisions based on the future. You base them on the here and now.
Speaker 1: (40:45)
Well, I I’d wanted to interrupt you earlier when you said you weren’t intelligent because I, I think it just depends on your definition of what is this, what was the smart choice, right. Like this isn’t, uh, I don’t know. It, wasn’t not the w it, something might, it might be possible that a choice could be the right choice and simultaneously not the smartest choice, maybe. Um, well, it just depends. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (41:17)
Well, luckily for me, like when I found out I was pregnant, never once crossed my mind to have an abortion or anything like that. So it was always okay, I’m going to be a mom. Um, I had another male friend who he offered to be her dad. This was before I met, like right before I met my ex husband. Um, because, you know, I, I knew right from the start that I didn’t want her to be raised with this person. Um, and all of this stuff just kind of fell in my lap. And you know, when, when I was making those choices, I wasn’t going to go, I wasn’t sitting there going well, how is she going to feel when she’s 18? Right. Of course not. Um, how is she going to feel when she finds out she has five siblings. I was thinking about the person in front of me, the baby in front of me, and what’s going to happen tomorrow.
Speaker 2: (42:21)
Right. Um, and so when people are that upset with their, their moms or whatever, for the choices they made, I just wished that they would think about the fact that when we’re that young, we’re, we’re doing the best. We can, obviously it’s not all of us, but like with me, I, I did the best I could. And like with my mom, I’m not upset with what happened way back with it. And that had nothing to do with me. I was just the product. I was upset with how she handled it after I sent that. Right.
Speaker 1: (43:02)
Right. Is an important line D line to draw sort of about the decisions that were made years and years ago and the decisions being made presently.
Speaker 2: (43:16)
Um, oh, and after I told her when she was 11, I, my ex-husband at the time was in DC. He was in the air force. And like, obviously this was a planned. So after I told her, and I got myself calmed down enough to make a phone call, I had to call him and tell him that I told her, having her never once spoke about it from the time she was 11 until the day before she met her biological dad, because I told her that the only way I would introduce them is if she talked to her dad first, like they both knew the other knew, but they never talked about it. And they still don’t. Um, it’s just one of those things that they, they each know is happening, but they’re not comfortable talking about it. He will, if she brings it up to him, but I know that he probably doesn’t, uh, he has a fear, I think, of being kind of replaced. And the way I explained it to her was that she got something that most kids don’t get. You know, her dad chose her. She wasn’t just given to him. And this is what you get. No, he chose her and he fought for her. That’s how much he loved her. Um, and that’s like, every time she gets upset with him because she has girls get upset with her dad. That’s what I remind her of. And we’re not perfect. And we’re human, even though we’re parents, we’re still humans and we make mistakes.
Speaker 2: (45:06)
Um, I wouldn’t trade her for anything. She was probably the saving grace of my life because I had some not too amazing friends way back when, um, and when I found out I was pregnant with hers, when I got away from those people, um, she was my everything. And you know, now I have four of my everything, but she walks in the room and the whole house, just like that. She moved out actually month and a half ago and like super excited. I’m like, we’re going to get all face back. Cause you know, she’s chaos walking and everybody’s like, you’re not happy about this. I was like, you just let me have this. Cause I know that when it gets here, I’m going to be a mess. And of what, and you were into it. I stayed out really late the night before because I’m like, if I don’t come home and I don’t go to bed, it’s not good. It’s not happening. Right. But I came home at like two o’clock in the morning and my two autumn and um, my one just under her were in the living room and I made them snuggle with me. Well, I wept like a six month old with him, both hugging me on both sides and me making the other one promise that she’s never moving out. Perfect. Um, and then the next day after I made, like, I don’t know, like the third trip to her new house with her stuff, she comes outside and she’s crying.
Speaker 3: (46:46)
Yes.
Speaker 2: (46:49)
She loves me just as much as I love her. Absolutely. And so we stood outside her house in this neighborhood where the neighbors are probably looking at us like we’re crazy. And we absolutely wept together. Um, and the house is far too quiet without her here. And it is definitely taking some getting used to, I recommend you never let them leave. I don’t like this. Right.
Speaker 1: (47:20)
Yeah. What a huge shift. And she, and I assume her, her, her did her baby go live with her?
Speaker 2: (47:26)
Yes. Her and, um, my grandson’s and them, they all moved in together and they have their little family and it seems to be going well. Um, it’s what they needed as much as I wanted it and didn’t want it at the same time. Um, but you know, I’ve ever heard the rule that you shouldn’t have two families under one roof.
Speaker 1: (47:53)
No, but it sounds like a good rule. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (48:00)
Yeah. Well, it doesn’t usually work out. No, he didn’t live with us, but, um, you know, uh, autumn and my grandson, their family, and now they have dad there too. And it’s weird going to visit her in her house. Right. Very weird. I’d knock on the door and everything. Yep. That would feel really weird to me too. So it all, it all, I think it’s all turned out. Well, hopefully it stays that way, but I have, uh, also left her space, open. Sure. Open door policy.
Speaker 1: (48:44)
I sounds like she’s really lucky to have you and that, and that you can, you have made decisions always with her best interest in mind and, and like adjusted accordingly as life has changed.
Speaker 2: (49:00)
I’ve tried. I mean, obviously we all make mistakes, but I I’ve done the best I can.
Speaker 1: (49:06)
I mean, that’s all we can do. Right.
Speaker 2: (49:11)
Um, she’s just, like I said, as much of a headache as she’s been. Cause she was a stage girl. She has, she amazes me. Um, all of my kids do, but they’re all very, very different. Um, like autumn and my next friend, they’re a year and eight days apart, night and day really completely. One of them would stay in her room all day long, all night long. If we let her and do all schooling online and autumn is an extrovert and she needs people. Right. So I just, and I’m hoping that as a mom now, her being a mom, as he grows older, she’ll understand some of the decisions I made because I don’t think at this point she fully understands. No, I, yeah. I I’m. I can,
Speaker 1: (50:10)
I can’t imagine that she wouldn’t have more realizations as she, as she grows older as a mom. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (50:17)
So I’m just waiting to see, oh, I just had a message pop up from messenger. Says mother I’m in your home.
Speaker 4: (50:32)
The living room. That’s funny.
Speaker 2: (50:35)
Hold on one. Let me, I’ll tell her to come in here. She’s at the very least say hi, I would holler, but that would hurt your ear real quick. Come say hi Easter. Just the lady I do the podcast for. Oh,
Speaker 1: (51:14)
Hello. You do have red hair.
Speaker 2: (51:17)
Yeah. That’s new. Oh cool. There I’ll give you the year.
Speaker 4: (51:20)
Oh, it’s not helpful. Acquirement. Autumn breeze give weirdo so nice to meet you.
Speaker 2: (51:33)
Good to meet you too. I was telling her how amazing you are. That is true. We were talking about the mother’s perspective of NPE. Keep going. So like when I told you that’s what I’m asking. Oh, um, non-parent is second. So like when I told you that you’re not okay. Yeah. Okay. Let me ask you something. When from then, till now, have you been angry with me? No. Why not? I don’t care. Why don’t you care? Cause I have my family. So you know your dad, granny Peppo what do you think of your biological dad? She didn’t choose the greatest people you could have. I did have pretty. You had pretty good option too. Huh? I love you. Let me to know. I didn’t have to compliment. You could have done better. I know. But you said it was pretty well. And so when you talk to him now, he, I think he told me before that he’s just another person.
Speaker 2: (52:46)
Yeah. But you’re you were building a relationship. Yeah. I mean it’s whatever there’s, what’s going to, as far as it’s going to get built, talking and texting and presence. Yeah. As far as that goes. And how do you feel about the decisions to be made for your dad to be your dad? Good decisions. Good though. Without the line, but good decisions. Okay. That’s a good, no, that’s a good point. That’s a good point. How do you feel about the fact that we kept it from you? I just said don’t worry about the lines, but if we hadn’t told you the truth from the get-go yeah.
Speaker 2: (53:28)
You think about what would have happened then it’s probably better that you did what you did. Cause I got to grow up thinking it was my dad. He is my dad. So he just happened to be better that way, because then I wouldn’t have grown up with me in my head. He’s my dad. So we were taken more to get that mindset. Good point. I’m really lazy. My arms are weak from standing like this. You’re not standing your lane down there shaking. Okay. Well I’m going to finish talking to you and I’ll be up. No, I work at six. You work at six. Okay. Is that okay? She said, thank you.
Speaker 1: (54:15)
She said anything for my family. That’s funny is, uh, she talks. That’s just how my 18 year old talks, like it is a new, like, like it is a new acquirement. Like that is totally something. But Lily would say, uh, exact same sort of drought. I have one of those. I have a Lilly. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. We talked about that last time. Yeah. Like real like that real dry, dry delivery humor. Yeah. On this content. Yeah. That’s awesome. That’s so great. Yeah. I would love to talk to her more about, sometime about, about how, how she imagines that could have worked and not, and a challenge, not to challenge or not be like, how do you think that would’ve worked? Like, so how is so like not lying. So that would have meant, I dunno, what would that, you know, I would love to know what that looks like. Um, yeah, but it, and, and it sounds like you guys have navigated, navigated the changes, the best you could. Um, like I said, she’s definitely a mama’s girl. Yeah. Well, thank you so much. Um, for telling your story, I still feel sort of speechless. Cause there’s nothing there’s like sort of nothing to say. Like, it’s kind of like what I asked you, like, do, do you want to hide, you know, do you want me to, to hide your name? And you’re like, it is what it is. And I kind of feel like, yeah, I was just here. Like, I’m just here to hear it. So you did it.
Speaker 2: (55:49)
I hope it helps somebody understand something along the way.
Speaker 1: (55:54)
I think it, I know it will. I absolutely know it will. And I, I think there’s so much to be said about acknowledging just all it is. It’s just really complex. It’s just acknowledging how complex these are. There’s just no easy answer.
Speaker 2: (56:14)
Well, I’m also kind of hoping that there are moms that listened to your podcast because you know, with say like my mom, my mom and I are different, um, empathy, hasn’t always been her thing. And I firmly believe what’s helped me with my own child is that I’ve, I’ve tried to be understanding of her feelings. Um, I’ve tried to take blame where do, um, and just be there because at a certain point it’s not about me anymore. And I’m hoping that there are moms listening that I don’t know, maybe they haven’t gotten that revelation yet. It’s no longer about you. It’s about your kid and maybe it will, maybe it’ll help them. I don’t know.
Speaker 4: (57:20)
Yeah.
Speaker 1: (57:21)
Yeah. I mean, I just think so much too is to me, I guess maybe this is just me, like my personal experience is just how much it’s, how much people feel, um, alone in the experience and to think of you being 18 and mean being alone, you know, and, and to meet it would just be amazing if all, I don’t know what it would be like for you. But to me, I imagine it would be amazing if all the moms, not all the moms, but you know, like if you met other moms who made that decision, get all commiserate about being 18 and, or being very young and feeling like you had no choices and, and to just carry all of that alone, your whole life is a lot.
Speaker 2: (58:10)
When I was finally able to tell her guilt, when I was finally able to tell her as guilty as I felt it was so wonderful to not have to lie anymore. Um, she’s the one that told her, her siblings that are my kids, but it was just, it was a weight that was just lifted because I hated like, um, but you know, I, I don’t know anybody like me, like who has made that decision, it’d be wonderful to talk to somebody who does, who like would understand it. Yeah. Um, because I don’t know anybody. I’ve never talked to anybody who did, and it’s easy to sit back and look at it and pass judgment, but you just never really know what somebody is going through unless you’re in their shoes.
Speaker 4: (59:18)
Absolutely. You never know.
Speaker 2: (59:23)
And I think she turned out pretty well. She’s
Speaker 1: (59:25)
Great. She’s fantastic.
Speaker 4: (59:28)
She’s horrible. Oh, and
Speaker 2: (59:31)
She just went back to the red, by the way, he got lucky you caught it with red hair. Oh, it’s been about every color in the crown box. Ours are
Speaker 1: (59:40)
The, every color of hair is at this house too. I feel like your 18 year old and my 18 year old would get along very well. They probably would. Um, all right, well go spend some time with her before she has to go to work. I will, she has to go. She has to go to work pretty soon. Um, thank you again. I’m going to, I, if I, if you think of anything more, you know, message me and we’ll, uh, we’ll jump on again or say, or email me and I’ll, and I’ll make sure it’s in there. Um, but this was really, really lovely and eyeopening and I, and I’m an insightful and I, and I hope that people are really take from it. What I’m taking from it about, about decisions and moms and youth and mistakes and forgiveness. It’s all
Speaker 2: (01:00:29)
There. I know that you like to sometimes put pictures on your Instagram, if you want, I can send you a picture of her and I, after I had her and like, what now? Oh, I would love
Speaker 4: (01:00:42)
It. You could have cute. She was, oh, I can believe it. Yep. I would love it. Okay,
Speaker 1: (01:00:49)
Great. Thank you so much. All right. Talk to you soon, Kimberly. Thank you so much, right?
Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction
Speaker 1: (00:20)
There, there we go. Awesome. Hi. Hello. How are you, Ben? Good. How are you? I’m doing good. Doing good.
Speaker 2: (00:30)
Oh, I’m so glad. Is that your, is that a quilting room?
Speaker 1: (00:35)
That is my studio. Yes. Part of it. Wow. That’s that side. And then let’s see, have a, still have a figure as this stupid thing. Now, there we go. We’ll just do this. Oh, wow. That’s my design wall back there. Yeah. And I’ve a couple of projects up there on the desk. So how many
Speaker 2: (01:01)
Quilts are you making at any one time?
Speaker 1: (01:04)
Uh, right now I actually have in some form or fashion, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9, 9, 9
Speaker 2: (01:27)
Quilts in process. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (01:29)
And they all have to go, you know, they gotta be at different stages, so I don’t get bored. Right,
Speaker 2: (01:33)
Right, right. Right. And are they all to be gifted to people or do people commission you to do them or do you sell them somewhere?
Speaker 1: (01:40)
Um, none of these are commissioned. Two of them are well, one of them, um, which is behind the big one up on the wall, ready to go on. The long arm is a scrap quilt. And, um, I will use it to teach myself how to use this machine. That goes about 10,000 stitches a minute with rulers where you’re actually holding the ruler and moving the machine. Um, some of those and, um, like there’s one that I have that I’m working on right now piecing that is for my half sister. Um, yes. And another one is some, I get a box of month of, um, new quilt, uh, fabrics from different designers. And you never know what you’re getting in the box. Some of them, you like some of them, one of them that I don’t particularly care for Lydia loved. She was like, oh, I love that.
Speaker 1: (02:44)
So I’m making it and I’ll just give it to her. But most of them are, um, up until this past last year, most of them were gifts that I would give away. Um, and this year I’ve decided, you know what, I’ve made so many quilts I’ve kept for myself. So kind of keeping some for myself, some will be like I said, gifts. Um, so just depends. And I have done commission in the past. I just don’t have any right now. So, and I don’t, um, I have not thought about selling them just because I usually have someone in mind. Um, although my son did say, mom, you really should sell your quilts. And I’m like, yeah, well, we’ll see. We’ll see. We’ll just see how the process goes. Yeah, exactly. So, thanks for joining me this morning, I guess for
Speaker 2: (03:39)
You. Oh, no. I was realizing bright as we, as I was sitting down and, and, uh, getting everything set up that I know this, I know about your story. I know the second half, like I know from like discovery onward, maybe. I mean, I know pieces of it. And then I realized I didn’t really know the first half, so that’s kind of exciting for me to, um, to talk with. I mean, I always love to, I to, I love talking to everybody, but I like it when it’s a new story to me too. Yeah. Um, but your, your story is, um, has, has some twists and turns that are, that are,
Speaker 3: (04:16)
Um, interesting to say the least. Yeah. Yeah. Um, we
Speaker 1: (04:22)
Like to say Jerry Springer on steroids.
Speaker 2: (04:25)
It’s a little bit, yeah. I was going to say, I want to say it’s, I want him to see this twists and turns that are fun, but that is not the word I want. So interesting. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (04:36)
Interesting. Yes. Intriguing. Yes. Um, you know, the story, I mean, you know, we’ve all heard it, truth is stranger than fiction our whole lives. And we’re like, yeah, whatever, you know, because you read a good fiction book and you’re like, oh, that could never happen in real life. And then you live through something and you go, wow. Yeah. Truth really is stranger than fiction at times. So
Speaker 2: (05:02)
Like to start the story, some people start with their discovery and then some people start by telling you their child, you know, a little bit of their childhood or what life was like before the discovery.
Speaker 1: (05:14)
Um, I think for me, um, to kind of put everything in context, um, because there are so many crazy things with this story. Um, I will give you a little bit of, um, family history that kind of puts things in context. So I’m now 52. I was born in April of 1969. Um, I’m the oldest of five and all of this that I’m telling you is what I grew up knowing. Okay. Um, so I have, uh, one brother who’s right in the, of us and then two sisters, um, or there’s the two of us. And then the two of the last two. So my parents got married in July of 1969. And I am the reason my parents got married. Um, I, um, like I said, I was born in April. My father had been to Vietnam, had come back. Um, the story we were told as kids is that he was engaged to someone when he went, she broke off the engagement, got married to someone else and didn’t tell him till he got back and then we got back.
Speaker 1: (06:37)
He kinda just went crazy. So, um, so anyway, my mother got pregnant, uh, and apparently so did the ex fiance sister, um, who, if I’m not mistaken, was married and had kids around at the time, but I’m not sure on that one. So, um, so anyway, so I am the reason my parents got married. My parents, my dad did not like my mom, um, in the beginning. Um, apparently I have since found out that my mom was going to take me and moved to Arizona. This all took place in Northeast or Northwest Ohio. Um, she was going to move to Arizona with me, my grandmother, my dad’s mom, uh, convinced her not to leave that she would convince my dad to marry her. And, uh, so she did. And how long have
Speaker 2: (07:31)
You been dating or seeing each other or they,
Speaker 1: (07:38)
From what I have been told, um, which I just found out because of everything else going on, just trying to get some real history of what was happening. My mom got pregnant in 68. My dad was in the army still. Uh, even after my mom got pregnant, he had apparently had just been home on some kind of leave and was down in Georgia. My mom showed up at his place in Georgia, pregnant with me, and I guess they kind of stayed together after that. I’m not quite sure on all of the timing there. So the reason that my dad ended up marrying my mother was the one you need to put a warning at the beginning for various reasons. So the first reason we were always told is because my mother was a Virgin when she slept with my dad and got pregnant. And so none of his bar friends in the little town they lived in could come up and say, Hey, she was good. Wasn’t she? Uh, the other story is the other store is I have my dad’s feet. My, when she saw my feet as a newborn knew I was his because of my feet. Hm. Hm. So, uh, that’s the other story. So that’s why they got me. Oh. And there was supposedly some fight between my dad and his dad and the front yard on main street and the little town that I grew up in and his dad was very connected politically. And so I guess they got in a fight. And so anyway, so fast forward
Speaker 2: (09:24)
Getting married was the right thing to do.
Speaker 1: (09:26)
It was the right thing to do for who I’m not quite sure yet, but so, so they get married in July, my half brother. That was the other woman that was pregnant at the same time. He was born in August of 69 and, uh, put up for adoption. So we go through life. My parents moved to Indiana. Um, my, like I said, my mom had four more kids after that. We kind of bounced back and forth between one small town in Indiana and Texas back to Indiana and Ohio back to Indiana different towns back to this little town in Indiana. So I’m a very unique name for my area. Um, and I just happened to be an elementary school when roots came out and, uh, to say that it was finer for snotty nose, little elementary kids, and the teasing would be an understatement because I can remember going home and telling my parents, we are going to court, you’re changing my name.
Speaker 1: (10:38)
I knew this. And like second, third grade, you are changing my name. I cannot do this anymore. They didn’t, what did you want to be anything, but what it was, I didn’t care. I did not care when you’re going to school when people are calling you. [inaudible], I mean, it’s just a big deal when you’re like in this little, I mean, I graduated with 93 people in the middle of a cornfield, so, you know, we’re small town. Um, so, so we, you know, like I said, we all are living in this little trailer. We were very, very poor. Um, my parents both worked, but we were still very poor. Um, I didn’t realize it at the time, but years of therapy have shown me how toxic and traumatic that upbringing was. Um, so anyway, I am also a survivor of incest. Um, six years of it, when, um, when it was going on, I obviously, I didn’t say anything because back in those days that wasn’t even heard of, I mean, I can remember being, I think, a senior in high school or a junior and hearing the word incest on Oprah Winfrey for the first time, you know, I’d really never heard the word before.
Speaker 1: (11:56)
It wasn’t topics of conversation. Um, and so being the protector that I am was protecting my mother. And so anyway, so I move out, go in the army and I’m one of those people that from 18 to about 49, it was not topics of discussion. Um, didn’t face it the whole nine yards, and this does play into everything else. Oh, I know
Speaker 2: (12:34)
You kept in touch with your family. I did like you weren’t, it wasn’t like you left at 18 and never saw them again. It was like you left at 18 and joined the army, but were otherwise a fully communicative quote unquote functioning.
Speaker 1: (12:48)
Exactly, exactly. Yes. Um, I loved my mom. I really, I loved my mom. She was probably my best friend. Um, so that being said, um, in 2015, um, my husband and I moved back to Indiana for family reasons. We were on the east coast, outside DC. His parents were on the west coast in Huntington beach, California right off the beach. And they started getting sick. They’re older, his dad’s currently 95. Um, his mom has since passed, but it was just, my husband had already retired from the military. We had, our kids were late teenagers. Um, still living at home. The three youngest were our oldest was in Texas at the time. So we moved back here because it allowed my husband to quit his job, to be able to take care of his parents. And we were going to be here in case my parents needed us. My, my dad had had a total laryngectomy from throat cancer. And so, and they were getting older, you know, and we just wanted to be available.
Speaker 2: (14:00)
Like you’re both being really, um, good adult children doing what you’re supposed to do or should do doing the right thing. Again, people doing the right thing for family.
Speaker 1: (14:11)
Exactly. Um, so, so that’s 2015. We decided to move out here. We moved out in August of 2016 and we, like I said, we brought the three kids with us. Uh, one of which got married seven months later and moved back to Virginia with her awesome husband who is a farmer. And we lived a life. Uh, Steve wasn’t working. He, he was retired from the army at that point and had been actually working for the government in a civilian position. And he got into that job to come out here. So we get in the house, we get everyone settled. Uh, his mother, like I said, had she passed away two weeks before we were going to move them out here. Oh, wow. So we did bring his dad who had, it was in the early to mid stages of dementia at that time. And we, um, kind of just got into a groove with life.
Speaker 1: (15:13)
Rebecca got married, moved back to Virginia on Noah, Lydia we’re finishing school. I homeschooled all my kids and they were finishing high school and we were just kind of living life, you know, you’re beautiful quilts. I was, I was making my quilts and I was spending more. Okay. So between, basically between I, when I left to go in the army, uh, and when we moved back here, we would come back to Indiana and see my parents once or twice a year, very short trips, you know, three, four or five days. And then we would go back home to Virginia and, or North Carolina if we were living. Cause we lived there also. And we, um, we didn’t allow our children to stay over with my parents unless we were there until Rebecca was engaged or almost engaged at that point. She stayed for a couple of days. But anyway, um, I digressed, sorry, I’m just like a little kind of all over the place. I feel there’s some, you’re
Speaker 2: (16:18)
Not all over the place I’m following you. Totally. And I think, okay. Yeah, no, no, absolutely. And I think, um, I think you’re, you’re, you’re answering questions that, that ha that are sort of like subtextual in there. Um, so, and so did, so, right. So did your, so for example, did your husband know about your history with your dad?
Speaker 1: (16:39)
He knew I had been abused. He just did not realize he, he was, um, he was very good. He was a, he’s amazing, absolutely amazing. He didn’t want the details. Right. He didn’t need, he said, I don’t need to know the details. Um, I know what happened and I know how it has affected you and then I’m good with that.
Speaker 2: (17:06)
Yeah. Okay. So I, so, so anyway, um, so it was, it was, I guess, like, what I was asking about was like, it was a reality for you as far as the history existed in so much as he knew, and the children were not allowed to spend the night there, but otherwise, um, but otherwise not discussed in any way. And you’ve maintained a relationship with them
Speaker 1: (17:28)
Pretty much. Yes. Yes. Um, I will say that in, um, my oldest son, our oldest son site is biologically not Steve’s. Um, Steve and I met when I was four and a half. We got married when he was five. So while I was single with him, I living, I was actually living in the state of Indiana because I was stationed at a different, but in a different city. And my father and I got into an argument because he did not care for who I was, who I was dating at the time. And it turned into this big, huge thing. I never at the time thought about how much control, um, and how narcissistic that man was. But, uh, we got in a huge argument and I can distinctly remember being on the phone with him and telling him, if you don’t tell her, I will. And I hung up the phone.
Speaker 1: (18:30)
And I think in my own protective, naive mind, I’m thinking he’s honestly going to tell her he told her something and I just assumed that it was everything. Um, and she called and I’m sorry, I wished I would’ve known, you know, and you’re just like, it’s okay, mom, I love you. It’s not your fault. And you just go on with life and you keep going forever. The protector, however, the protector forever. The daughter. Yeah. Yes. So that took place in, I guess that probably would have been at the time the Steven I met 94, that would have been probably the fall of 92, I guess. So she knew she knew and nothing was said about it anymore by anyone. Um, I do remember I went over to their house a couple of weeks later and my dad and I were in the garage and I just asked him why, and he couldn’t tell me why.
Speaker 1: (19:44)
So it just was never talked about again, so fast forward to moving here. And I literally, if there were no trees, right there could see the back of my mom’s house. She lives two blocks at a diagonal from me. So I was seeing my mom all the time and I was seeing my dad and my mom and I went to lunch one day, probably it was in the fall of 17. We’d met, like I said, we’d been here since August of 16. So it was in the fall of 17. And I was like, Hey mom, you know, do you think that this whatever’s going on with dad is because he’s being faced with the guilt of what happened all those years ago? And she’s like, no, no, your dad’s just going through some stuff, you know, don’t worry about it. It’s it has nothing to do with that. I said, okay, well, what was he exhibiting? So when I would go over there, like I said, I’m the oldest of five when I would go over there, everybody that wasn’t there, all of my siblings that were not there to defend themselves, he was devouring one of them or their spouse. I mean, nothing good was coming out of his mouth about them. And it was like, he was attacking me for what they were doing and I’m like, time out. So go tell him, you know? And so that was
Speaker 2: (21:10)
Just, that was unusual behavior. And so that’s what you asked your mom about?
Speaker 1: (21:15)
No, it wasn’t that it was unusual. It was just intensified. Like he would always have something to say about somebody when they weren’t there to defend themselves, but it was, um, it was just more intense all of the time instead of like an occasional thing here or there. So she’s like, no, you know, your dad’s just going through something. And she was, I think she was trying to put it off as the cancer, you know, because he was having some issues with, you know, when they do a total laryngectomy, you can’t talk unless you put a finger over them. And there was a lot of things that they did not make them aware of would become their new reality once.
Speaker 1: (22:03)
So, wow. So I just, you know, I go through life and at that point in the fall of 17, I told my husband, I said, I need to see someone I need to, I need to see a therapist or something. And I said, I love you and I can talk to you about anything, but I need to talk to someone that’s not emotionally invested in me so that we can get this out. And so, so I started seeing a therapist at the VA here in town. Absolutely amazing. One of the smartest things I did allow me to start talking through some things, um, kind of get things out in the open I learned about your inner child, which I had never heard of and a lot of things. So I think it was, um, in my purse, it was, it was, uh, it was God’s timing. He knew what was coming for me.
Speaker 1: (23:08)
Oh, you just muted. All right. That’s okay. Yeah. Okay. So I started, so I started seeing this therapist and it was awesome. So fast forward to the fall. Spring of 18, Mila moves back to Virginia. Uh, he’s graduated from high school. He moves to Virginia, starts working full time as an arborist and is living life and Lydia still home. Um, in November of 18, on November 16th, 2018, my father came to my house and told me that he didn’t care what happened in my family’s lives. He didn’t care if he never saw my husband again, never spoke to him or my kids didn’t wanna see pictures of them, their life, nothing. He didn’t care. And I was like, so after going round and round about how can you be a grandparent and not care about the lives of your grandchildren or your, you know, they left, he came over to tell you that. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Oh yeah. Yeah. So, so from that point forward, I pretty much only spoke to my mother or saw her when I knew my dad was not home in, um, the may of 2019, my daughter, Lydia, our youngest one, uh, graduated from high school and all of this really does play a part in everything that happens with part two. I,
Speaker 2: (24:39)
I know it does. I know it does. No, I’m on the edge of my seat.
Speaker 1: (24:43)
So in may of 2019, Lydia graduated from high school. She went over to my parents because my mom, you know, she doesn’t have the typical graduation ceremony because she was homeschooled. My mom’s like, Hey, when Lydia is done, come over. So we can give her her graduation gift and all as well. So that was at the end of may. She went over there and uh, she came home and she was in tears. I was like, what is the deal? And so she told me how absolutely horrific my dad was while she was there. Uh, the story of remote across the room, because she was talking to my mom. Yeah. So I was like, it’s one of those things where in the back of my mind, I was thinking, you know what? I need, I need to tell my kids what kind of life I had growing up so they can understand a lot of the things that I did as a parent and trying to keep everything suppressed.
Speaker 1: (25:43)
Like when I would come back from there, from visiting my parents and how I’d kind of like go off the deep end for a few days, you know what I mean? You are being the perfect daughter and you’re not letting real life in. So I was like, okay, I am seriously done with this man. So I took my mom out to lunch in June of 19. And I was like, what in the world happened at your house? When lady went over there to tell you about her graduation or, you know, she’s like, well, what are you talking about? And I was like, that was absolutely horrible to her. And she’s like, well, your dad’s like that to everybody. And I said, no, my dad, dad was not like that to Lydia at all. That is the first time he has ever been like that with Lydia and I’m done, you know?
Speaker 1: (26:33)
And so that’s the way my family operates. You say it. And it’s so in July of 19, my parents celebrated 50 years. I told my husband, I said, I, I seriously need to tell the kids what’s going on. You know, the therapy, the history, all of it. And he was like, that is yours. And you need to do it when you’re ready. I fully support whatever you want to do. So we, my siblings and I plan a lunch, we’re just going to go over to my parent’s house with just us adults and our spouses, no kids, cause nobody knows what kind of mood debt’s going to be in. And nobody needs, we just didn’t feel like dealing with it. So got through that day as the ever loving, happy daughter, then I am celebrating their 50th, celebrating their 50th. Yes, then my, um, Steve and I, and Lydia all flew out to California for a wedding.
Speaker 1: (27:45)
No was a groomsman in a really good friend’s wedding in California. And Rebecca went out there with her husband, Corey. So we are all in California and it is the day before the wedding. And we are all at Morro bay, except for Noah. Who’s doing the whole rehearsal thing. So we’re in a moral bay where we go out to lunch and we’re sitting there and we’re just having this great conversation. And Rebecca said something to the effect of, you know, mom, um, blood doesn’t always make you a family, you know? And it was just part of the context of the conversation. And I was sitting there and I was just like, it’s time. My children are all adults now. They’re all in really good places. And they don’t have to deal with this and being teenagers and growing up. And they’re all adults now. And, and this is a good thing.
Speaker 1: (28:41)
So it was so funny because we were standing at the door to leave and I was whispering with my husband and I said, it’s time. And he goes, I felt like it was the exact, I felt the same thing. Yes. And I said, obviously, I’m not going to tell them in California the day before a wedding, but you know, and his, so, so we get through the whole wedding. We come home and I had already had a trip planned to go to Virginia. Uh, had some quilts I needed to deliver that was given to Rebecca that was finished with, and I was going to go out and see her. And Noah, see, uh, Noah was looking for a house to buy. No, actually, no, I already had his house at this point. No, one’s getting to know someone. So I was coming up there to spend time with him and his now wife and, um, someone I’ve known for 20 years.
Speaker 1: (29:31)
So it was really fun. And, um, I already had, like I said, I already had that trip planned for August. So August 1st I get a group text. I’m part of a family group text. I get this text from my mother. Hey, that kid, that your dad was fathered and was put up for adoption has reached out to your dad. What do you all think about your, you know, him coming into the family and we’re all like, what’s the big deal we’ve known about this? I mean, all of us have known about him since birth. I mean, it was just one of those stories that was always talked about. Exactly. So we’re all just like whatever, you know, who cares. I mean, I didn’t care at the time. Um, let me backtrack on one very important thing here that I totally forgot about in the spring of 2014, I did a 23 and me DNA test for totally completely.
Speaker 1: (30:38)
And the only reason I did it was medical only, right. I was seeing a natural path. She was going to take my DNA, extrapolate it, throw it into this program. And it was going to get me on the road to healing, which it did. It’s amazing. Had all these family matches. Couldn’t give two widths of who cares. Right, right, right. Yeah. The medical part of it, my mom’s family has traced their family line all the way back to France. In the 14 hundreds, there was a book named, I mean, so I’m like, and I’m thinking at the time, because it’s not important to me. Oh, looks like mom had a lot of family do 23 and me whatever. And I never paid any more. Right.
Speaker 1: (31:24)
As a matter of bag, the top two people on that list, I’m like, I didn’t recognize the names, but we come from a really big, I mean, like my mom’s one of 10, my dad’s one of 10, each one of 10. It’s like, you’re talking 15,000 people in a family, whatever. So anyway, so I don’t pay it any mind. So August 1st we get this group texts. We’re all like, who cares if the guy wants to get to know us sounds great, whatever. So I drive out to Virginia because I’m going to tell my kids about my history. And I tell my kids about my history and kind of knock their socks off and say the least. But it, I believe it helped them. Um, I would like to think that it has helped them understand the way I react in a lot of ways. Um, especially before therapy and all of this taking place. Sorry, I talk with my hands all the time through it. And so, so, um, so I go, come back home. We get through that, come back home. I want to tell my son, sigh, I want to tell him face to face, but by this time he’s living in New York city and there’s just no way I can get there. He can get here. So I call them and I tell him what’s going on. And he was kinda like, well, that explains a lot of things, mom.
Speaker 1: (32:45)
And then I tell Lydia who is just starting her freshman year of college, uh, first time in a classroom environment and her whole schooling career. And to say she’s a little on the edges, you know, putting it mildly. And so I throw this on top of it, but she needed to know, you know, all the rest of them did. And if it became a topic of conversation, when we’re all together, she didn’t need to be left in the, and like I said, she’s an adult and she’s, you know, she was, she was at a good place. So this is the beginning of September, all of my kids know. And I decided that I’m going to write letters to my parents. So I write a letter to my mother and I write a letter to my father. And I tell my father basically, um, until you get things figured out, you are not allowed inside my boundaries for my own.
Speaker 1: (33:40)
And my family’s mental, emotional, and physical health. You can’t be a part of my life. I explained to my mother what I’m doing and why I’m doing it. And, um, when I wrote the letter to my dad, I was very specific in a lot of things that I have never forgotten, just so he knows I haven’t forgotten. And I just kind of glossed over and my mom’s letter and Steve was like, you need to give specifics because I somehow have a feeling. Your mom has no real clue of what has gone on. So I lay out some specifics for her and I tell her, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Doesn’t even begin to acute, you know, give you a picture of what happened for those six years. And my husband takes them over to their house. And the next day my mother called her, she texted me actually.
Speaker 1: (34:37)
And she was, you know, obviously, I’m sorry, I love you. Can I come over? And I’m like, sure. So she came over and um, we started to have a conversation and uh, let’s see what was the date of that one? That was because it all, that was September 9th. Okay. So September 9th. Yeah, she comes over and I tell her mom, don’t worry about it. You had a bad upbringing. I know you did. My grandmother was, um, loose to put it lightly. She was not as my grandmother hated me from the day I was born. My mother will tell you, my grandmother never liked me. My sister, my siblings, my cousins, everybody knew from, I didn’t like me for whatever reason, never could figure it out. So, uh, and I was like, you know what, mom, you had a upbringing. I know that we all know that.
Speaker 1: (35:35)
We know that you tried to do the best that you could do and I’m trying to do better. I don’t hold you responsible. You know? So she leaves, in the meantime I get a text or there’s a family, like a baker family, Facebook thing. And my aunt puts on there, Hey, I always knew the bakers were a bunch of months, you know? And she gives the different countries and the percentages. And she says like, she’s got all this from doing a 23 and me. And I’m just like, you know, so I send her, I go on this private group and I like, Hey, if you guys would all take yourself off of private, we could share our family ties because I did 23andme back in 2014. And we, you know, I’m not showing up on, you know, none of you guys are showing up. So go off a private knowing full well now it’s just like the light went on kind of thing.
Speaker 1: (36:41)
It’s like knowing full well, now they should be on my list. Right. You know, something is fishy had Denmark here. So she immediately on a pro. He texts me back on. Um, and she’s like, Toby, I am so sorry. She goes, I’m not on private. And I was like, okay. I was, so we exchanged pictures of our like first page of our twenty-three and be, oh my God. And, and it’s, it’s, it really was one of those things where it was like, so surreal that your brain, your logical brain is not allowing your emotional brain to know what your logical brain is seeing kind of thing. Absolutely. And I think it’s just because there was just so much other stuff going on with my parents, that it was just like, okay, this is so, so we send each other these pictures and she gives me a bunch of names and none of those names are showing up on mine. And in the meantime, uh, this whole deal with Tim, the brother that was put up for a nation, branching it out yeah. Is got my mom and dad all up in a tizzy. So my mom’s car.
Speaker 1: (38:13)
Okay. Continue. Okay. So my mom, and like I said, it’s all on a tizzy and my dad because of this kid, that’s what they call him the kid. So she come over here and she’s just like, it’s all my aunt Vicky’s fault because she did this 23 and me and sh and all the 23andme wants to do is destroy families and pull them apart. And I’m still not allowing the logical brain to click things in place. I can say that now, looking back on it. Um, and my mother let it slip that my dad had done a 23 and me and I had gotten posted results back. And so, so I don’t say anything because, you know, she’s, I’m like going, it’s one of those where it’s like, okay, yeah, this really is happening. And it was so funny because the day it happened, we’re having a conversation right here in the studio. And the reason that they’re having such a tizzy is because this young man, I should say, he’s 50 years old.
Speaker 2: (39:20)
Cause you gotta be your age. Right. Exactly. The same age as you almost right.
Speaker 1: (39:25)
Wasn’t born until January of 1970, which means that my dad was as my, I put it to my mother, literally screwing someone while she’s in the hospital having me because that’s like nine months later. And she’s like, no, he’s not. You know? So, so she leaves, I go in the house, I call 23 of me because I know what my brain is telling me. And I don’t want to believe it. Thank you. She’s like, ma’am, if you share any DNA with anyone, there’s no way they can hide that part of it from you. They’re going to come up on your list. And I’m like, okay. So I called two of my sisters. So in the birth order, it’s myself, Corey than Chad’s and Joe and Alvin Mindy. So I call Corey, my sister, that’s three years younger than me. And I’m like, okay, um, something is going on here.
Speaker 1: (40:29)
And I call Mindy at the same time, we’re on this group, phone conversation. I’m like, there’s something going on here. And I need somebody to please do a DNA test for me because apparently dad has done one and Tim has done one and Vicki has done one. I did one and I am not showing up on their list. They’re not showing up online and I’m not sure what’s going on. And I just need somebody to do one. So they, um, both agreed to take these tests. And they both obviously do 23 and me. Um, and we just kind of wait. And in the meantime, while all this was going on, um, my sister Corey has known about the abuse since I guess let’s see what years is 2001 or 21 is 31 now. So she’s probably known for about 28 years about the abuse. Um, and in the interim of waiting on these DNA tests to come up, come back, Mindy.
Speaker 1: (41:34)
And I had a conversation one evening and she was like our mole. She was keeping us informed because when my parents, when I wrote the letters to my parents, I let them know that Corey does know and has known since I was about two and a half, three years old. She and I both got cut from all family communication the day after the letters were given to them. Um, and so Mindy had come over, we’re waiting on the DNA test and I told her everything. And, um, so, so that’s the end of September. We’re waiting, we’re waiting. And in the meantime, my son, Noah, by this point is engaged and he’s getting married. So I am getting ready to fly out to Virginia where they live for her bridal shower for Kelly’s bridal shower. And my mother is going to fly out also a couple of days after I fly out. So the Friday before I’m getting ready to fly out my sister Corey calls and she’s like, my results are in. And I’m like, okay. And, uh, she’s like, they’re what we thought they were. And I said, okay. So I at the time was down in Indianapolis with Lydia and we were shopping. So we come home, I go on, I look at it and I’m just like, this cannot be happening to me.
Speaker 1: (43:02)
So I, um, I fly out to Virginia. Nobody knows in Virginia, what’s going on. None of my friends, none of my, you know, nobody, Lydia obviously knows everything that’s going on because she’s been living through it. Uh, my mom doesn’t have any clue that Corey and Mindy have taken a DNA test. So get you the shower. My mom comes back home. I come home a couple of days after that and get through, I think I was home like one or two days, Mondays results come in. Same thing. My mom comes over to my house and she doesn’t realize at the time that Lydia is home because Lydia’s in her room with the door closed. So she’s thinking Lydia at school. And she just lets into me like, because apparently my parents had put out a text to all of the families saying no one is allowed to friend him on Facebook until dad decides what he’s going to do.
Speaker 1: (44:05)
Oh yes. Well, we had already, I knew this, you know, because Mindy is keeping Corey and I informed like, Steve, you need to friend Tim and get ahead of dads. You need to get ahead of dad’s story. So you need to bring him on. So he does, Steve goes on Facebook and he had friended Tim. So my mom comes over that day and she is just absolutely livid. Like what makes you guys think you have the right to fit to front him? And I’m like, mom, you dumped me off family texts the day after you and dad got those letters. So I had, I was never told I could that Steve couldn’t be Tim’s friend, you know, because my two siblings in the middle, Chad and Joe now are like, whoa, we’re Steve getting off, you know, friend and Tim. So I’m like, you dumb.
Speaker 1: (44:58)
That was against the rules. Exactly. You don’t want me and Corey off of all family communication. So I, I didn’t know. We weren’t supposed to. So she tries to give me this whole list of excuses on why. And she just won’t let this whole DNA thing go that, you know, 23 and me is wrong. That this, this guy can’t be dead son, you know, yada, yada yada three bags full. And she just wouldn’t let it go. And I’m just like, I’ll never forget. I’m a bar in my kitchen. And I just slammed my hands down on the bar. And I was like, look, I was not going to go into this with you today, but you will not let it go. Mom, Corey and Mindy have done DNA tests. And actually, I don’t even think I told her Mindy had done it at that point. I was like in the test, came back. I’m not dad’s dad is not my biological father. Holy smokes. Exactly. So my mom is just standing there like, you know, and I’m like mom, knowing my history that I have a son that was born out of wedlock. He knows that he, you know, I mean he knows cause he didn’t, wasn’t raised with his dad. It’s like, you just have your baby and you just go home with life. You know what I mean?
Speaker 2: (46:28)
It’s just, I don’t know what you mean. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: (46:31)
Yes you do. Yeah. And so, so I’m like, mom, I give my mother every excuse in the book to lie to me. I’m like all that verbally begging this woman to lie to me. I’m like, mom, you know, you were raised in the Catholics, the Catholic church and all of the abuse and everything. Maybe it was a Catholic priest who that was the wrong thing to say. I was like, maybe it was one of grandma’s boyfriends because my grandma had a lot of boyfriends and uh, she was like, no, it wasn’t one of them. You know? I was like, maybe it was brave. I don’t know if I was right. I was like, you know, I’m like, you know, I’m like what mom, what, how, you know? I said, I, I don’t, I am still trying to wrap my mind around it. I mean, I literally just found out, she’s like, well, I need to go home and tell your dad. And I’m like, why, why do you need to go tell him? I said, I haven’t even decided what I’m going to do with this. Why do you need to go tell him? And so then she says, you think I’m a? And I’m like, no.
Speaker 1: (47:40)
You know? So she leaves, she does go home and she tells my dad and I do not speak to my mother again until I get a group text or I get a, an individual text from her telling me that my grandmother is on hospice. Um, and I tried, I continued to try to, to reach out to her, you know, Hey mom, you want to come over and chat with them? And I’m getting no I’m busy. No I’m busy. Okay. So November rolls around my, like I said, my grandmother’s on hospice. My son is getting married. So the way it worked out, um, was, you know, Mindy and Corey got their results. Mom and dad had this absolute horror to us to 23. And me, because that’s the test that everybody’s doing. So we decide we are going to go to independent labs and get a DNA test done because one, my parents won’t believe Corey because she’s on the bad side now because she knows, right.
Speaker 1: (48:41)
They still don’t know that Mindy knows. So she’s still good. So if Mindy gets it done, also they’ll have to believe. So we all three go to independent labs. We get this test done, test results, come back while I’m sitting in the Toyota dealership. And I’m in this, like, I’m like, I literally had a panic attack. I almost got sick on the Toyota dealership floor. Because up until that point, I was seriously like, please let 20, let me be the one person 23 and me got it wrong with somehow some way. Let me be the one that they got half of it wrong. I wasn’t unfortunately somewhere, exactly. Somewhere wasn’t me. So I tell my siblings, I don’t want any conversation whatsoever about any DNA stuff until I come back from the wedding. I want to go out to the wedding. I want to enjoy my time.
Speaker 1: (49:40)
And I don’t want any of this hanging over me. And by this time my kids know, um, that, you know, there’s this whole DNA thing going on and that my parents and I are not speaking, which we, you know, and so I, I, and like I said, unless somebody dies, I don’t want to know anything. So I flew out there the weekend before to get a bunch of stuff in place. My husband flew out on Wednesday, Wednesday night. I got a text from my sister, Corey. Hey, can you talk? Did somebody die? No. Then no, I can’t talk to you. I don’t want to hear it. Yeah, exactly. That’s the only reason she called. So like I said, he came in on Wednesday. My sister Corey and Lydia came in on Friday, Saturday morning. I get a text from my sister, Joan, who has not spoken to me about anything that has to do with anything since the, um, letters were given, because my parents told all of my siblings that were, they were still in communication with an everyone that my husband is mad at my dad. So we’re not allowed to speak to them right now. Oh. So she sends me, that’s
Speaker 2: (50:53)
An easy, that’s an easy out. Can you hold on one second. Can I pause for one? I’m going to dress by the way.
Speaker 4: (50:59)
Oh, thank you.
Speaker 1: (51:02)
Okay. So, um,
Speaker 2: (51:07)
So it’s the Saturday of the wedding weekend. Yes.
Speaker 1: (51:10)
Thank you. I was like, okay, where did I leave off? And I contact you. She had sent me, she sent me a text this really long, very, you know, foul mouth. Cause that’s her text and yada yada yada three bags full. And I’m just like, I do not have time for this today. So go to Noah’s wedding. Absolutely amazing. Beautiful in this old barn, out in the country and beautiful Virginia. And it’s an amazing day. They absolutely, it was wonderful. And mind you, nobody aside from immediate family knows anything that’s going on at this point. So knowing Kelly get married reception, they leave actually, even before they leave, my grandmother dies.
Speaker 1: (52:04)
The grandmother who doesn’t like you, the grandma who doesn’t like me. And I will say that my first thought was really grandma. You couldn’t have waited till tomorrow. You had to die on the day hill was getting married. I’m sorry. I did. But it was really funny because, um, I’m standing there talking to some friends and my phone goes off and my daughter immediately, Rebecca comes up to me and she’s like, mom, can I use your phone? So I already know what’s going on. She doesn’t need my phone, so I know what she’s doing, you know? And so I’m like w whatever, you know, so we, we get through the rest of that day, the next morning, you know, we have our goodbyes and we go off to the airport. So we get, uh, all five of us or all four of us, myself, Lydia, my sister, Corey and Steve.
Speaker 1: (52:59)
And I guess that’s fine. We are sitting at the airport in Richmond and we’re just waiting to fly back here to Fort Wayne. And, uh, I look at my sister, I’m like, okay, so what was it that couldn’t wait on Wednesday night? So she proceeds to show me this exchange of texts between her and my dad, which was vulgar, horrible, typical dad. And, you know, and she’s like, um, she’s asking him, does mom know that you’re doing this? And he’s like, well, mom’s sitting right here. Well, come to find out. My mother was actually over with her mother at the time. So she had no clue what was going on between the two of them. So I’m like, okay. So I had read that Steven had already talked about it. She had already filled him in, you know, so they’re just whatever. So we get on the airplane and, uh, we’re all sitting in individual rows with no one beside us.
Speaker 1: (53:54)
It was wonderful. So I get on the plane and I start writing and I write all the way to Philadelphia and we get off the plane and we just kind of eat and have some conversation. I ask a question about how long has the pregnant, uh, an elephant pregnant for, and Google that and get on the next plane. And again, we’re all by ourselves, individual chairs, individual rows, the whole nine yards. So I keep typing and I keep writing until we landed Fort Wayne and we land. And my husband before we even came to a stop text and he said, don’t send it yet. And I said, oh, I’m not going to because I want you and Mindy and Corey to read it and make sure that I have not misspoken, not put any false information in that the timeline is good and everything. And he’s like, okay.
Speaker 1: (54:47)
So I finished it. And I sent it to the three of them through email and they all three come back and say, there is nothing you’ve left. Nothing out. Everything is in order. You’ve not misspoken you not, you know, I said, okay. So I sent that out in a messenger group. Cause that’s the only way I could, I didn’t have numbers to some of my family members, but I did. Um, so I made sure that everybody was on one. My S my all three of my sisters, my brother and my mom, because I wasn’t friends with my dad on Facebook and I send it out and I just lay out everything that is totally specifically, and only towards the DNA part of my life and what had been going on since September, as far as that was concerned. And I copied and pasted the text message that my sister Jo Nell had sent me, because I was like, you’re not going to get away with some of the stuff that you said and think nobody else is going to know about it.
Speaker 1: (55:54)
So I included that in there so everybody could see what she was saying about everybody else. Wow. And, um, just let the chips fall where they may. So that was, uh, let’s see, that was November 23rd that they got married. We went, came home on the 24th. So that would have been the 26th that I sent that out to everyone of 20, 19 of 2019, November, 2019 is so fresh. Okay. Oh yeah. So that Thursday was Thanksgiving. So Steve and I, and my father-in-law Willie and Lydia all went over to my sister Corey’s house for Thanksgiving, and we’re just kind of hanging out and enjoying the day. Um, the next day is my grandmother’s funeral. Now, mind you, I had only had one real conversation through texting with my mother up until this point from the end of October 29th, when we had had the conversation in my house about the initial DNA test, to this point, it had just specifically been your grandmother’s on hospice.
Speaker 1: (56:52)
And then your grandmother has died. That was all communication that we had had. And this was someone that I talked to every day up until the end of October. Um, so we go to the funeral and I obviously want to know what’s going on. I understand it’s my grandmother’s funeral. And all I want to ask my mom is when are we going to talk? When are we going to have a conversation? I mean, I am 50 years old. I’ve been told my whole life. The only reason your parents got married is because of you. I’ve been told my whole life that the only person I’ve ever been with in my whole life was your dad. I’ve never been with anyone else in your whole life, my whole life. And I’m like, so I’m kind of like still spinning, actually, if you want to be honest with all of this.
Speaker 1: (57:50)
And, um, so we go to the funeral, like I said, and we, she tells me I need to be with my family because they need me. And I’m like, yeah, they’re the last people I need right now. Thanks. But no, thanks. Get through the funeral, go to the grave side and everybody’s leaving to go wherever they’re going. And I was like, okay, mom. So when are you and I going to have a conversation? And so my mom is facing me like I’m having a Congress. And my dad is in his pickup truck right behind us. So when I ask her this, she looks at my dad with this look like, oh my goodness, I cannot believe I have to talk to this woman kind of thing. And I’m just like, thank you. Thank you. And I’m sitting there going what you got to be freaking kidding me. So myself, Mindy, Steve, and Corey and Mindy’s husband, railroads all go have coffee. And we I’m just like sitting there reeling from my mother’s reaction to me because I’ve never seen this from my mom before. And my sisters and my husband are all going well. It’s about time. You saw your mom for who she really was.
Speaker 1: (59:12)
I’m like, oh my goodness. It was just such a shock to me. I mean, it really was on top everything else. It was just like, holy cow. So we get through that day, the next day, Steve says, I want you to get an ancestry test. You might get more family history that way. I said, okay. So I did. And in the meantime, I started going through my 23 and me list and I remembered that in April of 2019, I had gotten an email from someone on my, actually the number one person on my list. Um, before my sisters took the test saying, Hey, I’m just trying to figure out my grandmas, you know, history and how you and I are family related. And I’m like, okay. So I’m still at that point thinking it’s my mom’s side of the family. Cause I didn’t realize the name, you know?
Speaker 1: (01:00:09)
And so I tell her all about my grandma, how my grandma, you know, has she’s like she, I mean, my grandmother was such a woman that she slept with a neighbor to get money for skates for her kids. And he was black and the nuns came and took their baby. It took that baby away because, and this was in the fifties. Do you have in a good Catholic family? You couldn’t have a mixed race baby when you’re still married to your husband, mind you with my mom and like, yeah. Yeah. So yeah, exactly. So, and she proceeds to tell me about her grandmother, how her grandmother was quite a prolific woman also, but it nicely so energetic. Exactly. Yeah. So we could never make a connection. Never thinking that it would be on my dad’s side. Why exactly. So, so while I’m waiting on the ancestry to test, to come in, um, that was, uh, November 28th, 30th, whatever that Saturday was after the funeral, I ordered that test and my sister Mindy and my brother-in-law Johnny could put any private detective private investigator to shame with wow.
Speaker 1: (01:01:33)
Their investigative skills. Apparently at some point my mother had told my sister Mindy that she smoked pot one time. And this was the woman who never drank, never smoked pot because she was going to become a nun when she graduated from high school. And the only reason she did it is because she slept with my dad and got pregnant with me. Oh yeah, yeah. To get married. Yeah. So she apparently smoked pot one time and she started something with some guy, but she got paranoid. So she told him to stop and she let some names slip to Mindy. So Mindy, and because I have access to ancestry now and all of your books and everything else, her and Johnny, they just go to town with all this information. I’m just like reeling from all of it. So they track this guy down that my mom went to high school with and you know, this, that and the other.
Speaker 1: (01:02:28)
And I’m just like, okay, okay. Okay. And I’m sending emails to people on my list that are not, that are names that I generally recognize from all of the family names, just saying, Hey, I’m 50 years old. I’m very happily married. I don’t want anything. I just found out that my dad is not my dad. Uh, I want the truth. I am a survivor of incest. And I just want to know what, what was, what should have been, what could have been, you know, kind of thing. And I am, I’m really not getting anything back, um, because of where my parents lived, my parents are from Northwest Ohio. And nobody on that list has any information about anyone in their family’s ever being in Ohio? Because I there’s people in Kentucky, people in Michigan, people in Connecticut, I mean, they’re just, they’re all over. So I’m coming up with nothing.
Speaker 1: (01:03:31)
And I, uh, I just wait. So December 5th, my mom calls me and she wants to talk, but she wants to know when Lydia has gone to school, because when she left my house that day in October, she said, I called her a. That’s what I was told. And I was like, I knew full well, I hadn’t. And I know Lydia was there and had heard it and she, she didn’t want Lydia to be there. So when he, uh, leaves to go to school, she says, let me know when has leaves for class. And I said, okay. So let me know when you’re all alone. Thank you. Well, she was actually waiting in my driveway cause I told him that he was leaving well, right before she gets there right before Lydia leaves, as she’s getting ready to leave. I’m just like, you know what? I know this woman, I really know her now after the funeral, I really know her. I need to video this. So I’m like, okay, if I do it on my phone, it only lasts so long and then it cuts off and then she’ll know that I was videoing. Okay, I can’t do that. And I just happened to glance in my living room. And my video camera was sitting on the desk because we had videoed Noah’s wedding. So it was still out. I know, oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: (01:04:43)
The equipment was just right there for you.
Speaker 1: (01:04:45)
Thank you. So the way my house is set up where our computer table is at our front window, it’s a big open space. And my dining room was on the opposite wall. My com my printer sits on this little shelf with an open space underneath it. And I’m like, if I open it and put it right here, it will go right to the dining room table. She’ll never know what’s on. So that’s, I mean, I literally pushed play as she’s walking up the steps on my front porch. So she comes in and it’s like, hi mom, how are you? You know, I’m sorry, grandma passed. And, and this is when it gets real. So we sit down at my dining room table. My mom is on one side, I’m on the other side. And, uh, in being in therapy, you know, this full well that when you are working through trauma, a lot of past history will come to your memories that you haven’t thought about 48 years, you know, 40 years, whatever one thing I always remember about my mother, she was very quick with her hand, she would slap you in a heartbeat.
Speaker 1: (01:05:57)
And she always had really long nails. And it was one of those where she’d slap and then the nails come out and come down. Um, oh yeah, she was. Um, but the things I didn’t remember about her is how quick she was to go off, to just go from fine to bat crazy angry in a second. Um, and after having seen her at the funeral and, and just remembering how quick she can be with that hand, I mean, I was a teenager in high school and my mother literally choked me in a Kmart while my dad was standing there because I was telling her someone had a baby, we were talking about someone having a baby. And she was accusing me of never having told her. And I knew full well I had. And so did my dad. And I mean, that hand was around my neck.
Speaker 1: (01:06:47)
Not letting go that fast. So I was like, Hmm, she’s going to sit on that side. And I’ll sit on this side, I’ll have the table to get ready. So, um, she comes in, she sits down and she proceeds to tell me that your dad wants you to know that he loves you, but he just doesn’t like you right now. And I’m sitting there in my mind thinking, and I could give a rat’s. Right? Yeah. Then she proceeds to tell me and almost verbatim these words. And if you have to scratch it, I’m sorry. You could have won a academy award for the way you’ve acted for the last 20 plus years. And I’m just like, okay, this is getting off to a really good start. She said, I’ve spent the last week going to family, home videos, all of them that I could find. And you never once looked like you had any problems with your dad. You look like you were as happy as could be. So I, you can understand this because of your professional life.
Speaker 1: (01:08:06)
I proceeded to try to explain to my mother, to get her to understand that when you go through something traumatic, especially when it’s an extended period kind of thing, and you learned to just squelch it and go on with life so that you can have some sort of productive life where you’re not on alcohol, drugs, whatever, to make it go away, which I did the alcohol part. Um, when I first left home, she couldn’t wrap her mind around the fact that people will function to get through life. If that’s what they really want to do, they will close that part of their life off. And a lot of people do it till the day they die. And I think I probably would have kept doing it. Had we not moved back here? Wow. But moving back here forced the issue. So she couldn’t wrap her mind around it. She absolutely could not wrap her mind around it. She continues. She continued on that day to tell me that we put too much stock in science, my sisters and I, we just all
Speaker 2: (01:09:15)
The way everybody, this is pre pandemic science isn’t even like a hot topic.
Speaker 1: (01:09:23)
Wow. She was so ahead of her time, she didn’t even know it. And she is such an incredibly intelligent woman. I mean, she really is a smart woman and she just, you guys put so much stock in science. I would sh I know you have Bibles in this house. I would swear on the stack of Bibles in your house. I am never been with anyone, but your dad, my whole life. And I told her, I said, mom, I said mending and Corey. And I actually did another DNA test that will stand up in a court of law, independent labs. They all show exactly the same thing. Dad is not my dad.
Speaker 1: (01:10:07)
What do we do? And I’m still, I’ve never been with anyone. You know, you put too much stock in science and I’m like, mom, don’t you think I wish I was lying. That this was all wrong. You know? I mean, yes, my dad did my, I lived a living hell, but in the end, I mean, he’s still my dad. You know what I mean? Yeah. You know, you know what I mean? They’re still your dad, even if they’re not perfect, nobody’s dad is perfect by the way. And he’s still not perfect, but he’s still my dad. He raised me. He made sure that I did have food and a place to live, even if we had nothing else. We still, you know, so, so anyway, she leaves, she leaves that day and doesn’t speak to me again.
Speaker 1: (01:11:07)
The end of December, December 29th, my ancestry results come in. And, uh, the top of the list is a woman named Diane. And the next is Marlene. And the next two on the list are the top two on my 23andme list. Angela and Jessica Angela was the one that had emailed me in the beginning about, Hey, trying to figure out how we’re connected. So I emailed Diane through ancestry and I basically give her the same email, same thing I told everyone else through 23 and me that I was trying to connect with. Hey, I’m 50, I’m happily married. I don’t need anything. I’m very well taken care of. I’ve got four, very well functioning adult children. You know, I just want the truth. I just want to know the truth. And, um, so when I got that access to the ancestry DNA, the ancestry website, where you get the birth certificates and all of that stuff, and I just really took the time to look at the 23 and me, and the different ways that you can actually go in there and split your father’s DNA from your mother’s DNA, by cross-referencing everything.
Speaker 1: (01:12:24)
I came up with some names. And so I started researching those names. They were not the names that my sister and my brother-in-law had come up with. That was not even any, it was, would have ended up at a brick wall. Um, so I started doing my own research and I literally had to get like a whiteboard. Um, yeah, so I whittled it down. There was a family, um, uh, GE Aquinos and they were from New York where they came to when they first came to America. Um, I’m sorry. Yeah, he came to New York. So it was this, it would be my, um, grandmother. Great grandma. My great, great grandfather came over from Italy, settled in the states. Then my great-grandfather and my great-grandmother who were not married at the time, came over from Palermo and they settled in New York. They ended up getting married and they had two sons and three daughters. So I am trying to figure out which one of these is mine. You know what I mean?
Speaker 1: (01:13:42)
And so I, um, I start emailing different people on the list for my 23 that are connected to this family. And, uh, I’m kind of, I’m whittling it down to who it can’t be. And my results come in before. I’ve got a clear case on who it is and it’s my aunt Diane. And like I said, she, I emailed her, gave her the same spiel. She says, I’m not very good with this. I will talk to my niece. She’s the one that had us do this. We’ll see what we can come up with and I’ll contact you tonight. I said, okay. And in the meantime, I gave her access to my Facebook page and my Instagram. So she could see that I really wasn’t some crazy woman and normal person. Exactly. And so we, um, when she told me who it was, I was like, oh my goodness, you gotta be kidding me.
Speaker 1: (01:14:39)
It was my cousin Angela. And, uh, so the one I had been communicating with COVID we were not connected. Yeah. So it was really funny because she called me that evening. Uh, Diane did my aunt Diane, um, because we were going to do like this whole email thing. And I’m like, could I just call you and just talk to you? And so we actually ended up talking for three hours that night. Oh, wow. It was the, it was the craziest thing because, um, just funny anecdotal things here. So, uh, Steve and I son, Noah, our youngest son, he looks nothing like anyone in my family and nothing like anyone in his family. And we always used to joke where to know, uh, come from. I mean, whose side does he take from? Because our girls clearly take, my husband is French Cajun. And they clearly take after that side of the family, um, Noah does not right.
Speaker 1: (01:15:38)
I mean, he, but he doesn’t take after my mom’s side either. So my aunt Diane sent me pictures of my biological father. And, uh, as soon as we saw the first one, it was like, holy smokes. I mean, yeah. And so we figured that out. Um, so I, I obviously have figured out who my father is, uh, my biological father at this point. And I find out that he has a daughter and, uh, Diane and Angela are going to talk to her to see if she will do a DNA test. And she agrees to it and I’m like, I will pay for it. I don’t care. I just want a definitive. Yes or no. It was your dad or it wasn’t your dad. And we can just move on to the next one. And so she agrees to do the test and she actually, we, and she ended up calling me and we spoke for hours, um, because they were all pretty convinced that it was him.
Speaker 1: (01:16:40)
So, um, I know this is a cliffhanger part when I was growing up, I used to joke with my parents and I used to tell them I am the perfect blend of the baker family and the robot Chamblee. Because if you’re a robot charge, you either are really big busted and big back high-minded or you are totally flat front and back. There’s no in-between. And if you’re on my dad’s side, you have lot of medical issues. Hashimoto’s thyroid, heart disease, kidney, all of that. And you are very large. Um, I don’t have any of that. Uh, I never had hormone problems when I was growing up. My girls didn’t my sisters, all three of my sisters have and their daughters. Wow. So I used to just joke. I’m like the perfect one. So, um, and my feet were always a topic of conversation because yes, I am the only one that has a very heightened step and high arch and long, long feet, everybody else short squat.
Speaker 1: (01:17:47)
And so, so this all taking place in January, so Megan, her name is Megan. Megan gets her tests. She does it, she sends it off and we’re just waiting and we’re waiting, we’re waiting, no contact with my parents, pandemic hits our state shuts down. And, um, we’re, you know, well actually our shade state hadn’t shut down at that point because I got my results on March 3rd, 2020. And they are exactly what we thought they would be. Um, my, I have found out who my biological father is and, uh, we were already Steve and I and Liddy were already scheduled to go out to Virginia at the beginning of April of 2020, because our son, Noah is an arborist and he competes in the international society of arborists tree competition. And he was going to be keep competing that weekend. And it was going to be in Virginia.
Speaker 1: (01:18:44)
No, I’m sorry. The one was going to be in Maryland. They hopped back and forth. Well, my half sister Megan lives in Maryland and we were going to meet at the comp to meet for the first time out in public. You know, the whole nine yards, the pandemic gets really into slang. My state shuts down, her state, Maryland, totally shuts down. And she’s being a labor and delivery nurse. She’s like very apprehensive. And I’m like, Hey, I get it. No problem. Um, so Steve and I, we still go out there and still visit with our kids. Even though the contract canceled, we still visited with our kids and came back. And I just, I started calling my dad’s sisters that were younger than him that were still living at home when all of my birth and all of this took place. And I’m like, what’s the history.
Speaker 1: (01:19:33)
I want to know what’s going on. You know? So they fill me in one. My dad never did get in a fight with his dad in the front yard. No, to, um, my grandmother did tell my dad that my feet looked like him. And she was the one that convinced my dad to get married. Three of my parents, my dad, he apparently didn’t believe in the beginning that I was his. Um, and so take that for a grain of salt and just some other families stuff that’s irrelevant to this right here. So I have all of this information and I’m like, I need to go talk to them. I need, you know, but I want, my sisters are going to go with me because if I go by myself, then I they’re going to say anything they want, if they take Corey, they’re going to say, well, Corey is lying for you because Corey, cause she knows the truth that
Speaker 2: (01:20:29)
She’s on. She’s lying because she knows the truth. So she’s on the team.
Speaker 1: (01:20:33)
Yeah, exactly. So the Mindy, Mindy is still, she’s still in communication with both of my parents. And so they’re like, you know, we’re thinking if we all three go over, this’ll be a good thing. Right. So we, I wait for my state to unlock. Um,
Speaker 2: (01:20:52)
There’s one more sister, Joan [inaudible]
Speaker 1: (01:20:55)
She is not there. She is not communicating with me at all. Um, she, uh, so we, I wait for my state to unlock. We do the two weeks and then they do like two more weeks then I’m like, okay, we’ll go over when the state’s unlocked because I don’t want mom and dad saying that I could have potentially introduced COVID that I broke restrictions by going over there. I’m not giving them anything
Speaker 2: (01:21:19)
Right. On top of thing else, you’re not going to bring over COVID
Speaker 1: (01:21:23)
Exactly. Um, you know, especially with my dad and the laryngectomy and not knowing how that would affect them and you know, everything. So, so we go over on May 3rd and um, my dad was gone, so we kind of are waiting and I’m like, uh, I’m a very, a type personality kind of cut and dry, you know? So my protective mode. Sure. Um, and I’m like a cat on a hot tin roof waiting on him to come home because I’m like, this is going to be a one and done, my mom is acting like nothing in the world has ever happened and all is well, and life is perfect. And so Corey, thankfully and Mindy are trying to uphold the conversation because I am ready to spit nails.
Speaker 2: (01:22:12)
So Toby, you’re not going to believe this.
Speaker 1: (01:22:14)
It’s time to cut. [inaudible]
Speaker 2: (01:22:19)
That’s great. I’m going to, I know. It’s great. So what I’m going to do only because I have to run and take, uh, not run, but my, we have a graduation today, so I’m going to, uh, so I have to go to take my daughter to her graduation, but cause it’s like, it’s, it’s also like an independent learning graduation, so it’s different. But um, can I get you on Friday? Yes. Hold on just a second.
Speaker 1: (01:22:51)
Friday the 18th. No, it’d be 11. Yes. I’m sorry. You’re right. Friday is the 11th. Yes. I will be home until probably six. O’clock my time or five. O’clock my time. Friday night. We are actually flying to North Carolina that night for wedding. So yes, I will be home all day. All right.
Speaker 2: (01:23:12)
So, okay, so I’m going to, so I’m going to do 1:00 PM for you, which is 10:00 AM for
Speaker 1: (01:23:16)
Me. Okay. I am so sorry. I do not
Speaker 2: (01:23:20)
Apologize. This is all so good. I like it’s I we’re gonna it’s. It’s so good. It’s so good. And it’s so hot and I just so amazed by your, uh, like vulnerability and just sharing so much. And I have so many, that’s the thing is like, I don’t just want your story. I want to talk with you. And so I want to talk with you about a lot of this stuff, so I want it, I want to give us more time so we can, we can really get into the, so it’s not like it’s like you tell the story and I’m like, okay,
Speaker 1: (01:23:47)
Bye. I wanna, I want to
Speaker 2: (01:23:51)
Go back over a lot of this stuff, so yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much for your morning, my morning, your afternoon. Um, and uh, and I will talk to you on Friday.
Speaker 1: (01:24:03)
Enjoy the graduation today. All right. I hope you have a restful day. Thank you. No.
Speaker 2: (01:24:09)
Okay. I was going to say like saying all that stuff can be a trigger for the rest of the day.
Speaker 1: (01:24:15)
Yeah, no, I’m going to, I had a good workout this morning, so I know you’re
Speaker 2: (01:24:21)
Dedicated to that. Okay. Good.
Speaker 1: (01:24:23)
All right. So y’all Friday, Friday. All right. Okay, bye. Now. So I don’t forget. Uh, okay. I have great news and that is that all of that material we recorded last time. Yeah. Is good. I was just worried because we switched halfway through from like computer to whatever, but it’s all, but the bad news, I don’t remember where we left off to, um, when I got the official results and then the confrontation with my parents. Yes, yes, yes. Is that when you brought your sisters over with you? Okay, maybe we, yes. Okay. Um, okay. Hey, thank you so much for your flexibility.
Speaker 2: (01:25:18)
I can also, I can also like open the file and
Speaker 1: (01:25:22)
Let me see if this is the one. Cool. It can, I can always double-check. You know what I mean?
Speaker 2: (01:25:31)
Uh, let’s see the, I, my money. I mean, you made me remember. Okay. I just had it open.
Speaker 1: (01:25:39)
It just had it. Good to go quick for you Carolina before last for a wedding for one of my nearest and dearest friend’s sons and, um, oh, it is absolutely. Um, love it. So I moved back to North Carolina in a heartbeat, spent seven years there and loved every minute of it. Um, we’ll see, what else? It’s a good thing we’re talking today because yeah.
Pour Yourself Some Chianti: I’m Not Italian
Speaker 1: (00:06)
Yes. Yes. Hey, is there too much light in the background? There she is.
Speaker 2: (00:23)
Can you hear me? Can you see? Yes, yes. Great. Hi Annie. No, it’s not a lower the blinds. That’d be like a little better, but it’s also, I can also see it.
Speaker 1: (00:40)
Hey, I’m good. I’m good. How are you? Sure, sure. Yeah,
Speaker 3: (00:51)
No problem.
Speaker 1: (00:52)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just like here at work. So it makes no difference that actually it’s a lot better. Cool. How are, you know, um, I like this morning, she’s not here for you later. Sorry about that sale. I’m a little bit late. Um, no, cause I have
Speaker 2: (01:15)
Is that I have my backing at my house or your house. That, that sound just happened better. Probably my house. Now I can still hear it, but no, yeah, there are just ended. I don’t know. My poor editor it’s fine is let’s get your story. Um, so we’re already recording, just so you know, cause I am always afraid. I’ll forget if I don’t just hit it right at the beginning. Um, but so here with Annie, she’s an NPE. Um, and so we’re, we’re trying something new, a little bit new that Annie and I had talked about and that Lily would have NPE stories. And I had talked about where, um, we, so we’re trying to sort of pair up our episodes. So you, so you were on a and P stories with when we would, which is another podcast and you told your story. So we’re going to tell it again.
Speaker 2: (02:36)
Cool. Little short, like a little bit abbreviated and then I want to talk to you about some, like other elements of it so that people can listen to either one first, but then go and hear like more details at Lily’s or listened to Lily’s first and then come over here and listen to the other, um, elements that I want to talk about. Yes. So, um, so, so like many NPS you, uh, you, well, not like many, but you are interested in genealogy anyway, and you were there going into it and I guess so let’s see. So if it’s okay with you, I’ll do some of these, I’ll tell, I’ll tell your story because what, the part that I thought was so exciting and interesting when listening to your story with Lily was when you talked about how Ellis island records became available and you were so excited and I, um, I was fascinated with Ellis island growing up and loved like that idea and that history.
Speaker 2: (03:38)
And we had like, I dunno, foe children’s sort of history books or something that, you know, I didn’t know. I was just really fascinated with it. And I come from a family of one, many generations in California. And then after that it’s like many generations it’s just so we just don’t have like an immigration story to me. And my family also doesn’t have, um, we don’t have an immigration in our heritage so much. I mean, we do, but it’s like from 1600 or something. Um, and then, uh, we also don’t, I’m a family. Like we don’t have a heritage pride right. In any way, like we’re just sort of your own. But, um, and there was like a lot of talk about being Irish, but that didn’t mean anything. Whereas for you, you, the Ellis island thing directly connects to you because you’re like one generation away, your grandma came over on a boat. Um, and you wanted to, to, to like research more about being attacked, um, and your family,
Speaker 1: (04:45)
What you said in Lily’s my, my dad. And so I refer to the man, raised me as my dad. So my dad had four siblings. There were five being really Italian men, enough to boat, quote unquote, off the boat. Um, I didn’t know them. Uh, they both died before I was born. Um, but growing up, you know, when the family would get together on holidays and stuff, they would talk about, you know, back in the day and, and the whole family, like they were four brothers and married three sisters. And, and so it was like a very, I don’t want to say incestuous, but, but brothers and sisters marrying, so everybody was kind of double related, I guess. Um, and they all lived in a brownstone in the Bronx and they like three stories of, of an entire family. They will live together. They all walk together. And my dad was actually the only one who married someone who wasn’t Italian. Um, she, my mom is Irish. Um, you know, but we’d get, we get together. I’m sorry. Go ahead.
Speaker 1: (06:00)
Um, in retrospect I think it might’ve been, um, but I never felt that growing up, you know? Um, but I never knew my mom’s family. Um, I only, I sold, if someone would ask me was I would say, oh, I’m Italian. Oh. And in the family. Um, because I grew up in an Italian environment. Um, my, my, my dad, yeah. They spoke fluent. And so whenever, whenever they wanted to talk about stuff that they didn’t want the kids to know, they don’t talk to him. Right. Did your dad, did your parents Italian? Um, well, um, you know, there was a lot of, um, you know, holidays revolved around food. Um, so we’d go visit aunts and bows. My aunts had basements speaking Italian and then table and apply what over the table and a tablecloth. And everybody would sit around the big pool table and there was, you know, pasta and lasagna and need.
Speaker 1: (07:08)
And, and, you know, on holidays, we’d start eating at like one in the afternoon. And at eight o’clock at night, there was still food. And, you know, you, yeah, it was, it was actually, um, it was actually a nice environment to grow up in as far as, um, you know, being like family kind of thing. Um, but we didn’t, you know, I didn’t, um, that’s amazing. I kind of always felt like an outsider in that environment. Um, you know, my, my cousins were, um, and it was a small family. There were only seven cousins altogether, including the three of us. Um, so, but my cousins, friends were always there. There was always a lot of people around, but they were all much older than me. Yeah. So, um, you know, so like when I became aware, you know, say five, six years old, um, they were all adults, they were married.
Speaker 1: (08:10)
Um, you know, so I grew up around a lot of adults, um, being an only, you know, the only small tribe you were in the, in the family members. Um, you know, so I, but, but growing up in that environment, it w you know, it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of, you know, they would, they’d sit around and drink and, and laugh a lot, talk about, you know, this uncle and that aunt and, and, you know, doing this. And, you know, they grew up in the depression and stuff like that. So, I mean, it wasn’t, uh, it wasn’t a bad environment to grow up in. Um, but, you know, I really just didn’t feel like I belonged there. Um, but I always thought it was an age thing. It might’ve been. Yeah. Well, and I also didn’t look like any of them. No, I didn’t look, I didn’t look like any of them.
Speaker 2: (09:02)
Right, right. No, I don’t think anyone,
Speaker 1: (09:05)
Uh, overall coloring. Um, so they’re all very Zorn. They’re swarthy anatomists. So they’re Southern Italians, you know, that’s probably, um, but they’re, you know, dark skin, dark hair, dark eyes, the thing. And I was always very pale and Knight. And when I was on my hair color or brown, just like, um, like ever like really light my skin. I don’t tan. I burn. Um, and, and I just looked very different from, from them. Um, you know, and I, that I realized at a young age, I think, no, no, no. You know, I mean, if I would ask my mom about stuff, like, I always had a lot of freckles when I was little, why do I have freckles? Why is my hair light? Why this, why that? And she, I like to say she would invoke dead relatives that nobody knew, and they tell us, so it would be, you know, my aunt, my aunt had this, my father had that, you know, that kind of thing. So, um, right, right. Correct. I mean, like my brother had, um, green eyes, um, beautiful green eyes, very pale skin, but he would tan. And he had, yeah. I mean, I feel like, I feel like if you were half the time anyway, that it would make sense that one kid would get like, oh, she just got the lighter jeans. Like it just worked. And then you wouldn’t. I at least, I wouldn’t think if I saw, if I didn’t know, you know, who she was.
Speaker 1: (10:45)
Oh, really? It wasn’t like an open discussion in my family, like anybody.
Speaker 2: (11:04)
Um, yeah. And I, so now I like, of course now, and I, I, I,
Speaker 1: (11:10)
If, if, if it wasn’t, it wasn’t around me, it wasn’t like, it was, it wasn’t a if like uncles and
Speaker 2: (11:16)
Aunts and friends, like people would just all the time, like where did you come from? So, um, so I’m always curious about that. Like, was it, oh, was it a common discussion? My eyebrow, like, yeah. Right, right, right, right.
Speaker 1: (11:34)
Right. Five little girls. They were all under. Cool.
Speaker 2: (11:38)
So you’re doing this Ellis islands and you get, you get more details. And I love the story of finding out that nine. And she came over for sisters. Right? Like your, your great grandmother brought over five girls. And th th th the Volvo, the visual of that on an Ellis island boat is like, I get goosebumps. I got goosebumps last night and I’m getting it again. Like, I don’t know, something so precious about that. Um, I can’t even imagine and, and amazing about the determination to get, like, whatever was going on there. This was going, this was worth the trip. Right. You know, and I’m worth risking it’s so, so interesting.
Speaker 1: (12:25)
The famous test. Right. I mean,
Speaker 2: (12:31)
Um, so, so then you do, so you’re, so you have this genealogy book and then you over time, um, ancestry offers you the spit test, the, the famous test and, um, you
Speaker 1: (12:45)
Know, what had to do register really upfront. Um, and, you know, I mean, they literally like emailed me ancestry did about a year. I don’t know how to, like, basically an offer. Look, we’re doing this time members, are you interested? We’ll let you know when they’re available. So I, I said that I was interested, so I got put on a mailing list. And when they came out, I mean, I awarded it immediately. Um, you know, not like I said, um, the family was small and it was all sisters. It was like, they were five sisters and three brothers. And like, there were a lot of girls. So my last name was not, it was common, but I could never find any relatives with my last name. Um, correct. Correct. Yeah. Sorry.
Speaker 1: (13:46)
Right. Yeah. Um, right, right. The last name would change. Right. So anyway, so these women would send me the email with the tests were available when their children get back and catch everybody up, just in case on 99, our last name, James, that’s weird, you know, and I’m like, well, you know, it must be it’s brand new. There’s not a lot of people that take that have taken it, I guess, over time it’s gonna, you know, uh, change. Yeah. You know, so this was in 2012. Right. Right. They didn’t, they were know to know Italians have taken the test yet. That must be what I didn’t understand about Senta Morgans. You know, I looked at that and I looked at the matches and I didn’t see any names that I recognized. I would think that too. I was like, oh, I closed it. I went on with my life. And every once my dad stepped in here now, you know, we match on ancestry, blah, blah, blah. It was always like this, like it is now, you know, you get that email and it’s like, oh, you have, you know, 23 new relatives. And they’re like eighth cousins, 12 times removed, you know?
Speaker 1: (15:02)
Um, you know, so it was kind of like that, but every time I would look at it, it didn’t change. And, um, but I kept doing, you know, the tree and the research, and there were more records and more records and more records. Um, yeah. So then in, in total, in 2015 was the first time someone got in touch with me from my grandfather’s family. Um, so it took, it was three years before like a bell went off that something was wrong or something was awry. Um, you know, so, so, so through, in that three-year period, it never even occurred to me that there was a problem. No. Right. Exactly. I mean, you know, it’s, it was, that was really my identity in, in so many ways because, um, a lot of the kids I had went to grade school with their parents were off the boat. So like everyone in my immediate circle in high school was tested. Right. Um, you know, including, including my friends. So, uh, you know, so it was, it was a bit of a shock when it, when I did finally realize that this, this, this was a problem, that there was something wrong. Um, you know, so, um, I kind of, uh, you know, I kind of went the other route after that and I called ancestry and, you know, gave them some stern words and, you know, things like that. And, um, you know, I’m hearing it now.
Speaker 2: (16:40)
Right. Yeah. Right, right. Yeah. Here you are. Right. And, um, so, so you, um, again, summarizing what we talked, what you talked about with Lily. So,
Speaker 1: (17:11)
So relative start contacting you in 2015 and takes a while, not a while, but you started working together. Cool. You start to put together then by mistake, the only way these, she took her tassels with my dad. Right. Um, so she took her test and it came back exactly how she thought it would. Um, she’s, she’s pretty much a month. She’s German, Irish, well region Swedish, like all kinds of stuff. So since we had an extra test, like all of my sister, and I said, I think this is a problem. And if I buy a test, would you take it? And she said, she would. And she came back half Irish. Um, you know, so at the S at around the same time I got this, the, the message from this one relative. Um, and I, you know, she said, you know, here’s my tree. I can’t figure out where you fit. Um, so I looked at her tree and I’m like, none of these names mean anything to me, you know, it’s just like 3000 strangers, um, on this tree. And, you know, even though we, I took the test, my sister took the test. We figured out there was this issue. I just figured this is a needle in haystack now, unless, unless a sibling takes a test, I’m never going to fi I’m never going to know my mom’s been dead since 1994.
Speaker 3: (18:44)
Right.
Speaker 1: (18:45)
Correct. And, um, so I kind of just resigned myself to never knowing yeah, [inaudible]
Speaker 3: (19:01)
Right,
Speaker 2: (19:01)
Right. Both your parents have passed. There’s no one to answer questions.
Speaker 1: (19:06)
Um, at that point it was more of just a, another cop on your sister came back with that time, by the time she tests sent it in and got it sorted, I was already kind of, did that feel like a big shot or a punch in the style? I had already resigned myself at that point. The fact number, how that felt the guy that raised me is not my fault. And I just figured I was going to never get answers to the questions that I had, because it was nobody to ask. Um, it kinda sucked, you know, it kinda sucked. I mean, I was mad at my mom, not for my existence, but because when she was sick, I lived with her for over three months. How does that feel? It was just me and her. And she had ample opportunity to tell me yeah. And that’s what I was mad at. Um, and she never did. Um, so, you know, I don’t know what I would’ve done with that information in 1994,
Speaker 3: (20:14)
You know, so,
Speaker 1: (20:16)
I mean, I guess it really made no difference. Um, you know, we, we, weren’t in lovely, uh, right, right, right, exactly. Um, you know, so I kind of, it took me a little while to kind of get past that, you know, um, I’m a long timer. So dialed up your prodigy AOL with your CD rom. Right. A lot of confusion. Um, you know, a lot of resentment, um, the resentment did come back after I did identify my family. Um, because like I said, I grew up like a tiny adult and it turns out that I could have had like 35 cousins that were all around my age. Yeah. Um, you know, so, so that, that still comes up sometimes that, that little bit of that’s that sucks, but, you know, but then I get another perspective from my wife. Who’s been incredibly supportive. Um, she said, oh, what would have had, would have been so fun that you would have been part of that family?
Speaker 1: (21:33)
You know, do you think that he would have divorced his wife and then they would have only had three kids instead of six, you know, w they, would your mom and dad have gotten divorced, you know, what do you think would have been different? And, you know, when I look at it that way, you know, it’s very true. It pro it probably wouldn’t have been different and I still would have been ostracized and, you know, and, and it would have been different, but maybe not in a good way, you know? Right, right, right, right. All this. Exactly, exactly.
Speaker 2: (22:23)
Right. And maybe even more, yeah. Even sort of more aggressively ostracized,
Speaker 4: (22:28)
Right. It’d be this real life. You already were living proof, but this proof of, of all this, all this. Yes.
Speaker 1: (22:41)
Um, well, I, I wrote a letter, so you’ve
Speaker 2: (22:44)
Connected with your family, with your, your paternal, your all biologicals
Speaker 1: (22:47)
To bio dad’s family. And I saw what happened backtrack except for one. So I’m doing all my research and I, I now have identified that keeps his distance, but, um, they were three brothers and I, I identified who he was. Um, and my cousins started giving me photos. Um, so I would put photos on my tree. So I had, so that’s okay. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, so, so going back to 2015, so the, the, oh, couldn’t this H she’s a first cousin going back, I’m in the back, you actually turned out my fall, this fall, you had, you had a cousin on that side. So we chatted a little bit about, and I couldn’t figure out where I thought, yeah. If I’ve ever figure it out, I’ll get back to you. So, two years later, I got a hit that w it’s at first, first cousin. So I could see that he was on that side, on the, on the paternal side. So I emailed him immediately and I said, this is going to seem like a weird question. Um, but my results, we, we, we match as a kind of a high match and my results are, are questionable. Can you just tell me if your mom had any brothers? So she said, so he, he emailed me back almost immediately said, oh yeah, my mom had two brothers. They will priests.
Speaker 1: (24:27)
So, so wow. So, you know, I’m thinking about it and I’m like, well, you know, first of all, the ages of the priests were much, much older than my mom. And she, we, we weren’t a church going people. So she wouldn’t have had in her social circle. Wow. She did work. She always worked. Um, so we figured out that, um, this, the cousin, the more recent cousin ed, that his mom’s sister was married to Shannon’s father’s brother. So I was very easily able to identify my, my grandparents. Um, and so they weren’t related at all, but they were in-laws I guess, cousins in law. Um, he, since there’s really no term for that, but they knew each other. And, um, so ed, uh, while we’re co corresponding back and forth, he said, well, you know, um, since we don’t know which of the three brothers it is, he said, I, my wife and I actually go to Florida every winter and one of the sisters, right.
Speaker 1: (25:40)
Every time when we’re there, we visit them a couple of times, he said, I’ll try to bring it up. Like, you know, you get to talking about old times and I’ll see what I could do. So turns out he was too chicken to bring it up with her, but he emailed me and he said, look, I just don’t, I don’t know how to say this. He said, but right, exactly. So he said, would you mind if I open the door? And I said, no, it says, it’s fine. So he told her daughter, um, who was actually an adoptee. So her, her existence wouldn’t help me. Um, in that way it can be an, um, we ended up emailing back and forth. Um, and she told her mom and her mom’s first reaction was that’s my brother. And he’s dead. And I don’t want to talk about it because that’s the Irish way.
Speaker 1: (26:39)
That’s the Irish way. Um, so while my cousin speaking to me, you know, she’s like, I’m trying to get my mom’s come around and you know, we’re not, we’re really just not sure what the brother it is. Um, so there was another visit in the meantime, um, over Easter and, um, invited to my aunt’s house over Easter was the daughter of one of the three brothers who also lived in Florida. So they’re all sitting around and they’re chit chatting. And, um, Ed’s wife says to Emma, who was the other person says, um, Hey, didn’t you dad work for IBM? And she said, oh no, no. He worked at Sinclair on balance on, so ed and, and his wife knew that that’s when my mom wants and him all this information.
Speaker 1: (27:36)
And how do I ask this? Oh, didn’t you were fine. No, we worked here. So that was how I confirmed that he was actually my birth father because they work together. I love the idea of [inaudible] now a year later. Um, and they were telling me, um, about that day and he said, Hmm [inaudible]. And we both looked at each other like, like this, and like, we didn’t know what to do with, like, they want it to pop out of your head. [inaudible] yeah, totally. Totally. Or like the person that like movie, I don’t know. It feels like in the movie, towards the end of the movie where the person that’s like trying to solve a crime, like the fact comes out and the whole audience is like, the audience knows. I started, like I said, I started putting pictures on the tree and everything, and I miss identified someone on the tree and I got a message.
Speaker 1: (28:58)
The ones you don’t want ancestry, if you comment, you can comment my sister, like if you go, so you can, like, if you find a photo that someone posts, you can comment on the photo and then the person who owns a tree will get message. So I get a message from this person’s on him saying, um, I had misidentified my grandfather and great-grandfather. And so Donna, who was actually turned out to be my brother, that was his wife, um, sent a message and said, this is not Michael, this is Jack. And for me to put the picture. So I took that as an opening. And so I emailed back and I said, oh, well, you know, thanks. Thanks very much. I was told that it was this person. And so she emailed me. She said, oh, that was my husband. Mark was, was commenting. He was working was so I crafted a letter and I redid it and I edited it.
Speaker 1: (30:04)
And I, I probably took me two months to put it all together. And I got pictures and I put it in a FedEx envelope and I sent it, um, someone in our group found his address for me and I FedEx it to his house. And, um, about 10 days later, he emails me. And, um, he said, you know, I got your letter. I shared it with my siblings. Um, we decided that, um, this was something that, a secret that was, that was kept a long time ago to keep families intact. And at this point in time, um, we would like to keep it that way. Now their mother is alive and right from the beginning, I’ve been very cognizant of that. Um, and I’ve told them that I’ve told everyone that I’ve corresponded with, um, that I don’t feel that she deserves that kind of pain at this point in her life. So if she, if she doesn’t know, she, if she doesn’t know, she doesn’t need to know. And, you know, I, I reiterated that several times. He said, you know, we appreciate, you know, your sensitivity in that and this and that, but we’re not, we’re not ready to correspond. Um, can you imagine, I’d be happy to email you back with you back and forth if you have any questions.
Speaker 3: (31:37)
[inaudible]
Speaker 1: (31:52)
Right. Well, I had, yeah, I had actually said that to him. I mean, we did meet, he and I did meet, it’s interesting to say in April of 2019, we’re not, we don’t want her mom to know [inaudible] and he works here. He works in Philadelphia and he lives in south Jersey. Um, and I emailed him on a whim while I was there. And I said, you know, do you want to meet for a cup of coffee? And we had emailed a couple of times, but it was always me initiating. And he, he giving me brief responses. Um, you know, I asked him for medical information. Um, you know, if he could tell me anything about our, our father, I never referred to him that way. Um, you know, I, I try to be as, as I could with him, um, you know, and he gave me some information and, um, you know, and, and I really didn’t expect to hear back from him, but he emailed me back and he said, well, where do you want to meet?
Speaker 1: (32:52)
I said, well, I don’t know anything about Philadelphia, so you tell me and I’ll just be there. Um, so we, we, I didn’t sleep all night, um, the night before. And we met in the morning and we actually had breakfast and we, we talked for a couple hours. We were there for a couple of hours. And, but that was one thing I did say to him. I said, you know, I said, you know, I, I know that you don’t want her to know. And, and I don’t want her to know, you know, not for me, but for her. And I said, how would she know if you don’t tell her, you know, how, how is she ever going to, you would be the one that would have to tell her they would literally be no other way to, far to find out that I exist.
Speaker 1: (33:36)
And he kind of was like, whoa, you know, like he never thought of it that way. So, you know, the, but there’s a lot of people in the family and people talk and I said, okay, that’s fine. Um, you know, and, and we had a couple of emails after that and I kind of realized that he was just not going to be the one to initiate anything. Um, right. At the last time I emailed him was probably about a year ago. Um, you know, kind of just, just checking in, making sure you’re okay. You’re okay. During the pandemic, I hope you’re safe, blah, blah, blah. And it was just a very brief response from that. And that was the last contact I really had with him.
Speaker 1: (34:26)
And what’s funny is, um, Emma, she’s the oldest, and I think there’s three, three girls, three boys, one is deceased. And I think, I think what it is is they just had him up on a pedestal and the other siblings and no one else, my appearance really just knocked him off. And I think she’s just hurt and disappointed that he would do that. Um, and, um, the, um, the one that is getting the blame right, correct. Of, of her father right. Of your father. And, um, but what’s funny, what I was going to say is that, um, hero, who was the cousin in Florida, who’s been, um, we’ve actually become very, very close. I just visited her a couple of weeks ago. Right. You’re the living. Yeah. And I, and my aunt she’s, she’s just the best, you know, she really is just the best we we’ve actually, we’ve actually talked about that.
Speaker 1: (35:35)
And yeah, that’s, that’s really, that’s really part of it. She’s, you know, she said to me, you know, well, he’s like, I’ve always known, I was a cop was adopted. I’ve never felt like king shall be cast in the family. She said, but I only knew, I didn’t really know that there’s a sort of, you know, saw adopting empathy. And she said, and you know, here you are, you do belong to them, but you can’t, you’re not allowed in, you know, you know, they’re really your family more than mine. If you want to look at it in a biological kind of way, you know? Um, so I think that’s more of it. I mean, I’ve, but I, I am, I’m in touch with another first cousin who I haven’t met yet, but I’m going to over the summer and, you know, we were just, it’s just the siblings that seem to have the problem. Right. Because other people I’ve spoken to have been just more than loving and welcoming and, you know, I’ve, I’ve met several people in the family since this all started. Um, you know, so it’s really just them. Yeah.
Speaker 4: (36:42)
Right.
Speaker 1: (36:44)
You know, my aunt tells me, well, I think when their mother dies still, they’ll probably be more open. But when we were down visiting her last month, she actually said to my wife, they’re never going to touch us. It gets too close to
Speaker 4: (37:00)
Something too close to some, I don’t think she,
Speaker 1: (37:04)
I don’t think she cares for them very much, but anyway, um, so I know, so Kira’s daughter got married, um, in actually she got married right at the start of the pandemic and, and Emma was invited to the wedding. Yeah. And she went and I asked Kira, I wonder why when she was there, she never said anything to you. Not a single, not a single word. Did she say like, oh, oh yeah,
Speaker 3: (37:39)
Yeah.
Speaker 1: (37:41)
Nope. Not a word, not a word, but she did unfriend and block ed the first, the cousin that, yeah, the cousin that, that was helping me. She actually for friends, but didn’t say anything about it. Huh. But none of them have blocked me on Facebook. So I go to their pages and I saw some all the time and I’m totally petty with them. And if I, if they comment on cousins and I’m friends with, I make sure I go there and comment and you know, I’m like, you’re gonna know that I’m here, killed the messenger. I’m here and I’m not going to let you forget about it. Yeah. Right, right. You know, you don’t need to be my friend. I managed to live 55 years without you. And, but right. You’re not going to forget that I exist.
Speaker 2: (38:39)
I’m here. There’s really something about existing as an NPE about wanting to say, I am, I am here, I am here. Um,
Speaker 4: (38:58)
Right, right, right. Hmm. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (39:03)
And no way to have answers. No way to have answers. Okay.
Speaker 4: (39:06)
Yeah. Um, so interesting. So I have, um,
Speaker 2: (39:11)
The other thing I want to ask you, this is about being Italian. This is what I was thinking
Speaker 1: (39:16)
Is that we were just at the retreat together.
Speaker 2: (39:19)
We were at a higher earth hope and healing retreat. It was an April. Uh, it was so fun. And, uh, it’s just something totally unique to be with all that.
Speaker 1: (39:31)
You described it as a tribe and it really feels that way. Right. Just like
Speaker 4: (39:34)
People that get it, people,
Speaker 1: (39:36)
Chicken, Marsala, all the, all the different Marcel everybody can talk about is completely different to explain thing.
Speaker 2: (39:43)
It’s just really great. Um, but you made dinner one night and I want to talk about it paid like a chicken piccata. Is that what it’s called? Oh, okay. Chicken. Um,
Speaker 1: (39:59)
I do not actually my specialty. Perfect. Um, chicken Marsala illustrate. Um, and um, well my mom being Irish. And so did you grow up learning how to, did you learn to cook from your family? Irish people tend to have, um, you know, to put it bluntly. Um, so she, my mom was a pretty good cook. Um, I learned watching and I learned watching my aunts and I just always enjoyed it. Um, you know, cooking, creating, putting together, having people enjoy what I make, you know, so I guess that’s my little bit of artistry. Thank you. Yeah. Oh, it’s so good. It was so great. Yeah, it was really good. And, and I just think there’s something really,
Speaker 4: (41:07)
Um, I don’t, I don’t know either it’s
Speaker 2: (41:10)
Special or unique or magical or weird, you know, something about it, about you growing up, thinking you were Italian, um, learning that you’re not Italian at all. And then connecting with all these other people who have found out right. Or not what we thought, what I know ethnicity or not, you know, whether it’s about heritage or not, but just like all these different versions of that. And then,
Speaker 1: (41:32)
But you’re, you know, I find food more. Um, you’re still using your raised here, whatever that’s called [inaudible] certificate, no matter what you, whether you agree with someone or whether you use that to bring people to [inaudible] is, is, is a good way to have a fellowship with people regardless of who they are. Yeah. Um, you know, so yes. I I’d be happy to share it. Yeah. It’s, it’s not, it’s actually not a big deal. It’s it’s, I mean, it’s not, it’s, it’s super easy to make. It really is. It’s it’s yeah. Meal time is so fun at the retreats, but it was so funny. I have no bed. You should had a special dinner night.
Speaker 2: (42:22)
Is that a recipe that you think we could get from you?
Speaker 1: (42:25)
Or do you have enough? I’ll put together a book. [inaudible]
Speaker 2: (42:38)
Maybe it’s something we could look into. Okay. Cool. All right. We’re going to get Annie, the NPE from proxies. Yeah. I actually thought of that at the retreat. When you were cooking. I was like, Hey, I wonder if everybody’s
Speaker 1: (42:54)
Got yes. Um, I would say, um, yeah. Okay, cool. Um, don’t rush into anything. It’s asked us at the end, when I take a breath and do nothing, you’re a long timer. You’re going to be upset. All that kind of stuff existed. Those are all valid feelings. Um, seek out people that may be in your same position. Um, I’ve found, um, the groups more helpful than, than literally anything else. Um, you know, because you have different levels of people like, like me, I’m a long timer, then you have new people and the new people need guidance and what do I do? And how do I approach this? And, and so you have, um, people that know from their own mistakes, like what to tell people not to do, you know? Um, but the main thing I would say is to take a breath and do nothing, you know, don’t, don’t start immediately sending messages and, um, you know, they can be scary for the people that receive them.
Speaker 1: (44:10)
Um, especially if you get a really close hit, um, you know, if you’re going to message someone be as vague as you possibly can, um, just to get, just to get them to, um, engage, um, you know, because if you start, if you start out like, Hey, my dad, isn’t my dad, or you, my dad, you know, you know, um, you know, people don’t want to be the hider of family secrets. Um, and that’s unfortunately what we are, we’re family secrets. Um, you know, whether it’s one person that knows or 10 people or the whole family, you know, kept secrets for a reason and nobody wants to be the one that knows that information.
Speaker 4: (45:14)
Right. Right.
Speaker 2: (45:20)
Yeah. That’s true. It’s interesting. Cause, cause we’re like, uh, people we’re not the NPS, but like we’re a society. Yeah. Right.
Speaker 1: (45:30)
Well, especially, yeah. Especially, um, we don’t want to have them, if you see, this is why I like telling my people, I take people, one person that says that or emailing from this stranger that says, you know, they might be like cousin or they might be my brother and wow. That’s, that’s messed up. And, but, but my friend Annie had that happen to her. So maybe it’s not something that I should ignore or send away because it happened to my friend, you know? I mean I had, um, yeah. You know, I mean, I I’ve told my story like with, um, like I have a, uh, a Facebook group with my high school class and I told it in there. Um, and we had a reunion and in 2019 I begged people like three or four people and just like, oh my God, I can’t believe it.
Speaker 1: (46:30)
Can you tell me more? You know, and why do you tell people? And you know, and, and, you know, because I don’t want, um, I’ve had doors slammed in my face and if I could prevent that from happening to somebody else, you know, because you get people that like I read, like, especially on like Ancestry’s Facebook page or, you know, you get these stories that come up in the news where this person found their unknown sibling, blah, blah, blah. Oh, nobody should tell that story, keep it to yourself. Don’t say anything. And you know, they don’t take into account that not only, or the people like my siblings being handed a surprise, but the surprise us where people too, you know, and you can’t just say don’t feel that way because this is how I feel, you know? And, and I might not, you know, I’m not looking get invited over the Thanksgiving, but you know, don’t be an. That’s all. Oh, it’s just so being an.
Speaker 1: (47:44)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, that’s pretty much it. I mean, I, you know, I can’t complain, we don’t need to be invited over for Thanksgiving, but don’t bother that might be in the next tote bag. You know? I mean, my, my, the family that has embraced me has done so very willingly. Um, it’s really, no, they didn’t, they don’t need to invite me into their homes, but they have, um, you know, and if I don’t ever see my siblings, I figure it’s their loss. Yeah. All this Italian food. Right. I know, I know oil’s meat, boiled meat, a hundred percent, their loss boiled meat, potatoes, chicken.
Speaker 2: (48:51)
You’re going to be introducing them to all this Italian cooking. Right. All they know about is cabbage and boil and you’re over there. Yeah. Oh man. They’re really losing out. That’s too bad. That’s so funny. Well, thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Annie coming. And, um, and, uh, T telling your story and talking more about some other
Speaker 1: (49:20)
Times quite you do, but in a way that’s true. A lot of references to how had I been, you know, always about people that have DNA discovery probably never would have. Probably never would always say, I don’t mean why I wasn’t getting any don’t mean that kind of matches. I mean, I could have explained the Rangers, but, but if I’m not, you know, I mean, it’s, it’s not a mystery that I, that my, my dad was Italian because I have records of his family coming from Italy. You know, it’s, it’s not some long, you know, long ago a person that just showed up here from, from London, you know, these people came from Italy and they were still people in Italy that he’s related to right now. So when, when I didn’t match any of those people, and it didn’t say I was Italian, that was a big, you know, thank you for having me. Yeah. All right. I’ll send it off.
Speaker 2: (50:42)
That was the flag. Hmm.
Speaker 1: (50:45)
It’s supposed to be sunny. So I plan on finishing up my yard, um, cause we have a 4th of July and stuff or nieces come over and some of their friends, so trying to go on with your day, it’s a Friday, I’m having a good weekend. Make an atmosphere. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We got washed out last week, so I didn’t get to do any of that.
Speaker 3: (51:10)
So maybe now.
Speaker 1: (51:14)
All right. All right. Talk to you soon. I’ll send you that recipe. Sure. All right. Have a good one. Bye.
Speaker 2: (51:23)
Oh, fun. Oh, great. Good. Okay. So maybe now things will grow. Yeah. Nice. Okay. We’ll have fun. All right. I will talk to you soon. Thank you so much. Okay. Bye.
It’s Never Too Late to Process the Truth
Speaker 1: (00:00)
Ah, how are you, how was your day?
Speaker 2: (00:07)
Sounds good. Yeah, I was just doing a little job earlier. Um, and just get a little bit nervous, um, about this, but, uh, got, uh, jump in the deep end.
Speaker 1: (00:18)
Mm-hmm mm-hmm well, I was gonna say don’t be nervous, but I can’t, I can’t, I can’t control how you feel, but I’m hoping it will just feel like a conversation.
Speaker 2: (00:28)
Yeah. Hopefully, um, I’ve always wanted to try this type of stuff, Uhhuh and, um, yeah, just, uh, try to help people really. And, um, yeah, just see, see how it goes, putting yourself in the deep end and, uh, yeah, just try to learn a learning curve, isn’t
Speaker 1: (00:53)
It? Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, this is an easy, I’m an easy audience. Um, and, and, and you did the video mm-hmm right. Which did you, are you, when you did that video, are you reading off a, um, teleprompter?
Speaker 2: (01:11)
Um, yes, you were. So, uh, that was, um, took me about 20 takes I was, yeah. Then I done the video. I memorized the starting the end and then in the middle, I’m just reading off as PO as I could be. mm-hmm professional. I could be, we’re not trying not to sound too professional.
Speaker 1: (01:32)
Right.
Speaker 2: (01:34)
Not
Speaker 1: (01:34)
Too posh. right. You wanna be articulate, but approachable.
Speaker 2: (01:38)
Yeah. Or something. I, I like the lad as well, so I wanna and keep my reputation right, right.
Speaker 1: (01:45)
I hear you. I hear you. Um, and you found me through Cindy, right? Yeah. Or I found you. Yeah. And how did you meet Cindy love Cindy too. Great. So great.
Speaker 2: (01:58)
Yeah. So there’s, uh, support group. I go to every Wednesday and Sunday and yeah. Meet Cindy there. And, um, she offers me 10, 10 advice. Mm-hmm and
Speaker 1: (02:12)
Support mm-hmm she’s so cool.
Speaker 2: (02:15)
Yeah. She’s I feel, um, settled and comfortable talking to her and yeah. Uh, whenever she says something I’ll listen,
Speaker 1: (02:29)
Yeah, she is. She’s a
Speaker 2: (02:30)
Really she’s she’s she’s doing wonderful things. Mm-hmm so, um, yeah. It’s uh, I’m glad I met her.
Speaker 1: (02:38)
Cool. Yeah, me too. Cuz then now we connect networking. That’s what’s all about, yeah. That’s what we’re doing. We’re networking. We’re in these groups from the network. Um, so, so we’ll just ki we’ll kind of just jump right in, um, because we’re here to, to tell to hear your story you’re um, so I, so I’ve, so here’s what I don’t wanna do. I don’t wanna just tell the story that’s on your video because yeah. People can just watch your video, so I’d rather have more of a conversation about it. Um, okay. So I purposefully did not watch it again. I watched it one time. Um, and so I guess I, I would like to know, so we’ll get to your, we’ll get to what happened when you’re 18, but before that, how would you have described your childhood?
Speaker 2: (03:25)
Yep. Childhood? Um, it was, it was okay. Mm-hmm it was, um, weren’t the richest family. Um, weren’t the poorest either. Um, I was a bit embarra of my parents, um, cause obviously not much money and uh, different accents, um, and uh, different, um, parents, uh, different religion and obviously some different, different skin color. Right.
Speaker 1: (03:59)
So you felt different, you felt different in all those ways? Always. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (04:03)
And what, even before, even before adoption mm-hmm mm-hmm so, um, I adopted dad’s Moroccan and my adopted mom’s English. Mom’s white dad’s uh, tan mm-hmm so, um, adoption didn’t cross my mind. Mm-hmm I thought wish I was white. That wish I was, you did, uh, same color as more Scottish British
Speaker 1: (04:27)
People. I was just gonna ask, what was the diversity, were there people of color at your school or in your town? What is, what is it like? How many people in Scotland
Speaker 2: (04:35)
There was, there was, but not many, um, not as many there is now. Um, but it was, it was just another reason to, uh, stand out. Mm-hmm all, all what to do was just fit in.
Speaker 1: (04:53)
Sure. Sure. All you wanted to do was fit in and um, and when you said your parents had accents, your mother was British
Speaker 2: (05:00)
And that, uh, yeah. I’m I live in Edinburgh. Mm-hmm and we’ve got, uh, strong Scottish accents. Yeah. And, uh, England has got a different accent. Right.
Speaker 1: (05:13)
So she’s got, she’s got, um, an English accent and, and your dad, and then your dad was from Morocco. Was his, was his accent sort of from Morocco or do he have a British, what did he sound? What does he sound like?
Speaker 2: (05:26)
Not British. He was, I met Moroccan. Okay. Yes. And, um, yeah, it was just, it wasn’t typical Scottish mm-hmm mm-hmm friends were, um, obviously. Yeah. So, and did you,
Speaker 1: (05:42)
Did you play sports? Did you, and did you have siblings?
Speaker 2: (05:46)
Yeah, I got an older adopted brother and sister. Okay. But, um, there’s a big age difference. I think they’re 15 years older. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2: (05:58)
Okay. Yeah. Growing up. Um, well a fact is that the five of us have never been in a room together. Um, me and my brother, my sister and my mom have never been, my dads, never been in their room together life. Wow. Really, really happened. Yeah. Um, so I was kinda brought, even though I have a brother and sister, I was kinda brought up an only child mm-hmm and um, yeah, I liked sport and, um, I was quite a quiet child to what I am now. Um, I was very nice and at times I could be very destructive and like a brat and move and get more away and yeah, just, yeah, just, uh, I dunno why my mom put up with me, but she was fantastic. Mm-hmm
Speaker 1: (06:54)
Cause she loved you. Yeah. Um, and, uh, and did, okay. And did you know that your older brother and sister were adopted before you turned 18?
Speaker 2: (07:03)
They, they weren’t adopted, they were not adopted they’re biological. Got it. Okay. What also annoyed me was they were white as well. Oh. So I was, uh, black. Right. But fast forward to now everyone wants to have kind yeah. it’s not much a bad, it’s gonna a
Speaker 1: (07:22)
Deal. Um, right. Okay. So, okay. I didn’t know that, um, I thought they had, they had also been adopted. They were not adopted. They were okay. So, all right. So, so, uh, so tell me, and then tell me about, about how you found out, um, you were adopted, which is how walk me through your late discovery.
Speaker 2: (07:45)
Yeah. Go for it. So, um, mother, the parents relationship wasn’t, um, uh, very good. Um, every year was getting worse and worse and adopted father he’s bit religious and religion came first and, um, we didn’t kinda follow down that path and they got divorced and uh, we moved away, me and my mother and, um, yeah, when I was 18, just before I was 18 and my brother was, uh, hinted to me, um, need to speak to mom and find out. So she was got something to tell you. And I always felt there was something odd about me, but cause my dad would rocking. I’m a rocking. Um, I would also lying, saying that I was Scottish mm-hmm so when I was growing up, I was ashamed that shamefulness I just lie. I was ashamed of my name. I was ashamed of my skin color, ashamed in my nationality.
Speaker 2: (08:48)
Um, shame in my dad’s religion. Um, yeah. So, um, spoke to my mom and she told me the truth. She wrote me a letter. She was in England at the time and yeah. Or where just came crashing down. I was, I was in floods of tears. I ran away. And when I got back, I just didn’t speak about the flight back up to, um, the place I grew up and stayed with a friend. The name got a flat that lived on my own for the next 13 years when, when that happened. I just vow to never talk about that again. And um, never told anyone, kept it a secret and shame
Speaker 1: (09:31)
So much shame. I mean, you’ve, you’ve carried so much shame since you were little, like it’s interesting and sad, sad. I’m not, I’m not into it. Um, but, but it’s very interesting that you had so much shame because of your skin color because of your accent because of your dad, like, and your dad and the, and
Speaker 2: (09:49)
Then the adoption that just, uh, that was a knee and the cost. Right.
Speaker 1: (09:53)
And then you lose your dad through the divorce. I mean, you don’t lose your dad, but that’s a, that’s a, a breaking of a family kind of right. It wasn’t,
Speaker 2: (09:59)
It wasn’t really there and emotionally, and it just became like an enemy. Right.
Speaker 1: (10:05)
And then you find out that you’re adopted, which is this
Speaker 2: (10:11)
It’s like makes you think like, um, that’s the reason why there’s no connection. Hmm. And, um, you just, everyone turns out to be black and white now, who do you trust? Right. And, but my, my adopted mom done that out of love. Mm-hmm and I understand why she’d done that. Um, and she wasn’t, she much guidance. Um, so obviously she came to the Moroccan orphanage and um, she picked me out of a line of babies. Um, we were all crying, badly dressed. Um, my dad does my dad, my dad says we’re not getting a girl getting a boy. First one we pick and that’s it. Um, so when my mother’s, she picked up, the first one she picked was a girl. So the next one she picked was a boy. And so that’s just in my mind, I’m like, well, that’s chance. Um, and I need to be something special. Um, I only found out about this, about the, this time last year. Wow. So I start, so yeah. So even know I found about 18. I just, no more questions. Mm-hmm I would just ignore that I’m 18 year old. I’m gonna go out and with my friends and enjoy my teenage years and my early twenties
Speaker 1: (11:37)
Lock it up. Do
Speaker 2: (11:39)
That’s I found drugs and alcohol mm-hmm and had a great time and also had a terrible time. Mm-hmm
Speaker 1: (11:47)
They do that, those drugs and alcohol do that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (11:50)
So that was my, that was my escape. And I’m just trying to find, I just try to travel and um, go holidays and block my friends or my family. I pushed my doctor’s family away. Did you
Speaker 1: (12:04)
Know, did you know at the time that you were doing that because you were upset about, about the adoption trauma or did you, um, did you just think, were you not, were you not thinking about it that deeply?
Speaker 2: (12:16)
No, I wasn’t thinking about that deeply. Um, cause as the years went by, you think when I was like my late twenties, that’s when I started thinking I can’t keep the secret up anymore. Hmm. And so you never,
Speaker 1: (12:33)
You never told any of your friends?
Speaker 2: (12:36)
No one, no, no one, I think I told my first person at 2018. Um, so that was what, and when it was, when I was drunk, it was a girl and, um,
Speaker 1: (12:47)
That’s three years ago. That’s only three years ago.
Speaker 2: (12:49)
Yeah. So like 10 years later I told my first person when I was drunk. Cause we were having heart to hearts and in the morning mm-hmm I regret in the morning I regretted it and I was, I was so anxious and just being like vulnerable and I was not in a good place. You know, you think, oh, you’ve told someone should feel better. No, I was I’m panic. You were two. I told, I told another girl in the next year, 2019 same situation when I was drunk and same, the same feelings. And then it wasn’t until I opened up to the doctor and in May, 2020, uh, after lockdown started, um, and COVID started, it started on March and the UK and that’s when I was, uh, I, I just decided I what to deal with my adoption. Hmm. So I decided to stop drinking drugs. So I’d have a clear head, uh, deal with my adoption. Do it for a year. Well, no, I was at, I was, I did a planet. I planned to stop drinking drugs while COVID was finished. And I thought it was only last month. I
Speaker 1: (14:04)
That’s the easy, a great, yeah. For a little while there we thought COVID was just gonna be like a, you know, here in LA we thought it would be two weeks. Yeah. So mm-hmm right.
Speaker 2: (14:14)
So yeah. So, uh, um, I was just, uh, I’ve lost my train of thought there.
Speaker 1: (14:20)
We, we were just talking about your decision. You, you had told you hadn’t told anybody and then you let it slip out in 2018, twice and felt vulnerable. But then when COVID started, you talked to a doctor and felt like you were ready to face
Speaker 2: (14:32)
Something that was, that was killing me beforehand hand, over years, not telling anyone. And the reason I came, the reason I came out with my story is cause it was killing me and I wanted to help people to speak up. Cause uh, keeping secrets like that. Uh, well the, the keeping secrets in general, uh, for me, uh, I believe it was really damaging. Yeah. I wish, I wish I was brave enough to speak up. Cause when I did speak up, like wait off my shoulders and not, not don’t have anything for the it out yet. I’m still winging it, but I’m trying, and the feedback I got from my story was fantastic and uh, helped a lot of people and I’m just trying to push on and keep trying to keep on helping. And um, yeah, it was just so I understand when people say to me, I couldn’t tell my story. Cause if you asked me 2, 3, 4, 5, 10 years ago, do I tell your story? I would’ve just been put my wall up and ran away as far as fast as I could in another direction. But
Speaker 1: (15:48)
So can I ask you some questions about yeah. When you talk about holding the secret in, were you thinking about, did you think about I’m adopted? Was that a thought that was going on? Would you say, would you think every
Speaker 2: (16:01)
Day? Okay. I’m an overthinker. So every day, so everyday adoption’s on my mind. Okay. Every day I feel, uh, upset every day. I feel lonely every day I feel um, yeah. Worthless.
Speaker 1: (16:19)
Yeah. Isolated and worthless. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (16:22)
I stay alone and my choice to be alone and I push people away. And, but then even though they feel, I have they every day, it’s like the, the time scale, sometimes they happen for like five, 10 seconds. And then I just think positive mm-hmm , mm-hmm and understanding the feelings are always gonna be there, but then you just need to look on the flip side of life at what good things I do have and how to push forward and yeah. Just try to see, make the best out of it. Even though it is sad, sad thoughts they do pass and then try and concentrate on the happy thoughts.
Speaker 1: (17:06)
Right. So I think one of the things I think is really interesting about your story is, is that you’re young. like very young you here. No it’s coming, but you’re, but you’re young, you’re younger than a, um, a large, like a large portion of the M P E or the LDA or the donor conceived communities tend to be people that are a little bit older that older than me older than you I’m older than you. Um, and so when I think people saying like, oh, I was, I found out I was adopted and I felt ashamed or nobody talked about adoption or that was something that was a secret, I think, oh, that’s that’s from the olden days. That’s from, that’s from society in the sixties and the seventies. And now you’re here saying, no, I, this was, this happened, you know, 10 years ago. Um, did you know anybody else that was adopted?
Speaker 2: (17:59)
No, I meant no. So I felt alone.
Speaker 1: (18:02)
Yeah. And in your whole life, like there wasn’t any other kid in class that was like openly may have
Speaker 2: (18:08)
Had like, but here and there mm-hmm I dunno, statistics. I dunno if we’re like 1%, 5% of the population, um, here in the UK or in the world. I dunno. I think I’ve seen the, the percent, the 5% of Americans adopted, which is quite small,
Speaker 1: (18:25)
You know, do you think that part of that is, and you tell me me cuz I don’t know about, I don’t know very much about Scotland. I’ll be honest. Um, do you think that was partly a societal cultural thing that was making you feel like adoption was something that was not, not good? Or do you think it was all a personal thing?
Speaker 2: (18:44)
Just personal, like mm-hmm I just, soon as I told I’m adopted, I felt isolated. I felt like I’m I’m in this world alone. Eh, blood meant everything sort of meaning they, I just, I just automatically thought if you’ve got family, you are more happier than me. If you are blood related, you’re more happier than me. And now over like experience family is what you make of it, make it. And um, but that my thought was I automatically thought everyone was happier than me. And um, I just had a dark cloud over me because, um, so I’m a, I’m a founding, so I don’t have any information of any of my family. I was, uh, an orphan. So I was, uh, left in Morocco. So that’s, that’s like quite challenging. Um,
Speaker 1: (19:39)
Well there’s so much, there’s, there’s so much information now coming out. Um, still slowly, but like more and more studies about the actual trauma, the trauma of the baby being adopted. There’s so much focus because we’re still, so in culture, the culture is so excited to talk about the good things of about adoption that now there’s people saying like, Hey, like all these babies are experiencing major, major trauma. And um, and for you to describe being an orphan in a lineup of little babies. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (20:10)
Well my thought was, you know, I was picked, so I need to be grateful. Um, think about what about the other babies? Uh, what if I wasn’t picked, would I be run most, like everyone says Morocco’s a poor country, I’d be running the streets. Um, would, uh, still be alive and on my good days, I’m like, I’m gonna do something great with my leave. Cause I was picked mm-hmm and on my bad days I feel worthless. I can’t get up, uh, a waste of a decision and um, this is this pressures I put on my mind and it’s like, I, and I need to, I
Speaker 1: (20:53)
Feel like I need to prove it to everyone that I deserve have to be the one picked. Mm. And that’s exhausting.
Speaker 2: (21:00)
Yeah. And it’s no one really cares. Um it’s so them all, but with my overthinking mind and creating all these scenarios and um, yes, just there’s there’s there’s other places that have it worth China mm-hmm um, India, um, dunno Korea. Um, there’s lots of countries and um, yeah, it was just, that would always go through my mind. And I thought that I think I am a trans doctor, I think being like Morocco, Scotland, but Morocco’s not like it’s a different, it’s a language barrier. So it’s not as if I’ve still not been back yet, but it’s not exactly. Just turn up and go, uh, speak, speak to anyone. Right.
Speaker 1: (21:54)
Um, right. You can just go ask the, you can’t just go walk in, walk in and ask
Speaker 2: (21:59)
All the questions. Yeah. It’s not just around the corner. Mm-hmm so, um, yeah. So,
Speaker 1: (22:10)
Um, so you found out when you were 18, um, at the, at the time or, or now that you’re, you’re sort of working on yourself and working through this, do you feel like, um, you wish that your parents had told you sooner or that there was a better way to do it or a different way to do it? It had gone differently
Speaker 2: (22:29)
From what I’ve read is, is more, the most important thing is to tell, uh, kids from the start, but I’ve known people who’ve told their child from the start and they can’t deal with it. And, um, even there’s child committed suicide to drinking drugs, obviously there’s a fact that adoptions are four times more likely to commit suicide. But my belief is it’s better to tell the truth and it’s just the way you do it, make, try and do it with a bit empathy and show commit, sit from a caring side, uh, kinda point of view. And, um, yeah, just, it is important to tell them, tell right from the start, but at the same time, I understand why my mom didn’t do it. She said it was a difficult task. She decision she regrets. Um, cause you know, when I was 1824, I would be like as a nightmare.
Speaker 2: (23:35)
Mm-hmm I was, um, aggressive, uh, verbally, you get given our abuse, uh, down the phone being difficult. Um, just trying to vent and deal with all my, all my trauma and um, my mum, she would just so up it all up. She would get up and she would just, she would just be relentless when, um, maybe so thankful to her that she didn’t walk away. Right. She just took it. I’m I’m I’m I’m amazed. And that’s why, uh, all her kindness I’m trying to learn from her mm-hmm uh, to try and be a better person in the world and to help others.
Speaker 1: (24:22)
Well, that’s, that’s part of, um, like it’s just, it strikes me that that’s a part of unconditional love coming from your mother is that she was, she was willing to still stand there, even though she knew it was really hard and uncomfortable and that you were really angry.
Speaker 2: (24:37)
That’s why I need to feel lucky. Cause some people don’t have that relationship with adoption adopted, uh, mother mm-hmm , some people have great adoptions and I’m happy for them. Uh, some people have the one parent that they get on with. Some people have none. Yeah. And um, I just hope that people don’t have, uh, any connection to any adopted their, to family, have someone they can, um, turn to. And I believe that’s adoptees mm-hmm so joining all the adoptee groups that I go to, zoom groups, support groups, um, I believe all us adoptees. We get each other. And um, for me, if I you’re adopted, I’ve got your back. You’re my friend. Um, and I’ve only learned this over the last year. Uh, since I was, you know, when I found out I was adopted and I’m started meeting all these adopted people, I don’t feel alone anymore. Yeah. How did
Speaker 1: (25:39)
That feel? The first time you met a group of people that were adopt adopted or other person I
Speaker 2: (25:44)
Was in, I was in a bad place, um, September 20, 20 and uh, had my first zoom meeting and takes me over 20 minutes, half an hour to explain my story. Mm-hmm , everyone’s just like, wow. Um, and cause I’m quite unique with being an LDA and um, keeping my story a secret. I’ve not many met many people, any adoptee who’ve literally told no one. And then now I’m just telling no
Speaker 1: (26:13)
Making up for lost time.
Speaker 2: (26:15)
Yeah. I’m like adopt you focus I’m um, yeah, I’m still trying to search for my family. Mm-hmm just going at home pace. Yeah. Um, I was up for lost time, so I was too what’s the word like that wanting too much. Like at the start we had a, um, a group once a month. I need a group every day. Right.
Speaker 1: (26:42)
You just starving for
Speaker 2: (26:44)
Connection. Yeah. And then now I’ve never got that. I can get that now, but that’s took me a long time to find that mm-hmm so it’s quite, I meet a lot of adoptee who join all these groups and they were like, I didn’t know this existed there’s so there’s not much awareness out there. And so, so all of ask all of us connect with each other mm-hmm um, and uh, yeah, just, um, I was, I did, I did feel relieved when I found out there was lots of adoptee there, but at the start I had too much to too much bottled up. I didn’t have enough, uh, support mm-hmm and um, to be honest, anything, and anything could set you off as well. Like life’s not easy as it. Right. So it’s like, something can happen in your life and you’re you’re at the low, but these support groups for me, help me. Um, sometimes you don’t, sometimes I go a support group and I’ve got nothing from it. Mm-hmm sometimes I all and lots of adoptee have helped me out and uh, been supportive and perhaps made a difference in me feeling good. Mm-hmm
Speaker 1: (28:01)
um, yeah. I’m so glad you found them. How, how did you know, how did you hear about the first one? Did you just Google something? Like how, how did you stumble upon?
Speaker 2: (28:11)
Um, I used Facebook and I went to my doctors, uh, and cause it was COVID everyone was on zoom. Right. But it did take a lot of perseverance. It’s not as if you easy access I to go through someone to go through someone. And then when you start meeting someone and then you need to be confident to talk mm-hmm sometimes I’m a bit shy. Um, and then when I felt a bit brave, I could talk and then you start asking questions and then one group, least to two, at least to three now zoom groups. Oh my gosh. Now. And I’m a no joke about 30 Facebook groups. Oh
Speaker 1: (28:51)
My gosh. That’s awesome. That’s so many
Speaker 2: (28:53)
Ryan, but I don’t, I don’t really speak in them. I just show my story. Mm-hmm um, but if I ever, I do watch, um, some of the, the Facebook groups and there’s people out there there’s support it. So that just shows me that there are strangers out there who care mm-hmm , mm-hmm for anyone who’s feeling low or, uh, needs some support. There is people out there who care and, um, it helps me mm-hmm
Speaker 1: (29:24)
Yeah, it sounds like for the first time you, you really are part of a community and, and whether you’re speaking all the time or not, or participating all the time, you’re in, you’re in it, you’re in the community and you’re a member and you, you all relate and you know, you support them and they support you. And that is really powerful for you.
Speaker 2: (29:41)
Yeah. So with the support groups, it’s not, you don’t even if like you’re, you can go, go to the support group and if you’ve not got any problems yourself, you can maybe help someone else mm-hmm and that’s that me feel made me feel good when I done that. Even just a little comment or even just showing someone a bit of support mm-hmm or even just listening to someone rant. Uh, and yeah. Having seen someone a period of years, uh, just to see if you can contribute helping and even just listening to their problems and you’re like, it makes you, makes you think doesn’t it. Um, absolutely. And, uh, hopefully just try and even just hearing some good news, give you some inspiration or, um, you know, just keeping yourself educated. Um, math, my thought is give it a try mm-hmm . Hmm. great. If it doesn’t no harm lost as a, at least you’re trying.
Speaker 1: (30:52)
Right, right. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So what do you do? Um, what, where are you living now? Are you in Edinburg?
Speaker 2: (31:01)
Back in ed? So, uh, with my, with my story was I found out 18 headers all over the place, put them to the back of my mind and I just got a job. My friends were my family and, um, just getting, doing alcohol and drugs. And, um, I found, uh, yeah, I went on a holiday, enjoyed traveling mm-hmm um, then I found, uh, an island called ATA in Spain. Oh, I
Speaker 1: (31:30)
Know about ATA.
Speaker 2: (31:31)
Yeah. I’ve seen you there.
Speaker 1: (31:34)
Not, I’m not that much older than you
Speaker 2: (31:35)
. Um, yeah, so I went there on holiday, fell in love with the place. Um, I think two years later, 2015, I decided I’m gonna gonna go out there. So I went out there for five summers. Um, and yeah, it was just a part of lifestyle and, uh, it was, it was good. Fun, not so good for the mind and the body mm-hmm . Um, but I made some amazing memories, more good than bad. And, um, ever. So what, what, what annoyed me was, um, I’d kept this a secret. So I beat, I was escaping and in the winter I’d go traveling around the world and everyone that’s perfect. It’s a perfect life. That’s what, that’s what everyone thought. Right? Perfect life. He’s living the best life. But every holiday I was going on every summer at Nather adoption was always on my mind. So this may looks good, but when I’m alone, I’m thinking all these negative thoughts and right when I’m, when I’m doing all these holidays, I’m not, I’m not told anyone about this.
Speaker 2: (32:43)
I’m just, so I’ve got all these people around me having a great time, but really I’m feeling alone and everyone’s, everyone’s come up to me saying you’ve got an amazing life and I always wanted to tell them, tell all, but I just never had the guts. So, um, yeah, it was, um, so I was my, it was my 30th. I was in, in Vegas. 20th. I went over myself. It was good. Fun. And yeah, I just, I went back, um, something just clicked to me that this, I need to deal with, uh, my lifestyle set year old, not dealt with my adoption. So that’s when COVID start started. And then I decided, right. And when try and get my head in a good place and get some direction in life, instead of living to put up and life mm-hmm drinking drugs. And when I was taking drugs, I was ending up unconscious a few times. So I kinda to give me a, like a shock to the system, right.
Speaker 1: (33:56)
A wake up call.
Speaker 2: (33:57)
Right. I wasn’t, I wasn’t didn’t care about my, of health, but at the same time, I didn’t wanna die. Mm-hmm but yeah. And I was kinda just living to 30 to see if I had got like, if I could figure life out. And when 30 came on, like I’ve not lived life, how you’re supposed to live life, where you have a family, you have a relationship, um, you buy a house, you, you get a good job. I was just drinking, taking drugs and just trying to find the next buzz in life.
Speaker 1: (34:34)
Yeah. Well, yeah. And I don’t know that you need all those things, but, but anybody needs all those things, but, but you’ve felt, you just were no longer fulfilled drugs and alcohol were no longer doing it. Yeah. And you, you wanted ground, you wanted to be grounded. You wanted to be grounded. And
Speaker 2: (34:50)
Cause when you drink and drink and take drugs too much, it gets on top of you. You do silly things, make mistakes and um, it’s not sense. What was it?
Speaker 1: (35:03)
Mm-hmm right. No, it’s it’s not a sustainable lifestyle.
Speaker 2: (35:06)
Yeah. I’m all about trying to find, have that balance. Mm-hmm , as, as I, as I said before, I’ve had the time of my life doing it on occasions, but they have had made me feel at the lowest points in my life. Mm-hmm and uh, that’s where I that’s where I just saying I wanted to change and I reached out for help. And it’s the best thing I’ve done. Mm-hmm
Speaker 1: (35:27)
, I’m so glad that happened. I mean, I’m so glad that something inside of you wanted change.
Speaker 2: (35:33)
Well, that, that was because of a lockdown in COVID. So that’s why I can thank people. I actually thank that happened. Right. Cause I brought, you know, every year I said I was going to change and I never, and it’s we all do that. We all say we’re gonna well, sure. Yeah. I, I kind of think like, think I’m a do, but I wasn’t. I said, I’m not gonna go ti BTA again. Every year I said that I just went because of all the travel got, um, when COVID started, I was just like, right, this is sign. And most of the people I know everyone just was drinking and lockdown and um, I wish I did, but I, I, I was, uh, I was going through my own journey. Mm-hmm and that’s what I, I was just like, if I’m gonna get myself better, I, I want nothing to interfere.
Speaker 1: (36:31)
I, well, that’s so cool because so many people don’t don’t do that. And, and also, um, I, I think that you’ve, you you’re finding it, you know, you, you, you, you are finding like fulfillment for yourself in a better life, but also the, this community you’re helping so many other people now yeah.
Speaker 2: (36:50)
In,
Speaker 1: (36:51)
In a new way. Right. You’re there for them. And you’re part of this community and you speak out, um, and
Speaker 2: (36:56)
I’ve always had, I’ve always helped my friends. Mm-hmm um, I was trying loads of things like yoga and meditation stuff. That’s not even me. I was just giving it a try. And, uh, volunteering was one that I’ve always wanted to try. As I said, I was like, I’ll do some volunteering, never done it. Mm-hmm . And when the opportu came, I was like, you know what for go, go for it. And then I I’ve done it. And yeah, done that for six months and I loved it. And, uh, it was rewarding and, um, yeah, helping others helped me. Mm-hmm and um, yeah, it was just looking back on my journey. I’ve just seen how I’ve slowly taken step to try and, um, yeah, go a better person and, uh, and to help others. And it’s not been easy as well. Cause, um, when I was, I never came out with my story until I think I told my first friend, um, and it was in may,
Speaker 1: (38:02)
May
Speaker 2: (38:02)
Of this year. Yeah. So I told, I told the, I told the doctors on may
Speaker 1: (38:11)
20, 20 Uhhuh, and then it took you another year to tell a
Speaker 2: (38:13)
Friend another year to so even so another thing, everyone, so I’m staying off to drinking drugs for a year. Everyone’s coming up to me saying, you must feel amazing. You must feel, you must feel great. Um, blah, blah, blah. And really, um, I didn’t feel great until I told until I got my story out mm-hmm and then had a process where I was gonna tell all my friends face to face. And then, yeah. And then I popped it online, uh, told all the adoptee groups on the Facebook and I got fantastic reaction. Um, but see, before I was join adoptee case, someone I knew was in that group two and two together. Right. That’s how paranoid I was now. I’m mean I’ve got 30 groups. Mm-hmm yeah.
Speaker 2: (39:07)
Anyone, anything adoption related? I wanna know about it. No shame. And I want, I want everyone to know about adoption so they can network and have the resources. Cause we’re all everyone specifies in a different area. And um, one person would be benefit from speaking to person a or person B person C. So everyone’s, if we got an issue, there can be direct to a person who can help them best mm-hmm . But, um, yeah, I was, when I told all my friends, everyone was just, I’m quite good at keeping secrets. I was keeping everything to myself. Everyone was just shocked. Yeah. But, uh, thankfully everyone get, I was always worried about in case I got a negative response or who cares response. Mm. Sometimes that’s worse. Yeah. Cause this was a big deal to me. Mm-hmm um, and thankfully I got a supportive reaction from everyone and when I came out with my video, that was, um, in August this year mm-hmm I got by about 14,000, 14,000 views.
Speaker 2: (40:15)
So I was, I, and then just every, all the messages, um, support is someone just putting their thumbs up or a loves heart to some people writing three pages mm-hmm telling me, pulling their heart out. And um, they’re the people I’m drawn to. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I’m drawn, I’m drawn to everyone, but more so the others who, who actually, um, showed that they cared and, um, and even people who even wished me shook my hand, cause some people can’t really express mm-hmm that? What, like what, like what thanking me or, um, giving me praise. They don’t, sometimes you don’t know what to say. Mm-hmm mm-hmm and um, there was, it was still, it made me feel like I’d done the right choice when I came out my video. But when I came out with my video, I was, I felt vulnerable mm-hmm to leave the house and you know, people were approaching me. Um, and I was just, I didn’t know how to deal with it. Yeah. And yeah, that was a, that’s
Speaker 1: (41:29)
A big deal. Um, yeah, I think you’ve, you’ve really tapped into something, um, that we don’t, we just don’t talk about or think about very much, um, in the, in the, the larger public
Speaker 2: (41:42)
And yet all these people are experiencing it and feeling it all the time and you were able to put a voice to it. I’m sure. So many people, the reason I done that was because over the year I’ve been to a lot for the roles and I’ve lost a lot of friends possibly to drugs. Um, and yeah, I was just trying to get that message out to try and find your balance and like try and talk more, um, yeah. Reach out and, uh, try not make people feel alone. Cause if, if we all talk to each other, maybe this world would be a bad place. Right. Rather than, uh, keeping everything a secret and making it, uh, build up in your own mind. Mm-hmm um, yeah, so that was, I felt, I felt like I needed, uh, I needed to try and do something to, to make a difference. Mm-hmm
Speaker 1: (42:46)
And you have, and you have, and you still are. Yeah, it’s very,
Speaker 2: (42:50)
Yeah. But before I was like, I didn’t know what I was frustrated to myself and yeah. Now once I’ve done that, I want to just keep pushing on mm-hmm yeah. Just try and just speak to everyone as if it’s the last thing you’d ever speak to them. So keep everything on, uh, good vibes and be kind, always help people, um, to, and be supportive. Mm-hmm you got everyone’s back and hopefully they’ve got yours. Right. Um, and maybe that could be key having a happy life
Speaker 1: (43:36)
Maybe
Speaker 2: (43:38)
Who knows yeah.
Speaker 1: (43:39)
um, uh, well the adoption community. So, I mean, I, I look, I can’t speak for the adoption community, but I can say that the MPE community, uh, is lucky to have you. And, um, I imagine that the adoption groups feel lucky to have you as well on everybody, like anybody who can, who can learn something or, um, glean something or feel inspiration from you. Um, it it’s just, it’s just so cool. I think it’s so you’re such an awesome, not even in the adoption, you know, com adoption, not withstanding, you’re an awesome human. So, um, so it’s, it’s, it’s really lovely to, to just to see positives coming out of such hard struggles.
Speaker 2: (44:24)
Yeah. So I noticed with some adoptee, like some of us, uh, don’t like to ask for help mm-hmm some boss, uh, we don’t like to feel uncomfortable receiving conf uh, compliments. Right. Um, some of us, uh, are relationships really difficult, as I says, I’ve got trust issues. I’ve never had the, um, that gets to me a lot, but now I’ve opened that maybe one it’ll happen mm-hmm . But, um, and although some adoptee be like, someone does anything bad to you. You’re like you cut them off. Right. That’s what I notice all these similarities and most adopt mm-hmm . Um, and yeah, just, just to make, make people feel comfortable, uh, that they’re not alone and, uh, yeah, just hopefully people can, can reach out.
Speaker 1: (45:23)
Very cool. Mm-hmm that’s it? Yeah. It’s very good. It’s
Speaker 2: (45:26)
Very kind. I wish I had that when I was 18. I dunno if I would’ve been ready. Um, mm-hmm but, um, hopefully with all of us, everything moving forward, people can, um, people can get access the more this making world, a less lone place for other people. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (45:47)
Wow. Yeah. It would be amazing if, if, if the, just the more and more we can get this information out, it’s amazing to think about what kind of, um, just what kind of world we could have if everybody knew about these resources more, um, and was able to be there for each other, but youre part, sorry. I was gonna say you’re a part of that. I was just, um, which is all we can do. Right. You’re doing, you’re doing your part. Uh, so yeah, so, so it’s, it’s fun to think about, about a future like that. Um, and I’m glad it’s fulfilling for you to work towards it. Mm-hmm , mm-hmm
Speaker 2: (46:27)
yeah. So a lot of people, even, um, there’s support groups have, I think support groups are, uh, they do a lot for me. Um, but even for like non adopted people, there’s, if they can find someone, a support group, what to whatever’s happened to them, they’re speaking to someone who has had a similar situation happen to them will help say, for instance, if they can’t not can’t kids or, um, yeah. Relationship breakups or stuff like that, there’s, uh, the types of support groups, the worst feeling for me was feeling alone,
Speaker 1: (47:09)
Alone. Absolutely.
Speaker 2: (47:12)
Yes. Um, and thankfully, now I know when bad stuff happens, you start, go down a little Rocky road. Um, I find now I find it easier to jump back up on the right path mm-hmm before, before I would, um, I’d be all over the place.
Speaker 1: (47:34)
Yeah. But with, yeah, with support, you’re, you’re developing resilience with community, which is, um, which is so powerful. Um, I will post, if you wanna give me information to, um, just some resources for, for adoptees, whatever that is, whatever you think are the best, you know, the top five or the top 10 things, I will, um, I’ll put them up on the Instagram and the, and the internet. When I, um, when this episode goes up to make sure that anybody listening can go on there and find it
Speaker 2: (48:05)
Before for like what I want to create as, um, basically we’re all different. So adoptee, some people, even, even as people, some people like books mm-hmm so what’s the best, what’s the best books we can read that adoption related podcasts. What’s the best podcast. Uh, obviously you’re one mm-hmm um, and, um, counselor, um, in the UK, there’s not many counselors in that adoption related, right. Um, films, is there any adoption films people can think of? If all us adoptee put our minds together, give them, give their opinion. And then we just have this resource where everyone could just tap into and like, like certain articles and, um, yeah, I’ve read a few, some, some books. And when I read them, I was, I felt, um, yeah, I felt like a bit more, not alone.
Speaker 1: (49:11)
So you, so there’s nothing like that right now. There’s not like a website you can go to that would say like best books, best articles, best book, best podcasts, videos. Um, I’m
Speaker 2: (49:21)
Not sure. I’m not sure if it is, but I’d like to create
Speaker 1: (49:23)
You would like one. Yeah, that seems awesome.
Speaker 2: (49:26)
Well, ask me to so many adoptees and they don’t know about that. Mm-hmm so we, you know, when you say, oh, is this a, is this podcast, have you listened to that? Everyone’s like, no, you’ve read this book. Like, there’s like, no. Um, and as I said, you need to list different, uh, different areas. Cause some people might like reading. Some people might like, like podcasts. Some people might like videos. Uh, know there’s a video, um, on YouTube. I dunno if you’ve, you’ve, uh, seen that one. Mm-hmm people say it’s about adoption. People say that’s, he’s our head of person in UK. People say that’s
Speaker 1: (50:05)
Uh, oh, I have seen him. I think. So. Does he talk about the trauma of the separation at the baby at birth? Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. That’s his stuff is really powerful. They even
Speaker 2: (50:14)
See someone seeing one of the, one of the videos you said that can be so powerful to them that can just make something click in their mind. Mm-hmm mm-hmm , uh, keep them, keep them in a good place rather than when I was feeling that. Yeah. Uh, lost place before. That’s not nice to feel like that, so
Speaker 1: (50:37)
No. Okay. Adoption community help Ryan make that website help him, who can reach out and help this guy make this amazing.
Speaker 2: (50:46)
Mostly there’s courses out there as well. Mm-hmm but we, we all just get together and all network and all put our ideas together. I’ve got a few ideas, but I know there’s, I know there’s lots more people out there, more intelligent than me. And, uh, and we all put ourselves together and I don’t know. I dunno how we’re gonna get, share the awareness, but, um, it can help others who are struggling.
Speaker 1: (51:14)
Yeah, let’s do it. I feel like this is, I feel like this is an attainable goal to get this resource, to get this resource up, up and going. We’ll work on it. Um, Ryan, thank you so much for spending this morning with me. It’s morning for me. It’s night for you. Um,
Speaker 2: (51:33)
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: (51:35)
Oh, I really it’s been, it’s been so fun. It’s been, it was so fun to, I love when that I love when somebody knows somebody who knows somebody and it all, and they all connect and say, you know, I’ve got, I’ve got somebody you gotta talk to and, and they tell you to, to contact me. It was just so fun to do it that way. And,
Speaker 2: (51:56)
Um, how was the Scottish accent? Was that okay?
Speaker 1: (51:59)
It was okay. I think, um,
Speaker 2: (52:01)
Put
Speaker 1: (52:02)
No, no, no, it was good. I understood everything. And may, maybe I’ll think about putting a transcript up if it’s really hard for people, but it, um, but I understood everything that you said. I, um, I thought it was lovely. It was so fun. Um, this won’t go up for a while because I’m on hiatus right now, but, um, yeah. Yeah. But, but let’s keep in touch about all the, about the resources so I can put them all up at the same time. Um, and I’ll make sure and, and tell everybody about your video and, um, we’ll just kind of keep in touch now that we’re connected.
Speaker 2: (52:32)
Yeah. Yeah. I was, um, happy with that. I done a podcast a month ago and I was, I was really nervous. I was all over the place, so I’ve tried to settle on my nerves. Oh,
Speaker 1: (52:43)
Well you seem settled
Speaker 2: (52:43)
To me. I feel like I got tongue tied and I get, um, uh, I start are, and I go off in tangents when I’m talking about this and I’m on that then I dunno if adopt, if we suffer from ADHD or anything. Oh. But, uh, I kinda, I just myself, um, uh, I’m, I’m all over the place, but
Speaker 1: (53:06)
Nope. Nope. I felt like I was
Speaker 2: (53:09)
Self as
Speaker 1: (53:10)
Well. Yeah. Nope. I was with you the whole, I was with you the whole way. It was great. Um, all right, so let’s be in touch and, um, I will, yeah, I’ll be, if I don’t hear from you you’ll hear from me. Um, okay. So go have a good night.
Speaker 2: (53:26)
I will do. Thank you,
Speaker 1: (53:27)
Cindy. We met. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much, Ryan,
Speaker 2: (53:31)
Take care.
Speaker 1: (53:31)
You too good night.
Speaker 1: (00:00)
Okay. Uh, so that I don’t forget that doesn’t mean that everything will be in, but, um, this is so cool. I couldn’t believe it. I’d say it’s only happened once or twice where I’ve kind of like had a panic shout out to, to, uh, help me with an episode. And every time someone can do it, but I’m still thrilled.
Speaker 2: (00:23)
I had just left work and, um, I actually was scrolling through Instagram stoplight and, um, I was, uh, we have a little lake house and my dogs are here and it’s storming. And, and I was trying to rush down here to get here on, uh, the storm is quiet right now, but I’m in bed because that’s where they’ll behave themselves the most. Oh yeah. Hopefully they’ll be
Speaker 1: (00:53)
With you cuddled. Yeah. Um, that’s fine. We have lots of dogs on this podcast and children and sirens. And if the thunder wants to be a part of this story, the thunder can be a part of it too, if your storm comes back. So thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 2: (01:11)
You’re welcome. Thank you. How
Speaker 1: (01:13)
Long, so I’ll ask you just a couple, like, I mean, this is the most blind I’ve ever gone into a story so
Speaker 2: (01:21)
I can hang with you. It’ll be okay.
Speaker 1: (01:22)
Um, yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, uh, where are you? Where are you located?
Speaker 2: (01:29)
I’m in Texas. Okay.
Speaker 1: (01:32)
I’ve heard of that state ease. I’m writing things down, but it’s just a habit that’s happened from being a therapist and how long, see, this is where we’re already going to probably get into the story. How long have you known
Speaker 2: (01:46)
Say the problem is where to start the story, complicated story. And you were like, okay, we want to keep it to about an hour. I’m like, I hope we can. Okay. Okay.
Speaker 1: (01:59)
Well keep, can you spend talking and I’ll interrupt and ask questions.
Speaker 2: (02:02)
Okay. Um, Hmm. Where to start? I think the very beginning would be, uh, I was 13 years old when I found out that who I believe my father to be, my father was not my father. And, um, of course, like most of us, I call him dad. Uh, he is now deceased, but, um, my parents divorced and, uh, complicated, complicated story, interesting story, but so complicated. And, um, my father remarried and my stepmother mother hated it, that I didn’t know the truth. And literally came into my bedroom 13, you know, tumultuous age and, uh, stood with her hands on her hips and said, tower, tell her right now, tell her. And, um, he was tearful and not an emotional man and not an expressive person. And, um, you know, just kind of from a very bluntly, I’m not your dad. I don’t know who your dad is. You’re going to go see your mother this weekend and you should ask her all those questions. And my stepmother said, what do you think about that? And I was shell shocked, you know? Um, I still don’t know what I think about that to tell you the truth. Well, and, uh, they turned around and walked out of the room and that was pretty much the end of that. Wow. I was. So he
Speaker 1: (03:27)
Knew, so he knew that was one thing was
Speaker 2: (03:29)
Yeah. And he adopted me, I’ll get to that in a minute. And um, so I went to my mother’s that weekend and, um, I didn’t ask any questions. It’s kind of a strange thing. I don’t know how you feel about your story, but I, you know, I was a child and, um, and, and very unstable adult world. I was landing in very unstable and I was terrified to ask questions. I didn’t ask any questions, um, until I was about 21 years old. So my mother brought me back to my dad’s that weekend. Um, I was living with them with my, my father and my stepmother and said she didn’t ask any questions, just leave that being shouldn’t have told her she was against telling me apparently. So that was that except for my stepmother, needling me for information. Every time I was around my mother. Did you find out anything? Did you ask questions? Why aren’t you asking questions? She wanted to know, you know, all the dirty details. And I just didn’t ask, I couldn’t ask, I didn’t know how to ask.
Speaker 1: (04:38)
I don’t think most 13 year olds would know how to ask. I don’t know any, I mean, it, the, the sort of like the gravity and breadth of that situ of that knowledge is so huge. I don’t even know. I mean, that makes, it makes, it feels totally like appropriate for you to just be overwhelmed by it and not ask and just, and if they weren’t, you know, especially if your dad, you know, they weren’t, it wasn’t just like an open conversation in the first place. Like I just don’t where do you start? When, you know, it’s a big deal. Yeah, that’s too bad.
Speaker 2: (05:16)
And, and I was left, um, to be the person to try to figure out the answers for the adults was how it seems, uh, kind of a theme in my life. But so what happened was, um, and I, I kind of don’t want to tell the end of the story before the beginning of the story, but it it’s hard not to, but eventually who I call my dad, he adopted me, uh, just last year I found out I was nearly six years old when it happened. Um, he adopted me and they, they never intended to tell me, but then their marriage failed and each of them remarried. And so then came out. So promises made
Speaker 1: (06:00)
That fall apart when the marriage fall.
Speaker 2: (06:02)
Right. So I, um, you know, I find out he’s not my father, but I don’t know who my father is. And, um, along the way, we have a family friend who I happen to look just like, and he’s, uh, he’s not an uncle, but we called him uncle. And, uh, he was just a family favorite and every kid just thought they were his very favorite, but I was especially his favorite. It seemed that way to me, it really did. And he spent a lot of time with me. He lived out of state, but whenever he was in town, he came to visit and the minute he came to town, he would pick me up and take me out for ice cream, just every, I mean, maybe we didn’t see him for two years or maybe it was just a couple of months, but, um, he really did make me feel special.
Speaker 2: (06:53)
And I looked a lot like him and, um, his wife had a lot of problems with him spending time with me. I witnessed a couple arguments about that. I didn’t understand them. It was very small. And, um, so I just always kind of wondered if it was him. Then my stepmother instigated that what’s strange is that my dad adopted me when he married my mother, they had two of their children and we, my sisters and, um, my dad never knew for sure who my father was. And, you know, my mom obviously knew, but I don’t know the whole story there, but she never reveal it to him. So I, I, I think that’s kind of odd. So
Speaker 1: (07:40)
It’s odd considering that everyone that you, I don’t know. I mean, we don’t know if, I don’t know if that man, if uncle ends up being the man, but it’s interesting if there’s something going, if there’s yeah, yeah. It’s just the way there seems like if a child can kind of put some things together, right. It’s interesting that the adults weren’t talking about it perhaps and you
Speaker 2: (08:02)
Know, talking about a child, putting things together, there were hints and clothes that, um, cause people always say, well, when did you know, I really didn’t know. And was blindsided at that time when I was 13, but I also had hints and clues. I had a baby blanket handmade by somebody who knows who enhanced ditch with my name. And it had my mother’s maiden name as my last name. And I can remember asking until, until I was 13. Why does it say this other name? That’s not my name. Oh, that’s the old fashioned way to do it. It
Speaker 1: (08:39)
Wink, wink. Okay.
Speaker 2: (08:41)
Yeah. Things like that. It really did make sense. So, um, fast forward and, um, I’m 21 years old and finally got up the courage to, um, to confront my mother. And by the way, my mother, my mother was 13. When she became pregnant with me turned 14. By the time I was born, she was very young. I didn’t understand as a child, either that my mother was the naturally known. I just didn’t have a concept of that. I can remember some things with my friends, parents questioning me. How old was your mom anyway and saying, you’re almost 20. My mom is 22 and then just being floored. But I, I just didn’t get it cause I was a kid. Right. How
Speaker 1: (09:33)
Could you or your mom,
Speaker 2: (09:36)
The time I thought she was old, you know, and she was, you know, 14 years older than me. Anyway. Um, when I was 21, I confronted my mother so twisted and complicated when I was 13, my parents are divorced and I was living with my mother, with my sisters. And then very suddenly she took us to our dad’s and left us. Uh, he wasn’t even at home actually and left us there basically in the middle of the night. And uh, yeah, it’s, it’s a very complicated story, but here
Speaker 1: (10:09)
Come the layers, I’m getting it.
Speaker 2: (10:12)
I, I listened to a lot of these podcasts. I’m like a lot of us sort of obsessed with them and I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but mine has more layers than most even it really that in a lot of ways. But anyway, um, so I’m living with my dad and my stepmother and I find out this is not my father and I, you know, the relationship with my mother is very sketchy. She moves out of state. We lose track of her for a couple of years. It was just a lot, um, fast forward I’m I’m 21 years of age and I’m now ready to ask her. And, um, we had a family event and I got her alone on the very last morning, almost the last hour that I was with her that weekend. I hadn’t seen her for a couple of years and I could barely choke off the words. That’s crying so hard. And I said, you know, I have a right to know who my father is, tell me who it is. And he still won’t have that conversation with me. Um, I mean my 50th now, and it’s, she’s still just won’t come up. She won’t be upfront with about it. So
Speaker 1: (11:20)
I, as you didn’t tell you then, and she won’t tell you now.
Speaker 2: (11:24)
Yeah. I haven’t asked for years. So yeah, I drew a line in the sand eventually. And, um, the relationship is very much at a standstill and I don’t know that I’ll ever be better, but from there I decided, well, I’m gonna find out what I can. I’m from a small town. I have both my father and my mother’s sides are huge, huge families. And, uh, I start asking ants questions and uncles and, um, you know, just start being a little detective. I had a friend who worked for an attorney and she tried to research records in the courthouse. She didn’t find much about a couple of small, but extremely important pieces of paperwork in my grandmother’s papers. That was an interesting story in its own, but too much detail. But anyway, I ran across a couple of papers. One was a letter written from a judge to my grandmother and, um, about a court issue and asking them to drop it, um, in today’s world, uh, that judge would have been disbarred in a hot minute.
Speaker 2: (12:32)
I mean, it is, it is some interesting documentation. So, um, it had a little bit of an inkling, um, a little bit of backstory. My grandparents have seven children and, uh, in the sixties, a pipeline was being built through our state. I grew up in Ohio, it was built from the south up through the north. And, um, workers went along the pipeline and build it as they went. And, um, a lot of small towns, no hotels, motels, no place to stay and families would open their homes for some extra money and run basically like a little bit in breakfast. And my grandparents did that. They had six girls and one boy, and they took in young men.
Speaker 2: (13:19)
Yeah. So there you go. Anyway, um, the person who was the family uncle, so to speak, I don’t know if I should say his name. Uh, he was a pipeliner and he lived with my family, became very close with my family to this day. Um, and uh, I decided, I knew the person who was believed to be my birth father was a pipeliner. I knew that much. So I wrote this man a letter and said, you worked with whoever my father is. Do you know any information about him? I was given a name, but then the first it was just initials, initials. TJ was what this man went by. And then a last name that much I got from my mother. She said she didn’t know his real name and all this business. So I wrote to the family friend and he said, I’m going, I’ll just come and see you.
Speaker 2: (14:10)
I want to talk to you about this in person. He wrote a letter back. This was old school, I don’t know, late eighties. And um, about a week later, he showed up on my doorstep of my apartment. And again, with a grown man with tears in his eyes, sat in my living room, my tiny little college apartment and said, I’ve always thought I was your father. Your mother thought I was your father. I was told to never speak of it again. Don’t tell anybody. And I haven’t, but you look like me. I think your mind, the timing is right. And we should go have a blood test and find
Speaker 3: (14:46)
Out,
Speaker 2: (14:48)
And it’s what I wanted to happen. And I just thought, now it’s just, I just can’t believe it. This is, it was a good thing because I loved him. I still love him. And, um, had a relationship with him already. And, um, he, he was in the Korean warn was sent off and, uh, he was there when I was born. And that seemed like that was the story. Meanwhile, my mother moved on with her life kind of a thing, but that’s not the end of the story. We never had a test. Um, I don’t know if DNA was even available back then. I really don’t know, but some sort of a blood test or something, we never did that because my shame to say this, but my boyfriend at the time, you know, he said something really awful. I have a hard time even thinking about it because it upsets me still.
Speaker 2: (15:37)
But he said, when you were born, it ruined so many people’s lives that tests done. Now it will ruin more people’s lives. Let it go. And that comment, one simple comment, very flip. It tripped me up for decades. And so I did it and I never had the test. And, uh, I went on and I, you know, eventually married and had a child and everybody talks about how my baby looked just like him. And I look like the older I got, I looked more and more like him. Um, his father died. I went to his father’s funeral and again, in another state and never met the man when he was alive. But felt like when I heard he died, I need to go there. And I met all these people who I looked a lot alike and that whole feeling and this one,
Speaker 1: (16:32)
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Just for clarification. This, the funeral that you went to, that was for the, the man with the initials that you had.
Speaker 2: (16:40)
No. And I’m sorry. It’s so confusing. The family friend who we think of as an uncle. Yes. Father passed away
Speaker 1: (16:47)
His father. Okay. I thought, okay, got it.
Speaker 2: (16:50)
I’m thinking, gosh, this is potentially my biological grandfather. Right, right, right, right. I went to the funeral. I went by myself and, um, his family and, um, you know, it was just stunned how much I look like them and you know, it, it was just a, you know, interesting time. So, and in that stage, I was in my thirties, I was early thirties when that happened. So I, over time just decided, I probably would never know. I, I have fantasized about figuring out a way to find out without him knowing. I finally just got to the point where I didn’t really want to know, because I didn’t want more complicated relationships and tragedies and problems,
Speaker 3: (17:46)
So
Speaker 2: (17:47)
I didn’t pursue it, but I could not quit thinking about it. It has been a theme in my life since I was 13. Just wondering and trying to figure out and thinking about it. It’s never left, but I didn’t know how to pursue it without getting myself wrapped up in more complicated, problematic relationships. But I just didn’t then fast forward to, um, gosh, let me think that would have been Christmas of 2018. So almost 2019. Um, actually it was Thanksgiving. My daughter was home and um, her husband and the television was on and a commercial for ancestry DNA came on. I know that I had seen that commercial. I don’t know why it never, what the it, because it wasn’t new. It was not new at the end of 2018. It was not new, but something happened that particular day. We were all focused on the television and I turned to my daughter who knows the whole story and said, I should.
Speaker 2: (18:59)
I wanted those DNA kids. And she threw her hands up and her husband started laughing and she’s like, I can not surprise you. They had bought one already for me, for my Christmas present. And I didn’t know. And it was just really funny that I took note of it. Right. And with that particular commercial. And so the kid came for Christmas and um, I got a little nervous and didn’t take the test and turn it in for a few weeks. And finally, one morning I just did it and sent it off. And the idea was the person who I believe to be my birth father, the family friend, the uncle, he has, um, a lot of these like 60% American Indian. And the idea was it would show me his ethnicity. Can you hold on one second? Absolutely.
Speaker 1: (19:51)
We’re going to just decline that call. I’m going to put my phone on airplane. Uh, um, and then you’re going to, okay, so he is 60% native American.
Speaker 2: (20:07)
Right. And I, first of all, if I ever thought about DNA, I thought if you, and I thought we were siblings or something that we would both have to take the test together in order to determine a relationship. I didn’t know how it works. Most people don’t sure. Yeah. So I didn’t know forward I’ve done this year, but my idea and my daughter’s idea was the test would come back. It would show that I was a percentage of Cherokee Indian, and that would confirm he was my birth father and that’s all I was looking for. And I could keep it quietly to myself if I chose to and go to him and say, well, I confirmed it. Guess what? You know? And, and I had maybe a half a percent suspicion that it wasn’t, it was just, I just knew it was him, especially after my daughter was born.
Speaker 2: (21:05)
And she also looks so much like him and his family. So anyway, the test comes back in early February. I now know that that was the biggest mad gold rush of DNA testing in history was in 2018. And I got my results in February of 2019. And, um, you know, my husband has grown in there. I mean, my daughter has grown and married and you know, lives elsewhere. And my husband goes to the coffee shop in the morning. And I remember him kissing me goodbye and saying, see you in a little while at work, we worked together. And, um, you know, you keep getting those emails be prepared from ancestry because you never know what’s going to happen. I’m like, oh, I’m prepared. I I’m gonna figure it out finally, maybe once and for all. But I know it’s, uh, I already know that my father’s not my father, that wasn’t going to be a surprise. So, um, I opened the DNA kit and, you know, you don’t, or the information you just don’t know how to read it and what to expect. And I looked at the ethnicity first and there is nothing native American, uh, English, Irish, tiny bit of time. Mm
Speaker 3: (22:21)
Hmm. Nothing. I
Speaker 2: (22:23)
Was like, okay, okay. Wonder what that means. Right. But then you kind of go through where settlers are and my grandmother is from Maine and I see all of that. I was like, okay, that makes sense. And then kind of moving down the east coast and then a heavy percentage in Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky. And this is where the person with the initials who my mother told me the name that’s they knew, I knew he was Southern. No one could remember exactly where he was from Arkansas, Tennessee. Maybe it was Kentucky. He had a Southern draw. I don’t, I don’t know where he was from and my heart starts racing. Okay. So then it says matches and I opened up the matches and the first match is a person I don’t know. And it’s a high Minaj.
Speaker 3: (23:14)
Um, the
Speaker 2: (23:15)
Second match is my maternal aunt who I grew up with. I know her, you know, and the, the first match was a higher match than her, but a similar number. It ends up that person was my paternal aunt. And then several people that I don’t know about 10 or 12 names down the list. First of all, all of those names, the first several were all female names. So the last name, you know, marriage and all that, he can’t go by that 10 or 12 names down was my first male match. And it was that last name. My mother told me, aha, just the air just sucks out of the room. And then I, wow. My husband used to be a hard nose news reporter, um, murders and rapes and molestations and very hard news. He’s watched five executions before covering those for the news. And I called him first.
Speaker 2: (24:18)
And I said, you will not believe this, but the name that matches is not the uncle’s name, it’s this other guy. And he, he is hard to shock. I mean, we were just all convinced of who it was. So it started out just a whirlwind of investigating and, um, you know, looking into it. And I, I spent the next six months and when I say I own a business and I would get off work and come home, I don’t remember cooking laundry or doing anything except for just absorbing myself in ancestry. And Facebook started it at different social media accounts that I didn’t have before then to just figure out people and find information on them. The biggest bit of information came, uh, the second night, uh, the second day that I knew after work, I Googled the person who was my highest match and an obituary came up, turns out that obituary was for my paternal grandmother. It was a wealth of information. Um, right. I know that’s controversial these days that people are like, don’t put things in your bituaries cause that’s crazy. People on ancestry will get ya. It was a wealth of information,
Speaker 1: (25:46)
A new thing. I didn’t know that
Speaker 2: (25:51)
Your family will find you, right. So I didn’t know what TJ stood for. So, because I didn’t know what those initials TJ stood for. I could never search before I had taken a stab at it because I always knew there was a potential that he was my father, but I didn’t believe that he was, but you know, with just initial, she can’t go anywhere. And in that habitual wary, I found my, the name of my match was, was my grandmother’s youngest daughter. She had eight children, every child of hers was listed and their spouse and the children full name, um, and then great grandchildren and great grandchildren were just listed by number and on the last line of the obituary. And it said, and one deceased son, TJ. Oh, so, well, I found out what his name was because he was named, he was a junior and he was named for his father.
Speaker 2: (26:51)
And so the paternal paternal grandfather was also listed. He was deceased as well. And he went by his actual name, which are the letters T and J and, um, his son, my birth father just went by TJ. So, and in one article, one obituary, I found out my father’s name and that he was deceased and all of those first-line relatives, all of them in one document and had all of those people, eight children make a lot of cousins of cousins. So, um, my birth father had, uh, three daughters, three daughters. And, um, so I had three half sisters and they’re all in Kentucky. They all live close by the same area where they grew up in everything. So I spent the next six months gleaning as much information as I could and preparing myself. And I was doing a lot of hard work and hard work.
Speaker 3: (27:59)
It’s still saying
Speaker 2: (28:00)
It’s costing, that’s it? It is exhausting. And, um, you know, I, I found that there’s a lot of information that’s available to us these days that you just don’t know it’s available. Um, I wrote to vital statistics to get, I couldn’t find a reason why my birth father died. There was no obituary. I couldn’t find anything. And, um, I wrote to vital statistics and, um, well, you know, it’s a computer form you fill out and it said, you know, you must be directly related to request, but it’s just the computer room. He check a box and I checked daughter, which felt so wrong to do, but I am so right. And because he has a strange name, uh, what TJ stands for is just, uh, a name you have never heard of. Uh, they accidentally sent me my grandfathers or my grandfather’s death certificate. So I accidentally got that.
Speaker 2: (29:03)
And I wrote again, I was like, Hey, you sent me the wrong one. They’re like, Hey, we’ll put it in the mail today. And, um, with that rose a lot of questions. I have a high school friend who is a physician and a coroner in my hometown. And I, I called him. I was like, Hey, ah, this death certificate doesn’t make sense. Help help me with this. And he said, you know, you can, you have a right to look at the Sheriff’s report and the coroner’s information and stuff. Right. And get it. And I did. Wow.
Speaker 1: (29:37)
And you, and you at this time had not contacted the family yet? No. Cause you’re just trying to get as much information as
Speaker 2: (29:43)
You can as much information as I could. Um, no, a lot of people everybody’s individual and everybody has their own struggle in making decisions and what, what to do with information and what not to do. I feel pretty firmly had he been alive, I would have never gone to meet him, but I really wanted to meet the rest of the family. And, um, I got as much information as I could to be sure that was going to be the right decision for myself. So are the people that I haven’t wanted to meet. There’s more of the story I haven’t talked to. So I felt that way. But anyway, um, I had so much information. I knew what points were in his pocket when he died. Wow. I know what color socks he had on. I mean, I know a lot of information and it was hard information to get to it. It was much harder than a lot of people can imagine. And people say, why did you want that information? And I can’t answer that except for just a deep curiosity, just a very
Speaker 3: (30:53)
Deep,
Speaker 2: (30:55)
Deep curiosity that could not be satisfied until I knew. So, um, it was actually exactly two years ago tomorrow. Yes. Um, in July I and my husband and I drove to Kentucky, this was risky. I want to be sure that I say this, I nearly got kicked out of a couple of genealogy groups, those people, oh dear. Fantastic. And so helpful, but they can be wicked when they are against what you’re going to do, but they were trying to be protective. Um, I did make a post. I said, Hey, thoughts and prayers for me, I’m leaving tomorrow. Here’s what we’re going to do. And I don’t advise this. I genuinely, don’t not
Speaker 1: (31:48)
Try this at home. Do not try this at home. I didn’t
Speaker 2: (31:51)
Say, but we drove 11 hours and we knocked on the door of my, um, my, my highest match in our mind. This also a lot of thoughts in our mind that person was open because they took a DNA test. They left their account open. Um, here, here I am. And here, you know, and the information was there for them to see, I had messaged this woman, but she never saw it. You know how ancestry is with the messages. And she was not managing her own account. Her husband was, and he just never saw the message. But my husband knocked on the door printed information about who I was, you know, off of ancestry and said, I believe my wife is the daughter of your deceased brother. She’s in the car. I love doctors. I have a couple of dogs and I took one of my Wiener dogs with me as my, I called him my support worker. You’re emotional,
Speaker 1: (32:53)
You’re emotional support Wiener.
Speaker 2: (32:55)
There you go. I was in the car with a dog and my husband remembered, he used to be a very hard-nosed investigative reporter. He knew what he was doing, but it’s risky. And we were actually welcomed with open arms. Um, the uncle who would be my birth father’s brother-in-law uncle by marriage. He was the person my husband first talked to and he said, well, you know, I only met him a few times, but I’ve heard all the stories. He was, he was a character kind of a scoundrel. And that sounds just like him. So, uh, let me go talk to my wife. She had actually been injured and had, had emergency surgery the day before from a fall and an injury. So she was on medication. She, we was busted. Yeah. He came out and uh, he said she wants to meet you, come back right now.
Speaker 2: (33:52)
And so seconds after my husband knocks on the door and says this minutes after, um, we’re in her bedroom sitting on her bed and she’s pulling out photograph albums and showing me pictures of my birth father. Wow. It was insane. And she was so happy to see me. And she’s only a few years older than me because she’s the baby of a large family. And I, you know, would have been an older grandchild. And, um, so we visited 15 or 20 minutes and the uncle said, you know, the rest of the family is actually getting together right now. One of the aunts has, uh, a pool house. And um, another one of the aunts is ill. She has Parkinson’s. And since then she has died. Um, I only had one opportunity to meet her. And, uh, they’re all meeting she’s in town. Is there having a gathering?
Speaker 2: (34:51)
Can I go call them and tell them what’s going on? Like yeah, go follow him. So he stepped outside of his home. He made a phone call, couple minutes later, he came in and he said, they know all about you. They knew that you existed and they want you to come out right away. Can, can we just head on out there? And I was absolutely in a cloud. I was just in a daze and, uh, yeah, absolutely. So we pick up the injured aunt and her pain medication and we drive several miles out in the country and an hour after my husband knocked on the door, I was in the midst of 32 blood relatives
Speaker 1: (35:35)
At a pool. Wow. 32. Okay.
Speaker 2: (35:43)
So the thing is, is that they all knew that I existed. Um, I was going to ask about that. Yeah. So birth father was a couple of days away from turning 27 years old. When I was conceived. Do you remember how old my mother was?
Speaker 1: (36:01)
I sure do. She was 13,
Speaker 2: (36:04)
13, so I will probably never know the whole story there. Um, because my mother is just not willing to talk to me about it. And, um, there’ve been a lot of different things said, and you know, like I said, I did a lot of asking questions and investigating and reporting. Um, and, and I, I continued to do that because now I have access to people on the other side of the story and whoa, I lost you. That’s okay. I can hear you. It’s still fine. Sorry. I didn’t mean to mess that up. Um, you know, I don’t know though, ever know the truth of exactly what happened or how it happened and in the end it doesn’t matter. I’m here and that’s right. It is what it is. But no matter how you slice it and dice it, it was absolutely statutory. Right. Right. Um, my birth father was charged with rape. He was arrested on the job. Um, when my mother told her parents, she was a few months pregnant would have been conceived in
Speaker 3: (37:20)
September. And
Speaker 2: (37:22)
It’s my understanding. She told my grandparents on Christmas Eve
Speaker 1: (37:27)
Say right in time for the holidays. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (37:30)
And, um, I know that my birth father from the documents I’ve got was arrested and, uh, I think January 2nd, early, early in the year or in January, and he contacted his family, uh, in Kentucky. And, um, his parents gathered up the money to bail him out of jail, which was a sizable amount in those days in the sixties, that was about $5,000. And it was very difficult to come by. I’m sure. Yeah. They had a large, a large family and, you know, they were just common people from what I understand. And so they knew about the accusations, but they still gathered the money, drove to another state, bailed their son out of jail and on it goes, so a trial was eventually scheduled and rescheduled and delayed and delayed and delayed. I was two and a half years old when it was ready to go to trial. Oh, wow. Um, that is a wild concept. Yeah. And, uh, what happened? I I’ve spoken to my birth. Father’s former wife. I know it’s hard to follow without saying no, I
Speaker 1: (38:48)
Know who, you know, it’s okay. I know who you’re talking about. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (38:50)
She’s the mother of my half sisters. Imagine her position as a young woman with, um, three little girls and your husband’s in another state accused of raping a 13 year old who’s pregnant. Ooh. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, I’ve spoken to her at length about her side of the story. It almost identically matches up with the memory of my most trusted aunt on my mother’s side. Uh, so I, I believe I’m pretty close to the truth and how it went down. But, um, I don’t know that it was an actual, I want to say this carefully and sensitively to those, who’ve dealt with this before. Um, I’m the product of the rate, but I’m not, I’m not a victim of it myself. So I want to be sensitive to that. So, um, whether my mother was a willing participant or an unwilling participant, um, it was, it was wrong. She was a child, he was a grown man and married me and, um, anyway, his parents drove and built, bailed them out. And, um, a couple of years later, the thing has been delayed and delayed and delayed. And I remember I found that document that my grandmother had, I’ve been
Speaker 1: (40:17)
Waiting. I was like, oh, I know when that’s coming, that letter’s got to come into this
Speaker 2: (40:22)
Place. It was just delayed so many times. And a judge that back then, those were shameful things. We don’t talk about it. We’re going to blame it on the woman. And, um, w we don’t want to deal with this. We don’t want in our small town and our small county, it needs to go away. And the judge said the man has an alibi. He was with his wife and some friends, and we should just drop the matter. Well, yeah. Wow.
Speaker 1: (40:53)
So it is an alibi,
Speaker 2: (40:55)
Like my grandmother and grandfather they’re, especially my grandmother was persistent and didn’t drop it, but fast forward to, from what, and I can’t confirm this again, my mother won’t talk to me, but, um, the day before it was to go to trial, my birth father and his young wife showed up at my grandparents’ home and big, you know, argument started and get out of here threatened to kill you for my grandfather. I mean, you can imagine,
Speaker 1: (41:32)
I can only imagine what 10 year old
Speaker 2: (41:37)
Told you know that about two and a half years old. Um, the man who later adopted me was there. He and my mother were already dating. He was there and he was present for this scene. And anyway, my birth father, TJ said, if I go to jail, if we go to trial, I’m going to go to jail. And if I go to jail, who is going to take care of these girls and my little girls in another state, they won’t, they want them to bother. I won’t be able to supply anything for anybody. It won’t serve anybody. And there was a lot of arguing. My grandfather, I imagine, was extremely angry and confrontational. And my parents, my birth parents, my mother and my birth father decided to go to the other room and have a discussion. And when they came back, do you understand the man’s wife was there too?
Speaker 2: (42:35)
Um, when I came back into the room, they had decided that my birth father would pay for her to go to school. And, um, well, I guess it doesn’t matter to say that she wanted to go to school to be a hairdresser, and he would need for her to go to beauty college. That way she would have a way to support herself and me, and then in exchange for that, she would go to the judge on the next day in court and refused to testify. And it would be thrown out, which is what the court wanted to happen anyway. So that was agreed upon. It was just as fraudulent as it could possibly be. Just, wow. Yeah. Um, but that’s what happened. Um, from what I’m told again, I don’t have it directly from my mother, but from everybody else who was involved, that’s, that’s what I’ve understood. My mother went before the judge flanked by her parents and said, I’m not going to testify. The judge said, great, we’re throwing it out. And it was a done deal. My birth father got in the car, left the state and was never seen again by my family. He never paid a dime for my support or care. He
Speaker 1: (43:49)
Did not it. I was really excited for the beauty school. Part of this story did not,
Speaker 2: (43:54)
He did not pay for education of my mother, um, high and dry, just, just waltzed out of town, just as big as it came in. And that was the end of him. And that was the last any of my maternal family ever saw him. I later found out, um, fast forward when I’m writing for records and they were easily given to me. So people who are listening to this podcast, if you are, I was afraid to ask questions of officials, you know, her whole records. Aren’t, they’re just going to say, no, they’re not, you know, you hear all these things about, we don’t have any rights. I am an adoptee. I an NPE. I am. So I have checked so many boxes. And really what I asked for was given to me, and it won’t in every state, but it will more often than you might think.
Speaker 2: (44:42)
So at least ask. And it doesn’t usually cost a lot of money or take a long time. Um, I called the courthouse in my hometown and I said, you know, I, I had a file number from my grandmother, uh, the letter that she kept from the judge and I called and spoke to this woman. And she’s like, that’s not even a valid number. I said, oh, it’s from 1960s. It’s a valid number. I’ve got the paper right here. And she started searching. She goes, Ooh, that’s going to take some digging because those records are stored, but you’re right. It’s in the computer. And she goes, what are you sure you want to read this? Because she could see what it was about, about statutory rape and so forth. And I said, yeah, I know what it’s about. It’s it’s okay. You’re not gonna hurt my feelings.
Speaker 2: (45:25)
I want a copy of all of it. When she came back with it, she called me later that day, when she found my records and she said, I have one other record. I’m going to send it to as well. My birth father that day in court was, you know, it was all thrown out of court, but he had to pay the court cost and his attorney fees. It didn’t even pay that. Remember his parents had put the $5,000 down to get them out of jail. And a few months after this happened, his own attorney sued him, was granted. However you say that it, it went his way and they took the attorney fees and the court costs out of the $5,000 and then sent the remainder back to his parents. He didn’t even take care of his own attorney or the court fees. He sh he was just, wow, just a class act or not a class.
Speaker 2: (46:25)
Yeah. There’s one more really interesting thing. I want to go and see, before you ask any other questions, um, back to getting the results. From the very beginning, I had a person who was, uh, four or five names down my list, a very close match. She was listed as a first cousin. You know, the, the listing of ancestry is just subjective and people get hung up on that. But she’s a young woman about my age, um, within a year of her daughter. And I was like, who is this person? I can’t say that a family resemblance, but the same color. Oh. And I knew that because, well, she posted a picture on her ancestry, but she was easy to find on Facebook. She has an open Facebook. And so I stopped all that. And I immediately started asking her some questions and I was like, Hey, yeah, I don’t know how we’re related.
Speaker 2: (47:14)
She’s also from Ohio. And she goes, I don’t know either. I just know my mother’s side. My dad was adopted, sorry, I can’t help. But if you ever figure it out, let me know. And so I let it go. Cause I had all these other people to research, but I kept circling back to her because she’s a very close match. Um, one day I, I just, I had a Saturday off work and I just kept looking through the ancestry. I was about six or seven weeks into it. And I kept coming back to her and I messaged her again on Facebook. And I said, so you said your dad was adopted. You really, do you know where he was adopted from? Or where did he grow up? And she said, yeah. And she said, where he grew up about 30 minutes from where I grew up.
Speaker 2: (47:57)
Huh? How old is he? She goes, well, funny, you should ask today is his birthday. Um, he’s 53. I’m like, you’re kidding me. He’s my age. That’s strange. And you know, I just started asking some questions and I started putting two and two together. I’m so grateful that I didn’t say anything to her right then, because it would have been a big mistake. But by then I had joined some genealogy groups and was getting information about how the, the numbers work together and what the ranges mean. So I, I start, I asked her, how do I contact your dad will give me a, oh yeah, here. Here’s how you contact. I’ve really had like this yellow brick road.
Speaker 1: (48:43)
Yeah. Yeah. I love just doors just opened for you, but it just goes to show that it never hurts to ask.
Speaker 2: (48:49)
Yeah. Yeah. So I was 52 years old when I got the information. And then in a matter of weeks I had all, all of it so much more than I ever thought I would have. So I go to the genealogy groups on Facebook and I was like, okay, here’s the numbers? What do you think? What do you think that like, she’s your half niece, she’s your half niece or she’s your great aunt. And like, she’s not like writing because she’s only 30 years old. But anyway, um, and I said, that means her brother. Yep. You’re right. I’m sure had her dad, her dad, his brother, and, well, she asked me to call her stepmother. She said, he won’t talk to you directly call, call his wife. She’ll talk to you and figure it out. And I didn’t tell her what I was thinking and never come back and asked me, and which is a good thing because that, that part was kind of complicated there on his side, long story short, he is my half-brother. He was like an extra bonus person. Um, my birth father had three children already. He was married. My half-brothers mother got pregnant with my birth father and he got my mother pregnant. My brother, this a little over two months older than me. Wow. Our mothers are from the same town pipeliners pipelines.
Speaker 2: (50:15)
Um, it’s crazy. Later that day I spoke to, I texted with his wife a few times and finally she said, okay, he’s ready to call you or will you, will you call him? And I, I called him and it was, oh gosh, I had such a hard time holding it together. I just couldn’t control my emotion. But he thought I was some kind of a scam artist and sure, sure. Now it was coming out of no, I mean, he knew he was adopted, but he just didn’t expect a phone call like that. And I should have given a little bit more time in hindsight, you know, but, um, it was, it was just so shocking to figure it out that day. Um, but we have, we have a great relationship and we have become very close. We talk a lot. We text a lot, I’ve went to visit him twice.
Speaker 2: (51:09)
Um, and because he was fully adopted, I say I was half adopted. I was raised by my birth mother adopted by my birth father. Um, I’m kind of like all of the stuff. And he was fully adopted, had a very, very wonderful adopted family. And, um, both his adopted parents are deceased. He did find his birth mother, but she has no interest in seeing him. And, um, that was several years ago before I found him. And once that happened with his birth mother, he didn’t seek out his birth father and he still doesn’t really want to know anything. And he really knows the last name, but he took a DNA test to be sure that we were correct in our assumptions. And we were a cool thing with that. He is just shy of the numbers, being a full sibling. We are such close matches as half siblings, which is really neat thing because it it’s hard to explain, but it was just so conformational for us to have found each other. And our numbers are like, there is not a question it’s, it is what it is. And it’s kind of a cool thing.
Speaker 1: (52:24)
And I know this, this mathematically doesn’t totally work out, but it almost is like you’re twins because you in a lot in like sort of historically and emotionally to come from the same way and the same story from the same man at the same time.
Speaker 2: (52:38)
Yeah. Yes. Yeah. It really, really is
Speaker 1: (52:41)
Wombs, but otherwise very similar.
Speaker 2: (52:46)
Yeah. And it’s just a, it’s a strange twist to it. Um, back to when I went to Kentucky and I met the 32 relatives at that gathering, um, my birth sisters are not really very connected and friendly with that side of their family. They were raised by their mother and, um, our birth father died when he was only 38. He died a pretty horrible way. And, um, they were all young women. Um, my youngest sister was still in high school when he died. I think she was a senior in high school. And, uh, the next day after that cool party, the family arranged for the sisters to come and meet me more or less alone, uh, with one aunt and uncle who the uncle was ill, not too ill to come to the little family gathering. He also has died since that day. Um, after I met the, the large group, three of them have passed away since then.
Speaker 2: (53:47)
So it was like the last opportunity that, that whole family was all together. And I was able to meet most of them that day. Um, one sister, the oldest sister refused to show up, um, she’s a complicated, difficult situation and that, you know, it’s, it’s her right. And I respect that. Um, uh, but the other two did come and, uh, we, we very quickly built a pretty strong relationship and, um, especially the youngest sister and I, the middle sister, uh, again, me appearing has brought up some bad family memories for them, very hard to deal with and, uh, very, very hard for them to accept the statutory rape or worse, whatever it was, whatever it was. I just want to address that just a little bit because I’m a super sensitive person. I mean, I, I’m very sensitive, but for some reason it’s a blessing from God. I swear it is. I don’t get in a tizzy or take too much offense when people start to talk about, um, you know, being the product of rape, because I always knew there was a possibility of it, but I didn’t believe it. I thought it was this uncle. I wanted to believe it. And it, I think that’s easy to see that, gosh, it would have been nice to have been loved and wanted, but I wasn’t, I am the product of a rape.
Speaker 2: (55:36)
I just want to ask people listening to this to be careful because it comes from people in our own community, as much as it does from people who aren’t part of our community of people say, well, it, if you know, you, weren’t the product of a rape, or at least you’re not a product of a rape. And I’m like, first of all, I’m not a product. I’m human, I’m a person, right. I am careful with my heart to not let that get to me, but I hear it said a lot and folks need to watch their, their words because it’s, uh, it’s really not right. And it’s not the child’s fault.
Speaker 1: (56:20)
It’s not the child’s fault. And I think when you tell me if you’re, if I’m wrong, but like, what I understand you’re saying is that people, um, w in the, in the groups use it as if it’s, um, to be T to be one, the product of a rape, not the human of a rape, but also might just be the worst thing or is so bad. And it means a lot of different things to different people. That’s right. And that’s not a fair assumption to make, it’s not an, a, not a fair generalization to make that, um, to be the human results of this, of rape, um, may or may not be the worst thing in the whole world. It doesn’t mean anything about who you are as a person or what your life was like, or who, who, you know, what kind of soul you’ve got.
Speaker 2: (57:11)
Yeah. And a lot of, a lot of people have just never thought of that. And believe me, I’ve struggled with that, um, with that concept throughout my adult life. Um, but you know, you just have to remember, it’s a person behind it and it’s, you know, and I think there are a lot of people finding out these days that they were adopted or their identity was hidden in some way their, their father’s identity or whatever, because of that. And it’s, uh, I don’t know. I just, I just want to say this a reminder, because I hear it in our own community and it’s, it’s offensive.
Speaker 1: (57:54)
No, thank you for bringing that up.
Speaker 2: (57:56)
That just being said. Um, but anyway, um, the oldest sister, I still have not met, um, my husband and I went back to visit a couple of months ago. I think it was an April. And that was a really fun visit. Um, I will say that the first time that I went at the meeting where the pool party in the middle of us relatives at first, it was really, really wonderful. And then it turned very sour by the end of the evening. Um, my birth father at that point had been dead for 38 years. And I’m like, he’s gone, he’s dead. It doesn’t matter what he did. I’m here. I really wanted to meet you. I don’t want anything from you. I wanted to see your face. I wanted to know something about my birth family. I’m not a happy family, have a wonderful husband and daughter in life.
Speaker 2: (58:48)
And if I have extra, that’s great. And if I don’t, I’m okay where I am. I was as careful as I could be before I went there at first, they were so bring her out here. We’ve got to meet her. We’ve got, we want to say this. We want to see all those things. But by the end of the evening, it was twisting and turning things about my mother and my grandparents. And I said, you know, I don’t know the whole story. And 38 years later, I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. It’s about me meeting you and us building a relationship or not, right. Doesn’t matter what he did or didn’t do was accused of either falsely or fairly, does it matter? Not everybody, but it turned so as quickly as quickly as it was good, it was bad. And, uh, that, that, that was rough.
Speaker 2: (59:48)
But I, I firmly made my mind up before I went, I don’t need anybody. I have what I need in my life, and I’m gonna stand on that. And I have as best I’m able to. Um, so with my three sisters, the oldest one, what you come and meet me again and April. And we went, she said she would be there. And then she didn’t show up. And then, um, the middle one did come, but it was just a very brief, she was very late. We only got to visit with her. And then the youngest sister who has really worked on having a relationship with me, she’s come to my home and stayed with me for a week. And I’ve went to this twice and we are very good friends. And so it was the brother that I found. And, um, he finally opened up that he was able to connect with her. They chat on the phone and texts back and forth. I have not met in person yet. And, you know, I just say, take the good parts and the bad parts, just kind of walk away from it, especially you’re able to, and, and continue on with the life that you were building anyway.
Speaker 1: (01:01:03)
Right. Take what you want and leave the rest.
Speaker 2: (01:01:06)
There’s still at least like, you know, yeah, there’s still at least one sibling. I found out that, um, he had leased one other young woman pregnant. This one is in North Carolina. We have no information to be able to find her. I have a first name. That’s a possibility, but you know, they think she’s younger than me. So she would be in her early fifties. And, um, we’re not sure if the name that somebody remembers was the child’s name or the mother’s name. We’re not sure. And until somebody in that family takes a ancestry test, we just have to wait, but there’s at least one more. Wow. I know that’s productive.
Speaker 1: (01:01:51)
We’ve um, I’ve I talked about this on a few episodes, but there’s this, this idea that we’re the, the, the, the children of scoundrels comes up again and again, and it’s not for, it’s not everybody, but, uh, as soon as you said that word, I, I felt a kinship. Um, yeah, like that’s, that’s its own sub category. Um, wow. I don’t, um, and on the one hand, I don’t know. And I don’t love the idea of, of, uh, of a lineage that follows a pipeline, but at the other, on the other hand, that that is something we haven’t had yet. And that’s really interesting. Um, I probably was happening all over.
Speaker 2: (01:02:42)
Yeah. Yeah. I think there was a lot of it and, you know, something else was interesting about that pipeline thing. I found out when I met the bulk of the family that night, um, several of the brothers and sisters, the sisters as well, and their husbands were pipeliners. Um, so out of this family that I came from, there were two or three aunts and several uncles who also worked for the pipeline and then other wounds from the same town. And, um, yeah, it w it wasn’t just that he was like out there by himself, right. It company, and yeah, there was probably a lot of that going on. A lot of it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (01:03:25)
Yep. I imagine there was, um, interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I was just thinking about families being trusting and also sort of, uh, a whole society that won’t, that doesn’t talk about some things, or it doesn’t fathom some things. And I just, yeah, let’s just sort of, sort of a recipe for disaster.
Speaker 2: (01:03:49)
I’ll tell you one of the hardest things for me to accept. I can’t say that I’ve accepted it yet, but that first weekend that I was there, um, that July two years ago, I was taken to the cemetery where my birth father is buried next to his mother and father. And I knew that I was going to go there and I had looked at the grave site online and that was outrageously emotional. And I, I nearly passed out. It was so hard and I’m not a shrink. I had to take a lot in my life and I feel like I can take a lot, but that I thought lost it. And part of what it was was not just the realization of, um, he was under the ground and just that idea. But then I had this concept where it came from. I don’t know, I, my husband accuses me of being a Pollyanna.
Speaker 2: (01:04:58)
Like you think everybody has a little pink fit, little white picket fence, and everybody has this perfect little life. And I know better. Of course I do, but I want that for everybody, even though I don’t have it in my own life. When I found out that my paternal grandparents not only knew that I existed, but solidly hit it away, paid for it to go away, kept it a secret. And then I, I had to look at stacks of photos and hear all the stories about what a loving grandmother she was. She would never have turned away. One of her own. She would have adored you. Um, no, because she didn’t. And it was, uh, I was, I was raised by my maternal grandmother. Uh, you know, my childhood was very messy, as you can imagine, my mother had me sometimes didn’t have me, would disappear, move away in and out of relationships with lots of different men, lots of situations. And my, my grandparents and my mother said raised me and I, I had a very difficult time accepting that my grandparents who had a large family, they were clearly close, clearly involved with their children and their grandchildren rejected me and never sought me out ever. And they could have easily, I could hear him shaking his ears earlier. Yeah. I, I really had a very, very hard time accepting that.
Speaker 2: (01:06:47)
And so, and, and you know, my, um, my paternal grandmother only died in 2008. So it’s not that she’s been gone so many years. I hope that, you know, there’s this child, we know where she is. They knew what town I was in and could have probably found me on this
Speaker 1: (01:07:11)
Project could have checked in.
Speaker 2: (01:07:15)
You know, I can understand it from the father. He showed us character early on. I’ve had a much harder time accepting it from, uh, the grandparents who are deceased. It doesn’t matter. It generally doesn’t, but that’s been a hard pill to swallow, you know, aunts and cousins and things like that doesn’t matter. I was not, their responsibility was not their problem, so to speak. But, um, so you know, somebody who’s listening and contemplating meeting people, you just, it’s just something you should think through and know where you stand and how you feel about it before you pursue it, because it can trip you up. And I think we think a lot about our parents, birth parents and siblings, but, you know, there’s a few other aspects that I would advise people to consider along the way.
Speaker 1: (01:08:08)
Absolutely. I think in my experience, and, and then, and then what I’ve sort of gathered just from listening to everybody’s stories is that there’s just no telling or no knowing what element of your story or of this experience is going to be the thing that, that rocks your world, or like turns you upside down. Like you think you thought through and you think you understand everything. And then, and then just, just a variable comes in that
Speaker 2: (01:08:37)
You just didn’t see coming. And everyone’s
Speaker 1: (01:08:40)
Got one everyone’s got even, you know, even people with very organized NPE stories, um, yeah. Something, something comes in somewhere in there that, that pokes at, uh, I don’t know if like, it sounds like for you, like at this idea of what if, and you know, to have this, but, but it’s something for everybody. Um, so it would just be prayers, paper paired for the thing you don’t see coming, which is impossible. But yeah, I guess
Speaker 2: (01:09:09)
There’s no true way to prepare for it, but at least center yourself that you know who you are, where you are, where you stand and don’t let the past rock that we just can’t let them sit there and focus on, you know, your parents did what they did and things happen as they happen. You can’t change it, but you, you, you can focus on who you are, the person you are, the people that you love, you break the chain, right. Who you are now.
Speaker 1: (01:09:50)
Yeah. I was going to say, yeah, I was going to say, I guess if I think the only thing we can do to prepare is to, to yeah. Take care of ourselves, but to make sure our support or our own support network and support system, isn’t a really strong place. It’s
Speaker 2: (01:10:06)
Not always easy because I don’t understand. And, you know, I definitely been asked the question by people very close to me. Um, my daughter bought me the DNA kit. She really has almost no interest in knowing much about it or meeting people. She did meet my youngest. I say my youngest sister, she’s my older sister, but the youngest, I was the oldest in my family that I grew up with. And I’m the baby of this family. It’s, it’s the same sensation. But, um, you know, she, there, her relatives are her blood relatives that she doesn’t have a lot of interests. She doesn’t really ask questions and she’ll listen to me talk about it here and there, but she’s not overly interested in it. I think it’s a protective thing towards me has been a lot of hurt and my family and, you know, through my whole situation, the way I grew up and she just is afraid that it’ll cause me more distress. But, um, you know, sometimes the people who you think can support you can’t, or can’t do it in the way that you want them to. So, and I know that you’re a counselor and, um, I know that there’s a movement for counselors to have training in this area it’s definitely needed. Um, but it’s, it’s really strange how reading and listening to other people’s similar stories does help. It’s kind of, um, couple heartaches at times how it helps.
Speaker 1: (01:11:40)
Absolutely. Yeah. I agree with you a hundred percent. Um, I, yeah, I keep saying this, but just the power of learning that you’re not alone, um, has been, I think, remarkably healing for other people and it’s, it’s been helpful for me. I always feel even like talking to you right now when I do the podcast, um, and hold on my
Speaker 4: (01:12:03)
Yawn, um, it’s cause it’s really hot here. And, um,
Speaker 1: (01:12:09)
Um, but yeah, w when I do the PI, when I do the podcast with people, like, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not doing it as, I don’t really feel like I’m doing it very much from a place of my own NPE story, although that’s present and I’m not really doing it very much as a therapist because this is not therapy. Um, but both, but either way, whenever I’m done with these, um, conversations with people, I feel, I totally feel sort of like fulfilled and alive and calm, calmed, and a part of something in a way that, that I’m not otherwise. Um, and then, and I, and I, and I get the feeling, other people are get that too, from listening, just from listening,
Speaker 2: (01:12:54)
We thought about that aspect as you’re describing it. But for me, it’s so interesting. I think my own story is so interesting and it it’s just captivating to hear what people did, how they handled it, how they responded, how they hit it, how they didn’t respond. Yeah. And it seems it’s, it’s ongoing. It’s, it’s the rest of your life. It’s just, it’s just very interesting. And I always felt well, first of all, everybody knew my story, except me. I’m from a small town and everybody knew so much about it. I don’t know how it was kept a secret so long. I really don’t. But, um, it, for me, it is what you touched on a bit ago about knowing that you’re not alone, even though my story is not the same as yours and anybody else’s. I just always felt like I was so different from anybody. And it was really bad. Therefore I probably was really bad. And there’s so many people who are the same different ways they got there, but it’s yeah.
Speaker 1: (01:14:11)
Oh, good. Well, this was magical. This was amazing to catch you, um, on a whim on a, on a Monday afternoon. Um, think I don’t really have questions because, uh, you told, you told the story perfectly, um, because it’s your story. So that’s what it is. And I, yeah, so I have no questions. Um, I, uh, yeah, I just, and it was, uh, I don’t I’m, uh, I mean, I, I guess, I guess what’s, what’s the, the important thing, and the surprising thing is that as I’ve gotten a lot of messages from people talking about the sort of turn, this has been a little bit of a turn in episodes lately towards slightly more, um, serious aspects of the NPE, um, experience and, and a lot of the stories that are sort of in the subtext of, of our community. And, uh, and I didn’t ask for that from you.
Speaker 1: (01:15:14)
I just, I just said, can anybody tell their story? And you, you came and offered, uh, a totally unique story. Um, but that also has, has some elements that are not so unique. I think to a lot of people finding out what their origin, what their origins are and, um, and the, and the harder stuff to talk about. So thank you. Thank you for coming in with, um, with some real honesty and vulnerability, and you had things to, you were thoughtful, you had things to share. It was just, it was, um, so I’m really grateful.
Speaker 2: (01:15:52)
I am too. Thank you. And I hope that people aren’t shying away or afraid to talk about hard things. I think it’s important. And, um, I mean, I don’t, I don’t know what your messages have been, but keep doing what you’re doing. It’s helpful to a lot more people than a few who say, I don’t know if they’re saying don’t tackle hard subjects. Well, I think you should tackle hard subjects. No,
Speaker 1: (01:16:18)
Yeah. I think they’re mostly supportive. They just have noticed it. Um, and, um, yeah, but, um, but, and, and I’ve, I’ve gotten a few complaints come in here and there, but that’s okay. Um, yeah, yeah, exactly. Um, but I mean, and, and, and what’s so interesting about all, I, I think is it like this whole as individuals, the NPE community seems like everybody says, like, I want to know the truth, and this is about the truth. And then as a community, we say, we have the right to know the truth and we need to know the truth. And then there’s actually a whole lot of things that, um, are hard to talk about that are part of the truth. Um,
Speaker 2: (01:17:08)
So I definitely find sometimes when my story has come up throughout my life, people have a hard time hearing about it. They don’t want, they don’t want to hear it and that’s okay. But yeah, well, I didn’t do it. I didn’t cause it, but it’s, you know, it is what it is. So, and I hate that expression. It is what it is
Speaker 1: (01:17:37)
I do too, because it comes up a lot. It work on something else, work on something else for that, for what we mean by that. Um, but thank you. Uh, I’m gonna, yeah, I’m gonna work on this and, um, it’ll be, uh, this week on Friday. Um, so yeah, I’ll just keep in touch with me if anything comes up before Friday. Um, but, but otherwise, um, this was just perfect. Can’t be more grateful. And, um, thank your dogs for being here.
Speaker 2: (01:18:21)
They were good for most. I think my husband came home and I got riled up.
Speaker 1: (01:18:24)
Oh, that’s what happened? Um, well we invite all, uh, all creatures. Great and small to be a part of the, the podcast. Um, all right. But I’ll be in touch with you. It was really great to meet you and hear your story. Thank you so much for your vulnerability.
Speaker 2: (01:18:42)
Thank you. Bye bye. Bye.
He’s Not the First Murderer I’ve Ever Met
Speaker 1: (00:01)
All right. I don’t know why sometimes it does that. And some I don’t. Uh, I’ll I’ll have to. Okay. Wait, duh, duh, duh. Uh, is it okay if I record the video? Okay, cool. How do I do that?
Speaker 2: (00:20)
There,
Speaker 1: (00:25)
There it is. Okay, awesome. I’m recording our audio. I’ve got you on zoom, bro. Hello. It’s so great to get to meet you. Yeah, we’ve been corresponding for a while we know each other, or I feel like I know you, um, uh, this is our first time getting to see each other face to face. How are you? Good. Yeah. Thanks for giving me your Saturday night. I appreciate it. I really do. Uh, cool. And, um, before I forget, cause I don’t wanna, I, I, uh, I loved the piece you wrote for severance magazine. Yeah. Uh, I read the one about men not being yeah. The men. Why there aren’t as many men in the support groups and I, um, so I appreciate it getting invited to participate, but um, more importantly it, uh, ended up being, Are you, um, are you, have you been a writer? Are you a writer by trade, you know, by train or
Speaker 2: (01:32)
I’ve been a cop by trade for 28 years. 27 years.
Speaker 1: (01:37)
Uh huh. So you just decided you decided to make a little pivot.
Speaker 2: (01:41)
I decided I liked writing. So that came as one of the mini surprises of all of this that I was like, all right. Something and see if I enjoy it. And I did, and now I’ve just kind of been, I mean, I still work as a cop every day, but I liked that. So I write more.
Speaker 1: (01:57)
Yeah. Oh, that’s cool. Yeah. Yeah. So speaking of totally unexpected. How do you like to tell your story?
Speaker 2: (02:12)
It really doesn’t matter. It gets pretty twisty and turny. I think if you knew, I don’t know if you’ve listened to any of the other ones I’ve done.
Speaker 1: (02:19)
I did it cause I want, I like coming in. I like coming in cold or coming in blonde. Um, so yeah. So what, um, yeah, so what happens if you’re talking about it with friends over beer or whatever?
Speaker 2: (02:32)
Yeah. I mean, we can do that. And then when I throw you for a loop or you’re like, wait, what? Just stop me and tell me because
Speaker 1: (02:41)
Everyone knows I interrupted. So cool. All right. Why then I’m so excited.
Speaker 2: (02:48)
So my wife and I did ancestry DNA probably five or six years ago, that was going to be our in quotes fund Christmas. So we did, we did ancestry DNA, not no suspicions. No. Oh, we think something’s going on here. My parents were never big about talking about our genealogical history back past my grandparents. So I just really didn’t have a clue. My wife did. I didn’t. So we just thought it’d be fun.
Speaker 1: (03:25)
I’m sorry. I’m already gonna start interrupting you. Uh, where are you born and raised in Texas? Always in Texas. And you just, you and your wife thought that that learning more about your heritage sounded interesting and fun.
Speaker 2: (03:38)
So my dad was an airline pilot and they flew all over the world and I’d always be like, Hey, if you’re in Europe, see if you can find our family crest or anything like that. And it was always kind of a dad, nobody cares about that. And I was like, well, I do ask him for it. I did it. So I finally just stopped asking. So when the ancestry test came out, we, my wife and I thought, cool, we’ll do that for Christmas. And that would be a lot of fun. Um, so we did it like, I think it was 2016. And I tell everybody that I talked to, I feel kind of dumb and naive. The test came back. I, if you’ve done ancestry, you pop up in your map and you can see kind of where you came from and all that good stuff. And I looked at that and I was like, okay, so I’m English a little bit Irish, a little bit Scottish. Cool. And I closed, it never went back. Um, so I didn’t even look at the tab that said relation DNA matches or anything. I just skipped it. So my wife stayed on it doing some more genealogy stuff. And I looked at my map and that was, I was kind of done with it
Speaker 1: (04:46)
Was the map. Wasn’t it was the map. Interesting to you. I mean, even if it wasn’t surprises, was it
Speaker 2: (04:57)
Completely blind? So it wasn’t anything that I saw that wouldn’t me. Like my wife knows that she’s got a strong check background. So she just seen something that was outside of that. That would have seemed weird for her, for me. I didn’t know. Cause nobody talked about it.
Speaker 1: (05:13)
So it’s just like more information for yourself and what you’ve been asking all your life,
Speaker 2: (05:20)
There was a way to do it. It was like, okay, cool. We’ll do that. So fast forward to 2019 and my wife was still on there doing stuff I’d never really gotten back on there. And one day she gets a message from a lady that says, Hey, this bee person, which is me on your shows to be a close relationship to me. And I’m just trying to figure out how so my wife asked me, I had never really been good with keeping up with aunts and uncles. I just, we were never really close. So my wife asked me, I was like, I don’t have a clue who that is, but that doesn’t mean anything other than, I don’t know who it is. So she said, okay, well I’ll, I’ll talk to her. So I was like, that’s cool. So they started messaging back and forth on Facebook and talking on ancestry a little bit.
Speaker 2: (06:08)
But the ancestry messenger thing is kind of weird. So just easier talking on Facebook. So they talked for quite a while and the lady I’ve gone back and read all the messages now and it makes so much more sense where she was headed with all this. We just didn’t know so well that like we, my wife and I still laugh. I look at the message now. And when you get a message to somebody, you can click on a button and see the relationship wouldn’t be that we didn’t do anything. We’re like, no, I don’t really know you. So the only thing that they’re a kind of wrench in that, in her contacting us was we had found out that we still don’t know for sure, but we’re fairly certain that the, my mom that raised me is adopted, we’re not 100% for sure. Her mom told her that she adopted her and died shortly thereafter.
Speaker 2: (07:02)
That, and that’s so far back that we’ve my mom’s never had an interest in diving off into it. So we just really don’t have any way to know. So the lady was about the same age and we immediately thought, Oh, that’s probably a half sister, full sister, cousin, somebody related to mom. So we told her that and she kind of disappeared again. So she, I guess she went off to research that, to see if that was the case. And we didn’t hear back from her until the day before St. Patrick’s day in 2019. And it was very stuck in my head. Yes. Um, so my wife and I were actually out on a date and she started getting messages from this lady and she said, Hey, this lady is messaging me again. And she said that she has, she’s done all her research and there’s no way she’s related to your mom.
Speaker 2: (07:51)
And I was like, okay. I mean, I’m, I’m at a loss. I don’t know what to tell her. I’m still not smart enough to have ever clicked on show me who this person is. So I told him, I was like, I don’t know what else to tell her. So tell her, we’re sorry. And she said, well, so they, they were, we’re sitting there at lunch talking and they’re messaging back and forth. And the lady finally, I guess, decided it was time to spill the beans and said, well, let, let me tell you what I think and see how this sounds. And we’re like, okay. So, and so my sister had a baby boy born on July, 1970 in Dallas, which is my birthday. And I think that’s this bee person on your account because he was given up for adoption at birth. And we sat there at lunch and I went, well, I mean, no, that’s not, it there’s a narrative that I know that doesn’t work at all for me.
Speaker 2: (08:42)
So I said, you know, ask her what hospital she thinks this happens at. I’ve got my birth certificate at home. I can look at it and we’ll at least get her on the right track. So I’m not mad at her. She just confused. Of course, my wife asked her and she said, she couldn’t really remember, but she do some research. And so we wrapped up lunch, came back home. My in-laws came over and funny enough because we’ve been talking about ancestry, my in-laws and my wife end up on the couch playing with the family tree. And I go off in the other room, get the little fire, safe out, pull out my birth certificate and start looking at everything. And I get my birth certificate. And all of a sudden there seemed to be problems because my birth certificate doesn’t have a hospital. I was born, doesn’t have an address. It just has a dash there. And I was like, that’s weird. So I was like, so then I got my wife’s out because we were both born in 1970 in Dallas. So they should look somewhat close and they couldn’t look any more different. So my wife’s looks like a typed out document. It’s got her dad’s signature on it, the raised seal and all that are there. And it
Speaker 1: (09:52)
Is that what we usually have on it
Speaker 2: (09:57)
As the Dallas County seal on and all that mine. On the other hand, if you remember back to old school and library of the microfish machine, mine looked like a bad copy off of microfiche machine and it was stamped and sealed out of Travis County in Austin, which is the state Capitol here. So I was like, well, that’s weird. We were both. I know we were both born in Dallas, but so then I started looking at the differences between hers and mine, mine, like I said, looked like weird microfish hers looked like a document that somebody had typed in hers had the hospital. She was born in mine, had a dash dash and out. I mean, just had nothing where the hospital I was born in. And then where usually the father signs the birth certificate it’s called like the informant or something. Her dad’s signatures there. My dad’s name is just typed in, so there’s no signatures on it. It’s just if they’re totally different.
Speaker 1: (10:53)
Okay. And when do you think the last time was, you had ever looked at your birth certificate
Speaker 2: (11:01)
When this happened? Probably 22, 23 years ago for getting a job and yeah.
Speaker 1: (11:09)
Right. You need it for a job or like a passport, like there’s any still aren’t you generally, there aren’t any questions that, that, that ask you to look at it with detail, just so you have to always like show it.
Speaker 2: (11:18)
And I mean, really it’s been, I’ve probably had that in my possession 30 ish years. So it just that’s always been my birthday, but I didn’t ever think it, look at it and then start putting the next to another one and going, well, these don’t look the same. That’s not right. So I just always assumed it was that, that was that. So my in-laws finally left and I went into, my wife was like, okay, so some things are bothering me and she’s like, okay, well tell me, so I hand her are two bursaries. It’s like, these couldn’t be more different. Like, yeah, that is kind of weird. I said, yeah, that’s kind of weird. And here’s some other things that are me because while she was talking to her parents, I was sitting in the other room quietly, trying not to freak out and panic everybody.
Speaker 2: (12:01)
So I was, you know, running through all these things in my head. I’m still thinking this lady’s not right. She’s confused, but we’ll get it all figured out. So when I was in there, thinking what I realized was my mom has told every embarrassing story about me to my wife, that you can imagine anything I didn’t want told has been told. So I said, so we’re sitting there talking. I was like, tell me anything. You know about my mom being pregnant with me or giving birth to me because we’ve had three kids. Now, my mom’s been there for all three of them. You would have thought stories swapped somewhere. And my wife sat there and she says, she’s never told us any stories. Like that’s, that’s true. I’ve never heard no birth stories, no guilt trip of, I was in the labor in labor with you for this long. And this is how you treat me. So I was like, so that, that kind of bothers me. And she’s like, yeah, that is weird. Cause I would expect it to hear those. Yeah. And I, you know, I guess it’s that, that had always been my reality. So I never questioned it. It just nobody ever.
Speaker 1: (13:04)
Yeah. Oh yeah. It’s so amazing. What, what, what, uh, the, the, the, the, the, the, like, the lack of information becomes interesting within a certain context.
Speaker 2: (13:17)
My parents took pictures of everything. I have pictures of them when they were first meeting, dating all this stuff. And so I asked my wife and I was like, tell me one pregnant picture you’ve ever seen in my mom. She’s like, never me neither. And I’ve seen all the photo albums. So either I’ve missed one or there’s no pregnant pictures.
Speaker 1: (13:38)
Yeah. Yeah. That’s weird. And I would have thought maybe like, generationally, like being pregnant wasn’t, you know, it wasn’t. So,
Speaker 2: (13:48)
And that’s actually what my wife said and what we want to be like, you know, maybe she just doesn’t like talking about it and maybe they didn’t want pregnancy pictures, so. Okay. So we’re still, okay. I’m still not convinced. I’m just still, like, this is just weird. So I had asked my wife, I was like, did she ever the delay that contacted you ever tell you where she thinks I was born at? Because my birth certificate has a dash on it, but I’d be curious where she thinks, and she gave us, she said, I can’t remember the name of it, but she gave us a very specific description of like this little clinic, more than a hospital and where they lived compared to where it was. And we’re no I’ve told me, I kind of took an extra breath. Cause I was like, I think I know where that is.
Speaker 2: (14:29)
I think I’ve been there. So it ended up being a place that my parents took me to visit. Every time we went to see my grandparents and we visited this nice old doctor named Dr. Carmichael, I was a kid. Never understood why we visited Dr. Carmichael, but you know, your parents go somewhere and like everything, I just went along. So no clue, just, I was like, so if this is where she’s talking about, that’s creepy. Cause I’ve been there. I mean, I can picture the building, what it looks like on the inside Stokes. I went there so many times as a kid,
Speaker 3: (15:07)
That’s a real weird mode.
Speaker 2: (15:08)
It was. And I was like, that’s so strange, but okay. So we’re still talking. I was like, so what do I do now? Cause I mean, I’ve got all this weirdness, but nothing that’s really good. Other than this lady saying, Hey, I think you’re my sister’s kid that got adopted. So my wife who is much smarter than me said, Hey, we have a friend from church that’s adopted. And she’s known ever since she was also born in Texas, but she’s known for as long as she can remember that she was adopted. She said, so reach out to her because she had gone through and found her birth parents and made contact everybody since. So reach out to her and just see what she knows about all this offer and see what she thinks. It was like, okay, great. So this was getting later now. So I waited until the next morning I sent her a text said, Hey, can we
Speaker 3: (15:57)
Talk?
Speaker 2: (16:00)
It’s the morning of St. Patrick’s day. Yes. It’s now a wonderful day. So it’s St. Patrick’s day I messaging her going, Hey, I want to talk to you and you have a minute about adoption. She’s like, Oh yeah, sure. Call me anytime. So I call her and I tell her all the stuff, you know, birth certificates look weird, no pregnancy pictures, no birth stories. It’s all just very weird. And she said, well, if you’ve got a picture of her, she took it. I said, well, yeah, I took a picture of it. She still will text it to me so I can look at it. So I text it to her and she goes, okay, let me go get mine. So she gets off the phone for a minute, comes back and I get this kind of, and I’m like, yeah. And she said, I don’t think you’re going to like this. And I was like, okay. So let me text you a picture of my birth certificate.
Speaker 3: (16:45)
And
Speaker 2: (16:46)
They’re carbon copies of each other. There’s dash dash is where we were born. Birth fathers names. Aren’t signed. They’re typed in. They’re both from Austin. I think she was born in Abilene. I was born in Dallas and magically. Both of our birth certificates have come from Austin. So I was like, well, huh? Yeah, this, this is getting harder to ignore. And yet I’m still not sold. There still has to be a good explanation for all this.
Speaker 3: (17:16)
Right.
Speaker 2: (17:17)
There’s gotta be something. So I talked to her. Yeah. Obviously there’s a weird mistake or somewhere. This is just a copy of my birth certificate. That’s what they looked like in 1970. I don’t know. There’s, there’s a lot of good reasons I could make to make workout. So I talked, she talked me through kind of how she found out who her birth parents were. And she said, honestly, all that stuff was a complete fluke and it was a nightmare to get the paperwork I had to go before the court, tell them what they called, compelling reasons why they should unseal my, and then got it. And the only reason she found her birth parents was she deciphered one signature on one page because they, I think they still gave her redacted copies, but there were signed copies and she made out a signature and traced it back.
Speaker 2: (18:06)
So that sounded like a lot of extra work. And I’m like, you know, since I still don’t really believe this, it seems silly to go through that much work. So like, you know, I’ll just talk to my dad. Cause my dad and I have always talked pretty openly. We’ve never, we’ve talked a lot away from my mom and my mom is the stereotypical worrier of everything. So when there a serious talk to be had, it’s usually just he and I talking about it somewhere. So I was like, well, I’ll just, I’ll hit up dad. And next time we can go have coffee, grab a beer, grab lunch, do something. I’ll bounce all this off in that. Cause there’s obviously no rush because this still isn’t true. So
Speaker 1: (18:48)
No, no need to get everybody in a, in a fuss over something.
Speaker 2: (18:53)
Right. So I called him and said, Hey, we, we talked a little bit. I was like, so I got a couple of things I want to bounce off of you. And next time you’re near where I work, call me, we’ll go grab coffee. You can come by the office. I’ll meet you for lunch and do whatever as a no, no big deal. I tried to lay off all the problems was like, nobody’s getting divorced, nobody’s broke. Nobody’s sick. They’re all good. The house didn’t burn down. Everything is fine. Just some things to bounce off of you sometimes he’s like, okay, great. Sure. Yeah,
Speaker 2: (19:26)
We’ve done this hundreds of times and this time it was. Yeah, sure. That’s great. Why? And I was like, that’s not him. And I’m sure I sounded not good on the phone. Cause you know, we’re in our like 12 of figuring all this out and I was like, it’s nothing important. Just next time you have time. We’ll talk. He’s like, okay, great. But why I’m like, I don’t think you’re hearing me not on the phone next time we see each other, we’ll have this conversation. Okay. Yeah. I’m still good with that, but what are we gonna talk about? And I, yes. And I would tell you, this went on for like 20 minutes. It was probably like two, but it felt like 20 minutes of just going back and forth of no, no, we don’t want to talk about this on the phone. He’s like, yeah, I know, but what are we gonna talk about? So I finally gave up and I was like, listen, I think I’m being clear in saying, I don’t want to talk with you about this on the phone. Right. And he’s like, yep. So, and you seem determined to talk about on the phone. He goes, yep.
Speaker 2: (20:26)
You, you understand? I don’t think this is a good idea. Yeah. I understand. Is mom with you? No, no. I’m in the car drive and I was like, okay. I said, so. And the funny thing is they knew all about the ancestry test. This, the ancestry test is not like a surprise. This has been years ago. We had actually, I think shortly after Christmas, when our results came back, we had pulled it up and cast it to the TV and looked at everybody’s maps. And there was like, Oh, that’s neat. And that was that. Nobody ever said a word. So I said, you remember when Pam and I did the day mystery test? He’s like, yeah, I do remember that. Okay. So this lady contacted us on there that I’m related that we’re related to. And he’s like, Oh really? I said, yeah. And we thought it was mom’s sister or something like that. And he’s like, that’s fascinating. I didn’t know. They could do stuff like that. I was like, yeah, but it’s not that. And he goes, okay. And I said, what she says is that I’m her sister’s son. And that y’all adopted me and never told me anyway. Huh?
Speaker 2: (21:26)
That was it. That was all I got just a loud, huh. And a little bit of drumming on the dashboard that I could hear. So we, we, we sat there very quietly for probably a minute or so. And I just waited to see what would happen next. And finally I was like, okay, I’m not trying to be an. I’m not trying to make the world harder for you, but you’re actually going to have to say out loud what I already know the answer is because until you tell me, I still am going to wonder, and he’s kinda, I got another. So we adopted you and we’ve been trying to figure out how to tell you. It’s like, okay, now it’s been 48 years. So we’re a good time in 48 years, it didn’t come up. So, okay. Now I guess is the time. So he said, well, yeah, we adopted you.
Speaker 2: (22:19)
Nothing changed. You know, my favorite line ever, nothing, nothing has changed. And I should probably go home and talk to your mom said, yeah, you should probably go talk to mom because the gigs up, it’s all out there. And he’s like, so when should we talk about this? And I was like, well, I’m working tonight at some, somehow I managed to work my shift through all this. I was like, I’m working tonight and I’m going to take Sunday to regroup. And how about Monday? I said, okay. So we hung up. And that’s how I found out that yes, this lady was right. I was adopted and I was her sister’s kid.
Speaker 3: (22:55)
Wow. Can you remember how you felt at that moment?
Speaker 2: (23:00)
Like the world had opened up underneath me. Everything just spun. Basically. It was it’s hard. I mean, you you’ve been through it. It’s almost hard to explain just how everything shifts and all of a sudden, nothing seems quite right anymore.
Speaker 3: (23:21)
I mean,
Speaker 2: (23:22)
Super sad because my parents were my parents, but they’re not really, my parents. There’s been a huge secret, kept from me for almost 50 years. There’s a lot of stuff suddenly that I don’t know about myself. And there there’s a total. And uh, I still talk about this in therapy. There’s a total loss of identity that happens because I mean, it’s bad enough is the NPE part. But when both your parents are not your parents anymore, suddenly you don’t have any. I had no biological roots left. It had already been weird enough. It had been about two years before that, when my dad had told me that they thought that my mom was adopted and my both my grandparents had passed by them. And that had even weirded me out just with the idea of the people I grew up thinking of my grandparents. They weren’t really my grandparents. That’s weird.
Speaker 1: (24:13)
Do you think your dad or, I mean, maybe I, maybe I shouldn’t like feed you what I think, but like, or what I’m wondering, but what, uh, what do you think was going through his head when you said, well, this woman contacted me and says that she thinks I’m adopted and he went, huh? What do you think he was thinking right then
Speaker 2: (24:31)
In a word probably. I think it was just, I mean, they, they had successfully kept this a secret for 48 years. And I think, I mean, talking to them later, who would have thought in 1970 that you could spit in a plastic tube and put it in the mail and they could DNA match you to other people. Nobody saw that one coming.
Speaker 1: (24:56)
No, I mean, yeah. Oh man. I think about that all the time about like, what will it be when we are older? That will be some kind of fascinating technology. We didn’t see coming.
Speaker 2: (25:06)
I think it was just pure shock that, I mean, something they had done a phenomenal job of covering up, just got the blanket ripped back from it. And all of a sudden it was all out in the open.
Speaker 1: (25:19)
Hmm. Yeah. I kind of wondered if he, if he was trying to, if he thought maybe if he acted casual Lee about it, that you would think it wasn’t that big a deal. If he didn’t think it was that big a deal sorta or something like, I just it’s. I find that such a unique response, but like, huh. Oh, we were trying to tell you, um, I don’t know. I was just that. So I’m just curious, but go on, go on.
Speaker 2: (25:44)
I think that that’s his personality. We don’t make a big deal out of anything. If you’re on fire, you quietly go find water and put yourself out. You don’t make a big deal. Probably I’ll I’ll send you a different piece that I wrote that talks a lot about him or no, that wasn’t one. So you’ve read that article. I mean, I’ve watched him nail his hand to offense, break his leg and we don’t make a big deal out of any of it. We just go, Oh, that kind of hurts. Go pull my hand off the fence. Okay. So that’s, that’s the normal reaction. And then I think the rest of it was just the coverup of we’ve been caught. I better say something. We’re trying to figure out how to tell you, because what else? Oops.
Speaker 2: (26:26)
So I hung up with him and texted my wife and said, I can’t talk right now because I’ve got to get my head back together. But I guess go ahead and Texas lady and tell her she’s right, because my dad just told me I’m adopted. And she’s like, what? And I was like, I know I can’t talk on the phone right now. Just text her and tell her, tell her that if you, uh, I was like, if you want to talk to, you’re welcome to talk to her. This is way too much for me already. So tell her I’m not going to be talking to her soon. Not because I’m mad, just because I’ve got enough to deal with without starting that yet. So what ended up happening from there was my wife was a phenomenal kind of information filter. She would ask questions for me and this, this lady had been trying so hard and hinting about it for so long that, I mean, there wasn’t a whole lot. My wife had to ask, she just spilled it all out. Right. So there wasn’t a lot to ask.
Speaker 1: (27:26)
Oh wow.
Speaker 2: (27:27)
So this is where things get twisted and turned and you’ll have to interrupt me and stop me and try to make it all make sense. So the person that contacted me, like I said, was my birth mom’s sister. So her aunt, she was also the first or second wife of my biological dad. So aunt and bio dad were married.
Speaker 1: (27:56)
Okay. Okay. Hold on. Yeah, you’re right. Okay. This is where we get into like charts and whiteboards. So your bio mom slept with her brother-in-law
Speaker 2: (28:10)
Yes. They were divorced by, by then, but yes,
Speaker 1: (28:15)
Technically a brother-in-law at that time,
Speaker 2: (28:18)
Typically it’s even worse. So it was bio mom or aunt and bio dad were married and bio dad thought it would be okay to sleep with his 15 year old sister-in-law was how old she was. She was 15 when all of this started. So that started at 15. And then not because of that, because basically, I mean, in his own words, as well as everybody I’ve talked to has known him, he’s just a man he’ll sleep with anybody. So he and aunt got divorced. He was here in Texas. My aunt ended up here in Texas. And when bio mom graduated from high school at 17, she moved down here to Texas to live with her sister and not have to live with her parents. And the relationship started back up. And that’s when I came into the picture by then he was divorced from my aunt, married to another lady and had a four month old kid, I think at the time.
Speaker 1: (29:31)
So what we call a class act,
Speaker 2: (29:35)
It’s more complicated still. So that was how they all kind of intermingled was through that way. Um, so yeah.
Speaker 1: (29:49)
Did his sister, I mean, I’m sorry. Did your aunt who contacted you? The woman who contacted you? Did she know that her younger sister was doing this with her? Ex-husband
Speaker 2: (29:59)
She suspected it. She never knew it. And my bio mom would never cop to the parent who the father was just that she was pregnant. She had no real way of knowing she had a suspicion because he was around all the time. But
Speaker 1: (30:19)
Yeah,
Speaker 2: (30:20)
So he was also a member of the Bandidos motorcycle gang. So I was two years old. He was in prison for murder. And he’s been in prison ever since prison in 1972, actually, when you can 71 and for something else and then ended up in Louisiana in 72 in prison.
Speaker 1: (30:50)
All right. It’s kind of a different, a different kind of intensity.
Speaker 2: (30:53)
Yeah. That, that, that adds a whole new kind of mess to it. So he’s,
Speaker 1: (30:59)
We’re up to be law, uh, an officer for, for you. I mean, that’s just interesting that you, you, you went the opposite direction of the Bandido
Speaker 2: (31:09)
As did his other son. Yep. Okay.
Speaker 1: (31:14)
All right. Okay. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m going to be quiet now.
Speaker 2: (31:17)
So, so he’s in prison. He’s still alive. He’s in his seventies now. Bio mom passed probably 19 years before I found out. Um, I’ve got, so I’ve got half brother on bio dad’s side of the family. Bio mom’s side is a sister, half sister, half brother, and one, two, three aunts and several other uncles. Um, the what’s kind of really weird. His half brother on dad’s side have sister on mom’s side and all three aunts up until about five years before I found out we all lived in a 30 mile radius of each other for our whole lives pretty much.
Speaker 1: (32:08)
Oh wow. Did they know about it?
Speaker 2: (32:12)
The only, only person that knew about me was the auntie found me the rest of the family was in California back then. So my mom and aunt kept it quiet from everybody. Right, right. So let’s see, where does that go from there? So that’s pretty much, that’s how I found out everything and how I found everybody.
Speaker 1: (32:36)
Wow. Uh, at that time with a woman, um, your, your, your aunt who was helping you or who, you know, sort of like had all this information and the waiting to Explo, um, is she, how did she help you connect with everybody? Or did you do that on your own with like ancestry and
Speaker 2: (32:59)
Without being asked, help me connect with everybody.
Speaker 1: (33:02)
Oh, so she had really been eager about this situation.
Speaker 2: (33:07)
And I mean, so I think, I don’t think it was as long as I expected. I think it was just a few days before I started talking to her. And by the time I had talked, I talked to her, I had found out bio dad’s story because she had told my wife and the wife was like, I don’t know if you really want to know much about your bio dad. And I was like, well, now I have to know, because if you’re telling me, I don’t want to know, I can’t help.
Speaker 1: (33:32)
Thanks for the,
Speaker 2: (33:33)
She filled me in on that. So I already knew he was in prison. But so when I start talking to aunt, she starts telling me, well, I’ve talked to who I think your dad is because really at this point we really didn’t still know. This was still who she believed my dad was. When you see pictures of the two of us side by side at the same age, it’s not really hard to figure out if it’s probably dad or not, but she had no proof, but she had taken it upon herself to get ahold of him, give him my date of birth, my full name and all the information she could, because she was determined to make sure that he knew that she knew that he had slept with her sister. So there, there was, there was some underlying motivation there out, outside. It was really kind of a dual thing.
Speaker 2: (34:20)
I think she, she was determined to prove that that happened as much as she was determined to. She said that she was worried that if I ever did reach out, that nobody would know, and she didn’t want that to happen either. One of those funny synchronicity things. By the time when she started talking to my wife, we had some friends that had adopted kids and were doing a fundraiser to raise money for an adoption. So what she ended up seeing was a picture of me on Facebook with a shirt that says supported option across the front. So her assumption was that I knew already did not know that when she told me that was the first I’d ever heard of it. And that’s one of those, you know, you can’t put the toothpaste
Speaker 1: (35:10)
Of other genes.
Speaker 2: (35:14)
So, so we talked and she kind of filled me in on family history, who everybody was. She had already told everybody, I think, uh, I don’t think there’s anybody. She hadn’t told that she had found me by then, because there was also a little kind of family riff of her. Sister’s really a hard time believing her story that I was, I came from where I came from.
Speaker 1: (35:44)
Yeah. She probably felt so Vincent
Speaker 2: (35:47)
There there’s, there’s solid vindication there of, I mean, you can’t deny it.
Speaker 1: (35:51)
Like I told you probably real loud.
Speaker 2: (35:58)
So she and I talked for a bit on Facebook and then I started talking to, I think it was bio dad. So I’ve learned all kinds of things about prison in the short year and a half, two years now. Apparently you’re a prison.
Speaker 1: (36:19)
Okay. Do you connect? You have connected with him. Okay. So you’ve learned all sorts of things. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (36:25)
Yeah. So there’s email and prison didn’t know now I know. Um, so that was the way we started talking to each other was she said, you know, he said that if you would like to email him, you’re welcome to. And I was like, well, I mean, it’s, he, he’s not the first murderer I’d ever met. So it wasn’t like, Oh my gosh, it’s a murder. I was like, all right, I’ll talk to him. I don’t care. So I sent him an email and, you know, he, he was very not standoffish, but very reserved at first kind of, you know, yes, I’m totally, he would totally cop the idea that I could be his kid as much as could anybody else that had been around at that time too. And I was like, that’s fair enough. So
Speaker 1: (37:08)
He hadn’t, he hadn’t known about your existence all this time.
Speaker 2: (37:12)
So what sold? So we talked and he said, you know, timing wise. Yeah. I was with your mom back then. Um, so it’s totally possible, but I’m not convinced. He, he knew my mom was pregnant around that time. He didn’t know, like I said, it wasn’t for sure that I was him, that it was him. What kind of sold it for him was let’s see if I can make that show on your screen. I sent him a picture of both of us and about the same, I think that’s both of us in our mid forties. He saw that and was like, Oh, okay. So what ended up happening just completely bizarre was now I felt the need to research. Cause I mean, bio mom’s side was laid out for me. There wasn’t a question genetically, when I finally got smart enough to click on the DNA matches on ancestry there, she was listed as, this is your aunt.
Speaker 2: (38:06)
We’re for sure that you’re and it’s like 1700 Senta Morgan’s I’m like, okay, fair enough. That’s my, but there was nothing really to match me to him. Other than I could take, you know, you split your matches. I could say here’s, here’s where I matched with my aunt who shares these matches with me. And that gave me maternal side. And then I knew that these other matches were paternal side, but I didn’t have any strong, like I have another aunt or anything popping up then. So now that I had learned that ancestry apparently matched me to people. I thought, well, I should go look at all these messages because apparently we had messages in the inbox we had never looked at. And one of them was from a lady who said, you showed to be related. I’m managing my daughter-in-law’s account. You showed to be related to her.
Speaker 2: (39:02)
And we’re trying to find her birth parents. And I was like, so I messaged her back, I think two years after she sent me the message and was like, so I just found out that there’s messages in ancestry. And I’m just reaching back out to you to see what you learned and see if I can help because I just found out I was adopted and she reached out to why don’t you call me? And the bees are, if we talk and it’s like, okay, that’s great. So bizarre, bizarre story. Her daughter-in-law had been raised by a man that she believed to be her bio dad with the belief that her mom had left them only find out later that the man that raised her had actually, I don’t know, not, you can’t say not in a weird way, but not in like a weird molestation scary way, but had kidnapped her and raised her as his own kid to get her away from her bio parents.
Speaker 2: (40:01)
So that’s why he was searching was she was looking for bio appearance and she’s so, and she had found, I think she had figured it out by then. So when I’m on the phone, the mother-in-law that’s talking to me is like, well, I have all the files. So if you can tell me who you match with that, you know is paternal. I can probably work you through it. And I was like, okay. So kind of like you just did with the pen, I got out a piece of construction paper and I said, here’s my match with, and she’s like, okay. And she had like legit paper files. I could hear the paper rustling in the background, like, hold on. Oh, okay. So if you match this person, this person is the child of these two people. These two people had one son and she basically traced it back to him like that from I think, a cousin or something that she said.
Speaker 2: (40:59)
So that it’s probably a good chance at Sam. I was like, okay. So I reached back out to him and I said, I had sent you the picture. I talked to some lady and she says she believes were related in. Here’s how I, you know, I did my best since it’s email. And not that I can draw on. It’s like, here’s kind of how everybody lined out. And his next email response was, Hey son. And that we didn’t say that freaked me out. We didn’t talk for probably three weeks a month because I was not ready for that yet. Even though I knew it was true, I wasn’t ready to hear it like that. So that kind of paused us in that same timeframe. I had started talking to my, I just, I don’t have any other brothers and sisters. I’m an only kid. So I just call them all my brothers and sisters now. So started talking to my sister and we set up a time to meet. And she and her fiance back then, and me and my wife all met. And it was, it was so weird. It was like some you’ve been friends with for 20 years and hadn’t seen for five years and you go up and just fall right back into the same conversation.
Speaker 3: (42:16)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Settle into rhythm right away. Completely comfortable.
Speaker 2: (42:22)
See any resemblance until my wife showed me pictures. Once, once she took a picture of us standing side by side and hugging each other and she showed me, I was like, Oh, okay. Yep. That’s
Speaker 3: (42:33)
Yup. Now you know what that feels,
Speaker 2: (42:36)
But not sitting across the table, couldn’t have in a million years been like, Oh yeah, that looks like me. And I mean, when you see the picture like, well, are you stupid? Do you not know what you look like? Because
Speaker 3: (42:45)
She looked
Speaker 2: (42:47)
So she and I have gotten super close, love her to death. We talk just about every day, usually on Facebook, just messaging back and forth. So that’s the nice thing about this story is all the reunions have really been pretty good. So hers is great. Um, the aunt that found me, we still talked to the antique, found me is the only one that does deliver anymore. She’s in Tennessee. Now her husband passed away and she moved to Tennessee, but everybody else is still here locally. So her, I see a lot less just because she’s a long ways off, but I’d see sister fairly regularly. My other aunt that is the youngest of the sisters. I see. And talk to her. I see her fairly regularly and we talk pretty much every few days on Facebook. Same thing. Great lady. Fun to talk to. She’s
Speaker 2: (43:45)
Early, early sixties. So she’s not, she’s barely a decade older than me. So she and I talk all the time. I talked to sister all the time. I have another aunt who’s a little bit older and nothing bad, great connection. Super sweet lady. We just don’t talk as much. I don’t know why we don’t use don’t. And then I have a brother on mom’s side who he and I messaged back and forth. He actually lives in Houston now. So we’re far enough apart. We don’t see each other near as much, but we still just messaged back and forth.
Speaker 3: (44:18)
Y’all just stay connected. I think
Speaker 2: (44:22)
I have to go back and look to ever remember it. Right. But around that same time, well, this I’ll go back to talking to bio-data. So while, while we’re talking about, while I’m emailing back and forth with bio dad, he tells me that he wants me to talk to his girlfriend and I’m already thinking you I’ve met enough people. And in a couple months, I don’t need to meet any new people. I’m I’m people up, but he I’m like, well, I’m trying to be nice. I’m like, Oh, well, I mean, I don’t know. I don’t know where she lives. I was like, and he emails back. He’s like, well, no, you actually know my girlfriend. And I’m thinking to hell, I know anybody that, you know, you’ve been in prison since 1972 in Louisiana. There, there’s no way that I know anybody that, you know, and he tells me her name and says, she works with you. And she has a very unique name. And I’m like, Oh my God, I know exactly who that is. So it turns out, it turns out that I work with my ex step-mom, I guess you would call her. So she is brother’s mom. So she was the one that he was married to when he made me, she and I work in the same place
Speaker 1: (45:44)
That’s on. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (45:45)
Another, I mean, I’ve met her. She, she works in HR. So I mean, I’ve met her in our HR lady. And like I said, a unique enough name. As soon as he told me, I was like, Oh, okay. I know her.
Speaker 1: (46:00)
Well, it is. So did dish. I mean, may, maybe this isn’t related to the NP thing so much, it’s just the sort of like complicated nuances of, of everybody’s families. But does she consider herself his girlfriend?
Speaker 2: (46:14)
I don’t know. I think so. So they were married. They stay married. They stayed married for about his first five years in prison. And then they both will tell you that when they got divorced, they still love each other. But he realized he, he, we can get into his whole story, but he’s doing a life sentence with no possibility of parole and decided that there’s no way he’s getting out. And there’s no reason that she should live her life married to somebody that’s never coming back to the free world.
Speaker 1: (46:44)
Right. So they’re no longer really married, but they still acknowledge it.
Speaker 2: (46:48)
Well, so they got divorced. She married somebody else. And I don’t really know how that one ended, whether he passed away, they got divorced or what the story was. I know that she’s not married anymore. And when I reached out to her and she was it, it’s still very weird to me. And it’s, it’s super sweet to me. I’m just like a six foot three acknowledgement that your husband fooled around on you is so nice to me. So when I emailed her, I’m emailing her at work. After he’s told me to contact her and you know, it’s work. Everybody can read your work email. It says, every time you log in the computer, so I’m being very circular. I’m like, so I talked to somebody that says, they know you and says, and I’m saying all this. And I hit send, I mean, as soon as I hit send my phone rings and she’s like, Oh my glass, I’m so glad you finally contacted me. I’m going to start sending you pictures. So he had, they had been talking. So like I said, she’s never called herself, his girlfriend to me, but she visits on the regular. They see each other every week on telephone and video visits when, before COVID she visited all the time and a boatload of pictures, she sent me where the two of them hugging in prison, visiting room. So it’s like, there’s still something there.
Speaker 1: (48:17)
Right, right. Something, some kind of companionship, some kind of companionship and love. Um, what was it like, can we talk just a little bit about, um, so, so what was it like for you to be, to have a got, uh, I don’t know why this is a hard question to ask it. I’m just trying to word it correctly. What was it like to find out that your dad was a man who murdered murdered somebody and was in jail for the rest of the act? You know,
Speaker 2: (48:54)
Honestly, no, not really. And I think that’s mainly because that, it’s not that unique of a thing for me. Like, I mean, it’s unique that it’s my bio dad, but so before I was a cop, I worked in a big County jail. I’ve spent a lot of time around people that have killed people, then all kinds of awful things. And they’re just people that they’ve made horrible decisions, but not something that was shocking.
Speaker 1: (49:26)
So your bio dad could have been, uh, could have been, could have been a murderer just like anybody else couldn’t be a murderer. It was as light as anything else. That’s interesting. That’s actually a very human way to think of it. Um,
Speaker 2: (49:41)
Yeah. Yeah. I worked in a jail for about just shy of three years. And one of the big things I really ever learned was you would end up talking to some super smart people that just made really crappy choices. I mean, had they applied themselves in any other direction or had the ability to totally different world. So knowing that that’s what he did and that’s who he was. It really, it was kind of a non-issue for me now, what I did, I’m trying to think of anything else too well. So I, I also met my brother, his son, and obviously we hit it off. We’ve had the same jobs for about the same amount of time. He and I, like I said, I started work in a big County jail here and I missed each other there by about two years. I left there in 93 and he started there in 95 or no, that’s wrong. I left there in 95 and he started there in 97.
Speaker 1: (50:42)
That’s amazing. So you could talk about whatever, just, wow.
Speaker 2: (50:49)
So he and I, it’s weird. He and I like similar music, just very similar in a lot of ways. So he’s, he’s a great dude. He’s fun to talk to it’s I didn’t grow up as an only child, always wishing that I’d had siblings. Like I didn’t, my wife’s an only child too, just like, you know, I always wanted a brother or sister. I never really had that, but now that I have my one them for the world, so it’s totally cool to have my just didn’t know what I was missing.
Speaker 1: (51:17)
It feels like, uh, it sounds like you’re, you’re a, you’re a man who, um, in, uh, you’re you’re, there’s that it’s actually, like, it’s kind of a Zen philosophy that you’ve had for your whole life. Everything you’ve described it, like, what is, is like, you just seem to be in like a place of acceptance. Um, like, I mean, you’re just talking about visiting that doctor and being like, okay, like we visited this doctor in this town and there’s no stories of birth, like, okay. That’s what it is. And, and I didn’t, I don’t have siblings. Okay. That’s life. And then, um, which is, uh, I could see that, um, that trait being a great benefit to anybody, um, that an adaptability or something
Speaker 2: (51:58)
There is it’s, I think that traits good, except it makes it really easy for you to accept what you see and then you don’t realize you’re adopted for 48 years. So there’s that?
Speaker 1: (52:09)
Yeah. I mean, that way they don’t see it.
Speaker 2: (52:13)
It’s helpful. I mean, it does, it hasn’t changed the need for therapy and things like that, but it’s, it’s helpful to be able to not freak out that, you know, Oh my gosh, my dad murdered somebody. Yeah. He did.
Speaker 1: (52:26)
Right, right. Um, and how can you just touch briefly on, uh, did you ever talk with your, your adopt, your adopt div parents? Like, are they, are they, are you did that? How’s that going with it?
Speaker 2: (52:42)
Um, so it’s kind of a mixed bag. We talked like, I like, uh, totally skipped over that part. The
Speaker 1: (52:50)
Monday
Speaker 2: (52:52)
After I found out we sat down and had a one hour conversation where basically they told me, you know, they adopted me in short of that. They know nothing. They don’t know anything about my birth mother, my birth father, they know that they filled out some forms. It turns out the hospital we used to visit was the hospital I was born in. The doctor, used to visit Dr. Carmichael was the person that arranged the adoption and said, if y’all are ever here, I’d love to see him as he grows up. So that’s why we would go there all the time.
Speaker 1: (53:22)
It’s just a friendly neighbor so that why, um,
Speaker 2: (53:27)
You know, they told me, I think all the things parents feel like they have to say, nothing’s changed. We’re still your parents. Um, which is nice and accepting. And at the same time totally untrue because everything kind of changes all at once. Um, so, but I think probably the weirdest thing about talking with him about it was I felt like I spent about an hour trying to make them feel better for the secret they kept.
Speaker 1: (53:58)
Right. I think that’s, I think that’s really common. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (54:01)
So I spent an hour like it’s okay. It’s great inside. I’m about to explode, but no, this is all good. This is all fine. It’s all good. So the only thing that we really didn’t agree on was when it came to telling my kids, I mean, they they’ve, they’re accomplished secret keepers. They’ve done pretty good at it. And they did not like the idea that I was gonna tell him, tell the kids. And I told him, you know, all I really know to tell you is your secret is not mine to bear. And they need to know because their dad’s gonna be talking about adoption, all kinds of weird stuff. And they don’t need to think, wait, am I adopted nothing wrong with it? But they’ve got enough things going on as they’re growing up to not know, to be wondering, why is dad whispering of mom about adoption?
Speaker 1: (54:43)
Right. Right. Well, this is like, as somebody who, who knows what that surprise feels like when it’s a shock.
Speaker 2: (54:50)
What, I didn’t know when we had that conversation, would that would, that would be almost one of the last conversations we’d ever have about it. So apparently we talked about it at once and then we were going to put it back in a box and not talk about it.
Speaker 1: (55:04)
Hey, we did it that wasn’t so bad. It was only an hour.
Speaker 2: (55:09)
Really didn’t catch onto that until I think the first time that I was meeting my brother on dad’s side, I was driving out to meet him for dinner. And my dad just out of the blue called said, Hey, where do you? I was like, Oh, I’m meeting a friend for dinner. Or just go hang out and have a couple beers. Now Barry’s like, Oh, great. Who you meet? And I was like a buddy of mine from work that you’ve never met, but who and I was like, it’s my brother. And he goes, man, it has been hot today.
Speaker 1: (55:38)
Yeah. Too much.
Speaker 2: (55:39)
So that’s the way it stayed. So I found out March of 2019, that’s the way it stayed till probably late February of 2020. My dad got sick, ended up in the hospital and my mom and our split and nights in the hospital with him. And one night in the middle of the night, he woke up and looked over and said, Brad, I’m dying. And I was like, you’re dying now. Or, I mean, just in general, you’re not feeling. He was like, no, I think I’m dying right now. I was like, okay, what do we do? And he’s like, well, let’s just talk. Okay. What are we gonna talk about? So if you met any of your family and he got very curious, so we spent probably hour and a half hour, hour and a half, two hours talking about meat. And everybody, I showed him pictures on my phone, everybody. And we kind of sewed up all that in one little hour to chat. And he said, I always want to know, but your mom always got upset about it. So I never wanted to ask. And I was like, okay. And probably a week after that, he passed away.
Speaker 2: (56:50)
So I did get some closure there, mom, what I didn’t, like I said, my parents are accomplished secret keepers. I knew that my mom’s memory was slipping. I didn’t know how bad her Alzheimer’s was till my dad died.
Speaker 1: (57:06)
So there’s so there’s really
Speaker 2: (57:08)
No closure there because there’s really not much she can tell me anymore. She’s gotten very curious about my siblings, but for a lot of more complicated, like four more hours of talking reasons, I’ve just kind of kept those two separate. So that’s probably not going to be something that we ever get together and see each other or everybody meet at the same time. But I had what, I’ve, what I got kind of bound and determined to do. And what it made them do really with stop asking what I told no, I was like, I feel guilty enough. Like, I feel like I’m sneaking around. I don’t feel like I should need to sneak around. I’m never going to lie. If you ask me where I’m going and like my parents call and say, where are you going? I’m going to tell you, I’m going to go in to see my sister. If you don’t talk about it. That’s great. Stop asking me where I’m going. So
Speaker 1: (58:03)
Yeah,
Speaker 2: (58:06)
The only one that I kept totally secret was I think it was right at a month before my dad passed away, it would have been like middle of February of last year. We actually went, it was before COVID hit and everything shut down. We went and I got to actually visit my dad in prison. So we got to actually sit down face-to-face and meet each other that,
Speaker 1: (58:36)
Wow, that’s all I said. Wow. That’s that’s interesting. How was that?
Speaker 2: (58:41)
It was really neat. So like I said, sister and I and brother and I that are both here close have hit it off phenomenally. Well, my aunt and I have hit it off really well. I really went in, I tried to go in to meet and bio dad with really low expectations. Cause I mean, if you read enough of the stories, things just aren’t good. We had emailed back and forth a bunch. So it wasn’t like we didn’t, we hadn’t really talked yet, but I really just tried to go in with kind of the expectation of I’ve been around criminals my whole life and I don’t need a person in my life. That’s Mr. You know, this isn’t my fault. These aren’t my, that you found all these drugs in, none of this, the world is against me and I’ve been treated unfairly and that’s how I’ve ended up here. So I went in, I honestly, I think I went in expecting well, and I’ll, I’ll, I’ll back up in a second, but I went in expecting to really not get much out of it other than here’s a person that’s part of the reason I’m on earth and we’re done with that.
Speaker 3: (59:44)
Um, yeah,
Speaker 2: (59:46)
That’s that’s actually, yeah, I kind of just thought out kind of just closing, closing the ring, just getting it all the way done and that way I’ve closed that circle up. That’s actually what started me in therapy. When I found this out, I went through about the first six months saying I’m great. Everything’s fine. Everything’s wonderful. Lester Holt. And he’s a phenomenal reporter. I always call him that Lester Holt because Lester Holt did a Dateline special called life on the inside where he spent three nights in Angola prison.
Speaker 3: (01:00:14)
And it is where my dad is
Speaker 2: (01:00:19)
When I watched that it wholly and completely derailed me from feeling. So I started therapy trying to figure out was I going to go meet BioDapt? Did I want to bring all this into my life? The short version of the conclusion was obviously, yeah, I decided to. So I went, had very low expectations of him. Um, he had told me, he said, you know, it’s a special visit so you can stay all day as long as it’s not too busy to them. Like whatever. Well, I was literally there for eight hours. So it was, yeah, it was a lot, but so got there and got the prison, got searched, got run through metal detectors. If you’ve never seen Angola prison, it’s like 15,000 acres. I think it’s this huge old plantation. So I got bused four miles into the prison somewhere where I got dropped off at a camp and go in there and let’s revisit. So what was weird was half-brother and sister, until I saw pictures of a side, side by side, I didn’t really catch the resemblance. He walked in the room and I was like, Oh, so that’s how I look when I’m 75. Okay.
Speaker 3: (01:01:38)
And
Speaker 2: (01:01:40)
When he sat down with me, what total, I’ll say he totally took me by surprise. He sat down and I don’t know. I’m sure. Part, I think part of it was a test to kind of see, you know, do, am I just going to run away and not want to get to know him or anything? He sat down and spilled his life to me with no excuses for anything. I mean, he said, you know, I can tell you that I killed somebody because I was drinking and I was high and all this stuff. Cause I was drinking and I, but I killed somebody cause I chose to kill somebody. And I was like, Oh, okay. And he, he owned all of it and that was not at all what I was expecting. So that kind of let me let my guard down. And I’m at the point now where I genuinely liked the guy. I mean, he’s done something horrible. He’s prob I would love to say that. I think he’ll get out of prison one day. He still holds out some hope that there’ll be some sentencing revisioning I don’t know if you will or not, but I genuinely liked the man.
Speaker 2: (01:02:44)
So we’ve gone from, we would email every once in a while till now we video COVID shut down all prison visits. So I can’t go see him. Um, we video visit every Friday and we talked on the phone every Monday. So the, I would say the, the worst part about having, finding this out and have somebody in prison is I’m getting to know him in 10 minutes. Burt’s shorter emails. All the phone calls are 10 minutes. All the video is for 10 minutes. So everything is so short. So we’ve, we’ve taken the email in quite a bit just because there’s no time, but I mean, wow. Overall it’s, I mean, it’s, it’s been a lot, it’s been very hard. I still have a lot of identity stuff to work through, but compared to so many other people’s stories I’ve heard on your podcast, other people’s podcasts and you read, everybody has been super welcoming. I mean, there there’s been nobody that turned their back. So I don’t want any part of this. Everybody’s been nothing but nice to me.
Speaker 1: (01:03:53)
That’s so
Speaker 2: (01:03:54)
It is, it’s
Speaker 1: (01:03:58)
Probably, I don’t know. I mean, well, one day there will be data on all of this I imagine, but probably more people than not are, are probably welcoming and nice, but it’s the, it’s the people that don’t get a nice welcoming that come to the support groups. I don’t know. It’s like, that’s almost like a skewed data situation, but, um, but it’s, it’s always lovely to have a reminder that, um, that there are nice people and probably most people are nice standing about this or like, I, at least I can hope that that, that it’s most. Um, wow. And I just keep saying, wow. Um, well tell me what, so, uh, L uh, what do you think, what would you say has helped you the most through this process get from where you were on day one to where you are now?
Speaker 2: (01:04:58)
Well, I think it started with therapy, but therapy is what really started journaling, which is what led to writing. Cause I figured out that I legitimately liked to write. So, um, I would journal my therapist, like, you know, just journal your thoughts. So I would sit there and journal and journal and journal all my random thoughts. And there was something I never, I still don’t really understand it. I mean, I, I understand that it works like therapy, but just getting those feelings out of my own head, even if it’s just on paper, even if I’m not talking about them, to somebody there’s a huge cathartic release that comes with that and then taking it a step further and putting them out in the ether and letting other people read them while super scary is even more cathartic than just writing them for myself.
Speaker 2: (01:05:51)
So that’s, that’s probably been the biggest one. I don’t think I would’ve ever done it without therapy. And I, I still think therapy is a huge part of it for me because it’s, I’m trying to kind of even explain it. Well, it’s like my wife and I can talk about this all day long. And she’s, she’s my super support star in all this. But you kind of like you, you know this, cause you’re a therapist. You need somebody that knows how to ask the right questions to kind of get down to the nitty-gritty of what’s going on. Like I’ve, I’ve learned they’ll eventually be probably something else. I write for severance. My first therapist who just stopped taking clients and not have to find a new therapist, set me up using a feelings wheel or a feeling start is I suck at feelings. So she’s like, well, how do you feel? I’m like, I’m sad. And she’s like, well, but the explain saboteur. I’m like, I’m sad. I said it I’m sad. So she gave me this in the chart. She gave me this chart and I’m like, Oh wow. Look at all the other words there are for sale.
Speaker 1: (01:06:55)
Yeah, that is, yeah. I do that with someone. I do that with a lot of clients, but I am doing that with some NPE clients.
Speaker 2: (01:07:02)
And when you dig down into those words, it I’ve always thought it. Cause I always, I’ve always said words matter. I didn’t know how much till I got that wheel. And like, Oh, if you find the right word for something, it totally releases it where sad doesn’t. But if you find like a word, like anguish or something, you’re like, Oh, that’s, that’s the word for this. And it’s just different now.
Speaker 1: (01:07:26)
And again, and again, we come back to the power of language.
Speaker 2: (01:07:30)
Therapy has probably been my biggest help writings. What makes me feel the best through all of it, but I don’t think I’d ever write much if I didn’t go to therapy.
Speaker 1: (01:07:41)
Yeah. Now you’ve become a part of this community through, did you come in through a support group or did you come into, did you come to severance as a writer? How did you sort of navigate into this, into this small world of us?
Speaker 2: (01:07:56)
So I started with one of the big, big support groups. Cause that was the only one I ever found when I first started. And then
Speaker 1: (01:08:05)
That’s easy to understand.
Speaker 2: (01:08:08)
I think I’ve kind of gone in cycles. What ended up happening was my first therapist, we were talking, we were talking about journaling and that I liked to write and she was like, you need to find something to do with all this. And I was like, okay, well what, what do I do? So I just, just look and see, what could you do with all this? So I started Googling things and I stumbled at about the same time into severance magazine. And then one of the smaller NBE groups and well, actually what I stumbled into was the right to know page, I think. And that brought me talking to people that are like, well, you should join this group. And about that same time, I just kindly blindly reached out to BK who edits everything for severance and said, I don’t know if I’m a good writer, I’m journaling a bunch.
Speaker 2: (01:09:06)
But I just think that I would like to write if I send you something, well, then I’d read her submission guidelines. I was like, if I send you the things I’d like to write about, could you tell me if there’s one of you’d like me to try? And she said, sure. So I sent her a ton of ideas. And of course, if you’re talking to her much, she’s like, well, I like all your ideas. So write about the one you want, like want to write about. And I was like, so I picked one, spit something out and she liked it. And we went back and forth a few times with her edits. And that’s how it started.
Speaker 1: (01:09:36)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, it’s, um, you’re really, uh, I feel like we are, the NPE community is lucky to have you, is what I’m trying. It’s uh you’re you’re and it’s also, um, and you actually just wrote about this, but there aren’t as many men in this community. And so you are, um, it’s great to have you as a man and then also, you know, and, and somebody that’s writing and you’re, you’re not only a man, not only a man, but you’re a vulnerable man. Um, I just, I just think we’re all, we’re all benefiting from, um, your journey. And that is a really generous thing to share, um, to share with people it’s really having an effect, which is awesome.
Speaker 2: (01:10:25)
What’s weird is I do great with it here. I went to therapy on Friday and she said, well, how are you doing? I was like, I’m totally overwhelmed. Will you present? Like, you’re fine. I was like, I know, because I do walk around. I’ll be like, I’m fine, but I’m not. But here when I write and stuff, I do find letting it all go, I guess, right in the day-to-day world. She’s like, well, you act like you’re fine. I was like, that’s part of my game. That’s why I’m here seeing you because I’m not good at things.
Speaker 1: (01:10:52)
Right, right. Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, we can do a whole other episode about that. Um, Brad, thank you so much for your time. Yeah. This is so fun. I’m, I’m really excited. I am, uh, I am doing, what’s called batching. I lot of M M uh, episodes right now. So I’m recording a whole bunch and they’ll all be coming out in a couple of months. Um, of course I’ll keep in touch. Um, and in the meantime, if you want to send me any photos or charts or, you know, any information that, um, illustrates, uh, your story, then I would love to have them for the social media pages, but that’s not, um, that’s definitely not required. Um, yeah, I just, uh, I just wanted to, to get to hang out with you for evening and you got a good story. Good complicated story. Scandal, family school, um, yeah, family scandal and, and small town. And it all makes sense because everybody generally stays, you know, in the area that they grow up in, but cool. Lots of ships passing in the night and scandal and, and, and like redemption. There’s something about your dad that it’s really interesting. Both your dad’s redemption in their own ways. Really beautiful. Thank you so much. Um, yeah, I’ll be in touch. You have a good night. Thanks for staying up late.
Speaker 1: (01:12:24)
Awesome. Thank you, Brad. All right, I’ll talk to you later. Bye.
NPE Stories Special Crossover Episode!
Speaker 1: (00:00)
Okay. We’ve started recording. I’ll get it on my end. Okay, cool. Um, yeah, so like, I’ll just kind of like dive in and let everybody know what’s going on. Um, I’m here with Hollywood today. It’s very exciting when we’ve done a crossover episode. So I just spent, um, an hour or so with her on her podcast, we just talked and talked and talked. Um, I think we just started to do it again. And then we were like, we gotta do the podcast, we gotta do it. Um, so now we’re recording. We’re going to focus on the API’s. Um, so we’re here. So Lilly is, it’s very exciting. I just want to keep calling you, Lily would do people do that, but they just call you first and like
Speaker 2: (00:43)
Totally fine. They do that with my daughter. She’s a Hollywood. So that feeling
Speaker 1: (00:46)
You’re kidding me. Come on. Yeah, like I, so the reason I do that with a lot of people, but like certain names just have that ring. Um, yep. So the reason that it’s a little bit extra exciting to have Lily wood on my podcast is because she has her own podcast. Nollywood is doing the same thing as I am, um, in her own way. Uh, also with the podcast, she has a podcast called NPE stories. It’s, uh, found all the places my podcast has found its um, so Apple, I, you know, whatever I’m going to take this part out. Um, so, um, so okay. Hold on. Let me do that again. Um, so it’s really exciting to have the Leewood here today because she has a podcast, NPE stories. It is similar to mine, but very different because we’re different people and we have come at it, um, with different angles and experiences and different tones. Um, so it’s really fun to get, to have someone else that not only has an MPE story to share with us, but also she and I get to have a connection because we’re both trying to spread the word and um, share our stories. So I have the Leewood I’m thrilled to have her here today. Thank you so much for giving me your afternoon.
Speaker 2: (02:06)
Oh absolutely. I’m I’m having a lot of fun and I haven’t laughed this hard in a while, so yeah.
Speaker 1: (02:15)
Yeah. It’s a really fun my Mondays don’t normally aren’t normally this fun at all. Um, so yeah, it’s been really, really fun and silly. So, um, I am gonna, um, my, so, okay. Um, I want the first question I wanted to ask you is actually the same question you asked me, which is, um, which is about your podcast. And um, I’m wondering if you could just like talk a little bit about what gave you the idea to do a podcast and why?
Speaker 2: (02:48)
Yes, absolutely. I, I, when I first found out I was an NPE, I was, um, right, totally shocked and looking for any information I could find. And I remember a week after finding out someone introduced the board NPE to me, the, you know, all the different acronyms that can be not paired expected my non paternal event. And I’m like, okay, there’s a name for it. It’s a really terrible name. It’s a really terrible acronym, but okay, now I know what I am and I can start Googling this. And I did. And that’s pretty soon I found my way into the Facebook groups. Um, and I was obsessed with scrolling and reading everyone’s story. I was spending hours right in the beginning, just reading and reading and reading to the point where it was getting to be a little unhealthy. I needed to actually pull myself away from my devices and still do life like dishes and driving my kids places.
Speaker 1: (03:51)
Have you slept?
Speaker 2: (03:53)
Oh, and I didn’t, I didn’t, I, my poor husband next to me, I’ve got the lights on my devices till one in the morning. And yeah, I was so obsessed, but I am, I’ve always been a podcast listener. Uh, it just works with my personality. I’m the sort of person that just puts it in my back pocket and goes about my day and does my stuff and takes in the content. So I’m looking on, I think Apple podcasts, I’m an iPhone user and I’m typing in this word NPE, cause I don’t know what else to type in. Uh, and I, nothing at the time popped up for me now I’ve since learned, you can do things like DNA discoveries and surprises and genetic. I mean there’s many other search terms now I know to use and make my way to your podcast and others. Um, but at the time that’s the only word I had to use. So I was
Speaker 1: (04:47)
To be so unfair for all of us because it’s like such a new thing that we have to. I mean, how, what do you, how do you type? I mean, yeah. I remember typing in like entire sentences. Like that was like how to find your, when your dad is not your dad. Like, like yeah.
Speaker 2: (05:08)
Yes, exactly. Um, so again, this terrible acronym that we have that we own, it’s ours, this NPE, um, I wanted to take all those stories. I was reading on the Facebook groups and I wanted them in audio format. That’s all I want. I just wanted them in audio format so I could listen to them. And I’m like, why isn’t there a podcast? Um, I’ve actually since found out there was there was yours. Cause I found out an hour or two ago that you started April, 2019. Did you say yes. Okay. So I thought I can compile these stories. I don’t want to share my own, but I will, I can record them. And I was only maybe one month into my own journey and I decided to start a podcast, um, very fresh, very raw. And I did not want my name associated with it at all. I said, I only go by the first name Lilly at the time that that was back in 2019.
Speaker 1: (06:09)
Sorry I was going to say Matt, I am interrupter. Um, that’s so funny because I feel like all of a sudden we all know that this NPE stories has Lily wood on it. And for a long time that you were like this mystery podcast, it was like this mystery. And I was like, there’s like a lady. Her name is Lily. We don’t know where she is. Like you were this, you were like voice from a basement. I don’t know. I always imagined you went to church.
Speaker 2: (06:40)
That is, that was what I was going for. I mean, I was going for the fact that I was just Lilly. Um, I was carrying on my mom’s, um, shame and secrecy and I was like, I have to keep this quiet. I have to, I have to be quiet about it. I don’t know if maybe my biological father will one day include me in his life. I need to be, you know, I need to keep this a secret. I was, I was such a different scared person in the beginning. Um, I started, I just launched the trailer. That’s all I did. And in the trailers when I asked for people to start submitting and I actually had a few people that offered, so thank God other people were willing to share those stories in the beginning because I had no idea what I was doing. I mean, I still, literally every day have no idea what I’m doing. Um, but I, I’m more of an organizer I think is what I would call myself. Just an organizer of everyone else’s story.
Speaker 1: (07:37)
Well, you’re doing a wonderful job. Whether it’s organizing or facilitating. We could say that you’re a curator. Yes.
Speaker 2: (07:45)
Like it, thank you. Yes.
Speaker 1: (07:48)
Lily would curation of stories.
Speaker 2: (07:52)
I mean really it’s everyone else. They’re so brave and they’re such better storytellers than I, and they’re willing to dive deep into this stuff that, you know, it’s uncomfortable to talk about this sometimes depending on where you are in your healing process. And you know, I’m just really thankful that people are willing to share their story because I love listening to it. And the whole time I’m just nodding, like nodding along in agreement with everything they’re saying,
Speaker 1: (08:21)
Yeah, it’s the connection of familiarity. Is that what it is? Or the con yeah, that it’s, um, it’s really, really powerful. That’s something that, um, I have not, I have understood it in the past, but not perhaps as profoundly as with the NPE experience, for sure. For me. So you were a month in when you started the podcast, so you are now 18 months a year and a half in.
Speaker 2: (08:56)
Uh, and I don’t really think anything has changed in my story. Um, but yeah, I’m obviously I’m feeling much, much better and I’m, I am a year and a half in. I have all these resources I use has anything changed? No, I, I still have no contact with my biological father or new half siblings, but I now know there’s such a thing as an NPE, I’m on all the Facebook groups I listened to your podcast. I, I read the books, I do the things. Um, the only thing I haven’t done yet is this retreat. I mean, you know, COVID is messed everything up, but really messed everything up it Ted. It did. And one of these days I want to get one of those NPE retreats on my, on my docket. That’s for sure.
Speaker 1: (09:50)
Yeah. I think you will have a really good time. Um, because I just had a really good time. I feel like, I feel like we are similar in a lot of ways and I think you would, it would really crack you up to one of these retreats and be good for you. That’s the thing is like it was, um, it was like so fun and it, it, it did like crack me up. Like it just was so, so much more fun than I anticipated, but, but also like I was just, I’ve said this so many times to people, um, in the past couple of weeks, like the everyone’s ability to pivot from laughing and joking and telling wild stories or saying wild things and having a great time pivoting to being able to tend to somebody that was in a place of vulnerability or sharing a story or being present for the different facilitators that were there for different workshops. Like it was, it was super amazing. People were able to swing, um, you know, in a way that I’m, I don’t know that everyone can do. And it was very impressive,
Speaker 2: (10:57)
So true. That sounds like my cup of tea. I’m I’m that way I’m like I could be joking around and then the next day I’m like, let’s get real. Let’s get into it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (11:05)
Yeah. People were doing it. It was very cool. It was very, very cool. I really admired everybody’s um, like vulnerability. It was cool. So yeah, let’s go do one together. Okay. Um, so, okay. So do you, um, want to share your NPE story? What parts of it are you comfortable
Speaker 2: (11:23)
Sharing
Speaker 1: (11:26)
How you do it? Are you and you also don’t?
Speaker 2: (11:29)
Uh, gosh, no, I don’t want to, no, I’m I just, um, uh I’m I love listening and um, sometimes I feel, Oh, it’s happening right now. I get this physical, like my throat and my chest get tight because I think like, Ugh, this sucks talking about mostly what I’m thinking of in my head. I’m not obviously not communicating this out loud. Okay. The behaviors since finding out I was an NPE 18 months ago have been particularly painful and something I’m working with right now in life, you know? Um, but yeah, I can, I can kind of give you my background. Should I do that? Sure. What are the bullet points or
Speaker 1: (12:28)
I can just ask you questions.
Speaker 2: (12:31)
Yes, yes. To all of,
Speaker 1: (12:36)
Okay. So, so this will be kind of like, I want someone to say like a mystery story, but, um, but I mean, not in the best way, um, because it also, I think something that we could really like illustrate right now is how the details don’t matter, because what is important is like the field is the way that we navigate the experience with our feelings, um, and our relationships, which is so much about what this is about. So, okay. So a year and a half ago, you, 18 months ago, you discovered you were an NPE and was that through a recreational, um, male in DNA test?
Speaker 2: (13:18)
Yup. Just one of those, uh, one of those tests I had originally taken the 23 and me, and was mostly for health reasons. I’m a health nut, and I wanted to know all the markers that I could potentially have, and I wanted to do all the preventative maintenance that that was necessary. Um, if I did have one of those markers, uh, I got back my results and I didn’t actually figure out I wasn’t NPE from that first take-home test. It showed what kind of planted that first seed that I was, um, not, I’ll say it showed that I was not half French as I thought I was, I have a Norwegian mother and a French father or so I thought, and I was named after my French grandmother, Lily, Marie DMO. And I have all this French culture and French wine and French this and, uh, all my dark, little small French aunties.
Speaker 2: (14:20)
So I really identified as that. And when I, I was shocked the head 1%, I think one to 2%, they estimated, uh, called my sister up. I’m like, look at this, I have more Italian than French. Isn’t that strange? My sister had taken ancestry and she said, no, no, we, we have French. And you know, that’s when it, that’s when the confusion starts and that’s when the, Oh, I’m not so sure about this technology. And maybe a technician got the hair, their hair in the, and uh, that’s when all the weird questions and my brains trying to make sense of my strange results. And she had just spent a hundred bucks at ancestry and I’d spent about that much at 23 and me, but we both determined, like we definitely need to take the same company’s test. I wish I’d taken it sooner, but it was about four more months till I did ancestry.
Speaker 2: (15:15)
I think they had a promo or some special. I finally took it. And that’s when I started to make the jokes to people like, well, you know, who maybe I’ll find out I have a different father. And can I go ahead? Um, what, when you said, um, I wish I had taken it before. I wish it hadn’t taken me so long or it took me about four months to take it. What do you feel like would be different if you had taken it sooner? Oh gosh. I guess nothing would have really been different. I think it still would’ve played out the same way. I, I was just kind of, but the thing is I was alone. I was alone with my confusion and it wasn’t until I had confirmed results when both my sister and I took ancestry, the ancestry tests that I was like, Oh, here’s why we have different results. Got it. Yup. Okay. Yeah. Like clarity, clarity would’ve come sooner. Yes, yes. Wait, we ended up having different results when my ancestry results came out, obviously because we have different fathers, uh, shocking. I had, I had, uh, in my DNA matches, I had my aunt and then my sister’s name and then I had my brother’s name, but I don’t have a brother.
Speaker 2: (16:42)
Uh, so that was confusing. My mom and I already went on very good. We didn’t have the strongest relationship at that point. Uh, so when I decided to just get in my car with my one hour old results and go over to her house to talk to her, my husband was saying, eh, maybe you shouldn’t talk with her. Maybe you got to think this through. And, um, I was like, well, exactly our relationship. Isn’t that great. So what do I have to lose? Why not just ask her? I assume there was some sort of explanation for this. Uh, she, she, when I got to her house and showed her my confusing results, she just didn’t really talk. She just kind of just sat there, like red eyes, red face. I looked like shocked me at whether or not it was, cause it was found out or whether or not it was finally confirmed. I don’t know. She was, she was definitely not comforting or helpful in any way, shape or form. It was, it was actually pretty terrible. I don’t think anyone actually feels good when they relive the moment of their confirmation that their dad is not their dad.
Speaker 1: (17:58)
Yeah. It’s so, um, it’s such a familiar story, like of, of sort of like watching so many, you know, whether it’s over the phone or, or being there in person, it’s like, um, it’s a real disconnect between you and your parent. All of a sudden
Speaker 2: (18:16)
It really is. Then things just got achy. I right. Cause then your life just kind of falls apart when you find that out. And my, my stepdad was actually in the room. The day I asked her and I’m pulling my hair out. I’m like, mom, are you saying my dad is not my dad? And she’s immediately minimizing like, Oh, Lily stopping your dad will always be your dad. Like I’m overreacting. You know, here I am me override my stepdad. I can, I didn’t realize this in my shock until later. But he’s saying to her from across the kitchen, uh, you’d never thought this would come back and bite. You did you. And I was like, wait, what did he know about this? And he obviously didn’t mean to say that out loud and wait, did he, did he know about this? What does he mean?
Speaker 2: (19:18)
This didn’t want to come back and bite her? Uh, yeah, yeah. Later, if, if I just skip ahead, it, it does turn out that although, you know, my mom never confirmed it with any sort of paternity tests and she never told anybody. Um, she had suspected that my biological father, who was her coworker, uh, you know, may have been my father. She had mentioned this to her husband, my step-dad and had considered it. And whether or not he’s, you know, he’s a credible protector for a reason, an enabler. Like you wouldn’t believe he will agree with her about anything until the end of time. Uh, which actually, you know, I’m sure that’s great for their marriage, but it’s actually, it’s really unhealthy, like mediocre stepdad. Yes. Uh, yeah. Yeah. So he kinda knew. So unfortunately, you know, the, the estrangement, isn’t just my mom because that’s where I’m at right now. I’m a strange from them. It’s my stepdad as well. Cause I’ll be because you know, he’s chosen his place, which is to be by my mom’s side, no matter what. Yeah. That’s too bad.
Speaker 1: (20:41)
The overall estrangement is too bad. Um, and what about sister? Is she,
Speaker 2: (20:48)
Um, in community with you? She’s trying so hard Eve. She’s really trying she’s um, uh, the first day she was shocked and she’s calling in on speaker phone and my mom is answering and saying, you know, immediately poo-pooing her. And like I yelling at my sister, I’ll talk with you about this later. This is none of your business. And my sister, I think even she took the day off work. Um, she was so upset about it as well, but she did go to the place where a lot of us go and a lot of us daughters, well, maybe a lot of children in general, like, uh, protecting my mom. And it was for a few months there, it sucked. It really sucked because she, you know, and I understand this through therapy and I’ve put myself in her shoes and I try to be empathetic, but she was immediately, um, protective of my mom.
Speaker 2: (21:44)
And she S she did the, you know, she doesn’t, how does she say it? She was really worried about my mom feeling shame around this revelation. She didn’t want my mom to feel pain. She don’t want her to feel embarrassed or guilty or shamed. And she wanted to protect my mom. And I understand that. But, um, they really, for a while there were doing the, you know, I’m the troublemaker scenario. I’m I’m causing problems. Why do I have this anger towards my mom? Uh, this could have happened to anyone and it was hard for me to handle. So I just had to stop communication with all of them. My sister has, she is making an effort and I have to give her that much. She joined kind of her own little support group. She’s getting therapy. And she has told me, uh, I’m here for you.
Speaker 2: (22:46)
I’m your sister. And I love you. And even though she is in constant communication with my mom, and she does still think like you and mom need to talk to each other, that’s what she thinks will fix. This is that mom and I will need to talk to each other. Not that my mom needs to be honest or show any sort of love or support or remorse at all. Um, but then she, she thinks that I, she mom and I just need to talk. Um, but my mom, but not my mom, my sister is trying, I will give her that much. And I really actually appreciate the last couple of months, how she’s been, trying to be more supportive to me. That’s where we’re at now. What’s the age difference between she is three and a half years older, but if she were here today, she would ask, she would be like, which one’s older, who looks older, really looks older.
Speaker 2: (23:40)
She’s older. Yeah. Three and a half years. So when I, my mom slept with her co-worker, but for a while, she was doing the whole, he was my boss. And I started to get concerned, like, was this a position of empower? Like, you know, it was this it anyway, I moved past that now because it wasn’t my, I don’t believe it was her boss. It is a coworker. And my mom was 30 years old. And executive had all the resources. You could imagine. Uh, she was privileged. She had a great job. And again, 30 years old, this, she was not some confused teenager that got racked up. Excuse my language. But you know what I mean? She was fully capable of being able to access some sort of
Speaker 1: (24:26)
80 right. 1988, 1981.
Speaker 2: (24:29)
Yeah. Older paths. She’s good. She did. Oh my gosh. Probably like crimps I blue eyeliner. Yeah, totally power suits. Totally. Oh my God. The victim. No, no. I mean, I had there, I’ve seen pictures of her getting on the private plane with, uh, other executives at this large company and who actually, my birth father was also an executive at. And he ended up being the president in the nineties of this company. But, uh, yeah, they were, she was not the scared, naive, um, young lady. She was, she was a woman that had the ability to get, you know, some sort of a, I shouldn’t say DNA testing. I don’t know exactly if they had that 1981, but I’m sure they had blood testing or some sort of paternity testing. She could have been honest. She could have told both men, both my birth certificate father and my biological father that she wasn’t sure.
Speaker 1: (25:35)
Right. Do you know if it was, um, uh, do you know if their experience together was one time or do you think it was an ongoing relationship?
Speaker 2: (25:45)
I think it was a one night stand. And my cause my birth father told I had maybe two or three phone conversations with him before we stopped talking and he called it a one-night-stand my mom called it. Um, and God, this is the part where I just want to cover my ears. Right. And like, but she’s like, we only had sex once or twice. So her words swimming, a business trip of some sorts, maybe a weekend away.
Speaker 1: (26:14)
Right. I’ve seen the movies, These business trips go. Um, okay. Okay. Um, and your, okay, so your biological father, you talked to him a couple times before decide, or I was going to say, deciding that you’re not going to have relationship with him. Was that your decision?
Speaker 2: (26:38)
No, it wasn’t. Yeah. It’s it is now, now that I’ve seen his character, I would be very, actually quite concerned if he came around. But I was that very first day I emailed him because I, well, I thought, you know, the first five, I was like, what’s my mom raped? Like, who is this guy? Is he alive? Is he dead? So I had to Google him and he’s still alive. And I found an email address. Uh, he has his own website and, um, he responded that night and said, I do remember your mother. I believe there could be some truth to this. And don’t you worry? We will bring clarity to the situation. And I found, you know, I found like comfort and I thought, wow, this is going to be good. And I think maybe I got a little too over excited.
Speaker 1: (27:40)
That’s such a, I feel like that’s firm. I mean, I could, I, okay. So maybe I’m making like some grand generalizations, but like that feels like such a man executive response. Totally. I mean, of course in retrospect, probably more, but to be like, I’ll take care of it. We’ll figure this out. Don’t you
Speaker 2: (27:59)
Worry? Yep.
Speaker 1: (28:02)
I’ll give a diplomatic response. That will be like, it’s very Pat on the shoulder.
Speaker 2: (28:07)
Yes. Don’t you little girl. Yes.
Speaker 1: (28:12)
I would have been like hook, line and sinker.
Speaker 2: (28:17)
And I totally see that now because now, um, because I thought I was going crazy with the second and third email. I printed them off. I showed my best friends and they were like, Oh my God, patronizing condescending, like with his further correspondence. But yeah, he, you know, in the beginning I’m like, Oh good. He’s not some, I mean, you know, all the, all the things you fear and it, things got weird. Right. Um, couple of weeks later, we decided to have a phone call. His emails were just very confusing. They were like, I’m out of the country. So I can’t speak. I’ll be back in the country in a week, get in touch with me. And then all of a sudden it was like, Lily, I never heard from you. I thought you were going to get back in touch with me. It was just like, I, I was pulling my hair out, like, wait, what? I immediately wanted his approval and wanted him to like me and wanted to do everything just right. And I was confused why he kept saying, I, I didn’t get back in touch with him. It was just very confusing. I, I remember going into our first phone call, uh, scared to death with my list of questions. And I didn’t, you know, I don’t know if it’s because he’s, I mean, he’s not old, he’s 70 something, but I was like, is it, is this like a man thing where he’s missing details?
Speaker 2: (29:41)
Or is this I mean, cause I, my, my birth certificate, father’s a guy that kind of skims texts, skims emails. I thought maybe this is how my biological father would be. He wouldn’t get the full details. But he said in that first phone call, um, well, uh, I finally told my wife and I was like really sad and shocked because it was like three, four weeks later. I was, I was like, wait, you didn’t tell your wife. I, I, I guess I shouldn’t, I don’t know what I would do if you were, if I were in his position, but I just got nervous because immediately I thought he didn’t tell her right away. I mean, I guess there, I dunno, that just bothered me. I’ll say that.
Speaker 2: (30:24)
I would like to validate your bothered about their feelings. Yeah. Thank you. Uh, it got weird. He in a phone call and at the time I took it the wrong way. Now I understand what he was trying to say, but he said to me, I am not interested Lilly in replacing your father, your father did a great job raising you. Um, he really had no reason to believe that or nobody was talking about, but that’s what he told me. He said, when people do sorry, your father did a great job raising you. I’m not interested in stepping on any toes. I will, I will never replace your father. And I’m, I’m not interested in doing that. I just want to make that perfectly clear. And at the time I thought, well, what a, what a gentleman? He’s, he’s not trying to take my dad’s place. What, how kind? I realized later weeks later he was telling me he does not want to play a father role at all with me. Right. He didn’t want to acknowledge he was my father. He didn’t want to acknowledge that I was even his biological daughter. That’s what he was trying to say. But at the time I’m like thanking him and I’m like, Aw, thanks.
Speaker 2: (31:38)
Yeah, he’s a man who knows what he’s doing. Yes, very much so. I’ve um, my best friend used the word controlling when she read one of his very long, very eloquent emails. And that’s what makes it so dangerous to me is he’s really smart. And his, the way he talks it’s gosh, dare I say manipulative, but it’s like, it is, um, it’s easy to be tricked. It’s scary. So he said, uh, how we left it, as he said, he would potentially be in touch with me over the summer. This was may April or may of 2019. And uh, that summer came and went. And then, you know, we’re in 2020 now the summer of 2020 came and went. So we, we haven’t talked since, but that’s, that’s that, that was kind of my experience with, he did also tell me my biological father, because I said, well, I’ve tried to contact your kids. Um, notice I said, your kids that I didn’t like include me at all as being one of his kids. But I said, I, you know, I contacted, um, I guess it would be my half-brother and half-sister, and I don’t think they’ve heard, or I don’t know if they read the messages. He said, Oh no. They know they saw my family has really let me take the lead on this. And my fi my family follows my lead.
Speaker 1: (33:11)
He’s an executive of everybody.
Speaker 2: (33:13)
Yes, apparently. So, so anyway, I just got really like an ick factor from him. And, um, unfortunately I was really bummed. I thought maybe some of my cousins or uncles, gosh, it’s weird calling them cousins and uncles, isn’t it. I, his offspring and his nieces and nephews I thought would respond to my messages and none of them did. So I, I guess he has placed himself in the self appointed executive position of the family. And it looks like they’re kind of following that, which sucks, but I guess that’s their family dynamic. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (33:51)
Yeah. Who knows? It’s so hard to know what kind of community, what kind of things are being, um, like communicated. Like I want to say behind your back, and it’s not necessarily intentionally, but, um, my own parents’ understanding of like DNA testing is, has been eyeopening to, to, um, because they, they, I mean, my parents must represent a large part of the population and they just are very wary about this information. And, um, and, and also like wary of messages and
Speaker 2: (34:27)
Yes, yes.
Speaker 1: (34:29)
I it’s like, probably not even personal. They’re just like, there’s this person. And he’s, I mean, you know, I mean, I think he’s being personal, but they probably don’t even know that it’s personal for you.
Speaker 2: (34:41)
True. They probably think it’s a con artist or something,
Speaker 1: (34:45)
Right. Like, yeah. My parents were like, Oh gosh, you have to watch out for those people. They’ll contact you. And,
Speaker 2: (34:51)
Um, and
Speaker 1: (34:54)
You know, I just, if they’re scared, it’s like new technology is scary, newer, newer technology.
Speaker 2: (34:58)
Um Hmm. And
Speaker 1: (35:01)
I don’t know. I don’t know. I just, I would love to know. I guess I would love to know what is what’s, what’s going on over there, but, um, yeah, but I’m sorry, the point is is that you were just,
Speaker 2: (35:14)
Yeah. But yeah, but what you were just saying is that’s something I’ll, I’ll touch on. Cause I don’t know the real answer. Do I, I don’t know why he hasn’t responded. I don’t know why his children haven’t. Uh, and I have been in therapy about this and one of my things is, um, Oh, what is the word? You mental health experts. Is it what’s another word for misperceptions distortions. Right. So I had to, and it was kind of mind blowing and eye opening, I should say, when I found this out, like my distortions around this, like, do I have fortune telling in mind reading tendencies, like yeah, I do. So do I really do? I really know what he’s thinking and what his offspring are thinking. And I, in my brain I’ve concocted this scenario, but I don’t really know. So yeah. I think
Speaker 1: (36:15)
Hard for anybody to not have these experiences as rejections and the,
Speaker 2: (36:22)
Um, and you know,
Speaker 1: (36:25)
I don’t, I’m not defending your family, but who, yeah. Like who knows? My dad even said, well, my birth certificate dad said once, um, he was like, Oh yeah, cause he’s done these tests. And so there’s a whole other story there, but, um, he was, he said, uh, Oh yeah, I get messages.
Speaker 2: (36:42)
I don’t read any. And I was like, dad, those are humans,
Speaker 1: (36:53)
You know? And he’s like, ah, you know, I don’t know.
Speaker 2: (36:56)
Um, you
Speaker 1: (36:58)
Know, like he just, it just never even occurred to him that he doesn’t know about. I mean, and he knows now, but like at the time, like he has no idea or no fan fathom that there could be NPE connection going on and people having real, real needs for, for tribe and history and understanding of who they are.
Speaker 2: (37:14)
Yeah. Yeah. What, what is that? The, the not responding now with your dad’s case. I can understand that. Cause I have a picture of him in my head, you know, I’ve had one know a couple of weeks ago. I had a, I was really excited. I had on my biological father’s side, uh, first cousin, right me. And he said, how can you be my first cousin? I know my first cousins. I’ve never in my life. Heard of you or seen you, how are you showing up on here? And I wrote him as carefully as I could, um, time to shock that no one had told him, including his brother who had already messaged. But, uh, I said, well, you know, I hate to tell you this, but I, I guess you didn’t know your uncle bill. Um, we found out, you know, last year that he is my biological father, I’m his daughter, blah, blah, blah, et cetera, fill in the story.
Speaker 2: (38:09)
And I wrote him answering his questions. And I said to him, here’s my mistake. I said, I totally understand if you, um, you know, if this is too much for you and if you don’t want to be in contact. But if so, I’d love to be in contact with you. I’d love to know more. And I was trying to be as gentle as possible, but I gave him an out and he took it and he didn’t respond to me. And I was so bummed out. I’m like, finally, I had someone from that side of the family, reach out to me, ask me a question. I answered the question, but that was the end of communication. I saw it was red, red at 4:31 PM. You know, like I’m constantly on and checking the check marks. And I just, I don’t know what is up with it that the not wanting to respond. It’s just, Ooh, it’s really disheartening at times, but I just have to have some acceptance for it. I guess I can’t make people respond.
Speaker 2: (39:08)
This hits, this hits people in a really, in a really deep primal place, I think. Um, and, and people, I think people want to protect the system, the family system that is in place and disruption of that system is a very frightening idea. And I, and so that comes off as all sorts of things, the defense against that phrase, that fright that’s fear, you know, so comes off, it comes off as apathy. It comes off as aggression, you know, it comes off as all sorts of things like, you know, it’s interesting now that you know, now that you’re making, now that you’re making me think about it. Um, cause I’m trying, I’m trying to imagine like my relationship with my cousins and I have cousins that I’m close with and close cousins that I’m not close with and aunts and uncles, same thing, aunts and uncles on posts with aunts and uncles that I’m not close with.
Speaker 2: (40:13)
And I’m trying to imagine if somebody contacted me all the different ways, I would be thinking about who, who I was protecting and who I was serving. And it would be, I wouldn’t be as hard for me cause I’m an NPE. And I guess I know, but if I didn’t have this experience, I don’t know. I don’t know. I just guys, I do think now that we’re talking about it, I do actually think, you just said the words, uh, protective of the family system. I, I could see myself being that way. I’m, I’m, I’m a bit skeptical of some, somebody messaged me, you know, claim they’re related to me, I would say, what is their intentions? What are they getting at? Who, who is this going to hurt? I could see not responding at first anyway, but I would definitely do my research on the side. I would, I would be Googling and Facebook stalking them. Um, like that’s yeah. Yeah. So I can see that the non-response, but it’s very frustrating to be in the, in, I want to say the drivers in our seat where we were never in the, in our place, it’s really hard. It’s really hard to want answers and just have no control. There’s so much powerlessness in these so much powerlessness and your birth certificate dad. Is he in the snare at all?
Speaker 2: (41:47)
Yeah. Um, I’m laughing cause I just, I know his, I know him. He’s, he’s an interesting character. Uh, my birth certificate father is more recently. He started to come around again a couple of months ago. We had a, I guess a socially distance play date on the driveway and a couple months ago. And he did decide to bring it up, um, terrible timing with like all the grand grandchildren running around. And he’s a very, um, a very difficult communicator. Uh, and he is in the story now he didn’t talk to him about it for an entire year at all that he said to me with its very, very strict Christian values was that he has forgiven my mother. Um, and he can’t hold anything against her and he’s done with it and I was okay. It doesn’t sound like you forgiven her. I mean, this was my thought.
Speaker 2: (42:49)
I didn’t say this, but okay. Okay. Uh, he brought this up again. You didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t really want to talk to him about, I don’t really like to talk to anything about anything with him. He’s he just doesn’t have the emotional, the eye, the EEQ, the emotional, he doesn’t have the words. He doesn’t have empathy. Def really doesn’t um, he, his best, best, best friend slash first cousin found out through an ancestry test. He has another daughter out there. So all of a sudden my dad is so welcoming of this young woman as he should be as all families should be NP. And so now he’s decided to come back around to me, he’s got this new found empathy. He’s absolutely horrified for me that my biological father’s family never welcomed me. And now he wants to talk about it.
Speaker 2: (43:47)
Um, so I guess I have some, some gratitude, but you know, if this buddy of his, if his best, you know, his cousin, hadn’t gone through it, I think he’d still be silent to me about it. Right. There’s something bittersweet about the navigation of that. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and, but he, so where he, he and your mother were married when you were like a terrible, terrible volatile marriage. Yeah. What are those? When did they split up? Uh, I’ve heard before I was born and I’ve heard AB after I was born, uh, I found a desperate or death. I found a divorce certificate for when I was about a year old, but yeah, I would say they probably had a four year marriage. I was at the, I was conceived near the tail end of their marriage. My mom already had my older sister with him. She was already legally married to him. So she wanted him to be the father, you know, she in her mind anyway,
Speaker 1: (44:50)
There’s one way that there’s one way to guarantee that
Speaker 2: (44:57)
My dad said to me, he said, well, even if she had had sex with bill and then came around and had sex with me in that same weekend, there’s, there’s no way she could have known who was the father. I don’t blame her for that. And I said, but dad, she should have at least told you this was a possibility she should have told the midwife. She should have, she should have told bill. And he never got a chance to bond with me or hold me as a baby. It just that she should have been honest. And he’s like, I can’t hold that against her. I’m like, okay,
Speaker 1: (45:27)
Okay.
Speaker 2: (45:28)
That’s what he, he, he just places it all on that one act. The one act where she had unprotected sex with another man and that he has to forgive her for it because his words, it was so long ago. And I said, but, but dad, you realize it wasn’t long ago. This was a continuing lie, a continuing secret. My entire life. I caught her in it. I found out through a DNA test. This wasn’t 38 years ago. I found this out a year and a half ago and I, we caught her on it and he, but he doesn’t wrap his brain around that. You know, it’s, it’s challenging. He doesn’t want to. Yes. Yes. Living in denial is as much bliss. Ignorance is bliss. Right. For some of us
Speaker 1: (46:16)
I have. Yeah, my, yeah. The past two years have opened my eyes to the power of denial in a way that I, I didn’t know what I didn’t know, um, about how strong and powerful denial can be. It is amazing. It’s an amazing force. Um, but he had, he’d been in, he’d been fairly present as a, as a dad for your childhood and life, even though
Speaker 2: (46:39)
He wasn’t much in the way of a provider, but he had me every other weekend and he was very fun. I will never, it was very, very fun when he had us. But, um, yeah, but my, I think my, my stepfather was the continuing, you know, he was, my stepfather was the father figure in my life, probably the warm, affectionate, loving person that was there reading me a book every night at bedtime. So I’ve, there’s so many dads now. So many days,
Speaker 1: (47:12)
It’s about to say like your understanding of like the role of your father. Like of course, of course this NPE thing would, um, I mean, of course, I mean, there’s no one it’s, it’s, it’s always confusing, but I also see why, especially the, the comment of, of why it matters or doesn’t matter who your father is, um, would, would be like an especially stinging rebuke, um, of the experience. Um,
Speaker 2: (47:43)
My parents actually had such a terrible divorce. They kept taking each other to court. I mean, you know, cops were called domestic. So it was, it was, it was bad. But my dad who was a, a taxi cab driver living below the poverty line, he still does to this day by choice. Uh, he went to court back in 81, 82, 83, multiple times to get full custody of me and my sister, which is kind of shocking. I don’t think he did it because he wanted to be a hundred percent full-time father. But I think he definitely didn’t want my mom to have us percent of the time. And here it turns out all along. I’m not even biologically his just crazy. They went through this custody battle and it was, yeah, it did not sound like a good marriage or a good divorce. My parents refused to speak to each other. Every recital, every Christmas, every Thanksgiving, they, they weren’t even allowed on each other’s properties. They had to be, you know, drop off zones at the end of the driveway, tires, squealing and peel. It was ridiculous. It was, it wasn’t until grandchildren came around that all of a sudden they decided, Oh yeah, we can be perfectly friendly and fine. And in, in the same room as each other, and I’m like, couldn’t you guys have tried this like 20, 30 years ago when I was a little girl.
Speaker 1: (49:03)
Yeah. God, it’s so hard with totally. It’s so hard when, when adults, um, like, I mean, we’re all adults, but like when people come around to something and it’s so nice and yet I feel like it’s so often that, that, uh, we are the children or the adult children are like, this is great, but I’m having a lot of feelings about the timing of this. Um,
Speaker 2: (49:33)
But yes, it is great. It is great that for the grandchildren’s sake, they are both there and both able to hang, you know, hang out and we can spend all Christmas just relaxed and yeah. Well, I don’t know if relaxed is the right word.
Speaker 1: (49:54)
Is there anything else that you want to share about your story?
Speaker 2: (49:58)
No, I don’t think so. No, that’s, it’s, it’s hard to share this. You’re, you’re really easy to talk to about it, but it’s hard to share cause it’s, it’s hard to remember some of this stuff sometimes.
Speaker 1: (50:12)
Yeah. I hear you. I hear you. I feel like sometimes I have to make myself think about it because otherwise I won’t because it’s too hard, it’s too hard and it brings up too much stuff. So I’d rather just sort of, um, keep, keep moving forward or keep hearing other people’s stories. I’d rather talk to other people about their stories. Um, yes, it’s completely like, Oh, maybe I should just focus on myself for a minute. Um, yeah. Oh, but thank you so much, Lily, for sharing, um, everything that you shared and for the work you’re doing with your podcast, I think, um, you are reaching a whole, whole new audience, um, by offering the stories on as a podcast. I think you’re totally right. Um, these, all these stories are, they feel so good to know you’re not alone and it it’s such a wonderful, like medium to have it in a way that you can listen to them. Um, not everybody’s on Facebook, Facebook support groups. Don’t, aren’t, aren’t the end all be all. And um, so I think the more and more different ways we get these stories out the better so that everyone not only does everyone who’s in them in them know no that they’re not alone, but also so that more and more people, um, can understand the scenario, um, from all the different perspectives and, and their own choices. Choice-making and advice-giving in their life.
Speaker 2: (51:40)
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: (51:42)
Yeah. Um, no, thank you. Uh, if you want to, if, uh, if a, if a listener wants to go find Lily woods, podcast, NPE stories, um, what is the best place for them to go do that?
Speaker 2: (51:57)
NPE stories? You can find it on all the podcasting platforms. Uh, I do have a Facebook page, NPE stories, and personally, since I’m not actually assigning my name with it, you can find me on Instagram at Lilly, M wood, a L I L Y. That’s how you spell Lily and ms. And Marie
Speaker 1: (52:19)
Cool Lily and what that Instagram. Awesome. Great. Well, thank you. This was so fun. Um, I wish, yeah, I wish all my Mondays were like this, whereas, uh, okay. So yeah. Um, I try and make like, there’s so much I want to talk about, so I’m trying to wrap it up. I’m like also, can we talk about France? Um, okay, so this was great. I’m going to, I’ll just hit stop now. Thank you. Don’t worry. I’ll stop it after you mean it.
Speaker 1: (00:05)
Testing [inaudible].
Speaker 2: (01:57)
Can you hear me? I’m good. Oh, good. Good. I could see you log on. It’s such a strange program that gives us, connects us, but doesn’t give, give either of us like a ring or a, or a tone or anything. It’s just that suddenly words suddenly were together. I was just sitting here waiting for the phone to ring. Doesn’t that? Isn’t that the natural talk with you. Thank you for inviting me. Oh, I’m so excited. Um, tell me really quick, how to pronounce your last name? The last name is D gangy. Oh, I’ve lost you Kanji. Degangie yup. Okay. Oh, fun. Okay, awesome. Awesome. Mr. Gait. Degangie all right, so, um, thank you so much for giving me some of your time this morning. Um, so you, you reached out and to me, because you have written a book called the gift best given and what your, um, what your story is interesting for, from my perspective for my podcast is because you’re somebody that you have correct me if I’m wrong, but you’ve, you always knew you were adopted, right?
Speaker 3: (03:28)
Well, I’ve known since I was a child, probably eight, nine, 10 years old. Do you remember that conversation? It was never a conversation. The only conversation I recall is somewhere, you know, probably before that time is I was about to go out and play and I remember kind of a fumbled conversation on my mother’s part saying, somebody may tell you, you don’t blow to us, but that doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about it. And it was kind of confusing, but, you know, it’s one of those moments where I looked at it and said, okay, can I go out and play now? And, and that’s what I did, you know, it’s, it’s interesting because my wife, before we were married, traveled with my mother one day on a flight, my mother openly discussed my adoption and I had never discussed it with my, with my wife to be at that point. And yeah, my mother told her that, well, you know, the doctors told us always hold your baby and say, you’re a wonderful adopted baby. And I have no doubt that she did that. But someplace along the line, she stopped before I was not just what, what I was hearing. Right.
Speaker 2: (04:50)
Okay. So she, so it wasn’t ever really a part of the narrative, but then she openly talked about it later as you, when you were an adult?
Speaker 3: (04:57)
No, no, it was, it was never discussed. And that was probably as much my fault as hers, but, you know, Danny Shapiro talks about secrets, then, you know, the secrets people keep from us and we keep from others. We keep from ourselves. I know I’m pretty sure she knew. I knew we just never discussed it. And I think my take was, if it’s something others aren’t talking about, well, I’m not going to bring it up.
Speaker 2: (05:28)
Right, right. Waiting for someone else to take the lead, which I think is natural. Um, and okay. And then, um, so just a couple other details. Um, do you have, did you have siblings?
Speaker 3: (05:43)
Well, I was brought up as an only child.
Speaker 2: (05:45)
Okay. And then, so then, okay. So then that, that answers my next question, which was that, um, there was sort of this, I, you sort of knew this idea deep down, but you weren’t, that wasn’t something that was with you and your friends?
Speaker 3: (05:59)
No, it was not. Okay.
Speaker 2: (06:02)
Um, I didn’t, I D I imagined that you, that it wasn’t, but I thought I would ask anyway, um, just as I was like, sort of piecing together the story and, um, I got to read the first part of your book, which is so great. Um, your writing is so descriptive.
Speaker 3: (06:18)
No, thank you. So interesting. The interest, excuse me. The interesting part was after the book was published, I had a couple of cousins who read it, who I had never had this discussion with. And one co one wrote me saying, I am so sorry. I always knew my mother said, don’t say anything. I should have told you. I had another cousin. So I always knew that, you know, it was no secret. So I obviously, I was the only one that was kind of out in the dark for this.
Speaker 2: (06:53)
Yeah. That, I think that that is not unusual.
Speaker 3: (06:56)
Yeah. No, I don’t think so either.
Speaker 2: (07:01)
So, um, so why don’t you like, um, walk me through a little bit of the, of the process for yourself. Um, you, you knew you were adopted, but you weren’t, as far as I understand it, you were not especially interested in, in your, uh, origin story. Um, but tell me, so tell me about that and, and how that changed and how this book came to be.
Speaker 3: (07:21)
Well, I, you know, I, I had, I guess the idyllic life, we lived in a suburb outside of Manhattan in New York city, uh, lived a very good life. And I just, you know, even from the time that I understood that I was adopted, I suppose there was part of me that didn’t want to rock the boat, but the greater part of me said, it doesn’t matter. You know, my parents were very loving, very supportive. There was little that I wanted. Yeah. That I, that I needed that I didn’t have. And so I just, that just sort of modeled long periodically. I would, I would have thought about it and yeah, I wonder who my mother is. I never gave a second stop. My father was, but then I had the occasional thought there was she that she, I think I may have said this, my email to you.
Speaker 3: (08:20)
Yeah. She was some school girl who stayed out too late one night and came back and found that she was pregnant. And I just, that was my image. And that it was just somebody who, from there yeah. Went on with her life as I had gotten on with mine. And, um, at about the age of says, I approached my 70th birthday and I’m 72. So I guess was a little bit before then. Uh, we had my wife’s mother and father who had lived in New Jersey, come down here to North Carolina because they were in compromised health. And over a fairly short period of time, we lost them both. And we were up in New Jersey in touring. My father-in-law’s remains. And the day before we went to the cemetery there, we went to another cemetery, which is where the, uh, my adoptive mother’s family by and large were, were buried.
Speaker 3: (09:30)
And it just brought back some old memories. So it started to spur some curiosity on my part. And I had also just read a book by Daniel Mendelson. It’s called the loss, the search of six of 6 million. And it’s a wonderful book. I would recommend it to anybody. And it talks about his search for six relatives who there is during the Holocaust he went through. And I just was so envious of his ability to go and travel as he did to trace down the people who may have known them and to go back to the village where he came from and it’s sort of tickled my interest. So when we came back from the, uh, from the services that we have in New Jersey, I went to our local library and my first thought was, well, let me go. And L investigate my adoptive mother’s, uh, heredity. It didn’t last a whole long time, because as I realized, what was now available online, I said, this is a chance to take a quick look and find out what my story is, what my true story is. Right. And, uh, you know, I was, I was adopted at birth that was taken home at the age of a day in one day. Wow. Amazing.
Speaker 2: (10:56)
Think that even still happens, but that’s so, um,
Speaker 3: (11:01)
I was born at noon on May 17th, the Monday. And I went home with my adoptive parents to follow them day.
Speaker 2: (11:09)
Wow.
Speaker 3: (11:11)
So it was a privately arranged adoption. And as I went through the paperwork that had been left after my own parents passed away, I found a certificate of birth by adoption from New York city. And I found the adoption decree and the adoption decree had my biological mother’s name on it. I was able to get onto ancestry, typed it in. And you know, what I think is most people who have been Dallas Panther where, you know, just the screens of information popped up the, yeah, the first ones were this, the civil documents, the, you know, the census, things like that. And I gave me a very quick glance and I found that she wasn’t a school girl. She, she had been 23 when I was born.
Speaker 3: (12:09)
Then I found a visa traveling from the United States to, to Rio de Janeiro. And it had her picture on it. I was absolutely stunned. You know, all of a sudden you have almost 70 years to sit there and look and say, there’s my mother. And I sent it home. And you know, when I get back from the library, you know, my wife was home. I said, you like to see a picture of my mother. And she said, well, I know exactly what your mother looks like. And I said, no, not that one, this one. And that sort of started to open the flood Gates the next day I was back to the library and looking for more. And I couldn’t find anything her there, her maiden name was Genevieve Irene or Rouse mouthful. Yes. And Googling under that hole, I could find where the family records, things like that. And I I’ve had some interesting coincidences. You know, she, she grew up probably two or three blocks away from where my parents brought me home after I was adopted after I left the hospital. So there are a lot of close misses and I continued to look, and then I found a marriage license for her in 1950s, 1955, I believe. So this was several years after I was born. And it listed, her name is Genevieve Norris NeuroSky and it listed her occupation as performer.
Speaker 3: (13:52)
So that gave me a little bit more to go out. So I did what everyone does. I immediately flipped over to Google and typed in Genevieve Norris performer and the blog of a woman who, who called herself a picker. This is somebody who goes to yard sales and auctions and buy small items with the thought of reselling them. Her blog appeared and the blood contained probably 10 various piece pictures or pieces of a femoral all related to Genevieve. True. It turned out that she was a very prominent ice skater in the 1940s and going into the 1950s. So yeah, that was, that was kind of flabbergasted by that. You’re looking at a good part of the story. So I, you know, I then went Facebook and tried to find the picker. Cause my first thought is, I wonder if she’s still got these things and she’s still got the most, she sell them to me.
Speaker 3: (15:02)
So I, you know, I sent them, I found a name that seemed, it was the right name. There were three or four with the same name, but she was in Atlanta. And so it was the closest and, and she, I think she was associated with an antiques mall. So I said, okay, that seems logical. So send a message. And every, every correspondence is sent from that, the time was always started with, hello, you don’t know me, but I’m pursuing a family relationship. And I’m just curious if you’re the right person, then do you still have the, you know, the materials? And probably within 10 minutes, I got a message back saying, yes, I’m the right person. Yes. I’ve still got them. Wow. So I’m real excited at that point. So they sent me another message back. I said, can we talk? And she said, yeah, I’ll call you. And probably for a week, I didn’t hear from her.
Speaker 4: (15:59)
Great.
Speaker 3: (16:01)
It was, yeah. I was going a little bit nuts, but it was still good to know she had this stuff. And so finally, a week later I sent her another message saying, I’m S yeah, I don’t mean to pester you, but to clarify, so said, I believe this one is my mother. Would you please call me? And the phone rang probably 30 seconds after I sent the message. Wow. And she said, Oh my God, I am so sorry. She’s like, can’t believe that. And she said, you need to come here. And they was just like that, you know, we’re in North Carolina, she was in Atlanta. And within a week we were on our way to Atlanta with arrangements. They’ll come, you know, she and her husband who is also a picker would come to the hotel, bring these things to see. And yeah, we’ll spend some time together and that’s exactly what happened. And they, you were sitting down in the lobby and the woman came in first alone and carrying a big carton.
Speaker 3: (17:06)
And it was, you know, it was like, we had always known one another, just a lovely, lovely person. And probably about five minutes or later, her husband who had been parking, the car came walking in and he comes walking in with a, with a, uh, with a sword and a shield. I love teenage mutant, Ninja turtles attracting some level of attention in the hotel lobby. And we eventually went up to our, to our room because, you know, just a little bit, it was more private and we had a place to spread things out and we started going through the box and it really did take my breath away. Wow. Yeah, because it was one promotional picture after another,
Speaker 2: (17:52)
It’s been like an allergy discovery.
Speaker 3: (17:54)
Well, it was, Oh, it’s brilliant. No, and then the one thing that I think is really a key here is amongst the pictures, there was a per diploma from elementary school or middle school. And then the next piece was her first professional contract. And at the age of 18 and 1943, she was making a hundred dollars a week, which was huge mindset.
Speaker 2: (18:26)
Yeah. I didn’t think you were going to say that much.
Speaker 3: (18:28)
The interesting thing was, you know, and I, I don’t know how it reflects on me. Maybe it’s just, my nature is I looked at that contract and I said, I understand everything is all right. And you know, she was faced with the decision of, yeah. Do I raise a child as a single mother at a time when being a single mother was not an appropriate or an accepted thing, do I pursue this very lucrative career? And I have no problem with the decision she made and you know, so we, before we had gotten them, my wife and I, the entire way down, we’re kind of debating, well, how much should we be willing to pay for all of this? And, you know, we brought two checks in case we get into a kind of work that had to work in stages. And at the end, they, I take nets and pictures that were in the box and they were of other skaters. And all of them were personalized to, to Genevieve my mother and I started writing down names because they was thinking, okay, I’ll try to track these people down one at a time. And maybe somebody could tell me something about her. And as I was doing that, Dan, who was, the husband looked at me, so what are you doing? And I explained what my process was. He said, you don’t need to do that. He said, all of this stuff is yours just been holding it for you.
Speaker 3: (20:09)
It was just, it was, you know, it was one of many, many kindnesses that I encountered along this journey. And ultimately I did, I went through every one of those pictures and only found one person who, who turned out to still be alive. Because I think the one great disadvantage I left myself that is, as I pursued, this was waiting so long. Most of the people who knew my mother who no longer alive, I traced this woman down via her husband’s obituary. I couldn’t find her, but I found her son and sent another hi, you don’t know me, but, and yeah, it was, you don’t know me, but our mothers skated together in the 1940s. And probably a week later, he called up, he was very enthusiastic and said, he said, I’ve talked to my mother. She would love to talk to you. Uh, I said, well, that’s great.
Speaker 3: (21:14)
And then he said, there’s only one issue here said moms and memory care, you must have heard me cutting gas be said, but the good news here is, you know, she doesn’t remember what she had for breakfast today, but she can tell you everything that 1947. And she and I had a great telephone call. And then in September, my, my search began in March of 19. I’m sorry, 2017 in September, we went out to visit her in Minneapolis and we spent five hours with her. She was just such a charming lady and so bright and relationship. I felt terrible for, because he had brought her out from the, from the facility. We’re going to go out for lunch. And we pulled up and I spotted her. And I almost ran from the car to hug her. It was as close as I could come to finding them. And she kind of looked at me like, what’s up here, but, you know, but then, then she understood. And she told us, yeah, she was my mother’s roommate. Well with ice Follies. And she told us all about the things they did. She said, but I, she kept on saying your mother was a star and your mother was a star. And I can’t believe the way she would get tossed around on ice skates. She said, I can tell you who she dated and I can tell you, your father was.
Speaker 3: (22:47)
So it was a wonderful visit. And, you know, unfortunately her name was Isabelle Smith. She passed away a year and a week ago. And what she just such a lovely lady. That’s so beautiful. You know, even at the age, she passed away at 94 and she was still beautiful what a gift. But I supposed to continue the story of how I ultimately trace down my, my birth mother, uh, going back to the pickers blog, there was a comment section on it. And there was one individual comment that he was the only one to comment at the time that I knew mrs. G I knew ms. Jen when, and I was, I went to school with her sons and I used to, you know, this is in the days of payphones. I used to go to such and such a place my bicycle and call them because it was cheaper if I went to the other side of the street than from my side.
Speaker 3: (23:55)
So I said, okay, well, this is somebody who might be able to at least lead me to where she is, but I didn’t know how to get in touch with him. And then somebody who elsewhere is corresponding with, I mentioned it to, and you know, probably the next day he sent me an email back saying, here’s his phone number. I never quite knew how he found it. He sent me your phone number and an email address. And again, I sent you emails saying, you don’t know me, but, and you know, and he sent me kind of around about the email, which almost seemed like he was protecting your identity, which I think was a responsible thing to do. Sure. I sent him back another email saying again, kind of blowing by the, you don’t know me and just saying, okay, Genevieve NeuroSky was my mother.
Speaker 3: (24:46)
Can you call me? He did that. Then he was the first person to say that she was no longer alive. You know, I started my search in 2017. She passed away in 2014. So I didn’t mean a whole lot, but she was 89 years old at the time. Uh, he told me that I had a a half a half brother and I knew that actually I knew that I had had two half siblings. One unfortunately was no longer alive and rather tragic story of a murder and a suicide miserable, miserable story. And I, uh, it’s still kind of haunting one on new year’s Eve of 2015 was involved in a very serious fire and had been in, had been in a hospital and then a convalescent home for several months at that time. And that’s why I’ve been S I had his name and I had a series of addresses, and I’ve been sending a letter, all of which come back as a dressy unknown. And that kind of explained it. So I said, well, you know, if I send a letter to you, will you deliver it for me? He said, yes, I’ll do that.
Speaker 1: (26:14)
[inaudible]
Speaker 3: (26:17)
And he didn’t still, I didn’t get a response.
Speaker 5: (26:21)
Okay.
Speaker 3: (26:22)
So I, you know, I waited some time and try it again. And he said, okay, I will talk to him again. And ultimately we did make contact and yeah, we’ve been in fairly frequent contact since, and, you know, he, he told me pretty much all that has happened. Like, you know, my mother came to rather and unhappy. And as a result of her mother’s son being involved in murder suicide, he had, could jolt her out of, or into deeding her properties. And she had substantial property into his name. And after he was involved in what he did, the, the survivors of his common law wife came in a lodge, the wrongful death lawsuit, and basically took everything that she had because it had all been put in his name. So they, you know, they filed it against the estate away. They were upheld. And, you know, she really wound up down in the end of her life, know she started her life living every, every little girl’s dream. And at the end, you know, died a very, very sad life. I think from the way my, my half brother describes it. She was not resentful, not angry, but, you know, but deserving of far more than she had.
Speaker 3: (27:55)
So, you know, there, there are all sorts of little quirks to story bear. You know, when I was, when I found out that she was no longer alive, I started to, to query the local cemeteries saying, can you tell me if she’s buried there? No, no, no young, again, you know, one of the cemetery superintendents took it upon themselves to, to contact the other local cemeteries and came back. I’m sorry. No, we’re not finding her. And when I finally found my half brother, after we struck up enough of a enough relationship, I guess I said, you know, you know, where is our mother buried? And there’s kind of a pause. She said, well, she’s not buried. Okay. Well, where is she? So she’s in my closet and I ain’t gonna have that. There was part of me that wanted to laugh. And there’s another part that they want us to cry. Sure.
Speaker 3: (28:57)
Ultimately we know. And she was there with his birth father who had passed away in 1994, the two of them on the shelf side by side. Right. Well that’s yeah. That is like sweet and sad at the same time. I’m not sure what the father’s story was, why they did, why they waited, but by the time our mother passed away, it was a financial issue and couldn’t afford to insure her. So, um, I’m losing track of time with, you know, with the pandemic now, but do, I guess it was a year ago this past August, we went down and finally entered the two of them in a cemetery down there. And it was kind of a cute story. We, they lived in a very they’re South of Atlanta and just a little old, you know, an old mill town, which is not done a great deal to revive itself, but there’s one very sophisticated restaurant down there.
Speaker 3: (30:01)
Then my wife and I love. And every time we go down there, we get in there at least once. So we’ve always had the same waiter. Who’s not flamboyant, but who is unabashedly gay and very cheerful, very pleasant. So, you know, we were down having dinner the night before, and I saw him bringing out kind of a fancy dessert to one table. And there’s a lot of, you know, a lot of back padding and, and congratulating. Then he brought the same kind of dessert to another table. And he finally came back to ours as we finished our meal. And he said, nah, he said, I didn’t ask you about you celebrating any kind of a, of an event tonight. And my wife and I sort of looked at each other who knows. And I think my wife said, well, his mother is coming out of the closet tomorrow. And he put his hand in that, as hippie said, well, I’m down with that. And you went scurrying way to the kitchen. At five minutes later, everybody’s peering out of the kitchen. She came back with one, one of the same desserts, all in grave, new congrats on coming out of the closet.
Speaker 6: (31:12)
Perfect.
Speaker 3: (31:15)
So when he thought he thought it was hilarious, but it was a somber event, but very uplifting,
Speaker 6: (31:25)
Right. A moment of connection.
Speaker 3: (31:27)
No, it wasn’t. We, you know, the pandemic has kept us from getting down there to visit again and that’ll be a stop for us. We’ve used stuff. You know, I had mentioned that, you know, I have never given any thought to who my birth father was. And prior to the search for my mother, you know, I, I did an ancestry sample right around Christmas time where I bought them for myself and my wife for Christmas. And so before I even got the inclination to search ancestry, I sent the DNA sample then looking solely for, you know, what’s my, what’s my heredity. I had always identified on my father’s side is Sicilian. And my mother’s side is crating him. And yeah, never a hundred percent sure that that was accurate. I sort of felt the European piece, the Eastern European piece never quite filthy. Yeah. The Italian side, we came from a, you know, kind of, uh, allowed walkers, you know, closely knit Italian family or my father’s family.
Speaker 3: (32:44)
And yeah, it’s, I’ve always had a feeling of otherness grant. They were embracing and they were loving, but I never really felt like, okay, I’m part of this. And that was, that was me, not them. So I sent the sample in and it took forever because of the Christmas holidays, I suppose. And it wasn’t until, until may of 2017. And now by then I was deep into the, into this search and they started to get curious about, well, I wonder where my mother was when she got pregnant via, via Google. I found out that she had joined the ice Follies. And then on eBay, I found a schedule for, for the Follies, from that season. I purchased that and found out that they were, they were in San Francisco for the entire summer of 1947. I assume that I was, or kind of backtracked and decided that I had been conceived right.
Speaker 3: (33:49)
August of 1947. So, you know, I sent my sample in and I finally got back the, the information or the report. And I immediately went to the, to the pie chart, which is what I think most people do. Right. And found out I was like 50% Eastern European. And that felt right. And then there was another 25% of the time, which was Ashkenazi Jew. And that kind of made me chuckle, but that felt good. And then, you know, then a mixture of a little, you know, mostly Northern European and great Britain. And then I went to the list of, of, of relationships, you know, and they’re a thousand third to fifth cousins, but there was a, at the top of the list, there was a high probability, very close relationship with a first cousin. And I studied that pretty carefully. And you know, the name was not familiar when I searched farther, he had a very, very complete family tree.
Speaker 3: (35:02)
He turned out to be an LDS member, done great research. Right. And I said, this is, you know, this has got to be my father’s family. And I just assumed, okay, if he’s my first cousin, he needs to have an uncle someplace who was my father and his mother had, or his father had no siblings. His mother had seven siblings. It was six sisters and a brother. Oh. I said, okay, bingo, got them, looked him up and found that you’d been born in Wisconsin, I think, and then moved to Austin, Texas and had gotten to the university of Texas who was a lawyer. So I wrote to this cousin, I sent him a message via ancestry. And you know, I’d heard the horror stories about what you said, messages, and no one answers he answered in 15 minutes.
Speaker 2: (36:01)
Oh wow. You keep having such good luck.
Speaker 3: (36:05)
This has been serendipity and coincidence since all the way through
Speaker 2: (36:09)
Nice people. I keep getting adrenaline sort of like a little shot of adrenaline every time you say someone wrote. So I can only imagine what it was like to be in your position.
Speaker 3: (36:19)
And he was all excited to have, you know, to, to find her a close relative. And, and he said, okay, I’m looking at what you’re saying about my uncle. And he said, that makes perfect sense. And he told me a little bit more about the history and we agreed. We’ll, you know, we’ll, we’ll be in touch. And about, as I was discussing this with my wife, then 15 minutes later, another message drops in front of him. And he said, I was just looking at your pie chart. And you know, I was looking at that part that’s yeah. That’s 25% Jewish. You said there are only a couple of concerns. They have, you know, where your mother was when you were conceived. I said, San Francisco, you. So I might, as far as I know, my uncle never left Texas. And I can tell you unequivocably he had no Jewish blood. This is kind of disappointing now. So yet this thick and then 15 minutes later, there’s another message she said, but I have 25% Jewish blood. And as it turns out, this person who ancestry identified as my cousin was actually my half brother.
Speaker 2: (37:37)
Oh my gosh. I did not. I just got goosebumps. I did not see that coming.
Speaker 3: (37:43)
I didn’t see it coming either. I don’t think he did either. And you know, and it’s real bright men, very embracing. Yeah. He was as opposed to my maternal half brother who was very guarded, you know, my paternal half brother was his arms were open from the start. Tell me what you want. Tell me what you need. I’ll get you the information. I’ll tell you what I know. And yo, and interestingly, what his read was in those first couple of days is, you know, I don’t know who your adopted parents were, but you probably didn’t better with them than you would have with my father. And through that, he was kind of a, you know, he, he ultimately had had five wives and just, he got around, he was my half brother’s father for 10 years. And one day just said, I’m outta here and left.
Speaker 3: (38:45)
But a couple of years ago, I gave him no I’m losing track of our time. Probably probably February of 2019, we were out and set me, visited the West coast to see friends in LA. But we, we swung through San Francisco first to meet my brother. And we spent time with him. And he said, if you would like to, my mother would like to meet you. And she was, she was my father’s wife after I was conceived. They married a year later, I think. And then my brother was married a year after that. So, so we went out and she’s, she’s currently alive and she’s 99 years old, but we came into visit with her and she, you know, she was very sweet. My son was with us. My wife was with us and she, you know, she went through the niceties with my son, went through the niceties. My wife’s been looked at her son and said, take them and show them the house. And she pointed me. She said, you stay. And as soon as they were out, she said, I think you, you deserve to hear that your father, wow. It was a wonder, it was a generous gift.
Speaker 2: (40:11)
It feels like you were just, I mean, I can, I’m now starting to get a big, a deeper understanding of the title of your book that it’s like, you just got in your exploration, sort of stumbled upon gift after gift
Speaker 3: (40:26)
Was gift therapy gift. And that wasn’t really the inspiration for the book, but someplace deep inside, when, you know, when Genevieve is in the process of, of making a decision, yes. Somebody has a discussion with her and talks about gifts and yes, some, you see some you give, but yeah, it was a series of gifts from very generous people. And his mom basically did not have a lot of great things to say about him either, but to a certain level forgave him and, you know, kind of pinned it on his mother instead. Right. But, you know, she said, yeah. And I just, again, I, you know, more than what she told me, it was the fact that she told me that was so, so poignant. I was so grateful for. Wow. So, you know, so that’s, that’s how we put together my family tree.
Speaker 2: (41:24)
So with all of that, on this, this adventure, this is how you, you put together this story, which is sort of about your adventure, about your adventure, but also about your, um, and it struck me as being so, um, it’s, it’s very like, sort of beautifully detailed in the, in the, the parts I read up until. Let’s see, I guess I read up until the train station when she’s being, she’s going to go away to her first ice skating that’s as far as I’ve gotten so far. Um, so, so, um, so my question is how much of that is like creative, like creative license and you imagining the things that were going on in the family and how much of that was details that you gleaned from your research?
Speaker 3: (42:11)
Well, I think there are two things that place here is the chronology and people, I think have a great deal of integrity there they’re right on, right on the Mark. And I did an awful lot of research where, when, who was she with? And you know, what came in between was kind of connected dots. And, you know, I don’t have any way of knowing what did she say or what did somebody say to her? But it was, uh, an exercise in, okay. If, if this is where she wound up, what must’ve preceded it, as far as dialogue and things like that, I took creative license with it because, because I had to, otherwise it would have been Genevieve was here going to be there
Speaker 2: (43:06)
To me. It sort of strikes me like your, your, um, you’re developing a relationship with her by doing that.
Speaker 3: (43:15)
I came away feeling that I knew her. And I think it’s, it’s twofold. You know, not number one is, is I have met some people who didn’t know her as an adult. I’ve met. Obviously my half brother was the most was the closest to her. I’ve met and been with two of my maternal cousins now, who, who, if they don’t remember her, remember all the stories that surrounded her. And she was just, she was revered on two levels. Number one, she was a star. So that impresses all kids. Right? Number two is everybody just held her on a pedestal as a wonderful person. I was a talented and kind person then, and that helped through to the adults who I encountered along the way. And so, you know, that that’s certainly shaped the way I approached dialogue. Yeah, well, you’re right though. It did. It gave me a relationship with her that I might otherwise, might not otherwise have had.
Speaker 2: (44:29)
Well, it’s like an, it’s an exercise in, um, sort of an exercise and like a testimony to our, our sort of this, this human need and the girl, I mean, it’s a growing trend right now, but, but also just this human need for connection to where we came from.
Speaker 3: (44:48)
I agree with that. Uh, you know, I had, I had, we never made any connection or had I never gotten the inclination to go look in United, probably I would have been okay with that, but I feel like I’m richer for having done it. Yeah know. And I think you, you know, you had Becky Proudfit a few episodes back and I love the way she said, all I did was I found more people to love. And, you know, I think some people, unfortunately, and I can’t speak for anyone else’s experiences, but you know, they’re, yeah, they’re disappointed or they’re angry. My disappointment is I didn’t get to ultimately meet her. And maybe, maybe that was for the best. Maybe it would have come away with a whole other impression, but I don’t think so. I think where I, where I was with my, you know, at the end of my research and I shouldn’t even say the end because I’m still researching and at the end of the book, and I think we would have been pretty much the same place.
Speaker 3: (45:57)
I would love to have met her just to say, Hey, you know what, I’m okay. Because I think, you know, we, we tend to look at our own situations and, and probably don’t give a great deal of regard sometimes to the people who, who gave us up or, you know, in the DNA situ in the BNP situations and the people who, you know, suddenly are revealed not to be who you thought they were, you know, so it’s, uh, I would like that I would like to have had the chance I didn’t have it, you know, so this was kind of by my ability to recreate that opportunity.
Speaker 2: (46:40)
Yeah. Well, it’s just beautifully done. Um, and, and, and I have to be honest, you’re the first this story and I don’t, I don’t exactly know why, but this story is the first time that I have, as you were describing it, I felt along for the ride. And I’m excited at each discovery that you made. I mean, just now during this phone call and I, I suddenly just this morning have like a new understanding of why the ancestry search is fun. Again, I don’t mean that. I thought it wasn’t fun. I believed it was, but I suddenly have this new appreciation for the investigative adventure.
Speaker 3: (47:22)
Sure. Yeah. I think it’s a matter of the mindset that you approach it with. If, again, you know, you’re looking, if you’re open to what you might discover, you know, it’s a fun thing. If you fear what you might discover, it’s probably a whole different experience. And I can’t speak for anyone else I wrote down here. So I wouldn’t forget to say it as a, I think, you know, my adoptive parents somehow, and I don’t know how they did it. I tell every parent how to do it as that, as they in part in me with a sense of self, you know, so I was not who they were. I was not who my biological parents were. I’m I’m me. And I just, yeah, I’ve always been kind of a pragmatic person then. Yeah. So I, if, if I had found something that I wasn’t happy with that would have, I probably would have been disappointed, but it wouldn’t have changed my life, but I understand that some folks are, you know, yeah. Again, circumstances differ.
Speaker 2: (48:36)
Right, right. They sure do. Wow. Wow. Well, if people want to read your book, which I can not recommend a more highly enough, I’m really loving it. Um, how, what’s the best way for them to, to get a copy of that? Should they, do you have a preference of distributor?
Speaker 3: (48:59)
Well, you know, it’s, it’s can be requested through any, any made any bookseller it’s available on all older online retailers. And I do have a website it’s Degangie author.com. It’s D I G M G I author all one word.com and the book can be purchased there and I’ll, I’ll be happy to sign and inscribe it if that’s what they like and nicely packaged nicely and send it on off very quickly.
Speaker 2: (49:33)
All right. I know what I’m doing.
Speaker 3: (49:35)
Yeah. You’re letting me say that. I appreciate the plug of the book. It’s two intersecting stories. One is my surgeon. One is, you know, there’s this story of my mother and at the end, the two of them come together. And I think it’s in both, in both cases, it’s kind of a joyous ride. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (49:56)
Yeah. Oh yeah. Um, this has been lovely. Thank you so much for giving me your time, mr. Degangie,
Speaker 3: (50:02)
I’ve enjoyed it and that’s it. You don’t have to call me, but I’ve so enjoyed your podcast, you know, because I think you, you approach serious subject with a, I think with the sense of heart, in the sense of humor that you know, that you don’t often always find that elsewhere. And so I’ve really been enamored of the podcasts and the, your guests.
Speaker 2: (50:28)
Thank you so much. I’m really, I’m hoping to, I’m hoping to, I hope that my, my approach makes it, makes it, you know, uh, not more conversation, more conversational, easy to approach for people, but for people that need that, that’s what I’m trying to give them.
Speaker 3: (50:46)
I think you’re doing a great job. Thank you.
Speaker 2: (50:48)
He’s so much, um, I will be in touch with you and let you know. Of course, um, the housing winds of, of this episode will not be very long before it’s up. Um, but, uh, yeah, I’ll be in touch. Thank you for your time. Um, I look forward to it. So maybe more updates about your, your adventure, and I hope that you have a wonderful weekend out, out, out there. And are you in North Carolina while we’re in North Carolina,
Speaker 3: (51:12)
Central part of the state, we’re kind of a, kind of a cloudy day to day. We’ve had some chilly weather and clouds and it’s warmed up a little bit, but it’s still cloudy today. And you’re a little sad,
Speaker 2: (51:24)
But I have a I’m in Los Angeles. My, my 17 year old daughter lives in West Virginia though. And then my, my best friend from LA moved to Tarboro, North Carolina. And so he lives there. And now my daughter is looking at the, at the North Carolina schools for college.
Speaker 3: (51:44)
There’s some great university.
Speaker 2: (51:45)
Yeah, we’re really are. So, yeah. So North Carolina is kind of, kind of on my radar in my heart in different ways. So I hope to get there soon.
Speaker 3: (51:57)
You bring your for a visit. Let us know I will. I will. All right. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: (52:04)
Yeah, absolutely. Have a wonderful day. Thank you. Bye.
Mourning One Brother, Finding Another
Speaker 1: (00:03)
[inaudible] [inaudible]
Speaker 2: (06:41)
Oh my gosh. That always, as soon as I turn off, like turn away from the computer, the person arrives and scares me so bad. Can you see my headset or my computer? I don’t know, but I can hear you really great. I think it’s through the computer. If that works. That’s fine. Okay. Yeah. That’s totally, that’s totally fine. We’re all just like doing the best we can. Yeah. Awesome. Good morning. I’m so glad that you could do this with me this morning. Me too. I was listening to an episode of your podcast yesterday, so I had it on mine, which I love, and I had it on my brain, but I’m not used to like, usually I’m naturally up by seven and something about this fall weather I woke up and was like, wow. So I’m glad I didn’t oversleep even more. I, um, I actually talked about that with my husband last night.
Speaker 2: (07:44)
Not about you sleeping in, but about, um, the fault weather and this time, for some strange reason, I feel much more aware of the, the change and it just like the other day, it was really hot all through the night. And now all of a sudden it’s very clearly Chile. Like the sun goes down and, um, yeah, that difference feels very stark this year. I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s, cause we’re all locked inside all the time or we’re marking like a first year into this new weird, you know, at first year after it changes every week, it just seems more dramatic. Yeah. No, I think, I think there’s something that, something to be said about that there’s something about being the hunkering down, makes us more aware of the elements in a new way. Yeah. But anyway, I’m so glad. I’m so glad you got up. Whatever.
Speaker 2: (08:37)
Cool. And you’re in Montana. Yup. Cool. How are you in Missoula? Yup. We are. How big is Missoula? I feel like most people, at least when I’m on the East coast, uh, rarely people kind of imagine that we live in cabin in the middle of the woods, but Missoula’s maybe 70,000 people or so in the County. Okay. The third largest city in Montana, which is still in Montana and not saying a lot, but arts and culture, I would say more than any other city, 70,000 isn’t isn’t uh, isn’t small, isn’t small isn’t TV. I grew up, I grew up in a town smaller than that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s a good, I love it. It’s a really, it’s nice small enough that my kids and I can make friends and run into the same people regularly enough that you can meet people, new people and, and all that, you know, in theory.
Speaker 2: (09:34)
Right, right. Yeah. Sure, sure, sure, sure. Um, I’m one of these people because I came from a small town. So I’m just going to go ahead and ask you if you know, Caroline temple. Totally. He’s my only Missoula person that I know. Um, we went, we went to graduate school together. Oh, that’s so funny. Good friends with, uh, a friend of mine. So I used to see her at my friend Joe’s parties every now and then. Yep. Okay, cool. That is just my town that I grew up in. Um, it’s likely that, you know, someone, so let’s talk about your book and your experience and your writing. Yeah. Um, otherwise I could, I could just ask you questions about all sorts of things all morning. Um, so I, I, um, I found you because I read your narratively piece, um, and it was so beautiful.
Speaker 2: (10:34)
I loved it so much and it, it really moved me in. And so I reached out to you and here we are. Um, but one thing I was realizing this morning is that, so my, my podcast has, um, uh, traditionally, like I have only talked with people who have discovered a parent or a parent has discovered them and it’s like a parent, a parent to, to adult child, um, discovery relationship. And so you’re my first person who can talk about the sibling discovery and what, what that has done. Yeah. Thank you. So happy. Cool. Um, wonderful. So, um, I’m just wondering if you can give like a summarized version of, of what happened with, um, uh, with the discovery of your brother, your brother, how that happened and what that felt like. Um, and then we’ll, we’ll go from there. So, so what happened? Um, the, the short version is that, um, I lost my only sibling, my older brother.
Speaker 2: (11:45)
He was three years older than me and he died when I was 25 and he was 29 and we were very close in an odd way. Um, I had grown up in Indiana, we had grown up in Indiana. Um, and I, this was my first experience with grief. I was just wrapped and it took me years and years. I was already a writer. I had trouble writing after that. Um, so it took me a really long time to write and then revise and finally publish, um, my book driven, which is very much about me losing my only sibling. Um, let’s see. I had, uh, just announced on Facebook, I think in 2016 that I had, um, sold the book to my publisher and it was this time of year actually. And I was having trouble sweeping, which is unlike me. And, um, I was up one night around 11 or midnight or so, um, trying to delay, going to sleep and hopes that I would sleep better covered on Facebook that there’s this other little, um, at the time it was a folder that just said other and messages from people who were not your friends went into that folder.
Speaker 2: (12:58)
So I just discovered that folder and there was a message from someone named Tony in Indianapolis that said, um, hi, I think your dad might be my bio dad, if you want to talk about it, that’s fine. If you don’t, that’s fine too. And it goes from there, but it turns out that I have, um, another brother, a half sibling who was alive and well, can you remember how it felt, um, where, like, what you were thinking when you read that message, such a simple message with so much information in it? Yeah. Um, my immediate thought was, um, this one, this must be one of my dad’s, uh, unsettled clients. My dad is a social worker and therapist and growing up, we, um, you know, had a history of stalkers and upset patients. And I just thought, Oh, this has to be one of dad’s patients.
Speaker 2: (13:58)
Um, I’ll check it out or I’ll ask dad about it. Really. My mom was not, you know, the person who had had another child. Um, but I think even either message that night or in the morning and by the end of the messaging, um, which there were only five or six messages. I was like, no, this is, this is for real. And how do you know how he determined that, um, your, your dad was his dad and how he found you? Yeah, I’m trying to remember some of that. It is interesting. Just the circumstances he grew up in. Um, he had grown up with a stepdad and no one ever talked about who his biological father was, um, nor would he directly ask, but he said he pieced together clues. Um, like his middle name is Steven and my last name is Stevenson, but he then always thought his dad’s first name was Steven. Right. And I don’t think he ever got further than that, but I guess back in 2011 after what would have been maybe 40 year high school reunion that my father and, um, Tony’s mother attended, uh, Tony got a Facebook message himself from my father.
Speaker 2: (15:25)
I think I might basically another version of, I think I might be your bio dad, if you want to talk about it, that’s fine. If not, that’s fine too. And what really strikes me about that sentence is it’s so it’s so the way my father, my brother, my half brother, um, or I might approach something really large with that kind of understatement and simplicity, right? Oh, that’s so is genetic. Um, and one, one sentence that, um, that is just one of my favorites in your, in your narratively piece. Um, hold on. I’m gonna pull it up. I had it ready and now I don’t. Um, so, um, so this is, this is about you checking out his Facebook page, um, after he contacted you, but it says Tony’s posts with the kind of things I’d seen on. I’d see, on my friend’s walls, a turntable playing a seventies tune, a homemade tortilla Browning, and a cast iron pan, a picture of a caper van.
Speaker 2: (16:35)
But none of that confirmed anything. My parents have been married since they were 17 and 19. So I had no clue where another brother would fit into the timeline and my folks had never seemed complex enough for such secrets. And that last part that my folks had never seen seemed complex enough for such secrets, um, just rings, rings so true in a really deep place for me. And, and I’m wondering if you could just talk about the way that this changed your understanding of your parents or your dad. Sure. Um, first of all, thank you for pointing out that line. It’s always, I felt that deeply, but it’s wonderful to hear when it resonates with someone else. You know, I was just raised in a household that I thought growing up was very open. Um, we told all kinds of stories. My parents even told wild stories from their youth and involving alcohol and motorcycles.
Speaker 2: (17:36)
And for teen parents, they seem to fit in a lot of fun, uh, before they had us. Um, and then it was just wild as an adult to see silences grow, um, around my brother’s death. And then my mom’s continued severe alcoholism and have that vision from my youth kind of turned on its head. I grew up in a family where I felt, we talked about everything. And then as an adult, I felt like I was a member of a family where we don’t talk about any of the big things. Do you think that trajectory can change over time? Is the elephant in the room grows? Do you feel like it wasn’t your brother’s death that, um, triggered that pivot or do you think it was just, it was something that was slowly happening and you just noticed it more as an adult in the way we didn’t talk about, um, both, both, um, after his death, we could talk very explicitly about him and what had happened with him, but there was my mother drinking herself to death, knowing where to alcoholism. It was like that before.
Speaker 2: (18:48)
So yeah, it got worse. And as people get older, I think you either kind of, um, uh, invite or foster a growth mindset of some sort, or you can just clean to have it kind of calcified. And at that point in time, um, my parents seemed to be clinging to have it, which alcoholism will do that to a family as well. Sure, sure, absolutely. Um, so, right. So, so, so all of that was happening and then, and then Tony, Tony contacted you and you realized that there was, there was more than just alcoholism that wasn’t being talked about and then, and then you go, uh, and you, you meet Tony. Um, can you talk a little bit about that and what has happened since then, or since that, that, that initial Facebook message. Yeah, so that was 2016 and, um, by we, my kids and I visit Indiana typically every summer that’s kind of agreement.
Speaker 2: (19:57)
Um, and we visited in summer of 2017. So we had time to like, communicate about this and I had time to talk to my dad and verify all of this information. Essentially. We kind of got the scoop on what had happened and in 2017, um, it was really interesting. This is the example of like, even though we were talking about everything, we weren’t really talking about anything. Um, I was down there with my kids. My mom was still alive, but you know, wasn’t really mobile. And I had made arrangements myself to meet, tell me, and at first it was just going to be Tony and myself. And then at the last minute, Tony’s like, well, is it okay if my wife comes? And I was like, of course, it’s fine. If your wife comes and my dad, you know, Hey, I’m going up to this midway point, Greenwood, I’m going to meet Tony.
Speaker 2: (20:50)
Um, I don’t know if you want me to tell mom that, I don’t know if you just want to hang out with you guys, hang out with the kids and I go, um, or you can come up with me and take the kids to do something fun that town has some more options. And my dad, um, again, very, in a very understated way. Well, um, yeah, I’ll take the, I’ll go up with you. I’ll take the kids to do something, but, um, could I, could I meet Tony too? And I, you know, we hadn’t really talked about that. When Tony contacted me, he did let me know. His dad had been in, my dad had been in touch and he said, you know, I didn’t follow up on that message because I was already raised, I didn’t know what I might want from a relationship with a father, but I knew who he was on Facebook.
Speaker 2: (21:39)
And he said, the reason he reached out to me in 2016, he noticed that I had posted something on my dad’s wall and he thought, wow, I didn’t know what I’d want with a father, but it never even occurred to me that I might have a sibling sibling, um, which is sweet. Isn’t it sweet. And then at that point in time, you know, shortly he realized that I’m a sibling who, um, had lost my only sibling who was an older brother, um, just about a year from his age. Um, so that’s why he had reached out to me. And that’s why we had talked, but he hadn’t really talked with my dad. So I ended up kind of in the middle ground where I’m like, well, okay, I did the emotional work to build this relationship with Tony. It’s up to him. If dad can come and I emailed Tony and, and he said, sure.
Speaker 2: (22:30)
And so the funny thing is Tony and I have never had the one on one meeting, but every year that I go up, we meet. And that year, the first time we met was a prime example. Um, first it was just me and Tony and his wife who is really awesome as well. And the three of us talked for about two hours and just sort of like, I mean, a lot of it was just looking at the mannerisms and hearing and, and just being blown away by the, um, genetics, uh, is pretty wild. And then my, um, dad showed up with my two kids and we all set together and my dad’s fairly quiet anyway, but my dad was really smiling and happy, but quite speechless at this point. Um, and since we visit every summer, um, dad usually comes with us and it’s, and, um, Tony has a daughter as well.
Speaker 2: (23:24)
Who’s delightful. And, you know, we’ll all go out and get some food and walk around, um, some part of Indianapolis. Um, and now my mom has passed away as well. And my dad is single after 40 years. So he and Tony might get together. They’re talking about getting together to watch some sports and stuff. So that’s really interesting too. Wow. So they may end up sort of forging some kind of connection after all. It seems like it. Yeah. And after all this time, wow. I wish I could be. I wish I could. Um, I wish I could know what’s inside your dad’s head and heart about all of that. Um, but, but, uh, but I’m interviewing you, not him. Um, so I also, um, but that’s, ah, that’s really interesting. And I, I th and I talk so much to two people in Tony’s position, so I would, I am also interested in the idea of feeling like, um, sort of self aware enough to sit to recognize, like, I’m not sure what I would want from a father relationship.
Speaker 2: (24:34)
Um, yeah. Wow. And he had, it sounds like he had a father or stepfather. He had, um, yeah, the sort of solid, solid family foundation, so to speak. It’s interesting because he had a stepfather, um, who he know, I don’t think he really considers a father anymore. His parents divorced when he was 18 and his father, um, was perhaps not the nicest and yet he’s a really grounded, calm kind person in the same vein as my father. And I guess I I’d say myself in that we, um, tend to be, um, de escalators good listeners. Um, so it’s wild to see that despite, um, a rough upbringing, these there’s these common traits and it makes me really admire his openness to, um, he’s not looking to cast, you know, he’ll even say I don’t need to blame anyone for my upbringing or for anything. It’s just really delightful to have this connection now.
Speaker 2: (25:43)
Yeah. How lovely, um, I admire, yeah, it sounds, um, like, uh, I don’t even know how much, I don’t think, I think I’m still sorting through my own story, so I wouldn’t even say like I have resentment, but, um, but it sounds so nice to not have that sort of like Zen or Buddhist or understanding of what is is, and what was, was, um, that’s really cool. What, another part that, um, another part that it’s in your story that I want to talk about? Uh, well, and, and one thing that was so funny, I was reading every, going over everything last night again. And so there’s some things that are really similar about, about you and you and I, and, um, uni. And so, so one thing is that I’m a writer and I, um, I feel very jealous that you got, you have a piece of narratively and a published book, but, um, but we both seem to write about, about ourselves, like life ourselves are our reflections on our growing up.
Speaker 2: (26:51)
Yeah. Um, so, so that was, that was, uh, one thing, but so you wrote this memoir, you worked on this book driven, um, for years, years and years, and your family knew you were working on it. And, um, and then it turns out that after you met, after you discovered Tony, you found out part of that discovery process was finding out that other people had known about him the whole time, which happens a lot in the NPE world. Um, but, uh, I just, I want you to talk about it, but I also just wanted to say that I had, I wrote a memoir, um, that was obstensively about the relationship between mothers and daughters. And it was about raising my daughter, um, and reflecting on the relationship with my own mom. Um, and all of that is not very original, but I couldn’t quite figure out what was missing.
Speaker 2: (27:49)
Like there was something about it that I was trying to emphasize that I couldn’t quite get to. And it has something to do with shame and has something to do with conservative values and me having a baby out of wedlock. It w you know, like I never could quite like get there. Um, and, but I did create a whole book proposal and it got rejected like 76 times. And, um, and right around then, like, as I was submitting it and getting rejected and feeling like, feeling not surprised actually, but, um, then this whole thing came out and I was like, Oh right. This whole time, this has been the thing that’s missing is the thing I didn’t, I couldn’t identify was that, um, my dad is not my dad. And you have this secret that you’ve been carrying all along. And like, maybe that has been the elephant in the room between us for 38 years.
Speaker 2: (28:46)
Oh my goodness. So, and I, and I know a lot of people in the MPE community have this experience where they, they find out that other people around them knew. Um, so I’m wondering if you could just talk to speak to that a little bit about what your experience and feelings were when, when that came out. Yeah. I mean, that just so captures my family, but I, I, and I want to answer that question, but I also want to circle back and ask, did you, do, did you, or will you go back to this book proposal with that knowledge? Yes, but it will probably be an entirely different kind of book, but, um, but it was, it was, it was very sort of funny and, uh, to be telling like my closest, closest friends who all have read by BeMore already, or the book proposal and knew everything about me and knew how long I’d been struggling with this, and everybody’s faces with have like the same face and they would sit with the same tone go like, Oh, well, that’s, what’s missing, or that’s your book.
Speaker 2: (29:48)
Yeah. That’s what’s going on, you know, so, yep. Yep. We’ll get there. Yep. I’m good. And I think there’s a tendency in memoir to when, when there’s that missing piece to, um, on ourselves, like, why am I not digging deep enough for the truth? Why not seeing when in fact sometimes people are just not telling the whole truth. Right, right. Like, yeah. I was definitely making it about my, my writing or lack, lack of insight. Yeah. Can come up with the right words. Yeah. Uh, for me, I mean, I think I just started laughing, but it was definitely a complicated laugh because it’s was like, okay, fool me once, fool me twice. This is totally my family. And I don’t think so the situation was, and, and the reason I just had to laugh at it at the end, um, my family is maybe not what you would expect when definitely not what you would expect when you think of conservative Indiana.
Speaker 2: (30:54)
Um, they have been so great about nurturing my kind of weirdo artists’ self from the time young, even though they tend to live fairly traditional lives. Um, and so my entire extended family had been helpful as I had spent eight years writing this memoir and many things. Um, there are so many instances where I would be emailing an aunt or, or someone asking a story. Um, they would fill in blanks for me. Um, and they really helped me with a lot of key details that were definitely in drafts of the memoir. And many of those stories are in the final draft of the memoir. So we just had all this time when I, they know that I’m for years and years and years writing a memoir about the death of my only sibling. Right. Never did anyone think to say, Oh yeah. But did your dad ever tell you about that other kid?
Speaker 3: (31:49)
Yeah, I can. Totally. I can sort of understand like them
Speaker 2: (31:53)
Not even, not even a crossing their mind. Exactly. Totally. One situation. Yeah. Yeah. It had been so long ago. One of my aunts even said, um, you know, they’ve, they’ve all met Tony now, which is really cool, all of them. And, um, one of my aunts said, she goes, you know, I’m not even sure that I did know. It all sounds very familiar now, but of course that all happened, um, 50 years ago and probably the version that they got came through my mother and was something like, Oh, um, didn’t something happen with that, that girl who lives near, um, Glen, my dad and didn’t she have child and, and aren’t we not supposed to talk about that. And another aunt, her version was that my mother had told her, we’ve decided to now that’s settled and we’ve decided to never talk about it. And then when we continue to not talk about something for 40 years, yeah.
Speaker 2: (32:56)
They were all like, Oh yeah. Oh yeah, yeah. So they knew, but, but it was all very fuzzy and they’ve kind of forgotten. And then my aunt pointed out too, she goes, well, I had no idea. Um, that seemed like something your parents would tell you or not. And I had no idea along the, through the years if they had told you that or not. Right. Well, I think too, I mean, you just, for me, like, I have such a, a new appreciation for time, the passage of time, but like your parents, your mom was 17 like that. It’s so young. Um, and to make a decision and to, to decide what’s best at seven at age 17 and 19. And I’m trying to think if I can remember anything from the, from when I was 19, let alone 17, and then remember it reliably in any right. Or like anything about my friends or rumors at school. Like I just, I feel like my heart really goes out to that reality for, for the second, the older generation facing these situations. Um, yes. That there’s, yeah, she was 17 and pregnant and, um, had already lost her father to a car wreck and her first boyfriend to a car wreck. So I can totally imagine this territorial 17 year old, who was like, I’ll marry you. Um, but we’re, this is our, this is our family.
Speaker 2: (34:24)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um, yeah. And without I made, and it’s just so much, so much has come out now about in, in 40 years or in the past 50 years about child development and family systems and, uh, the psychology of, of family. And in the end, even now people are still making decisions like that. So, you know, people are just doing their best. Interesting. Um, and then, okay, so the other thing I wrote down that was similar is that I also had a brother contact me on Facebook and be in my other folder. Oh, hell yeah. But I, um, he wasn’t as explicit as your brother, so I just thought it was a weird message and deleted it like immediately. I was like, Oh, what a weirdo that’s. Cause it was like, it was some kind of, it was more cryptic. It was like, Hey, we really need to talk.
Speaker 2: (35:19)
We have something in common, contact me if you want to know something that I just was like, uh, okay. You know, Russian bot or whatever. Um, so it’s so funny to think of how sort of in a sliding doors kind of way, like the path could have, could have changed very dramatically. Cause I was in 2015 that he contacted me. Wow. Um, yeah. So, so things, yeah. So I didn’t, I didn’t find out. And then what else? I felt like there was like all throughout the whole thing. I was like, Oh my gosh. That’s like me too. Um,
Speaker 1: (35:56)
Yeah,
Speaker 2: (35:56)
I don’t know. I don’t know what it was. I’ll probably think of it as soon as we get off your phone, which is how I operate. Um, so, so driven. It is an amazing book. Um, and this narratively piece is great. And I’m wondering if you are still writing, are you working on anything else right now? Yeah, I’m always still writing. Uh, and you know, you made a comment about the, um, uh, mother daughter and raising your own daughter territory. Um, maybe not being so original, I’m fascinated with it. That’s what I want you to write your book. And that’s another thing we have in common. Um, so I’m, I write a fair amount of essays that kind of, um, whether I intend to, or not deal with my mother and then also a daughter and, um, right into that territory. Um, but right now I’m working most regularly on a book about being a single parent. Awesome.
Speaker 2: (37:03)
Oh, that’s cool. Yeah. I can relate to that. That is um, Oh, that’s really neat. Well, I’m excited. I’m excited for, for any, anything. And I actually, um, I will, of course make sure there’s links to your stuff, um, on, on my, on the page and on my Instagram and everything like that. Um, if people want to, I will set up some links, but if people want to follow, are you, are you doing follow you or, or, or keep abreast of your work? Um, is there social media that they should check out or anything? Yeah. I have a website. I’m an author website and I’m also an Instagram. So what’s your author website, Melissa dot Steven, that Stevenson with a pH Squarespace. Right, right, right. I should know this. Right.
Speaker 2: (38:01)
And you’re on, I’m sorry. Did you say Instagram or Twitter? Instagram. I’m on Twitter too, but I don’t say a whole lot there. Okay, cool. Well, thank you for spending your morning, talking about your writing and about what it’s like to discover a sibling. Um, because that’s, that’s new for, for my podcast community. Um, although not new to the overall NPE experience. That was one of the first I took a lot about, about when I first started, when I first started talking about my experience and how every time I talked about it, people somewhere, somewhere near me would say like, Oh, that happened to me. It would happened to someone I know. And one of the first ones was somebody said, like, I just had some, I just have a sibling reach out. And she figured out as much that her mother had had a baby when she was 16 and giving the baby up for adoption.
Speaker 2: (38:56)
And that’s as far as it’s gotten, because her mother was so devastated to have that secret, Oh, come out. And, and my friend really wanted to process this new understanding of her mother with Thermo, you know? And, uh, so I, I want to check in with her, but, um, but yeah, this is how this is happening all over the place. I, and I, I have to say, I did have that first thought, um, which I kind of forgot about, but, uh, when I first realized in those emails that Tony was probably my half sibling, I thought, Oh, my dad must really have just kept this a secret from everyone. I’m going to pretend to secret, but I’ll talk to them about it. And that was part of why I laughed. And I’m like, Oh, it’s not a secret. Everyone knows, but me, I guess the memoir gloves are coming off. I can write about this. Oh yeah, yeah. But I have, I did get more email on that narratively piece than I’ve gotten from anything that I’ve written. And it was all people who are like, Oh my goodness. I have a similar story. Yeah. It’s wild. Yeah. It’s a real, it’s so funny. I was just, I was, I don’t know if it’s so funny, but I, it is just a lovely piece. I’ve read it so many times now. And you’re writing is, is, um,
Speaker 4: (40:16)
I don’t know why I don’t mean this in a bad way. I don’t know why
Speaker 2: (40:20)
So accessible, but it’s really beautiful. And there’s something about the simplicity also of like, he found me on Facebook and not like Facebook, you know? And, um, Facebook is not the most like eloquent, romantic baseline for a story, but like you, you really worked with it. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Well, great. Well, I am so grateful that you could spend, I already said this, but spend your morning with me and, um, and I will make sure everything is linked to your stuff and I can’t wait to, to read more. And, um, I hope you keep in touch about all things, um, writing and siblings and parenting related. Yeah. It was so great to get to talk to you and I’ll share, let me know when there’s a link to share and I’ll share it on my various social medias and I want you to, yeah. Let me know if I can ever help with, yeah. I want you to get a book out there. Thank you. Thank you. I, um, yeah, I, I, I feel like this connection was more than just about the DNA connection. It feels really great to connect with you. So have a wonderful weekend. You and enjoy Missoula as the weather changes. Yes. It’s lovely. I will and enjoy the change there as well. Thank you. It’s less lovely here in LA, but it has its own charm.
Speaker 2: (41:48)
Right, right. That’s true. All right, Melissa. Thank you so much. I will be in touch with you. Alright, bye.
Speaker 1: (00:00)
It’s more concerned with like having to manage four kids. And it’s hard. Like it’s so, so hard to, um, to be managing that because the needs are so different, each of their schedules is different. So academically I’m not concerned at all. I’m more concerned, like what it’s gonna do to our life and our relationship having us do that. Um, and it seems like it’s changing every day. Like they’re honing it and so, Oh, it’s just bananas. I kinda just want to pull all the kids out and homeschool. And I would do that if I wouldn’t lose my spot at my kid’s charter school. Right. So I know there’s like so many different ideas that are popping up. Like I would yeah. Brainstorming and like,
Speaker 2: (00:40)
I don’t know. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (00:43)
I hear you. And I feel bad for teachers too. I’m like, they’re doing such an amazing job, but at the end of the day, like, man, their hands are so tied. I feel so bad for them.
Speaker 2: (00:54)
Yeah, absolutely. Um, yeah. So
Speaker 1: (00:59)
And how have you guys been in quarantine? Otherwise it’s been great. We love to travel. We love to hike. We hike a lot. And so it was totally fine for us. And back when it was in the spring, it seemed like it was a more, um, flexible schedule. And so that was great. Cause the kids could wake up and kind of do it when they wanted and we could go places, you know, in the afternoon or we did a lot of hiking around Arizona and um, and that was, that was actually great. It’s good for our family. My husband owns his business. And so working from home from him is not a problem. And it was great. Like I kind of was sad, sad to see that. And um, because now the computers. Yes. And it’s hard. Cause we’re so careful with screen time and our kids, that’s something we’re big believers in and I’m like, okay, so now, okay. Everything we told you, right. This is what you have to have. Right. You have to have YouTube access because that’s what you’re, you know, they’re accessing YouTube and I’m like, well, great, Jess, great. All the work, all the work we’ve done. And now they’re on screens and YouTube. And so it’s a learning experience for all of us.
Speaker 2: (02:11)
Yeah. It’s been wild. And um, yeah. Have you guys been,
Speaker 1: (02:15)
Have you been managing to get podcast episodes? So yeah, so we record, um, we’re recorded out through Oh gosh, like right now, like November. So we, what we realized early on, we do bulk recordings. So when Becky and I are out of town, cause we do all of our recording in person. Um, we record like 10 episodes in 48 hours. Like it is so crazy. Yeah. It is. It you’re like cross-eyed by the end, but for both of us, cause Becky has three kids, I have four kids. Like it just is how we have to do it to make it, to make it work so that we’re not stressed out. Um, so yeah, we always are. We try to be a minimum of six weeks ahead of schedule. That’s amazing. That’s I bet I batched, I did five in one day once and that was, that was too many.
Speaker 1: (03:03)
I couldn’t like in my defense I was pregnant, but like I also, by the end of the day, like the person talking was telling me this like wild story and I was like, like nothing left. The leader was like, well that was the wildest story. And I wrote, I responded like it was nothing. Well, yeah, it’s you kind of gotta do what you can and cause you know, you want to be consistent and yeah. That’s what we kind of aim for. So yeah. That’s cool. Yeah. That’s cool. You guys got a system for yourselves, so let’s talk about your DNA discovery.
Speaker 1: (03:42)
Tell me, um, you can tell the story however you want in whatever order. I imagine you’ve told it to friends or uh, like for therapists or over eating over a drink. So like how do you like to tell it? So for me, um, initially, and I’ll kind of get into the story later, but the one thing that I knew was really important for me was to tell the story and I don’t mean on a public forum or on my podcast or something, but really be open about what was going on with the people close to me in my life. Because one thing I recognized really early on was, um, it could turn to shame and it could go a lot of different ways and kind of my antidote for that was making sure that I was being honest with myself about how I was feeling and also open with the people around me that I loved, um, so that they could be in on like this craziness that I was going through.
Speaker 1: (04:40)
It was nuts. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that, I think you hit the nail on the head. It’s so important to be open about this experience. Yeah. So do you just want me to jump in and tell you yeah. Tell tale if you yeah, yeah, just do it and then I’ll probably interrupt if they’re saying perfect. Come up, but you just tell it, you just tell it how you tell it. Okay, perfect. Um, so I have been interested and really fascinated with genealogy for golf probably seven or eight years now. And I had utilized, um, online resources to find pictures and documents to kind of, um, document my family. I thought it would, it’s a really interesting work. And if you’ve ever done it, it’s like falling down the greatest kind of rabbit hole because you start in like two hours later, you don’t, you know, it feels like, right, right, right.
Speaker 1: (05:30)
It’s kind of this really fun intellectual study for me. And so I had documented over 2,500 people and I kind of reached a point in my, in my genealogy that I kind of just had roadblocks. Like I had gone back as far as I could go. And um, I knew that I was going to have, yeah, I’m sorry. Can we go back to wait, can we go back to that number that you just dropped really casually 2,500 people in your family? Well, so when you’re doing you do your direct lines and then it kind of starts to branch out. So it’s really wide when you add it, add in spouses and you know, my husband and his family. And so it kind of started getting really wide, but I was having death problems. Like I could not get past a certain, a certain depth. And I knew I was going to have to go to Europe or start employing like some of these pretty rash tactics.
Speaker 1: (06:20)
And that wasn’t a super big reality for me. Um, so I w we were actually traveling with friends. We were in Iceland and we were talking about genealogy and there’s on different websites. You can access, like how you’re all related. And I, you know, I was trying to access one of those and everyone in the car was related and I had the most genealogy done. And I was like, how is this even like numerically possible for me not to be related to anyone in this car by 12 generations or whatever. And so I bought the DNA test, a DNA test from one of the online, um, genealogy sites solely because I just thought it would be fun to see if that could like break me through the walls that, that had kind of come up in my research. Right. And literally that was it. So I took, you know, took the test, bought the test, took the test, mailed the test in and seriously forgot about it.
Speaker 1: (07:09)
And then when the test results came back in, um, it, it showed a bunch of cousins. I didn’t know which really was what I was expecting. And it showed a first cousin that I had never heard of, but my first reaction was, you know, we live in Phoenix. And so I thought, Oh, the sample probably sat in a really hot mailbox. Right. It’s like, maybe it cooked weird or I laugh. Cause my daughter, my daughter said, mom, I just don’t understand if you take a DNA test. Like what if you ate a hamburger right before doesn’t that show you’re going to be related to cows or something.
Speaker 1: (07:52)
I mean, especially when the results come back or something you don’t expect. Like, I think our minds just start to like put pieces all the wrong pieces together. Totally. Just like, just so even, even after I had the results and I knew there were people in my cousin list that I didn’t know, but toothy, I totally expected that. Um, I kind of just cast it out of my head. I had just finished, um, chemotherapy for a cancer, um, that I had. And so it was just not the first thing on my head. And I went home, um, to New York where I’m from and I was talking to my mom about genealogy and, um, and, and what I had found. And she said she had no idea, you know, who these people were. And so I went home again and just kinda like, forgot about it, the sat on it, and really didn’t think much of it.
Speaker 1: (08:43)
And so the next time I went to go do some work on genealogy, I pulled it up and I was noticing some inconsistencies as I was accounting for these new cousins that were genetically related to me. And so I called my mom and I was like, mom, I’m so frustrated. Like, I don’t know what I did wrong. I think I like messed the test up or something. And I was like, literally, the only way for this to be true is if dad is not my father and stopped and was like, didn’t say anything. And I literally said it, like, there’s no way that could be true on the planet. And then all of a sudden she kind of got quiet and was, and said, well, there’s a, there’s a chance. He’s not your father. And I was like, Oh my gosh, like you could have said anything to me.
Speaker 1: (09:33)
And I would have believed it over that statement. Like there was just no way that I thought that that could be true. And I relate to that. And then immediately I felt such a surge of love for my mom, because as my brain started to wrap my mind around what that meant and what that meant for my mom and for my dad, like I felt so I was just overwhelmed with love for them in, in a way that I have never been before, because I felt like I understood so much better. And so I just, I just said to my mom, you know, this doesn’t change anything like don’t, I’m fine. And I re I really truly was okay. It was more interesting data. And so I got off the phone with my mom and I, I called my husband and I was like, you are not going to believe this. And at that time, or did you just say like,
Speaker 3: (10:26)
I love you.
Speaker 1: (10:28)
She said, she said that she had had an affair and that she did not remember like his name or his, she only knew his first name and didn’t remember any details. And for me, I was just so like reeling from the event that I didn’t ask any more questions. And so I called my husband and I told him what was going on. And he was just as shocked as I was. And, um, he reminded me though. He was the one that kind of brought me into remembrance that like I had an appointment with my oncologist and a few days later. And because of, I had, um, a really rare, weird kind of cervical cancer, but when you have cancer, they do intensive, um, medical histories of your family, like generations back, because it can actually impact like the kind of treatment they give you or, um, you know, just different things.
Speaker 1: (11:21)
If you have a breast cancer history, there’s different things they have to add into your chemo and surgery schedules and, you know, the way that they track you and all that stuff. And so he said, honey, we have to find out who your dad is. And it was the first time I was like, Oh my gosh, like, this is a real person. And I have to, I like for my health, I have to find him. And so I hopped on social media and my mom had shared his first name. And then when I called, I called her back a hours later and I was like, mom, I need more information. And I was like, I need locations. I need anything. And it turns out that she did have his last name. She was just so shocked from that phone call. She didn’t have time to process.
Speaker 1: (12:07)
And so in that second phone call, she was able to share his last name with me. And so, you know, I hopped right on Facebook and typed it in and found all the people under that name and the country and tried to like make connections and figure it out. And then I came across, um, a profile picture of, of this man and I thought, Oh, maybe like I see some similarities. So then I went onto his account and I was looking down and I saw, um, a comment made. And it was like a person who frequently commented from this girl named Sarah. And when I looked at Sarah’s account, like we could be twins. Like it is the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen. And so I messaged, I Facebook message Sarah, and who is actually my cousin, my first cousin. And I said, this is so weird.
Speaker 1: (12:59)
I can’t like I’m having an out of body experience even writing you this. But I think that this guy could be my father and I don’t know how to get in touch with him. I’ve had cancer. Like, it’s okay. If you don’t want to know me, I just need your medical information. And, um, within, I mean, 10, 10 seconds, I swear. She responded back and was just so kind and so loving and so amazing. And my husband was laughing cause I was like, I can’t believe she’s just so awesome. And my husband’s laughing. He’s like, because honestly back that’s exactly what you would do if the, if the roles were reversed, like you’d be acting exactly like her. It was just another one of those like affirmations of man, how crazy important genetics are. But, um, so anyways, so Sarah was able to get me in touch with my biological father and, um, he had no idea that I existed and we talked on the phone and I discovered I have this whole other side of my family.
Speaker 1: (14:03)
I still have a grandma that’s alive on that side. I have cousins. Um, I have, I have two sisters that I didn’t know. Um, I had, and so the whole experience meeting this biological father and the extended family was actually really positive. Okay. So you went and met them. So first we just talked on the phone, um, and it was, I talked on the phone with my grandma and my biological father and my uncle and cousins. And we did that for about six months. And then about six months later, my husband and I were on the East coast for, um, a work conference. And we decided to drive up to meet them in person, just he and I. Um, and so first we met that side of the family, just he and I, and then a year later we brought back, um, last we brought back our kids and they were able to meet kind of the family on the side. So that was super, super fun. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (14:58)
Super fun. And what is, um, uh, let’s see. I have so many questions. Um, I’m sure you’re so used to, like so many times when I tell the story, I’m like, well, just hold on, everybody, hold on. Like, we’re going to get to that part, like, hold on. Um, I promise so, um, okay, so your mom still live, uh, is she still married to two respites and that’s who he is?
Speaker 1: (15:24)
Yeah. So the dad who raised me, um, my mom is still, they’re still married. Um, and I have four siblings and they are, they have a really, really strong marriage. And so I found out that my father, my father, who raised me, um, was aware of the infidelity when it happened. So that was not like a hidden thing. It just wasn’t known that I wasn’t his, although, as we’ve had subsequent conversations, he, I think had inclinations as I was growing up just cause of physical resemblance. I don’t, I don’t look like anyone in my family. And so I think that physical resemblance to my biological father, um, was pretty, it was pretty significant when he was younger. And so I think he had, I think he knew deep down. I think, I think they both knew deep down. I just think it was so painful that they didn’t want to think about it
Speaker 2: (16:21)
No way, no way
Speaker 1: (16:22)
Pushed it, pushed it away instead of finding out. Yeah. Um, so, and that, that honestly was the hardest part for me. So, and you’ll like, this is the most openly I’ve talked about it. I was talking to my husband last night and I was like, well, I can tell the filtered story or I can tell the actual real story. And I thought, if there’s a podcast where like the real story needs to be, is this one because this is the place where people come and we’re going through the same thing. Um, you know, in those days, following when I first found out I had a lot of anger sink in and a lot of things from my childhood became a lot more clear. And so honestly the, the whole experience start to finish has actually been a really good one for me, not an easy one, but I feel like I know more of who I am and it makes more sense to me.
Speaker 1: (17:12)
Um, the way that I exist in my family and I understand more, it has not been a strengthening experience for me and my parents, for sure. Um, it’s hard and, and I feel to a certain degree, they’re still in denial about it. Um, cause I need to talk about it. I need to talk about it and be able to talk openly about my feelings. It was, it was a really hard realization for me to realize that when I was going through cancer and needed all that medical information, that my mom made a decision at that point to not share that with me. And that is really hard for me as a mother to understand. Um, and then understanding that I don’t understand, you know what I mean? Yep, yep. Yep. I do. Yeah. A lot of complex feelings. Totally. Oh my gosh, Becky, like, I mean just, yeah, no, I want you to keep telling your story and then I’ll talk about it. Yeah. Um, I, I, I mean, I’m so grateful that you, you feel willing to like share, share sort of like the, the, the more intimate details of the experience. Cause it’s so important. And I think like what I heard that really resonated with me is that good. You said it’s been a really good experience, but that doesn’t make it easy. And like the good, isn’t always easy, the good way, you know? Um, that’s, that’s really huge and I actually am really struggling. I’ll just tell you some personal information about me now.
Speaker 1: (18:42)
It’s going to be on the podcast. Um, uh, I’m really struggling with, with how to talk to my parents about it. And they know, I mean, they, you know, we’re, we’re through the knowing part, but, um, I really need to talk about it. Like I really need to talk about it and I’m, I’m sort of just in this, like just, and so it’s just really interesting that we’re talking today. Like almost like maybe we were supposed to talk today. Cause totally cause the people that I’m working through it with on my own, like for like a therapist, for example, you know, there’s really a lot of like encouragement for me to just really like sort of break through that wall or break through, you know, break through this discomfort of them sort of paralyzed and yeah, it’s got to happen. I know it’s going to happen, but, um, I think it’s hard to realize that, um, my parents are very resistant to talking about it and have made the comment several times.
Speaker 1: (19:38)
Like, no we’ve gotten through this a long time ago. We don’t want to talk about it. But I think when it’s that difficult to talk about really highlights the fact that they actually aren’t through it and like really brushed it under the rug. And so it’s a really hard dynamic to be in where essentially you’re having to put your health and happiness over another person’s and knowing that you’re, you know, it is gonna be a situation in their life that they’re going to have to deal with in the same way that you are in it. It feels so selfish at times to put my wellbeing and my need for honesty, because I could so easily be so ashamed that I am the product of infidelity and you know, and with that, because when I found out it made a lot of things from my childhood, I, you know, I’ll, I had a great childhood, but there were a lot of times where I felt like I took a lot of heat.
Speaker 1: (20:36)
My siblings didn’t, I knew I was different. Every, it was pretty obvious I was different. Um, I felt like I was treated differently. And um, and kind of coming to with the fact that like, no, I was treated differently. They were way harder on me. And probably that was because of this subconscious shame about, about what they knew or what my mom knew about, you know, the, my paternity. And, um, it’s hard to talk about that because I’m a mom and that I, I don’t, I, you know, everyone does the best they can with the circumstances kind of they’re given. And so there’s equal amounts of grace and complicated feelings of, um, of understanding that that is really the reason for a lot of the, you know, traumatic, not traumatic, that’s probably a dramatic word, but like, you know, for the harder experiences in my childhood, and it’s hard to bring that up. It’s hard. I don’t want to cause my parents pain. I don’t want to be disrespectful in any way. And yet I have, I have to talk about it to be able to remain healthy. And you know, as I’m working through healing from this
Speaker 2: (21:43)
Yeah, yeah. Becky, wow. It’s so complicated. It’s so complicated. And I think also you, you reflecting back on your childhood and um, the way for me, like the way that memories suddenly like come in, become, just come into picture or come into frame and become clear. And, um, but it’s such a like testimony to intuition and like what something was, you know, that, that feeling that something, something was up. Um, and so how confusing and it’s nobody’s fault, like I know your parents didn’t work didn’t mean to do this. And I know my parents didn’t mean to do this, but for me, like I’ve really struggled, trusting myself my whole life. Like, and I think that for me, like my intuition, I’m just now having to be like, Oh no, I was right all that time. Like I do know what I’m thinking. I do know what I feeling I do. I do. There is something to be said about those feelings that I had nowhere to put. Um
Speaker 1: (22:43)
[inaudible] as you heard that I totally got chills. Cause I plain, I explained that to my husband before I knew about all this as we’re, you know, raising kids together. I’m like, I didn’t trust myself as a child or as a young adult. And I don’t know why I didn’t trust myself, but I need to have my kids trust themselves. So how do we help me out the kids to trust themselves? That was something that came up so often. Um, I think you’re right. I think that intuition, we often doubt ourselves. Um, and I knew, I knew on every level that, that I was different. Like I just knew, even though I wasn’t noticeably different, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: (23:24)
Right. A hundred percent know what you mean, percent know what you mean on an intimate level. I am relating to you.
Speaker 1: (23:31)
Well, and it’s interesting how that’s played into the work that I do now. Um, and that’s why I say it’s been like a really helpful experience for me because as, um, I stayed at home when my kids were younger and kind of returning back to work, having the podcast, I did a lot of public speaking. And then now I’ve really, um, this experience kind of highlighted in, in my mind and in my life, the power of my intuition and the truthfulness of my intuition and I kind of help women, um, with the coaching, I do a very specific kind of niche coaching that involves basically articulating the jumble in your head and the thoughts in your head and articulating that into, um, into words and being able to create for ourselves like a script of what is actually true about us. And my intuition is a hundred percent that it’s, it’s essentially allowing women to be empowered by their intuition and to trust themselves.
Speaker 1: (24:29)
And so, you know, that work is so meaningful to me, but I don’t know that I ever would have gotten there had I not had this experience. So I don’t regret it to me. It feels like there’s just more people to love. And even with my parents and I’m a hundred percent sure they don’t feel this way, I even feel like I know my parents more authentically. Oh yeah, totally. And I will say, I don’t think it’s brought us closer together because I still we’re still, you know, two years later figuring out like boundaries, I don’t know, or how to tell them about it and probably not doing a great job at it. Um, there isn’t, and there’s so much, I feel for my mom because really healing from this means outing herself as, you know, having an affair and that that’s complicated. There’s a lot of people involved in that that’s painful and I’m, it makes me sad. It makes me really sad for my mom that she can’t own that as part of her story and forgive herself and be okay enough with it where it becomes a meaningful part of the story. And not just like, you know, this damaging awful part is something that defines her.
Speaker 2: (25:48)
Yeah. And, um, what’s
Speaker 1: (25:51)
Do your children understand of the situation? So we were very open with our children, um, in both of our families, there has been divorced and, you know, various infidelities. And so it’s not a completely foreign concept to them. Of course, we tried to, um, we tried to keep it as appropriate as possible. So they don’t know like the nitty gritty details, but they do understand that I have a different biological father. And so for my older children, they understand what that means. The younger children will connect the dots when later I’m not gonna do that for them as it becomes appropriate, they’ll probably connect those dots for themselves. Um, and we, we just shared with them that it’s a really, really hard thing, um, for grandma and grandpa, and it’s a really hard thing for us, but that our job is to take, you know, circumstances that we find ourselves in and to love and to try to do the best we can to make it through.
Speaker 1: (26:48)
And, and so when we took them to meet the family, we let them know it’s okay to, to have loving feelings towards them. Like, you know, this is how heavenly father makes like good things happen out of really bad circumstances. And so for them, they kind of feel like we do just that our family’s expanded and we get to know and love more people. And so they’ve really dealt with it quite well. They’re pretty, they’re pretty into it when they got to meet, you know, another great grandma and another uncle and more cousins. My, my cousin, Sarah, who I mentioned at the beginning, who’s probably the one that I’m closest to. She has a daughter that is literally like two days apart from my daughter and the two of them when they met, it was the cutest thing. It’s like, they’re Siamese twins.
Speaker 2: (27:40)
Yeah.
Speaker 1: (27:41)
So fun. And um, yeah, so it’s been, it’s been a lot of good and I think my kids have adjusted well as we, I think if we had tried to shield them from it, it would’ve, it would’ve made it way harder for me and it would’ve made it harder for them to.
Speaker 2: (27:57)
Yeah. Well, and like we just said, we’re just talking about that intuition. How can you keep children from like, knowing that something’s, something’s going on and things
Speaker 1: (28:07)
When you don’t talk about it essentially you’re, you know, you’re reaffirming a shame narrative of, yeah, we don’t talk about this because, because we’re ashamed of it and I’m not ashamed of it. I’m not ashamed of the fact that I’m, you know, was born from infidelity. Like I am, I’m totally fine with it. I feel, I feel great about who I am and feel great about the increased understanding I have of who I am. And, and I don’t ever want to encourage them to feel like they need to keep their mouth shut about something because of me or because of, you know, I don’t ever want them to be increasing in any way with shame or guilt and then burying it. And that’s just not something I want them to do. And so we do the best we can to try to model how not to do that for them. And hopefully they’ll follow a similar path.
Speaker 2: (28:59)
Right, right. Doing, doing what you feel is best doing the best you can. And hoping it works, having trafficked children so hard,
Speaker 1: (29:11)
But at the end of the day, and this was, this is where I come with now, even doing this interview at the end of the day, um, there’s pain involved both ways. So there’s, there’s pain. If you tell your story of what that will mean, but there’s also pain if you don’t. And so you kind of have to decide for yourself, which is the more intolerable pain. And for me, it always, and forever will be not being truthful and honest and, and embracing my life. And so that’s kind of what leads me to, to talk about it is because it is what makes it is what makes me more aligned with who I am. And it’s how I don’t have, you know, feelings when I’m having relationships with people like, Oh, you don’t, if you only knew everything, you don’t even know everything about it.
Speaker 1: (29:56)
You know? Cause that essentially keeps me from having close relationships with other people right now you can just bring your whole authentic self to do that dynamic. Exactly. Yeah. I think that’s lovely. I think that you’re right. Um, and the last thing I always ask people is, um, if somebody is listening right now that has just found out about, um, they’re about like a D you know, this, whatever you want to call it, a DNA surprise or an NPE, um, what do you have advice for anybody or anything you wish you’d known or, um, thoughts about those that, that first experience? So it’s kind of the same advice. I’d give anyone who finds anything crazy happening in their life, whether it’s, you know, um, any kind of paternity thing or cancer or any huge life change that really the, the new information is data. That’s really it.
Speaker 1: (30:55)
And the new information is data. And you’re the same person you were before you found out. And all this data is going to bring you is more understanding. So the data is nothing to fear. It’s not like, you know, sometimes people don’t go get mammograms cause they are just so stressed out about finding out any information. But the cancer, if you have cancer, it exists. Whether or not you find out. So nothing is actually changing. You’re just giving more information so that you can be more intentional with how you move forward in your life. And don’t be afraid of the information because information gives us the ability to make choices and, um, and have greater understanding and growth and all the things that we’re meant to have, um, in this life in. And it is all gonna, it’s all gonna be okay. It’s all gonna be okay. Because you are not any different, right?
Speaker 2: (31:49)
Oh yeah. Amazing
Speaker 1: (31:53)
Becky. You’re amazing. Thanks on, I’m so glad. It’s so cool that I don’t know. It just feels, you just never know when somebody’s going to come into your life. That is really going to maybe offer, maybe offer something as a, I don’t know, like, I don’t know how to, I don’t want, I don’t know how to describe what you’re doing for me right now. Cause you also, you cause of course like this is for the podcast, but it just really feels like for some reason I was supposed to talk to Becky today. For me, it’s just really feels right.
Speaker 2: (32:28)
Mmm.
Speaker 1: (32:30)
It’s just really, it just feels really powerful. Well, and that’s kind of the wrap up of why podcasts like this and talking about owning our stories and talking
Speaker 2: (32:40)
About our stories is so impactful. I heard a quote and it said that, um, your story may one day become someone else’s survival guide. And that just, it just rang so true to me. Um, cause that’s what we deal with in the work that I do is the power of stories and the power of your state and, and where you sit inside of your story. And the thing is, is all of it is for the good, if we, if we just can be open, if we can let go of shame and just allow it to be used for the good it will be. And the impact of conversations like these and conversations I’ve had with people that have been my survival guides have changed my life. And so I could never not share and offer that to someone else. Wow.
Speaker 2: (33:28)
Well I, for 1:00 AM grateful for that. Um, yeah, I’ve just sort of stunned. I’m just sort of done right now. Um, yeah. I like I’ll let you go back to your, to your, uh, to your distance, distance learning, parenting day, distance learning. Oh man. Distance learning is a hard as a hard trial. So I need to remind myself that my story with distance learning someone else, someone else’s survival guide. Exactly. Exactly. Thank you so much, Becky. This was so awesome. It makes you’re welcome. Thanks for having me. I’m just really, um, for lack of a better word, like tripping out about, about, about like going to Alton and being at that podcasts meeting and then you, and it just, it just is all feeling, um, synchronistic right now. So, Oh, aren’t those things it’s just so great when that happens in life. When you realize just the cyclical nature of all of these different, crazy journeys, we all go on and it’s such an honor to be able to play a role in the life of other people and have other people be part of my life.
Speaker 2: (34:40)
And we’re so blessed with podcasting. I mean, obviously I’m a podcaster podcasting seen as like the very best thing ever because you get to find community and support and um, get to relate to people that are going through these crazy things you imagine no one else could be going through. Right. Um, right. I’ll possible just through this, this fun, new medium that we love so much. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I’m so grateful that you got to jump on with me today and um, we’ll keep you posted about when this is gonna air and it will probably be very soon. Um, okay. And uh, and I mean, like there’s very boring details. Like my artist’s sound editor got a new job, so I’m in the middle of a new one. So we’re on this accidentally. Um, things will, things will, the ball is rolling. It’s just, um, a little off track right now, but everything will be up soon and I’ll keep it, you know, and of course, if you think of something that you want out, I’ll take it out or if you Oh, no, you’re good.
Speaker 2: (35:39)
Um, but yeah, thank you so much. This was a really big one for me. Um, so I will, I’ll just be thinking about this for today. Leave marinating in this one and um, well, keep in touch too. I will hear from you. And um, if you ever need someone to talk to, I’m always here cause how many people, there’s so many people that have been on this crazy journey and can understand all the depths of the different feelings. Yeah. Thank you so much. I feel really, uh, I mean, I, I mean, it’s sort of, it’s unexpected, although what did I expect? But, um, it just, I feel really connected to you right now and it, it just feels really good. So I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week, right?
Emergency Episode: Dr. Laura Is the Worst
Speaker 1: (00:11)
Hello, your listening to everything’s relative. And I am Eve Sturgeous. This podcast is about the new modern phenomenon of surprise, DNA results and everything that happens when a person discovers they are not who they thought they were. I’m trying to get everyone to talk about the people involved, the feelings that occur, the fallouts, the celebrations, the secrets, and the shame. I want to talk about all of it. So I’m here and I made this podcast. If this is not your first time here, you know that usually I sort of chat at you for a minute and then play a recorded conversation with someone who’s had this experience today is going to be different though, because there is drama in the NPE community and it needs to be addressed. Here is what happened. Okay? Wait, in order to understand what happened. You have to know about dr. Laura. I thought that everyone knew dr. Laura, but apparently that is wrong. Dr. Laura is a radio talk show, quote, unquote therapist who has her own Collin show. And a lot of books published and is known for being very no nonsense about her advice. She espouses very conservative values and uses strong language. She quote unquote, chose to take herself off the air a number of years ago, but she now has a show on Sirius XM radio. Okay. Everyone with me.
Speaker 1: (01:37)
So a woman named Tori called dr. Laura and said she was struggling with her relationship to her mother because she’d recently discovered that the man who raised her was not her biological father and her mother lied to her, her entire life. That’s all we learn as listeners before the editors cut her off for the segment or dr. Laura interrupts her. It’s very unclear, but dr. Laura lays into Tory, like I have never heard her late into anyone before she calls her a stupid twit. She says, she’d like to smack her across the head. She calls her an ungrateful brat. It goes on and on for an agonizing five minutes while the color Tory is totally silent. And finally musters a thank you before hanging up.
Speaker 2: (02:25)
Okay?
Speaker 1: (02:25)
The NPE community is on fire right now at dr. Laura. I started calling other NPS who work within the community. The NPS are sensitive about the collective experience and the collective experience is angry about this one. I’ll be totally honest about this. At first, I was like, well, yeah, it’s dr. Laura being mean to people is what she does. That’s her whole shtick. What did you expect? And I expressed that I wished everyone would put all that energy into a different cause or two or three causes that seem more important to the world right now. Like dr. Laura will always be a judgmental wretch. Don’t waste your time people. But someone responded to my comment with a simple explanation of standing up for what you believe in and voicing dissent when someone is treated poorly and they were right, maybe this situation is small potatoes to the outside world, but dr. Laura personifies the worst nightmare of the NPE shame. Belittlement incredulity gaslighting.
Speaker 1: (03:39)
And after all this, I’m here to tell you that this episode is not about dr. Laura. Please don’t find that clip and play it for yourself, unless you just enjoy experiencing abuse of power and raw vulnerability. And even if you do enjoy that, please don’t give dr. Laura any more time or energy or clicks or visits to her page. Please go fight the good fight somewhere else, where it matters like a voting booth or a soup kitchen or a community clinic. For example, this episode is about Tori and about the NPE experience that is sweeping through our country and has affected so many people you don’t even know. And all the people who don’t know who to turn to for advice. And this episode is also for the therapists out there who are facing these clients with this like unforeseen cultural phenomenon.
Speaker 1: (04:37)
So many listeners contacted me about Tori. People are crushed to hear the way that she was treated and people want to find Tori, Tori, whoever you are, wherever you are. There are like thousands of people trying to find you right now and send you a message of love inclusivity and the opportunities to speak your mind openly without the fear of emotional abuse. And look, I don’t think Tory would have called dr. Laura if she didn’t listen to dr. Laura. And I don’t think the people who listened to dr. Laura are the same people who listened to me, but maybe, maybe, maybe someone knows someone who knows Tori and Tori is the focus, but Tory’s also sort of beside the point, because there were hundreds, maybe thousands of people in her position, listening to that call, believe me. If the statistics are anywhere near close people who are going to be NPS and don’t even know it yet, we’re listening. We are everywhere. Dr. Laura is not a doctor, not the medical kind, not the psychological kind. She has a PhD in physiology. She is not a therapist. She has the training, which she obviously doesn’t apply. And she was once licensed, but I don’t believe she is anymore. And I believe that any ethics board would yank it after they heard the call that I heard today. You know why she left radio 10 years ago because she wanted to use the N word. Dr. Laura hurts people.
Speaker 1: (06:23)
I think yesterday for five minutes on the radio, Tori was all of us. She is struggling to reconcile the love she has for her mother, with the new understanding that she was lied to her entire life. She is looking for advice. I don’t know her, but I imagine that she feels very confused and alone. I can say with almost certainty that we all feel confused and alone. When we get this information, Tori, you are not alone. You are not a twit or a spoiled ungrateful brat. You are human
Speaker 1: (07:01)
Special. Thanks to the women who talked to me on the phone while I tried to figure out what to say about all of this, um, special thanks to BK Jackson, founder of severance, a magazine and community for adoptees and PEs and others with concerns about genetic identity. Julie Dixon, Jackson, host of the cut of the podcast, cut off jeans, who is also an NPE and a genealogist herself and Krista driver, CEO of Mariposa counseling center in orange County, California. I’m going to make sure that all of their wonderful resources that they offer, um, are available on my Instagram. So if you didn’t catch it, now, go check them out at everything’s relative podcast. Tell your friends, thanks for listening. I’ll be back in two weeks.
DNA Is Upending Who We Are with Libby Copeland
Speaker 1: (00:00)
I know what I’m saying. God. So see.
Speaker 2: (00:10)
Okay. How does that sound? Oh, way better. Oh, thank you. Um, I actually just like, I finally just got the right equipment on my end, so, um, maybe I feel more comfortable saying yeah, try it. Um, hi. I live in Copeland. How are you? I’m great. I’m great. It’s so exciting to talk. Oh gosh. Well, I I’m like I emailed you this a little bit, but I, um, I sort of can’t believe we’re talking. I didn’t, um, like I’ll try to reel in my like star struck dumbness, but it just didn’t, it didn’t occur to me. It just felt well, it just felt like I just didn’t even occur to me that I could just contact you and ask you. You could be on my podcast. I was like, hoping you would. I was like, Oh, I know. Well, yeah. Gosh. Okay. Well, it is, um, it’s very exciting for me, but I will try and stay focused cause we’re have a limited amount of time.
Speaker 2: (01:15)
Um, so, so you’re here because you wrote a book that came out earlier this year called the lost family, how DNA testing is up ending, who we are. And I can say that within the NPE communities and the people that I talk with this book is hot. It is on fire. Everyone is talking about it, everybody is reading it. Um, and it’s such an honor. Thank you. Um, and I think, you know, I was rereading it, um, last night and to sort of just like refresh my brain before we talked. And one thing that really occurred to me is the feeling when I’m reading it it’s, um, I think that there is something for every kind of person in this book in that, or, or I say every kind of person, but what I mean is there’s maybe two kinds of people and there’s the people that are into history and science and there’s people that are into stories and you do this like excellent way of weaving those things together.
Speaker 2: (02:25)
Yeah. I mean, I’m, I’m mostly a story person. I, you know, I would happily write an entire book with just people’s stories, but, you know, I kind of felt like, well, this is a really important moment. And, you know, in not just in cultural terms, which is the most interesting piece of it to me, but like in scientific terms, in business terms, right. Um, in sort of sociological terms. And so I wanted to broaden it out because I felt like if, um, if we could all see the heft of this moment, right. The way exchanging from of lives and like the greater important for all these sort of different avenues, then if then we could really start important cultural conversation and we could, um, you know, just grapple with something that I think we’ve never, we’ve never grappled with before. Right. And that is this question of how much the past is entitled to shape us this question of, of, you know, who would we have been if we had only known the truth about our genetic origins, what are people, um, sort of obligated to do for one another? Um, you know, just all these things that I think people are really wrestling with right now that are really, really important that we talk about. I couldn’t, I couldn’t agree more and I feel like so many of those questions you just asked were the things that I underlined throughout, we’re just,
Speaker 3: (03:50)
Uh, you know, um, uh,
Speaker 2: (03:56)
Yeah, of course, like I’m now I’m finding like a hundred, but yeah. You know, it is a strange thing to look in the mirror and at the face you’ve grown old with and find you don’t quite recognize it. Um, and you just have so many things that, that just hit, like hit, hit the nail on the head, or just capture all the different, um, facets of this experience. So well, um, so yeah, so we’ll know. Thank you. Uh, I am wondering how this book came to be. What, um,
Speaker 3: (04:25)
How did you, how did,
Speaker 2: (04:28)
I guess I’ll just repeat the question, how did this book come to me? Yeah, for sure. So, you know, I’ve been a reporter for, um, like over 20 years and the story is I was always drawn to where the, like the intimate lives of people who, um, you know, who weren’t, who weren’t famous, um, but were, you know, really, really interesting and compelling. So those were always the stories I like to tell were sort of the, the, um, the intimate lives of people who, um, had something to teach other people. Uh, and then over the last few years, I’d become increasingly engaged in science writing. Um, and then I was talking to my editor at the Washington post and she proposed that we write about DNA testing and its unintended consequences. And I started, this was a few years ago. I started becoming interested in this idea of it like a technology that people were thinking of engaging with for one reason.
Speaker 2: (05:28)
Right. But as importantly payment could be this sort of profound life changing experience. Right. And how does technology kind of shape our lives? Um, particularly when we don’t go out asking for it to do so. And then, and then how do we grapple with something that we didn’t ask to find, but that’s in many cases we are grateful to find. Right. And so, and, and, and, and why are people grateful to find, right? Like what, like all that, and then how did the people on the other side respond and, and, you know, and how can their responses be? So sometimes 180 degrees different than, than the people who are seeking connection. So it, you know, there’s this opportunity for all these really interesting stories, um, to come out of this topic. So I wrote one story for the Washington post and it got a lot of pickup.
Speaker 2: (06:18)
And then I got like, literally hundreds of emails. This was in early 2017 from people who’d read the article and were like, well, that story was great, but let me tell you about what happened to me. And I was very grateful. Yeah. And I was very quickly like underwater with it. Like I couldn’t even read them all and reply, like it was so, so many emails and they were so detailed and they were so moving because, you know, they were from people who like were searching for something. And in some cases we’re meeting only with like rejection. Uh, and they didn’t, they didn’t know how to handle it. And then other cases where they were like really beautiful, like reunions and coming together. And it just seemed like, it seemed like these stories were actually shining a light, not just at this moment, but like, sort of, um, on the human condition.
Speaker 2: (07:07)
Right. And like, why do, why do people behave the way they behave? Like, why were they open arms sometimes? And why are they closed off? And I was so interested in that. And then, so what I did was I started like emailing back to people who had emailed me and sometimes getting on the phone with them and they would tell me their stories. And sometimes like these stories were so moving that I would actually find myself crying, which is not something like I normally do as a reporter, but, you know, I would talk to them over hours and then I would talk to them again and again, and it was like, wow, like, this is like, like I’m imagining myself in your place. And this is, this is really something else. And these stories, yeah. The stories are sort of accidentally intimate. So intimate. They’re so intimate because when you’re talking about something that happened to you at the age of 60, you’re also talking about what happened to you at the age of six, right?
Speaker 2: (08:00)
Cause, cause cause over and over, there’s a woman who said to me, she discovered at the age of 51 that she was adopted. And then she started to reach out to her to not a kin. And she was like, and they were rejecting for the most part of her because she was made the messenger of her own existence, which is a terrible place to be. Right. You’ve been kept a secret. And now you’re being asked to not only introduce yourself, but announced that you exist and that is very inconvenient for those people. And they would rather reject you as a stranger than invite you in as a relation, right. Change the narrative. Right. Don’t change the narrative. Right. And, and this is very, um, yeah, this is very ill timed for us. Right. We would rather not believe this. And so, uh, you know, she told me, you know, when, when, when you meet with rejection, she said, you are not 51 years old, you are six years old.
Speaker 2: (08:50)
And there was a little child inside of me that, um, feels so hurt. Like just want it to be embraced, just wanted to be loved. And instead, you know, I’m being kicked to the curb and she, she was in so much pain over it. Um, and she was one of the people when I spoke with her that I just found myself moved to tears. Um, so I wanted to tell all those stories. I wanted to tell them, you know, in their, sometimes in their three 60 nature, like when it was possible to interview the people on the other side and then also to like follow people over the course of a long time so that, so that I could see how their stories developed. Because I think, I think when your entire life narrative is up ended, it’s not something that you quickly process and move to a new place on.
Speaker 2: (09:32)
And then you’re good. It’s like actually months and months and years, and maybe the rest of your life depending. Right. Cause you’re not just rewriting your story in the now you’re rewriting your story from its very beginnings. And when you, when you, when you rewrite your once upon a time, the whole rest of the story changes. Yeah. The ripple effect, um, just goes and goes. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That’s yeah. Yep. I agree with you. Everything, everything becomes different, right? Like everything is pick up and go wait in light of this new information. Now this fact about myself has changed.
Speaker 2: (10:09)
Yeah. Yeah. All the facts. Yeah. All the facts, memories come, come up that you didn’t know were even in there. And um, yeah. Waking up in the middle of the night, remembering something that happened when you were 10 and weird, right. Your mom made that suddenly makes sense. Right. Somebody, somebody mumbled something under their breath at one bright and you didn’t even know who remembered it and suddenly remembering it. But your subconscious of like bringing it up. It’s amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I’m sure that you had such an amazing experience exploring all these different elements, like so many different stories and every story is different. And yet there’s these threads that are the same. Right. I mean the language, there were, there were a lot of like threads that I find commonalities. Like, and one of them is what you’re talking about. Right. Suddenly you’re remembering old memories.
Speaker 2: (11:04)
It’s like, you’re annotating your you’re annotating your, your childhood. You’re like putting little footnotes next to everything. And you’re like, wait. Um, and then there were commonalities of language that were very interesting, um, commonalities of descriptions that I would get from multiple people. And they had not talked to one another beforehand, but they were using the same words to describe the experience. Right, right. Gosh, it was just speaks to so much to this, to this need, not even need, but this connection that exists, whether we need it or want it or not, um, and speaks to this exploration of people wanting or needing to know their histories and was because we’re all people just connection exists. Whether through things like that, that, you know, speak to things we can’t quite understand. Um, the collective.
Speaker 3: (12:03)
Yeah.
Speaker 2: (12:03)
What was the biggest surprise when you wrote this book while you were writing this book or researching this book? Yeah. That’s a good question. The biggest surprise. Um,
Speaker 3: (12:14)
Okay.
Speaker 2: (12:16)
You know, I guess, I don’t know if there’s one way to answer that. I mean, I found that I found those, those commonalities incredible. Right. And I did not see that coming like this description of, um, I had a hole in my heart and now it’s filled well that I would hear over and over again for people who had, um, had been welcomed into a genetic family, this idea of a whole, um, another surprise was like this idea, the description that I hear over and over again, of a sense of rootedness, like first, a sense of displacement and then a sense of rootedness. Like when you realize you don’t know what you thought you knew, or four adopted persons, they would talk about not, not knowing and that it being experienced as a sense of disorientation. Uh, and then when, you know, you’re putting down roots, uh, and Krista driver, the psychologist who you had on your program, who was so great.
Speaker 2: (13:17)
Um, and she, I would interviewed him for my book and she was great then. And she was great when you interviewed her. She said, um, she talked about this idea of like anxiety at the loss of identity. And I don’t know if I would say that that was like the biggest surprise and writing the book, but that was like, my baby made me my biggest kind of learning process in kind of my biggest takeaway and kind of trying to wrestle with how big of a deal this is that, you know, and I think there’s a tendency for people who haven’t been through this to say like, what’s the big deal? The guy who raised you is your dad, or right. What’s the big deal that you’re half I’m Greek and you didn’t know it. Right. Like you’re still, you know, you still have the experiences of having been raised, whatever you were raised.
Speaker 2: (14:05)
So like, what’s the big deal, but it’s a big deal, right? Like there’s a, there’s a, there’s a woman in my book. Um, who’s actually the sister of the protagonist. So her name is Jerry. And like I tell her family story in the book and like, they’re just an incredible kind of existential. Who’d done it. And you follow the narrative with buggy. And Jerry says towards the end, she, you know, they discovered that they’re half Jewish, half a genetically Jewish. And she said, one of her relatives said to her, like, what, what’s the big deal? You’re still Irish. Like this doesn’t have anything to do with you does it. And she said, Oh, but it has everything to do for me saying. Right. And I think if you haven’t been through this experience, you can’t really maybe conceive of what a big deal it is to, um, you know, to your understanding of your relationships with your parents, to your understanding of relationships with your half siblings. Maybe if they’ve suddenly become half the puddings, um, to the fact that you have like a, now another biological family out there, um, you know, in Jerry and Alice’s case, it’s a different scenario because they’re not, this is not an NPE experience, but for a lot of the people that I interviewed it is, um, and, and I just think your orientation on the world is, is vastly changed.
Speaker 4: (15:24)
Yeah. I, I, um, yeah,
Speaker 2: (15:29)
I don’t mean to be so like dumbfounded, but yeah. You know, you’re explaining it so well. Um, yeah. And I think that it, I think this is just because part of it is good. It’s a new experience for us culturally, but there is something to be said about how much people do not anticipate how the change will feel or how the discovery will feel. Right. Um, and there’s cause there’s no precedent. And, um, and, and it’s not only that there’s no precedent, but it’s, um, it’s such a, like, I don’t want to say it’s unfathomable, but it’s because it’s, it’s an unfathomable idea, but it’s not unfathomable as far as, um, like British murder mysteries, have it all the time, you know, have like inheritance being a part of the discussion or, but, but it’s really about secret parentage. And so it’s like, we talk about it very casually, like very flippantly in pop culture, it comes up.
Speaker 4: (16:25)
Mmm.
Speaker 2: (16:27)
Wow so it’s like, we’re familiar with the idea, but we had no idea that
Speaker 4: (16:30)
It was so, um,
Speaker 2: (16:33)
So big or so, so can be so serious. Right. And I think like, you know, even though the DNA testing company has give you these little, um, kind of warnings, um, or sort of, you know, notifications that you may discover something about your family that you didn’t expect, or you may discover unexpected relatives, they’ll say, um, in my interviews, like generally speaking people didn’t anticipate that this would apply to them. And I think, you know, that makes sense because it’s like, it’s such an inconceivable thing. So why would you assume that kind of cognitive dissonance, like, why would you assume that everything you thought you knew was not right. It would be like a weird thing to assume. And then you see on the backend, once they make these discoveries, there’s often a sense of denial at first, because that’s how strong the cognitive distances.
Speaker 2: (17:24)
So then they call 23andme as customer service line or any ancestry. And they’re like, why is it saying this woman is my half sister. I don’t have a sister. Right. And then the customer service line, people have to kind of explain to them, you know, why it’s showing that finding, like maybe they don’t know their full family history. It could be because of all of these various reasons. So I don’t think, you know, most of the, the vast majority of people have an expectation that they’re going into this, even if they, they know in theory that there could be a statistical possibility. Right. Well, yeah. And I, actually, one of the things I marked was, um, because especially when I first started the podcast and start interviewing people, there was, um, still, I still a lot of time. I mean, I just hasn’t come up lately, but I’m sure there’s still a lot tech out there, but people wanted to talk about feeling sort of resentful about not being warned enough, um, or different ideas that they had for a way to, to emphasize to people the importance of the, of that probability. Um, but you wrote the problem of incidental findings is an important one in the context of both scientific research and recreational testing. If you can’t anticipate what you might find out, how can you make an educated decision about what news you want to hear?
Speaker 4: (18:37)
Um, and I, yeah,
Speaker 2: (18:40)
Yeah, to me, that really resonated with me. And, um,
Speaker 4: (18:43)
And, uh, because,
Speaker 2: (18:45)
And I also feel like so many people like MPS get the question, like, do you wish you’d never found out? Um, and or do you wish it had gone differently? And, and that, to me feels like such an impossible question, um, because one of the ways, right. Yeah. You know, in, in the science, in the medical setting, we have, we have gatekeepers and we have sort of bioethicists offering guidance to say, genetic counselors or genetic counselors have a code of ethics or doctors, you know? Um, and they, and they’re wrestling with, you know, the question of like, what do you inform the, um, the individual, if they take a test and they discover something that isn’t exactly what we tested for, but something else that might concern their health. Right. That’s the question that’s sort of like, what’s known as incidental findings in a medical setting.
Speaker 2: (19:37)
There are no, there are no gatekeepers in the context of recreational DNA testing. And I’m not saying that that’s bad, we’re good because you know, you see it, you see it go both ways. You see people who are, you know, adopted and very much looking for their birth families. And this is their means of finding out that information. Um, and so it can be very empowering and, and, and, you know, the majority of people who I interviewed, who discovered something surprising about their genetic origins told me, like, I don’t wish to unknow this information, even when it’s painful, even when it’s complicated, even when it introduces all sorts of conversations, I wish I hadn’t had to have, or had gone differently. Like, I’m still glad to know. Right? Like we play such a premium on understanding the truth around how we came to be that.
Speaker 2: (20:22)
No, of course I’m glad to know. Um, but there’s, but there’s very, very little in the way of, um, support for people. Um, and so, you know, I do think what, you know, actually what you’re doing is very important because I think the more that people can see themselves in other people’s experiences and feel that this conversation is normalized and feel that their experiences are validated. And then hopefully ideally the more that the psychological community, like the mental health community, like figures out, this is a unique experience and we can support people going through it, like the better, because this is an army of Americans going through this right now, millions of a minute. Yes. And so, you know, we can’t like, we can’t talk about it too much. Um, it’s, it’s just a really important experience. And, and, you know, a lot of things like, like you were saying, like, in some ways this, this new, you know, in some ways this is old, there’s, there’s always been, um, cases where, you know, we as a society or as individuals kind of grappled with questions, like nature versus nurture, right. Or, um, what is, you know, like I write in the book, like this question of like, what is a foster father goes back to like some writings from like ancient, I think it was ancient Rome, um, kinda wrestling, you know, the foster father. Yeah. Taking care of the wounds of the sun. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: (21:46)
Right. Like what is family? What is ethnicity? You know, what if, what if who would I have been, et cetera, et cetera. Um, the difference is that now it’s happening on mass to lots and lots of people who didn’t know they were ever asking the question, who am I, they just didn’t know. They blindly went into it because they got it as a gift for Christmas. Right. Different, that’s a different scenario when you enter into something because you think of it as a form of entertainment, and then you get this outcome. That’s like a really big deal. So now all of a sudden, as a kind of a culture, now we’re engaging on all these questions that previously, you know, we talked about, we’re interested in, um, but maybe not to such a degree and the reason I think it’s important, we all talk about it.
Speaker 2: (22:32)
And I think it’s important. We all talk about it, even if you’ve never even taken a DNA test is because these are essential human questions with always wondering about what makes a father, you know, and can you like, can you, uh, you know, can you at this sort of strange moment in time with all the technology that, um, that exists and has made it possible for us to know the truth about our genetic origins? What does it mean to find room in your heart for two fathers? Can we find language for that for the, for those cases where that’s the appropriate response on the part of the person, who’s the product of an NPE? Like, can we find language to support people in acknowledging that they have to, that they have two fathers, right. A father of biology and a father of love, right. So much about language.
Speaker 2: (23:19)
Yeah. This whole experience, um, or a phenomenon has, um, brought up for me just because there aren’t, there are like, um, there’s almost like not, not, we don’t have the line language for it. So part of the stumbling around, um, among other things is also trying to find, and the words for that, it’s like, what is it to have, um, to have two fathers? And what is this crisis called? And we all keep kind of going around and kind, it’s kind of about, it’s kind of existential and it’s kind of identity, but it’s also genetic. Like, you know, we don’t really have, um, that’s just a part, a part of the scrambling. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a good point, right? It is it’s extension existential and psychological and genetic and right. So like there might be a German word for that, but we don’t have a compound word for it.
Speaker 2: (24:13)
No, but no doubt. Um, but we don’t have that word. Um, and, uh, so, okay. So here’s the question. I probably, everybody asks you, um, have you taken a Malin DNA kit test? Yeah, I have, I have, I’ve taken three of them. Um, yeah. And you might say like, why take three of them? But if, but if, you know, you’re steeped in this world, you know, that the different databases give you different, you know, relatives because you’re only going to match to the folks in a particular company’s database, right? There’s the databases don’t talk to each other. And so if you’re doing family history research, you might want to cast a wide net. And then of course I was very interested in discovering how the ethnicity estimate would vary from company to company, to company. Because while the, while the relative predictions are very robust and reliable, uh, the ethnicity predictions are sort of an evolving science and they’re informed and, uh, particularly on the margins, uh, they can, they can have room for improvement, let’s say.
Speaker 2: (25:14)
So I was very interested in seeing how the results would differ. Um, so my first test was, um, my, my dad gave me a test in late 2016. It was a holiday gift is so many people get their, you know, their, you know, the gift for the person in your life already has everything. Um, and to some extent it was vetted for me because my dad and my mom and my brother at that point, I believe, were all already tested. So if there were any surprises, it was not gonna come up for me. Right. Well probably, I mean, you know, it certainly it could have been, but, um, but you know, to some extent it was vetted. Um, although if I had found that I was an NPE, obviously, you know, that that could have happened, but it didn’t happen. Right. Um, so I did, um, I did take that test and then I went on and as I was reporting for the book, I took more tests and I, I didn’t find any significant surprises.
Speaker 2: (26:10)
What I, what I had, what we had in our family was just kind of like this broadening of understanding, um, of finding relatives, who we would not have found if not for the DNA. So like, on my dad’s side, we were able to find through DNA, his second cousin who lives in Sweden, um, who traces back to my dad’s. Um, you know, my dad’s grandmother came over from Sweden in the 1890s. And so we are related through, um, her father to my dad’s second cousin. And we were able to travel to Sweden and meet her. Um, and we were able to see because, um, her daughter was a genealogist and had been in a database and it hooked us up and was like very keen on helping us. She was able to organize, um, somebody who was local, who took us to Southern Sweden and showed us my grandmother’s, um, school, her church, the foundations of our farm house.
Speaker 2: (27:02)
We even were able to touch a piece of furniture that had belonged to my grandmother’s family. And, and again, she had come over at age 16 and 1890s. So what that drove home to me was like this incredible immediacy of the past. Um, and the fact that DNA had found this worst because the records would not have on, because there was basically a break in the line. Um, and so, you know, the ability to meet our cousins and like go there and feel like, Oh, 1890. Wasn’t actually that long ago, that to me was kind of a profound experience. And, um, I think that whether you’re discovering something about your family history, that’s a little bit more distant to you in terms of, you know, your identity or you’re discovering something about your immediate family. That’s more like, you know, kind of dislocating. Um, it’s surprising the central lesson here is that the past is not over the past informed our, and, and we have to talk about it.
Speaker 2: (27:56)
We have to reconcile with it. Like we have to look at it and you see that happening on a broader scale now, um, you know, kind of nationally, I think in the conversations that we’re having about race and particularly like how concepts of race came to be in this country and how, um, you know, when you look at the genetics of African American population and how their European ancestry got there primarily through, um, white men and, um, you know, rape of black and slave women, and you also see it, um, and that’s been studied by 23, me and you also see it. Um, the other way you see populations of white Americans who think of themselves as, um, as just simply white walking around with small percentages of, um, sub Saharan African ancestry that not that long ago would have made them be considered black out of the one drop rule.
Speaker 2: (28:50)
Right. And, and broadly we are having now conversations about race and how we construct it and how we think about it in this country as a result in part of some of the research that’s coming out of the recreational DNA industry. Yeah. I’m so glad you brought that up. Cause that, that was also a section that I, um, I have a million post-its because that same thing it’s sort of, um, like we don’t even touch on it a bit. Like there aren’t even quite the right words for this exploration, um, because it’s, it can be so sensitive and so delicate to use the word ethnicity and race. Um, and we there’s this such a dark history, um, when it comes to eugenics and genocides and, um, and, uh, you know, separating or people. Um, and so you talk about that. And I felt like when I was reading that chapter, that,
Speaker 3: (29:46)
That, um,
Speaker 2: (29:48)
These are the things that cause like, I guess I didn’t realize until reading your book that, um, I don’t talk about this stuff very much out loud with people. Like it’s not converse. I mean, I do for my podcast, but conversationally,
Speaker 3: (30:01)
Um, it doesn’t just co it doesn’t just
Speaker 2: (30:04)
Come up. Um, so, so normally, and, and these were the things that I saw like, Oh, yes, like I have thought about this and I’ve wondered about this. And I’ve been waiting for someone to sort of like, wave a flag and say like, wait, wait, wait, wait, um, what’s going on here? And, um,
Speaker 3: (30:21)
There aren’t, there aren’t conclusions, but
Speaker 2: (30:23)
It’s just like sort of an exploration and to talk about like, Oh, well this guy, this man tried to write about it. And he got in really big trouble and then this person, um, thinks we should do it this way. It’s just really interesting to me. Um, because I’ve been, I’ve been wondering, I’m waiting for that. And, um, is there something that you brought up the, the ethnicity division and, um,
Speaker 3: (30:45)
But, but yeah,
Speaker 2: (30:48)
But the connections are past, like what you just described as your experience of going back to Sweden. Like that’s what people are hoping for, I think, right. Like, that’s like, you got to have like, exactly what, yeah. That’s the kind of like fun experience that you might see in an ad. Um, but you know, I mean, and with that said, I think sometimes the ads are a little flattening of the experience, right? Like I traded in my later hoes and for a kill, like as if it were that easy to turn from one ethnicity to another. Um, but yeah, I think, I think the challenge that we have in talking about these recreational DNA tests and the ethnicity charts we get is, is in some ways a problem with language, it’s also a problem of understanding and genetic literacy in this country because right, even the term ethnicity estimate is a bit problematic because ethnicity is in many ways experience.
Speaker 2: (31:39)
It’s how you were raised. What we’re really talking about when you get these pie charts is, is genetic ancestry or biogeographical, uh, ancestry, uh, biogeographical genetic ancestry, I think is the term, or I’m probably modeling it, but it’s like, you know, it’s like, where exactly were your people living 500 to a thousand years ago? Not, not what were the traditions and values that you were raised with and you know, how you see yourself? Um, right. So that, that sort of piece of it is kind of tricky. And then, you know, the issue with race, which is, you know, really a social construct. And yet when you see the way that a lot of people engage with understanding around genetic difference, along race and ethnicity lines is through these tests. And when you get a pie chart that has little slices of pie and says that you’re this and this and this, it can, you know, have the effect of kind of promoting a sense of difference or a sense that you can identify differences in the genes and that we are very different from one another and kind of forcing sense of difference that it makes that it’s important.
Speaker 2: (32:49)
Yeah. That it makes a difference or that it’s important or right, right. And that, and that these are solid lines, right? Like you can see it in the genes suggest there’s real, real difference. And that’s a problem if we are kind of reinforcing this and there’s been some study to see, and I think the jury is still out. And I talk about, uh, some of the, you know, sociologists and others who have been looking to see, like when you test, does that reinforce a sense of race or does it lessen because you see the diversity with, we see the diversity within ourselves and we recognize our commonalities, like which way does it go? Um, and that’s like, one of the things that’s studied right now. Um, but there’s also, you know, you know, there’s such a history of, um, persecuting and sterilizing and killing people or for, you know, for, for their difference.
Speaker 2: (33:38)
As you know, there are differences as understood by what was previously a very like wrongheaded pseudo-scientific understanding of genes and, and, and inheritance and genetics. Right. Um, that it is understandable that we need to be cautious. Right. And to be careful in our language to think about like, being knowledgeable about the history of eugenics and how much, you know, that was used to justify, um, people being hurt and, um, you know, put to death, uh, because of what was understood to be, you know, their, their, their genetic difference that this is something we really need to grapple with. Yeah. And I don’t think, um, yeah, they can’t be separated. I think we can’t, um, I mean, the, the cultural, the cultural, social construct of race, can’t, can’t be, um, it’s, I mean, I guess I’m just imagining it sort of like the chicken or the egg.
Speaker 2: (34:33)
Um, it’s just, you just, can’t like, I think, I think there are people that would like them to be two separate conversations and, um, and I, and I don’t think they can be, um, I mean, I think, I mean, yeah, right. If there’s, if you’re talking about race as a genetic reality versus, you know, which, you know, there’s so much more that we have in common than, than, than, than difference, but race is a cultural reality. Hell yeah. Right. Um, yeah. So those are, those are tricky conversations. Yeah, it was, um, I was, but I was not, not that I, um, I didn’t necessarily go into the book with it with expectations. That was very sort of impressed that, that you, um, that you went there, um, you really, you really touched on so many different aspects of this, um, of this phenomenon. And, um, thank you.
Speaker 2: (35:34)
Um, are you doing anything now with the, um, with the, well, I mean, your book just came out in the middle of a pandemic, but, um, are you doing anything now with, with the, within the, um, genetic testing or NPE? Yeah, I mean, I I’ve been, you know, definitely like getting emails, talking to people I’ve been doing, um, you know, some events, um, you know, like this or, you know, interviews. Um, and I don’t know if I’m going to, like, I don’t know, like what happens next? I, I write an occasional column for psychology today where I talk about some of these things and like, I occasionally will write like op-eds and things like that, but I don’t know, you know, whether I’m like what I’m doing next, whether I’m writing a book, what topic, like right now, I’m like good with what what’s on my plate, which has a lot, um, and, uh, kind of a weird short day with, you know, kids, distance learning and, um, home and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: (36:31)
Right. As I’m sure you are familiar with, I know 2020 has plenty for you. No question about it. Um, no pressure for me to coming up with more projects. Um, just getting through, getting through the days as a project through it’s a challenge. Yeah. Um, do you feel like there’s anything that, um, people ask you in these interviews that, or that you want to talk about that I haven’t touched on? Oh, that’s a good about your experience writing it or, or anything, anything at all? Yeah. Um, let me think about that. Um, yeah, I mean, I think there’s, there’s one thing that I kind of find interesting, um, which is, you know, sort of this central narrative of, of Alice, um, which is so good. And I actually last night started to get anxious. Um, yeah. I mean, I struggle with, with like, who done it to gender, you know, who suspense and I started to like, like skim through, or I was like, okay, then what, what happens?
Speaker 2: (37:39)
What is the closer, closer you get to it? I just, I know the end of books sometimes, or when I read it, when I’m watching movies, if they’re just too much for me, I’ll like, look up the plot I’ve been, yeah. I’ve been known to like jump up and down on a couch like that. Right. At that, like, see it and yeah. The very end right before. Yeah. Um, yeah, so, I mean, I, you know, what interests me about Alice’s story, which is like the central narrative book, and then, you know, the, the, the other stories from people that I interviewed over the last few years, like kind of com you know, uh, kind of branch off from her story would interest me about her story is that it is kind of a, um, a microcosm of all the theories in one. Right. So you do a DNA test and, um, you get unexpected results.
Speaker 2: (38:33)
Okay. Now you’re like your own detective of your own story. Like, what’s the explanation. Um, Alice is like this incredibly clever, uh, you know, analytical, you know, technologically, um, savvy woman who had recently retired when she did her DNA test and, um, you know, was in a position to basically research the hell out of her own story. And it’s amazing. Yeah. And so she, she’s amazing. She’s amazing. She’s so, so smart. And she goes through every theory in this just unbelievably kind of, um, methodical fashion, like a scientist, like Alex, the scientist of, uh, investigating her own genes, um, in the book, I think you’d like, well, this was a, you don’t say this was an outlandish idea, but like this, this, this was, this seems really, really wild, but Alice was determined to try every single theory she was gonna write. I mean, everything seems wild, right?
Speaker 2: (39:30)
Like if you haven’t an NPE experience, it at first seems outlandish to you, right? Like maybe after a little while it clicks in and you say, Oh, it makes sense. But at first, right. And so she goes through every experience because she doesn’t want to eliminate any particular theory. So she investigates why her ethnicity pie chart. Isn’t what she thought it was. And this was in 2012. This is before the databases were so big. Like nowadays, if Al Alice had her experience, she would, she wouldn’t need to go through all the theories because, because she’d quickly find a close genetic relative, like a first cousin. Uh, and then she would just like, or first cousin once removed and she would just figure it out from there. And it would be done very quickly. Meaning maybe, um, but this is 2012. This is like, like databases or less than, um, I don’t know, less than a million, if you added them all together right now, we’re at 35 million, which is like insane and an incident totally like almost 10% of the U S market affiliation.
Speaker 2: (40:30)
Right. Cause if the 80%, 80% of the databases are Americans, so, right. So, I mean, now it’s like, everyone’s implicated in this, this technology, you don’t get to opt out. If there’s a family secret in your family, it’s coming out one way or another, you know, not a matter of if, but when. Right. So all those things, but this is 2012. And so we’re not there yet for Alice. And so she has to investigate, you know, why her ethnicity pie chart tells her that she’s instead of almost entirely Irish American, that she’s half Ashkenazi Jewish. Is it an NPA? No. Is it a donor conception? No. Is it adoption that nobody told her about? No. Is it, um, you know, this idea that her Irish ancestors like hid their Jewish genetic ancestry or claimed, claimed Irishness when they came over to, you know, bypass discrimination?
Speaker 2: (41:17)
No. And she goes through all the theories and what I love about her story in addition to the fact that she’s just so funny and smart is that like, then, like I get to branch off and tell the story, like, okay, what does it look like to be an NP? What does it look like right at your donor conceived and you have 20 siblings, what does it look like to discover that you were adopted? No one told you, what does it look like to find out that you have 18% sub Saharan African ancestry, but you were told you were Sicilian because your mom wanted to protect you from the discrimination faced as a biracial child. And she was determined not to pass that on to you. Right. So, um, I love, I love, it just loved the way Alice’s story unfolds, because I think it contains so many stories in it.
Speaker 2: (41:56)
And I just think, you know, the first time I heard her story, I thought, well, this, this can’t be true. You know, I’m going to report this and, you know, it’s going to turn out to be so much less interesting and compelling, but it was so much more, so much more. Yeah. He’s amazing. Yeah. It’s a really great, it’s just this, it’s just a good, yeah, you really, it was a good, get good. Get through line. Well, I can’t recommend this book enough, but I also just, I can’t thank you enough for giving me some time to talk about it. And I sort of wish, I wish I wish we had more time in the, in a grander scale, the grand things. Um, just to, just to sit and talk about all this stuff, just cause it’s, so it’s not rare, but it’s still unique to find someone that understands all these different elements.
Speaker 2: (42:52)
Um, and so it just feels like we probably could talk, you probably talk all day. Um, yeah, I think it’s so great that you’re having all these kind of like your, I think your podcast is really important and really fascinating. And you’re having these conversations with different people in different sectors of their experience, right? Like you’ve got, you know, you’ve got the individuals to whom this is happening and you’ve got people who are, maybe have experienced it, but also have a professional background that they can shed light on it, like you, um, and I just think that that’s, I think the more we talk about this, the better, so I’m very excited to have had the chance to talk to you. I think it’s really, it’s so fun. Um, yeah. I just think we have to, we have to keep talking about it. I can’t, I can’t quite imagine like what it would be like if this was all normalized, but I that’s like, that’s the vision, that’s the intention.
Speaker 2: (43:38)
Right. Think of what we have now that used to not be normalized. And, um, so I’ll have to think. Yeah. I’ll have to think of some kind of social construct that we’re all used to now, um, that you used to not exist and it could even just be divorced, divorced, like very taboo, you know, or yeah. Or thinking about certain diseases or same sex marriage or, or, or, uh, you know, donor conception that was that people didn’t tell their children about it now they, and now they generally do. Yeah. And adoption. Yeah. Um, but so I really am sure it’s, it’s possible. And I think it will, I think it will be for our benefit. Um, but it’s, and your book is so great because it’s so accessible for the NPE. And for those who are just interested and, or ought to learn more about, uh, more about this culturally, um, socially sociologically, scientifically, all of it is just it, you, you really like, um, you really come at it from, from all angles and it’s very accessible.
Speaker 2: (44:45)
I love it. Uh, so thank you. Thank you for writing this book. Thank you for giving me your time on a Monday morning. Um, and, uh, yeah, I don’t know, like I’ll, I’ll like we can sign off, but I’m just so excited. I probably will come up with like 10 more questions for you, like later, you know, I should have asked. Yeah. Well, thank you. This is great. Um, Oh man. Um, I just, I’m, I’m feeling so excited and grateful right now. I’m a little surreal, to be honest. So go on with your, uh, distance learning day and we’ll be in touch. Of course, when this episode is going to be on it, won’t be very long because I’m kind of trying to hammer them all out, so to speak. And so, but I’ll be in touch with you and, um, yeah. Thank you again. Thank you. I really enjoyed this right. Me. You need to, sorry. I’m such a dork. Okay. Bye. Bye.
Togetherness Heals: Erin Cosentino
Speaker 1: (00:00)
Uh, I mean, I was getting, I w I settled into the, to the, I had settled in to the audio only experience. Um, but I like it this way. Way better.
Speaker 2: (00:13)
How are you? I’m good. How are you? I’m
Speaker 1: (00:15)
Good. Thanks for joining me this morning.
Speaker 2: (00:18)
Absolutely. For sure.
Speaker 1: (00:21)
Um, so I’m talking with Aaron Cosentino. Is that how you say it? Constantino Constantino? Um, we have been connected on Facebook through various channels, and then she is one of the hosts and co-creators of here. You can tell me how we say it, but Hara here at here, Hera,
Speaker 2: (00:50)
I can’t roll the art. He did it with hope and healing. Yes.
Speaker 1: (00:55)
Um, which is the retreat that I signed up for. So enthusiastically, last spring, and then ended up meeting with you guys in, uh, in Atlantic city, um, this last October, and then barring any sort of emergencies or unforeseen situations. I will be there again in April. Uh, so, but I am here to day. I want to talk, um, about three things. If, if, if you can manage it, I would love to know your story and then how you came to create, um, uh, uh, the, the, after the discovery, the, your, your support group on Facebook that has been this quickly growing and is becoming a really great source of, of support and, you know, networking and resources for people, uh, in the NPE world. And then also talk about the retreat. Can you do that’s awesome. Okay. I can do it. Okay. Um, what order do you want to do?
Speaker 2: (01:55)
Oh, I I’m. I’m completely open, whatever. Right.
Speaker 1: (01:58)
Tell me your story. Tell me, tell me, tell me about, about you, um, becoming an NPE or having an NP. However you say it.
Speaker 2: (02:10)
I, um, I got the itch to test because, um, my grandfather was a foster child, so he was never formally adopted. He was raised by foster parents and in 2011, I lost my grandmother in 2013. I lost my grandfather. And then in 2016, um, I lost my dad, my birth certificate father. And shortly after he passed, I, my husband actually got a phone call, uh, about someone in his family who had taken the ancestry DNA test and discovered that his dad was not his dad. And I was like, Holy. If he can find out this information, I can finally figure out, you know, where my grandfather really came from, who his parents are. Um, you know, what nationality I am. So I, I didn’t go into, uh, the DNA test, completely blind, obviously that this information, you know, could be discovered. But, um, I just didn’t think that it would happen to me. Right.
Speaker 1: (03:20)
I mean, of course not had already had happened to your, your husband’s family, like, right. And it happened twice in one. Yeah,
Speaker 2: (03:29)
Right? Yes. So, um, my parents divorced when I was very young and my mother actually stayed very close with, um, my dad’s parents. So when the results came back, I called her right away and I was like, Oh, do you recognize this name? Do you recognize this name? Do you recognize this name? No, no, no. Okay. So I just kind of kept pouring it over, which, I mean, that was fine because we really knew that we weren’t going to be recognizing, um, any names. And, um,
Speaker 1: (04:01)
So you were coming at it from a, uh, like, I don’t know what that’s called a recent research place of not knowing and not expecting, I don’t know how to, I don’t know what that’s called, but yeah. Yeah. You knew there was going to be new, new information.
Speaker 2: (04:17)
Correct. But then I very quickly realized I don’t see anybody from my grandmother’s family here, and I know that some of them have to have tested, you know, and I can actually remember, I can remember sitting in my bathroom, um, with the cell phone calling my husband’s uncle and saying, I think it’s happening to me. You know, I think same exact thing is happening to me. And on day two, I finally said, mom, is there any chance that daddy is not my, my father? And she said, uh, yeah, yeah. There’s, there’s a chance that, you know, he’s not your father. And I was like, yeah. And on day three, you know, she knew I wasn’t going to let it go. So on day three, she said to me, do you want to know who your father is? I said, you know, I think that’s probably a good idea. Um, you know, and she said the name, but I had already figured it out. You know, I, I had already come to the realization that, that I knew who my biological father was. And I, I said to my mother, are you okay? You know, that was my, that was my immediate response. Like, are you okay? And she said, are you okay? And I said, well, I’m okay. You know, right now, but are you okay? And
Speaker 1: (05:36)
What were you thinking when you said to her, are you okay? Like, what were you imagining or, um, that she may, may have been feeling or thinking,
Speaker 2: (05:47)
Oh, deeply embarrassed. Um, you know, mortified really that, that this potential had been hidden for so many years. And I spit in a tube and you know, her, her whole world now is kind of like, you know, Oh my God. And she said to me, I, I never wanted you to find out. I wanted to, I wanted to take it to the grave with me. And, um,
Speaker 1: (06:17)
She,
Speaker 2: (06:19)
I have to say my experience was very good. She, she told me everything that she was willing to tell me. And I did get a lot of information. Um, you know, my, my parents had a, uh, a miserable, horrific marriage. Um, they separated got back together, separated, got back together, separated, got back together. So, um, you know, it, it, it just was, was not, uh, a great situation. And, um, she married him young and had my brother and, um, you know, once the problem started, she was like, you’re, you’re really boring. And I just want to kind of go out with my friends and hang out and have a good time. And, and you’re like a fuddy-duddy and you don’t want to do that. And, um, and they fought, they fought a lot. So, um, I mean, the, you know, I think part of the shame is that, um, my dad and my birth father actually grew up together.
Speaker 2: (07:23)
So my grandparents and his parents were very good friends. Um, and I, you know, I think that, that added to the embarrassment and, uh, and there was, you know, a lot that she just did not want to be public knowledge. And I respect that, you know, I, I definitely respect that. Um, but at the same time, I said to her at the very least I need to contact him and let him know. I had just seen him 10 months prior. He came to my dad’s funeral. Oh, wow. So, yeah. So, um, so I fired off a Facebook message and, um, you know, he pretended to be surprised
Speaker 1: (08:05)
And
Speaker 2: (08:07)
He, uh, you know, gave me medical history that night. He said, perhaps the most important issue is probably medical history. And, and I should have realized right then and there, that, that was going to be the beginning and the end of whatever type of relationship we were going to have. But, you know, I saw it with Rose colored glasses and, um, I hung on his, every word for a few months. And, uh, there was still no meeting. There was still no lunch. There was still no guest together. And, uh, I made the decision that I was going to reach out to his other children. Um, did
Speaker 1: (08:46)
You know his other children before now? I
Speaker 2: (08:48)
Did not do the family friend. Okay. No, no. He, um, he disappeared from my life when I was like seven or eight. Um, and I think like if I’m doing my calculations correctly, I think that’s when he met his wife and, um, you know, got married and they had their two children. Um, so, um, you know, I just made the decision to reach out to them. And, uh, that’s when I saw his true colors and he told me, um, that he had absolutely no use for me. And he probably never would. And that’s amazing language. Yeah. And, and I just said, okay, that’s, you know, that’s fine. I’m totally fine with that because you don’t truthfully, like you don’t deserve me in your life. Um, so I did, um, email his, his other children and they were wonderful and gracious, and I was able to, um, meet up with them for, uh, we went out to dinner and we went out to lunch and, um, I’ve been to my brother’s house.
Speaker 2: (09:53)
Um, and you know, it’s, it’s, it’s just there. It’s not, you know, we don’t, we don’t call each other all the time and, and text all the time, but, um, but they’re there and I reach out every once in a while. And, um, and I’m okay with that. Like, I feel like, I feel like my purpose in all of this was bigger. Yeah. So, you know, I’m, I’m, I’m an educator and that’s what I want to do is I want to educate and I want to heal. Um, so I, I feel like, um, I’ve accomplished what I set out to accomplish. And as far as the, the relationship, and I just feel like I have a bigger purpose in it all. Yeah. Which then leads to, you know, my, my NPE group. And
Speaker 1: (10:47)
Talk about your purpose. I mean, I have questions about your story, but it’s so easy, so nicely segues into, into what you have done with it. What have you done with all that stuff? We can pause if you’d like, no, no, no, no, no. Tell me, tell me about, tell us about the groups. So everybody knows.
Speaker 2: (11:04)
So I was part of a very large Facebook group, and I just, um, I felt like it was time for me to move on from that. Um, but I knew that I needed a home. And so, um, I reached out to the creator of a very successful adoptee group. And I said, you know, I’m, I’m looking to start this new group and I would love to, um, join with you. And, and she was wonderful and gracious. And, um, and, and PE only after the discovery was born. And, um, it’s, you know, it’s what I like about it is that, um, I love the collaboration, you know, I don’t, I don’t feel like, um, other people can’t share their amazing projects that they’re working on. And, um, I just think that it’s a safe place to, to heal and to learn and to grow. Um, and I’m just super happy with, um, with my new home. I just, I love it there.
Speaker 1: (12:08)
It’s really great. It’s really, I think I, one of the things I really admire about, about it, about its group, about the group or about you, and is that I feel like there are a lot of people, um, within the community and probably within like every phenomenon, there’s like a lot of people that are like, I’m going to start, I’m going to start a group. That’s an idea, but I’ll just start off in a Facebook thing because Facebook makes it so easy, but you have done it. Um, and, and, and I think, I mean, I just think it’s kind of like from promotion by attraction or, or, you know, attraction by people. I don’t know. I don’t know, like people just keep coming to it and it continues to thrive. And you’ve got these like meetup you’ve got, uh, like the zoom calls that you do on the weekends in the week.
Speaker 1: (12:57)
So people are meeting each other. And, um, I don’t know. I don’t know how to explain what I’m trying to say, but it’s just that you’ve, you’ve just really like, it, it has taken on a life of its own and, and you, but you have been, you’ve been there the whole time. Yeah. Really keeping it going and, and, uh, and that that’s encouraging. Um, and, uh, yeah, and I think, and I think I don’t, I don’t know what it is, but there is a, um, you know, there’s a deep connection that, that NPE people feel, but there’s a deep connection. And, and I experienced in your group, a, a, a, a, a F a lightness or a for safety, a freedom, the freedom of say safety, that feels like freedom or liberating, I guess. Um, but that I really, I really appreciate, um, and then getting to meet everybody.
Speaker 1: (13:44)
And then, you know, like when I signed up for the retreat, I didn’t even know it was where it was, you know, I just saw the word like retreat get together, and PE is real life face to face like I’m in. Um, and, uh, man, you guys are an amazing, amazing group of people, uh, just like so fun and so loving and so vulnerable and, uh, all at the same time, it’s, um, it’s like a really powerful experience that you don’t get everywhere. No, no. I just, because everybody experiences, the same thing does not mean it’s going to be a good, safe place, you know? And, and, um, and, and, but you seem to have really like nurtured it by whether it’s by luck or, or, you know, the energies or the stars have aligned, but it’s just been good. People have been attracting good people. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (14:35)
I think it’s, it’s probably a little bit of all of that, you know, I, I definitely pour pour my heart and soul into it, um, with a, with a good mix of, um, you know, let’s have fun and let’s, um, let’s cry and, you know, um, so it’s been, it’s been really rewarding for me. Um, it’s been really healing for me, uh, not having, you know, the fairytale of course that I wanted. Um, but just being able to see so many people in the same boat, but also getting to celebrate those people that do have the fairy tale. It’s just super amazing to me. So yeah, I definitely, um, had some luck and I had some hard work and, and some grit and, and, and you’re right. I, I do believe that we get back what we put out into the world. And so, um, I’ve, I’ve definitely tried to, uh, support and uplift and, um, and the same has happened for me.
Speaker 2: (15:41)
So it’s been really good. Yeah. Yeah. And then you did, you got to come to retreat and, you know, retreat was one of those things where I went to, um, I went to this meetup in, in Philly for another Facebook group that I was a part of, and I actually got to meet an adoptee there. Um, Cindy McQuay, and, you know, we had become very close in this group and, um, we ended up, uh, you know, staying together while we were at this meetup. And I, I remember, um, like just being so energized and I said to her, like, that wasn’t enough time. That just wasn’t enough time. We need, we need to do something and we need more time. It’s got, we have to do like a weekend, you know, it’s just, it’s gotta be a weekend. And so, um, that was how our retreat started. And, uh, we started our first one was, um, all day Saturday, and we ended at noon on Sunday and it was awesome. We had, uh, an awesome group of people there and we came home and I, I was like, that wasn’t enough time. It just wasn’t enough time. So we added Friday and now, you know, we’re in session all day, Friday, all day, Saturday, and, uh, and, and half the day Sunday. Um, and, and we find some people that come and present are in the community. Some people are not. Um, but we just try to give, uh, again, that, that right, uh, balance of, of laughter and tears, go ahead.
Speaker 1: (17:26)
It’s I mean, mission accomplished it. It was a really, um, that was the thing that blew me away the most. And, and, uh, you know, and part of it is just like the mini, like sub cultural differences between, you know, West coast and East coast and, and, you know, people from all you kids from Philly and New Jersey are different than, than California, but I, um, the ability to be laughing and joking and yelling, I mean, laughing to tears, you know, um, with people and then the ability to pivot yeah. With somebody, because that’s what was needed about their NPE story was, um, so touching to me,
Speaker 2: (18:08)
I remember you saying, I, this has so exceeded my expectations and I don’t even know what my expectations were.
Speaker 3: (18:14)
Yeah, yeah. It’s true. It’s true. I was like, okay,
Speaker 2: (18:18)
Well check. We, you know, we got that. And, and the other part of it too, is that, um, you know, we, we keep them small and we keep them, um, in a private home and we prepare meals together and, you know, we eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner together. And, um, that’s not to say that some people don’t, you know, go off and go for a bike ride or, you know, go to the beach or whatever. But for the most part, we’re, we’re just there, you know, for the weekend. And, and we laugh and we cry and we’re completely inappropriate and, um, sing karaoke and, um, and just play games. And, and it’s just, it’s really awesome. It’s just really awesome. Yeah. So transforming.
Speaker 1: (19:04)
Yeah. And for so many people, there’s there. I mean, and, and the, and the, the way that Facebook has, um, uh, provided a platform that for all these groups to form is great. And there is so much to be said about the power of connecting with people that, um, are experiencing what you experience, but to meet people in real life and be in a home and see people and eat a meal with these people with, with people for, so I don’t, I, you know, I didn’t do a survey of the room, but for lots of us, it’s the very first time you’ve ever met any other human that understands at a core level, what, what that crisis is like. Um, so I mean, it’s sort of like powerful, even powerful by default, like, you know, and then on top of that, it’s good people creating a safe place, uh, with laughter and vulnerability is just, yeah. I mean, I, I don’t, I’m not, I don’t know how I, I think I would say I’ve been to a lot of retreats in my life and, and that’s not something you get everywhere and it’s like, so it was definitely like some kind of magical combination of things. Thank you. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Um,
Speaker 2: (20:18)
I appreciate that. Yeah. And the human connection, you know, a lot of people aren’t able to do that. And so when, when the pandemic happened, I started twice weekly zooms and, um, you know, some weeks we have the same exact people and, and some weeks we have completely different people, but it, it provides a little bit of human contact. It’s, it’s certainly not the same as, as being at retreat, but, um, it’s just nice to be in a room, um, with these people that know what you’re talking about, get it. So it’s pretty cool. That’s pretty cool. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (20:56)
It’s really wonderful. Back to your NPE story. Um, which you, you, you, you told such a great bullet bullet point, sorry. Um, uh, do you, can you shed any light on, um, what your bio dad’s, uh, like relationship was with, like how he ended up in the same circle as, as your mom and dad? Um, they were family Fred, there was family, friends, and my friends, um, or like what his job was or, um, role, you know, is there anything else? I mean, you, you don’t have to say anything if you feel it, if you’re protecting people, but
Speaker 2: (21:38)
Yeah. Curious if
Speaker 1: (21:40)
More shades to this story,
Speaker 2: (21:42)
There are definitely more shades to this story. Um, and if you are lucky enough to attend retreat, um, I definitely share my story
Speaker 1: (21:53)
Fingers, cliffhangers people come on clickbait, click back, come to the, come to the retreat to find out the juicy parts.
Speaker 2: (22:03)
Um, but you know, there’s, there is an added layer of, of shame and stigma, right. To my story. And, um, my mom and I are in a really great place. And, um, I need to be respectful of, um, of her experience as well. You know, um, I’m three years out. I just celebrated my third rebirth day as we call it. And, um, let that, you know, serve as, as, uh, maybe, um, hope that you can come to accept, um, you know, what has happened like so many days, I feel like this knowledge has been with me for years and years and years and years and years. Um, so it’s, it’s so not part of my everyday existence anymore. Um, so, um, yeah, I just, I love that it is not at the forefront of what’s going on in my life.
Speaker 1: (23:09)
Yeah. It gets better. Um, it does, I think, and I w I wouldn’t be interested. I wonder, uh, I mean, I guess I could just throw a survey out there, but I’d be interested to know if everybody feels like it’s about a two to three year process before really, um, love to know that too. Yeah. Let’s, you know what, I’m gonna put like a little note on my notepad right here. Um, because I know also in, uh, like an inheritance, Danny, Shapiro’s, it takes her about two years. She kind of talks about like, moving through stages of understanding and acceptance. Um, you know, and I would never, I would never want to prescribe it to anybody, but for anybody in entering this experience, it might be helpful to know what the sort of somewhat expected healing time is. If, if they need to know that if they’re in a hard struggling,
Speaker 2: (24:01)
You definitely go through the stages, the stages. Um, but you don’t, or at least in my experience, and what, what I’ve watched happen with other people is that there’s not this linear. Right, right, right. No, no, no. There’s, uh, there’s that roller coaster, you know, like, Oh, I’m great. Oh, no, I’m really terrible. No, I’m great. No, I’m terrible. I also say it’s it’s I live right by the ocean. So I like to talk about it in terms of like that some days yet you have a nice calm glassy sea, and other days it’s like hurricane and it’s just pummeling the out of you, right? Yeah. Yeah. So, um, I mean, I can’t tell you if I’m being completely honest with you. Um, I can’t tell you the last time I cried about this, my, my own experience don’t get me wrong. I’ve cried.
Speaker 2: (24:45)
I’ve cried with other people with other people, but, um, I can’t tell you the last time that was ice. I don’t cry, but I cried for yourself. Yes. Yeah. I just, I feel like, uh, we talked about that in the beginning. I feel like, um, you know, my purpose in all of this was bigger. And so, um, I’m glad that I’m glad that I’m on the other side of it. I remember my husband saying to me, you’re not acting like somebody should act who just found out this information. And I was like, well, I mean, how do you want me to act,
Speaker 1: (25:19)
Please tell us how we are supposed to act.
Speaker 2: (25:21)
Yeah, here. I was telling your uncle, like, it’s okay, we’re here. We’ll support you. You know, we still love you. You’re still family. Yes. There’s this whole other side, you know, that, that you now need to learn about and discover. Um, but how, how hypocritical of that would have been if I was like, Oh my God, my life is over, which does happen for some people don’t get me wrong. It totally, it absolutely does. And I don’t mean to make light of their situation. Um, but I just, I wasn’t, um, I wasn’t in that place. I gave myself, um, maybe about two months in, I gave myself what I call my three-day pity party. And I literally just laid in bed for three days. And then I said, all right, Aaron, you’re going to, you’re either going to get to the other side of this, or you’re never going to get to the other side of this. And, you know, you’re, you’re bigger, you’re bigger than this. So get up, get in the shower and get your to work and, and you’re going to be okay. So, um, yeah, I was gonna say something else, but I have absolutely no idea what I was going to say. There was like something else there, but it’s gone.
Speaker 1: (26:33)
Do you, um, help, am I wrong? Am I, you now have become, uh, somebody who’s kind of, uh, acknowledged could be like more tongue tied, um, knowledgeable or helpful with other peoples, um, trees or understanding DNA stuff, or are you like, I don’t know if you consider yourself technically a search angel or are you just you’re somebody that, uh, feels like you’ve got like a real good grip on the genealogy stuff? Yeah.
Speaker 2: (27:03)
Yes. I, I definitely, um, consider myself a search angel.
Speaker 1: (27:07)
Okay. Just, I didn’t want to put that label on you. I didn’t want to put you in a box
Speaker 2: (27:11)
I’m I’m honestly just at this point, not doing that because I’m so busy with all of the other stuff.
Speaker 1: (27:19)
Yeah. You got a lot going on. You got you. I’m not, so I’m not trying to put more on your plate
Speaker 2: (27:24)
Because something’s got to give, so that’s, you know, that’s what web, so that I could dedicate more time to, uh, hire with hope and healing and to NPE only. So
Speaker 1: (27:34)
Yeah. Yeah. And your own family and your own job. Yes. And your own, like your own life, all of that. Absolutely so much going on. Uh, if somebody is in their beginning, you know, someone is someone stumbles across this talk, um, in the beginning of their journey, what do you wish? Is there anything you wish you had known when you were brand new to it or, um, that you think is, is the best advice for the beginning parts?
Speaker 2: (28:04)
I wish that, um, I wish that I had patients, um, you know, I think the majority of us, when we make this discovery, we’re like, I need to know everything and I need to know it now. And I need to reach out right now and I need to talk to, you know, this person. Um, and I wish that I had taken a little more time to digest the information by myself before I reached out, um, to anyone else. And I mean, anyone, my mother was like,
Speaker 1: (28:37)
Including your mom. Okay. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (28:41)
All of the above. I wish that I had been a little more, um, adjusted to the news, even though I knew what could happen. I, it, it really surprised me when I realized it happened to me. So, um, yeah. But I wish that I had had more patients and, uh, with myself and other people, um, and I truthfully wish that I had picked up the phone and called him instead of sending him, um, a note because, you know, I tell people that may be the only opportunity you have to, to hear his, her voice, um, you know, one last time. So yeah. Join as many groups as, as you feel you need, you know, some people join one group and they’re like, no, I’m great. I’m happy over here in my little corner. Um, there are people are in every single group, there is out there and are active and they get something different from each of those groups. So, um, make sure you take care of you and, and do what feels right for you.
Speaker 1: (29:50)
Yeah. That’s amazing. That’s almost word for word with the last interview, a person set said, you got to focus on you, take care of you, you do what you need to do. Um, yeah. Nothing brings it like this experience certainly brings, uh, the need for that into sharp relief. Um, about, about what do you, what do you want, um, and did your mom, when you, so I’m sorry, when you I’m going all over the place now, but when you were, when you decided like, Oh, I’ll try and understand where my grandfather came from. So I’ll do an, uh, a DNA test. Did you, did you, had you told your mom, you were going to do that. It was like, it was like an open discussion and she didn’t, she did she, has she acknowledged that alarm bells went off for her at that time? Or did she think about it?
Speaker 2: (30:36)
Yes. She said, she said to me, why, why, like, why, what does it matter? Like your family is your family
Speaker 1: (30:45)
Laying the groundwork laying on the ground.
Speaker 2: (30:49)
And then I, I actually remember, um, so my results came in December 27th. Oh, great. And I host Christmas day at my house and, uh, you know, my, my mom and my stepdad were here. My, um, my stepsister was here. Everybody was here and we were talking about my husband’s uncle. And I said to my mother, if you got any skeletons in the closet, like now would be the time to like, get them.
Speaker 1: (31:13)
You did it, Aaron, you didn’t. I did. I mean, of course, like, of course you didn’t actually think there would be
Speaker 2: (31:20)
Totally did not think there would be. And then she says, well, you know, there may have been, you know, a time or two words. It was a young woman. And I was like, uh, was she serious? You know, like I remember pulling my stepsister into my room and being like, do you really think I should be worried? Like I, and then both of us were like, nah, no, no, no, no, that family. Right. So yeah, no, I mean, those, those, those warning bells were, were definitely a thing [inaudible]
Speaker 1: (31:50)
Okay. Okay. So she had had a couple of days of some, some level of processing and preparing for that. That’s interesting.
Speaker 2: (32:00)
I mean, she said to me, her and her and my stepdad have been together. Oh, good Lord. Um, a long time. I’m trying to think. I think he’s been in my life since I’m five. So I’m almost 46, 41 years. He’s been a part of my life. Um, he’s in it didn’t they didn’t get married, you know, right then and there, but that’s how long they’ve been together. And I remember her saying to me, I have to tell my husband, like, I’ve never even told my husband this. And I was like, Oh, okay. And then he said to me, you’re not gonna, you’re not gonna tell anybody. Right. Cause it’ll make your mother look less what I said less, what, less human, like, you know, she’s a human being. Right. And she’s not perfect. Just like the rest of us
Speaker 1: (32:49)
Only that if only that idea, I guess we just need to start talking about it more. Nobody’s perfect. And this relationship
Speaker 2: (32:58)
Did say I made a mistake. I made a mistake. I made a mistake. She kept repeating that. And I said, I said, you need, you need to change that narrative, you know, because you didn’t make a mistake because if you made a mistake, then I’m a mistake. Right. And I’m not a mistake, you know, I’m, I’m obviously meant to be here because I’m here. So that narrative has to change. You have to stop saying that. And she did so. Yeah. But I mean, you know, ultimately, like I keep saying that, like, there was a bigger purpose for all of this and I, and I just truly think that I am so incredibly lucky, um, for the people that I’ve been able to meet through this. And, um, you know, it’s always kind of dangerous in the NPE world and the adoptee world to call people, family that aren’t family. Right. Um, but I’m, I just feel so incredibly lucky, um, to, to have these group of people in my life that I wouldn’t have met, otherwise wouldn’t have met.
Speaker 1: (34:04)
And like, there is no universe that I would have met some of these, any, any of these people, any of them.
Speaker 2: (34:11)
And when you look at like, who’s at retreat, it’s, it’s literally a group of people that you would never put together in a room, and yet there we are. And, you know, we’re all laughing together and crying together and, you know, people that we wouldn’t choose to be friends with in real money.
Speaker 1: (34:27)
Totally. Yeah, no, I was, I was, you know, I’m like, Oh my
Speaker 2: (34:30)
God, you’re really cool. Really cool.
Speaker 1: (34:32)
And, and I, I actually kind of like that, the word struggle is not the word for that, but like, I’m, uh, I’m, I’m very like open and, um, about my politics. And, um, that was something that, um, for example, you had established no, no politics to talk about it at the retreat. And, um, and there was a part of me that felt I’ll be, I’ll be honest, uh, like frustrated by that, or it felt like a, like an oppression or something. And, and yet I can’t help, but acknowledge that, that totally, um, uh, that, that the lack of that or whatever, let, anyway, anyway, the connection with people was because of the NPE experience and other things in life than who we are, who we may or may not vote for, or what, you know, think of, think of other people on, on that plane. And, um, so I, so like in the end, I really appreciated it. I still have like lots of complex feelings about, about that in general, but, um, I can’t help, but think about that a lot in with the group where I’m like, yeah, like we’re sitting around with, um, some, some really big fundamental differences, and yet we’re finding the ability to like, laugh about, you know, laugh about all these other things and, and that area can, can heal. And I don’t know, I just
Speaker 2: (35:52)
Thank you for saying that because I, I don’t, I don’t think that I, I don’t think I viewed it as oppression, you know, thank you for opening my eyes to that. It was, it was more like we need to connect. Um, we need to collect, connect on a humanistic level and, um, you know, everyone, um, has the potential to be passionate about their politics except me, because I’m the world’s least politically.
Speaker 1: (36:22)
Okay.
Speaker 2: (36:23)
But I, I just felt like it was such a contentious time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (36:26)
I mean, also, yeah, we should tell everybody, this was October, 2020, so we’re leading up to a, uh, election, uh, you know, like a historic election, uh, you know, during a pandemic during this hot year after this controversial president or during this controversial president. So yeah. I mean, like it, the temp gets hot real quick.
Speaker 2: (36:50)
Yeah. And, and there’s just been so much hatred and, you know, I’m unfriending you and I’m unfriending you. And can you imagine having to like, live in a house with somebody for 72 hours when you’re like, I hate your politics and you sound so ignorant, you know what I mean? So, yeah, it was definitely not meant to be oppression. It was just meant to have a, you know, a level, a level playing field. So, but I, I appreciate you pointing that out because that was not my intent.
Speaker 1: (37:17)
Oh, sure. No, I mean, I, yeah, no, I knew you were just, uh, and you know, and like, I’m, you know, I, I’ve got my own like, um, personal issues about like authority and rules and stuff like that. And, um, and, and yeah, so I, I just, I like, uh, I ended up really, like, it’s just really good. It just really gave me like a lot to think about and a lot to appreciate about these people. And, um, and I, you know, and I assume that they are thinking the same things about me, like, you know, we all connected and it was really cool. It was really, really, really neat. Um, I really loved that part. I loved all of it. I loved all of it. Um,
Speaker 2: (37:58)
Yeah, that warms my heart. Thank you. Oh, I’m
Speaker 1: (38:01)
Counting down the days till our next one. I am. Um, I am too, in fact, yeah. I actually need to get on and like secure my secure, you know, finish all my resident, you know, car, uh, what’s it called? Airplane tickets, stuff like that. Um, and I think I owe you money. Um, okay. I’ll get some money over to the retreat too. Um, Aaron, thank you so much. Thank you for having me. And it’s so great to talk to you and get to see your face. Uh, and you’ve been such a source of support for me in the group, but also behind the scenes. And, um, I just, I really appreciate you and all your, all your, all your service as a, as a friend and, uh, and a group leader.
Speaker 2: (38:49)
Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate you. I like to say, you know, we’re, we’re all mirrors and we recognize in each other things that we already possess. So thank you for, for being a mirror to me. I appreciate that. Okay.
Speaker 1: (39:03)
Likewise. Cool. Um, all right, go on with your Saturday. You probably have a, uh, group to join right now or something, right? I think I might help on over there. Yeah. It’s only been, yeah, they just started. Yeah. Cool. All right. Thank you so much. Yeah, I’ll talk to you soon. I’ll be in touch. Alrighty. All right. Bye Aaron.
Tell Them Sooner Than Later: A Chat About Late Discovery Adoption with Lesli Johnson, LMFT
Speaker 1: (00:00)
Edit the beginning sort of chitchat, but I just hit record otherwise I’ll forget to do it, so. Okay. Sounds good. Yeah. Um, yeah, so thank you. So I, so I told you a little bit about the podcast. Um, I looked at a couple episodes. Oh, wow. Okay. Thank you. Um, so you know, that are, were, um, more than anything. I generally end up talking with people who, who find out that, um, they, the one or more of their parents were not their parents and what is like a growing population, um, within that community is like late discovery adoptees. Right. Which I didn’t, I honestly was very like naive about. Um, and, and I’m learning more about kind of quick, quickly, like sort of scrambling to catch up and, um, I want to include everybody. So, um, simultaneously I was looking for, um, some therapists to help with some, some people contact me through the podcast about getting therapy. And so I asked around through some therapy networks and everybody kept saying Leslie Johnson, Leslie Jensen, as like, as an adoption therapist. So, um, so that was why I reached out to you. Um, and so I’m just wondering, I guess, let’s see, we could start with, um, you, you could tell me like what, how you came to therapy and how you came to focus on, um, this particular area. Sure,
Speaker 2: (01:27)
Sure. Um, so I, uh, I’ve been like licensed therapist since 2003 and started out just with a general practice and early, very, very early on started. Um, just, I mean, I don’t really, I don’t think there are any coincidences, but I was getting a lot of, uh, referrals, um, or people contacting me who were members of the adoption and foster care community. Um, and I, myself was adopted and I spent, um, a lot of time in therapy, myself in my early twenties. And, but it was never talking about, uh, my therapist, um, was not an adoption trained therapist or really, um, I don’t think thought adoption was a thing or, you know, separating a child from their biology. Their, their first mom was, was significant. Um, and I spent a lot of time in therapy, uh, talking about things that, that now I’ve come to learn were really related to that early separation loss.
Speaker 2: (02:35)
Um, but, but we weren’t, she wasn’t helping me connect the dots. So I started thinking this might be a great, um, area for me to work with. Um, so not that my personal experience would, would be the same as everyone else’s, but it may, I thought my personal experience might, uh, inform my professional work. So I spent, um, a lot of years, uh, getting trauma trained. So this idea that separating a child from their biology is traumatic to both baby and or infant or child, um, and often, uh, birth mother as well. So I got trained in some brain-based therapies that including the EMDR brain spotting the trauma resiliency model, just in order to help, uh, ameliorate trauma symptoms, but also that these therapies, um, work well with implicit memory. So that, that trauma that happens before a person has, uh, out of autobiographical memory or language to describe it. Um, so that’s, that’s in a nutshell kind of how I got here. And, um, so now I, I do individual therapy. I do coaching, I have a virtual course for adult adoptees, um, other support groups and, um, yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s wonderful work and, and the community, that community aspect. And I think you, you can probably agree, um, that that’s part of the healing too, is when people find other people that have had maybe not an identical experience, but a shared experience and how, um, just how profoundly healing that can be
Speaker 1: (04:19)
So powerful to connect with somebody that understands. Yeah, absolutely. And I actually think, um, and is it, this isn’t always the case across all, um, facets of therapy, but, um, in just anecdotal experience, it feels to me like, um, adoption specifically people, um, very much wants a therapist that has, has experienced adoption on one end or the other.
Speaker 2: (04:44)
It really has kind of come to that. And it’s, um, it’s interesting and, and understandable too. I mean, it is understandable too,
Speaker 1: (04:54)
Right? Yeah, absolutely. So, um, what is something, so now at this, at this time you have, um, do you serve both adult, adult adoptees and also families who want to adopt, or do you focus primarily on, um, adult adoptees or
Speaker 2: (05:13)
So I work with adult adult adoptees, um, adoptive families, adoptive parents. Um, I do some work with, I also work with, um, first parents. I do some work with prospective adoptive parents, but that’s really, um, more psychoeducation, right? So talking about, um, I think, I think adoptive families are best served when adoptive parents have done their work around why they’re choosing to adopt and really, um, you know, really helping parents understand that, uh, adopting a child, you know, isn’t a replacement for a child. They couldn’t conceive nor replacement for a child who may have died. Um, it’s one way to form a family, but really, um, talking about the, the both ends of adoption. So for adoptive parents, their adopted child might be the answer, you know, to their, to their dreams and completing a family, but that, but there’s also, um, or, and not, but, and there’s also the element of grief and loss for everyone involved in the, in the adoption community, adoptive parents, first parents. And, and of course the adopted person.
Speaker 1: (06:24)
Yeah. Yeah. And do you feel like, um, in, in, just from what you have seen it feel, it feels to me, or I would have thought before now that people adopting children, uh, babies and not telling them, um, was an older, an older practice. Um, but I, but I’m still meeting people in the late adopter, late discovery, adoption world who are pretty young or younger than me. Um, do you feel like it’s still happening, you know, out there?
Speaker 2: (06:57)
So, um, I don’t think it’s happening as as much so, so, but I, I do think it is still happening a little bit and I am, I am, you know, so such an advocate for openness and adoption, certainly truth and transparency. Every person deserves to know they’re there, it’s a birthright to know your birth story and your history and your genetic history. Um, and I do, I do know that there are still families that choose not to, to share, um, you know, really important information with their child. And I do also know there are still a few families that choose not to tell, um, not to tell their child that they were adopted and which is really, really, um, surprising, especially in today’s society where there’s so much, um, information.
Speaker 1: (07:52)
I was just thinking, I was like, Oh my gosh, you just, you’re blatantly turning your back on so much information.
Speaker 2: (07:58)
So really educating adoptive parents that, that, you know, you, I want you to be your child’s best advocate. I want all of the information to come filter through not filtered, but come through you so that, you know, your son isn’t over at their friend’s house on Facebook, scrolling through Facebook and finds that they have, you know, siblings and contacts them. And, you know, we’ll kind of say, Oh yeah, that’s never going to happen. Well, I’ve seen it happen many, many, many, many times what that does is it creates a real breach of trust because kids, kids think, wow, you haven’t told me this, what else haven’t you shared with me? And it’s, it’s a real, it’s a real issue.
Speaker 1: (08:36)
Yeah, yeah. Uh, yeah, that, that, that rings true with me. I mean, my experience, not an adoption story, but definitely, um, feeling incredibly confused about the trust and the Vitra, the feeling of betrayal, betrayal, and, um, and trying to even explain that to my parents who I think probably I can’t speak for them, but I think, and I bet you’ve, you’ve experienced as well. When you said be your child’s best advocate. They believed they were being like my best advocate. They thought they, they were making a choice on my behalf. Um, right. So it’s like, it’s a very confusing paradox kind of, um, I think for people that you know, who can’t, I don’t know, I don’t want to get, uh, let’s not digress into talking about my parents, but, um, but I know that it’s common. It’s not an uncommon experience in this world.
Speaker 2: (09:25)
I think you’re right. I think that that’s perhaps true that the parents think that they’re, you know, that they’re protecting their child or, you know, this can be for adoption. This can be, you know, parents who choose not to tell, um, parents who have had their child, you know, have had, um, a child out of their relationship and, and decide that the, the, you know, if they’ve ha if, if mom has had an affair and decides that the person she’s with is gonna be raised, that child is their own, and they decide not to tell the child, um, you know, instances where there’s, you know, rape involved and that’s not disclosed. I mean, all of this it’s, it’s like it, I don’t believe it’s a parent’s job to shelter their kids from, from their child’s truth. Right. Um, of course, we’re going to talk to kids in an age, you know, about, about these things in an age appropriate way. And, and, you know, when they’re developmentally, um, able to understand the concepts, but I always say, if I, if you’re telling me this, if I’m, if I’m talking with a parent, if you’re telling me this, and I know my guess is you’ve told someone else, and eventually your child’s going to know, and, and I would want your child to know that information coming from you.
Speaker 1: (10:43)
Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s where I think it’s hard for people to conceptualize how, how long life is and how information travels. Right. Um, yeah. Um, you said something that I want to go back to, I’m gonna have to think about what it was. Um, Hmm. I don’t know, but it will come back. It will, it will. I’m sure it will come back at the worst moment, but, um, what, and so when you let’s see, when you think about, um, adoption, Oh, it was about the age. Okay. I remember now it was about age appropriate stuff. Um, that is, I just wanted to say, I guess, I think in, I think that is one area where we could really use way more information and resources. Cause that is a constant conversation. Um, within the support groups is, have you told your children, how did you tell them, when do you tell them?
Speaker 1: (11:44)
Um, and I was at a retreat actually a few weeks ago with other NPS and some late discovery adoption. And, um, and, and there was a lot of just sort of like misunderstanding about what, what it meant to tell, tell people, and, and everyone is kind of, I mean, so much of this world is about like, sort of flying by so many people are sort of flying by the seat of their pants, trying to figure out how to handle it. But I wish there was more, um, like a chart that was like, if you’re chatting, you know, about how to age appropriately explain all these things. Is that something that you go over with with people?
Speaker 2: (12:18)
Me too. I do. And I, I like to say, you know, it’s not, uh, it’s not, uh, it’s not whether to tell the child, but when, how much, um, and in, you know, the idea that by the time a child is 10 or 11, they should really have all the details of their birth story. Um, and that way they can enter adolescents. A lot of times people say, Oh, well, maybe, you know, we’ll let them know when they’re 18 or will, you know, that that’s, that that’s. So that means your child has gone through identity formation without the information around their, you know, their birth story. So that can create a lot of confusion. And again, I’m just thinking of that. I, you know, when I have worked with, um, late discovery, adoptees who find out, you know, later, so, so LDA is like discovery find out later in life that they were adopted and just the immense amount of, of feeling of feelings, of betrayal and mistrust of self.
Speaker 2: (13:18)
Right? So a lot of them will say, I kind of, I kind of knew something, you know, I knew something was different. I never felt, um, I belonged or I never F I just felt something was off. Um, so they have a mistrust of themselves. They obviously have a mistrust of their parents. Um, a lot of, so a lot of adoptees suffer because of that initial separation that, that, that early separation and loss, they have, you know, hypervigilance, anxiety, depression. So if, if a child doesn’t know that, that part of the reason that they’re maybe having some of these symptoms is because of this early loss, they just grew up wondering, why am I so anxious? Why am I, you know, why am I always waiting for the other shoe to drop? Why do I have, uh, so much anxiety around change and transition?
Speaker 1: (14:11)
Yeah. It’s kind of like, it’s kinda, I mean, I didn’t know, I hadn’t thought of it this way, but if there’s a line by omission is one thing, and then there’s kind of, it’s, it’s almost like gaslighting by omission. Yeah. The confusion about, about who, what ha trusting yourself about your understanding of yourself. parents’ relationship. Not withstanding. Okay.
Speaker 2: (14:36)
Yeah. And these, and then, you know, sometimes people will discover that they were adopted, you know, when their, their adoptive parents have died and they’re looking through their, this is a really common, you know, they’re looking through their parents’ paperwork and then they find, you know, they find these documents. So then they have no know if their adoptive parents are dead. There’s a very, there’s a strong likelihood that their birth parents may also have deceased and there’s no one to help them, you know, there’s no one to tell them their story or fill in the gaps of their story. So they’re left with this huge, um, trauma.
Speaker 1: (15:13)
[inaudible] so many questions without answers. Right. So hard. Yeah. Yeah. We meet so many people like that, um, in the NPE world, for sure.
Speaker 2: (15:23)
Yeah. Their identity is kind of shattered. Right. They, they they’re, you know, and if we’re, if we think, um, in terms of, again, that, that they’re, you know, our bodies remember everything, so they have a felt sense that something was different. And again, that, that idea of trusting self, right. I, I knew something was off. I felt different. Um, but everyone’s telling me something else.
Speaker 1: (15:50)
Yeah. Yeah. So hard and frustrating in my experience, in my experience. And what do you think, do you think there, I mean, that feels like a silly question to ask you to narrow it down, but do you feel like there is something that you wish that people could know more about adoption or what is, is there a thing that you wish people the general public, or was more known or more talked about in the, about adoption?
Speaker 2: (16:18)
Um, well, I think that I, you know, I’m, I’m really a proponent of elevating the voice of the adoptee and listening and learning from those who have had the experience of, of being adopted. And there’s so much that can be learned. And I think for so long, the adopted person was told, um, that they should be grateful that they were lucky. Um, you know, that the narrative was, was that adoption was solely a great, wonderful thing. And I think that we know, again, the, the, the, both ans that, you know, I can say as an adopted person that I actually am, I do feel grateful that I was adopted. I, you know, I grew up in a loving home and I’ve had the opportunity to meet my biological family. Um, so I can say that I feel grateful around it. And I can also say that I, you know, I had a lot of anxiety, have a lot of anxiety, um, have had to work really hard to, um, to heal, uh, wounds related to, to that early separation trauma. So I, I would just like, uh, people specifically adoptive parents, um, to just know that, that this is a, it’s a, you know, there’s a saying adoption is a lifelong process and it really is. And that, you know, again for, for adoptive parents to do their own work, um, and continue to, to educate and educate themselves and do their own work around, um, adoption related themes. Yeah. That was a long night.
Speaker 1: (18:05)
No, that’s great. Um, and, um, and for P for people who, I guess for all, I mean, I, I, we could go over all, all the different aspects of this, but, um, what are the, what are, are there some go-to resources that you send people, um, to right away? Um, as far as I don’t, I mean, it’s like, this is, this is, it’s like so complex. Like, I mean sure. It’s different resources for adoptees versus adoptive parents,
Speaker 2: (18:34)
Different ones. Um, I just, I think again, there are, so, I mean, I can, there’s so many different, um, adoptee related resources and books, um, podcasts, there’s a, there’s, there’s so many, and I mean, I’m happy to name specifically if you want me to, but there’s a book that is an, it’s an older book written by Nancy Perrier called the primal wound, and it’s still so applicable. Um, and I think it’s a great one for, um, adoptive parents, you know, most adoptees, if they’re, if they have co the term has come out of the fog. So to come out of the fog is to recognize, um, the grief and loss that is inherent in separating a child from their biology. Um, so if, if adoptees have come out of the fog, most of them have read, uh, Nancy varies, the primal wound. I also think, um, reading books about just trauma in general and the body, right?
Speaker 2: (19:34)
So, yeah, Bessel van der Kolk Cokes, the body keeps the score is, um, really an important, uh, important resource. Um, there’s an, a podcast adoptees on Haley Radke does an amazing job of, of talking to other adoptees. And I think, you know, it’s finding your tribe and finding your, the, you know, like I mentioned earlier, finding community, um, like I mentioned, I, I have a virtual course that I’m, that I’m doing with adults who are adopted and it’s, you know, just watching the interaction, um, that they have with each other online. And for many, this is the first time that they’ve been in a group with other people who were adopted. So there’s late discovery, adoptees, there’s, you know, people who have known they were adopted, um, you know, since they could remember and, you know, and various, uh, stories in between. And, and it’s just, again, their, their experience doesn’t have to be identical, but they share the same thread and it’s really so, um, healing, you know, so healing for them.
Speaker 1: (20:41)
Yeah, absolutely. I can only imagine that sounds really fascinating. Um, and do you have a website? People could find that kind of thing. I’ll put it up on the Instagram and the website and everything, but
Speaker 2: (20:53)
Ask adoption.com
Speaker 1: (20:56)
Ask adoption, and that will get them to you and all your resources that you are for like the virtual groups and things like that. Well, wonderful. And, um, I think of some other quite, I feel like we probably, um, let’s see, what have I not asked you if you can think of any, um,
Speaker 2: (21:26)
Well, I think, you know, so we, we’re, we’re talking primarily right now about adoption, but I think that the crossover in, um, you know, is so similar is so similar when someone finds out, you know, that the father that they were raised by isn’t their biological father. And just those, again, those issues of trust and identity, and, you know, you know, like broken bonds really, um, you know, shame there’s a lot of times there’s, there’s, you know, shame and, and again, it’s, it’s encouraging people. I, I guess, you know, maybe that part of it is there’s a societal, um, pressure to keep some of these things secret. And, and like you said, your parents thought that they were protecting you and really kind of recognizing that, that it’s not a parent’s job to protect, you know, I kind of feel like I’m repeating myself, but it’s not really a parent’s job to protect their child from their child, you know, from their child’s experience.
Speaker 2: (22:30)
Right. And so much, I mean, I’m a big, I’m a big proponent of, you know, our, of, of healing. You know, we have the capacity, our brains have the capacity to change throughout our lifespan. And so it’s never too late to, you know, rewire our brains towards more, uh, more resilient state. It’s never too late to heal. Um, and so no matter when a person finds out, um, you know, about their birth story, of course, there’s, there’s the capacity to heal. And I also just think, you know, that that could be made so much easier if a child knows their story, you know, from early on and parents are part of that healing process.
Speaker 1: (23:13)
Right, right. There’s an opportunity to make it a collaborative experience. Right. Um, a lot of people that come to the, to this podcast, um, are often newer to the, to their experience, to their discovery, whether it’s an NPE or late discovery adoption. And there’s, as you’ve mentioned, there’s crossover there, but, um, so when they come, so if somebody comes to you for therapy and they’ve just discovered that they are, uh, late discovery adoption, um, what does that first session like? Generally,
Speaker 2: (23:51)
I think, um, well, mostly mostly that if they’re coming to me after they’ve discovered that they were adopted, um, later in life, they’re they’ve, if they’re coming to me, they’re, they’re recognizing that it matters, right. The recognizing that it’s, that it’s something and, uh, most of them have, have, um, come with, you know, symptoms of anxiety, depression, shock, um, grief, you know, grieving the grieving, the identity, if they thought that they had, um, betrayal. Um, so, so the, you know, maybe the first session or first few sessions is just, um, allowing them to tell their story and, uh, normalizing some of their, their, their reactions and responses to what has happened. Uh, and then, you know, perhaps helping them find community. Um, a lot of clients come to see me because they want to do, um, the EMDR, you know, EMDR therapy or brainspotting therapy around some of, of the trauma. Um, but I think that’s kind of what some of the first handful of for sessions would look like.
Speaker 1: (25:07)
Yeah. I think, I think, I mean, across the board, um, the therapy is often about this, but, um, I think it’s so important to normalize everybody’s reactions. I think that’s, that’s really something that people have to, that’s part of finding a community community, whether that’s a group of people or just a therapist, um, is finding someone to say all your feelings and reactions are totally normal. Um, and w and this is why this is why there’s anger. This is, there’s a word for that. It’s called betrayal. And the offering offering a vocabulary, um, is so important. And,
Speaker 2: (25:41)
Um, yeah. And helping them connect the dots of their story, even though the story has been, you know, kind of jumbled, you know, helping them, you know, integrate this new information into their story.
Speaker 1: (25:55)
Yeah. Yeah. I think, yeah. It’s, it’s, I mean, I imagine that there’s something to be said about just providing, I don’t imagine I am a therapist. I know that there’s something to this, but, um, but that there is, there’s something to be said about offering a safe space, to just, um, be with the confusion and be with the experience and, um, say, say out loud things that like, like, for me, even like, it’s two, I’m two years in, and I still have moments. I even just had one while we were talking about, about something that doesn’t make sense. Right. And I can’t, you know, in my day-to-day life, I have all these things that need to get done. And, um, and I, so it’s so nice to have one safe place where I can be like, Hey, like, listen to this thing. Then they said this and that doesn’t make sense. Right. Just, it’s just, you just need a play, you just need that. There’s something about somebody saying, yeah. Like, yeah, that that’s ridiculous. And, and giving yourself the time. Right. Nobody, nobody needs anything for me when I’m with a fare when I’m with my therapist. Right. Right. The only time for me to, to focus on this strange thing, I don’t know what it, you know, thing. And, um, so
Speaker 2: (27:16)
To listen to, so nobody needs anything from you. You get to have that space and, and hopefully collaborate with your therapist on, on, you know, ways to, um, heal ways to, you know, work with difficult feelings and strong emotions and yeah.
Speaker 1: (27:33)
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Wonderful. Is there anything else that you want to tell me about your practice or your work with adoptees that I did not ask because sometimes people expect a question that I didn’t think of. No, I think, I mean, yeah.
Speaker 2: (27:49)
I think you asked great questions and I, I, I appreciate the, I mean, it’s so interesting how there is so much crossover and, um, you know, right after, right after you contacted me, um, someone I read after you contacted me, someone contacted me with, with a story that wasn’t adoption related, but, um, was, was, you know, a non fraternity event. And it was just kind of amazing, just the themes. Um, and not that this isn’t the first person, but it was just kind of interesting that that had happened right after you had contacted me and just the themes are so, so, so similar,
Speaker 1: (28:33)
So similar. And actually, I think, I mean, I don’t, I don’t, I, I actually ought to, and I can do it right now. Ask the late adoption community to tell me if they think that they, they need more, not more attention, but I just didn’t. Um, it’s very interesting. Cause I will talk with people all, you know, all the time about my podcast and they, people will say, cause I, I, you know, obviously you have to explain what an NPE is and I’ll say it’s when it’s, when a person discovers that one or more of their parents is not their parents. And almost always I, if someone is thinking about it, they go, well, the mom is always the mom and it’s not until I suggest adoption that they’re like, Oh, like it’s sort of a forgotten variable within the NPE larger picture. I think it seems to be, and maybe I’m wrong. And maybe that’s just my own experience, but I, I feel like I’m a little bit naive. And, um, and like, I want to make up for a little bit of lost time and, and acknowledge acknowledged that, um, that kind NPE, that, that there’s just so many different types. And, um, this comes with its own its own world, its own its own set of feelings and process. I think there’s probably little differences between all the different types. Right.
Speaker 2: (29:55)
Well, yeah. And then we’re not even talking about, you know, donor conceived, um, you know, families and that’s, that’s also, um, there’s, you know, there’s grief and loss inheritant that if that’s, if that information is, is revealed to, to children.
Speaker 1: (30:14)
Yeah, absolutely. No, there’s so many, um, I keep saying, I just thought, I just said it in a previous episode, but I keep, and I was just talking about it with someone else that like, we, if you, and I, you know, if we could sit down and write down every different type of NPE, we could think of someone will, someone will offer a new one. There’s so many ways, you know, which is it’s it’s in some, I guess, you know, in some ways it’s, you could say it’s a beautiful thing, but there are so many ways for children to come into the world and for children to be raised by who they’re raised by, hopefully that’s a beautiful thing, but, but that would be a really naive generalization. It’s not always, um,
Speaker 2: (30:50)
Right. And I think it can be again, just, you know, uh, a huge proponent of truth and transparency, you know, that that’s, that can certainly add to, I guess, if it’s going to be a beautiful thing, um, why not tell the truth about
Speaker 1: (31:07)
Right. Be a part of it. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I agree with that. You know, so, well hopefully the work you’re doing, um, and the work lots of other people working in the adoption field are doing and, and I’m doing, and we’re all trying to get this information out there. So hopefully there will be a shift in the, um, larger global conversation about how this, how this works. Cause it would be, yeah,
Speaker 2: (31:30)
I think, I think there is a sh you know, a shift it’s a small shift happening and I, and like you, I hope the shift, uh, becomes more significant.
Speaker 1: (31:41)
Yeah. Yeah. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much. I will put all that information up on the, on my, um, Instagram. So, uh, so if everybody, if you didn’t catch it, I’ll put it, um, I’ll, I’ll put it up. I’ll make sure everybody can get to it. And, um, I just wanted to say that actually it was, um, at this retreat when I was meeting late, late discovery, adoption, adoptees that so many were talking about body keeps the score as a book that’s been really great and also, um, complex PTSD by Pete Walker. Those two books were coming up over and over again, as, as books that people have really used as campuses
Speaker 2: (32:17)
Really, really important to make that connection that, that our bodies remember everything.
Speaker 1: (32:25)
Yeah. Yup, yup. Yeah. It’s too bad. We don’t get that education sooner, sooner, sooner, and everywhere. Um, all right. Well, Leslie, thank you so much for your time. I’ll let you get on with your morning. Um, this was so great and I’m so excited to put this up and I, I like we’ll be in touch with you about when it will be. It will not be very long. Um, yeah, absolutely. And yeah, that’s it. I mean, like that was so easy, so straightforward. You know what you’re doing? You’re very prepared. You know what you’re doing too, and I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you. Oh yeah. Great. I’m excited. I’m super excited that we, yeah, I’m super excited and um, hopefully we’ll meet in person one of these days, I’m in, I’m like Glassell park and I’m in Toronto and I feel like our paths will cross now that we’ve we’ve chatted. Totally great. Wonderful. Um, all right, Leslie, have a great rest of your day. Happy Halloween, et cetera. Have a great day. Thank you. Thank you so much, Leslie. I’ll talk to you soon. Bye bye.
Blond Hair, Blue Eyes, Black Sheep
Speaker 1: (00:00)
Died. And then like on like the Mount Washington side. Um, do you know where that is? Or Highland park died? Eagle rock.
Speaker 2: (00:08)
Yeah, of course. I know Eagle rock. You guys have. There’s a great pizza place. Casa Bianca? Yes.
Speaker 1: (00:16)
It’s good pizza. Yeah, totally. Oh, that’s so funny. How long have you been in Vancouver?
Speaker 2: (00:22)
So I actually, uh, moved here when I was 12 and I lived here till I was about 23 and then moved to LA. I was in LA for, uh, five years with my birth certificate father and then moved back, uh, in 2011. I think we just missed the Olympics of 2011. And then I’ve been here since
Speaker 1: (00:47)
I love, we love Vancouver. Oh yeah. I mean, we only, we, we went up, we met up in a few years, but my husband’s job sometimes takes them up there for TV, so, oh yeah. This the Hollywood north. Yeah. Yep. So
Speaker 2: (00:59)
Yeah, one of my good friends actually, uh, he’s from, he’s from Vancouver. Uh, his name is Evan Goldberg. He’s a, he’s a producer in Hollywood. He works with Seth Rogan. The him and Seth Rogan is the two of them. So he goes back and forth all the time. He eats living LA. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: (01:17)
Mean, compared to Vancouver, it’s hard to, it’s not even a contest really in Coover is just
Speaker 2: (01:23)
Like, the air is
Speaker 3: (01:26)
So beautiful up there. Oh,
Speaker 1: (01:29)
Mutable and LA is fun and wonderful, but I don’t know if we call it beautiful very often.
Speaker 2: (01:37)
I didn’t like LA. Yeah. I didn’t like it. Uh,
Speaker 1: (01:42)
That’s fair. So, okay. So I know nothing. Uh, if you told me in an email, I don’t remember it right now, but you’ve got to start. You’ve got a story to tell me. I don’t know much in any way.
Speaker 2: (01:58)
I thought I knew lots, but in the end I don’t,
Speaker 1: (02:02)
That’s what it does. Yeah. That’s what that’s, that’s not uncommon. So, so tell me what, uh, what’s going on with you. Tell me what ha what ha what happened,
Speaker 2: (02:13)
What happened? Well, COVID happens for everybody. Um, but it’s, I think probably the best is, uh, starting about where my, as a childhood. So I, I lived, I was born in the, you know, uh, Connecticut in the 1980s, uh, which was a great time to grow up in Connecticut. Like it was east coast and just the music, everything. I love everything eighties. Um, I had a pretty privileged childhood. I grew up in a somewhat wealthy home, upper middle-class. Uh, so I, you know, it was at the summer camps and everything, uh, and it was a Jewish upbringing, but more culturally, um, you know, we would go on the high holidays to synagogue, but, you know, uh, on Yom Kippor, I would have a bacon double cheeseburger in the afternoon. So, you know, we’re culturally Jewish and that’s because, you know, my dad, um, was, you know, Jewish growing up and, you know, Judaism was very important to his mom.
Speaker 2: (03:15)
So my mother converted when I was a child, uh, from Christianity. So we, uh, it was a very nice all our friends, you know, I had an older brother, he was about 19 months ahead of me. Uh, and I had, I had a really nice upbringing. I was always the different one. I was always kind of the entertainer. I was always the, um, the, you know, the blonde hair, blue eyes, um, black sheep, so to speak to the family, uh, definitely felt it in a way. My dad always was, um, you know, more, uh, more leaning towards my older brother. Now, my dad had been married before my mom. Um, but she was unable to conceive children. So they adopted three kids. Uh, he had a whole life. Okay. Yeah. He had a whole life before. I mean, when they met, he was like 50, 51 or something like that.
Speaker 2: (04:20)
And my mom was like 26, uh, right. Uh, but he, so he had, you know, the three kids from before and then me and my older brother, um, we grew up as siblings. We didn’t see, we didn’t know. I mean, we maybe knew that they were adopted, but we never went into it. I always saw them as my brothers and sisters. Um, but they always saw us differently because they knew they were adopted. Uh, and since they’ve gone and found their, their birth families and, uh, engaged with that, but they, uh, they’ve always knew they were adopted. We never really knew. So, you know, they always looked at us like we were kind of like, you know, the purebreds, so to speak. Right. And it was a source of contention from that between them and us. Um, they always called us the favorites, which I say them, I definitely am not the favorite. Right. My older brother’s a favorite, but I, but I definitely felt that there was something different about me than my older brother. Um, my father always said in his later life that his work was his mistress.
Speaker 2: (05:38)
He was one of those guys who would’ve worked till like, you know, would leave the house at seven. Uh, had his own business would come back eight, nine o’clock at night, go behind the newspaper. Uh, and we would try to play with them. And you just wouldn’t, you know, wasn’t really there. Um, but he was always there for my brother playing. We always kind of connected with one thing and that was sports. Uh, sports was always something that we can all find kind of as a common ground. Um, he, sorry. I’m I got my notes. I’m sure. I’m sure a
Speaker 3: (06:14)
Lot of them. Yeah, totally, totally you,
Speaker 1: (06:17)
Whatever it takes to help you stay grounded is fine.
Speaker 2: (06:21)
When I was six, my parents got divorced. Um, and about the age of seven, my mom started dating another man. And my dad was off frolicking with pretty much every, every, uh, young woman he could locate or convinced to go out with him. Uh, he was quite a ladies man, so I’m not, I wasn’t surprised. Uh, but you know, I would still, we would have, we would go on the weekends or every other weekend with our dad, with my dad. And, you know, a lot of times I would find myself hanging out with my dad’s girlfriend, uh, or whoever at the time. And my dad and my brother would go off and do stuff together. Right. And I never, I never thought anything of it. I thought that I was just following in his footsteps as a ladies man or something that they wanted to spend time with me.
Speaker 2: (07:14)
They found me quite charming, which I can’t blame them, but definitely it’s something that, you know, uh, stands out, especially now in retrospect. Um, we never, he and I had never really connected my dad and I, we connected later in life. I always felt I was trying to earn his approval all throughout life, throughout high school, you know? And, uh, even in the university, even after university working with him, it’s, you know, for a period of time, I always was trying to earn as a PO approval. And then at one point in time for my life, you know, maybe 10 years ago, I said, uh, well, I’ve, I’ve achieved a lot in my life as in, so I don’t need his approval. And that’s when the kind of, I guess the power dynamic changed between me and him. And, and, and then we started connecting more and we started, you know, he started like learning and respecting who I am as a human being.
Speaker 2: (08:12)
And why later in life, I started to get closer to Judaism, uh, why I married, who I married, why I put my personal faith above, uh, personal profit. Right. Uh, that was always something, you know, that was, I was, yeah, like very difficult for them anyway. So I grew up, you know, we, we lived with my mom and my stepdad. We moved, uh, we moved to a different country and we came, you know, whenever my dad would have us come for a weekend, he would fly us. He would pay for my brother’s ticket, but not buy, my mom would always pay for my ticket. Wow. Did you know that at the time I found this out, right. I found this out later when I was a kid, it was in that, and that’s something that’s kind of like, okay. Like, you know, I think the argument was, oh, well, you know, we’re, we’re doing this half half, right.
Speaker 2: (09:10)
We’re going Dutch, so to speak. But like, you know, I was always the one getting paid for. So now looking back once again, like it makes me think maybe he knew, like, I don’t know, um, fast forward to COVID-19 right. COVID struck everyone differently. Uh, I ended up being furloughed and staying home and being a home teacher to my kids, uh, which I completely failed back. Uh, they, they, I think they definitely regressed to a level that was unseen before. Um, but you know, my wife, my wife was a teacher, so she was continuing teaching during this time. All the stories were coming out about COVID and, you know, preexisting conditions and, uh, you know, different things with your DNA. I was just following it very closely because I’ve always had an interest in my family’s history, my mom’s side, you could trace it, backward daughters, daughters of the revolution, all the way back to the Mayflower, my dad’s side.
Speaker 2: (10:14)
He always, you know, yeah. We’re from Eastern Europe. That was, that was the saying, we’re from Eastern Europe. You want to know, they’ll figure it out yourself. I don’t have time for it. I want to make money. That was kind of like, that’s literally my upbringing in a nutshell. Um, okay. You know, with, so I decided, okay, I’m going to do, you know, what I’m going to do to 23 and me with the health stuff, maybe it could provide some insight into, you know, uh, predisposition to a pre-existing condition. I don’t know. I just, w you know, I think everyone bought a lot of things online during COVID that they may look back and regret now.
Speaker 2: (10:54)
And I definitely, for the first time in my life had my credit card number stolen probably three times. Oh my gosh. All within the first couple of months, I mean, it was, it was mayhem. So I did it and I said, okay, I, you know, I’m going to do it. What’s the harm. Um, I get the tube, right. My wife thinks I’m totally miss sugar saying, like, what are you doing? Like, this is why you’re wasting your time. And I said, I’m going to do it anyway. I sat in the thing. And the only time I stepped into like an enclosed space during COVID not even to the grocery store, was to mail that back to 23. And me, um, then I guess also I download the app. I do all the connecting of, you know, this is, this was my thing. And I get a notification.
Speaker 2: (11:37)
Your results are in a couple months later or a month later. And my wife’s teaching upstairs. And so I like, oh, awesome. She wanted to see the results with me. So I run upstairs and she’s on her zoom classroom with things. And I come running in. I’m like, I gotta be quiet, but I’m almost done. So just wait five minutes. So I said, okay, fine. So I go downstairs and I’m waiting, she comes downstairs. She goes, okay, let’s, let’s open it up. And we open it up and it’s, you know, a very expected what I expected. Um, you know, 50% was, uh, 45% was, uh, German, French, British, Irish, whatever. That’s, that’s all, you know, Mayflower ish,
Speaker 1: (12:28)
Right? Your mom. Yeah. Right. Your mom’s that evolution.
Speaker 2: (12:32)
Exactly. And this is 55% Italian. And I was like, she’s my mom. She’s she’s, you know, my dad only this guy would run around and saying, he’s from Eastern Europe and not realize he’s Italian am, you know, but no Ashkenazi Jews, none of, none of, none of that stuff. Right. And so I, I, I, I said to my wife, I said, you know what, he, he’s running around telling everyone he’s from Eastern Europe. He never knows what he’s talking about. And I noticed the DNA, uh, DNA relatives tab. If I click it, I expect to see, you know, fifth cousin, six cousins on my mom’s side. So it’s like this, I see half sister.
Speaker 2: (13:21)
And it’s definitely not anyone I know. Wow. It was like a slap in the face and then freezing cold water and then another slap. And then my wife hitting me being like, what can you believe what’s going on? Exactly. Exactly. And we were both in this kind of like total state of shock. Um, she couldn’t even like, she wanted to be there, like to be like, are you okay? But she, herself was shocked. Right. So like, the us together are just sitting there and our kids are by the other, on the other hand are in the room, on the other side of the room yelling, calling us. Right, right.
Speaker 2: (14:14)
Oh yeah. It’s going and it’s going now, it’s going a mile a minute. I can’t keep up. So, um, I’m like taking my two minutes and trying to capture my breath. And then I have to go back to teach, like I have to go back to plan. So she goes back upstairs and she’s like, are you okay? I’m like, uh, I’ll get there. Right? Like, um, you know, I’m old enough that I could try to figure, you know, I just need my time to figure a process. And you know, I’m looking at this and I’m looking at all these, and I don’t recognize a single name of any of in the top 10 15 of, of this thing. I’m like, this is crazy. Maybe they, maybe they screwed up. Right. Maybe they screwed up just like, you know, I, this part you could write in a book for anyone who’s found out any NPE, NPE, anything. This is like the one thing we all think that, you know, well, you know what, it’s gotta be the fault of 23 in me. I mean,
Speaker 1: (15:14)
Mistakes happen, mistakes happen in life. Like things like technology, things mess up. Everybody has had an experience of something, getting it wrong. So why not? 23 and me. Exactly,
Speaker 2: (15:26)
Exactly. And, you know, maybe when I spat in it, right. I, you know, someone else that maybe the guy at the post office, because it’s, COVID at all right. He might as well open it up and spit in it himself. It’s like, who knows? You might just go anywhere. Especially like, literally this is in the heart of like the, COVID like the, what’s your mind there, because you just don’t want to understand or, or, or believe what you’re seeing on this website. And then you start thinking maybe this is like another one of my credit cards being screwed or taken advantage of. Uh, so I mean, the first thing I do is I pick up the phone and I called my mom and I sent her. I said, you know, uh, and so I’m trying to frame it, like, you know, I’m not just going to come out and throw it in her face, but
Speaker 1: (16:19)
Did you already suspect?
Speaker 2: (16:22)
I had never suspected anything, but I mean,
Speaker 1: (16:24)
But so when you’re looking at them, when you called your mom where you had you already been thinking, oh, maybe I have a different dad, or you just still thinking, did you know, the dad thought he was raised in Europe and he’s Italian?
Speaker 2: (16:35)
I, I think that, yeah, the second that, that, that’s more kind of where I was going. Um, I was kind of, I was buying into the, the rose colored glasses way of like, you know, oh, this is totally just a mistake. Uh, you know, but maybe this ancestry part is okay or whatever. Um, then I, then I, you know, I call her answers to the hi, how are you? I’m fine. I’m fine. You know, dad is such a funny guy and she asked me, what did he do now? Right. This is, you know, it’s her ex-husband right. It’s not like, and I said, he always runs around saying and telling everyone he’s from Eastern Europe. I said, but he’s 55% Italian. She goes, what are you talking about? I said, well, that’s a 23 and me set. And I could hear her jaw, the floor, your ProHeart drop into her stomach. Like my heart
Speaker 1: (17:33)
Just dropped into my stomach for your mom.
Speaker 2: (17:36)
Exactly. And I, and, and the best part is the response. When she said, I, I thought I asked you not to take, okay. Something you want to tell me. Cause at this point in time, you know, it’s starting to, it’s starting to make sense. And now everything’s starting to become clear because when I, when I heard that drop on the other side, like she didn’t actually drop the phone. But when I heard like really that quiet, I knew, okay, the truth is actually is, is actually here. And so I said that to her, I said, is this something you want to tell me? So she, she proceeds to tell me that she had had an affair. She was very young in the marriage and my father was older. And as you said, as he, as he said, he, his, his work with his mistress. Right.
Speaker 2: (18:42)
And that’s something that, you know, for him was very, you know, a revelation late in life. Now I love my dad and I love my mom. Right. So for me, this didn’t change anything. I mean, it, it changed a bit of our relationship in one way, meaning, like I just realized, wow. Like she really was able to sweep that under the rug and as if it never happened. Right. Um, and then she told me she had, so she had this affair and, uh, it was with an individual, uh, let’s call him Bob he’s Italian. Exactly. He’s definitely. And he, um, you know, she said it was short-lived, it wasn’t, it was literally something she did when she was younger. And it was just out of, you know, being lonely loneliness. And, uh, and it was also the eighties. Right. You know, she never could have known that I would’ve stopped. I could spit in a cup and be able to define yourself, you know, the minute that the other person sneaks out the door, out the back door.
Speaker 1: (20:06)
Totally. It never happened. I mean, Facebook, Facebook, so many things have changed. Yeah. Nobody could, nobody could know
Speaker 2: (20:14)
Exactly. So one of, uh, the, the harder conversations I’ve had in life, because, you know, this is someone I care about deeply. And I’m trying to kind of wrap my head around this now, 40 plus year old secrets. Right. Um, so I said, you know, does my dad know? And she said, no, no way, no, no, no, no, no, no one should ever know about this. I love that. I’m saying that on a podcast that is kind of go out. I wish
Speaker 1: (20:56)
I was that I wish I could like surprise you with her on the other line right now.
Speaker 2: (21:01)
Sorry. I thought I was getting Eve Sturgis, not Jerry Springer. Right? Jerry. Yeah. Cause that’s what,
Speaker 1: (21:05)
That’s what that’s, that would be a different kind of podcast.
Speaker 2: (21:08)
Yeah. That would be a different kind of podcast. Some of them though, probably to watch. Um, so I questioned whether or not he knew and you know, she, she didn’t know. And I said, I said, well, maybe it’s maybe it’s wrong. You know, I’m trying to kind of get it, you know, maybe it’s wrong. And she goes, you know, you’re 99%, your, your dad, your dad’s right. 99%,
Speaker 1: (21:32)
Your mom, I love, I mean, she sounds,
Speaker 2: (21:36)
Oh, and you gotta have, you gotta respect the dedication to the lie. You got to the belief of that possible 0.01%, you know, afterwards, I said, okay, well, you know, I don’t, you know, I don’t hold you. I don’t have any ill will I don’t. This is, you know, you were young and stupid. I’m like, that’s just, it is what it is. Right. So, and we hung up and, you know, she texted me almost like right away. And she’s like, I’m just so sorry that you’re having to deal with a mistake. I made 40 years ago. Interesting. How
Speaker 1: (22:13)
Will, I mean, so many moms don’t come clean so quickly even hate the word come clean. It’s like our honest right away. Like she, so, so I, I, I’m very impressed that she still wants it to be a very, you know, her secret, but she’s
Speaker 2: (22:32)
Well, it’s also listen. I, I, I think that there’s, you know, I always, she always, I was always kind of her baby. Right. I was always, and now I realize, well, maybe that’s because he was only her baby, but I was always kind of like, you know, very much like her. And so, you know, we have always had like, kind of an open relationship in a way where I could go to her and say things that I normally wouldn’t say to other individuals, or I w you know, I would be able to approach things. And so that was, you know, I respected that. And I think she respected that. And then for her to come and apologize and say, but you know, in that apology, she said, I really hope you don’t, you know, that it just died. It just dies here. Right. That’s not happening.
Speaker 2: (23:22)
I’m not that guy. Um, meanwhile, while this conversation is happening, this is all happening. Like within like an hour of the results. I get a message on 23 and me from a first cousin, okay, let’s call her, let’s call her Lisa. Right. Saying, Hey, I see we’re first cousins. Who are you? My reply was, if you asked me an hour ago, I would, no, no, I got no idea who the hell I am. And she wrote back saying, oh, well, you know, I think maybe you should have a conversation with the, you know, the person who showed up as my sister, uh, or I guess it would be half sister, uh, let’s call her, I don’t know, throw a name out Eve.
Speaker 2: (24:21)
Exactly. Uh, she goes, you know, I think you should have a conversation with Eve because on my side, it’s showing you guys as half siblings. Now, word of warning to anyone who falls into one of these, these a M P E N P E situations, you could fall into a beehive of family dynamics that have the potential of bringing you to an NFL lactic state. I said, well, you know, is, would this be something, you know, you would like, are you close with her? Have you talked to her? Because literally this is all happening, like split second in the instant messaging. And she said, no, we don’t speak.
Speaker 2: (25:16)
And I said, oh, okay. I’m fine. Well, I thank you so much. I will reach out to her. Right. So I sent a message because now I realized that the cousin was shown that I exist. That means it’s a matter of time before the half sister knows I exist either through a 23 and me thing, or a cousin who later I found out, like, there’s not a, there’s no love loss between the two sides of the family. So, you know, maybe it’s something that would be used down the road, or maybe it’s, you know, or just gossip, whatever I don’t at this point in time, you know, ignorance is, it’s not blessed, but it’s ignorant. And so, uh, I sent a message to the sister Eve. So, you know, I sent it, I sent a message saying the same kind of encompassing the response I gave to the F the first cousin, uh, you know, hi, I’m Mindy, sorry.
Speaker 2: (26:21)
Like this an hour ago, I thought I knew who I was now. I’m like, just as lost as anyone else. And like saying, you know, I hope you, you know, you’re doing good. I mean, this isn’t the heart, like the depths of COVID. So I hope you, you know, you’re safe. And like, I don’t know, what do you, where do you want to go? And I kind of just left it and you know, I’m thinking, okay, you know what, someone who receives that, it’s going to take them some time to process. Boy was I wrong within and out and neck from Eve? And then I’m like, oh, wow. And then, should we, so we connect. And I know that she’s just checking out all of my, you know, whatever my vitals or whatever it is, you can call it all my details. Right. You know?
Speaker 2: (27:14)
Oh, wow. You know, the Italian this, and at that point in time, I’m like, wow, any minute she’s either going to respond to me, or this is dead. Right. And like, my wife at this point in time has done teaching, came downstairs and said to me like, what the hell are you doing? What are you doing? I told him, I said, you know what? I have to tell you, this train took off. I didn’t realize, but my hand was holding onto the railing. And now I’m literally just trying to either pull myself onto the train or I’m going to jump off. I just don’t know what to do. And it’s Pandora’s box, right? Like you’re really putting everything out there about, about half an hour later. I get a response from Eve saying, oh my gosh, this is crazy. I cannot believe this is happening.
Speaker 2: (28:17)
I am in utter shock. You must have tons of questions. I have tons of questions. Maybe we should talk, oh, sorry. Do you know how old she was at that yet? She’s, she’s younger than me. So she is, she’s about 34, 4 35 now. And you know, one of the funny things is, is that, you know, she is like, based on the portfolio dropped Edwards. Right. And the reason I’m saying it is, is that my wife made a comment saying, it’s a good thing. You didn’t live back there because knowing you, you probably would have hit on her. And I’m like, oh wow, that’s crazy. And it’s scary. And it’s like, that’s my, you might be right. That’s
Speaker 1: (29:11)
Pandora’s box. I mean, everything. Everything becomes possible.
Speaker 2: (29:15)
Exactly. Exactly. So, um, I, I mean, so she sends me this message and I’m like, okay, like 30 seconds later, I’m like, yes, this is my phone number. What’s your phone number I can call you. Yeah. I did not leave anything to the imagination. There was no chase there. I’m like, I’m yours. What do you want? I’m here we talk. And we talked for like an hour and Eve I could tell you, talking to Eve was like, for me, the most fulfilling conversation I’ve ever had.
Speaker 3: (29:50)
Wow. Wow, wow. Wow.
Speaker 2: (29:53)
We had, you know, as I said, I was always kind of entertainer in my family. I was always the black sheep or everyone would roll their eyes and stuff. I would do my commitment to different things and passions. And in some form, like obsessions, like of things that like, I just can’t let go of it. It says F I took me and cloned a female version. That is the conversation we had, right. To the extent of like, I have always grown up with the worst irritable bowel. And if you’re Jewish, you know what I mean? And I had grown up and I’ve grown up thinking to myself, I have the worst Jewish stomach that exists, turns out it’s not Jewish. And it turns out that this family has the exact same stomach problem. Wow. So the expense that Eve actually is on the exact same medication that I am on.
Speaker 3: (30:56)
Wow. Whoa. Oh my gosh. Like you met a clone.
Speaker 2: (31:03)
I kid you not. And you know, I was on just this total. Hi, my wife is literally sitting on the bottom of the stairs. Like we threw the kids in front of the TV. We’re like, watch whatever you want. She’s sitting at the bottom of the stairs. I’m like in our extra room. And I’m just sitting there talking with this person who is literally like my soulmate. Right. Like I couldn’t be happier. Um, you know, she, it, she informed me that I also have a half brother, uh, who is younger than her now. And she informed me that my biological father is still alive. Okay. So Bob Italian, Bob, uh, has, is also quite a, uh, ladies, man. So when him and my mom actually had, uh, created me, they, she was single or dating, dating, who now is maybe that is their mom. It’s that part is unclear right now.
Speaker 2: (32:17)
Right? Yeah. Fuzzy timeline. Exactly. He wasn’t married. Right. Um, and like, you know, Eva has sister kept saying like, you know, they were young and stupid. Like my mom and him had been divorced already for 13 years because he cheated or something like that. Or he’s had girlfriends over these year that he cheats on the cheated on them. So like, you know, I’m not bringing anything kind of, you know, eye opening to them as far as, uh, you know, the, the father and this and commitment. Um, so I think that there’s, there was a, uh, she said, he’s a great, great guy is going to, uh, you know, will open up his house to when he finds out. He’s like, he loved family, that sort of stuff. And my brother, he may have a bit of, a bit of a difficult, at one point in time.
Speaker 2: (33:13)
But like, you know, I’m going to call him now, but like his fiance, you know, he’s, he’s engaged, he just got engaged. So, and it’s also, let’s also feel we have to keep remembering this is in COVID. This is like in like lock down at least for where I am. And I think for them as well, like it was in lockdown, like north American lockdown. And when she, you know, when, when we hung up the phone, you know, we said, well, we’ll talk, she’s going to call right now, call the brother and call the dad. And when we hung up the phone, I was like, I need to sleep.
Speaker 1: (33:56)
Oh, just exhausted.
Speaker 3: (33:58)
Yeah. Rained.
Speaker 2: (34:00)
And I couldn’t, you know, and I went upstairs and I like literally close my eyes for 30 minutes. And it was like, you know, my wife was on cloud nine. I was on cloud nine. You know, my wife had always said, like, I’m just so different than my family growing up. I was, people always ask me, are you Italian? Because the way I look the way I talk, I talk with my hands. But I, I thought this was just normal. I thought this was just, you know, I don’t mean sign language. I mean, like,
Speaker 3: (34:30)
Yeah, you do right now. You actually see me talk. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (34:35)
Uh, and so, you know, this is, it is as if I found my tribe and that’s not to take away from my brothers and my sisters and my, and my mom and my dad. I did not see that these two things have to go against each other. Right. I see it as it just, it’s helping me discover who I am. Right. Because, you know, I’ve always just been content with the fact that I’m just the odd one. You know, I’m the one who can’t sit in the classroom and can’t do, can’t go, can’t do university. Can’t do these things got kicked out of high school. That was me. That was who I was. And so, but everyone else is still angels. Uh, after I, I took this little slough, I woke up and I got a text message and it was from the half-sister. And that’s why I said, like, she’s talk.
Speaker 2: (35:30)
And so we talk again. And so, you know, this goes on and on for a couple of days, I call, we ended up sliding from phone conversations, into text messaging. Right. Which, you know, is a very kind of 20, 20 thing to do 20, 21 thing to do. Um, cause why, why waste the time pocket when you can just talk with your fingers anyways, we’ll start talking and, you know, we’re just getting to know each other, like I’m finding out about her. Like she works in the nonprofit sector and I, I, you know, am very, was very active in my nonprofit sector here. And she cares about environment. I care about environment, not as much as she does, but I care about environment and it’s just, you know, we both kind of have the same way of talking and it just, it was very, very, like, everything was just so smooth.
Speaker 2: (36:25)
After a couple of weeks, I realized that she’s not really saying how the conversation went with the dad and the brother. So I start kind of asking like, you know, Hey, should I reach out to them? Now? You said like, you know, leave it with me. I’ll let you know, when’s a good time. Right. Okay. A couple, couple of weeks go out a little bit further. Still we put chatting or texting and she’s, we all wishing me happy father’s day and stuff like that, but nothing nothing’s transpiring. Right. So I reach out and I say, Hey, is it, uh, you know, should I, can I contact them or should I call them? Or like, what should I do? She says, comes back and says, you know, they know of you and they don’t really want a relationship.
Speaker 2: (37:20)
And I was like, okay. I’m like, is there a reason, like, I mean, does it just, is it whatever no reason was really given at this point in time, I feel I’m feeling her distance, like starting to distance. Right. Um, so I go on, you know, NPE, Facebook groups or whatever, and I kind of throw it to the, I throw it to the crowd and I say, what would you, you know, what are, what do you do in this scenario? Because, you know, contrary to popular belief, there’s no handbook for any of us. So what we’re going off, and vinegar and our gut feeling. We’re not, you know, we’re not following any sort of guidelines. If there was a correct guidelines, trust me, we would follow it because we want a good result.
Speaker 2: (38:11)
You know, we’re not interested in hurting people or upsetting families or, you know, uh, but you know, people are different. Everyone has different personalities and you know that this is in essence, the whole, the whole picture. Um, so I asked them and everyone said, don’t listen to, you know, that the assistant, a lot of times, in my case, my sister was blocking me from reaching out because she wanted to control the situation. I mean, every scenario was thrown except for, which is probably the most likely scenario, which in my situation is, uh, you know, just it’s, it’s just shame. Right? The, I follow everyone’s guidelines. I put together a little envelope and I put pictures and I write a letter and I send it by registered mail. And, and by the time it gets there, I, I have, uh, the, the work where they both work at. Right. There’s no, I don’t have the home addresses. So I sent it to the work. I see it was signed for, I see it was signed for, by Bob. So the father signed for both copies and still nothing quiet. Right. And I started reaching out to his sister and I’m not hearing,
Speaker 3: (39:27)
Oh boy.
Speaker 2: (39:28)
Right. So I, at this point in time, I’m like, okay, I’m really craving. Like, if they don’t want a relationship with me, man, up and say to me, you don’t want a relationship pick up the phone, give me at least that little bit of respect and that little bit of acknowledgement that I exist. Right. Because otherwise
Speaker 1: (39:49)
It’s like this ambivalence without closure, that is its own kind of torture. That’s different than, than an outright rejection. Yeah,
Speaker 2: (39:59)
Exactly. And anyone who knows me knows that. I like, unless you, unless like I hear it from you, I’m going to keep going until I hear it from you. Right. So I continued, I sent flowers to him on his birthday. Uh huh. Within an hour of those being delivered, I received what I would call machine gun, text messages from the half-sister who disappeared for over a month. And those were saying, what are you doing? They don’t want a relationship with you. This is not respectful. Like, you know, all the sudden, like, you know, it just, it was, it was the most volatile thing that I’ve ever received by text message. And if I pick up the phone, I pushed the call button, which my generation knows how to do, but the other generation doesn’t. So I pick the call up, push the call button. No answer.
Speaker 2: (41:07)
I try again. No answer. So I sent a text message saying, Hey, I don’t know if you could see, I’m trying to call you at least, at least listen to me. Nothing, no response. So I wait a day, right? Because I don’t want to respond emotionally. And I eventually a text message saying, listen, I’m working from the blind spot of not knowing what the heck is going on, on your guys’ end. You’ve quiet for a month. Right. Everywhere. I’m everywhere I read. It says that I should be at least trying to connect directly with the biological father. Right. And, uh, you know, I mean, w w what did I do wrong? I sent someone flowers on their birthday. I didn’t say from your son, like, you know, I didn’t, uh, rub someone’s facing it still. So I sent it no response. So it seems that at that point in time, it’s done.
Speaker 2: (42:06)
And it, that was for me, very, very difficult. Because for someone to reject you without ever knowing, without ever having a conversation with you without ever meeting you or, or anything, it is, it is in my eyes, the most painful form of rejection, because you didn’t have, you didn’t have a chance to show who you are or be who you are. And this is, you know, something that I have, I still to this day struggle with now. Meanwhile, my biological father is still around my half. My, my, my, now I found out half the other brother I grew up with is still around. Right. Like I have a, my mom, I have my other brothers and sisters. I have, uh, my own network of people who I love and care for.
Speaker 1: (42:56)
And your birth certificate father is still
Speaker 2: (42:58)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, yeah, it was still around and everybody else was still there. And all of a sudden, right after this whole fiasco with Eve sister, Eve, uh, my half brother sends me a message saying, Hey, what did your, when you know, you told me it took 23 and me. I said, yeah, he goes, does it show up 50% Ashkenazi? I said, yeah, I think so. I don’t know. I, I, I looked at it and I deleted. It goes back. He says, he goes, I remember you. I remember, like you saying somewhere that it didn’t or something like that. And I’m like, no, no, no. I’m pretty sure it’s shared, like, you know, like at this point in time, I’m already like deep in this. I don’t want to throw my mom under the bus. Right. At the same time. I also, like, I’m not in the position where I want to be. It’s not my secret to keep. Right. I’m not, I’m not lying for no for anyone else. So I pick up the phone, I call him, I said, why are you asking me all this? Like, what the heck is going on? He goes, well, I mean, I took the 23andme. It’s showing you is my hat.
Speaker 2: (44:17)
Okay. And he’s like, I’m trying to figure out if it’s you or me. Oh
Speaker 1: (44:21)
My God. I was afraid you were going to say that he found out he was also not Ashkenazi Jew. Um,
Speaker 2: (44:29)
You know what? He may have been from my, my birth certificate father. We don’t know. Right, right, right. I mean, you never, in the 1980s back east country clubs, you know, who knows what happened back there. And so, uh, I said, at this point in time, I still did. I say, I say, it’s me, it’s me. At least. That’s what it looks like. I don’t know. And you know, I’m, I’m, you know, just trying to figure out what the heck is going on. And he said to me, is it someone who know we grew up fighting, but we were always brothers. Our relationship had kind of gotten Rocky in the last, you know, 10 years or so. And he said to me, he goes, I don’t give a crap what the DNA says. You’re my brother, no matter what. And so this was something that, you know, I mean, every, every negative story has some sort of, you know, silver lining to it. And so these, this has some silver linings. Um, and it’s not all negative because even since then, periodically, you know, messages are kind of sent through different ways through social media that make me know that the half sister really does want a relationship with me, but she can’t because she’s conflicted. And she’s, you know, they’re, they ha they are a family unit of dad, brother, sister. And you know, she’s for lack of better words, out-voted here and they do not want, they do not want it. They want it, their method of dealing with,
Speaker 1: (46:13)
Oh, you froze right then. Are you there still? Hello? Are you there? No, her and I, okay. Hold on. Hold on. Cause you froze big time. Oh yeah. It’s okay. So we have to go back to, um, to that. You said they don’t want anything to, with you and their method of dealing with it.
Speaker 2: (46:52)
Is there a method of dealing with dealing with it? It’s like, you know, mine is open arms, whatever their method of dealing with it is literally take it, seal it up, open the drawer, put it in the drawer, lock the drawer. Okay. Try to sell the desks. So someone takes the desk then leaves the office, close the office, burn the building down to the offices in that’s the way in which they deal with problems.
Speaker 1: (47:17)
It’s so interesting. Cause there’s so many people that respond that way and I would love to be able to sit down with them and find out what it is that they what’s going on. Yeah. What is the, what are you afraid of? Like, let’s talk this out. Oh God. I would love to talk about it in depth with, with what? Cause it sounds like it might be really scary, whatever it is, a series
Speaker 2: (47:40)
As scary as it is for them. Imagine what it is for me. All right. And as Matt and sorry, I meant to do that the other way. Isn’t that for me, imagine what it is for them. Awesome. Different generation right. In their seventies. Right. Um, so it’s shameful. And then also remember, like I said, there’s a family dynamics. So when I found out that the, that it was four brothers and the two of them went one way, two of them went, the other one sued another, they haven’t talked in 20 years. Right. And so the first cousin is from one of the brothers who they sued. They sued the biological father. Like this is, this is all, you know, things that, okay. A year later hindsight’s 2020. I would, I would have done things a little bit differently. Right. I would have let the train go.
Speaker 2: (48:26)
And, uh, eventually it would have come on. There would have been another scheduled arrival at some point in time. But that being said, I, you know, I compiled a letter to send to Bob and I sent it to the addresses. You know, I’ve done all those been verified, been verified and white pages, all these other things where you try to get him, you know, at least some sort of idea of where to send something. And so I sent, uh, I sent him that I sent a letter and it took like three weeks or four weeks because it’s international. And then it came back. Right. So by the time he came back in now been like six weeks from the time I sent it and it said insufficient address. So I don’t know. So then I sent it to the next address. And this time I sent it with, uh, where they have to sign and someone signed for it and it wasn’t his name, but the letter pretty much said like, listen, now I understand things are a little bit clearer.
Speaker 2: (49:30)
And I’ve been able to kind of sit down with my mom and understand a bit of the scenario. It turns out that there was a friendship between the couples later on in life that maybe made, you know, whatever more complicated. I said, now I understand, you know, there’s more depth and more facets to this whole thing, but I’m not writing this letter to apologize for my existence. I’m writing it to apologize if my existence has caused you any pain or caused you any suffering or caused anything with your relationships, with your, you know, with your existing family members. I said, because that’s not the purpose. That’s not my purpose. My purpose is to find out who I am, right. Genetically DNA wise. And, and if there is, if there is something that I can learn, health-wise, I would love to learn it. Uh, and you know, God willing down the road, do you want to have a right or the brother or the sister, or all three wants to have some sort of relationship or contact.
Speaker 2: (50:34)
I’m open to it to see where it could go. Right. About a week after I sent this, my BA my birth certificate father passed away, which made this whole thing even more because it was a double, like almost a double grieving, right? A grieving of the rejection from the summary. And now the grieving of this man now, the more I reflect on our relationship together, et cetera, the more I realized, you know, there is a chance, a good chance. He probably knew. Right. And that for me, just, you know, that elevates him to a whole new level as a man who maybe knew most likely knew, but chose to raise me as his own. Now. Yes, there were different things. I mean, it was not a nice divorce between my mom and my dad. So there are times that as kids, we were used as weapons and they’re fighting and, you know, maybe that’s that explains the tickets or the, you know, the education payments or whatever, I don’t know, or dental, whatever.
Speaker 2: (51:55)
I’ve let go of all those things for me. It’s I look at him and I think, wow, what an amazing human being, even though I was treated a little bit different, I w it was, I was given, I grew up in, you know, uh, a loving household to an extent like everyone else. Um, I was given every opportunity. I had food on my table, in my stomach. I had, you know, a new clothes when I needed new clothes, new shoes when I needed to do shoes. So overall, I mean, I’m better than many, many people in the world. Yeah. When
Speaker 1: (52:32)
You think about the alternatives of what an, what a, what a partner of a man could do. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 2: (52:40)
Oh yeah. A hundred percent. And, and so that, you know, Ray raised them a, a whole new level. Now he passed away. It was during COVID. So I wasn’t able to go for the funeral. I wasn’t able to go for any of this stuff. And this is, you know, this is not even diving into the whole factor that, you know, I have always grown up identified as Jew and Jewish. Um, I went to the extent of going through an Orthodox conversion and I was in a Yeshiva that was, you know, with the idea of moving further, to become a rabbi, an Orthodox rabbi. So to then find out that genetically, I don’t have a single of you and me, right. Uh, of, of Jewish history or DNA in me, also for myself showed that that Orthodox conversion was so important for me without even real life.
Speaker 2: (53:43)
You know, now I, I hold a high position in the nonprofit sector, in their Jewish community. And so it, this is for me, a very, um, you know, these are, these are some of the silver linings, uh, afterwards where, you know, you were, I didn’t know afterwards, cause it’s always going to continue, but here’s some of the silver linings. And I really do hope that down the road, one day, they’re able to put aside whatever, whatever it is that is causing them, uh, you know, I mean, I could hypothesize and come up with different ideas or different theories. Um, but you know, I mean, some of the first cousin, first cousin, second cousin added me on Facebook one time, and then I got another one of the machine textbook machine, gun, text messages. So I took them all off of Facebook. Um, you know, it just seems that there is something there that is really holding them back and, you know, I can understand it, I can respect it.
Speaker 2: (54:41)
And I still periodically send a message out by text message or through social media, just saying, you know, Hey, how are you? This is what’s up with the kids. This is what’s up with me. Hope you’re doing well. And you know, I send them into the abyss with the hopes that down the road, you know, what the hopes and belief that they are being read on the other side. And, you know, the openness for me is extremely important. And to let it, you know, eventually fall into a place where, you know, they may someday look back and say, this is not some crazy psycho serial killer, right.
Speaker 1: (55:21)
Not out for that. You’re not out for their money.
Speaker 2: (55:23)
Oh, geez. I actually was worried that the father would ask me for money.
Speaker 3: (55:28)
Not kidding you.
Speaker 2: (55:29)
I’m not kidding you. And not that I’m not that I’m rich, but you know, you know, you open up Pandora’s box,
Speaker 3: (55:36)
Right? Anything, yeah. Anything can happen. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (55:39)
Read stories and you hear, you know, on like podcasts like yours, which is just some phenomenal. My wife and I listen to every week together. Um, and you know, and NPE stories with Lily would, and you hear these, these, all these stories and all these different ways that things can happen and how it breaks down across you, just, you know, you’re grateful for, you know, the people you have who are with you to support you throughout it. Uh, and you just live the process right. And go through it and take the difficult days with the difficult days and the good days with the good days. And so, I, I mean, you know, I, I’m in a place now where, I mean, I’m not open about it in my community. Right. Um, there, you know, the only person, the only two people in my family who know are my mom and my half brother, my half brother, my brother, my brother, um, because he found out that the 23 and me, none of the others, no, no one else.
Speaker 2: (56:42)
And, you know, I think that eventually down the road that I will have that conversation, but because of all the travel restrictions that I, you know, I’m not able to see people in person and I’m not having it over the phone. Cause I want to hug them afterwards. I want them to, to know that this doesn’t change me. Uh, it doesn’t change my, the way I view them. And the love I have for them, there may be changes, you know, whether or not I listen to Italian music, my wife couldn’t get over the fact that like all of a sudden I was ordering pizza. No, just say
Speaker 1: (57:20)
Like a whole new, there’s a whole new menu available.
Speaker 2: (57:25)
I know that like, you know, I downloaded classic Italian songs and we’re blasting the neighborhood and everyone’s like, what the heck is going on
Speaker 1: (57:36)
Is going on over there. That’s awesome. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (57:40)
And, and you know, now looking at pictures of the biological father when he was my age and, uh, you know, side by side, I have a hard time believing my mom when she says she didn’t ask,
Speaker 3: (57:57)
I have a very,
Speaker 2: (57:58)
Very hard time.
Speaker 1: (58:01)
Sometimes we see what we want to see or don’t see what we don’t want to.
Speaker 2: (58:05)
Right. Yeah. And that’s true. Right. And sometimes, and that’s a survival technique, right? Like that’s how some people survive and you know, the same, the same, the same critique. Let’s say that I ha I may have of the biological family of throwing it in a drawer and locking it away is the same survival technique that my mother used for 40 years locked it away out of sight, out of mind. Totally. Totally. So that’s, that’s my story up until now. It’s only Friday, only Friday who knows what tomorrow brings world is unfolding.
Speaker 1: (58:45)
Yeah. Wow.
Speaker 2: (58:47)
Yeah. It’s pretty crazy. And, and, and it’s, I really would, if there was even an opening, I would fly there to sit down and have a conversation. And if it’s the only conversation we ever happened, that’s fine. Right. I just, this, the unknown, the, uh, the complete shut down or blocking. And I just, I can’t do that for me. That’s very difficult. Right. It provides no, it provides, uh, no insight as well. Like, I mean, you know, there are health issues that might exist in that family that, you know, I’ve asked the first cousin and she’s like, I don’t know about them. Right. Like, she’s done no idea because there’s literally no relationship. Right. And I think that, that also is part of my hypothesis is that, you know, there’s shame, right. That their mother who is his ex-wife right. Um, who is supposedly very involved, they’re still, they’re still all on a good relationship or you might’ve said, there’s no way in heck you’re letting this guy into, you know, whatever.
Speaker 2: (01:00:08)
She may have advised the brother who found out now, he’s not the only son. I know that there’s the oldest is a son. And you know, it’s old school, Italian, maybe this is, you know, is set up to take over the business. Like this is, these are all different factors that I think are playing into their, their decision, which it’s so difficult because if they sat down and talked to me for five minutes, they would realize I had absolutely no desire whatsoever to go after money, to go after, uh, anything or do to replace anybody. It’s literally just to learn. And if a great relationship comes with great, like that’s awesome, you know, but to
Speaker 1: (01:00:59)
Learn. Do you feel like, like to learn yes. Like I am a hundred percent, um, I’m with you there. And do, do you also feel like there’s something to be said about being able to look at this other person or these other people that not only have had this happen, but you guys have this, this like genetic, you guys are in this genetic connection, like the experiences. So there’s also this desire to just look at someone else and say like, this is really wild. Right. And they would say, this is really wild. Like there’s no one else can understand the level of, of what you’re going through. This sort of, we don’t have the words for it experience except the other people like that. The only people they have it, they’re having it because of you and you’re having it because of them. And there’s, there’s no one else that you can look in the eyes and say that to.
Speaker 2: (01:01:50)
Yeah. And I, I I’m really blessed, like, like many of, uh, MPS that to have a loving and supportive partner. Um, and even my partner says to me multiple times, I’m sorry, I’m sorry if I, you know, if I, you know, said, oh, you know you, but you are who you are. Or, you know, like something like that, because she said now, and it’s thanks to people like you leave seriously. It’s thanks to people like you because she hears it in these podcasts. And then the stories of all of all my fellow NPE or MP years, that there is no one who understands. Nobody can get, except for the people who have, who have lived through. And, and I, you know, the opportunity, I would love to sit across the table from them and say, this is crazy. Right. I think that the sister would be like, totally it, because we have the same kind of personality him, him. I got no idea. I know nothing about him. The only thing I know about him is he is literally, like, I tried sending a message on Facebook and a friend request, and then she came back with another machine gun. Right. A text message. Right. So like, you know, he, I’m sure he’s a great guy. I’m sure of it. I’m sure he’s just scared, you know, big life things are going on. He’s engaged, you know, COVID yeah.
Speaker 1: (01:03:22)
Then they, they, then they’re, maybe they’re worried. This is all about being worried about inviting you to a wedding. Oh,
Speaker 2: (01:03:27)
Oh, well, I’ll, I’ll send them a letter telling them that there’s no way I want to come to it. Right, right,
Speaker 1: (01:03:35)
Right. Maybe this is all the fiance being like we’ve already ordered the plates. We cannot have another. The one thing is the
Speaker 2: (01:03:46)
Fiance seems to be also pretty cool as well. I think, I think it is the two men. I think that there is, and this is something that I have learnt that, you know, sometimes in Italian culture, we can be stubborn us as men, not just in every other culture, but also at a time. Uh, and so I think that the, I think that there is a, uh, a concern that this can be used against the father and in a fight and all that. There’s so many different things here. And the problem is that by not commuting communicating, I hypothesize and come up with different facts, different, different scenarios. And then I’m like, oh, so then I’ll try this. Or if that’s the case, I’ll do this. Like, you know, probably
Speaker 1: (01:04:33)
Most likely, you know, the ant the reasons are very mundane. Probably. I think most of us feel like, or in most NPS, right. Because there’s nothing, you have no choice, but to, to think of everything. Exactly. Think of everything
Speaker 2: (01:04:49)
My point. And this goes to any, any of you who listened, who are on the other side, who are the family, right. Is engage with, with, with the NPE or the MPE, because by engaging, it’s going to, it’s going to stop any wave of continuation. If it’s something that’s not going to go anywhere by not engaging. And I don’t mean engaged by sending a cease and desist letter. If I got a cease and desist letter from him, I mean, I, I don’t know what to tell you what I would do, because it is funny. It’s like, it’s just, it’s ridiculous engage. Okay. So you got to swipe. No problem. Um, let’s have a conversation, but let’s be adults about this. Let’s, let’s have an adult sitting at the table and, you know, sit down and say, okay, can we approach this in a different, let’s see how this can work. Um, oh, you want a relationship? That’s going to be problematic for me because I’ve remarried and I have other kids, um, you know, I see this, I see the scare on their end because they don’t know who they’re opening the door to. Yeah. I wish I wish
Speaker 1: (01:05:59)
There was. I mean, I think this is just this, I think this is a society problem, more than an NPE problem, but if we could, if we could talk more about what we’re scared of, maybe everybody could approach one another with a little more sensitivity.
Speaker 2: (01:06:13)
Well, I mean, geez, I think if we could just talk more period to people and like have open conversations about everything, uh, not just it’d be about life and, and food and everything. I think that we can have, you know, we would have a way better society. Let’s just put our phones down for a little bit. But, uh, I mean, I think that there’s also, there is by the way, in my opinion, a market for a middle org, like an organization that works in the middle similar to like an adoption where the letter, and then that person reaches out and says, I’m from this organization, you know, this has, this has been, and you know, at least then there would be maybe a uniform approach, a uniformed approach to one side and would also allow kind of a, I don’t want to say an unemotional, but someone who is not emotionally like a neutral ambassador
Speaker 3: (01:07:11)
Yes. Could, could
Speaker 1: (01:07:13)
Help with the yeah. With like the, with like in the adoption world, I believe it’s called reunification. Yes. Something about, yeah. I was just thinking that like, there needs to be a kind of a script or a protocol that’s like, these are the want to know, these are the things you want to know. Like, is there a way to come together? Hm.
Speaker 2: (01:07:32)
And, and, you know, this is something that, you know, it can also provide, it can provide a conduit for, you know, those families to, um, you know, who, who maybe are not interested in having a relationship to at least expressed it to an individual. And that individual can come to the NPE and say like, I mean, in my case, the half-sister, it was expressed to the half sister and she expressed it to me. Um, but the problem is, is that there is, there is a history of blocking by siblings of, uh, of, you know, th there is a history here by having that, that, that ambassadorship or whatever is having that third party, it kind of takes that away. Right. And, you know, and they can even encourage saying, listen, even writing a letter, right. And this can provide closure for, you know, these, these people. I mean, it’s an idea I don’t know, may be wrong. No,
Speaker 1: (01:08:36)
I think we should keep talking about it. I mean, off the air, you know, like I, I think you’re right. I mean, I think there’s so many opportunities for, cause that’s what people want people or we want are. And I think all people really appreciate, uh, uh, containers, right? Like containers, structure, protocol. And I don’t mean that it needs to be militaristic, but, um, but routine ritual, those are things that feel really good to people, us as people. Um, there’s a safety in that.
Speaker 2: (01:09:05)
Yeah. And I think people trust organizations, right. Like if it is, if there’s a, it’s a nonprofit organization and like that, like they’ll, they’ll, they’ll be like, oh, this actually is probably real, right. Like this, isn’t just some random kook reaching out to me through Facebook messenger. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (01:09:22)
And even at the very least, I’m also wondering, you had me thinking a lot also about just mentorship of some kinds. Like if more, I know that the face, the groups, the Facebook groups and the, that, that the support networks are trying to provide that in a sort of grand scheme. But I wonder how it would feel if you, as an NPE in any element of the situation, if there was someone you could be connected with one-on-one to help you through the, this is
Speaker 2: (01:09:52)
Something, this is something I think that, I think this is something that, um, there’s an organization, right. To know. I think, I think that this is something that I, you know, would fit really nicely into their, uh, umbrella. Cause I believe they have a hotline or something like that for
Speaker 1: (01:10:08)
Yeah. I’ll look into that. I’ll look into that and post whatever I can find, um, when I post your episode. Cause you’re right. Yeah. Right. To know is probably there. They all, yeah. I connect I’m connected with them, so, okay. This is good. This is good. Mindy. No, Mindy. I will not, um, on that. I will not, I will not. This is really
Speaker 2: (01:10:30)
Cool. It was great. Yeah. Just that I, I heard, I heard pictures as well, so I was just wondering, oh yeah, no,
Speaker 1: (01:10:35)
No, no, no, no. Oh, that’s that’s yeah, no worry. Um, that’s for me. Um, and uh, Nope, I will. That will, at some, some point there will be a, I will put up like look at all the people I’ve interviewed, like in a digital quilt kind of thing. But, um, no, this was great. I’m so glad we got to connect. This actually worked out really perfect. Um, for me and, uh, it won’t be too long. I’m actually I’m way behind. So this won’t be, it won’t be too long before this is up, but, um, I will work on it over the, over the next couple of weeks. Um, and
Speaker 2: (01:11:09)
My wife is definitely waiting for, from episode, even though she lived in.
Speaker 1: (01:11:15)
Yes. She wants to hear. Yeah. Oh, well this is great. I think, um, yeah, yeah. I have to, you know, like what I usually do, I always do is it always takes me a couple of days to sort of like process the experience and I have listened again. And, um, but, but I I’m so interested in, um, in your, um, it, it’s interesting to me, we didn’t talk about it very much, but your experience with your faith, um, and you know, and your identity. Um, and I mean,
Speaker 2: (01:11:49)
That was definitely a challenge, right. Because, you know, I went from, I went from, uh, you know, someone who was very, um, very deep into the Jewish religion to, you know, this no genetic, uh, connection. Uh, now Judaism is a religion that doesn’t have to have a genetic connection if you, if you’ve converted. So I actually had converted and I converted to the highest authority, uh, as far as denominationally, right. As, so for me, I already identified at that level and always have, and it was never connected to the Jewish, to my, my genetic upbringing. Exactly. Right. But now that doesn’t change the fact that it, you know, it definitely shakes you to your kitchens. I think, you know, it gets in your system and it’s, you know, you start thinking, oh wow. Like, oh my gosh. But, uh, I I’m one of the, I guess I would say one of the lucky ones who would go from such a drastic change in, uh, of the genetic faith, um, to, you know, have really rooted in being deeply rooted in where I am and who I am and what my belief is before, during and after, um, now culturally, which, uh, I mean, culturally also I’m very rooted, but I’ve just, just like when it comes to, you know, the family, I’m not letting go of one for another, I’m just adding, right.
Speaker 2: (01:13:27)
So I’m adding this into my cultural attache and like, I, I definitely, like, I have never had any desire whatsoever to go to Italy before. Oh yeah, no, I’m going, I’m going. And you know, my wife, you know, there’s always now the joke and everywhere I turn, there’s something popping up Italian or puppet, you know, Italy just won the Euro Euro soccer match. Uh, my wife was visiting family and she’s in the neighborhood. She, she she’s staying in his little Italy.
Speaker 1: (01:14:01)
The signs were everywhere. They were everywhere all along.
Speaker 2: (01:14:04)
Yeah, of course it’s, it’s everywhere. So, I mean, for me, it’s more of, uh, adopting and, and, and, and bringing it under the tent versus, you know, losing anything I have not, if anything, it’s just shown me how solid I feel and I am and where I am and where my family is. Um, you know, that being said, like, I’m so interested to learn more, right? Like, uh, to interested to learn about like their faith or, you know, to what extent they have. I mean, I believe it’s, they’re Catholic. And so to learn more about that. Right. But also remember I told you my mom converted, so I already have that from that family growing up. So I have that kind of like openness and understanding between the, between there, the fluidity. Yeah. Hmm. And it’s, yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a, it’s definitely shakes you a bit. Um, but my shaking was more along the lines of like, well, I actually, I can’t even say I was so shook up because the train took off way too quick.
Speaker 2: (01:15:26)
It was, I didn’t have time to really process. And now I’m a year after and okay, now I’m processing. And like some people, it takes them years, multiple years to process and may take the other side, multiple years to process and accept. Right. Uh, I definitely sent a text message to the half-brother and half-sister on NPE NPE awareness day, June 27th. Right. Just saying like, Hey, I know this wasn’t, hasn’t been a great experience for you guys. And it’s not really the greatest for me, but I’m grateful for, you know, for at least knowing who I am or where I come from. Right. So, I mean, for me, I’m taking, I’m still going down the path. You know, my wife has gotten to a place where she like gets frustrated and is like mad that they are like, not even engaging to the extent where she’s like, they’re so stupid. They’re missing out on like the most amazing human being. That’s my wife, my wife. Okay. So, um, you know, she gets mad, but for me, it’s like, I get frustrated or upset or hurt, but my overall philosophy is arms wide open. Right.
Speaker 2: (01:16:46)
Right. Now you’re not holding a grudge. Exactly. I mean, yeah. I mean like, if right now, if, as we’re speaking, I got a text message from, you know, the half-brother or the biological father or the half sister or whatever, you know, or their dog. That would be amazing. If I got it, I would in a second, pick it up, look at it, read it. But the difference is now I would take an hour to protest. Right. Make sure I don’t respond too quickly and upset some, because now I’m a little more conscious of, you know, their side and whatever, whatever shenanigans or whatever’s going on in there. Right. This is something where that mentorship, you know, mentorship could be really helpful. Right? The problem is, is that by, you know, I, I actually believe the company, 23andme, ancestry, stuff like that, they should be, they should be the ones facilitating this mentorship or this, this level of support because you’re breaking the news. Right. You’re breaking that news. You have an obligation in my eyes to at least help the people who are getting the news.
Speaker 1: (01:18:05)
Right? Yeah. Yeah. Their resources are pretty minimal.
Speaker 2: (01:18:09)
Well, a doctor, doesn’t a doctor, doesn’t tell you, you have, you know, a high blood pressure and then, you know, walk out the door and let you figure it out yourself through Google. They, they help you. They say, this is what you’re going to need to do. Right. Or they give you at least some sort of some plan. I mean, I’m not saying they need to be my doctor, but you know, having them even, maybe team up with a right to know, or, uh, you know, a group of the podcasts, amazing podcasts. If you create a union between the three of you guys or for you guys, or five of you guys are 60, you guys, I don’t know. There’s so many. And to just, you know, where they could be like, here is a resource, right? Because without a resource, you’re just giving people this information guy and then they don’t know how to, how to handle it or how to use it. That hurts. It hurts them. It hurts their family. It hurts the extended. I mean, very rarely do you find a situation where you have someone, uh, totally accepting in every camp of the situation. Right. Right. So why not try to help that? But you know, they don’t pay me, so I’m not going to figure it out. Right,
Speaker 1: (01:19:23)
Right, right, right. Yeah. Hopefully that will change. All right. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (01:19:28)
Well, this has been very therapeutic and fun. I’ve enjoyed. I’ve actually enjoyed it. Immensely. My wife, my wife actually did. She recorded my story because she’s like, you’re going to forget all of this. So she recorded it and it’s like, I don’t know where she did like a voice recording and it’s like two hours long, so much detail. And I just said to, I said, who the heck is going to listen to that?
Speaker 1: (01:20:01)
You’ll be amazed. People, people need to hear these things. So, yeah. Good. I’m glad she, I’m glad she saved that oral are important. Yep. Yeah. All right. I’ll be in touch with you. Okay. Awesome. If anything comes up, contact me.
Speaker 2: (01:20:18)
Can you imagine that was just fine. Trust me. Nothing’s coming up. As of right now, unless there’s a big thing happened and the truth is actually I was planning on, and this is know we’ll go off there, off record for this. But I was, I was planning on, cause my dad is buried now back east. So I was planning on flying there and going through Connecticut as I actually have my other siblings live in Connecticut as well. And so visiting them and then putting the opportunity in front of them to meet, to say, I’m going to be at this cafe from this hour to this hour. Right. I am here. I am not going to show up at your work or at your house because that would be overstepping. But I’m here. I would love the opportunity to just have a coffee and see what happens. I can guarantee you, they will come. Cause you know, drawer burning everything. Right. But,
Speaker 1: (01:21:23)
But, but you’re really honoring. You’re honoring your need. And I think that’s really cool.
Speaker 2: (01:21:29)
Exactly. I, in, in, in this whole story, the one piece of advice I would give anyone is you do what you feel, right? You do. What’s good for you. And you honor your need. Just like you said, that’s a great way of phrasing it. And like, you know, that may mean not keeping the secret for your parents. That may mean whatever. And so I that’s what I want to do. And you know, worst case scenario, I’ve somewhat developed a bit of a relationship with some of the cousins. Right. And uh, you know, I’ll see them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (01:22:02)
All right. All right. That’s not such a bad worst case.
Speaker 2: (01:22:05)
Yeah. I don’t really feel like flying into the states right now. You know, Delta variant. Right,
Speaker 1: (01:22:09)
Right. Be careful. Be careful. Wear your mask, wear your mask. All right. Uh, I’m going to be in touch. Thank you so much for giving me so much of your Friday afternoon.
Speaker 2: (01:22:20)
That’s fine. No, it’s actually, I scheduled you in as an appointment. I fundraised
Speaker 3: (01:22:27)
Great. You may. You never know. You never know what things can, what, what could
Speaker 2: (01:22:32)
Lead to no, no, I remember I’m Mindy. I’m Mindy. I’m not, I’m not the here. Nope. Nope, Nope.
Speaker 1: (01:22:38)
Nope. It’s not even on there right now. It’s on earlier. All right. Uh, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: (01:22:44)
Thank you for the opportunity. I appreciate it. It means a lot. And um, yeah. As I said, my wife and I are weekly listening, so
Speaker 1: (01:22:54)
Gosh. All right. Hi, to your face. Hello to your family. Maybe one day we can all meet. All right. I’ll talk to you soon. Thank you. Bye Mike.
Speaker 1: (00:00)
Well, we have three more. He just happens to be the one in charge right now. Okay.
Speaker 2: (00:04)
Yeah, that’s hilarious. I, um, I actually, I was looking at your podcast last night and sort of like looking through it and, and trying to listen to stuff and, and just trying to understand it. And I was like, I think this is about science.
Speaker 1: (00:17)
Yeah, it is. That’s the whole essence of it.
Speaker 2: (00:21)
Um, uh, which was so fun. It was like, if it was I’m sure for, especially for psych fans, that’s really fun, but you guys sound like you’re having a really good time on there.
Speaker 1: (00:29)
Yeah. We’re all really introverted. So that’s pretty much as much as we, you know, get excited about anything.
Speaker 2: (00:36)
Um, let’s see. I think that’s cool. I think it’s so cool that, that podcasting, I mean, there’s like lots of different mediums, but, you know, podcasting offers like for example, introverts and an opportunity to get together and talk about stuff with a wider group of people. I think that’s, yeah, I think that’s neat. You did it, you did it for eight years or something.
Speaker 1: (00:54)
Uh, well, eight seasons and we did it after afterwards, so we had some breaks in there, but it took us probably a couple years to do a hundred episodes, you know, a hundred and something. And then they came out with a movie pretty much immediately after we were done, which was very convenient. So we got the, we got the band back together after a couple of months, you know, and then another movie came out when they came out with the peacock service.
Speaker 2: (01:19)
Okay. So that’s where I was sort of looking at things, um, that were like reflecting on previous episodes and then it mentioned the peacock service and, yeah.
Speaker 1: (01:29)
Cool. Yep. So have you ever heard of the podcast? Oh, no. Ross and Carrie. Okay. It’s, it’s a little, it’s a little different. It’s like a, it’s like a skeptic investigating kind of podcast. They go into like a, I don’t want to say cults, but they go into like a lot of fringe, religious groups. They look at like fringe science stuff, you know, like, um, flat earth and, uh, you know, there’s this, uh, holistic remedy work. Like they’ll chug, they’ll chug holistic medicine, you know, kind of thing. Right. Um, so I tricked Ross into joining us for a couple of episodes because we, cause we did one on UFO’s and one about a cult.
Speaker 2: (02:12)
Okay. Well, perfect. That sounds right. Yeah. There
Speaker 1: (02:13)
Alley. So that’s good for podcasting too. You can just call any rando and say, Hey, you want to be on my podcast? You know?
Speaker 2: (02:20)
Uh, yeah. I was actually just talking to some people about that, encouraging them to, um, to contact podcasts and just, just ask you might as well just ask, um, you know, it never hurts to ask, well, this is so cool because, well, it’s so cool because you have a story and we’re going to talk about it. But, um, one of the things I really like about this particular experience is that you just contacted me a couple of days ago. And so it just happened to work out that I had a spot and you were available. And sometimes I like it better that way because I don’t. Cause then I don’t know what to expect. Sometimes people send me long, long versions of their story and then it takes a few weeks or months or, you know, whatever happens. It just takes a long time. And um, by then I there’s a different kind of energy. So I really liked that. I, I almost am going in totally blind with you. Um, you did send me a chart last night and some and uh, some fun. Okay, I’m going to, I’m going to confess to you and I’m going to confess to everybody. I have a really hard time with like data.
Speaker 1: (03:20)
I’m finding this a lot because even like the people who are helping me, I start talking like send them Oregons and this, and they’re like, no, no, we do family trees. We don’t do some organs. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (03:30)
Oh no, really? Oh, funny. Okay. Well see, I’m not even pretending to try and do people’s family trees, but so I looked at your chart. So I looked at your graph that you sent me or a spreadsheet. And I actually was looking at it right before when we were trying to connect. Um, so, uh, I admire it’s, uh, color coded stuff and um, and I sort of was following it, but I didn’t quite understand it, which is great because you’re going to tell me this because you’re going to tell me the story anyway.
Speaker 1: (03:59)
Yeah. Well, this was really just like me. Like I can’t pretend I did get a math degree. I can’t pretend that I, I really did advanced math, you know, like compared to some of my peers, but I guess it was just a way for me to like, get it on paper somehow. Totally what I was seeing.
Speaker 2: (04:16)
It’s totally common. I think. I mean, and, and, and lots of my lots of people that they contact me, send me their own versions of naps and data and charts and things. Like, I really understand that, um, the, like the, the need to put it down on paper to understand what just happened. Um, yeah. So, yeah, so I wasn’t, uh, I’m not, I’m not turned off by them. I’m not, I, uh, I am actually excited when people send me that stuff. I love that. And I know that if I put them up, um, on social media with people’s permission that other people look at them and know what they’re seeing.
Speaker 1: (04:50)
Right. Well, like I had this whole argument, we’ll talk about my, my search angel a bit, but I had this whole argument going with her at one point, because I have like what people call like a half uncle. Right? Like my grandfather, my great grandfather had two wives. He has children in Hungary and then children that ended up in France. Right. So I had this whole argument with her, like, no, the numbers aren’t right. I can’t be this person’s cousin or whatever. He can’t be my birth father because the numbers aren’t. Right. Yeah. And she’s like, Oh, but you kind of look alike. I’m like, no. And then I had, then I had another guy I’ll tell you about it. Who was, who has done genetics? And he backed me up and I was like, sorry.
Speaker 2: (05:34)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think, I mean, I think you just, uh, you know, pulled the curtain back on the fact that so much of this like community and industry and, um, not industry, but like the world of the DNA family tree stuff is done by people with different backgrounds and different experiences and understanding of it. So there’s data people, and then there’s family tree people and there’s records people. And then there’s the people that are like, but you look him, you know? So, uh,
Speaker 1: (06:00)
I hate to say it, but this guy is kind of older and his picture looked at a little sad. So that then I had to poke fun at her, like, Oh yeah. I looked like that. Okay. Thanks a lot. Excellent. Let me show you what you look like,
Speaker 2: (06:12)
Set sad people for you. Hilarious. All right. So, so tell me, how do you like to start your story? Tell me, um, tell me what’s going on. It’s still fresh. You’re a, you’re a baby.
Speaker 1: (06:22)
Yeah. It’s going to be it depending on your, your lead time. It’s going to be a year. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so I was thinking I could just go chronological. Cause I, you know, I was half joking about having seven pages. I do have seven pages, but it’s chronological, so I don’t forget stuff. And that’s probably the way to go. Uh, and I do have a cousin to throw in there too.
Speaker 2: (06:44)
Okay, cool. We love, we love extra relatives that are appearing all the time. So when you least expect it, so yeah, go dive in. I’m here. I’m all ears and listening. I’m excited.
Speaker 1: (06:55)
Okay. All right. So, um, I was born in 1966. Um, but I’ll start with my cousin who was born in 1964. She was given up for adoption and write
Speaker 2: (07:07)
About, you wrote on her last night in the email. Yes.
Speaker 1: (07:10)
Yeah. And we, we, we never heard of her ever. Right. Um, my dad was in the army. His sister had a baby. She went to the Catholic adoption services and the baby went away. Did your dad know about this at all? No. No. Um, my, my grandmother may have known, um, but not, not my dad. And when I, and when I refer to my dad, he is the dad. I grew up with my, what we called birth certificate father. Right. You, yes. Right. So, so this happened, we had no knowledge. And, and then I came along. Now this story I knew was, um, I was born in Montreal. My mom is from Montreal. My dad is from like the Philadelphia area. They met on vacation. And the way I thought it went was they met on vacation in Atlantic city from their separate homes. And, um, I thought I came along from that meeting. Um, I had the timeline completely wrong. Oh. So what actually happened was they met and two years later, um, I came along,
Speaker 2: (08:20)
Oh, you were two years off your whole life narrowed it. Your narrative was two years off.
Speaker 1: (08:25)
Okay. Yeah. So it was kind of weird that way. I don’t know why you’re in, you’re in a tiny window now, but I’m just going to live with it. Um, so yeah, so I, I knew that, that I was born premature, that my parents weren’t married, um, before I was born and they got married nine days later, which coincided with my mother’s birthday. And I think the plan was to get married on my mother’s birthday and then I would be born. Oh, right. Okay. So, I mean, granted, the timing was still a little, little soon, but, um, you know, it was understood that my BCF was my father and he took the full brunt of that and life went on. Right. He took on medical bills. He, you know, started a family with my mom. I had, uh, two sisters after that.
Speaker 2: (09:11)
I’m going to reject that.
Speaker 1: (09:14)
Um, I had two sisters after that one, uh, 18 months younger and the other one is four and a half years younger. So she was, she was kind of like the younger sister to both of us, you know, we kind of remember her being young. Um, so, so yeah, uh, we were in Canada until I was about 13 and then my dad had an opportunity to move South to New Jersey, uh, kind of like where he was from. So then we got to know his family a little better. Um, uh, it was fine, you know, I mean, nobody’s perfect, but it was fine. Um, so at, at that point, uh, you know, we, we spent like basically the rest of my life in the United States. Um, my parents did end up going back to Canada to take care of my grandmother for a while. So, you know, they spent extra time there, but I, I was going back like less and less.
Speaker 1: (10:05)
I had less and less contact with Canadian relatives. And, um, even the ones in New Jersey we weren’t super close to. So when we all moved away from there eventually, uh, you know, it basically took Facebook to bring us all back together, you know? Um, so, so that was kind of like my life. Um, I spent my senior year apart from my parents. Uh, there’s, there’s a little story there because the person, the couple who took care of me my senior year, they were like my high school mentors. And apparently my father shared some of this story with the man who took care of me in 1983. Um, and I just found out like two months to maybe two months ago, I called this guy up and I said, uh, I need to tell you something about my background. You know, he’s like, Oh yeah, your dad told me and I don’t know why he told me, but I thought you already knew, Oh, so this was 1983.
Speaker 2: (11:01)
Okay. Huh. I think you just dropped an Easter egg. I think that’s what that’s called. Maybe a spoiler, but your dad knew. Okay. Interesting.
Speaker 1: (11:10)
Yeah. Yeah. Um, so, so, right. So, um, life went on, uh, you know, I went to college, got married, uh, DNA tests came into our lives. Uh, I think in, uh, let’s see, I’ve got it written right here in my extensive notes. Uh, 2018, my dad got a test because my sister got in her head that she wanted to find out if the family was Jewish based on our last name, always kind of sounding Jewish. Um, now religiously speaking, she also had reasons like, we always kinda like had a connection to like the Christian Jewish thing, you know? Um, so she was curious. So, so my dad tested and pretty much immediately found out that was not the case, but then my sister being a completist, she said, everybody’s going to get tested. So my mother, my, my other sister and her all got tested and they ended up being a mix of, you know, each other kind of thing. Right. Which ends up being like Eastern European, uh, for my dad and Northern. And then my mother was more like Southern and Southern European and what’s called Iberian. Right. Which is like France, you know, which you would expect like France, um, Spain for a French Canadian woman. Right.
Speaker 2: (12:27)
That makes sense. That totally makes sense. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (12:29)
So my sister was on my case by like, uh, 2019, like in the summer fall, she’s on my case. Like, how come you didn’t get your DNA test? Well, I just didn’t want to spend the money. You know, I was like, what’s the point? You all got tested now again, I knew the timeline, but I didn’t know anything else. So my sister sends me the test for Christmas.
Speaker 2: (12:53)
Aha. She is really gonna push this situation
Speaker 1: (12:58)
And, and she didn’t know any of this either, so, right. So I flubbed the test because my first tip for any, any new person doing this as don’t have lunch and then take your DNA test. Right. So that was, that was a wash. By the time I got my results, it was actually, um, March 15th, 2020, which is the start of my new calendar.
Speaker 2: (13:21)
Right. The eyes of the ides of March.
Speaker 1: (13:24)
Yeah. It was a Sunday and I was looking at my results around noon.
Speaker 2: (13:28)
Oh, wow. Isn’t it funny how those things become so cemented in your mind?
Speaker 1: (13:32)
Yeah. So, um, I opened up the results and the first thing I see, like the first thing, cause I went like, I think hardly anybody goes through the DNA matches. They don’t even know what that is. I go to the, I go to the, um, to what do they call it? The, the, uh, ethnicity, right? 50% Ashkenazi Jewish.
Speaker 2: (13:54)
Oh, Oh no, that doesn’t make sense because your father already did it and you guys are not Jewish.
Speaker 1: (14:00)
Yeah. So my, my mind starts spinning. Like, could this have like skipped a generation? Like, is that possible? You know, like recessive something, you know,
Speaker 2: (14:12)
Ethnicity. Totally.
Speaker 1: (14:15)
So then, then, then like, and I’m, and I’m running back and forth to my wife is all this is going on. And the next thing I see, like probably half an hour later is my dad’s missing. And this cousin that I mentioned from way back in 1964, she had popped up on my dad’s my heritage. My dad didn’t see her message. So eventually she got in touch with my family. Um, and we got together in October of 2019 before I got my DNA test and all this stuff was discussed about where she came from and who her birth father was. And my dad’s telling stories and somehow none of this related to me,
Speaker 2: (15:02)
Right. Like none of it triggered the idea that maybe there was things to talk to you about. Right. But it’s all here.
Speaker 1: (15:08)
We were, we were all together, all in person, down in New Jersey and none, none of this came up until like months later. So
Speaker 2: (15:15)
That’s prized only because I’ve heard so many of these stories and have my own story that like denial is so wildly powerful in it. Doesn’t I totally wouldn’t be surprised if they all were like, Nope. Never thought about you. I never thought about your story. Wasn’t just so focused on that cousin.
Speaker 1: (15:33)
Yeah. Yeah. So, so that was so basically like, yeah, we, we kind of settled the case with my cousin in October, 2019 and in March 20, 20, 20, 20, um, the week of the lockdown in a lot of places, including here in here in New York, um, I got my news, right. So the first thing I say is, Oh my God, I really am Jewish. And then the next thing I say is where where’s my dad’s side of the family and who are all these Jewish people. Yeah. So, um, I’m like flipping out and then I’m starting to see what the numbers mean. Like what does it mean when your siblings only match you 25%? And when I see right next to it is half sister niece, aunt, right. I’m like half, half, half sister. Okay. Um, so I processed that for a couple hours and then like, um, I shared with you before I started putting together data about what made sense and what didn’t make sense, because it’s always gotta be a mistake, but it was all wrong in like a very specific way. So then I got in touch with my sister who ordered the test and I said, Hey, there’s something up here. You know? Um, so she’s, she’s kinda like freaking out and, and within a couple of days she had ordered an ancestry kit for both of us. Uh, just so we could double check it because this had come from my heritage. So now we were going to try ancestry because of course that’s gotta be correct.
Speaker 2: (17:13)
Right. It could be the tests. Totally. Yeah. You never,
Speaker 1: (17:18)
It’s never the test.
Speaker 2: (17:19)
I know it’s never the test, but you might as well, you might as well get a second opinion
Speaker 1: (17:24)
And he Shapiro said it and inheritance, it’s never the test. Um, yeah. So, um, let me see my timeline. Yeah. So probably the next, the next big thing that happened was right around the time that I got my ancestry kit. Um, it also occurred to me that if I can export my data from my heritage, I could probably import it elsewhere and get DNA matches without all this waiting. Cause everything, it seemed like everything I did, it was like, wait weeks, you know, in the middle of the, the lockdown, when you can’t go anywhere and you’re going to go crazy,
Speaker 2: (17:57)
Totally. Like we might have this really life altering information for you, but we need you to just sit tight for a long time.
Speaker 1: (18:03)
Yeah. And in, and in, uh, deference to ancestry, they really processed my test really fast. So I got lucky there. But in the meantime I discovered this, this thing called GED match and I’m on GED match. You can meet up with people from various testing services. Right. So I uploaded my data there, um, in April just about a month after my first test result. So, um, what happened was, Oh, wait, well, let me back up to my heritage for a minute. Cause I missed something important. Uh, the day after I received my results, I got a message on my heritage from a second cousin. Okay. He uses an alias on all his accounts. I know this now. So it wasn’t, it wasn’t his real name. And he said, my mother wants to know how we’re related because his mother allegedly was on my heritage, but I still got to get back to him because his mother’s data and his data are the same. I think he uploaded his kit, his kit twice. And it really confused me cause I’m not related to his mother. I’m related to his father.
Speaker 2: (19:19)
Oh, well, no wonder. She’s confused. Okay.
Speaker 1: (19:23)
Yeah. His father is deceased, but I’m re I’m related to his father’s side. So, so, but um, he, he sends me a message and he says, my mother wants to know how we’re living, how we’re related. I said, I have no idea. And I, I, in the beginning I was really, it wasn’t that I was embarrassed, but I was kind of like really upset and I didn’t want to necessarily tell them, Hey, my parents screwed up. You know? Um,
Speaker 2: (19:49)
So you had started, you had started to figure it out, but didn’t want to a stranger. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (19:54)
I said, yeah. Um, it seems like my father, it maybe isn’t who I thought it would have thought he was. And he’s related to you somehow. And I didn’t want to let go of this key piece of information that my mother is from Montreal. And so am I, so I said, well, yeah, if you met her like down in New Jersey, like maybe she had an accent. I mean, this is the kind of ridiculous clues I was giving and it wasn’t, it was not like that at all.
Speaker 2: (20:20)
So
Speaker 1: (20:21)
He was confused. I was confused. He had just had a baby as it turned out. So they were kind of like going crazy a little bit and we didn’t get anywhere in, in March and April. Um, but he, when I got to GED match there, he was again, and this time I had his email address and I could see part of his like first initial, last name kind of thing. So I was like, Oh, well, this is interesting. So I sent him emails from that point on and it didn’t really help, but I also found on GED match near the top of my list. Um, this woman who had put up six, um, DNA kits that matched me in some way. And the top one, the top one was another like second, third cousin. So I said, after I figured out her email address was like all over the place. I was like, maybe I should talk to her, you know? And concurrent to this on ancestry, I had messaged a third cousin who I also realized was popping up everywhere. So just because I recognized the name, I said, let me send her an email too and say, sorry, it took me like three tries to figure that out that were related, you know? Um, but she was very
Speaker 2: (21:35)
Deadly active family about what they’re uploading.
Speaker 1: (21:39)
Yeah. I got, I got very fortunate with a couple of people. So, so with the third cousin, she was very nice, but as it turned out, her family treated and cover my part of the family. So we’re good friends now, like Facebook, Facebook, good friends. But she didn’t really know where I came from now. Now this other lady who her, her cousin happened to be the person I matched as my cousin. Okay. Opposite sides of the family. Right. We’re not related to each other, but we’re both related to that cousin. Right. So, and this cousin is like close to her family, so I like hit the jackpot.
Speaker 2: (22:19)
Okay. So that would start to solve it question. Are you, are your parents alive while this is going on? Yes. Okay. But you have not, you have not conferred with them at all about what’s going on.
Speaker 1: (22:31)
No, we’re, we’re in April now and, and I didn’t talk to them. Uh, and it came out from, from them in, in like July.
Speaker 2: (22:39)
Okay. So yeah. So that’s okay. And your sister, but you’re in touch with your sister kind of keeping her updated on things.
Speaker 1: (22:44)
Yes. My, my one sister and then the other sister, like the sister who ordered the tests kind of dropped off and the other one picked up. Oh really? Yeah. I was, I was given the youngest sister, like daily updates. Cause I was, I was totally flipping out.
Speaker 2: (22:58)
Do you think was going on with the, with the original sister that was so interested in it freaked her out, you think?
Speaker 1: (23:03)
Um, yeah, she didn’t quite know at that point. Like she wasn’t expecting to have a big surprise. She was just hoping we were Jewish, you know?
Speaker 2: (23:09)
Right. I mean, tale as old as time at this point. Right. Famous last words did not expect a big surprise. Okay. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (23:20)
So, uh, G D match. I find this lady, I sent her an email. Oh, crap. I’m already getting choked up. Um, in, um, in inheritance when Danny Shapiro got her big surprise, she texted a friend that was like a casual friend. And she said, um, can you help me out with this? Because she knew this friend, a genealogy freak. Right. I didn’t know this lady from anybody. And she called me back the same day. So, and obviously I’ve been in touch with her ever since. So yeah, she’s a good friend now. Um, anyway, so she got on the case and,
Speaker 2: (24:07)
Sorry, I’m sorry to interrupt. What is, what chokes you up about that is, is what makes me emotional? Is that, that somebody just out of the kindness of their heart reached out to you not knowing who you were. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (24:18)
Yeah. Cause it had been, it had been like, um, like not even a month, it had been almost a month, but I’d spent a month. Like just wondering, especially after talking to my, my third cousin, uh, who, who offered her family tree, but it wasn’t like, I had no idea where to look. Right. Um, and ditto with this lady, like her tree actually covers my part of the family because of her cousin. Right. So she’s got like 2,400 people or something on there. Right, right. So it’s nice to know I’m in there somewhere, but we still, we still didn’t quite know where, so she called me, she was so willing to help immediately. Yeah. Yeah. And she, and she said, well, let me see what I can find out. You know, she actually had a family story that she thought was kind of relevant, uh, from a cousin. Um, and again, uh, like he had lived in the New York area, so maybe he was involved somehow. She didn’t know. So, um, she went off with that and um, she started connecting me with people. She connected me with one woman who was an NP herself, who is, uh, a semi retired therapist. Now she’s a little older than me. Um, and she told me exactly this. She said, you’re going to feel like you just found out you were adopted.
Speaker 1: (25:36)
And, um, that’s pretty accurate actually to what my parents told me when they told me, um, you know, well, you know, your dad adopted you when you were born. That’s what we did, you know? Um, so that’s one person she introduced to me. Another one is that like the husband of a cousin who is, uh, he studied, um, genetics in college.
Speaker 2: (25:59)
So
Speaker 1: (25:59)
That was very helpful. Um, so we had our little, our little dream team together and the next thing, uh, within a few weeks, um, my, my DNA research angel as we call them. Right. And I call her that ever since I learned that term, like, yeah, that’s you, um, she offered to contact my second cousin who was like, we were making no progress via email because by the way he hates email. He’s like, I get tired of typing. I’d rather talk on the phone. I should have just offered him my phone number,
Speaker 2: (26:37)
Communication. Okay.
Speaker 1: (26:38)
It’s like, he was hesitant about me. I was hesitant about him. So said, look, why don’t I contact him? Because she’s done this stuff now for a while, she has her own story of discovering her family in a crazy way. And so she’s kind of used to this. So I’m like fine contact him, whatever you can do, the Jew thing, you know, like whatever mind-meld you guys have. I don’t know. So, um, so she did that and they went off and were like, sh for like a couple of weeks. Right. And I’m getting a little jealous, like, Oh, it’s great that you guys are such good friends, you know? Um, but then they came back and they said, look, uh, we figured out something very interesting in his, uh, grandfather’s death certificate, as crazy as that sounds, there’s a connection to your, uh, other cousins right. On the other side of the family in, in that paperwork. And I looked at that, that specific couple who are my great grandparents on, on my angel family tree. And like the room started spinning, you know? Yeah. Cause you just, you just like trying to connect all these different people who are related to me all his second and third cousins. And I’m like, I don’t know where I fit, you know? So that was the first clue.
Speaker 1: (28:08)
Um, then the, the genetics guy, right. Um, all these people are way smarter than me, by the way I tried to do okay. But these, these guys are smart. So he says you should get a Y DNA test. You familiar with that?
Speaker 2: (28:24)
Yes. Yes. Like the Y a religion or something. Yeah, the haplogroup haplogroup. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (28:29)
So, so just for the rest of us, uh, what, what we talk about with DNA tests, most of the time is autosomal DNA and they take a large, uh, you know, portion of your DNA and they compare it to other people’s, uh, just to find out like who your relatives are, but the Y DNA is specific to a portion of the DNA that gets passed from father to father going all the way back through time. Right. So if, and here’s another recommendation, if you can get like the oldest men in your family tested, that’s probably the best thing you can do to match up with other relatives through this test.
Speaker 2: (29:08)
No.
Speaker 1: (29:10)
Yeah. So I ended up ordering a Y DNA test, uh, and this was probably June by then, um, from family tree DNA. So now I’m getting listed on a third company. And, um, what happened was by the time I got the results of that, I had actually matched with a guy, uh, as like a second cousin on family tree, but I couldn’t tell him apart from any other second cousins. Right. But his father matched me on why DNA. So that means I’m directly related to his, you know, parents, grandparents kind of thing. Right. So that zeroed in on basically my family surname.
Speaker 2: (29:56)
Right, right, right, right.
Speaker 1: (29:58)
So now I know I’m belong to this family surname that narrows down my search angels tree quite a bit, quite a bit. I bet. Right. So now who’s related to her cousin, my cousin, and these other people with that last name. Well, there is a group of those people who live in Montreal,
Speaker 2: (30:22)
Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
Speaker 1: (30:24)
Yeah. So I apologized to my cousin for not having said this much sooner. Um, and he’s like, Oh yeah, I’ve known them my whole life. Um, and there was more that happened. Right. So this was, this was like may to June’s revelation. Right. And in the background, apparently what was happening was one of my first cousins was getting a DNA test from 23. And me now I wasn’t on 23 and me and I made a point of not doing it afterwards for awhile. Um, but, um, she accepted the offer to put her, uh, data on GED match when she got her results in mid, in mid June. So three months in, um, she put her results up on, on GED match and we were introduced by email, right. Like my cousin, my second cousin is introducing us like, Hey, here’s, so-and-so, uh, you know, I’m not sure exactly how you’re related, but I want you to meet. And he kinda knew. So, so like the next day it pops up on GED match as a first cousin. And, uh, you know, we do this now kind of know that’s like the end game because your first cousin is related to your aunts and uncles and your birth parents,
Speaker 2: (31:51)
Your parents. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (31:53)
So she has two uncles. Uh, they both lived in Montreal at the time. They’re both a little older than my mom. Uh, one is like six years and the other one’s like 10 years, uh, the, the 10 year older one was married with two kids. And one on the way, the younger, one of your conception. Yes. Okay. And the younger one was single and everybody talks about how charming he was right now. I can’t assume. And we still don’t know. So that’s the unfortunate part. You’re not going to get an ending on this one, but, um, yeah. That’s kind of where we’re at with that, with that part of it.
Speaker 2: (32:35)
Well, you know, like sure. That’s, you know, unfortunately we don’t have an ending, but, but, but realistically, this is what happens is that a lot of people don’t get an answer. So, so it’s actually great to have you representing the population of people who are left with questions.
Speaker 1: (32:50)
Yes. So what has happened since then is, um, that cousin and I got to know each other a little more, she was very, very kind to, not to like call me on the phone and tell me some stuff about the family. And she’s like, well, um, you know, I, it’s not exactly like a traditional, uh, relationship, you know, but you are, you are related to us, you know, it’s kind of like one of those things and it’s not like she’s ready to introduce me to everyone. She still has not, but, uh, we’re on, we’re on friendly terms after some, some rough spots, you know? Um, but like I said, right off the bat, she was kind enough to share her DNA. And, um, she’s the one who recommended that I read inheritance, which if, you know, early on one of the big clues was the unknown first cousin and literally that’s what she was for me. So, uh, so that was kind of cool, you know, um,
Speaker 2: (33:48)
Else for people, especially with that book or, um, so comforting.
Speaker 1: (33:52)
Yeah. Well, like in, I identify with, with Danny saying she lost half of her, her Jewish heritage and I picked, I picked one up.
Speaker 2: (33:59)
Right. So what does that mean?
Speaker 1: (34:01)
Yeah. Uh, well, I can talk about that, but, um, so, so what happened after that was, uh, you know, we kind of went into like the S the summer and people got busy, but in the background we’re talking about like, do we, do we contact this guy who was, who was single at the time? Um, and by the way, he’s developed a big interest in genealogy over the years. Like he was like the pen and paper kind of like picked up the computer later on, you know, so he’s got a lot of family records, then he would probably be really into this, you know? Uh, so we, we discussed that for a few months. Um, nothing ever came of it. And then, um, in November, uh, we made an attempt and he hasn’t responded. And in, uh, like on new year’s day, actually, you know, my, my search angel said, let’s give it another shot on new year’s day.
Speaker 1: (34:58)
I’m like, I don’t think it matters what day of the week it is, because by then I was in the NPE groups and I kinda knew how these responses go. Um, so, but I said, sure, we’ll give it a shot. And I made a video for new year’s day and we sent it to him. And, uh, that, that didn’t do any good, like a five, seven minute video. I’m like, Hey, this is me. Uh, you know, I remember way back when I was a kid, I made a family tree with my grandmother and then I never gave it a second thought until now, you know, it was this kind of stuff, trying to, trying to like pull the heart strings a little bit.
Speaker 2: (35:33)
Right. So this man might be your biological father and he might be your correct.
Speaker 1: (35:38)
And he could be, he, he could be silent for either reason. Right.
Speaker 2: (35:42)
Totally. I mean,
Speaker 1: (35:46)
So, and I’ve, and I, you know, I’ve gone through the gamut of emotions of being sympathetic with people and realizing I’m just like a Facebook message away from being a real nuisance and all this stuff, you know, but that’s kind of where we’re at. So I’ve made friends with a lot of second and third cousins from here to like Hungary. Um, and that’s cool. And it seems like the closer you get to me at family, the scarier it gets.
Speaker 2: (36:16)
Right. Right. The more there is to disrupt.
Speaker 1: (36:20)
Yeah. So, um, yeah, I, I guess I could say like, uh, by December, I, I gave another attempt at getting into the NPE groups on Facebook. For some reason when I tried earlier on it didn’t work. Like some, somebody didn’t respond to my request or something. So, so I got in, in December and ever since then, like, I’ve been learning a lot and realizing, Oh, it’s nothing personal about me. You know, some people’s family dynamics are a lot more messed up. Like the ones they know, the ones they don’t know, and that’s been very helpful.
Speaker 2: (36:51)
Good. Yeah. Yeah. I, yeah, the, the learning about what’s personal and what’s not personal is very, um, is very helpful. I’m glad, I’m glad that’s, that’s good for you. Um,
Speaker 1: (37:03)
Yeah, but, uh, so like it probably the, the, the last straw was my cousin, my first cousin was I, I did send in to 23 me cause they were having a special for the health and, uh, ancestry package. So I figured by December, like we had already discussed that I, I fall into this DNA black hole in the family because they seem to mistrust the giving out their information. Right. Just my luck. So, um, I sent in a, and I got my results in, um, December and, uh, picked up another first cousin just by coincidence. She had already, like, it was a first cousin once removed younger. Right. Okay. So she had, had sent in and got her results, like within a week of mine. And it, my, my, my first cousin actually contacted me and she said, ah, just a heads up. You know, my niece is on there now. And I’m like, okay. And she’s like, don’t worry about it. It’s fine. And I got it in my head. Like I gotta contact them now. Cause you know, I thought maybe I could, I could start this promotional campaign, you know?
Speaker 2: (38:13)
Yeah. It’s interesting to like that all these people know about you, but everybody’s protecting somebody else. I know there’s sort of a tangled web going on over there of secrets of secrets and Hmm. I don’t know. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (38:32)
Yeah. It’s a little wacky, so yeah. So cause, um, what I learned, uh, more recently from, from the MP groups is we can be, we can have our privacy and not be a personal secret. Right, right. It doesn’t mean we have to Blab it to everybody, but, but we don’t have to be, we don’t have to hide, you know? So yeah. I tried, I tried being super friendly and like, Oh, you know, we’re all, we’re all related. Isn’t that so cool. And I freaked them out so bad. Everybody stopped talking to me.
Speaker 2: (39:07)
Oh man. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (39:09)
So, uh, we’re, we’re kind of coming back around now, uh, at least with, with my first cousin, but leave, leave the kids alone and uh, just kinda like hang out, you know, and meanwhile, I didn’t mention this, but it’s sort of weird that my family and this extended family have kind of straddled Montreal and New York for my entire life. So all of a sudden I lived 35 miles away from a lot of cousins and possibly a half sibling. And again, because of the lockdown, I haven’t met anybody, but I know I’m going to meet at least a few people who are, who are nice to me now. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (39:53)
That’s interesting. Yeah. But yeah, you’ve all been kind of like navigating the same region. Yes.
Speaker 1: (40:00)
Parts of this is like, I get calls like maybe once a week from this one second cousin who, who I first contacted, you know, once we were introduced face to face, you know, then we started talking on WhatsApp and all this, uh, you know, we get along. Great. So that’s, that’s awesome. And he keeps asking me how more, how I’m doing on my book. Yeah. So, uh, and I do have a lot of notes, so, so there’s that. And then I’ve made other friends, like the, the other part of this I didn’t really talk about is the whole Jewish thing. Like I said, my, my relationship to that was, was both like underwhelming and also kind of complicated because my parents do like that kind of stuff. Like they have little, uh, little Jewish, uh, decorations around the home. Uh, they sent me a calendar from like a Christian ministry, you know, that it’s like all about Israel and stuff.
Speaker 1: (40:53)
So that’s always kind of been in the background, but my mother had no idea. She didn’t know this guy at all, you know? So, um, so that’s kind of weird, but um, along the way I’ve been, I’ve been learning about it kinda, like I said, I want to learn about this from Jewish people and kind of like from a non-religious perspective to start with, so that’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve been learning history. Um, I got hooked up with a couple of friends who were like, Hey, check out this, this service, this seminar that, you know, this thing on YouTube. Um, so that’s been kind of cool. Yeah. And my, my connection to the Holocaust now is much more significant. Yeah. I can imagine. Uh, because my, my family and Hungary in particular, we lost like 80 people. Oh my God. Um, my, my part of the family was in France by then. And they were hidden. That was kind of like their story, but I mean, it was still scary. And, um, you know, um, on my Facebook page recently, I put this very sort of vague news story about a person who was reunited with the family that hit kid them wink, wink.
Speaker 1: (42:06)
So, um, and I translated anything English, everybody could read it. Right.
Speaker 2: (42:10)
Okay. No noted. Yes.
Speaker 1: (42:15)
And it’s public. So he knows it’s there. If he wants to look right.
Speaker 2: (42:19)
If he wants to look around, he knows that you know things. Yes. Um, and when did you decide what or what, what made you, or when did you decide to talk to your parents about it?
Speaker 1: (42:30)
Okay. Oh yes. I forgot to mention that part. Um, so around, around, uh, July, my wife and I were talking about whether I should speak to my mother and by then we still didn’t know who knew what? And like, did my dad know anything that my mom knew anything. So I said, I’m going to, I’m going to just drop it because it’s going to be like a blow up the family situation. Right. So I said, but I got to go see my parents, regardless, at least give her an opportunity if she wants to say something, you know? Um, so I did, and we went to visit my sister, which was like an hour away from my dad. Um, and, uh, you know, and we had been talking about the DNA test and I, I been trying to like in code, like say, Oh, I had a lot of fun putting together a family tree on my heritage, you know, it’s so cool. You just click, click, click, right?
Speaker 2: (43:31)
Yeah.
Speaker 1: (43:31)
Yeah. She goes, she goes, look, um, your father adopted you when you were born. And I didn’t know the man, you know, who, who got me pregnant? Uh, she said, she didn’t even know she was pregnant until she had a baby bump. And her friend, her friend said to her, uh, you know, you gotta do something about that. So, um, yeah, that’s kinda how it went down. I mean, and the revelation to me, like I’ve heard these things get very, very contentious. Uh, my mother was very matter of fact, she was a little teary. Um, and, and she said she hadn’t wanted to say anything because she felt sort of naive at the time. And, um, she didn’t want her kids to think any less of her. Sure. Uh, when we got home, how it went down with my father was she walked in, like my dad was in their bedroom and she walked in and she’s like, Oh yeah, he knows. Um, I told him about being adopted.
Speaker 2: (44:29)
Oh, that was it.
Speaker 1: (44:32)
And what did he say? He was like, okay, well then he was very nice about it, but it was, it was all kind of matter of fact. Right, right. He said, look at my, my family life growing up. Wasn’t great. I mean, the circumstances around my aunt’s pregnancy kind of highlighted a lot of that. And, uh, when I found out about your mother, um, I wanted her to have better than that for both of you. So the way, the way it happened was she wrote him a letter. He was out of the country and she wrote him a letter. So however long it took a letter to get there. Right. Like overseas, he called her back
Speaker 2: (45:15)
Long distance
Speaker 1: (45:15)
When it was like this one connecting to that one connected to that. So that was something. Um,
Speaker 2: (45:23)
So she, so she was honest with him about the situation from the beginning that she was pregnant by somebody else.
Speaker 1: (45:29)
Now he must have visited around the same. That would have been like the summer of 1965. He must have visited sometime around then. And I was premature. So there may have been some fudging with the numbers there, but, um, he, obviously he must have visited where this would not have been believable. Right. But I’ll also clearly not his.
Speaker 2: (45:54)
Right. Right. Right. And he, so he knew that, but, but they did have a relationship, um, at that time. So it wasn’t, she wasn’t just writing a part of my dumb dude.
Speaker 1: (46:05)
Yeah. Part, part of my misunderstanding was I thought, like they met, she got pregnant. And then when I found out it wasn’t him, I’m like they met, she met some other guy and got pregnant, you know, but, but there was like a two year gap in there. Hmm. So, yeah, he was basically visiting back and forth, uh, during that time period, whenever he got a leave, you know? So, yeah. So that, I forgot to mention to my parents part in all this, you know, where it all started. Matter of fact. So, but yeah, I mean, literally from that day on, they had told one of my uncles who later passed away. Um, and they told this friend of ours for whatever
Speaker 2: (46:46)
Reason, that family friend. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (46:48)
I guess because they were passing off their son to somebody else and they fit your need. They need a new to know like, Oh, if he starts acting, not like me, this is why I don’t know
Speaker 2: (46:58)
All the bad traits, those aren’t mine. Right.
Speaker 1: (47:01)
You know, what’s funny is my dad was kind of a, like a football player in, in high school, you know, more like a, like a wide, uh, you know, stocky guy. Right. Um, finish the rail. I look like my mother, but I just figured, I looked like my mother, you know? Right. But meanwhile, my sisters and my cousins all look alike on that, in that part of the family. So they all have like the Sandy blonde hair and, and I have a dark, you know, like brownish hair, Brown eyes, you know? Yeah. So it’s definitely not, not as obvious as some of the NPE pictures you see, but definitely noticeable.
Speaker 2: (47:39)
Yeah. I think that, I feel like, I mean, Dan Shapiro is a, is an example of somebody that was blonde in a, in a family of dark, in a, in a, in a family of dark haired people. But I feel like it’s more common for those of us that have the dark features in a blonde family. I don’t know if that’s true. That’s really just anecdotal from my, from my podcasting, but I feel like more people have the dark features that stand out. Um, I don’t know why it’s always that way, but,
Speaker 1: (48:06)
Well, I had a couple of things like, um, you know, obviously my dad’s personality and mine were different. I figured, although the things that we had in common, like he kind of introduced me to like science fiction and reading, uh, long novels and stuff like that. Um, so we, we had some common interests, but like, I was never good at sports. Um, I kept to myself, you know, most of the time, uh, you know, I’d be doing like whatever in my room, my sisters always played with each other, but I figured it out well, they’re girls, you know? Um, so there were some separation, but I think it was sort of like unconscious and it was, it was never like you’d point back to it and go, aha. You know, now maybe if I start to meet my closer relatives, I’ll see some aha moments there.
Speaker 1: (48:50)
I don’t know. I honestly don’t don’t know. Um, I’ve seen, I’ve seen some pictures and some home movies, uh, which are kind of freaky and maybe me a little scent, like my, my grandparents, you know, that I never met and who apparently visited Montreal around the same time I lived there. So that’s a lot, you know, but they, they died like 20 years ago. Um, so, uh, yeah, that’s, that’s kinda where, where we’re at. Um, I would think the next big step for me is when we finally get out of this pandemic and, um, all pro-vaccine as they come, I’m going to get my vaccinations and I’m going to go visit the people who want to see me. I think that’s a great idea. And I may just move down to, where am I searching Jill lives and stay with her because she’s got an empty nest. So her and her husband could probably adopt me and everything.
Speaker 2: (49:48)
Then they’d have to off. They’d all have to face. You’d be present.
Speaker 1: (49:53)
Well, she’s, she’s kind of away from everybody else. She, she used to live here in New York, but now she’s down in Virginia and nobody else, as far as I know, I don’t have any cousins down there, but I have a whole lot up here.
Speaker 2: (50:03)
Wow. Wow, wow. Wow. Who knows?
Speaker 1: (50:07)
At least at least two or three of them want to see me. So that’s good. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (50:10)
I think that’s what you do. I think you start with kind of go to where the love is. Like you go start with, start with where it’s positive, lean into that and then see what happens.
Speaker 1: (50:20)
Yeah. I’ve been able to talk to like older cousins who gave me insights into how the family was back then, you know, before everybody kind of like split up and move away. Um, so that’s, that’s really nice, but they’re always also telling me like, don’t contact so-and-so because he, he could have a heart attack. No. Okay. So that’s kind of a downer except now I know no pressure now I know better. So
Speaker 2: (50:44)
Right. No pressure. Their lives are in your hands.
Speaker 1: (50:49)
It was a concern, but I, I seem to be the kind of person who just wants to reach out and find out, you know? Right,
Speaker 2: (50:56)
Right. Well, it’s, um, it is not fair to be made to feel like one’s existence is a secret. Um, yeah, it’s complicated, but it’s not fair right now. Um, is there anything you wish you had known when this all started for you last March?
Speaker 1: (51:19)
Yeah. All the emotional stuff I was not expecting. Um, I’d been, I’d been through some of this stuff before, because I had some, uh, changes to like my religious beliefs over the past five years. So I’d processed a lot of that, which is kind of emotional at times. And that got me into journaling, which was very useful. Um, so that all applied here, but then the Jewish thing kind of stirred things up a bit. So, and in a good way, I’m not saying it’s bad, I’m just saying it’s it complicates things. Sure. Um, and I’m more than willing to talk to anybody about it. Like the people in the Jewish heritage, NPE group. I love them. They’re great. Um, so, uh, the other things emotionally speaking were, um, like I heard the words, you’re going to feel like you were adopted and then it took a while to take effect. I got very anxious. I was oversharing with people. This is my big recommendation, like pick a few trusted friends and only talk to them if at all possible, because Danny Shapiro mentioned this too. Like she was at a party and she got a little tipsy and started telling everybody about her, her, um, you know, donor conceived a father, you know, uh,
Speaker 2: (52:37)
Was it a wet? I was at a wedding and it just, I was like, well, how, how am I, let me tell you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: (52:44)
Yeah. I’m sorry for all of you guys. I really am. I mean, the only connection I have to that is, I don’t know the guy either, you know? Um, so, but I did overshare with like 30 people because I went back at a certain point. Like I had a, I had a disagreement with a friend who said, look, you’ve got to stop acting like, this is your story. It’s other people’s story too. And you’ll notice, I haven’t mentioned anybody’s name. I did notice. I have noticed. Yeah, because that was a big screw up on my part. I started naming names and it was wrong. Don’t do it. Um, you’re going to feel, you’re going to feel like, you know, nobody loves you and it’s you against the world, but there are other people involved. So I’ve, I’ve, I think I’ve learned the lesson. Granted, you’re the first podcast I’ve talked to about it now. It’s public. Okay. Um, but this is also a very specialized topic. I also talked about my religious issues on a podcast. Right. If you’re interested in that topic, but I’ll say the same thing here. Like if you know me in person and you happen to cross this and I mentioned you especially, then, then yeah. Talk to me about it. Sure. Right. Right.
Speaker 2: (54:01)
Right.
Speaker 1: (54:02)
And otherwise I’m just the cautionary tale because, um, yeah. My search angel in particular has been picking up the pieces of a lot of this. And she’s, even though it was her friend who’s, um, who’s the NPE advocate. Right. Uh, she didn’t tell me any of this. She didn’t act like, Hey, you’re going to regress to like your teenage years and start acting out and just yell at anybody you can about what your parents did in the 1960s, you know?
Speaker 2: (54:35)
Right, right, right, right. Yeah. You’ll have so many things sort of flood you flood, you overwhelm you, um, so many feelings and experiences and thoughts and like mental processes. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (54:50)
And the corollary to that is join NP support group as soon as possible.
Speaker 2: (54:55)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get to those, um, for sure. Yeah. The PA yeah. The power of community is, is, uh, is, is huge within this group. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (55:05)
Because I find that I can vent a little more safely and that can also see other people talking exactly like me. And I’m like, Oh good. I’m not crazy. It’s not just me. Totally, totally. What I’d seen previously is I found like, uh, after you go on all the DNA websites, you start seeing all the ads on Facebook. Like the, my heritage girl doing the fist pump in front of her phone, which I hate like, okay, maybe you are happy. And granted, all this stuff has been very, um, uh, exciting, you know, but I wasn’t doing a fist pump. Right,
Speaker 2: (55:42)
Right. Okay. Yeah. No, the, the, the whole marketing campaign for all of the, the ancestry, all the ancestry, DNA genetic stuff is, um, is all about the excitement of connection and it, they never explore the surprises or the devastation or the confusion or the complexity or the questions. They don’t, there’s even a, there’s even a, there was one commercial. And I don’t know if he’d even lasted, but there was one, and it was for ancestry, I think, where there’s a birthday party happening with a family for an older man, like it’s his 80th birthday or something like that. And the doorbell, the doorbell rings and they opened the door and there’s another young man standing there and they accept him. And I don’t know, it just, people were really upset about that. One about, about this like that you would even do that. You would go surprise a family like that or that the family there was. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (56:35)
Yeah. That does seem rather unlikely. And they should know better the marketing people didn’t but the people at ancestry show.
Speaker 2: (56:42)
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, maybe, maybe that commercial didn’t last, but I remember that the groups were sort of upset by that.
Speaker 1: (56:49)
Yeah. Oh little, little sidebar. Um, there was a, there was a Hanukkah themed movie this past Christmas time on the hallmark channel of all times. Right. This was the year that they had the woman find out through a DNA test that she had Jewish relatives. Oh, that’s the plot. Yes. So I sat there and I watched this movie and I was like, yeah, if they don’t like, it could be like that.
Speaker 2: (57:17)
Right. If it only could be like a hallmark movie of life in general, it could be like a hallmark movie,
Speaker 1: (57:22)
You know? Cause all those movies, it’s like you have the, the initial, uh, you know, event and then there’s some confusion and then they have a little disagreement, but in the end everybody’s happy.
Speaker 2: (57:32)
Everybody’s happy in the end or, or in love or happy to move forward.
Speaker 1: (57:38)
Yeah. It’s called the lights. Um, love lights, uh, Hanukkah or something like that. Okay. I’ll look it up. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (57:47)
Uh, well, Fred, thank you so much for your time. I just sent your name. I just said your name out loud on the podcast. Is that okay?
Speaker 1: (57:56)
Oh, that’s good. Yes. It’s fine. I joked that my name is like the name that people pull out when they’re making up a name. It’s okay. Have fun. Have fun with
Speaker 2: (58:08)
Yeah. Yep. Yep. It was, it was definitely easy to like, remember when it came to emails and stuff. So this is so great. You’re right. Your story is absolutely going to help people. I love that you shared it. Um, I think it’s so important to also talk about stories that don’t have a resolution.
Speaker 1: (58:24)
Yes. And the other thing I would say too is like, honestly, like my, my parents kept it to themselves. Um, as far as I know, not too many people knew, uh, and the, the other person didn’t know either because there was no connection there, it was the 1960s. There was no way to get back to him as far as I know to this point. Yeah. Right. So I’m going with that. So it was like no harm, no foul. And my parents tried to do the right thing. Uh, back then it was like, well, if we don’t tell them they won’t hurt his feelings. Totally.
Speaker 2: (58:55)
I mean, people, parents are still doing that today, you know? Um, which I guess is partly why we’re all trying to talk about it. Um, and say, try to get this information out there and be like, don’t do that. Don’t do that. But it’s still, you know, it’s still an intention that people, uh, go with today. Um, so I have a funny, not funny, but an interesting question fact, and then followed by question. Um, I am talking with Danny Shapiro after this. Oh yes. You told me. Um, so what, what can I tell her for you? Do you have a message to pass on or a question to ask her or both?
Speaker 1: (59:30)
You can tell her, Hey, I’m the guy who sent you those Twitter messages about finding out I’m half Jewish. Okay. Um, yeah. Uh, no, I appreciated her getting back to me too. Um, and uh, no, her book, I mean, I read her book, then I went back and took notes on the book. Then I listened to the audio book and you could definitely tell her about my first cousin also. Okay. Yeah. That’d be amended it to her. Tell her that we, we almost broke up, but we’re back together.
Speaker 2: (01:00:02)
I’ll let her know that it’s been, um, not a smooth ride, but no, definitely. Still not. Yeah. But yeah,
Speaker 1: (01:00:09)
I’m still looking for tips on how to be, uh, how to like an introduction to Judaism for someone from the other side of that coin.
Speaker 2: (01:00:16)
Okay. Yeah. I’ll, I’ll, uh, I’ll put that out there. I’ll ask her and then we’ll see what else comes up.
Speaker 1: (01:00:23)
Yeah. Cause I was a lifelong religious person, so, uh, and I went to Bible college, so I got that part covered.
Speaker 2: (01:00:29)
Right, right, right. You understand that side of things, but, um,
Speaker 1: (01:00:33)
Right. So to understand Christmas tree,
Speaker 2: (01:00:35)
Right. So to have that side of you to have a side of UBI, uh, 50% of, uh, of, uh, uh, religion that is also a culture that is also a bloodline is more complicated than perhaps arguably more complicated than Christianity.
Speaker 1: (01:00:53)
Yes. She actually, in her book she kinda like said, um, I didn’t think of myself as having descended from Christians and I’m like, no, that’s not how that
Speaker 2: (01:01:01)
Right. Right. Yeah. Um, yeah. That’s, that is part of the, the beauty and the complexity of, of Judaism, right. Is that it’s, it’s, it’s, uh, it’s a, it’s like a race and an ethnicity and a religion and a culture. So yeah. Um, so to find out that that’s 50% of you, I can see why the, especially, and not knowing your, um, the story about you and religion, but knowing that you’ve already gone through something where you’ve processed a lot of that stuff, I can totally see why that would trigger, trigger a lot of thoughts and feelings.
Speaker 1: (01:01:32)
Yes. But it’s all, it’s all positive and I’m taking it all in as I can.
Speaker 2: (01:01:36)
Great. Good, great. Well, Fred, let’s go on with our Saturdays. Thank you so much for giving me the middle of your day.
Speaker 1: (01:01:44)
Thank you very much. And I’ll now I’ll say what my new friends say, Shabbat Shalom,
Speaker 2: (01:01:47)
Shabbat Shalom. Thank you for everything. And, um, I’ll be in touch with you of course. And, uh, and this was just so great. I’m so glad we got to, um, get together so quickly.
Speaker 1: (01:01:59)
Yes. I’m very happy. Thank you very much for the opportunity.
Speaker 2: (01:02:02)
Great. And what is your podcast? Uh, plug it real quick. Oh yes.
Speaker 1: (01:02:07)
Uh, we’ve actually finished it, uh, for the most part because fans listen to it, right? Yes. Oh, it’s still there. Uh, and it’s called psych rewind. P S Y C H. It’s about the television show psych that was on USA network now available on peacock. And, um, I can give you the link for the show notes if you want. Cause I don’t want to get it wrong off the top of my head, but it goes to my friend Stephanie’s podcast networks. So definitely listen to her stuff and support her for sure. Cool.
Speaker 2: (01:02:33)
Awesome. Yeah. We’ll make sure that all of that’s posted, so anybody interested can head over there. Uh, all right, Fred, thank you so much. Thank you. I will talk to you soon. All right. Great. All right. Bye. Bye.
Speaker 1: (00:00)
Record on the computer. Let’s do it. All right. Okay. It’s recording. Let’s say now, just so you know, officially. Okay. Um, I don’t even know where to start for some reason. Sometimes when I know people it’s more uncomfortable because I like have to slip. I don’t know. I don’t really like slip into a different persona, but, um, I’m here with Gina Daniel. Uh, we met, we, we, we have been in touch as pen pals for like two years, um, which is kind of amazing to think about, but, um, what, but, but then we met at the RI and then she was at the retreat in, um, on the East coast with me, um, this past fall. So I, we got to meet in person and talk and, um, we have been talking about recording something for all this time, and now it’s finally here, the day has arrived.
Speaker 1: (01:02)
And, um, one thing that is super exciting for me and, and what is unique about you is that you have an NPC story, right. Um, but then which we’ll get to, and then, but then you, um, and, but then it’s like what you did with it, what, what you did with that information. That’s, that’s really interesting. Um, and so you have become a pioneer in academia about, um, about the NPE experience and, and for those of you and us in the community of, um, the NPE or, uh, or DNA discovery world, it’s a very big deal because there’s, there’s like no information out there. So for someone, um, to, to start collecting information, coming up with conclusions and publishing it and putting it out there, it’s, um, it’s a really big deal. So why don’t you tell me, can you talk about your IPE experience? Yeah, sure. Yeah,
Speaker 2: (01:57)
Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, because I think all the players in my world would not listen to this. I don’t think David would know what the term NPE is to look this up. And I honestly do not believe that my two dads would even know what a podcast is, maybe one does. But, um, so I was born in 69 just for reference sake. I think a lot of us NPE is kind of sometimes like that idea of where in the timeline people kind of come from. Um, that seems to be kind of the general gist of the sixties to the early eighties seems to be a lot of us come from that timeframe. Um, and I was born to young parents. My mother was a college student. My dad was at home and she came home and said, Oh my goodness, I’m pregnant. And he was like, well, we have to get married.
Speaker 2: (02:45)
And that was kind of what happened in those days. They got married and soon after she just wasn’t happy and you know, wasn’t really ready to have a baby. And she took off, she was done. My dad was devastated, but he was determined to raise me. And he did. And he eventually got custody of me and raised me and she just went on and kind of lived her life. She kind of tried to come back a few times, but it just, wasn’t kind of that settled down, raise your child live. The wife life was not for her. So my dad and I lived a few hours away from all of our family and he just raised me as a hardworking dad. And it’s just, he and I for a really long time, he met my stepmother eventually and, you know, whatever that was our life.
Speaker 2: (03:25)
Um, but I did, I was that person. I am that person who always felt like I didn’t fit with him. We did not, um, connect very verbal, very emotional, want to talk all the time. He wants none of that. So I always felt like I wanted to be with my mom because I must be just like her. She just didn’t want to be with me. Um, not in a cruel way. It just wasn’t for her. It just mothering, just wasn’t for her. So fast forward. Um, when I am in college, she died unexpectedly. I mean, I think for me it felt like overnight, literally. Um, but she died from alcoholism. I was 20 and, um, I just got a phone call. Your mother died yesterday and I was like, what happened?
Speaker 3: (04:11)
Yeah. I think I heard your story. And that surprised me just now. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. So that was kind of, yeah.
Speaker 2: (04:20)
Wild to just be like, Oh, well, that’s, that’s a strange, strange piece to this story. I mean, there’s a whole lot of other things. Right. But we’re not gonna get into all of that. But, um, so she was, you know, it was over just kind of like, there’s no resolution to anything, you know, I always wondered why she wouldn’t raise me, why she wouldn’t want to be with me, you know? And then you you’re that kid that wants to like chase her love and attention. You want to like get good grades and you want to be the good kid and you just, you know, she would see me occasionally. And she was so funny and she was so pretty and I just wanted that so much and she just wasn’t having it. Um, not in a cruel way. It just wasn’t for her. So I didn’t get along with my stepmother very well.
Speaker 2: (05:02)
And my dad was just my dad. He was hardworking. I got a lot from him, but we just didn’t connect, went on my way of just living my life and wanting to be a mother desperately and eventually took a lot of, uh, fertility. And that world was fun. But eventually I became a mother in my thirties and, um, I have two daughters, which is amazing and, uh, kind of got to live that mothering through my kids, which in a very healthy way, I’m a clinical social worker. So I’m really good with like, kind of like seeing like what’s healthy, what’s not healthy. I’ve done my work. I’ve been through my therapy. But, um, yeah, I think I’ve been able to kind of replace some of that by being a mother that I didn’t get. It’s been really wonderful, really, really wonderful. I feel fully fulfilled as far as all of those pieces that were kind of not there as a kid.
Speaker 2: (05:54)
Um, and I’m sad for my mom because she died when she was 40. And when I passed 40, then that was a really difficult time for me. It’s a really tough time for a lot of people when they pass the age of their parents sometimes, um, really tough time for me because, um, my daughter was four. My youngest is four at the time and I thought, how do you leave your baby? You know, like terrible to like be done with your life at that point. Yeah. So sad. But anyway, so, um, fast forward to 49, um, I had asked my family to get Nila an ancestry test. I wanted to see how German I was. Right. There’s that whole thing I made name was German. My dad never talked about anything. He didn’t seem to have any history of our family. His father had died when he was young and he just doesn’t talk.
Speaker 2: (06:48)
So I just couldn’t get anything from anyone. And I didn’t click with that side of the family. We had always lived far away. And so I was like, Oh, let me just find out on my own. You know, my children, let’s just figure this out. So sent the test away. And um, eventually it took me time to do it, got the test back and looked at it and like, we’re not even chairman, well, this is silly. So I took it over to my dad and I’m like, where are these in German? He was like, okay, he didn’t care,
Speaker 3: (07:15)
Which I thought was ridiculous,
Speaker 2: (07:17)
But you know, I just put it down and I’m like, okay, so we’re kind of English. Well, whatever didn’t even think twice. Um, and at the time I had been a year into getting my doctorate, so I was just taking classes and it was late the day after father’s day 2018. And of course, right. And, um, 1130, it’s working on like wrapping up an assignment. My husband’s asleep beside me and up pops, you know, the email, the thing. And you know, you have a match and I’m like, okay, another fourth cousin from New Zealand, that kind of thing.
Speaker 3: (07:52)
Fifth cousin, very distant, right?
Speaker 2: (07:55)
Yeah. Yeah. We have like 32 CMS, like okay, whatever. And it came up and it said, you know, 50% match. And I thought, okay, it’s like late at night. Like, I can’t be seeing that. Right. And it said connection has to be father or son. And I went, I mean, listen, like I went through some fertility, I know exactly every single thing that’s happened to me. Like I don’t have any sons and I just went, you have got to be kidding me. I mean, I think there was a curse word in there, but I was like, what? Like what just happened? So I didn’t wake up. My husband, I just went to sleep. I mean, I laid there for a long time, thought about it, got up in the morning called a science teacher friend. And I just said, you know, this, this is not right. Right. And he was like, no, no, no, no, that whole thing, you know, DNA doesn’t lie. Like he was probably the first one to say it to me. And I’ve heard it 800,000 times since anyway. Um, from there I just kind of got on it, did all like stuff people do. And I like really studied all the trees very quickly before anybody removed stuff. Cause that happened, um, got on the pool, everything, screenshotted, everything. I don’t know why I knew about any of that. Cause I hadn’t done any of this work
Speaker 1: (09:08)
Just about to ask. I was just about to ask, like how did you know how to do that?
Speaker 2: (09:12)
Yeah. It was a gut thing. It was just a gut thing. Like I just, and I think what I was thinking was I just need to have it all so I can organize so I can look at it. I don’t think it was because I was afraid someone would take it down. Ultimately later I realized that was a good idea, but I think it was more so I could kind of piece together named years and relationships. I don’t think it was. Yes. I think that was where I was really coming from. And then later when it was gone, I went home. That was a good idea. Um, by July 5th, I was on the phone with my biological father. So what had happened was my mother was at college, a few hours away from her home. Um, the best that I can piece together was she was just kind of, you know, living in a young adult life back in the time and had met people on weekends and had fun. And I think she had met my biological father on a couple of weekends. I think they kind of like had a standing weekend date. He was older and I think he could buy alcohol and I think they had fun and whatever. Right. And stuff happened.
Speaker 1: (10:21)
Having a good time. Exactly. He’s fun. Not serious about life, like life calling friends with benefits in 1969, but what you know sure,
Speaker 2: (10:33)
Exactly. And I don’t want my life on display at 19. Like I, you know, it’s all of those things. So I think she just got scared and came home. And I think she shared with my grandmother, her mother, and I think they said, well, you have to tell the boyfriend and my dad that you’re pregnant. And my dad didn’t even do the math. The math doesn’t line up, but he didn’t, he just believed her and they got married and that was the end of the whole story. Yeah. And you know, when you reflect on your life and you remember certain things, there were goofy things where my grandmother, my dad’s name is Danny and my grandmother would say Denny was such a good father to, you know, that’s a goofy thing to say, right? Like, would you say that to your kids? Would you use your, your husband’s first name to say that to your kids, Caitlin is such a good daddy to you.
Speaker 2: (11:18)
Nobody says that. So things like that would happen in my life and I never thought about it like that. So it was just kind of funny how it comes back in time. But so anyway, I was on the phone with him and he is fantastic. He had no idea. She just disappeared and that’s exactly the story I knew she just left college bubbly and I didn’t tell him that he just kind of offered that. And so we were really putting the pieces together as best we could ourselves. So he was just as blindsided as I was. And so that’s my that’s pretty much my MP story. Yeah. I did meet him a few months later. I, he wanted to meet pretty quickly. I did not, I needed a minute. Um, it was a lot to wrap my head around. Um, I did have a ton of anger. Um, I thought I had really worked through all my mom’s stuff, you know? Um, and I felt that she had come back from my life.
Speaker 1: (12:12)
Yeah. It’s like she, yeah. It’s like she, yeah, totally. I was just about to say that, like she came, she, you thought you had worked through everything, but she had more, more secrets and surprises for you.
Speaker 2: (12:23)
Yeah. And I just really thought lady listen, like he didn’t already raise me. I struggled so much as a kid with you and yet one more time. But, um, you know, I think she did the best she could with what she had. And I’ve, I’ve really come around to, to understand that. And I’m over all of that, but I really was very, very curious for months with a dead person, which is really not, you know, fruitful, but I needed to be that way. Yeah. So time at hand and I mean, it’s, it’s just, it’s, it’s awkward at first and you know, it is what it is, but we’ve, I think we’ve made some great strides in what will be this year will be three years. Um, he doesn’t live near, so that, that makes it difficult to cope. It makes things difficult. But, um, he is all in, you know, as much as you can, when you, you know, find out you have a third daughter, um, and I have two half siblings who are not feeling this, I’m still not feeling, not into it.
Speaker 2: (13:24)
So no I’m hopeful that it’ll come in some time, but not yet, their mother’s still living. There was no overlap, nothing funky about that. He was just a single guy doing his thing. He hadn’t even met their mother yet. So there’s nothing weird with that situation. They’re just loyal to her and I think he’s not married to her anymore. And it appends, the oldest is no longer the oldest in some weird way, if that’s how she wants to look at it, but I don’t know what it’s about. Right. You know, no one asked for this, it just happens.
Speaker 1: (13:56)
Yeah. It’s always curious to know what I mean. And there’s no way to know unless they, unless they can articulate it, but like what it is that you represent to them, what it, like, it’s something, and it’s a loss of innocence about their understanding of their dad or it’s the loss of being the oldest or, and that was so important to her who knows, you know, and then why or the mom. Yeah, yeah. Gosh, it just is like a whole other file of questions.
Speaker 2: (14:22)
Yeah. And I think, yeah. And so, so that summer really was, you know, the summer that things blew up in a lot of ways. And for me, it turned out to be quite, you know, the shocking, shocking blessing. You know, I always say it’s a shocking blessing for me. Um, it worked out nicely. It doesn’t for everyone. I totally have learned that. So I decided to switch my topic of my dissertation, um, into, uh, the NPE experience was I was passionate for it at that point because I didn’t see anything about it in the research. I just couldn’t find anything. And as a social worker, clinical social worker, I wanted to know what was out there for us. What, what could I learn about this? And I couldn’t find anything. I couldn’t find support. I couldn’t find anything. It is so new. This is, this is an unintended consequence of these tests.
Speaker 2: (15:11)
Um, and it is a consequence of, um, you know, um, the numbers are staggering in some ways. Um, and these are only the people that find one another through Facebook. Right. You know, there’s some people that wouldn’t even know the numbers of mis-attributed paternity are big, they’re small percentage wise, but they’re big when it happens to you and you find a network of people. So I just think that there just needs to be more information put out there. So people are warned anyway. So I switched all of my top, my, my whole topics stuff around. And, um, my university is quite excited, um, about the topic they have been since the beginning of time. So I, I I’m studying, um, I have been studying, understanding what happens to the family of origin relationships. What happens to, um, how you understand your family of origin now as an adult, uh, what happens to your personal identity and how do we seek support through this process?
Speaker 2: (16:11)
And so it’s been interesting because when I started this, even where I have come in the past three years is vastly different than when I started. And so I’m seeing that too, cause I think I’ve done about 51 interviews with NPS over the course of this time. And, um, I am done with this dissertation in a couple of weeks, which is amazing. Um, but yeah, for sure. But it’s been really interesting because there is a whole, that there’s tons of areas where there’s more research that can be done, but one of them that I really have discovered through a lot of the people I’ve interviewed is with the siblings who didn’t expect to learn this either on the other side. And so I might have to dive into that next round of something.
Speaker 1: (16:57)
Yeah. I mean, that’s a topic that, um, yeah. But yeah, I can see that as being a sort of omitted. Um, I actually did my master’s thesis on siblings, um, on a sibling, um, because it is part of the family system that is so often taken for granted or ignored. We always are. We’re always focused on parent child and it leaves out, um, this whole other faction.
Speaker 2: (17:27)
Yeah. Well, because, and, and, you know, parents will pass on their right. They’re generally a generation older than us, but you’re left with your siblings as peers. And what happens in those relationships? Not always because sometimes one of the parents is significantly older and they have different family that are significantly older and siblings older, but oftentimes you’re in the same range of age and what happens with that. But so it’s been, it’s been very, and I’m, I’m super excited to add my research. There is, there’s definitely a lot of people doing some research in this area now. So we’ll, we’ll be getting a bunch of reasons. I mean, there’s a lot of anecdotal stuff coming out, lots of books, lots of personal memoirs, super exciting to see as much as we can get out there just for the awareness, just for the support. Um, I am working on support guide workbook kind of thing. Um, I just don’t have as much time as I wish I did, but I’m working on it, um, to get moving on something just to provide for therapists. I think there’s a whole element of what a mental health community could benefit from and understanding. Cause that was something I really got out of. Um, the NPS I interviewed was just the mental health community and the lack of support and the language that was provided to them. That really didn’t feel too good.
Speaker 1: (18:38)
Yeah. No, it’s still amazing. How many stories are still coming out a therapist saying, um, the wrong thing
Speaker 2: (18:44)
You’re still yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: (18:49)
Yeah, yeah. So cool. So, so currently you’re working as a social worker, you’re working on this workbook and you’re working on your dissertation finishing it up, correct?
Speaker 2: (19:01)
Yeah. I’m at the presentation point. Yeah. This patient’s been done. It’s just, yeah, it’s a present. It depended, I guess.
Speaker 1: (19:08)
Yeah. So knowing all that, what do you feel like is, um, gosh, I have so many questions, but uh, what do you, do you feel like you have, I guess we’ll start with the one I always ask everybody. Do you feel like you live with advice for people that are just entering their NPE experience? If you, if you could have known something back then?
Speaker 2: (19:33)
Um, yeah. I mean, I think I would say sit still and feel what you’re feeling. Acknowledge it. Just sit still. You don’t have to act. I think, I think we act fast. I mean, there’s an element of go ahead and screenshot all of the, um, ancestry trees, like go ahead because someone might remove that, uh, before they do. Uh, but otherwise just sit still for a second. Just sit still. It will be okay in some time. Um, and I think what I’ve seen with some of the people I interviewed a year and a half ago, um, I’ve seen them also calm down significantly from when it started to where it goes. We have to rewrite a narrative often in middle age. That’s a strange space to be. We’ve shared our narrative with our children. Like we’ve moved to a place where we, this is our story and we’ve passed it on and it’s wrong.
Speaker 2: (20:29)
We have to start over. That’s a strange space, but breathe through and we will, we’ll figure it out, you know, um, you know, the secrets and the lies, the shame that that’s not ours and we feel it deeply, but we will be okay. We have to just, we have to through that and just, you know, put that onus where it belongs to because it’s not with us generally, you know, but there are a lot of hurt feelings and a lot of hurt words that get said. Um, there’s a lot of mental health issues that are in families sometimes that get really stirred up in these moments and just take a step back. Sometimes I think, I think that’s probably some of the best advice. Just sit still, you know, be true to yourself. Um, don’t let other people’s actions, inactions, um, or she went to something that would make you uncomfortable in a dramatic moment like this
Speaker 1: (21:29)
Slightly. I think, I think, I mean, not only do your emotions and does one’s like emotions and thoughts fly every fly everywhere and every direction when, when this experience happens, but the internet and face Facebook and social media makes the immediacy of it feel, um, adds to the confusion. So people end up making impulsive decisions or saying impulsive things or saying things. Um, and that, that one might not, if we didn’t have social media, if we, if there was more like hand letter writing or, um, telephone calls, like these things might, might have been slowed down. Some of those things that maybe not. But I think about that too, that like these Facebook messages, people are like face like, like messaging back and forth, like having a conversation with, with people that they didn’t know existed like 15 minutes before. Um, and it can just make this sort of immediacy confusing, I think, and what to do, what, how to act slow when nothing else is feeling slow.
Speaker 2: (22:30)
Right. Right. And I would say too with, with all of that also is if you’re in a conversation, you know, through Facebook messaging or texting, you get on the phone and have a conversation, just like everything else, you’re going to misunderstand something. If someone goes to bed and they start talking, you know, your brain starts going down the rabbit holes because you’re so vulnerable. And you’re so afraid of rejection. Like that’s one of the things that came out of my research was like, the fear of rejection is so high. We feel so vulnerable when we’re normally such strong, capable people. You know, we’re, we’re capable of getting through really tremendous heinous things. We’ll get through this, but there’s all these other pieces that don’t need to happen if we just get on the phone and have a conversation like set up a time, like, Hey, do you have time this weekend for about an hour that we can have a conversation about this, set it up and have that. So your brain can relax, you know? But when you’re typing, you know, we can misinterpret a lot of different attitude. Someone gets on the phone and they give you attitude. Okay. Now we know what we’re dealing with. But if within the texting it gets, you know, it’s tough. I know it’s easy, but it’s you misinterpret things often?
Speaker 1: (23:32)
No, I mean, yeah, Kayla’s all the time. I mean, it’s all about, it’s all of this sort of miscommunication, misunderstandings, miss sometimes very deliberate misunderstandings or lies and stuff, but, but yeah, it’s all about communication. Um, yeah. Successful or unsuccessful communication. And um, what does one do with a dissertation once it’s done? What are you, what do you do with that information? You’re your role? You’re doing that guide book,
Speaker 2: (24:03)
Right? Well, yeah, that’s just my thing. That’s on the side kind of thing. Yeah. Um, well I guess they want to publish it, so it’ll be published. And then I don’t know, it’ll just go into some, you know, as a, as someone brilliant once said to me, it’s like a pebble on a mountain, whatever it’s done. Um, you know, I don’t know if I’ll take pieces of it and kind of write some articles for some publications. Um, I think I need to take a nap when I’m done with it, honestly. Um, I think I’ll probably dive back into some research related to what we’re doing with this and write some things and talk with some people I definitely will stay in this zone of how can I help, um, educate probably the mental health community. What can I bring to the mental health community to support NPS?
Speaker 2: (25:03)
How can I best help NPS? And, uh, you know, the, the wider circles, you know, the wider environments, the immediate family members, the extended family members, I think there’s, there’s a whole network of people there that could benefit from that. So I’ll probably do more in that zone. I don’t know, cause it gives me credibility. I mean, we all have credibility if we have a story, right. Are we all comfortable with some kind of a lens it’s I just feel this was kind of what I was supposed to do with the timing of this happening right. In the moment when I had to decide what I was going to do with my dissertation, I’m a school social worker, um, with my day job, um, I have a private practice in the evenings, so I didn’t want to do anything with my school, social work for dissertation.
Speaker 2: (25:47)
I could not land on something. And so it’s just interesting to me that this happens the way it is. Right. And now the passion is so here, like I’m so ready to retire the school in a few years and just go full force into this world. Um, I’m really passionate about it at this point. Um, it’s just a lot of hurting people, um, and a lot of room for education. It’s a new place. And I think that’s the most exciting thing is when you’re working on a doctorate of any sort you’re supposed to look for something that hasn’t been seen before and try and help to fill the gap. Well, I mean, it’s a gaping hole right now, so there’s a lot of us trying to help, you know, plug it up a little bit and find ways to support. And as a social worker, I can’t think of anything kind of more fulfilling than to help in this world with that piece for all of us.
Speaker 2: (26:37)
Um, you know, interviewing people has probably been one of the most rewarding. I, you do this, right? This is what you get. You’re so good at it. And we appreciate you so much. Um, but it is immensely powerful to talk to someone and see their face and see their expressions and see their pain and see their joy and just walk that path with them for a few minutes. It’s just a beautiful thing. Love it, love it. So I don’t know what I’m going to really do. I’m going to do something clearly. Clearly you’re hooked. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (27:13)
[inaudible] community, um, is so lucky for it. We’re just better, better for it. You’re just bringing so much information and, um, energy and, and focus and, um, it’s uh, so I, I, for 1:00 AM really grateful. Um, but I know that the community at large is, is, is excited for this, for all of this, um, to come in. And then also I know that for a lot of people, I think it really meant a lot to be asked to, um, interview with you. You know, I, I I’m, I’m suddenly, like I just remembered that. I think that’s how we got connected because you saw the, you had been allowed to ask people, uh, if they wanted to interview with you and someone else had interviewed with you, and then they contacted me and said, you really got to talk to this woman. So then, so then she, you and I connected and then, but I don’t qualify. Um, technically, so, um, it’s fine.
Speaker 2: (28:06)
I know I was so sad,
Speaker 1: (28:10)
So, but that’s how we started talking. And, uh, and I know that for a lot of people, I think it felt really good to feel like they were contributing to something that was going to help to data. You know, I think it, I think that also was a really empowering experience for a lot of people that feel like the, their whole life has been whipped out from under them and gave them, um, you know, being of service. I talk about this all the time, but you know, like being of service can be so healing. And I think that, that you really offered at least 51 people that, um, which is a lot. That’s cool. That’s really cool. So, yeah, so I will be, um, I’ll be keeping tabs on, on your, on what’s going on with you, your research and your progress and, um, yeah, I’ll be in touch. Are you going to be, uh, are you going to the retreat?
Speaker 2: (28:54)
Okay. I am in April. I’ll be there.
Speaker 1: (28:56)
We’ll talk. Um, cool. Um, yeah. Well, thank you so much for giving me.
Speaker 2: (29:03)
Yeah, yeah. And yeah,
Speaker 1: (29:07)
Yeah. This was just lovely. It was the perfect way to start my Friday.
Speaker 2: (29:12)
Yes. Thank you. Thank you for everything that you’re doing for all of us. You are super hero.
Speaker 1: (29:19)
I couldn’t do it without you and everybody else. Um, yeah. All right. Well, enjoy the rest of your, uh, work from home snow day.
Speaker 2: (29:27)
Oh, it’s amazing. I love it. Yeah. It was great to see you and I’ll see you in April. It looks amazing. This has been dirty for two days. Look, I mean, it just stays that way. I was like, Oh, you’re really well lit
Speaker 1: (29:42)
When you first came on, I was like, Oh, she’s really, it’s the snow, the snow off the window. It’s making a great, truly great. All right. I’ll talk to you soon. Gina. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: (00:00)
Um, there we go. I’m good. You’re good. I’m good. Okay. Cool. Kimberly, this is so cool. This is Eve Sturgis calling you. Hi. Um, I was, you know, when you contacted me earlier, uh, about the, about the link and I was on a walk, first of all, I’ve never said I couldn’t figure out what was weird about the sentence that I wrote you, but I think I said I’m out walking the baby, like it was adopted. Totally. And like, I was like walking and I was like, something was weird about that. What was it that I, what was odd? That’s what it was. I don’t normally say walking the baby. Um, I didn’t think anything of it seemed normal to me. Okay, cool. Um, and then the other thing that is kind of fun and different about this episode, no matter what it is you are going to talk about, is it, we are going in almost totally blind.
Speaker 1: (00:54)
Like, I don’t really know your story. And if you sent me some details, I gotta be honest. I’m not remembering them right now. So I didn’t send you any, I don’t think, I don’t think you did. Um, but I, there was something about, uh, your like availability and enthusiasm that I was like, yes, let’s just like, get on the phone right now. Like sometimes making plans with people is better last minute than planned ahead. Way ahead. You know what I mean? They’re like, isn’t time to cancel, cancel or think about it too much. So I’m super excited. I do have to do one thing. I tried to use my work charger from my laptop and apparently it’s not doing well. So actually I think I’m just going to send my husband to go get it. Okay. Let’s get him. Let’s get him involved. Yeah. He’s the man of few words. Okay. So if he can be the charger guy, that’s cool.
Speaker 1: (01:54)
See, actually it’s easy to register them to come here rather than try to text and like, yep. Nope. I, I go through that all the time. Like the Dell charger fit the HP and it charges sometimes I’m not confident. Ah, he looks, um, can you get my charger from the rolling cabinet? That’s downstairs with the two doors. Oh, sorry. This charger. It’s inside the cabinet next to the desk. That’s my work charger. And it doesn’t work so well, it’s for Dell, but I tried rolling cabinet two doors. The one that you’ve been asked, we’ll see this happens.
Speaker 1: (02:49)
It’s cool. I’m super flexible. We can make it work no matter what, I’m sure of it. I’m going to make sure I maintain power. Yeah, totally. So, um, okay. Wait. So knowing this, that that’s a dumb sentence. Doesn’t say knowing that I don’t know anything, like starting with the idea that I barely knew anything. Where are you located? That’s just in Kansas. You are in Kansas and what’s it like in Kansas right now? Um, it got really cold today. Oh. Like it was boiling over the weekend and today it is cold and rainy. Oh, how strange. Okay. The high tonight is 49. Oh, that’s really chilly. Yeah. Although I’m okay with it. Yeah. It probably feels like such a relief. Is it, does it, do they think that like the winter has arrived or is it just like a cold front is moving through and you’ll get it in summer.
Speaker 1: (03:47)
It’s just a cold front. It’ll pop back up to the eighties next week. Wow. Weird. Okay. Um, and did you grow up there? I did born and raised. And are you still in the town that you were born and raised in? Well, let me rephrase this. I was kind of raised in two towns, mostly Hutchison, but yes I am. Okay. Oh, you know what else I want to talk about before? Cause that’s almost a perfect place to say like, well, why don’t you explain to me growing up? But, um, I would like to talk about horseshoe Lake.
Speaker 1: (04:28)
That is, that is something I’m in. Um, can you tell me a little bit? We just had our, we just had our state tournament this weekend. Whoa. And how many, okay. Wait, how long have you been in a horseshoe Lake? Let’s see, I started, I want to say two years ago. And, and what, what, how did that get started? Have you always been a horseshoer? No, no. My son started playing with my stepdad and so I started playing and he started like three years ago. I started playing to be able to spend time with my son and my step dad and then my, my dad. And when I say my dad, I mean my birth certificate father sure. From Emporia every other week to play with our league and then the tournament’s because they don’t have league and Emporio. Oh, okay. So this, so it became a thing of, if it became a way for you to spend time with your son, um, and do all three of you play on the same week, your son, your dad and you, and um, my step dad step.
Speaker 1: (05:48)
Okay. And how, how, uh, how are you at at horseshoes? Well, I would say fair, but I had a good weekend. I won first place for state in my division this weekend. Kimberly it’s totally awesome. I don’t know how it happened, you know, so you’re telling me that right now, I am talking to the Kansas state champion for horseshoeing. And you might’ve been, I’m sure it’s an incredibly competitive and intense division. There are a lot of, lot of men and women who play incredibly well. This is amazing. I grew up with, I grew up across the street from a park that has horseshoe pits. Is that what they’re called horseshoes or, um, has a huge where she pits. That’s kind of famous, not famous for, but in town, like people know where that is and what that is in, in my little town that I grew up in. And, um, and then my, I like, it’s a, I have like a real clear memory and sort of like a fond association before shooting with my dad, my birth certificate dad and his brothers and my, and my grandfather. Uh, but I had no idea that it could ever be so big that there were leaks and that there would be tournaments. There is a world horseshoe tournament.
Speaker 2: (07:09)
Wow.
Speaker 1: (07:11)
I won’t go to that, but it exists. Are you going to go to nationals? Does winning in Kansas mean that you go to nationals now? You know, I don’t think there is a nationals of that. People just go state from state to globe. Okay. Somehow I’ve missed it.
Speaker 2: (07:28)
I am kind of oblivious sometimes those, so yeah,
Speaker 1: (07:32)
I think it just depends on like what you’re focused on. Well, I wasn’t even going to play this past weekend. Talking about Oklahoma has a a hundred mile yard sale thing every summer. And I’ve wanted to go for a long time and this is their hundredth year and they just had it and I was going to do that mile. Wait, it’s their hundredth year of the hundred mile yard sale yard sale. Yeah. Different towns, all kinds of sounds so fun. I love his yard sales and thrifting and finding vintage things. I would, you just really, you just gave me a road trip idea. Oh yeah. They do it every year. I’m going to try again next summer because this summer I decided to stay so I could spend time with my dad. Um, but I’m going to, I’m going to make it one year you to make it maybe, maybe if you and I can hold each other accountable.
Speaker 1: (08:34)
Yeah. This is going to be great. Okay. All right. I’m it’s all falling together. Okay. Um, so yes. Okay. So we’ve already even mentioned dads and stepdads and breast certificate dads. Uh, do you, how do you like to tell your story? Like if you were just, do you tell friends or have you told friends, is it something you’re open or do you want me to ask you interview style questions? It’s up to you. I mean, there’s multiple, like I said, I was going to make points, so I made sure I didn’t miss anything. Guess who didn’t do that? I got busy building. Well, I was going to say, you probably are just asking in the glory of being the champion. I’m all over the map. I was building a work bench for the new workstation building myself so that I have a place to set up my cricket and my summation printer and my heat, like a cricket, like crafting like a like, Oh, okay.
Speaker 1: (09:35)
Is that something, is that a pastime that you do for fun or is it a, is it a work or fun thing that I’m going to try to turn into a money thing? Cool. Maybe those are the best kind. Yeah. What kind of stuff do you do? Um, well, I’m kind of, I’m a Jack of all trades, but I did t-shirts, uh, stickers. I’m learning how to do tumblers. A sublimation printer does a different type of tee shirt and tumbler and coasters. And I mean, you can do basically anything with a sublimation printer. Um, and I got a tee shirt, heat press. That was everything. Everything’s nice. And even I build, I build things with wood. Like I build tables and stuff. Um, no you’re crying. Whoa. You’re like, not just crafty. You were like, uh, you, you like, you exemplify the original word of the word. I’m very handy. Yeah. I do electricity. I mean myself, my stepdad’s a carpenter and I learned a lot from him in Pinterest. Yeah. Wow. Put those two together and you’ve got really got something. Okay. Um, how about making topics or what? I can do those too. Hey, maybe we should get together and make some things for everything’s relative podcast. That would be fantastic. Let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about it later talking about it right now, but just like put a pin in it. I’ve already written it down for myself.
Speaker 1: (11:12)
Uh, but I think that’d be really fun. I agree. Okay, cool. I figure out how to make that work. All right. So you tell me, tell me, okay. Where do you like start from? We’ll start from the beginning. The beginning of Kimberly. So all my life, I have been told that I’m okay. My mom has my brother when she was 16 and my dad and her got married. My dad is three years older than her. Um, and then I guess it was so incredibly painful. She made my dad get a vasectomy and then she decided it’s one and done one and yeah. And then she decided that wasn’t it because she wanted me. So she had him have a reversal. How many, sorry, I’m going to interrupt you. Sorry. Um, how many children do you have? I have four. You have four. Did you, do you ever go through that?
Speaker 1: (12:07)
Like when you ha when, well, I’ll just talk about me and you see me, but when I, every, so I have three and every child, um, until this last one, I guess. So I guess it’s only two, but it’s, that’s a lot. Um, when, when they’re born, I’m like, I’m never doing that again. And it’s not, it’s not necessarily from the labor specifically. It’s just from like the whole experience. Like I hate being pregnant. The, I just I’m like, I’m never doing that again. And then there just comes a time where I’m like, Oh, we are really ready. Would love it. I love having children. Let’s have the, um, so I wonder if that’s what happened to your mom. She just like, got to the place where she forgot and the hormones kicked in and she was like, I’m ready. Again. I, it could be who knows what? That woman.
Speaker 1: (12:56)
Okay. So she had a vasectomy reversed. I mean, she didn’t even cheat. She asked, she asked her husband to do that, and that’s what he does to me. He had it reversed. Um, and so my whole life, I was told that I came, I was wanted so badly that my dad had a reversal to have me. And I was told that I was, I cooked two weeks too long. Um, Oh, only because I, we all know the end of the story or the, yes. We all know the twist. Is that a funny that Kimberly was otherwise you were too late two weeks late. No problem. So that’s the story I’ve been told of like my origins and that’s like, Oh cool. You know, I came from this that’s how much I was wanted. Well, then grow up. My parents got divorced two months before I was born. Um, it was, it was a very rough Rocky thing. Um, and growing up every time my mother got into a sticky situation where it wasn’t safe for my brother and I, um, my dad would come get us and we would go live with him until she was in a place that she could take us back. And so we’d be bumped back and forth. Um,
Speaker 3: (14:20)
[inaudible]
Speaker 1: (14:22)
So how, I’m sorry. I have more, I’m just going to do, what’s the age difference between you and your brother? Um, my brother and I are four and a half years apart. Okay. Um, and what was that like for you to go to hop back and forth between your, your mom and your dad’s house? Um, well, I think it was probably easier on my brother than it was on me because when he went to dad’s, he didn’t have to be my babysitter. Um, he got to be
Speaker 4: (14:52)
A kid. Um, but I loved hanging out with dad. If dad went to go do it, he would ask all of us kids if we wanted to go. Cause I have two step siblings. Um, and the only one who ever said yes was me coming into a carpentry now. Well, that was, that’s an electronic that’s that then my dad taught me how to fish play dark. Yeah. I have a lot of dads that you think I’d get used to that by now. Yeah. So he taught me how to do all this other stuff. So I’m very, I went to golf camp one summer because my dad golfed at that time. That’s really sweet. Um, so we went back and forth and through that, I don’t even know how I heard the rumors, but I had heard rumors that dad wasn’t my dad. Um, and you’re like, okay, whatever.
Speaker 4: (15:48)
I just figured that dad’s side of the family. Didn’t like my mom, because their marriage was very Rocky and they were just toxic for each other, I guess. Mmm. And then when I was 12, at that point I was living with my dad and I’d gone to visit my mom and I don’t remember the situation exactly. But I had hurt her somehow. And to hurt me back, she told me that my dad wasn’t my dad. So like emotionally you’d heard her feelings. Oh yeah. Okay. Okay. And so after that visit, I went to my dad and I told him what she had said. And he told me, you know, if I wanted, we could do a DNA test, but it didn’t matter what it said. I was his daughter. Right. So me being the classic over-thinker I am I held on to that all these years because a person who is sure that you were their child, doesn’t say it doesn’t matter what it says. Right. Um, so between that and her actually saying it, it like stuck in my brain. Sure. Of course. So I I’ve been talking about it for years. And then I think it was like six years ago. My stepbrother told me that he actually believed that my dad wasn’t my dad. And he had taken me in because I didn’t have a dad.
Speaker 4: (17:18)
And I also knew that my dad didn’t have a whole lot to do with me until I was about three, but I figured that’s. Cause he’s not a baby and a little kid person. Right. We had this Rocky relationship, but yeah. Visitation can be tangled. Okay. Um, so along comes this year, I had been talking to my dad’s half brother about ancestry. Cause he was sending me pictures of my
Speaker 1: (17:50)
Like great grandparents and like way down the line on my dad’s side. And we got talking about it and somehow I found out he had done ancestry and I have been trying to convince my brother to do it with me and he just wouldn’t do it. Um, he’s got some thing about putting your da DNA out in the world. Oh, okay. He was military and right, right. So knows what they’re doing with the information. Yeah. So I’m like, okay, well here’s my chance.
Speaker 4: (18:21)
So
Speaker 1: (18:23)
Black Friday comes along last November and I convinced my brother to buy it for me for my birthday in December. Oh great. Okay. Um, so the test comes in December. I see it. I look at it. I’m like, okay, well I’m not quite ready. And so I set it on a shelf, Oh the test, the test arrives. And you said, I’m not quite ready yet. And I set it on a shelf. And my second to oldest daughter nagged me and nagged me until I took this silly test. And so I took it like, I think the end of January and it came in the beginning of December.
Speaker 4: (19:04)
Um,
Speaker 1: (19:05)
And I, I want to say that test absolutely grossed me out. I have an issue with saliva. I mean, I don’t think you have an issue. I, I, well, yeah. I mean, I just want to validate your disgust, uh, as someone who’s done the 23 meat thing, I had no idea that that is what is expected of you. I was like, wait, what, I’m sorry. How much into the, what I thought I was gonna, I thought I totally expected it to be a Q-tip thing. Yeah. Me too routine. So anyhow, I do the test. She nags me all the way to the post office and I have to text her and tell her that I put it in the box. What, um, what do you think your daughter was so interested in or excited about? She, my kids have known that it has been a question in my mind for a long time and I just wanted, and the reason I did the test is cause I just wanted to get the question out of my head. Right. I didn’t actually expect it to come back the way it did. I thought that it would just get the question out of my head and I could just be done with it.
Speaker 4: (20:12)
Mmm.
Speaker 1: (20:14)
We all know that’s not how that turned out. Um, right. So it’s becoming a tale as old as time. Yeah. So I’m waiting for the results waiting for the results. And I go to Michael’s craft store with a friend of mine on March 7th and we’re walking around the store, getting an invitation stuff for her wedding and that magical email.
Speaker 4: (20:38)
And
Speaker 1: (20:40)
I open it up as she’s looking at all kinds of stamps stuff and I’m reading it. I really love that section. Oh, me too.
Speaker 2: (20:48)
I’m reading it. And I’m looking for anything that says the last name Fox. Um, and there was absolutely nothing. Like I saw my mom’s family and so I’m still scrolling and then I’m my friend’s like, well, are you okay? I’m like, yeah, I’m fine. I’m fine. We can keep looking. I said, I’m just going to multitask. I keep looking. So I start messaging my uncle and I’m like, okay, well I got my results. This is what they say.
Speaker 1: (21:14)
Imagine any of these people and you know,
Speaker 2: (21:17)
I didn’t. And my husband and I were going to my friend’s house that evening for dinner with her and her husband or I guess fiance. Um, and we were drinking.
Speaker 1: (21:27)
Did your uncle know about this possibility? No.
Speaker 2: (21:30)
Okay. Him and my dad aren’t close. Okay. Um, and we were, we went over there and ate dinner and we were playing a card game and everything. And the whole time I’m on my phone messaging back and forth with my uncle and I’m holding it together, you know, I’m, I’m in the investigative mode and we leave, I go home, I go to bed. I’m, I’m still just, you know, thinking about it. And the next day I called my dad’s, well, it’s his cousin, but she’s like an aunt to me.
Speaker 1: (22:06)
Yeah. Yeah. We have those. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (22:09)
And I called her because at that point I’m like, well, I, it, it is what it is. This is what it is. And when I called her, cause I needed to know how she thought he would react. That’s when I, yeah. That’s when I finally broke. Um, that’s when there was no more holding it together.
Speaker 1: (22:32)
Mmm.
Speaker 2: (22:32)
That was on March 7th is when I got the results in. And that would have been a Saturday. I called my cousin, my aunt on Sunday and I happened to be going to Emporio for work or that direction, at least on Monday. And I had already planned on stopping to see my dad. And it wasn’t something I wanted to talk to him about over the phone.
Speaker 1: (22:56)
Hmm.
Speaker 2: (22:58)
Yeah. I went there, I talked to him and
Speaker 1: (23:03)
He actually,
Speaker 2: (23:04)
I ordered an ancestry kit that day.
Speaker 1: (23:06)
Hmm. Well, wait a minute. What is your, what did your aunt predict? Did she have said that he would love me no matter what?
Speaker 2: (23:14)
Um, and that there’s no way I can get rid of them. They’re my family.
Speaker 1: (23:20)
Oh, okay. Okay. That’s nice. All right. But she, okay. Okay. Yeah,
Speaker 2: (23:24)
That, it, it wouldn’t matter to my dad. Um, so I go and talk to him and I tell him, and I’m a mess, absolute mess. And at this point, all I know is what the DNA results have said. I haven’t figured anything out yet. And he tells me
Speaker 1: (23:43)
Focused on what you’re focused on. It’s not saying
Speaker 4: (23:46)
Right now. Yes, exactly. So we go to dinner and at one point he’s like, well, when I was a baby, I had a complete blood transfusion. Maybe that did something. I’m trying to think of where I don’t think it works that way, but okay. Um, and then at dinner he tells me that if he had to, if he was a betting person, he would guess it was this red-headed sheriff and Beaver, Oklahoma. I’m like, okay. The parents liked them already. So apparently my, uh, my mom wasn’t and we all knew this. My mom wasn’t incredibly faithful, but dad didn’t have proof. Um, and assumptions. So anyhow, I talked to him, I feel a little bit better cause I’ve talked to him and I start digging. Like there was one night that I stayed up with my friend that was with me when I got the results. And we did like this triangulation chart trying to figure it out and through the mix of figuring everything out. I contacted one of the people in there that said that they were my second cousin. She helped a lot. Um, and I had it narrowed down to a set of brothers. So it’s so often that people come up with like brothers or like this team, this team of men.
Speaker 4: (25:06)
Um, and I guess I kinda, I skipped the part here because this is March. I hadn’t spoken to my mother since my birthday in December. Okay. Um, so it is, by the time I had it narrowed down to the two brothers, it was like a week and a half after I got the results. And I’m like driving around town, stocking my mom’s house, trying to make myself stop because it really didn’t want to talk to her, but it was necessary. Um, so I finally, I, and through one of my stalking drives, I had called my dad and I had a, uh, he asked me to leave well, enough alone. I don’t have that. I don’t have that capability. I am incapable of this. Right. So I ended up stopping and I go there and I probably surprised her by just walking in the house. It had been, you know, four and a half months.
Speaker 4: (26:08)
And I sit there for a moment, do a little small talk. And then I tell her that, you know, I took the test and that the results say that dad is at my dad and she says, that’s impossible. It’s wrong? I said, no, it’s not. And then I started telling her the names that were on it and all of a sudden she gets real quiet. She covers her eyes and she spits out a name, one of the two brothers. Oh my gosh. So it confirmed for me and the cousin on the ancestry that I’d been working for. And I talked to her quite a bit and her dad is my biological dad’s first cousin. Um, okay. She ended up giving me his phone number because I didn’t, I felt obligated to let them know I exist. Um, and then medical history, of course that’s a given. Um, but I didn’t have any plans past that. Um, can you tell me, can you tell me a little bit more about the feeling of obligation that he should know you exist?
Speaker 4: (27:26)
Whale? Here’s another fun snippet. Okay. My oldest, who is, she’ll be 18 in a couple of months, um, the person on her birth certificate, we got together when I was three months pregnant with her. And I did not tell her about who her biological father is. She didn’t know there was somebody else until she was 10. Um, and I just, Kimberly this does get layered quickly. So I walked with that, that guilt and that for 10 years as a pit. Um, and you know, I just feel like everybody should know who they’re connected to. Um, I didn’t intend to have a relationship with him, but I felt like he should know this year with your biological father and he could do whatever he wanted with it. Um, and so, you know, she gave me her phone number and I didn’t want to accidentally reach his wife.
Speaker 4: (28:41)
Sure. Um, because if it, if he was going to tell her that was, that was up to him. That was not up to me. Um, and also through all this, I realize he’s 13 years older than my mom. And so, so who knows who’s involved? Yes. So I, yeah, so I, first thing I did was I was on my way to see my dad one weekend. Um, it would’ve been like the 21st of March and I called and rang, rang, and then went to voicemail and I hung up and I, he like, I, I couldn’t breathe. I, yeah, that panic, you feel like, Oh my goodness, what did they actually answer? Right. So he didn’t, I really don’t want this to work. So I ended up sending a text and that says, you know, my name is Kimberly. You used to know my parents. So, and so once upon a time, I’d like to have a conversation with you about my mom and I wait, I wait, I don’t get a response. So about maybe a week later, I was, I don’t think
Speaker 1: (30:11)
You could get a text like that and not respond a week. That’s a long time to get a goodbye. I got a text like that. I would be like, I would, that’s so cryptic. Okay.
Speaker 4: (30:22)
Probably he knew I’ll get to that. Sorry. Later a week later, I’m like, okay, I’m going to call one more time. I’m going to leave a voicemail. And if he doesn’t contact me back, I have filled my obligation. So I, I call, I leave a voicemail that basically says the same thing as the text. And I leave it the next morning at 8:00 AM. I get a text message from him that says, um, asks if I’m, uh, if I’m available for a phone call. So like, I go back into that. I can’t breathe mode. Right. Um, and I was like, okay. Yeah, yeah, I good. Yeah. Cool. So we talked for probably like an hour maybe. And he said that as soon as he saw my text, he knew exactly what it was about. Oh, sure.
Speaker 1: (31:35)
Sure. Of course. Okay. I was imagining that he didn’t know. And so I was putting myself in his shoes as somebody who didn’t know.
Speaker 4: (31:43)
So obviously if okay. Yeah. I know exactly what it was about. Um, and I think he was kind of hoping, I, I just wouldn’t go back. Maybe it would go away to see also, I mean, everybody is hoping in these situations, he also immediately deleted the text. I didn’t think about the fact that other people look at their spouses phones. So I don’t ever look at mine. My husband doesn’t look at my phone. I don’t look at his. Um, but yeah, we don’t really, we don’t really,
Speaker 1: (32:17)
I guess things could pop up in a visible way, but we don’t, we’re not, we’re not a couple of things.
Speaker 4: (32:22)
Yeah. But I mean, they’re, they’re an older couple. Um, and so I think that, like, she probably helps some technology here and there. Sure. Actually also I’ve also been like
Speaker 1: (32:33)
Driving or doing something and been like, Hey, can you check, can you check my phone and do this and that? Yeah.
Speaker 4: (32:41)
Yeah.
Speaker 1: (32:45)
Sorry. I have my husband one second.
Speaker 4: (32:52)
Smashed it. How is it? Okay. I think we might need to bring her in here. Let me see it. I’ve had this happen before it’s gonna hurt. Okay. Um,
Speaker 1: (33:27)
Yeah, let let’s, um, I’m I heard all that and I’m happy to just sit here or get off the phone. Give me one second to look at this. Really. I am in no rush. Like there’s no urgency here. Alright.
Speaker 4: (33:56)
Okay.
Speaker 1: (33:59)
A nightmare broken toe. I mean, broken or, or heavily bruised toes or Knight are terrible.
Speaker 4: (34:07)
Somehow.
Speaker 1: (34:10)
How old is she?
Speaker 4: (34:11)
She is eight
Speaker 1: (34:14)
Youngest. Well, you can tell her if it helps that I dropped a huge bottle of olive oil on my toast once. And, um, and it hurt as an adult. I did that and it, it really did hurt so bad. I don’t know how or why that would help other than to just say that other people drops up on their toes too. And it does hurt. Well, it probably didn’t help any that or dad was talking about drilling a hole. I liked his thinking, but yeah, I would, I would be pretty freaked out.
Speaker 4: (35:02)
Um, that one caught me off guard.
Speaker 1: (35:07)
Where was I? Oh yeah. I called him. He called me to talk to you for about an hour. And he said he deleted the text immediately. Yes. Um, so I find out that he has been married to the same woman, 45 years, this, this year. Um, they have three daughters all older than me. Um, the youngest is
Speaker 4: (35:32)
Year and a half older to me. Okay. Um, and you know, he tells me like what he did for a living. It just tells me about himself and his family. Um, when I asked him about medical stuff, like if there’s any medical issues, his, his response was longevity. Oh, that’s a problem, I guess, I guess, um, quality problems. And as he’s talking to me, he’s very, um, I don’t want to, I don’t know how to explain it. Like, okay. When I get nervous, I make bad jokes. Huh? I, and I’m horrible about it. It was one of the things that my ex husband hated about me, but I couldn’t help it. I do. Yeah, no, I do that too. He did the exact same thing. Oh. Like, um, at one point he, cause I told him I have children at one point and he’s like, well, so tell me about my grandchildren.
Speaker 4: (36:40)
And then he goes, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t say that. Right. I mean, it’s just trying to like lighten it up a little and that’s what I do when I’m joking. I’m trying to lighten it up. But it was so weird to hear somebody else do it because nobody else in my family does that. Um, so we have that conversation and he, during the conversation, it kind of sounds like, like, I wasn’t sure if he was going to tell his wife. Yeah. Um, so we finished that conversation and that evening I was talking to my husband and I was like, well, if he tells her, this will tell me what kind of person he is.
Speaker 4: (37:26)
Um, and I’d say about, and I was perfectly fine at that point. Like he could have never spoken to me again and I’d have been fine. You feel fine? I was okay. I knew what, what I needed to know. I had fulfilled my obligation. Um, so about a week later, his wife messages me on Facebook messenger and duet she’s hip. Yes. Yes. She’s pretty amazing. So she messages me and tells me that they’re willing to open their Facebook up for a little bit. She doesn’t know how long so that I can see pictures of the family. And I told her, yeah. I told her at that point that, um, I can’t add them to my Facebook. I’m not comfortable with that, that I would make my Facebook public so they could look at mine, but I couldn’t add them to my Facebook. And then I got to talking to her and having, yeah. Holding conversation with her. And next thing I know this same day, the youngest of the three sisters reaches out to me. Cause she got her mission from her parents to reach out to me. Oh, and here here’s a part. This is a part you’ll like all of their names. All three of them, their names starts with K
Speaker 1: (38:56)
No. Yup. Come on. Yep. None of them are named Kim.
Speaker 4: (39:03)
No. Okay. They actually like the name Kimberly, but they’ve never named one of them. Kimberly. Cause people shorten it. Um, I don’t go by Kim. I go by Kimberly because my mom has always told me that every Kim, she has ever known as been a insert word. Um, and so whenever she’s mad at me, she calls me Kim.
Speaker 1: (39:26)
Oh, I go by Kimberly.
Speaker 4: (39:32)
So luckily nobody has my name. Um,
Speaker 1: (39:35)
Still, I mean, it doesn’t even need to be the K is just yep. That takes effort to do three, to do three Ks
Speaker 4: (39:46)
Total. Yeah. Yeah. But my grandma named me, which is interesting. Hmm. It’s just purely coincidental I guess. Or there’s something I’m not told. So anyhow,
Speaker 1: (39:59)
I had a one in 26 chance. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: (40:02)
Yeah, exactly. Um, so the sisters messaged me and I ended up getting on a group chat with the three sisters, said group chat, turns into a family chat and it’s in the middle of COVID. We have to do all day
Speaker 1: (40:19)
Recently. This is 2020. Okay.
Speaker 4: (40:23)
Um, yesterday was six months since I got my results. Oh my gosh. Okay. Which I didn’t, I didn’t realize Robin messaged me on Marco polo and told me which I think I would have been. Okay. Not realizing that. Um, because it kind of made me get in my head a little bit. Um, but that’s okay. We got past, so anyhow, it turns into this big family chat and COBIT is going on. So all we have to do is this to each other, which I think covert was kind of a blessing. Yeah. Um, because there was no need to rush meeting each other or anything. We did some zoom calls, um, with everybody. Um, but mostly it was just this family chat. I’m a, I’m an open book. If you ask a question I’m I’m most likely gonna answer it. I apparently don’t have boundaries.
Speaker 1: (41:27)
That’s not the same as not having any boundaries. I know what you mean.
Speaker 4: (41:32)
Um, so we spent, you know, probably let’s see, they messaged me very beginning, April a good month and a half before we met. And how we met was we decided to get a Airbnb at like a CA a cabin, you know? And it started out with everybody, bring in their whole family and mind you, all three of the daughters are married and they have children. So a lot of people, a lot of people and I’m like, um, I slowly whittled it down to like just husbands. And then I whittled it down to just us. I did it slowly. Cause I, I, that was too much for me. Yeah. And that was a lot. I didn’t want to take anybody with me either. I wanted to do it on my own. Um, luckily I had met the youngest daughter the weekend before. Cause we live in the same state.
Speaker 4: (42:39)
We live like a half hours from each other and we met in the middle and um, we, I think we went to a park and just talked for probably two hours. However, had I not done that when I pulled up to this cabin, I think I would’ve just drove off. Oh. Because I pull up and I’m sitting there and I made sure to park in the escape, parking spot. Good call. Just in case everybody else. Everybody else was already there. Yeah. Plan. Expect the best plan for the worst. Yeah, exactly. Sure. Um, so I pull up and I’m just sitting there staring at this cabin and they’re met, they messaged me on the messenger and I am not, I haven’t answered. So they ended up sending the daughter out that I had met. Um, and she came out and I started crying because it was just so much, you know, just overwhelmed. But she managed to kind of talk me out of the car and you’re, and you are totally alone. Your husband wasn’t with, you know? Yeah. I I’m, I prefer to do things like that alone.
Speaker 4: (43:59)
No, I hear you. I hear you. I hear you. Um, I it’s like he doesn’t understand. I mean, he, he tries to be as comforting as possibly can be sure. But I mean, he didn’t get it. You really can’t unless you’re in this position. Right. Um, so you know, we go, we stay the weekend, everything goes wonderfully and everything has gone wonderfully since this family is amazing. Oh, there is a piece of the story I forgot. Okay. Wait, before you tell me the piece of the story, you forgot. I just, I, you, and you probably said this at the, at the rental, at the Airbnb cabin, it was the three sisters and their spouses. And then also no, just the three sisters and the parents and the parents. Okay. So your biological dad and his wife were there. Okay. Yes. Okay. Okay. Okay. And it went wonderfully. Okay. And then there’s an element you’re going to tell me, you forgot. So here’s the fun element. I forgot. Okay. The end of, okay.
Speaker 4: (45:11)
My biological father and my dad were friends. He is actually, my biological dad is actually the first cousin to, he was married. His first cousin was married to my dad’s sister. Got us how they met. So what was my first cousins are, I guess, so family, but anyhow. And my dad worked with him for a little, for him for a little while too. So they were friends. My dad was, my parents were married and him and his wife were married. So, you know, I came out of complete and total deception, which that is something I struggle with.
Speaker 5: (46:01)
Okay.
Speaker 4: (46:02)
So I want to ask you about that in a minute, but okay. So anyhow, the weekend goes well. Um, I think we got together. I think we’ve gotten together at least once a month since may. Um, I took my kids with me in June at the end of June, I think. Was it June? Yeah, it was, it was in June. Um, and then we went there for July 4th. My husband went with me that time. Um, and then this, not this past weekend, but the weekend before, um, all of them drove an hour from Hutchison because I was on call for work and couldn’t go further than an hour away cause they live in Oklahoma and luckily right by the border. But so they all drove and we met in Pratt. Was it prep or did they meet anyhow, we met into another town. It was a place that was not here.
Speaker 4: (47:12)
Um, and did a, kind of like a barbecue thing at a park and September and October birthdays. Um, it sounds really fun. It was a lot of fun and you know, I’ve met, Oh, I have a lot nieces and nephews now and sure. Um, and is everybody, um, are you let’s see it’s everybody comfortable? Yeah. Or like, are they open about like this is auntie Kimberly? Yes. Okay. So, okay. They are all absolutely amazing. Hmm. I’m pretty sure their mom is a Saint and yeah. Sometimes I’d like her to be my mommy too, because she’s just, she’s just so sweet and accepting. And I don’t know how she does it because I don’t know if I could be that accepting. I don’t know if I could look at that person and not just see the pain.
Speaker 4: (48:19)
Um, but she does it. Hmm. And do you know, um, their version of events? Did she, she, she did not. She did not know about you until he did not. He didn’t either. Okay. Apparently my mom told him that she was already pregnant. Okay. Um, and when he told his wife, he, she actually contacted my mom and talk to her on the phone, started with messenger and talked to her on the phone and was very cold. Yes, it was right. It was right before she messaged me the first time. Wow. Um, cause she wanted to make sure that stories lined up. No. Okay. And I can respect that.
Speaker 4: (49:14)
Respect. My heart kind of goes out to her. Yeah. That’s fair. Um, now mind you through this at the very beginning, when I was driving and had called him the first time and I was driving to go see my dad, my dad ghosted me that weekend. I was supposed to spend the weekend with him and he completely ghosted me. So I drive the two hours important to go see him. I go to my aunt’s house first. I messaged him and he, he said something about how I shouldn’t have traveled because of COVID we weren’t locked down yet. Mind you. Um, and I was like, well, you knew what was coming. And I thought he was joking with me and I wait until about 10 o’clock and he never contacted me again. And so I just turned around, came home. Um, is that something he’s ever done before? Nope. Never. He was not in a good place mentally because of all of this. Right. And he told me he, he messed, he messaged me like a week later and apologize to me and told me that he was just in a really dark place.
Speaker 1: (50:32)
You hear that? Speaking of dark place, what does he try to do to her? Why do I feel like he’s still trying to drill a hole, but is there ice? Can we just, can we just do an ice pack One second. Take your time.
Speaker 6: (50:58)
[inaudible] okay. I’m here.
Speaker 1: (52:34)
Do you think it’s possible for me to switch to my phone? It’s not. Um, I’ll just take the computer with me. It’s fine. Only because this program does not work on phones. Ah, well, it’s a good thing. I tried with the computer person. Yeah. Um, I am going to mute myself as I walk through my crime. Now what’s her name? Ashton? Aspen. Aspen. Oh, like the mountains. Okay. Well yeah, no, I have a, I have an Ottoman, a Lilly, so I couldn’t name her something like Sarah? No, that’s I have a Lilly. Oh, how do you spell it? L I L Y. Oh, okay.
Speaker 4: (53:26)
You have more else than me? L I L L I E. Oh, that’s cute. I like that. And then, and then, but my brother, his two kids are, are both trees as well. They’re both out there, Aldon and Juniper. So we’re clearly on the same kind of wavelength. Okay. So Stepping outside, Hey, it’s raining as California is California completely burns right now. I don’t watch the news. Oh yeah. That’s okay. I mean, it’s just, what’s happening every year is happening. Well, I’m a social worker, so I don’t like the news because it’s always so sad. And I already deal with that. Here you take a break. Okay. So my dad ghosted me that weekend. Messaged me apologize. Um, and you know, I haven’t admitted that it’s, this has been harder on him than he was letting on.
Speaker 4: (54:51)
I knew it would be because my dad isn’t like one of those, I’m going to talk about my feelings. I’d rather just push it under the rug. And we’re just like, never going to talk about this again. Right. But I knew he wouldn’t tell me I’m not completely. Right. So I went ahead during the month and a half before I met them, I went ahead and got on Samantha depressants. Okay. So that, because I didn’t want to spiral before I could catch it. Totally. Because you know, I have a family and I kinda need to be available for that. And so I was just saying, it’s so funny. Cause I’m like, obviously you’re a social worker therapist. I mean, 100% to me, I want to be.
Speaker 4: (55:56)
And I wish that more people would recognize their resource availability like that. Yes. Um, so I had gotten on antidepressants and everything and I, it wasn’t long after I met them for the first time. And I had seen my dad a few times in between all of this. Um, and every time I saw my dad, I felt guilty because I was talking to them as well. But my dad wasn’t talking to me about any of this. Neither of my parents were, and the only ones who were asking me, how I was doing was these new parents. And I’m like, this isn’t, this isn’t right. And so there was one day finally that I went to my mom because my dad was there because when my dad comes to town for horseshoes, he stays the weekend and he stays at my mom’s house with my mom and my stepdad. It’s very weird dynamics. I’m sure. Well, they didn’t get along when I was a kid, they wouldn’t tell us an adult.
Speaker 4: (57:07)
Yeah. Like right now that my mom and my dad are on vacation together in Colorado, they left today. My stepdad is at home. Um, my dad is married and has been for almost 35 years for 30 years, I guess. So. Yeah. I mean, sure. They’re going to see my brother. Yeah, sure. That’s weird. Like it’s weird on the surface level, but it’s not weird if you start to accept the complexities of human relationship. Like my ex husband and I, my three oldest are with him and him and I get along beautifully. We’re really good friends. We were just horrible. Married people. Yeah. I think that, that, I think, I think that happens. I know that happens. I don’t think that happens. I know that happens. Yeah. So anyhow, my dad was there when we can. And I’m like, you know what? I’m just going to bite the bullet here. And I go over there and both of my parents are sitting on the couch. I wait for my stepdad to leave the room because I don’t want to drag him into any more than he has to be core guy. And I started talking to the both of them
Speaker 6: (58:21)
And my mother sat there and looked
Speaker 4: (58:24)
100% straight ahead. Did not say a word. Um, but I told them that, you know, nobody, neither of my parents have asked me how I am. I said, I find that wrong. And I explained to them how I am. And I told them I’m not okay. I’m never going to be okay. And where everybody says, nothing has changed. No nothing has changed. Everything has changed was like, I am no longer just like Andrew, which is my brother. Um, you know, I’m different now. I’m different. Now. I was like, and the fact that nobody’s talking to me does not help me.
Speaker 4: (59:12)
Um, so this opened up conversation for my dad. I guess he was waiting for me to come to him, which 100% sounds like him. Okay. All right. Yeah. So I’ve, I’ve talked to my dad. Like I went and had breakfast with him this morning cause he was here for the state tournament and then he left with my mom today. I go to Colorado and you know, I found out little bits and pieces of information. Like I read my baby book recently again. And my mom had wrote a letter when I was three to me. And it talked a lot about my birth and how my dad was with me or wasn’t. And so I’m like, I feel like I need to ask questions. Most people don’t get that opportunity because somebody passing away for me, everybody’s alive and yeah, I hear you so same boat. I bit the bullet this morning and I talked to him about it and I find out that when my mom this morning, this morning, this morning, Tuesday.
Speaker 4: (01:00:24)
Okay. You’re like, Holy smokes, Kimberly. Okay. Just keep asking questions as they come because you know, there’s gonna come a point. I don’t have that opportunity. Yeah, absolutely. Um, and my dad will talk to me. My mother will not, but my dad will nor do I really want to talk to her. Um, and he told me that when I was born, he really didn’t think I was his. Um, but my mom insisted that I was in, shoved it down his throat so much that at a certain point, he’s just like, okay. And I was cute to me. I was cute and adorable. Um, but so, you know, he just accepted me and that part where my stepbrother said that, um, I didn’t have a dad. So my dad took me in, well, I guess a few weeks ago I had gone to Emporia and my dad left a little bit early to go fishing. And so I talked to my step mom and to see how he really is, you know? And I was telling her what my stepbrother told me. And she’s like, well, he probably overheard conversation. And I lived there and I’m driving home. And I’m like, this was a big enough thing that there were conversations. Right? Like it was just openly talked about in the home. Yeah. So it just made me really think who, what, and nobody wanted to tell me, I could understand my dad not telling me because that meant he might lose me.
Speaker 4: (01:02:06)
I’m not as forgiving with my mom, but there was a whole lot of there’s a whole lot of other otherness to go with that. Somebody we would call a piece of work. Yes,
Speaker 6: (01:02:22)
Yes.
Speaker 4: (01:02:24)
Um, cause I mean, we already, weren’t talking, this is what made me talk to her. Um, and I love my mom. I don’t condemn her for what took place 37 years ago. I do condemn her for using it to hurt me when it was 12. And it turned out to be true. I just struggle with that. I do struggle with her lack of acceptance of it now and kind of just acting like I shouldn’t, my grandmother told me that this guy is no different than a sperm donor. And then tried to say yeah, somewhere in there. Um, I said that my dad is always going to be my dad. And she’s like, well for how long and that right there for me hit where it hurt because one of my biggest fears is losing my dad. Right. Which is why I talked to him about everything. I’m like, I put up a post on Facebook about me getting first place in horseshoes. Oh, I can’t even tell you that part yet. Cause there’s a part of missed I haven’t talked about yet.
Speaker 6: (01:03:39)
Yeah.
Speaker 4: (01:03:42)
Okay. So, um, after I came out of the woodwork, if I hadn’t done 23 and me, it would have led me directly to them because they had done, they had done it. Right. But I did ancestry, but one of the daughters had not done anything. So she decided to do ancestry. So when she gets her results back, um, as four daughters get on zoom to look at them together and they’re looking at it, they look at it and they see this, this person marked as a second cousin and they’re like, who’s this? And I had noticed this person and I had noticed that he was connected to the two people that I am. And it was an aunt from one side of the family or a great aunt from one side of the family and a great aunt from the other side of the family, which is how I narrowed it down to the two brothers. Right. Um, and, but I, that’s not what I was looking for. So I didn’t look into it. Right. There’s a brother. It was his kid.
Speaker 4: (01:04:57)
No, he is. He just turned 46. And there were a lot of conversations about whether or not to reach out to him and myself and my biological dad, father, I haven’t decided what to call him. Um, Jesus said to leave it be, if he’s not looking, leave him alone because it was his son’s DNA. Not, and because I know how much it can rock your world, but my daughters so badly wanted to reach out to him. And somewhere along the line they won. And then at the, like when they messaged him, I got drug into the loop at the very last second. And I’m like, what’s happening here?
Speaker 4: (01:05:53)
And I’ll go into his house. He actually lives in the same town as one of the sisters. Of course. I mean, it’s weird all the time. Yeah. He works at a state all the time. So anyhow, they reach out to him and I guess he has always known that he didn’t know who his father was and his mom had given him some other name and he was trying to look up this person. And for him, this is, he found his, he found his path. It’s a joyous occasion. Yeah. The barbecue thing that we did the weekend for last, his birthday is one of the ones that was celebrated. And the parents gave him 46 years worth of birthday cards. Oh. And individual message into each one. Um, like it wasn’t in my gift and it was overwhelming for me. I know. I’m like, that’s really overwhelming. Um, but he, you know, he’s just elated. So back to now I can go back to where I was. Um, I posted the thing on Facebook and he put a post up there that said, that’s my sister. And then put like a little picture that says like number one, the first night, first I tried to hide it. And then I realized that only hides it from me. Right.
Speaker 4: (01:07:27)
So I didn’t know what to do because my mom’s family, my mom and my grandma are really worried about this family finding out. Oh, okay. Um, my dad, I wasn’t sure where he stood. So I talked to my dad about it at breakfast and I said, okay, this is what’s happened. This is where I’m at. What do I do? He’s like, well, do you not? He’s like, well it depends. Or do you want to have a relationship with him? I was like, well, I talked to him all the time and he’s like, okay, then what’s your problem. I said, mom and grandma, I said, and then there’s your family. He’s like my family to just think it’s a really good friend of yours or it doesn’t right. They don’t, they don’t care. They’re just, they’re not judgemental like that. They don’t care. And he’s like, you know what? Don’t worry about your mom’s family. You’re comfortable. You do. You and your dad, your dad is so cool. I love my dad. My dad’s amazing. Um, he’s really great. There is one very, very important person I have not talked about yet. Okay. My brother. Yeah. Um, Kim and I, yes, he is. And has always been my rock. Um, and you know, obviously he’s like the first person I called. Um, and he has done his best,
Speaker 7: (01:08:55)
Just comforting,
Speaker 4: (01:08:56)
But he, you know, he’s like, well, me, I think I would have just left it alone. I’m like, you don’t know that until you’re there and say, wait, you’re not in it. Well, and you know, here I have ended up with this just incredibly nice welcoming family. Um, my sister in law tells me that she thinks that my brother’s a little jealous of that. Oh yeah. Totally makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. And I think he’s worried about being replaced, but everybody, everybody knows he’s not replaceable. Right. I mean, that’s my big brother. He half raised me already. You’ve just given us just like the, you know, the tip of the iceberg. But if you, he, you clearly both went through a childhood together that probably bring you either bring you together or split you apart permanently. So if you’re together, you must be together tight. Yes. And you know, this is the first thing that had to do with our family that just, I am experiencing and right. That is such an absolute foreign feeling.
Speaker 4: (01:10:17)
Um, Oh yeah. Yeah. And of course he doesn’t know, he doesn’t really know what to say to me, but he does his best. Um, and he has to do a lot of navigating between my mom and me so interesting. My brother does too. I mean, he just has to help and doesn’t have to help, but he he’s. Yeah. He’s stuck in an unplanned or like unwittingly ambassadorship that, um, but yeah, I’m sure it’s confusing. We’re, he’s lucky. He’s in Colorado. I’m here with her and mine is the opposite. My brother is near my parents. And so that’s why it’s also, how’d you make that happen?
Speaker 4: (01:11:05)
I got out of there. I got out of there a long time ago, so they’re nearby. So they’re close. So it’s more precarious is more precarious for him. And yet he also, I think doesn’t even have the expanse of empathy for any, cause it’s not his story. It’s not his situation. Yeah. Well like they, the new family has talked about meeting my brother and we had my daughter’s graduation party cause she graduated a year. She had a baby at 16 and she ended up graduating a year early and she started college. This what last month? Um, so we have a graduation party.
Speaker 4: (01:11:46)
I have a 17 year old, so I wanted to be like, so I wanted to connect about that later, but great. She is, she is, um, and two of my sisters came to the party. Um, my mom and my grandma kinda got disinvited. Um, so there was nobody from my maternal side there. Um, my dad couldn’t make it. Um, but my brother was here, my brother and my sister in law. So he met both of them. Um, and he has them on Facebook now and they’ll comment on stuff here and there. Um, and I was really, really worried about that. Like I didn’t want, I was supposed to take, I was getting ready to take a shower. Cause I was, of course we’re going behind because that’s what I do. And he showed up at the door and I’m like, nevermind.
Speaker 4: (01:12:41)
But they ended up, they were sitting in the living room and my brother is a very blunt person. Um, like I say, I have no back. He really has no boundaries and a filter. Um, he’s also ex-military. And so, uh, you can imagine that filter and again, asking some of the tough questions, like, you know, how did they feel about it? And they are in a more similar position, Andrew and them, they are than I am with any of them. And so I said, I’m gonna leave you guys won’t talk. And I went outside because I felt like they would be able to speak more openly without me standing there. It’s totally possible. Yeah. That’s actually, that’s really open minded or the other one open-hearted astute. I just want everybody to get along. Um, I want the important people in my life to get along. Um, the agreement I made with my dad is that I would never put him and my biological dad in the same room. That’s an agreement we made. Oh wow. Okay. I can understand.
Speaker 4: (01:14:00)
He asked for, okay, because you know, he’s today. He said what it was was a 36 year old, a 36 year old knife in his back. Yeah, because he had considered this individual, his friend. Yeah. No, it’s I’m I am not questioning your dance. And I requested, um, and when I contacted my wife, my biological dad for the first time he told me he would completely understand if my dad wanted to come down there and shoot him, shoot him. And he apologized to me multiple times. Um, but my dad has also told me that this guy he’s good people. Right. He said, despite this they’re good people. Well, it sounds like your dad and you, and a lot of these people, um, are like really able to understand the way that that nothing is, is all or nothing. Oh yeah. Black or white. And they do, you can hold, you can hold all sorts of things at the same time. Well, my grandson’s birthday is coming up and my daughter invited my dad and the new parents and I’m like, Oh, you can’t do that on them.
Speaker 4: (01:15:26)
So I contacted my, I call her my bonus mom. Now I contacted her and I told her what the deal was. And she said, well, you just let us know if your dad’s going to be there. We won’t go. If he isn’t going to be able to make it, we’ll try to make it. She’s like, whatever makes you comfortable. Um, like they’re just very, very welcoming. He is struggling with telling his family. He stole a few of his family members. Um, but I don’t think he told any of his friends. They have a very tight knit community, especially with their church.
Speaker 4: (01:16:11)
And she asked me once when I went down there, if it bothered me that he hadn’t told all these people and it doesn’t bother me at all, I think that that’s something he should do on his own time. It does bother his daughter, two of his daughters, at least, because as long as he’s not telling people, they have to keep the secret and think about secrets. Yeah. And I can understand, not wanting to keep that cause they’re excited. Right. The brother, it’s not a big deal because he came before his wife. I didn’t know. Um, and so that one’s not so much a big deal that’s explained to me. Right. I did. However, the other day, cause I had talked to one of my sisters about it and I, I had told her how I felt after, um, I told my daughter the truth and just having that weight lifted off of me.
Speaker 4: (01:17:21)
Um, even though it was incredibly painful to tell her, um, I, she and I, I was telling her all this and she’s like, you need to tell my dad that. But of course she says, dad, um, I, it took me a few weeks, but you don’t have Marco polo is yeah. We talk on Marco polo all the time too. And we have this family messenger group. Um, but so the other day I was driving in, I was thinking about it and I went ahead and messaged them and explained it all to him. And I told him, I was like, I hope I’m not overstepping. Um, I was like, but you know, she asked me to share this with you. So I am and you know, deal with it, what you will. And he didn’t respond to it, but he did have his wife listened to it. Um, which kind of, I guess kind of surprised her. And so she messaged me or messaged me and told me, um,
Speaker 8: (01:18:31)
Okay,
Speaker 4: (01:18:31)
That it opened up a door of conversation about it and that she appreciated me reaching out. Okay. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. You needed I’m all over the map. No, no, no, no, no. It’s okay. But your, so your daughter said, you need to tell, like, who did you tell what? So I was talking to their daughter about me telling my daughter the truth about her origins and about how it felt and how as a mom, as a mother parents today, like, I’m going to tell you the truth of this and got it. Okay. Yeah. And then that daughter, who is your sister said, would you please tell our biological dad that yes. Got it about the relief and the truth and that you are all experiencing these things in different ways. Okay. Got it. Um, so I did that. He didn’t respond. He still hasn’t responded, which is fine. I didn’t, I didn’t require a response. Um, but his wife did and I was really hoping I wasn’t stepping on toes. So, uh, it opened the car with the door for conversation for them. I don’t know where they went with it, but with that helped. Fantastic. Um, and another door that got opened because of this whole thing is I hadn’t
Speaker 2: (01:20:08)
Let my daughter meet her biological dad yet. I wanted her to wait until she was 18. But because this situation arose and I had done it, I couldn’t be a hypocrite. Hmm. And so I asked her if she wanted to meet him and she said, yes, I said, okay, I’m willing to do this, but you have to talk to your dad first because she had never held a conversation with her dad about her biological dad. Right. Like, Oh no. She knew, he knew, they just didn’t talk about it. It makes sense on it. The next day they went to dinner and she talked to him. And, and how old was she at this time? 17. Yup. Okay. Yup. This was a couple months ago, three months ago, four months ago, something like that. And so I went ahead and got, and got ahold of him. Now, mind you, he had been in prison for eight years.
Speaker 2: (01:21:10)
So there was an eight year gap. I really just didn’t have to worry about it. And it’s not that he’s a bad person. He just made bad choices. Um, and she said that she talked, she said I worked in the prison system for 10 years. Um, so I have probably a different perspective. Right. I was a CRA I was a corrections counselor. Um, and I double checked with her dad to make sure that she had actually talked to him and then I’ve reached out to, well, I call him her donor. Right. And I arranged it and we met in the park and they met for the first time. And for her it’s, it’s different because she has known for seven years. Right. And she has connected with her siblings. Cause I did allow her to connect with her siblings. Cause they’re all here in town. Um, and their, their lifestyle is different than ours and it’s not really something she can respect all that much. So the siblings are a struggle for her. And so she is a bit disgruntled with the fact of how lucky I got. But I explained to her, I was like, you know, if I was pissed because she didn’t get a warm, welcoming, extra family.
And I explained to her, I said, you know, if these people had of been like what you’re facing, I wouldn’t have anything to do with them. Um, I said, I am because they are these amazing people. Um, so all of us opened that door for her. And then now I have this brother, which I struggle with the brother part because I have something to compare him against. I have my brother, your brother, and with me being as close to my brother as I am, um, I have a hard time with the new half-brother.
Speaker 9: (01:23:18)
The sisters
Speaker 2: (01:23:19)
I’ll have a problem with it all. Cause I don’t have a sister. Right. Um, and it’s right. I like specific, you have a very specific idea in a high standard of what a relationship with a brother looks like. Yeah. Or feels like. Yes. Um, but he’s very understanding of that relationship. And I like one day I told him I was grateful for that. And he said, well, I wouldn’t be a big brother of I wasn’t understanding. Um, and my biological dad gave my son a yeah. Okay. So he has like quite a bit of land, but he also has an amazing amount of junk cars. Oh, my son loves, loves cars. So somewhere in this mix of this one visit where I took my son there with me, he gave my son a 1948 Dodge truck. Oh my God. That had been sitting in a field for who knows how long. And he even put it on trailer and drove it here. Oh my gosh. And signed the title over to him and my ex husband and my son I’ve been working on it. They got it running. Um, man, it’s so cool. He gave him tires to put on it. So they put the new tires on it. And my son is just over the moon for this. I mean, um, and
Speaker 9: (01:24:47)
Yeah, they’re just,
Speaker 2: (01:24:49)
And they just gave it to him. And with my new brother, he’s been working in another state and he came home for like two weeks. Cause that contract ended, they have drove him back to this other state, drove there with a trailer and pulled one of his cart and brought one of his cars back for him and my new half-brother for him. If that’s a foreign concept to him as well, being that nice one second drug. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That, um, one of my, um, half sisters also listens to your podcast. Um, and she really enjoys it too. They have all been listening to like they’re on the different Facebook groups that they can be on and they’ve read books to try to understand our perspective. That’s so nice.
Speaker 2: (01:25:50)
Like I just don’t even know what to do with these people because I don’t think I’ve met nice person. And like before we met for the first time, um, I messaged the new parents and I told them like, basically everything bad I had ever done in my life. Oh wow. Just so I didn’t ever have to worry about not saying something I I’m done with it. Yeah. Why powerful. That’s such a powerful idea image of just as like long list. Yeah. And they told me that it didn’t matter everything’s in the past. Um, and that people are human, which I completely agree with. But yeah. Everybody has these things that they feel shameful about, but I, I am 100% just that we’ll see.
Speaker 2: (01:26:36)
Yeah. I had to hold too many in my life. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I just can’t anymore. My, uh, my dad’s sister is the one that got me looking at different, um, support groups on Facebook, which I didn’t even know existed. Um, and then she’s also the one that turned me on to podcasts. Cause I listen to podcasts a lot when I drive. Cause I visit foster kids all over the state of Kansas. Um, so I drive a lot and you know, it’s just opened up a whole new world. And for me I’ve been looking for one, for an anything that is somewhat similar to my story. I find bits and pieces, but most of the time, like they’re people are older when they find out. Um, and somebody in the equation has passed away. Yeah. Not all the players are in the game or somebody doesn’t have a tight relationship with their birth certificate.
Speaker 2: (01:27:40)
I do. Yeah. Um, like today my dad was talking to me and he said, he used the phrase to find out that he’s your daddy. And I said, he’s not my daddy. Right. Right. And he says, you’re to find out he’s your father. He said, I’m not, I’m not splitting hairs. Right. On words. Like, but to me that’s a big thing. Right. Let’s get yeah. Yeah. Rhetoric is really important in this whole experience for people. Yeah. So I still don’t, I still don’t know what to call him. I call him nothing. Actually, when I’m talking to his daughters, I say your dad. Right. Um, if I’m in the same place as him, I will wait until he looks at me to speak. Um, and they all know that. I just don’t know what to call him at the get together the other day. I don’t know why, but I was naming off people for some reason. I don’t know why, but I said the, the, the one who must not be named, because I just don’t know what a column just don’t know yet. Um, and I, I, I think at 1.1 time, I called him, um, daddy, Bob, because his last name went really well with, it starts with the D and um, his wife just latched onto them, but, well, it’s not gonna stick well, um, yeah. These situations make all, make all the words important.
Speaker 2: (01:29:21)
They really do. And like his daughters have talked about like, what about when my other kids graduate? I’m going to have to put people together. And I’m like, I haven’t thought this far ahead. Right. It’s like, I wasn’t even planning on having a relationship with you guys. Right, right. But here we are. So I’m just taking it one step at a time. I didn’t have a plan. Um, I mean really who does right. I was about to say like, maybe that’s the best way to go in it because they go into it because, because then you don’t, if you don’t have expectations, I remember now where I was going with the, with the Facebook group thing. So I actually wanted to be like, uh, one of the DNA angels angel. Yeah. And so I had gotten into a few and I was trying to figure out how to do it because like when somebody passes away, I go into help mode because that’s how I handle it.
Speaker 2: (01:30:25)
Yeah. Yeah. I handle it by helping others. That’s how I agreed. Um, and so I desperately want to help other people because helping them is also going to help me. Um, and it’s like a win-win and so I got put into, I don’t, I don’t know if it’s, if I can say what it is. Oh, you’re asking me you’re in it as well. I think we’re in the same. We got we’re in one of the same groups. Yeah. At least. Yeah. And it’s to help the mental health initiative, um, which I really liked that idea. And the more, the more I think about the, the search angels, as much as I, 100% with love to do that, I, um, one, I worked 60 hours a week. I have four, I have four kids and a grand baby that lives with me and my husband.
Speaker 2: (01:31:26)
And I’m also kind of trying to start to get this little craft bags. Um, and so I’m like, maybe let’s stick to the smell health because I’m actually wanting to go back to school in the fall because I want to be a therapist. Um, and my associate’s is in criminal justice. So I mean, it’s not really gonna help me in that area, but that’s okay. I mean, I will help you from a credits, you know, logistics perspective. But, um, so the group, the, the spot I got put in, I think is perfect. And when they put me in it, I was like, I’m like looking at it and all these really smart people on there. And I’m like, Oh,
Speaker 1: (01:32:13)
I don’t know if I’m supposed to be here.
Speaker 2: (01:32:17)
The idea of being able to help other people, which is really what I wanted to do your podcast is because if I was looking and I couldn’t find it, somebody else’s too, and maybe my story will help them, um, a hundred percent because listening to the podcast and reading everybody’s stories and being able to talk to people who are like you and realizing you’re not crazy, and it’s okay to have these emotions, it has been so helpful to me, so helpful. Um, and you know, I, of course I wouldn’t have been able to get through this without my family. I feel very horrible for my children because, you know, there have been moments when their mom has just, you know, tucked in her room and just laid in bed and cried. Right. Yeah. Because you know, like my, uh, my maiden name, which is Fox, I’m a red head. Um, that was a huge thing to me. I loved my name. Yeah. And I struggled with it now because it wasn’t supposed to be mine. Right. Um, I struggled with the fact that my brother that I am so insanely close with is actually my half brother. And that’s just like, it doesn’t change anything. Like nothing’s different between us, but like one night he was here to visit. I think it was during my daughter’s graduation party or something. And he, we were joking about genetics or something, and we were joking and I mean,
Speaker 1: (01:34:02)
It does, we did start it.
Speaker 2: (01:34:06)
And I probably started it. But somewhere in there, he slipped in a joke about half sibling waterworks instantly. Oh, just don’t expect it. Yep. And he felt so bad. And I told him, I said, and I had already told my husband that it will always be too soon to joke about it. I’m the only one who is joke about it as me.
Speaker 1: (01:34:32)
I talk about mine all the time. You’re right. It’s like, yeah. And he felt so bad
Speaker 2: (01:34:40)
And he probably won’t make that mistake again. And, you know, it’s just, they hit, it hits you at just random times. Like when my stepmom told me that, you know, my brother, my step brother probably overheard conversations and I’m sitting here going about it that next day was a bad day. Um, I spent a lot of that day card. Um, but I also spent a lot of that day talking to my new half-brother because he was, he’s the only person that is like, close to my situation. Right. Yeah. So, yeah. Um, even though it’s not the same, but that did help. And, you know, I try to stay busy yesterday. I ripped out, I get that feeling about you. Yeah. Yesterday I ripped, I demoed my basement so I could start rebuilding today. Um, uh, there’s just so many aspects to everything I’ve been so worried about not hurting people’s feelings, especially like that, especially my dad.
Speaker 2: (01:35:52)
Yeah, sure. Um, I, the people I’m most worried about actually are my dad and my new bonus mom, because I feel like they’re the people who were jilted. Right. That makes sense to me. And I don’t want them to be uncomfortable. And my dad told me that I can’t make him uncomfortable. That if I’m happy, he’s happy. Um, no, we all know that, no, he’s not secretly wishing it all to go away. Um, generous thing to say, but he loves me and I know he does. Right. Um, and the relationship between my mom and I is, uh, not amazing. Ah, the only reason we talk is because of my brother and my stepdad and my dad, all right. Three people didn’t drink better than none.
Speaker 5: (01:36:50)
Yeah.
Speaker 2: (01:36:51)
Um, and it’s, it’s more of a, if she’ll just let me love her from a distance will be fun. Um, and you know, everybody has their cross to bear and their thing that they have to heal from. And I have a whole lot of healing to do still. I mean, what yesterday was six months. So we finished, you were like a newborn baby in this whole lie. Yes. But yet it feels like it’s been for ever. And I think part of that’s COVID colon COVID stoplight. Um, but actually I think that that time was, it was perfectly timed for us is that gave us a chance to get to know each other. Yeah. It’s like, it, it, it, it gave you parameters or boundaries to, to get space whether you wanted it or not. Yes. And I definitely needed that. Um, I don’t really know where you go from here other than just, you know, keep on ticking along.
Speaker 2: (01:37:58)
And eventually I’m told eventually it gets easier. Um, but I have noticed that most of the time the people saying this, somebody in their equation has passed away. Um, and, but I have, you know, talked to numerous, just amazing people who have been through some sort of trial or AAA tribulation with this. I have talked with one of the other people who was on your podcast and, uh, he was screening me for a group and I saw his name and I’m like, Hmm, that’s not an overly common name anymore. And I actually had not listened to like maybe, but two or three males on the podcast, because I was looking for a situation like mine.
Speaker 2: (01:38:48)
So I’m looking at it. And his profile picture is a Sheltie. I have a Sheltie. So I was like, you wouldn’t have happened to have been on those podcasts, would you? And he’s like, yeah. I was like, I listened to it. And I felt like I was talking to a celebrity. I told everybody I’m like, and he’s incredibly nice. And we can talk about her. Shelties yep. He’s the nicest, the nicest man. Yeah. He’s fantastic. Um, and so, I mean, this whole new world has opened up that I have absolutely no idea what to do with, um, other than just mow through and survive it. But at the same time, like I enjoy at the same time, sorry for what I feel like I’ve kind of lost.
Speaker 2: (01:39:48)
Not that I’ve not that I’ve lost my dad. I haven’t. And I never, ever will. Um, because my dad is my dad. That’s the person that hugged me was little and kissed my boobs and taught me so many things. Um, but there is the, you know, the identity issue. And now I have this worry that if I do something wrong, I might lose him. Whereas like my brother, that’s his dad, but that’s just, you, me getting in my own head is not something that’s actually going to happen, but you can’t help, but think it, um, and but now I have this whole other family here and there’s, I don’t come from a close knit family and they are very close knit. Right. And so it’s something I have to learn to navigate. I have talked to them every single day since April. Wow. That’s a lot talk every morning they get on and they say, everybody says, good morning. And so it’s kinda like what they’re doing. Um, my, uh, his mom is still alive. She is 95 and in a nursing home. And I’m trying to decide, so longevity, he was warning you about,
Speaker 4: (01:41:09)
Yes, it is.
Speaker 2: (01:41:12)
I am trying to decide whether or not I want to meet her. Um, I don’t know if she is all timers or dementia. She has memory issues. And so, I mean, she’s not going to remember me anyways. She’s probably going to think I’m one of her old students, but I’m trying to decide whether or not I want to meet her. Right. And what that would mean for you? Yeah, my grandmother, my dad’s mom just passed away last December the day before my birthday. Um, and she was everybody called it. She was grandma lovey that obviously wasn’t her actual name, but that’s what, that’s all of his grandkids color. And she was amazing. And I do have another, my mom’s mom was still alive, but now I have this other grandparent and I’m trying to decide whether or not I want to meet her. And if I’ll regret it, if I don’t. Hmm. I guess that’s always kind of the threat or the shadow or something about these things. It’s like, what will you regret if you don’t do it?
Speaker 4: (01:42:15)
Yeah.
Speaker 2: (01:42:18)
And he has two sisters that were adopted, um, interesting. There was a lot of adoption in this family. Um, like my two cousins from my dad’s sister and their dad was actually adopted. So they went from being blood related to me to like adopted related. Right. I don’t really know how you described that. Um, and I have told them all my dad’s family, just in case somebody from this other side tells them I didn’t want them to get blindsided. And I did let my dad know that I told them and he told me that I could tell whoever I wanted. It was my story. Gosh, he says all the right things. My dad’s pretty great, which is so sweet. Cause he, we all know that like he’s probably not feeling all those things necessarily, but yeah, he’s so supportive and encouraging, so, so sweet. Um, and you know, these three sisters that I have in anything, my new half-brother they’re, they’re fantastic. Um, I’m like, wow, like Andrew and I are close in a different way. I can’t explain it like him. And I went through, I was like, no one, no one can recreate the experiences of your, the history you have, which created each relationship you have now. Right. Um, but this having sisters things is kinda cool. Uh [inaudible] yeah. They and helped with my daughter’s
Speaker 4: (01:43:52)
Graduation party and I would not have survived that thing without them.
Speaker 2: (01:43:56)
Cool. Yeah.
Speaker 4: (01:43:57)
We all know how to cook. I’m not domestic at all. They made these beautiful fruit trays, like it was amazing what they did and I’m running around and doing, who knows what
Speaker 2: (01:44:13)
Hm.
Speaker 4: (01:44:15)
They made it happen. Um, and it, the sister thing was really gonna cool that, yeah, that sounds really cool. I actually had a long think about that today. About, about sisters and what that means and what, what I would want and what are my options. What are my options? See when I was looking for him, like when I had it narrowed down to the two brothers, I guess my uncle has two sons and then he had the three daughters, but I wasn’t, they weren’t my goal. So I didn’t really look into them. But when they found out about me, boy, did I get stopped right there talking to her, talking to him, I’d say this or that. And they’d go, Oh, we know
Speaker 2: (01:45:10)
Is
Speaker 4: (01:45:10)
A hundred percent something I would say, because when we figured everything out with the half-brother us, four girls spent like four hours on zoom together researching until we figured out who he was. Yeah. I mean, just, just wait right now. When you said like, we us, for us, for girls, like I just felt jealousy and like admiration and like longing and, um, like sensing the connection it’s different, but it was an easy connection now. They are all very, um, they’re religious, but not like crazy religious. Um, I think, I think the family stems from, and I could possibly get this wrong, but I think it’s Mormons. They’re not like full blown Mormon anymore, but that’s where the family line stems from. Um, not that I really know what that even means
Speaker 4: (01:46:15)
From religious, like church wise. That is not even funny. I don’t like to go to church. I think it’s, I think so many people are hypocritical that it just doesn’t make my heart sing. So yeah. I mean, I can understand why you would maybe have some personal feelings or experiences with hypocrisy in that regard. So I, that aspect of things I worry about because they say all the time, like we’ll pray for you and sure. Yep, yep, yep, yep. They don’t hear me say it very often because I’m the type of person that like, I don’t pray real often. And it’s like, um, when you have a relative that the only time you ever go to them or talk to them is if, when you need something, I don’t want to pray.
Speaker 4: (01:47:09)
So I don’t pray real often because I don’t want to be that person and explain it to them. And they all thought I was, they probably all thought I was absolutely crazy. And I did pray for one of them one time, because they had an issue that I felt was worthy. And I told them, I was like, I did pray for you as like, but I gave my thanks for everything. I made it really worth it. I was like, but I don’t pray for myself. I’m odd that way. So it it’s, it’s been a roller coaster is probably going to continue to be enrolled. Um, I mean, I still have my maternal side of the family that I have to deal with. I don’t even know what to do there. Um, because I don’t, like I said, I’m done with secrets. I don’t want to be a secret and Facebook comment, I left it good for you.
Speaker 4: (01:48:09)
God said to do what I wanted. And I would rather not hurt my new half-brothers feelings than try to keep my mom’s secret. Right. So great. So there you go. We’ll see what happens. Yeah. Just posted definitely will. My kids are the older two, have a little bit harder time. Cause I mean, they’re almost 17 and 18. And so, you know, there’s new family pops out of the woodwork and right. My oldest is doing pretty good with one of the, one of my sisters. Um, because she’ll like the first time we went down there, my daughter, my oldest didn’t go with me with the other three kids. And my ex husband drove her halfway and my sister met her, met them in, Oh, autumn had never met her. And autumn are in the vehicle with strangers. Right. Drove the rest of the way. And like when they crossed over from the Kansas to the Oklahoma line, they started singing the Oklahoma state song. And Autumn’s like, what is going on?
Speaker 4: (01:49:30)
You know, they were raised on a farm. And so my niece who is six, I don’t know how the topic came up, but she’s talking about slaughtering pigs. And it was talking about slaughtering animals, like slaughtering, they’re singing songs, we’re city people, as much as you recall in the city they’re farmers. And so funny, that’s normal. But my, my sister has like kept autumn on messenger and Facebook. That’s nice. Yeah. Exer and talks to her about school. So she’s trying to build a relationship with her, which I think is fantastic. My next, my next youngest is a not real social. So if they were to messenger, I don’t know if she would even respond. She’s an amazing person, but she’s just never social. And my son is on a group chat with me and the donor parents. Um, huh. I ha I just excellent. Excellent. I gave him my secret. So at home I call them the donor really hard not to say that I probably,
Speaker 7: (01:51:03)
It was the easiest one.
Speaker 4: (01:51:04)
Wait for me to say it this whole time at home. No judgment here. No judgment. So that’s whole thing. Just kind of spiraled for me because my only intention was to notify him of my existence. Right. Yeah. Wow. You got so much more than you asked for. Um, and at that point, like when his wife messaged me, I was like, I’m just going to roll with the punches. We’ll see where it goes. Yeah. And I am, I know how fortunate I am. Um, I have read so many stories where people are not as fortunate. Yeah. Um, I find myself fortunate in a lot of ways and then unfortunate and others, um, because I do have everybody alive and I do have all these things I have to navigate. Um, and it brings a lot of guilt because, you know, I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings who is still here to fill them right now that I won’t be to die. Please let to be die. But I opened up old wounds with my parents that I didn’t know were there, um, and a bit of a mess, but I’m slowly figuring it out.
Speaker 4: (01:52:28)
And, and you didn’t create the problem. I mean, you know, it’s like, you, you know this, but you didn’t create the problem with opening up the wounds with the parents. The wounds got opens, but they had created some. Yeah, exactly. Although, Oh, and the one thing I have never like anybody, um, my brother and I, like, we would go somewhere and people thought we were dating. We’ve looked on that different. And my bonus mom sent me a picture of him from when he was about my age and a friend of mine put them on a side by side. Yeah. Holy cow twins. I found who I look like. Right. Um, and that was the weirdest thing. Sure. Yeah. I’ve just never really know red hair still isn’t there. Um, there is red in the family, but he doesn’t have right here. Um, and I am like red hair, red hair, so that wasn’t there, but the face, the nose, the bone structure, it was just unreal.
Speaker 4: (01:53:41)
And, but then like the other day I was sitting on my porch and, um, I was looking at my hands, cause my hand, my hand hurts from throwing horseshoes and I ended up being a champion. Well, yeah, I guess, um, I was looking at my hands and I’ve always looked at my dad’s hands cause he has a, well, I call him Flinstone hands, um, short, just stubby hands with their homes. And um, I was looking at my hands and as my brain went to how I have dad’s hands and then like it remembered, uh, right. And I just had this instant sorrow cause they couldn’t possibly be dad’s hands. Right. And then I thought about my brother, my brother has dad’s hands and even moves them his fingers the same way. Oh well. Um, but like the other day on our group chat, my bitterness mom asked me, ask everybody what tow on their foot is the longest toe.
Speaker 4: (01:54:56)
And for me, it’s my second toe. And for all the sisters is their second toe. And for him, it’s his second toe for her to, for my bonus moments or first stuff. Cause I guess that’s genetic. Yep. Um, and Oh, and my, my new half-brothers his second toe also. So, but like my new houses are their giants. They get that from their mom’s side of the family. Okay. Because I’m the shortest of course nothing has changed her. I’m also still the baby. Um, the oldest is no longer the oldest, she became a middle child. Right. The baby of a family became a middle child in the middle list is the middle list of the middle. Right. She’s just, she just secured her location as the middle. Yeah. And one day I’m going to make t-shirts for all of us that have something funny along those lines.
Speaker 4: (01:56:00)
So cool. I love that. I did make my half brother a shirt for his birthday that said, um, what picture, why am I drawing a blank? The shirt says, um, promoted to big brother established 20, 20. That’s really special. Yeah. I love all that. I love those, those jokes. Yeah. And he like, I’ve talked to him and he kind of had a similar upbringing to like what I had. And so he has his filter on Hyler also like, you know, every now and then I’m going backward slip out of my mouth. I’m not a big, bad word person. I’m not, but they do call it. Right. But like when I’m saying yeah, whatever on them, I try really hard to keep that filter on and he’s doing the same thing. That’s funny with each other. We don’t have to. Right. So you got, yeah. It’s you ha you to have like your own secret connection.
Speaker 4: (01:57:05)
I was able to talk to him about the birthday cards and I’m like, so however woman was that. Whoa. And what kind of stuff was in there? Cool. You guys are like siblings in experience. And I asked him one time, I was like, so have you decided what you’re going to call him? And he’s like, no, I was wondering the same thing. He’s like, what do you think? I’m like, I don’t know yet. And so we came to the agreement of the other one, figures it out. We’ll let the other one know. Right. It just posted. We still don’t know, keep a brainstorm list going. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so it’s, it’s like in my little story, there’s three different MPS. Um, and I am in a very unique position where I am the MPE and I’ve been the parent of one. Right. So I think it makes it to where it’s easier for me to understand all sides maybe. Yeah. Um, because I’ve kind of, well, not all sides, but a lot of sides.
Speaker 1: (01:58:13)
No, I, yeah, no, I actually like, I really actually want to talk to you about the other one. Um, and other time, not right now, but yeah. I want to pick your brain about that a little bit.
Speaker 4: (01:58:24)
Definitely
Speaker 1: (01:58:25)
The perspective that I, um, I actually think I understand it wholly, but I think that people need to talk about it more.
Speaker 4: (01:58:32)
Yeah. They should. Um, like I feel like for like my new book bonus mom, I feel like there should be a subgroup and things for like her. Yeah. Um, and I know that she’s been looking for something like that. Um, because she’s trying so hard to understand so much, but she also needs an outlet as well. Yep. You know, a person can only be so understanding, but they have to have somebody. Right. Um, she did say that I helped them get their garage clean. Oh well, cause that’s what they did the days he told her, what you really need is a project. I, I know it’d be really funny if we found, if we did a survey of what NPS have begun since this determination probably find so many, like bird houses are made and it’s the big four branches at the beginning. Yeah. See. And I had never crocheted really,
Speaker 4: (01:59:42)
So. Yeah. Yup. Yup. I understand that. Uh, Kimberly, this is so great. I am so thrilled. We got to spend some time together tonight and I’m like, and, and I get the feeling we’re going to talk some more, cause I have more questions for you and definitely more, more to connect about and thank you so much for sharing your different, different, um, that you’re coming from different perspectives and that you also, you know, I mean, I think everybody almost, I mean, I can’t think of anybody off the top of my head that didn’t, but you, you came to this, you’ve come to your situation with a lot of empathy for people and a lot of understanding of the complexities of the human condition. And I appreciate that. And I, I think it’s really important that we share that stuff and talk about it.
Speaker 4: (02:00:30)
I haven’t said that. I should say, I almost said a whole lot about my biological dad, like about him himself. Um, he is really nice and good person. Um, and I’ve finally gotten comfortable with him hugging me. Um, it’s not awkward. Now if I ask a question, he answers it, but he’s got a sense of humor like mine. And he is a, he is a good person who made a mistake. Not that I’m the mistake. And he said that, right? No, I mean, you just said it right there. It’s like, that’s, that’s the truth of the matter is, is that most people are very good people and that all people make mistakes
Speaker 7: (02:01:24)
And if
Speaker 4: (02:01:27)
The world or society or could, or, or our culture could broaden their minds about the understanding of that, this might not be such a problem. Exactly.
Speaker 1: (02:01:41)
I agree with that. Cool. Um, okay. Kimberly, let’s go. Let’s get off the phone. Attend to Aspen’s toe. I think maybe she’s maybe asleep by now, but just, you know, screaming for a while. Although a good to the drill sitting on the table, um, running scream. That’s so funny, but I will be in touch with you and this is going to go up really fast. So it might be up next Friday. Cause, um, cause it was that good. That’s how I feel about it. I already know. Um, but, and I’ll be in touch with you and if anything comes up, please like reach out to me. And then we’ll also talk about tote bags and then we’ll also talk about another episode and this has just been really fun. Thank you so much for staying up so late. Oh, no problem. And have fun have fun out there in Kansas. Oh, have you ever been now? I have a question. Don’t laugh at me, but it’s the Oklahoma state song. The Oklahoma song from the musical is, I didn’t know, actually I assumed it was. And then I was like, that would be just, I didn’t know.
Speaker 1: (02:03:02)
It’s been coming up a lot in the past, like four days. My husband and I are just blown away by how much Oklahoma, the musical has come up in our conversation and we’re just like, it’s everywhere. I can’t wait to tell him this. Great. Great, great. Great. Thank you so much, Kimberly. All right. Thank you. You too. I’ll talk to you soon.
Speaker 10: (02:03:26)
Hi, [inaudible].
Speaker 1: (00:02)
So are you ready? You can totally take time. Time. I didn’t mean to like I’m totally ready. Yeah. No, it’s good. Just kicking my daughter out of her room so she can go answer the door when the AC guy that’s great. Cool. Cool. And you got the lights figured out bright lights? No. Cause a lot of times I use her room cause it’s the quietest room in the house and I was like, no, I don’t need videos. She’s like, well, I’ve got this light. I can turn it off. I was like, I don’t need video. We’re just trying to be helpful, which is nice. Super nice. She lends you her room. She can help you with video. Absolutely handling. So how are you? Thank you so much for, um, giving me some time today. No, I haven’t decided yet. No, I’m doing great. How did, how did you get involved in this?
Speaker 1: (00:44)
Like what, what’s your goal here? Well, it depends on what you mean by that. Um, how did I, why are you taking your time to make a podcast? Um, okay. So, um, I was like, well, like I connected from your friend, um, the interview, I have a podcast. That’s what I meant by out. How much do you know or don’t know? Um, yeah, so, so, um, what happened with me is a man basically I was not very interested in, in ancestry or DNA. Um, and I’m still sort of like struggling with my relationship with that. But, uh, about two years ago, a man, uh, contacted me and said, Hey, I, um, I think I’m your real dad. And so as opposed to the man that raised you and that you think is your real dad. So, um, so we did a DNA test and he was correct.
Speaker 1: (01:41)
Um, so there’s been sort of like a, like sort of a personal unraveling of, um, understanding of, of like who I am and um, where I come from and what that, even what that means, if that means anything. And then while I was, um, studying all of that and trying to figure out, um, sort of heads or tails of what, what to do with this new information, I CA I, I want to say I stumbled across, but, but really, um, it wasn’t that accidental, but I, um, I learned about how many people have NPE experiences and, um, and sort of surprised DNA results. So that became very interesting to me. And, um, and, and then so much of it is all wrapped in like in secrecy. So I thought, um, what better way to address this, um, then by talking about it. So I made a podcast. Cool. What’s your, what’s your real job? Do you have a real job? Uh, yeah. What makes you think? I guess it’s not my real job. Um, I, uh, no, I’m, uh, I worked as a, a marriage and family therapist, licensed marriage and family therapist in Los Angeles. So, yeah. Um, but you, so, but you, so tell me about you though. So you, you work in gene, genealogy and DNA. Um, can you, can you tell me like what a day is like for you or what, or like what your job sort of really is?
Speaker 1: (03:26)
Well, so my job basically is to figure out how to take the information that people are getting from their DNA testing company and break it down into a format that they can understand and can action action items from the DNA test. Cause most people that get a test have no idea what their next steps are. And then if they try to take some next steps, they’re almost immediately mired in, ah, I don’t know what this means, and I don’t know what to do. And I don’t know what these words mean, and I don’t know how to navigate this website. And so our, our role, my company is called your DNA guide. So our role is really to educate. Yeah. Oh, okay. So people come to you with their, like, with their, with their, just like their Malin kit results or they’re coming in with their like, um, like when I did it before I did a Malin kit, when I did it with my, um, with this biological, with this biological father, um, it was like, I went to a lab and then they mailed a piece of paper back that had a lot of numbers on it, but it was not.
Speaker 1: (04:31)
Um, and then it just said sort of like what the results were, but so, so people come to you more with like 23 and me results and the ancestry.com and stuff like that. Exactly. So we deal best with there’s five genetic genealogy testing companies that we mostly deal with. So that’s ancestry 23 and me, my heritage, family tree DNA and living DNA. Those are really the big five that we consider to be companies involved in helping people trace their ancestry using DNA. Okay. Um, and do you feel like, um, well, no, I’m not going to ask that question yet. Um, let’s talk about, um, how you got into this. What, um, what, how did this start for you? Where did this come from? I came into this industry, which we call genetic genealogy in a different way than most of the other genetic genealogists come in.
Speaker 1: (05:25)
So most people that are involved in this now, helping people understand their test results, find their family, whether it’s your biological father or your three times great grandfather, whoever it is you’re looking for. Um, they came into it because before they were just doing genealogy and then using paper based research to figure out these kinds of questions. And then now it’s all about using DNA. So I came in at the other way around. So when I was in college, I was actually part of a study. We tried to build a, that had genetic information and genealogy information in it. So this was back in 2000, this was basically the first effort to do anything like this. And it was called the Sorenson molecular genealogy foundation. And so I traveled during college to different locations throughout the United States, essentially giving lectures and convincing people that we could do this, that we could take someone’s DNA and figure out where they were from and who they were related to.
Speaker 1: (06:24)
And so, um, anyway, that project eventually was sold to ancestry and became the foundation of their product. And so then at that point, um, I was a stay at home mom, basically working, you know, from home and kind of left, what do I do now? And I ended up essentially starting my own company, just again, to educate people no matter where they’ve tested or who they’ve tested or what kind of tests they’ve taken, how can I help you understand what you have and do something with it? Cool. Cool. Um, my one question that came up while you were describing that is you said that it was a database of genetics and gene genealogy. Is there a difference between genetics and genealogy or are there, right. So I guess when I say genealogy, I mean the actual paper research. So when you contributed to our study, you gave us actually a blood sample of back then, and then you gave us a piece of paper that had your parents, your grandparents, and your great grandparents on it.
Speaker 1: (07:23)
And so it was that it’s really that correlation that makes everything so powerful is, uh, for example, in your ethnicity results that you’re going to get, that’s all based on what we call a reference populations, they had to test a bunch of people from Italy. So they would know what DNA from Italy looks like, so that we could tell you your from it. Right. Right. So, yeah. Yeah. Okay. So genealogy is okay. Okay, great. So one is like the paper trail and one is the, the DNA I’m like, okay, cool. I guess. Right. I understand that. Okay. Interesting. Um, so that’s how it is for you and you’ve been doing it for awhile. Um, so what kind of things have you, you, since you were, especially because you were a part of that very first program, um, what, what kind of things have you seen change about DNA testing over the past decade or so?
Speaker 1: (08:16)
Oh my gosh. So, so when we first started out, we were only able to do what we call Y DNA testing, which traces only like your direct mail line. So only men can take that test and it’s their father’s, father’s, father’s, father’s father’s line. And it’s really helpful. It’s still useful kind of DNA, but it’s not nearly as effective at, you know, finding family as what we call oughta Somol DNA, which is the kind of DNA that we take now with 23 and me and ancestry. So autosomal, DNA, traces, both sides of your family, gives you all this information about relatives and relationships and things like that. But why do you name was much more restricted? And then we also had mitochondrial DNA, which traces only your direct maternal line. So you have the same mitochondrial DNA as your mother, same as her mother and so on and so on and so on.
Speaker 1: (09:06)
So back then, you know, we started getting people excited about this idea that DNA could help define your family, but then people, women especially were like, well, well, I don’t have Y DNA, you know? And so it was a lot like, well, yeah, you could ask your brother or your dad, you know, so it was just, it was harder to, to get an answer because there was just so much limitation. And so then when autosomal DNA came online, which was really around 2007, okay. Then, you know, things started to open up a little bit more. Um, and so back in those two thousands, and we only had wine mitochondrial, we also had the kind of test that you took to find out if your father was your father. And we call that just a straight paternity test. Right. And that’s totally different kind of tests than what we’re using now, but it was very effective at relationships that were very close.
Speaker 1: (09:57)
So we could tell if this guy was your dad, but we wouldn’t be able to tell if he was your second cousin like that just wasn’t possible. Oh, right. So yeah. So when in 2007 it finally became possible to investigate these more interesting, deeper branching relationships. So now you can tell if someone was your second cousin, you could tell if they were your fourth cousin, and this is huge, right. We’re trying to figure out who your third grade grandparent is. Right. So we’ve kind of had the ability to do paternity testing really since the mid nineties really effectively, but there was no way to go beyond that because if you’d gotten to the point in your life where your father had passed away and you had maybe a sibling, even sibling testing, wasn’t really fantastic. Like it wasn’t always definitive. And so, but now, now hands down, you can tell absolutely the difference between a full sibling and a half sibling, very easy to do now.
Speaker 1: (10:56)
So it’s just really blown up in this whole idea of tracing your family and being able to identify people in your genetic family tree that you didn’t know were there. Amazing. Um, and, um, what, so I have, well, I have that, I just thought it was that there’s a lot of like a little bit of controversy within the, um, sort of like the Facebook support support groups, um, for people that say that there is not a sibling test, but you just talked about siblings as an example. Um, do you know what people mean by that? Well, I think the biggest educational hurdle that there is for people who are looking, especially for a biological parent, is how to interpret what I see on my match page. Because in your DNA match page, the company is never telling you sip rights. Okay. The company’s never telling you half sip.
Speaker 1: (11:59)
Got it. Right. There has to be. And that’s the thing DNA can’t actually definitively tell you that necessarily. Um, there has to be at least one more piece of information. So for example, you and your mom share half of your DNA, right? That’s, that’s the nature, right. But you and your brother also share half of your DNA. So if there’s two people on your match page, once your mom and one’s your brother, you really can’t tell the difference. I mean, there are genetic ways you can tell the difference, but in general, you can’t tell the, just looking at the data, just looking at the data, you have to know something else. So like, for example, looking at your brother, maybe if he listed like at 23 and me or my heritage, sometimes it lists their age. And so, you know, if he’s saying that he’s 25, Oh, well, then he can’t be your dad.
Speaker 1: (12:50)
Right, right, right. Okay. So that, that one extra piece of information gives you what you need to help you define that relationship. Okay. So there is, so it’s about that, that I want to say like extraneous information, but that’s not really, it’s not extraneous. It’s, it’s the, it’s the genealogies, the supplemental. Right, right. It’s like, okay. Okay, cool. So it’s so just the DNA itself only gives you, like, it gives you the variables, but you need, it’s like you need, right. It’s like a hint and that’s why it’s, it’s dangerous and it’s really emotional. And it can be, um, I mean, it’s an emotional journey. Anyway, if you’re an adoptee and you’re searching for your family and you’ve taken a DNA test and you’re actively looking, you’re looking at a DNA match page. And most people for the first time are seeing the names of biological relatives.
Speaker 1: (13:48)
And that alone can be really powerful, but then you dig a little deeper and you think, okay, well, how am I related to this person? Who are they? Because ultimately you’re looking for your parents, that your parents haven’t taken a DNA test. And so you’re left with this group of cousins and you have to Wade through this information to get out of them, the names of these two people that you want to know. And it’s a really, it’s a technical process. And there’s, you know, there’s a way to do it. In fact, I just barely wrote a book about how to do this process, but it’s, it’s really, it’s really easy to take a wrong turn, right. Because the DNA is not that good at telling you very exact things. Right. So I can tell you that you’re all in the same. I want to say same family, like same ballpark, same area, but not, but relationship specific relationships.
Speaker 1: (14:40)
Do you feel like that is, um, is that the majority of your clients that you get is adoptees looking for answers about their history? You know, it’s not the majority there a fair number, but I deal with so many, just regular people who want to find their great grandfather and one find their two times great grandmother and their they’re distant ancestors. They know all their close people they’re looking for. They’re distant people. And this technology is very powerful in helping them determine that as well. What do you think it is about, um, about, about that information that people want? Like, do you, what is it about our histories that you think people are so attracted to or interested in? That’s such a good question. I think there’s something inherent in us that drives us to know who our people are, whether that’s just the simple things of wanting to understand maybe where I came from in a very broad and general sense to, I need to know the names of all of these people. And there’s this wide range of people who have this curiosity, but I doubt you can come across anyone who isn’t interested. Everybody wants to know who they are, everybody
Speaker 1: (15:59)
interesting. Okay. Um, yeah, it just seems like, I mean, and, and I didn’t know the information is becoming easier and easier to get, so that is sort of like, I’m inspired like a new, some new generations of interest in this, but, um,
Speaker 1: (16:12)
yeah. It’s certainly like a growing movement. Absolutely. I mean, if you look, if you just went to YouTube and you asked and you do a search term, like DNA reveal or something like that, there are so many videos. People giving themselves looking at their DNA ethnicity results for the first time. And they are genuinely nervous about what it’s going to reveal. They are thrilled and sometimes disappointed about what they see. And again, it’s this drive and these are young people, you know, these are people in their twenties that are, they’re hungry for this connection. And I think especially as our culture moves away from traditions and families, and we’re just so much more widespread than we ever used to be, you know, it used to be, everybody lived in the same place and you saw your family all the time and blah, blah, blah. But now it’s just not like that.
Speaker 1: (17:07)
We’re just such a mobile society that so many people don’t live near family. And so they, I think they long for that connection to someplace some things that they can kind of grab onto and say, this is me. Yeah. Yeah. That sounds, that sounds very, I, what I, what I heard the most was the connection. People are just hungry for connection. I think that’s, that’s what resonates the most with me. Um, so what do you wish people knew about DNA testing? Um, before they got into it? If, if there, if anything, I just feel like, I mean, I’m PR I specifically navigate, um, the world of like NPS the most, but, um, but I’m curious if you feel like there’s information that you, when people come to you, you wish you wish everybody could know, or there’s like a misunderstanding about DNA testing before they begin. Well, I think, especially for your audience, people who are looking for biological family that they know is out there. Um, but for anybody understand you’re going to find them. And I think, you know, at the outset, maybe it’s like this little curiosity, like, yeah, I’m adopted kind of fun, you know, figure out who my people are. Sure. I’ll try it. That kind of attitude going in. Is it that cavalier? Let’s try it. I feel like we need to be really serious.
Speaker 1: (18:38)
Like you will. Right. And I tell people all the time, so I lecture all over the world really. And one of the first things I say is, before you take a test, understand it’s going to reveal your relationships. And I think, again, those people on YouTube, I was just talking about, I think most of them don’t understand that they think it’s an ethnicity and they don’t know there’s a match page. Right. You know, they have no idea, tons of those. Yeah. Right. And so you need to know this is going to find people and it will do it in a way that’s unequivocally understandably scary, because all the sudden you’re being faced with relationships and people that it changes the way you view yourself, it changes the way that you view your parents. And it understandably just disrupts, disrupts. That’s a great word. Yes. And if people just understood going in, yeah.
Speaker 1: (19:36)
This is, this works, this technology, it works. Right. Right. No, I think you’re right. I think it’s presented as a, um, as something that’s, that’s fun and, um, and funding for information. And then, and, and for a lot of people, it is for a lot of people it’s fine. But for all the people that end up with surprise results, um, yeah. Disrupt is a, is a really great word that, um, I feel like should be more present in the, in the discussion that this can really disrupt your understanding of things, um, one way or another. Yes. And along with that, just understanding that disruption may happen in that when it does, or if it does that you then have this chance to, to redefine right. Take the disruption. Yes. It’s not a, uh, I have to now cut off this branch. It’s always about grafting in, it’s never about cutting edge.
Speaker 1: (20:41)
And I feel like that’s like a message that needs to get out there more because so many people, just, again, they find their dad, isn’t their dad and they feel like I have to cut this limit when you don’t shouldn’t you never should, because it’s still so much part of who you are. Family is more than DNA. Right. Right. So it’s about just grafting in this new information and not cutting out anything. Right. Um, I think the same is true. I mean, I have a lot of clients that aren’t dealing with the, uh, miss attributed parent, but it’s a grandparent or great grandparent. These people long passed away and, and maybe you have very warm and wonderful memories of them when you were 10, you know, and they were 80. Right. You know, I think one of the things I love most about this idea that you can find out information that you didn’t know before is that it allows us to be more generous in the way that we’re thinking about ourselves and our own mistakes. And, and you, you appreciate that your 80 year old grandmother was once 19. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I think about that all the time.
Speaker 1: (21:56)
Yes. And we need to really understand that and appreciate that because of the choices and things that happened to her at 19, she became the woman we loved and respected it. Yup. Yup. You know, and we’re all that way. And how, if you’re in a place right now where you’re making mistakes or you have made mistakes that you don’t feel like you can overcome look to your ancestors, that people do this, they did it, they overcame it. They became someone, they had a family. Eventually they obviously raised your mother or father, whoever, you know, it’s, it’s just so comforting to think, man, she wasn’t perfect and I’m not her fault, but her life turned out great. And I loved her. That means I can still be somebody that people could love. You know, God, I could just end the interview right here. Um, yeah, no, you just did so much.
Speaker 1: (22:49)
I mean, just for me personally, um, that was just huge. You really put a lot of words to things I’ve been struggling with. That was really awesome. Um, I’m glad I, I think about this a lot. Um, where did you come up with that? Um, yeah, no, I am really fascinated. I think, I think because I think also within like the community that I talk with so much is work. People are coming at it from such a place of like shock and it’s often like couched with disappointment and, um, yes, and sometimes devastation for people to, to, um, discover that their parents weren’t truthful for one reason or another or in one way or another to them. And, but, um, and, and so, and I think you’re right, go ahead. That’s like the biggest emotion that I feel from people when I, when I do cause I have, so we do a, we call it mentoring where I sit down with someone, we open up your test results, we’re on zoom and we’re, you know, going through everything.
Speaker 1: (23:54)
And I’ve been in the position many times where I’m the one breaking this information. So I was going to ask about that. Yes. Right. And, and it’s, and it’s hard because I can see it immediately, but I have to, I have to be sure. Number one. So I have to ask a series of questions to make sure I understand what I’m looking at. As far as the people, they know their relationship to versus the people that they don’t. And then I have to be in a position to say, okay, this is what I see. And this is how we can test it basically. And the number one emotion that people feel as I as is their right. Absolutely is betrayal because you do feel like you’ve been lied to, and that’s, that’s what hurts people the most. It’s not that this happened, but that they were lied to essentially.
Speaker 1: (24:40)
And that’s, that’s the hardest thing to get over for sure. For sure. Yeah. That resonates with me for sure. That there’s um, yeah. It’s and that there seems to be some sort of like community, community, um, what am I, there’s a confusion between generations about what is the most important issue at hand, whether it’s the, the lying or the event itself or, um, yeah. Yeah. It’s just whether it’s generational or not. It just seems like it’s just fraught with like miscommunication and misunderstanding and P an individual perception or under, you know, um, suggested subjective. So we actually, so my mom was adopted and we found her biological family using DNA testing. And, you know, she always knew she was adopted. It wasn’t a surprise or anything. Our parents always told her. She always knew. And, um, when we finally decided to try it to pursue this Avenue and we were able to find her mother’s family, um, they, they were amazing and they handled it really, really well, but, and I learned a lot from them and the way that they, um, thought about my mom’s mom who has passed away, um, in that their number one emotion about it really was not anger or betrayal or anything, but was, um, empathy.
Speaker 1: (26:10)
They remember her as being such a loving kind gregarious person who loved children. Like all of her grandkids say that they’re her favorite. That’s the kind of, you know, she loved kids and immediately all the grandkids were like, Oh my gosh, that must have been so hard for her. Right. Because she loved kids so much that it must have just ripped her heart out to leave her baby. And, and that kind of empathy is what really want people to, to get an understand that these, most of the time women are making such hard choices and they’re doing the best they can with the information that they have at the time. And it’s such an important feeling to just understand where they’re coming from and give them the benefit of the doubt, which I feel like our family did for my mom. Yeah. That’s really beautiful. Yeah. I wish there was more, um, more, more, more just in general, like understanding of what I think it comes down to is like what women, what women are up against. I can’t, when it comes to these decisions. It’s really hard. Yes. Um, so as a person that, that, that can see within results, when you were discovering that, um, before the person, you know, on zoom or during a mentoring experience, um, since you’ve had this experience of telling people, um, like surprising information or, um, miss attributed.
Speaker 2: (27:42)
Mmm.
Speaker 1: (27:45)
Okay. For fraternity, um, I’ve really struggled for that word. Um, D do you have a prediction or do you, do you and your colleagues, um, toy toy with an, with a number about how many people are actually NP NPS, or, or how, how, how, like common or prevalent this is, well, the official, like scientifically published number is like 2% or something. I think we, we feel like it’s higher in our industry just because it’s disproportionate because that’s, who’s testing, you’ve got it. People that suspect it, they want to know they’re taking a test. So yeah, the, of the number of people who’ve tested, the number is much higher, but overall in the population, it’s probably around two things. So, okay. That’s interesting. That’s, that’s a lower number than I’ve heard, but, but you’re, you’re, um, explanation makes one, it makes total sense. I mean, I think, I think all the time about how skewed the data is, um, that word, cause it’s just a very specific, um, pocket like of the world.
Speaker 1: (28:52)
That’s doing this right now, so, right. Well, and that’s why I tell people who are testing, who aren’t, or don’t think they’re looking for a mis-attributed parent or grandparent or great-grandparent. I basically have told everybody if it hasn’t happened to you yet that an adoptee has showed up on your match list, it will because that’s just the nature of, of family networks. When you go back in your pedigree far enough, I mean, all of us have thousands of fourth cousins. Yeah. One of them is adopted is pretty darn good. Right. And the chances that they’re going to take a test to find out is also really good. And so I tell people all the time, like, even if in your own nuclear family or extended family, you don’t have any of these events guaranteed. Given enough time, you’re going to find a second or third or cousin that’s contacting you for information because they’re looking for a family. Right. [inaudible] yeah. I actually have had that happen. I had a cousin contact me. Yup. Yup. And I couldn’t be helpful at all because she was, I, because I am so fresh to my NPE status that I was like, I recognize that we are related and I can help you with nothing. Here is the information that I gave her, the information I had. Um, but she and I are still in touch. So, so hopefully will something will come of it. But, um, yeah. So what is the hardest part of your job?
Speaker 1: (30:22)
Um, you know, I think the hardest part of my job can be summed up in an experience I had maybe six months ago. So I go to a lot of conferences, like genealogies conferences, where people come to take classes and learn how to find the right record to find their ancestor or whatever. And so of course I lecture on how to use DNA to do this. And I also have a booth and I, um, so people come by my booth and ask questions and I sell my book and everything. And so it was in between classes or I’m sorry, it was during class. So everybody’s in class. So the exhibit hall is usually really empty and we all kind of sit around and chat. And there was this lady kind of wandering through the exhibit hall and she sees my sign at my booth, which says I have DNA now what is find sets? And she looks up at the sign and she just like, big sigh.
Speaker 1: (31:13)
I just can’t do this. And I said, what do you mean what’s going on? She goes, why it was just sitting in a DNA class and I can’t understand anything they’re saying, and it’s just way above my head. I’ll never understand this, but I really want to find my family. And I just, and that’s what just breaks my heart because this technology is so powerful, but there’s so many people who are unwilling to use it or try it because it’s science. And I feel like I won’t do science, you know? And I feel like you can, you can learn anything, especially if you’re determined enough and you just pick the right teacher, you just need somebody who can tell you only the things you need to know and not, and, and it’s really, it’s a focused effort. And, and I feel like so many people could get so much farther along and figuring out who they are or who their family is with this technology.
Speaker 1: (32:15)
There’s just this education gap. There’s this almost as soon as they think it’s science, they’re like, Oh, that’s not me. I can’t do that. I’ve never been good at, you know, so that’s hard. It’s hard for me to think that there’s people out there who are really trying to do this and they’re struggling because they don’t know where to turn to ask for help. Yeah, I think that’s so, yeah. Yeah. I, um, that’s really interesting cause it’s making me wonder, because I think about myself. I can’t help it, but think about myself during this conversation. Um, which I did not anticipate. Diane, I’ll be honest. Um, I, uh, I, because I, I have my DNA, I, my 23 and me results and I just look at them and I don’t feel overwhelmed. Um, I just, I’m not, I don’t feel much of anything. And I wonder if it’s because I just don’t really understand it, so I don’t know where to go.
Speaker 1: (33:10)
And so the default feeling is just a sort of, um, I don’t, it’s not apathy. It’s not that it’s not again. It’s just like, if I looked at a piece of paper with another language on it, like I can’t read it. So I wonder if that’s going on for me. Okay. I don’t know, honestly, if you are, you’re my target audience, right. You’ve taken a DNA test. You aren’t necessarily interested in genealogy like doing paper research, but you’ve done the test because you had at least that much interest to, to try it. And now you have no idea what to do next. Right. Like I’ve got this. Okay. That’s cool. And was that it like, was that my a hundred dollars worth? And so that was good enough. I’m done. Or is there something more I can get out of this? And the thing is like, again with just a few little tips, so like we have a YouTube channel and so on the YouTube channel, there’s like just two videos about 23 and me.
Speaker 1: (34:11)
And like, they’re just meant to show you, Hey, did you try this? Did you know that this was here so that you can be like, Oh, I didn’t know how that worked or that’s, that’s interesting. I’ll try pushing that by, you know, there’s just so much information on these websites that you’re just like, right, right, right, right. Absolutely. Totally. This is really, this has been, this has been really interesting. Um, I mean, I knew it would be not like surprise. I’m just, um, yeah. I, I, I’m not sure if I knew what to expect, but, um, and, and what let’s see.
Speaker 3: (34:50)
Mmm.
Speaker 1: (34:52)
What do you have, do you have, um, a story in particular that’s like your most exciting discovery that you’ve made as your job? Well, I mean, it’s most exciting story, as I say, it’s probably your mom. Yeah. I mean, with her, it was a very slow process because, you know, I had her tested at 23 and me in 2007 when they first launched the test. And so the databases were tiny and there was nobody really, I didn’t know how to read the information or what was going on. I was still learning right along with everyone else. And at the time my mom didn’t want to pursue it. She took the test because at that time 23 and me was also offering a pretty substantial health report. And that’s really what she was interested in is, you know, with no health history at all, and she’s getting older, you know, what should she be looking for?
Speaker 1: (35:43)
And that’s really why she did it. And, you know, kind of as a bonus, we got this matched list. And again, like almost everyone else who takes the test, even me, I was like, Oh cool. I’m actually, we didn’t know what to expect. Um, and so we, we found a second cousin on that match list pretty quickly. Um, and so second cousins, the way relationships work is that second cousins are going to share great grand parents with you. So every person has four sets of great grandparents, which means if I’m looking at this guy’s genealogy chart, he has all four of his great grandparents listed on his chart. So it’s like, okay, cool. Well, one of those four is also my mom’s right. Grandparents, you know? And so this was, again, that, that moment where you’re like, Oh my gosh, this is a relative, like, we’ve never seen one before, and this is what they look like.
Speaker 1: (36:42)
And we ended up corresponding with this person and I was very upfront. And that’s another technique that we teach is how to correspond with your matches. And that’s really important. You’re reaching out to someone. Yeah. It’s like, do you say everything right away? Like, you don’t want to scare people off. You want information, but you don’t want to be dishonest. You know, there’s like this kind of dance that you have to do, but we decided just to kind of be really upfront. And he was, he was awesome. He was like, you know what, I’m going to need a minute.
Speaker 1: (37:13)
And, um, anyway, so we ended up working with him and, and figuring out which of his great-grandparent couples was, um, was the cuddle. And so then if you think about working down from there, so now I have a great grandparent couple, which means one of their children is one grandparents. Right. And so we’re like, okay, cool. So let’s look at their kids and see if we can figure out which ones the grandparents they had just that’s so funny. Cause I was just now going like, right. That makes sense. Unless there’s a lot of kids. Oh my gosh, you’ve gotta be kidding me. And so again, at that time, my mom was not interested in, she didn’t really want to know because she just didn’t want my grandmother who is still alive to ever feel like my mom wanted a different way. She, yeah, I’ve heard that before, before you just didn’t want to hurt her.
Speaker 1: (38:11)
And so we just kind of left it at that. And it was fascinating though, because this great grandparent couple was the immigrant couple. They had been born in this little place called Odessa Russia and these little tiny communities. And basically because of a lot of historical forces at that time, tons of people in these communities just picked up all together and moved to North Dakota. And so we had tons of DNA matches from North Dakota because most of the families were like ours, like 10 kids, you had 10 kids, you know? And so it was really interesting to see and just learn about their history. And it was fascinating. And that was really cool. Our DNA has traveled that distance. We used to live in Russia and now we’re in the United States. And anyway, it was really cool. But you know, slowly we started getting a lot more matches and testing with more companies, which gave us even more matches.
Speaker 1: (39:10)
And again, I, I was working cases now for other people and I had figured out how to work it. And I knew that if I spent enough time in my mom’s DNA matches, I could figure things out, but I didn’t because she didn’t want to know. So we just kind of kept going along at the pace we were going along. And we came up with another second cousin, a different testing company who was related now on my mom’s dad’s side. And so that was interesting. But again, that second cousin was really helpful and we found a set of great parents, but we didn’t move any further forward. And then my grandmother passed away. And so at that point, I think my mom was like, okay, she’s, she’s gone now. And I’m at peace with that. And yeah, if you want to try to figure this out, let’s try to figure this out essentially. And so we started, you know, doing a little bit more, but Hey, I got three kids, I got a dog, two cats, husband, the job, you know, it wasn’t like I had all the time in the world to sit down and figure this out. But then, um, come Christmas. So we live in South Florida. My parents live in Washington state. And so they like to come down during the winter, like that works out.
Speaker 1: (40:24)
Um, and so they came down to visit and this was the Christmas of 2017. And I was doing a little bit of work. My mom was sitting on the couch, reading a book and I happened to pull up her results at ancestry DNA. And I saw half-brother and I’m just staring at the screen. And I look over at my mom, she’s just reading, coming back to this. And I look over at my mom and I was like, Hey mom, you have a new DNA, man. She looks up exactly right. Just Hong Kong. And so we, you know, I said, I think this is who this is. And she was like, Oh my gosh. And I said, yeah. And it was just initials. Like it didn’t have anybody’s name. And so I was like, well, do you want me to send him a message? And she said, sure, why not?
Speaker 1: (41:12)
And so I send this message that basically says, Hey, my mom’s possum, she’s super fun. You would love to get to know her. We don’t need or want anything from you necessarily. We just, aren’t interested in a relationship if you were interested or at least any information you want to share about your family and that’s it. And I let it go. And then we both like gave a huge deep breath and said, okay, we didn’t hear anything and might have an older sister. And this whole journey, my older sister has kind of been like, Dan, what are you doing? You know, all sorts of scary things can happen from this. Like, we don’t know the situation of her birth. It could be really terrible. Like, I don’t know if we want to do this. You know, she’s been really hesitant kind of the voice of caution where I’m like, no, I just power let’s find out, you know?
Speaker 1: (41:59)
Um, anyways, so she was kinda like, she look what you’ve done now, you know, you reached out to this person. They don’t want to talk to mom. And so, you know, and I was like, Oh, what did I do? And so I waited all the way til April and in April, I was going to be giving this like mini lesson to a bunch of teenagers about how to use a website called family search, which is like a free genealogy website that you can use to find lots of records. Anyway, it’s really, it’s a really great website, but you have to talk to teenagers. So I had to make it right. Like what could I do? And I thought, Oh, I know I’ll put in the name of the woman that I think is my mom’s mom, um, from the research that we’d done. And so I put her name into family search and it pulls up her obituary.
Speaker 1: (42:48)
And I was like, what habituate? So I’m reading the obituary. It lists all of her children and where they’re living and all these things about her life. And I was like, Oh my gosh. Cause as soon as I saw the name of one of the boys, I could tell that was the initials that were on the websites. And so I knew who it was and it said where he lived. And so I thought I could look them up, like in the yellow pages. So I go online like Dax online.com, like the website is down and I’m like, it’s 2018. How is the website down? And so I was like, it’s okay. Be cool. Just wait, you know, refresh your browser. And so I was like, okay. So then I got distracted probably with kids or something, doing something else. And then later that night I tried again and it was still down as I was talking with my husband.
Speaker 1: (43:32)
And I was like, ah, I just want to look up and see if I can find his phone number or something. And my husband said, well, have you tried those, you know, people find our websites and I was like, this scary, what is it like your credit card information? He’s like, we’ve got credit card protection. I was like, he was like, just do it. Right. The ones that are like threaten you with so much stuff. Yeah. Is your neighbor a convicted felon? You know, like we have their, their jail records there, but we need three 99. And so I did, I paid my three 99 and I found a couple of phone numbers for this half brother of my moms. And I called my mom and I was like, what do you think? Can I give him a call? And she’s like, sure. So I called the first number and this, yeah. Just, just try it. This girl answers. And I asked for, um, for Jack was his name. And, um, and she’s like, Oh, this is, this is Jack’s daughter-in-law um, I’m married to his son. Are you looking for Jack? And I said, Oh yeah. Do you have his phone number? And she’s like, uh, who’s this? And I was like, well, I think we might be family is all I said. And she said, Oh, okay. Well, his mother. And she’s like, okay. She goes and they never answer a call from a number they don’t recognize.
Speaker 1: (45:03)
And I was like, Oh, good tip. Okay. So sure. I called Jack and yup. It goes to voicemail. And I just say, Hey, you know, I’ve taken a DNA test and it looks like we might be family. I’d love to talk to you about it. And I hung up and you know, my heart’s like going a million miles a minute and I did it. I made the phone call literally less than a minute later. He called me. That’s great. So many people don’t ever call back. So, but like, it was like my, I just barely started to calm down. And then it was like, Whoa. So he gets on the phone and I said, you know, have you, did you recently take a DNA test at ancestry? And he said, Oh yeah. My daughter gave me one for my birthday. And yeah, we got our results. And I was like, yeah, well, here’s the news basically. And I said, I think that you and my mom are, are half siblings. I think, I think you share a mother and he was quiet for a sec. He’s like, let me grab my life.
Speaker 1: (46:09)
So then his wife gets on the other lines. Now I’ve got both of them on there and I’m walking them through this information. And we’re talking about years of birth and different things like that. And, and it was wonderful. It was wonderful. They were such good people. And they were like I said, so understanding, um, and just so loving and so welcoming. And within the first month of all of this happening, my mom had met all three of her half said, Oh, that’s so cool. And you know, now they, they text and they live across the state from each other. So they don’t get to see each other very often. But you know, we’ve been over there. They, they threw a big thing still in the same, they’re all in the same area. I mean, even in the same, like state is impressive to me.
Speaker 1: (46:55)
Yeah. Same state. So it’s been wonderful. And I tell people, my mom didn’t know she was missing anything because she had such wonderful loving parents in her life. And thankfully like really, she was the Apple of their eye. Like she was everything to them, but this was missing from her and she didn’t know it until we filled it. And it has been beautiful to watch and to see them care for her. And you know, she’s the little sister, believe it or not. Oh, so that’s wow. That’s okay. Yeah. So her oldest brother was our oldest sister was nine when she was born. And, but they didn’t know cause you know, your kids and you only know what you’re told Allie, you didn’t know. So wow. That would have been a more, I can see where that conversation would be a little bit more confusing to get to the bottom of that. Yes.
Speaker 4: (47:58)
Huh.
Speaker 1: (47:59)
Cool. That’s so cool. I love that story. Yeah. It’s been wonderful. That’s really neat. How lucky for your mom that she has a daughter that knows this stuff so well and or insists that she get into it, right. Yeah. That’s really cool. Um, is there, before we go, is there anything else, um, that you want me to know about what you do and how you do it?
Speaker 4: (48:27)
Yeah.
Speaker 1: (48:27)
Um, I guess mostly for all the people that you talk to in, and it’s so great to have these conversations, to let people share their stories so that people don’t feel alone. They don’t feel like they’re the only ones going through things like this. Um, but yeah, just, just keep spreading this message of inclusion and that it’s really about mercy and it’s about accepting your ancestor, whoever they are for the choices they made and in turn, then being able to accept yourself because we all make choices that maybe we wish we hadn’t made. And it’s refreshing to think you can come out on the other side, no matter how serious you can always come out on the other side, as long as you are committed to a better outcome. Right. You just pick up and move on. Yeah. That’s so beautiful. Yeah. I love that.
Speaker 1: (49:23)
Um, and for people that want to learn more about you or look into your services or find those YouTube videos, what should they be looking up? So our website is your DNA guide.com. And so you can also, that’s also on YouTube as well for those videos. Um, but yeah, on our website, we’ve got a lot of resources. We have a really great blog. And so you can just search in the blog for any topic that you might be curious about there. Um, you can sign up for our newsletter, that’s just once a month and that will kind of bring you any news that’s going on in the industry, as well as, you know, some articles or other little inspiring tidbits that we like to share. Uh, so it’s been, it’s been a really fun journey to just I’d love the, the best moments in my job are the light bulb moments where I feel like somebody says I get it now.
Speaker 1: (50:15)
And I, I live for that. So the more moments like that we can create the better. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you so much for your time. Um, thanks for having me and thanks again for always spreading this kind great message. We just need to get more stories out there, right? Yeah, no, I, I believe it, um, with everything in me. So thank you so much. Um, and I, if you could think of anything else, um, like send me a message. Um, yeah. Just let us know when you, when you publish and then we’ll promote your podcast also through our channels. So cool. Thank you so much. This has been so interesting. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye, aye. Content. This keeps happening to me where things like I have, I talked with somebody and I’m kind of speechless. I’m just like, this is interesting. This is interesting, but interesting is not the word I’m actually feeling good more than that. It’s more than that is better than that. Um, but thank you so much for your time and yeah, I’ll be in touch with you about the podcast and um, and I’ll just probably be in touch in general. Thank you so much. Thanks. Take care. Bye bye. Bye.
With Great Talent Comes Great Responsibility
Speaker 1: (00:00)
Um, in a way that people who have been through it felt seen and people who haven’t been to, it felt like, you know, I mean, I hear this all the time. Like, it was so important to me that people understand, um, because it’s not an instant, instantly relatable thing. It’s not, you know, I mean, my other memoirs, it was like marriage or my kid was sick or, uh, you know, my father died. This was like a whole other, like, what you, like, what does that feel like? And I felt such a sense of responsibility because it felt like it was my story and I’m a writer and I had to write it. So
Speaker 2: (00:43)
Yeah, you just answered all my questions. So I have to do any more interviews. Um, yeah. Sense of responsibility is, um, is important. I think, I think people, I think it, I think it lands differently with different people obviously, but, um, but it’s interesting how many, how, how people are choosing to channel their other own NPE experiences and what they’re doing with it and what, and, and mostly for the, you know, I’m mostly interested in the creative side of things. Um, the writing and the, uh, I guess it was probably movies and there’s podcasts and, um, there’s a magazine at least one. So, um, yeah, so that’s something that has really come out of this
Speaker 1: (01:27)
More and more. I mean, we can talk about that. I mean, you know, it’s, it’s, you know, nature, abhors, a vacuum and four years ago when I made my discovery 2016, so like going on like four and a half years ago, there was like very, very, very little. And now, I mean, somebody wrote high school, friend of mine wrote to me yesterday saying that a friend of hers just made this discovery and is there anywhere that I could point her to? And I was able to point her to, um, Brianne Fitzpatrick who has watershed DNA and who has all these resources and, you know, there’s therapists who are specializing in this now that did not exist. Um, so, and that’s, that’s no time at all, imagine what it’s going to be like in another four years. So it’s great. It’s yeah,
Speaker 2: (02:14)
Very quickly, um, very, very quickly. And, um, so, so I’m going to back up just a little bit, um, and make sure everybody knows I’m talking to Danny Shapiro. I didn’t even realize we were recording it. Um, well I started recording, you know, we were sort of in the middle of talking and I, um, this is always how it goes on my show. It’s only a little bit, um, scrambled. So, uh, so yeah, it’s, I’m talking to Danny Shapiro, I’m here with her today. She’s the author of the book inheritance, which is, um, what I describe as a very hot book in the NPE community, DNA discovery world. She, um, she is a writer of many books, many fiction books, and a series of memoirs that a lot of people are familiar with. And then she, um, stumbled into her own DNA discovery, uh, the way that so many of us do through a male in recreational DNA kits.
Speaker 2: (03:15)
Um, and she wrote about it. And I don’t, I think almost everybody probably that’s listening to this has read her book. So I don’t want to go over the whole story. Um, I don’t, I don’t need you to tell me you’re holding it, you know, um, NPS story, which is what a lot of this podcast often is. It’s people relating their stories. Um, and I, but I do, you know, I just want to say she, you know, you discover that there’s a, uh, it’s a late discovery, don’t donor conception distort story. Um, and I think what people, the, the, the facts of the chronological story are about discovering it, and then the journey you go on and then the things you find out, and then what that means, but what people, what resonates with people so powerfully is your emotional experience and the way that you describe it, um, and you, I could be wrong, but I think it’s the first book to come out on a sort of wide market popular, um, platform that, that made it so accessible for people to understand what you, uh, what you went through, what most, if not everybody goes through with these experiences, and then, uh, with what the feeling is my, um, side note, my mom read your book before me actually, and she read it because she was trying to understand what I was going through, which I thought was very sweet and admirable of her.
Speaker 2: (04:42)
She’s really putting in some effort. Um, she didn’t get it when it felt like such a, um, such a, like example of the, of the disconnect between so many parents and their children or adult children that are, that are going through this. Um, but she had, I think she enjoyed it as a memoir, but didn’t, it just had some sort of funny things to say. Um, but it’s an excellent book.
Speaker 1: (05:08)
I think so many parents who have, um, uh, you know, sort of kept this under wraps for most of their lives. Um, and then, you know, just there’s this, uh, you know, the, the kind of injury of the fact that there’s, there are these DNA tests and they’re commercially available and they’re inexpensive and people do them many, many, many hundreds and hundreds of thousands and millions of people. Um, and then parents grappling with, you know, having thought their lives were going to go one way and then having to pivot. And there’s, I think, I mean, I’ve seen this and heard this a lot, often a feeling of, of like very threatened, like what’s, what difference does it make, like in your mother, your was your father. It doesn’t make any difference and, you know, like just let sleeping dogs lie and, and, you know, don’t, you know, don’t rock the boat and, um, there’s certainly that reaction, but there’s also the reaction.
Speaker 1: (06:09)
And I’ve had this, a lot of parents have NP is reading my book. And like, I remember once while I was on book tour back when we could do such things being in Chicago and this young man came up to me and he asked me if he could speak to me privately. And we went into a corner of the bookstore and he started crying. And he said that his father had read my book and had sat him down to tell him after reading my book. And I I’ve had a lot of that too, the feeling of a parent reading it and thinking, Oh, this is actually important. And this, you know, knowingly or unknowingly, this has shaped my child’s life. And, and they’re going to find out anyway, which is the big medic. Like the really, like, can’t get around that piece. Right. They’re going to find out in all likelihood, somebody’s going to do an DNA test at some point. And, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s going to be revealed.
Speaker 2: (07:16)
Wow, that’s a powerful, um, sort of vehicle for the situation that I had not thought about. I had not considered the parents might read it and think, Oh, I better.
Speaker 1: (07:26)
Oh, wow. They came to my events. I could, I started to be able to spot them. They were there when my events started, right. When the book came out, like I remember from the very first event I walked in and it was like wall to wall people, first of all, which was a surprise. And there were people there that were not my usual demographic, you know, it wasn’t a room full of young women. And there were elderly men. And I was like, inwardly, my, my, my inner chatter was going, sir, who are you? And why are you here? And then there were like these couples, older couples sitting there holding hands, looking really stricken. And then there were all of these people of all ages, just looking like, almost like, like intensity was sort of radiating off of them. And so what I found over time, because I, eventually people started coming up to me was the elderly men were very often, donors were all of a sudden thinking, Whoa, boy, I donated as an anonymous donor many decades ago, never thinking that offspring of mine would ever be able to identify me, find me.
Speaker 1: (08:45)
Um, it was something I did casually or I, something I did for money or whatever it was. Uh, so there were those gentlemen coming to my events, but then there, these couples, um, who were really starting to, and I remember it being in California, um, a bookstore in Laguna beach and this really early on in my book tour, and this woman got up during the Q and a, she was crying. She had come with a friend and she said, I’m realizing I have to tell my daughter and my daughter. And that just really started happening. And then the people, the people who just looked like, like, like intense and like stuff was just like a radiating, you know, what I’m going to say was like, those are all the NPS, right? My very first reading, the very first question, when I opened it up to a show of hands, it was this, this, this guy.
Speaker 1: (09:37)
And he sort of turned kind of tables on me. And he looked out at the crowd and he said, how many people here have made DNA discoveries? And all these hands went up. And I was like, Whoa, Whoa. Um, something is like, it, it was, it was miraculous and actually really wonderful once it stopped being totally surprising that, because my book was the book that wasn’t is still the book that people would be like, this happened to you. Here you go. I’ve got a book for you. Yeah. Um, so the events became gathering places in a way that, you know, I think we long to gather, we long to like, have these conversations with other people who have been through something. So experience that resembles ours, and there was no place to do that now, increasingly there’s, you know, there’s some private groups, there’s Facebook groups, there’s, you know, there, there are other avenues to find other NPS, but that for me was actually one of the most healing things in my journey was that I got to ma I got to make a difference. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (10:55)
Yeah. I mean, that theme comes up again and again is, um, the healing sort of the healing power of being of service. Um, being able to help others can be so healing and yeah. And the, and the immense power of community has, uh, and I’ve, I I’ve been through other things in my life, but this has been the thing that, um, I have, I have needed and craved and been sort of healed the most was by, by connecting with other people over the situation. Um, and yeah, so I don’t, I don’t know what it is about the, about the NPE experience. Exactly. That makes it that way. But, um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: (11:33)
Theories, I mean, and I can only speak for myself, but you know, when you make a discovery and, and it’s something that you never knew about yourself and, you know, and I really have to differentiate there because one of the things I realized was that adopted people or adoptive parents in particular, um, if they hadn’t read the book and they just were hearing me on the radio or hearing me speak, they, they, they would like leap to the conclusion that what I was saying was that biology is all that matters. Right. Which would be a very, very, very threatening thing to a adopt. I don’t feel that way at all. Not even a tiny little bit, but a secret was kept from us. Right. And I, you know, I spent my life with no reason to doubt that my dad had was my biological father.
Speaker 1: (12:28)
And my mom was my biological mother. And it, this was the family that I came from biologically. And these were the ancestors that I came from biologically to make the discovery that that was not the case. The feeling was of being in pieces. Like my, my, my foundational story, we all have foundational stories. And our foundational stories are the ones that are told to us from the time that we can understand anything. This is, this is you, this is who you are. And when that foundational story is actually woven around an absence or an untruth, or, um, a lie or a secret, however, whatever you want to call it, um, for, for whatever reason it’s been kept. I mean, in many, many cases, it was kept because people were told that it was best for the child, but when you make that discovery as an adult, um, and I think this goes to the reason why community is so important or community is also having your experience reflected back at you.
Speaker 1: (13:33)
You know, this is a big deal. You know, I felt that way too, or I feel that way too, or that’s how I felt as a child too. You know, there’s so much emotionally that NPS share, even if the experiences differ wildly, there is thing. I mean, I’ve heard so many people say I grew up feeling like something didn’t quite fit in about me. I grew up feeling like I didn’t quite belong, but that didn’t make any sense because of course I belonged. So I had that feeling that I didn’t, so I felt like something was wrong with me. I felt effective. I felt other. And I mean, I, I don’t think I’ve had a conversation with a single NPE where that, that was not a shared experience. And so that’s huge to be able to begin to put those pieces back together and go, Oh, I was feeling that way because this was the ground beneath me that I didn’t know, this was the air that I was breathing that I didn’t know.
Speaker 2: (14:44)
Yeah. Well, yeah. And it, and I think, I think you’re absolutely right. It’s from one kind of isolation, the feeling like you don’t fit in, which is incredibly isolating too, then the NPE experience, which is incredibly isolating as it happens to then discovering that you’re not isolated at all, but you have this connection with all these people. Um, so, so yeah, to go from isolation to community, um, is a part of it, for sure. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: (15:10)
Well, and when people contact me, you know, and, you know, it’s, the book created a situation where I could not write back in kind like long,
Speaker 1: (15:23)
But what I, what I would do. And I mean, on my website, I searched, I have a place where people can find other resources, but also if I was ever encountering someone who was saying, I like, I just discovered this in my world is in pieces. The thing I found myself saying again, and again, is you are so far from alone. Hundreds of thousands of people are making these discoveries. I, you know, I, I heard a statistic recently that probably only about a third of the people who are NPS know it yet. And there are millions. So think, I mean, just like, yeah, it’s going to, I mean, there’s going to be a point, you know, I, I think of this time that we’re living through, it’s actually incredibly fascinating that we’re living through it. Right. I mean, it’s a sliver in time. It’s the people who were not told. Um, and that still exists. I mean, people are still having babies and they’re still doing it. That is actually the only thing that makes me mad. I’m not mad at my parents. I’m not mad at your mother. I’m not like I’m not mad at people plugging in my computer, keep talking. Yes. Um, I, people who made their families at a time when, um, it was conventional wisdom that this is, yeah, I’ve, I’ve really made my peace with that. It’s um, you can’t judge the past by the standards of the present.
Speaker 2: (17:00)
There’s no way my parents knew Facebook was going to be invented
Speaker 1: (17:03)
Or river, or the idea that, you know, that, that children had rights or that, you know, that, that, that what we don’t know can hurt us and that they’re toxic and all of that, their generations and generations and generations of parents didn’t know that, but we can judge the present by the standards of the present and in the present. When I hear stories that I hear all the time of people who are having babies with donors, and these are the, these are most often couples and, and, and straight couples, three couples are the only people who can do this. If you’re a single somebody else somewhere, if you’re a gay couple, there’s somebody else somewhere who assisted, uh, you need an assist. Um, but if you’re a straight couple, uh, and you’re going this route to use a donor, an egg donor, or a sperm donor, um, and you’re choosing not to either not to tell your child, or maybe you’ll decide later whether you’re going to tell your child, or maybe someday you’ll tell your child.
Speaker 1: (18:14)
Like to me, that’s when I start feeling really, um, upset with people because they’re a, because we know better, we should know better be, there are no secrets. Your child is going to find out and see there’s so much support now. So there’s no, there’s no, I mean, my parents, if they had told me when I was a child, there would have been no support for me. And I think actually it would have been a catastrophe, even bigger unicorn than I already felt. Um, and there would have been no way of ever identifying my biological father. There would have been no way of ever finding other people who were having the same experience because every, everybody was keeping the secret. But now, yeah,
Speaker 2: (18:58)
Yeah, yeah. Now, no. And I actually, um, I’ve interviewed a few people who, who are, um, who, who are even in, you know, I would say like in the, in the, in the more progressive and more liberally educated, uh, field of thought, and they even, aren’t taking it very seriously as, as parents using donor.
Speaker 1: (19:19)
Um, well here, here’s something I very recently heard from, um, uh, actually from, from, uh, uh, a therapist who’s very involved in this field, which is that. So there is, I mean, this, this just blew my mind. It was like one step further than anything that I’ve considered. Um, there is embryo donation when, um, a couple has used IVF to have their own children biologic, and they’re finished making their family. They’ve had two kids or three kids, or have any kids with, or one kid, well, however many kids they wanted to have with IVs, they can, instead of destroying those embryos, they can donate those embryos to another family. Okay. So, well, I’m good. I’m on the birth certificate of those embryos, which are then implanted in the, um, you know, in the intended mother goes to the intended parents names, which is unconscionable. I mean, that’s, that’s a lie, right,
Speaker 2: (20:25)
Right. Because the child, yeah. The child actually isn’t related to the,
Speaker 1: (20:28)
The woman did not birth certificate. I mean, when I realized that my, my birth certificate was a false document, when I realized I was, I was doing research on the history of reproductive medicine. And I realized that there were, I mean, it was there plainly written in medical texts that the couple would go to, um, uh, you know, to, to, uh, uh, a doctor or a clinic to do the procedure and, and, and use a donor. And then the, uh, mother future mother would go to her obstetrician and never tell him so that the obstetrician would be able to sign the document, the legal document. There’s nothing more foundational than your birth certificate. Right. Thing. It’s a thing you bring in when you have to get your passport is the thing you need to bring in when you get those new fancy driver’s licenses with the stars on them, like foundational document of identity. And the feeling I had when I realized that was a false, was an, is a false document. My father was not my biological father and that’s what’s on there. And, and that, that is still happening. If you think of all of the ramifications for that, the genetic ramifications, the medical, if nothing else, I mean, let’s even put aside the emotional, the psychological, the more subtle, the spiritual, you know, all of the, um, you know, sort of more, you know, harder to really wrap your hands around, but you talk about medical and genetic issues.
Speaker 2: (22:15)
Yeah. You’re right. Right. If your foundational, if your foundational document cannot even be trusted, then who are you when it couldn’t be yeah. You know, scientists scientifically or literally, and then existentially, it’s just, um, yeah. Yeah. We really ought to maybe rethink that, rethink that rethink the birth certificate process, whatever, you know, whatever.
Speaker 1: (22:41)
Well, that’s, that’s part of what energized me when I realized that I was, I mean, when inheritance came out, which was in January of 2019, so two years ago, um, I went on a book tour. I was on a book tour for like six months nonstop in like 30 cities, something like that. I came home and my publisher was like, do you want to go back out again? Because this is really working. I went back out again. I did another, I was on the road until, until the pandemic struck and I was still, the paperback had just come out and I was supposed to start traveling internationally. I was supposed to go to Paris for the French publication and to Sydney, Australia, um, to speak about it at the Sydney, at the Sydney writers’ festival and like all this stuff. And the thing I started feeling was a profound sense of purpose.
Speaker 1: (23:30)
I was tired and it was, I mean, it was exhausting and it was a lot, it was also exciting and thrilling, but the sense of purpose was I would look out at a crowd of people and I would tell them the statistics. I would tell them, I mean, I started becoming more politicized as I went on. I would Howard it totally empowered to share information. I mean, I remember being in DC and, um, giving, giving a talk at the Smithsonian there and our Congress woman, um, Johanna Hayes, the first, first term Congresswoman from the state of Connecticut who I know a little bit socially, but, you know, she walked in and I thought I’ve got the ears of a congressperson now. And, but like the, I would, I would tell people the statistics, I would tell them, you know, however, however many million people it was at that point, uh, had done home DNA tests and that around 2% of those discover an NPE, I would explain to them what an NPE was.
Speaker 1: (24:42)
And then I would do the math and say, I think at the time it was that’s around 235,000 people a year who are making these discoveries. And then I talked about the way that in this country, we have no registry for sperm donors. We, the only country in the developed world that does not have a registry that limits the number of offspring that a donor can produce. Um, you know, in everywhere else. Like in some places that number is one in certain parts of Asia. That number is one in a lot of Europe, Western Europe, it’s 10 or 10 there’s 25, there is 25, but you don’t have a situation where it’s like 137, you know, a friend of mine who’s a continuing every week brings new half siblings. And then I like, look at people’s faces and they’re shocked. I mean, their draws were just dropping.
Speaker 1: (25:43)
And I felt like, you know, I’m actually, if, if I can activate people to think about this, you know, every once in a while, somebody, especially in Washington, DC, somebody would say to me, you know, well, what are you going to do about it? And I was like, this is what I’m going to do about it. We’re going to continue to tirelessly travel the world and tell people what’s going on because I’m a writer. And I wrote this book and that’s what that’s, that’s what I can do. Like that, those are my tools and that that’s my toolbox. And that’s how I can try to make a difference. Yeah,
Speaker 2: (26:21)
Yeah, absolutely. I didn’t know how much, I didn’t know until this experience and, and, and then, and meeting everybody else and starting to dig into all of this. I didn’t, I had no idea. It never occurred to me. And I think it’s probably a part of the sort of long winding complicated, uh, layered history that, that we have with sex. And that if we’re talking about fertility is talking about sex. And so we don’t talk about it. So now nobody knows about sperm banks, because that’s about masturbation
Speaker 1: (26:50)
Shame. It’s shame it’s underneath. All of it is shame. You know, I mean, my biological father is a elegant area. Dite man, and he’s lovely. And we will never have a simple relationship because I am the result of his having masturbated into a, you know, into a, into whatever
Speaker 2: (27:16)
I was, what they always say as a cup guest, who knows.
Speaker 1: (27:20)
And because of that, there’s, um, a kind of, there will always be a little bit of an awkwardness or an unease. Um, even though we have a really lovely friendship, it’s, you know, and the people who kept these secrets, um, they kept some, because infertility was shameful. Male infertility was super duper shameful. It was so painful that around the time that I was conceived, it literally didn’t exist. No doctor would test for it. Um, the, the Institute where my parents went was run by a scientist who was roundly disliked.
Speaker 2: (28:03)
Right. He was like the rogue. He was
Speaker 1: (28:05)
The rogue guy. He just wasn’t, I don’t think it was very likable. I mean, people just like him, but part of why the medical community didn’t like him was, Hey, he wasn’t a doctor. He was a, he wasn’t a medical doctor. He was a scientist. Um, but B um, he, um, studied male and fertility, which was the easiest thing in the world to study. All you had to do is look at the sperm under a microscope. Right. It’s so amazing. It took that long and they would sooner do invasive tests on women to figure out what the problem was. Then just simply look at the sperm.
Speaker 2: (28:42)
Of course. Hmm [inaudible] yeah. Yeah. It’s amazing. So we have to start talking about all of this, if we’re going to talk about the rights and the, and the birth certificates and the laws and the science of, of genetics and who we are, it includes sex and sperm and wombs and vaginas, like all that stuff is in there. And those are incredibly uncomfortable things, uh, as a whole,
Speaker 1: (29:07)
Especially if part of what’s going on is something about that doesn’t work.
Speaker 2: (29:10)
Right. Right. If there’s a flaw in ingestion of a flaw. Yeah. Right, right. Yeah. Um, so I actually reached out to a few of my NPE, um, communities and asked them if there were any questions they wanted to ask you hope that’s okay with you, um, that hadn’t been asked yet. Cause I know that you, you do a lot of talks about this book and you’ve already said you’ve gone on multiple tours. And, um, I was trying to think of, um, of things that would, that would offer something different. Um, so I wrote couple down, so I don’t want them all down. Um, I thought we could do those questions and, um, and that would be a, sort of a fun way to, um, talk about it and the, and, you know, and, and sort of close up, close up our time together. Um, yeah. All right. So these are the questions I wrote them down in no particular order. Um, and some of them, I bet you have been asked, but that’s okay. These are what these are, what people were curious about. Um, how would you have handled things differently if your parents were alive at the time of your discovery?
Speaker 1: (30:13)
I think so many things would have been different. Um, you know, it’s interesting, there’s a, there’s a movie in the works, um, of inheritance and, um, my husband, who’s a screenwriter and a director actually ended up writing the most recent draft of the screenplay and in the screenplay, my mother’s alive.
Speaker 1: (30:36)
It’s a lot more dramatic, I guess, that’s that story. Right. But you know, what was really interesting about that? Is it allowed for the opportunity of thinking, you know, what would my mother, how would my mother have reacted? Um, I’m pretty sure I I’ll never know, but I’m pretty sure that my mother would have been of the root of that didn’t happen. Um, because she was of the generation that was so completely, um, what’s the word, uh, great efforts were taken to make couples who came in at that time and used a donor to basically kind of either forget that it ever happened or think maybe it didn’t happen, you know, by, by mixing sperm, by confused artificial insemination by, uh, telling the, the here’s something that I found out after I finished inheritance, um, the, the, the woman wants successfully pregnant would often be told, you know, wonderful news your blood work shows that you’re pregnant, but the levels show that you must have already been pregnant when you got here.
Speaker 1: (31:58)
Oh, so, Oh yeah. Like I haven’t heard that one. Yeah. It was. I mean, really, um, it was done in, in like in a, in a protective way, wowing this couple to feel like, uh, this baby was biologically theirs, but boy, would it with your head? So confusing, so confusing. So I believe that if my mother had been alive, that that would have probably been a dead end too much to her, um, that she had con I think that she had largely convinced herself that I was my father’s biological child. And I think if my father had been alive, it would have been a very painful conversation. Um, and I don’t know that as a conversation I even would have had with him, you know, I might not have one thing I’m sure of is that if my father had been alive, I wouldn’t have written inheritance.
Speaker 1: (32:49)
I just, I would have felt that he so desperately wanted this to be, um, a secret that he took to the grave with him, uh, that I, I would’ve waited. Um, I might’ve written it after, after he was gone, but I wouldn’t have written while he was living. Um, and I also think that the, the, the, the mystery so much of the mystery for me, part of it was whose my biological father, but I solved that incredibly quickly. Um, so the mystery that was the, the deeper one that kind of consumed me was what did my parents know? How much did they know? Did they raise me kind of with a consciousness about this? What went into their decisions? I don’t, you know, I I’ve talked to enough people now that I actually really don’t know that I would have gotten satisfaction about that even had they living it’s, it’s nice to think that we would have had this like deep reckoning and talked through everything, but, you know, we actually didn’t have that relationship with it.
Speaker 2: (33:57)
Yup. Yup. I relate to that. A lot of people ask me when my, when my experience first happened, they said, um, was happening. Like when I was in the, in the throws of the first, uh, days, people kept saying, well, have you asked your mom, have you, have you asked your mom, you know, so many people said that. And I was like, uh, no, no, because that, that would not be, um, a conversation that could, I can’t just call. Yeah. It’s just complicated cupcakes. And there are people who can,
Speaker 1: (34:24)
And I think there’s also a feeling of, like, you kind of want to understand as much as you can on your own before. Like, I remember a friend of mine who’s very plugged into the whole world of like the best psychics in the world and the best mediums. I mean, really like the ones that the FBI And, um, and, and she said, you know, we can get, we can get Laurel and Jackson on the phone, you know, we can, uh, and I was like, I don’t want to do that. I don’t, I want, I won’t trust it anyway. And I, the only thing that I feel I can trust in this entire experience are my own deepest instincts and like that deep, deep knowledge about things that continues to evolve, it’s evolving four years later and it will probably evolve for the rest of my life.
Speaker 2: (35:18)
Right. Right. Well, and I think part of the process for so many people, and I think, I think what you, you talk about in, in one way or another is about, um, recognizing intuition as such and, and creating a relationship with it after your whole life being told to ignore it, um, passive aggressively by the world, by your parents, by the world. Um,
Speaker 1: (35:40)
Because I had the intuition things I haven’t talked about much is that because I’m a writer and I’ve written 10 books, nine books before inheritance, I can go, I have proof of my intuition. I can, I can go back to the very beginning of my life as a writer and read, look at my first novels, which I did do. And it was breathtaking to me because on some level I knew. Absolutely. It’s just there, it’s there in black and white. That’s cool. It’s really cool. Yeah. I mean, it’s, and it’s, it’s like, hopefully some graduate student will do a study someday. It’s like, it’s like, it’s like the unconscious is there on the page, like a trail of breadcrumbs that lead all the way to ultimately the discovery, but I didn’t make the discovery because I suspected I made the discovery because as you said, recreational DNA, fun
Speaker 2: (36:38)
Science, fun science. Yeah. Wow. Um, someone wanted to know, have you discovered any more siblings and, um, I believe in the book you connect with your sister, sister through. Um, but they want to know if you’ve had any more connections with any more siblings
Speaker 1: (36:58)
I have not, which makes me pretty unusual. I think I have not been any, um, half siblings materializing. I’ve got my DNA up on all the sites. Um, and I wouldn’t rule out the possibility, but time goes on. It becomes less likely, I think, but I, but it certainly could be the case, but, um, I think that my biological father didn’t, didn’t donate that many times. It’s really possible that I’m the only, that I’m the only one
Speaker 2: (37:35)
Very possible. He didn’t fall into the 137 category. No. Um, let’s see. How do you think it would have felt if you had not been able to discover who your biological family was so quickly?
Speaker 1: (37:50)
Yeah, I’ve thought a lot about that because it was such a wild, like kismety fast. Um, like everything just clicking, like clicking, like the combinations of a lock or the way that it happened. And I was aware of how unusual that was. Um, and that I had exactly the right number of clues to be able to put it all together. And if any, one of those clues had not been there, if the first cousin had not been on my ancestry.com page, if my mother had not mentioned the word Institute and Philadelphia, if right. Like that conversation, by the way, I mean, people will sometimes ask, do you think your mother was trying to tell you something back then? Absolutely not. I think she was, she was triggered by the word Philadelphia. Like it just came up out of left field, you know, when somebody said, I, you know, I’ve come from Philadelphia and out of her mouth just came, my daughter was conceived in Philadelphia and the minute she said it, she would, I’m sure she would have loved to just like stuff, those words.
Speaker 1: (38:51)
Right. Um, but I remembered that conversation without that conversation, I would have been left in the dark. So, so I’ve thought about it a lot. I think it would have been really hard. And I, I, I just have so much compassion for people who are looking and struggling and trying to find and hitting dead ends or finding someone who rejects them or finding someone who is incredibly threatened and just thinks, you know, as, as virtually everyone is when they’re contacted my biological father was too, it’s like, you know, what do you want from me? It’s a primal thing. Um, but you know, to, to know, I can say from the vantage point of knowing it’s not everything, you know, um, but it’s definitely a comfort because it, um, it confirms things, it confirms, Oh, that’s why I look the way that I do. That’s I see my gestures.
Speaker 1: (39:58)
I see. I, I can see the, that the constitution, you know, the, who I kind of constitutionally am, uh, comes from this person and this line of people, it doesn’t make me feel like I have a new father. It doesn’t make me feel like I have a new family. Um, I do feel like I have new ancestors because ancestors are just facts, chips. You know, I have, I do have, I have my old ancestors who are my psychological, emotional, spiritual ancestors. And I have my new ancestors who are in fact, my biological ancestors. And I find that all kind of fascinating. Um, and it’s comforting to know because it fills in some blanks. And it’s really hard to, I only walked around with those blanks for three days. And there are people who are walking around with those blanks and wondering whether they’re ever going to be able to feel any of them in.
Speaker 2: (41:00)
Yeah. The unknown is so hard to grapple with.
Speaker 1: (41:03)
Um,
Speaker 2: (41:05)
One woman does not have a question as I’m sure you’re familiar with that in the Q and a world. Um, she wanted to tell you that she was at your book signing for inheritance, um, on a whim. And then one week later her results came in and she discovered she was an envy. Isn’t that crazy? I bet that happens all the time.
Speaker 1: (41:28)
It’s not the first time I’ve heard it. And, but it’s, it’s because of the sheer numbers of people that this is happening to. I mean, it’s, we’re reaching a point where this, it may not be the NPE experience, but the DNA surprise experience is touching almost everyone. It feels like everyone, it might be by a couple of degrees of separation, but it is, it is touching everyone. Everyone has a story. Now, even if it’s a story of, you know, my friend so-and-so or my, you know, my old boyfriend or whatever, it’s, it’s just wild.
Speaker 2: (42:08)
Yeah. It doesn’t seem, I haven’t yet. And I talked about this a lot, but, um, I have yet to tell my story in, within a group of some, you know, whatever, wherever it is and not have one person within the group say, Oh, that happened to me, to my brother, to my cousins and my bartender to my, you know, somebody knows somebody. Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 1: (42:28)
And need to go back to the thing we were talking about about like this sliver of time that we’re in. I think, cause I kind of went off track there and started talking about my, my, my rage at people who don’t disclose there will be a point probably was in our lifetimes where this will be over. We are living in this like, wave that hasn’t Crested yet. Um, but it’s, it’s a big, powerful wave of this combination of secrecy, shame, DNA becoming easily accessible, the unintended consequences of people being able to, you know, find out all this stuff and a few generations from now, it won’t be, it won’t be done anymore. Like people, the psychology and the science will have caught up with each other and P and if there are, if there are donors, they’re going to be entirely transparent and there will be registries and no one will think that it’s okay to hide their child’s genetic identity from them. Partly because partly because it’s simply won’t be possible anymore. And partly because we will catch up with the understanding of how wrong that is
Speaker 2: (43:55)
A hundred percent. Right. I think about that a lot about this sort of, yeah. A way a wave is a wonderful way to think of it as, um, graphically sort of like, um, yeah, we haven’t peaked yet, but, um, but yeah, eventually it won’t, it won’t be possible. So I am amazed when I do hear of people still doing it in different way, you know, still trying to hide things and I’m like, no, no, those babies are just babies. Oh no, no. The bell curve will not be over. Um, and one person wanted to know, do you have advice about writing and publishing stories? Because the more stories we have will a broader perspective
Speaker 3: (44:32)
Of the experience.
Speaker 1: (44:36)
I think that the reason why I was able to write inheritance is because I am a writer. Um, I’ve had a lot of people send me like versions of their stories and the details of their stories are, you know, heartbreaking and intense, but they don’t feel like stories. Um, because ultimately to be able to capture the story, the person doing it has to be in control of the storytelling. I could not possibly have written inheritance if it had been my first book I needed. It’s just going to ask you that possibly have written it. I have so many more tools in my toolbox as a writer. I mean, I found myself thinking, you know, what is universal about this experience? It has to be made universal for. I didn’t want to write a book that only NPS would read. I wanted to write a book that everyone would read. Um, I wanted to write a book that would concretize and make visible this experience for, for the people who say, doesn’t matter, your father is still your father. People who say, I don’t see what the big deal is for the people who say, but you know, you have a great life. You’ve had
Speaker 3: (46:06)
A great life. I mean, aren’t you just happy that you’re here
Speaker 1: (46:09)
For the people who essentially say, get over it, get over yourself. I wanted, you know, and I can’t, I can’t win anybody over if that’s going to be their attitude, but I wanted people’s eyes to be opened. Um, and in order to do that, I had to think what’s universal. And, you know, the, the, the details become riveting and, and, um, you know, kind of, we can really get inside somebody’s story when the, you know, the shape of the storytelling allows for that. And, you know, I mean, I threw out hundreds of pages of inheritance before I found the way to tell it the place from which to tell it. So I guess I would say, first of all, um, it’s never a good idea to think about Polish publishing something before you’ve written it, the world doesn’t need more accounts out there, the world, you know, somebody will come along and write another book at some point, but that person who does that well will be a writer.
Speaker 1: (47:22)
Um, and, and I just think that, look, there’s a difference between a kind of deep journaling that is very therapeutic and really useful, um, and is like, this is my story. I’m laying down my story. I’m telling my story. I teach that way sometimes. Um, I don’t know when this is going to, I don’t know when this podcast is going to drop this episode, but on March 6th, I’m actually teaching an online. I never do this, but it’s the first time I’m doing it, like an, a large online couple of hour retreats called secrets in memory. And a lot of, lot of that is going to be generative, getting, getting, you know, by all means generate. Right. You know, but, but to think, you know, I need to publish my story is like almost a short fire, route 10, not actually like to becoming sort of, so self-conscious that you’re not really telling the story anymore, right?
Speaker 2: (48:23)
Yeah. Yeah. There’s a freedom in the deep journaling, um, that may, that may not exist, uh, with, with publication in mind. Yeah. Yeah. Um, um, my book proposal that I worked on with Claire, um, was for a memoir and, uh, it was roundly rejected by everybody, but, um, but my letter got a lot of responses, but, um, but, uh, but it was interesting because I felt before I even started submitting it, that something was missing. It’s about, you know, when it’s about, we’ll get into the details, but it’s about mother and, uh, my mother and me and my daughter and sort of this like relationship between the three of us and there was something missing. And it’s so funny because it was before my NPE experience. And as soon as it happened, it was like, well, that’s what was missing. You know, not that anybody ever said specifically that something was missing, but something just wasn’t there. And I think what I was trying to talk about with shame and secrecy, but I didn’t know, didn’t know it yet. Right. And, um, and, uh, yeah, so
Speaker 1: (49:31)
Send it amazing when that happens, because it’s suddenly like, Oh, now you have, like, you had all of the colors, but you were missing the color blue. You just did not have the color blue. You had all the other colors or like you had most of the puzzle and you had the, kind of, you had the edges done in the corner, but there were just pieces that were like literally just missing.
Speaker 2: (49:53)
Yeah. And I had a lot of feedback that was like, this is like almost there. This is almost good, but there’s like, yeah, it’s just, it was so amazing. So as someone who’s had my book proposal rejected 76 times. Um, I, but, um, yeah, the writing for publication is different. It’s a different experience and it’s very hard to get published. Um, and my aunt, uh, who was very supportive of me, she suggested asking you, um, what, what is it, what is it like for you to be a public person while suffering private trouble?
Speaker 1: (50:32)
Oh, that’s such a great question.
Speaker 2: (50:34)
She’s a writer, English teacher per se,
Speaker 1: (50:38)
Not like an, like an, like an empathetic person. Um,
Speaker 1: (50:45)
It’s a complicated answer. I mean, it’s, it’s something I’ve thought a lot about. Um, you know, one of the great pleasures of writing memoir is that you’re taking the stuff of your life, the stuff that makes you vulnerable, the stuff that makes you, um, fragile, the stuff that makes the, you know, the stuff that’s hard and you’re shaping it into art. Um, which kind of goes back to my answer to the last question too. You’re not like splat putting it out there, you know? Um, it’s not all interesting. It doesn’t all belong. You’re, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re shaping it and making something coherent out of it. And you’re choosing what belongs. And that is actually not an act of confession. It’s an act of consummate artistic control when it’s done well. And that has always offered me its own protection when I’m on the road, because I don’t feel like I’ve done a strip tease.
Speaker 1: (51:57)
I don’t feel like I feel like my vulnerability is my superpower. Like when I get up and I speak and I’ve, you know, I used to be terrified of public speaking and now I’m really comfortable with it. Uh, and that was like its own journey. And I didn’t do like Toastmasters. I didn’t do anything. I just learned that the more honest I was, the more myself I was, um, the more I would look out onto a sea of faces and see people tearing up and crying and nodding and, um, and, and, you know, empathizing, um, when inheritance came out about six weeks later and I was already on the road, my husband was diagnosed with a serious cancer. I remember this only from what you publicly said. Well, and, and I had to really think about, okay, um, I’m I, I was, I still had to be on the road.
Speaker 1: (53:00)
And we were like, I was, we went through seven months of his having, you know, very serious cancer, very serious treatment, very serious surgery. And I was like in two modes that were diametrically opposed. I was with my husband and advocating for him and taking care of him and being with him and being terrified and being a caretaker, a caregiver, and, and being a mother to my son who was 17 years old and who was also frightened. Sure. No, he wasn’t 17. I’m making him younger. He was 2019. He was 19 going on 20, still very young, very young, very young. And in fact, close to the age that I was when I lost my father. So there was a lot, there were a lot of residences and then I would pack my bag and I would roll my suitcase through airports and I would put on cute clothes and I would go to the place and I would do the thing.
Speaker 1: (54:01)
And for that hour, I would be fully present for my job. But I, I realized really early on, and this goes to your aunt’s question that I couldn’t do that. If I was hiding that my husband was sick. Every bone in my body does not want people to know every bone in my body wanted to, um, just have this be our, um, you know, our cross to bear. And I felt very protective of him and I didn’t want, I just didn’t want people to know. Um, he cared about that a lot less than I did, but that was my, that was my first until I realized that what we were dealing with was very serious and it was going to be impossible to do that. And we were going to have to cancel things and we were going to have to move into New York city and all sorts of things.
Speaker 1: (54:54)
But, but for me, I realized that if I got up there and was splitting myself off to do that, that I wasn’t going to be okay, and that I wasn’t going to do a good job either, but then I wasn’t going to feel, I can’t get up there and present a false self. Right. And so, you know, that definitely presented it’s moments where I would be about to go on stage and somebody would grab my arm and say, how’s Michael. Oh my God, not now. Oh my God, not there was, there was that kind of thing. And I had to find little phrases and things to say that would protect me and shut down conversations when I didn’t feel capable of having them. But I, my, my public self and my private self are not the same, but there was an awful lot of my true self in my public self. And, and that feels good to me. I don’t feel like I have to protect myself. I feel like that’s actually, um, that’s my superpower. And, and, and that’s what allows me to connect with other human beings, which is really all I want to do. That’s what I want to do as a writer is what I want to do as a person
Speaker 4: (56:20)
That was very moving. That was very beautiful. Um, I,
Speaker 2: (56:24)
Yeah, I really understand that, um, the true self in between the public and the private is the true self. Um, so thank you for sharing that. I’ll thank my aunt for the great question. Um, she lives in Portland, if you need to know. Um, so my last, my last question is not a question either. It’s just a, it’s just sort of a story. Um, so, uh, you’re my second interview today. And my first talk this morning was with a man named Fred, who, um, we connected just in the past few days. And he, he had said, Hey, I want to tell my story. And I said, great. I just happened to have this hour open. If you want it. We jumped on and him not knowing what my schedule was today at all, or how, and why would he, he brought up your book a number of times.
Speaker 2: (57:09)
It was very interesting and it felt serendipitous for lots of reasons. And, um, and, uh, he, so he’s a big fan music fan, but he, you know, it’s like, it’s a fan, isn’t really the word I want. But, um, your book really resonated with him and really he really represented the, the, the way that your book has moved people within the NPE community in different ways. And so he wanted you to know, hi, you wanted me to say hello to you for him. And, um, he had tweeted about, um, he had the similar experience of having a first cousin and unknown cousin. Um, an unknown cousin is what revealed his NPE ex uh, identity to him. And what he discovered was that not, he wasn’t that he was not Jewish or half Jewish it’s that he is half Jewish after not knowing that. And, um, and so he feels a, a personal connection to you through, through those little details. Um, but also really loves your book. And I know he’s not alone, but it was really fun, um, to talk with him this morning and yeah,
Speaker 1: (58:09)
Yeah, that’s a nice, it’s a good story is a nice story. I love hearing that because, I mean, I think that when, when the book resonates with NPS it’s because, um, what we want is to be seen, you know, what we want us to be seen. We as human beings want to be seen, you know, everyone wants to be seen, it’s like, kind of, it’s our lot in life that, you know, that that’s, you know, that’s what intimacy is. That’s what, you know, that’s, that’s an amazing feeling when somebody sees you and the stranger and more idiosyncratic, uh, situation is, and the more alien self alienating. I mean, I think that the NPE initial discovery is for so many people. So, um, alienating from oneself, because the thing that, you know, the things that we thought made us us suddenly, aren’t what made us us, um, or at least that’s the feeling.
Speaker 1: (59:14)
And so there’s something that’s very like alien in the experience. And, and so it all the more important and essential to feel seen or to feel like that experience is captured in language. And this goes back to the publishing question, right. In a language that illuminates it for you. It’s not, it’s not only about telling your story. It’s about like, Oh, like I remember after I met my biological father, I got really sad for a few days afterwards. And I couldn’t quite figure out why. And a few days later I was meditating, uh, early in the morning, which I do every day. And, and sometimes when I’m meditating, especially when I’m writing, I find myself searching for language. Like, like, like, like what, like, just trying to find the words for what the feeling is. And I was sad because I realized that this gentleman absolutely did not feel like my father to me.
Speaker 1: (01:00:26)
Like there was no feeling, you know, my, my dad’s been gone since I, you know, I, since I was 23 years old, I mean, he’s been gone a very long time. And there was not a feeling that this man that I was having lunch with was my father. My father is dead and he’s been gone a long time. So I was feeling sad. And then I was meditating. And all of a sudden the phrase, the language came to me, it’s like, he’s the country I’m from, and I’ve never been to that country. And I’ve never walked the land of that country. And I’ve never eaten the cuisine of that country. And I’ve never listened to the music of the country, but it’s the country that I’m from. And, and so there’s kind of a longing, you know, for like the land that I’m from and that, and, and that ended up in the book to me, that was like the great satisfaction of that was yeah. That nailed it. Like that nailed what that particular experience, which is one that only people who are, you know, sort of along this journey may have,
Speaker 2: (01:01:39)
Do you know the word heareth, I can’t even say it right here. Right. It’s a word it’s like Welsh. And it means the feeling of homesickness of a place you’ve never been. And there is that there’s an NPE community that hosts a retreat and it’s called heareth hope and healing on the East coast. And, um, so when you just started to describe that, I was like, Oh, I’ve never thought that that word would apply. Um, Hera. Yeah. It’s like a well shore Gaelic word, but I think it’s well, um, that’s beautiful. Yeah. The feeling of longing for a place you’ve never been, um, well, it certainly resonated with Fred, um, and it certainly has resonated with so many of us, um, in the NP community. So I can’t, I guess I can’t thank you enough for writing your book and sharing your story and, um, using your skills as a writer to, to do it so beautifully.
Speaker 2: (01:02:28)
Um, and skillfully, because it really has resonated across, um, like you’ve described all sorts of people connected or not connected to this situation. Um, it’s been, it’s been really great. And actually, um, I was actually on that, on that retreat last year at the here at retreat week at one of the things from your book that lots of people, you know, sort of quote or drop a lot is the, um, nothing has changed and everything has changed or, you know, nothing is different and everything is different. And it gets said a lot, um, you know, on the streets, on the NPE streets, that’s one of the things we, we dropped a lot. Um, yeah. Well, thank you so much. This has been so
Speaker 1: (01:03:08)
Amazing. Um, I’ve, I’ve completely enjoyed it. I mean, for me, these conversations are really healing too, right. It’s it’s, you know, we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re people who are traveling, um, this really complex, really deep, really unexpected journey together. Right,
Speaker 2: (01:03:30)
Right. We’ve all found ourselves on this journey together, all unexpectedly. Um,
Speaker 1: (01:03:36)
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (01:03:38)
Well, thank you so much for your time on a Saturday. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: (01:03:41)
Um, my absolute pleasure
Speaker 2: (01:03:43)
And I will be in touch with, uh, with you or your people about, um, the, the when’s and how is, uh, when this will go up, but, um, probably
Speaker 1: (01:03:50)
March. Okay, perfect. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (01:03:53)
All right. Well, have a wonderful rest of your day.
Speaker 1: (01:03:55)
You too. That was really great to meet you. You too. All right. Bye. Bye.
Ring of Fire: Author Cory Goodrich
Speaker 1: (00:00)
I’m going to start recording there. Oh, thank you for your patience. I’m so sorry that, that took a few minutes course. How many kids do you have with three? Yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s a lot in 2021. Um, but I always say this, but like I have three, but I’m cheating a little bit because one of the oldest one lives with her dad. So, so like my day to day, every morning situation is only two that’s still, but numbered. Right, right, right. And it doesn’t mean that the older one isn’t calling me or texting me. Oh yeah. Yeah. I know you play music. I’m really excited to talk. Thank you so much for getting on, on the, on the line with me. I’m going to go ahead and hit record so that video’s recording. If that’s okay with you, we’re glad that you put on makeup
Speaker 2: (00:53)
And took a shower just for you. So yeah,
Speaker 1: (00:58)
I have like all these I have, I always have all these fantasies of like what podcasting is going to be. And they, they come crap. Like I’m like crashing in reality every single day. Um, yeah. That’s yeah, I haven’t, I didn’t, I haven’t showered. I thought, well, I’ll do video. So I should really all that would be a good excuse to Nope. Nope. Not ready cast. You really don’t have to show anybody. Right. It’s really unfair that they’re asking us for video now, because that was the glory of the podcasting experience was that so who was asking for video, let the networks and the site Geist, and some people want to know about podcasts and they just go to YouTube and want to watch the podcast. Interesting. I guess that’s a whole market. I will just see. I said I would try and pretty much anything, so, yep. And it actually is more fun to see you to be honest. It’s funny though, because
Speaker 2: (01:55)
I forget where to look like a zoom calls, you know, I’m like, Oh, am I looking at me? How do I look?
Speaker 1: (02:00)
Yep, no, I have a friend. Who’s a, she’s a like a dialect coach and S and like a coach about speaking. And she had a whole thing about like training, training yourself to stare at the green light. And I just can’t do it. I just, I’m looking in your eyes, but then I’m not looking at you right now. I try and raise, I try and raise the visual so that your eyes are as close to the green light as possible. I’m just going to let my cat out of the room is that course.
Speaker 3: (02:28)
That’s the door. Hang on
Speaker 2: (02:35)
These doors on my studio so that I could have some privacy.
Speaker 1: (02:39)
Now, the cat, my kids, my kids. Do you have,
Speaker 2: (02:46)
I have one in college right now and then one in high school.
Speaker 1: (02:49)
Oh, cool. Hybrid today. Right. Are you guys in, where are you located in Wheaton? So a suburb of Chicago. Okay. I saw, I mean, I saw that you were, um, that a lot of your life was in Chicago, but I wasn’t sure if you were still there. Yep. Cool. Wheaton. And what college is your older one at
Speaker 2: (03:08)
St. Louis university. She’s studying to be a nurse. I know.
Speaker 1: (03:13)
Yeah. Oh, that’s so good. That’s nurses are in high demand right now. Right? I know. And it’s about this. You feel validated and intimidated by this situation,
Speaker 2: (03:23)
But it’s scary too. I mean, she’s only a sophomore, but she’s doing the goals right now. So she, luckily was one of the first people vaccinated because she’ll be sort of on the front lines. It makes us feel better. But, um, you know, it’s scary.
Speaker 1: (03:36)
Yeah. Oh yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Cool. Let’s talk about you being an NPE. What would you like? Oh my gosh. I want to know everything. Um, I do want you to get a little bit closer to your microphone. Okay. Yep. How’s that? Yeah. Ooh, cool nails. Thank you. See, those are the things the podcast people want. Now they want to know about our nails.
Speaker 2: (03:59)
Well, and I just got my hair dyed, so I won’t sacrifice hair, nails, terribly shallow of me. We all have our limits.
Speaker 1: (04:13)
So, um, let’s okay. So I don’t even know where to start, but, so where do you usually start? When people ask you what, you know, what’s your story or when you’re, you know, what’s your like cocktail party version?
Speaker 2: (04:27)
I have many versions. I have the long version and capsulated. Would you like a medium version? Maybe a medium version. I’ll see if I can. Um, so everything is in the book, not everything, but a lot. But, um, my story is, so I was born in Wilmington, Delaware many, many years ago in the late sixties. And, um, you know, that was kind of the era of swingers and, and, and stuff. I know this now, but, but I, my parents, my mother’s Ernie and my father was Tom. And, uh, they were divorced when I was seven. And then we moved to Michigan. She married my stepfather, Jim, you really need a chart with all of this, making a chart as we speak. So she married Jim, we moved to Michigan. Um, my mother, my stepfather and I, we sort of had a contentious relationship. Um, I have three siblings who are considerably older than me, 12, 11, and seven years older. Okay. Yes. Um, and I could never really get an answer as to why my mom and dad divorced. Um, and so over the years when I was in college, we would fight a lot because I was kind of unhappy in Michigan and didn’t really understand why we had, you know, why she had left Delaware and my dad and our, my home, her home. That’s where she was.
Speaker 1: (05:43)
Were you in touch with Tom this during this
Speaker 2: (05:45)
Time at home? Every summer. And I spent, I spent the summer with him, but he was also 56 when I was born. So he’s also older. Yeah, he was older and it was a different time too, where quite as involved in their lives as they are now. So, um, I loved my dad. He was a wonderful man, but he wouldn’t, he never said a bad word about my mother. Just nobody talked about anything. And as is so common with us NPS, we all have this sense or most of us have a sense of being different or something being off, but not really understanding what it is. Um, I found a picture when I was about maybe 15 or 16. I was with my mom. Um, and I found this picture of a man holding me as a baby. I was nine and nine and a half months old. And I asked her who that was at the time. And she said, Oh, that’s an old friend. Uh, your father was really jealous of him. I will never forgive Tom for what he did to him.
Speaker 2: (06:41)
Oh, geez, mom, why don’t you drop drama bomb. And that’s my mom. And then she said, I fallen onto silent. Sorry, just turn it to be that’s okay. Continue. Sorry. So, um, she said, well, your father was jealous of him. And he had him transferred down South and he had a heart attack and he died. Oh, geez. You know, 15, 16. Okay. That’s wow. You know, never, never talked about it since over the years. I kept looking for that picture again, but I could never find it. I had all these clues and all these things, but I can never, I remember being in a hotel room with my mom when I was maybe two or three. I remember the carpet. I remember the doors, you know, the doors in between hotel rooms. Yeah. They were so cool.
Speaker 2: (07:30)
That’s one of the first things I would do is go check that out, make sure they’re locked. And I remember that, um, I would ask my sister if she knew why my parents got divorced. And she said, Oh, I don’t know I was in college. I don’t remember anything. And so nobody would talk about it. I look a little bit different. I’m shorter than everybody I’m darker than everybody. Um, you know, so we would joke. I would joke about being the milkman’s kid and they everybody’s laughs and everything. And so fast forward, I eventually, after I have children, I decided I do not want to have a contentious relationship with my mother anymore. I want to get along. I want her to know her grandchildren. And so we stopped fighting. We just sort of let everything slide. Um, and then in 2017, she told me that she had to have open heart surgery.
Speaker 2: (08:13)
So I went to Arizona to be with her the week before her surgery. And, um, she was so frail by this point, I did not want to upset her at all. I kind of was asking her questions about her life. And I always got non-answers, you know, she really wouldn’t talk very much about it. She was very elusive and mysterious. She had, she had, um, on her birth certificate, she has one middle name and on her driver’s license, she has another middle name and she never would tell us a story. It’s like little things like how that happened. Why, how did it go from Emma and Eileen? You know, just that she just wouldn’t tell us. So, um, after she had the surgery, she, uh, before she had the surgery, though, we went out to get, um, a robe for her. And I thought I’ve got to do this. I’ve got to ask her one more time because I don’t know what’s going to happen. Um, uh, why did you and dad get divorced? And she said, well, I had an affair. You knew that? Oh, no, I sorta didn’t know that I kind
Speaker 1: (09:11)
Of knew, but she said, yeah,
Speaker 2: (09:14)
His wife came to the house and she was very well-dressed and, um, very poised. And she asked me not to take her husband. And, um, I was very impressed with her and I said, well, what did you do? Did you leave him alone? She said, yes. And then the conversation ended. And at this point she’s so sick at this point. I’m like, I’m not going to deal with that, you know? Yeah. And she wouldn’t tell me anyway, you know, I knew if I pushed, you would get angry.
Speaker 1: (09:42)
What was going through your mind during that time, when she called you this little, like this truncated version of
Speaker 2: (09:49)
I’m thinking I’m clocking all these things, but I did not put it together
Speaker 1: (09:55)
Like hindsight right now. Right? Of course
Speaker 2: (09:58)
You could say, why didn’t I push? All I had to do was just talk a little bit more, but I didn’t, whether I was afraid that I knew the truth or, or that I just pushed it aside. I’m not really sure. Um, but, and, and again was scared to upset her. So, um, so she has her surgery. She eventually passes away from the, from the surgery and, uh, the day after she died on October 13th, Friday, October 13th, which I find hilarious.
Speaker 1: (10:25)
So you never, sorry. Did she ever, so did she, she went into the surgery and passed away? Yes. It took about a week after the surgery. Right. But it just didn’t go. Okay, didn’t go. Well, she was 89. I mean, we didn’t expect her really, to me, it would have been really hard but long shot. Okay. Okay. So Friday the 13th, it’s October 13th or black cats everywhere, which is humbling down the street, Arizona. So there are no autumn leaves, tumbleweeds, maybe. Okay.
Speaker 2: (11:01)
Going through her things, because I want to find this picture. I say that I want to find stuff for her Memorial, um, her, her celebration of life, but I secretly want to find this picture, you know? So we’re going through the things and she has categorized everything. There is an envelope of her performing years when she was in an Andrew sisters type group, never seen these pictures or reviews or articles. There was a whole photo album of her first marriage had never seen any of these, a whole photo album of, you know, my dad and, and those kids. So all, you know, uh, all categorized, every letter, Jim told me my stepfather that, uh, she had shredded all the letters from Tom and from him, from Jim too. But in one envelope, there was, uh, there were two, three letters and two pictures, and one of those pictures was the man holding me and there a second shot of that. So I’m like, okay, I’m going to get back to these. I’m going to read these letters. What are these two letters she’s kept here and there from my father, Tom to her shortly before he died in 1990. And they’re both letters that state how wonderful I was and how proud he was. And I know that she has kept these two specific letters so that I will know that Tom loved me. Yeah. That’s why they’re there. There’s only two of them
Speaker 1: (12:14)
Bumps. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (12:17)
It was a third letter that I did not know that my brother took, you know, that he hid away. But I looked at this picture and I said to Dan Suzy, Oh, is this guy, did I tell you the story about what mama said in the car about the affair? And, and you know about this, you guys are all older. Is this the guy? And my poor brother just turns white. And he said, yeah, how much do you want to know? Like, Oh no. Oh
Speaker 1: (12:39)
No. Oh, there’s more everything.
Speaker 2: (12:42)
And he said, well, um, you know, we used to be called daddy, Don. And I knew instantly everything that I had not filled in in the past just kind of went into telescoping focus. And, um, uh, and I knew, and I said, is he my real father? And he said, yeah, we think so. So I’m reeling. I’m absolutely reeling because all the pieces have sort of come together at this moment. But I’m, at this point, I will say my age at the time I was 51 years old. This is a long time to go without knowing who your real,
Speaker 1: (13:15)
It’s a long time. And it’s a long time for siblings to be discussing it amongst themselves.
Speaker 2: (13:21)
The short story after that is that everybody knew everyone didn’t know what to say. It’s not their fault. But, um, my mother didn’t know what to say. My stepfather didn’t know what to say. Um, I ended up finding my biological father. I found his obituary. He had died, not when my mother said way back then, you know? Um, but he was transferred.
Speaker 1: (13:41)
I have a broken heart from Tom vengeance transferring him, but,
Speaker 2: (13:46)
But he died in 2016. So he died the year before my mother. So I would have had a chance to meet him the third letter that, um, which I won’t talk about what’s in it, but it was a letter to my mother, uh, that was written when I was about 10 years old, basically admitting that I was his child and that, you know, how much he loved her. And, um, so I knew that this man was actually my father. Um, and, uh, he had died recently and, um, I just spiraled for three years trying to put the pieces together, thinking, am I Goodrich? Or am I Garnette? You know what part of my deal, what part of my DNA is different from my family? Oh my gosh, I don’t have full siblings anymore. I have half siblings. Everybody’s I have sibling. I ended up finding, um, a brother who is 10 years younger than me, who was Don’s from a second marriage. And I reached out to him and he, we took a DNA, DNA test and confirmed that we are indeed siblings. So I Dawn’s child. Yeah. And this man, this, this brother of mine is my best friend now.
Speaker 1: (14:48)
Oh, unbelievable gift that came out. It, um,
Speaker 2: (14:52)
I have also after three years of turmoil and to be honest, was very worried about my mental health there. I had a lot of suicidal ideation. Um, I had a lot of people saying your father still was still your father and, and therapists who didn’t really acknowledge the true trauma that comes with this discovery and says, Oh, everybody did this to protect you. You know? And then that makes you feel more ashamed for struggling with it. Right? So after three years of this, I can finally say, um, and this is through art therapy and through writing my memoir through writing folk song. And, um, and my brother I’ve traveled to Thailand and Bali and Italy and Spain with him and have forged this beautiful, loving relationship with this with my brother. I can finally say that I am the person I was always meant to be.
Speaker 2: (15:42)
And while it was difficult to go through the struggle for sure. And kind of wish I can take it back. I wouldn’t be who I am today. And I am so profoundly grateful for that. The process of writing the book, um, forced me to put myself in my mother’s shoes. I’m, I’m an actress. So I’m kind of used to doing that anyway. And I sort of can go into a character and find their motivations and what drives them. And, um, and so it was actually an incredible asset through this, to be able to say, okay, what was the timeline? What, what was it like in the sixties? What were family saying about my mother and her relationship with this man? And, and it wasn’t just an, a fling, it was a longstanding relationship and I was conceived intentionally. So what did that do to my phone on there?
Speaker 2: (16:29)
You know, like, like there’s so much blame for the mothers in these situations. There’s, there are a lot of people who have very narcissistic mothers and it’s very hurtful and very painful, but there’s also another side to it too. There’s if I put myself in my mother’s shoes, I don’t know that I would have done anything differently, at least in that time. So I gained through writing the book. I grant gained a tremendous amount of empathy and sympathy for her and for my father and my family. So, um, in the end I’m grateful. Believe it or not.
Speaker 1: (17:01)
Yeah. Wow. That’s yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s quite the journey. Yeah. Go to go from, to go from yeah. Sh shock, shock and shock and crisis and depression all the way to gratefulness. That’s really cool. That’s really lovely. Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 2: (17:20)
I would, I would love it if there was more, um, study on therapy for NPS, because I think we are sort of underrepresented because people don’t know. I mean, I have had friends who then I’ve read the book and said, Oh my gosh, I had no idea. I shouldn’t have said this to you. I’m like, how would you know, you, you, it’s not your fault unless you’re in our shoes, you have no idea what this feels like or how to react. And the things that people say are very, you know, very understandable, but then become really hurtful to us NPS. But I don’t blame them. No.
Speaker 1: (17:52)
Yeah. It’s like this collision of modern technology that brings us the, the trauma itself or the crisis itself or the existential experience. But then it’s like these old school ideas colliding of this whole like, well, your dad is your dad and whoever loves you, loves you. And, um, they were just, everybody was just doing their best and all those things. Um, if even people that, that I would think would never say that, say that kind of thing, you would think that, but I think we don’t even know how conditioned we are. Right. We’ll have certain understandings of things. Um, and this like incredibly modern phenomenon is really, um, really like shaking that up in a, in a way that, that we’d know nobody could have seen coming.
Speaker 4: (18:38)
Right. And all those things are true to my dad.
Speaker 2: (18:42)
I am grateful to the family that took me in, but that can exist alongside with the pain of not knowing who my biological father is. And wondering if he’s my father, those things exist concurrently. And you know, and I am Goodrich and Garnette and happy to take old names. I mean, literally take the name.
Speaker 1: (19:03)
Some, some people do that. You have not done that. Yeah. I think, I think that like integration of, of more than one thing is, is a concept we need to work on all around, um, of this. You can hold, you can hold a lot of things. You can hold both. Right. So you can hold stories, dark and light and right, right. Good and bad.
Speaker 2: (19:25)
We need both. We need both. I tell my husband, I could be mad as hell at you and still love you.
Speaker 1: (19:31)
Right? Yeah. Well, it’s not even, and not only do we need them, but we have them, it is a fat. So like, so acknowledging them and learning how to, to manage that balance. Um, I think would be good for everyone regardless of the situation, but it really, um, becomes real stark in the NPE community when you, when you first get thrust into it. Right. Depending on yeah. And we need resources, so many resources. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (19:59)
I like to say that there’s room in the playground for all of us and for all of these stories, because the more we hear and the more we talk about it and the more that other people hear about it and talk about it, the more empathy and understanding we can all have. And so Sherry, I thank you for what you do because sharing these stories is so important to people who are going through it.
Speaker 1: (20:18)
So, yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s been so important to me. It’s been so much a part of my own journey, um, to talk with people. Cause it’s the only time I talk about it with anybody. Right. You know,
Speaker 2: (20:30)
Do you have people, do you have friends that you talked to or?
Speaker 1: (20:33)
Well, all my, all my friends, but, um, you know, I’m pretty, I’m pretty, I’m pretty open about, I mean, the podcast is everyone knows about the podcast, so it’s pretty open, but, um, but it’s just a different experience to talk about it with somebody who gets it. It’s just different it’s in and they, and I’ve gone through this isn’t I don’t mean this to sound. Um, uh, like anyone should feel sorry for me, but this isn’t the only trauma I’ve ever been through. Right. And yet I’m still surprised at how comforting it is to have that moment with someone who, who understands it. Right. Um, even though I know that that’s, you know, I’m a therapist, like I, I know about the power of, um, you know, empathy and the power of me too, and, and the power of connection and community, but I still am the most touched by the, the experience I’ve had talking with other people, right. For this particular trauma. It’s like, Hey, somebody who gets me,
Speaker 2: (21:30)
Uh, trauma compounds, first of all. And so the discovery for you or for any of us, isn’t the only trauma. There was the trauma of the secrets. In fact, I think add is the trauma that it is actually more damaging than the biological, you know, the sperm or the fact that people keep secrets and, you know, dismantling that and dismantling the shame. There’s so much shame and stigma around the B word, the bastard word, and, and words that are phrases that are in our vernacular that we don’t even think about that I now create.
Speaker 1: (22:06)
When I hear, I know we’re never going to stop learning,
Speaker 2: (22:12)
You stop learning, we’re dead. So, you know, embrace it.
Speaker 1: (22:17)
Um, can you talk, can you talk about your experience of, um, deciding to, to write the memoir, um, and how like creativity has helped your healing can, uh, our, you know, are you, as you said, you mentioned art therapy. You’re also an actor. Storytelling is so powerful. Can you talk about that?
Speaker 2: (22:35)
Yeah. So, um, I am, I am an actress and I am a singer and have always happened, um, which I get from my mom, I presume. But, um, she asked me once she said, do you want to paint just out of the blue? And I’m like, no, I would suck at that. I would never want to paint. So I come to find out that my biological father was a painter.
Speaker 1: (22:57)
Oh, she was feeling it out, totally feeling it out. She was mad in an art class. Right. So, Oh,
Speaker 2: (23:05)
I didn’t even know my mother painted, you know, so
Speaker 1: (23:08)
Probably read the book. Right. And we would know that if we read the book, we find out about our class. Okay. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (23:15)
But, um, but so I started painting after I found out just to kind of see, because I, I started by doing cartoons and my brother, my new brother has sort of a famous, um, cartoon thing with Reddit. And so I was like, Oh, maybe I could draw. And I started drawing depression. I started drawing the, um, the evil monster that the dark monster that was kind of haunting me. And he’s like, you’re onto something here, keep doing it. So then I moved to painting and when I started painting, I can’t explain it. I knew what to do. I had picked up a paint brush in my life. I didn’t take classes. I didn’t go to YouTube. I just knew what to do, whether it’s genetic memory, whether it’s my father and my ghosty father painting through me, or just some hidden, latent talent that I didn’t know I had, um, it was just there and I never studied.
Speaker 2: (24:01)
And I started painting and now three years later, I sell paintings and that’s another source of creativity for me. So I’m doing this, which is just like, I feel usually I write songs, but I could not write a song to save my soul, all this. So, so this is pouring out in the meantime I had started journaling, um, because I didn’t, I wanted to remember what happened. I wanted to remember the details and I knew I was going to forget it. So, um, I started writing these stories about my mother and I would always kind of come to a conclusion, um, or I’d be thinking about something and it would bring up some childhood memory. And so I would relate somehow these two didn’t know what I was going to do with it. I thought maybe it would be a one woman show. Maybe it would be songs. I wasn’t sure, but it was helping me just to kind of get it out and to be able to, every time I would write it, it became a story that I could tell rather than just being pain. If that makes sense.
Speaker 1: (24:51)
No, absolutely.
Speaker 2: (24:54)
Eventually when the pandemic hits and the theaters are all closed and, uh, I reached out to an editor that my friend had suggested. And, um, that’s a funny story too, because we found out after the fact that she was born in Wilmington, Delaware, she lived maybe two miles from me.
Speaker 1: (25:11)
Oh, wow. We went on tours.
Speaker 5: (25:13)
She, her father, her father
Speaker 2: (25:15)
Worked with my biological father. No crazy. Right.
Speaker 1: (25:20)
That is so wild. I love that stuff.
Speaker 2: (25:24)
So, and I’m like, okay, we have to work together. So she, I hired her as an editor. And then she said, Hey, I am, I want to publish this book for you. So, um, so she ended up, uh, publishing like, Oh, shoot. That means I actually have to finish it. And
Speaker 1: (25:38)
Totally that means for this creativity, wait a minute thing. I have to make sure to be organized or something.
Speaker 2: (25:50)
So we ended up because I had no other work, um, through theater that we ended up doing that. And the people that have reached out to me because of this, it’s been incredible. Um, thanking, thanking me and telling me I’m brave, which I always kind of cringe a little bit because I’m like, I’m not brave. I’m just, you know, this is what I do, but, um, but that people have been affected and that people have been helped by it. That is my goal. You know, reading Danny Shapiro’s inheritance, like here’s my, the,
Speaker 1: (26:20)
What’s the cat’s name, Chloe. Hi Chloe. Thank you for joining us here today.
Speaker 2: (26:26)
Do you want to talk? Um, but just the agency and telling your own story and sharing your origin story and that, that can help other people means the world to me, you know, and that, and that it could be something that could be a resource for somebody else at this point, you know, like the podcasts and articles. I mean, they’re still helpful.
Speaker 1: (26:48)
Yeah. I mean, it can just become a part of this, like ever expanding care package. Um, yeah.
Speaker 2: (26:56)
Cause our purpose, we have to use our lives and our traumas and our hurts to help people in order for us to heal too. So
Speaker 1: (27:03)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I think, I think that’s one of the older, I, well, let’s see, I’m kind of making that up, but I’m going to say it anyway. Well, it’s like an older tenant that has been, it’s kind of gone through the world of trauma over time is the healing through helping, you know, or the healing through telling. Um, and it just manifests in different ways through different communities, but it certainly has become huge in the NPE world as a, um, a form of connection and community and healing and helping and commiserating and laughing, you know, all those things, um, who we so healing it’s normal, right? Normalizing Chloe, Chloe. This is out of control.
Speaker 2: (27:46)
One of the things, one of the best stories was, um, when I, when I had my first phone call with my brother, um, I was so careful. I didn’t want him to, uh, to have a bad opinion of his father because of this. And I said, you know, people do things when they’re in love. And I hope you’re not upset about that. And he sort of sniffed and went and he said, I think being the child of an affair is the most beautiful
Speaker 1: (28:07)
Sort of, and that was shocking, right? You’re like, no Bohemian. Yeah,
Speaker 2: (28:16)
Totally. It like, he just opened his arms and said, you know, you are welcome and you were accepted. And that meant so much to me.
Speaker 1: (28:23)
Yeah. So, wow. So powerful. So many people don’t get to have that. Right. So I consider myself very lucky.
Speaker 2: (28:29)
We are all here for whatever, whatever your religious beliefs may be, you know, we’re here for something. And so the cat’s going to walk in
Speaker 1: (28:40)
Chloe, Chloe wants to talk about her experience of living in house during all of this. She says, I don’t know my siblings, they were taken away. Yeah. She’s got her own traumas properly. Um, yeah. Wow. So, and your brother, where does he live? He’s in Texas. Okay. Yeah. At the time,
Speaker 2: (29:00)
No, he had, uh, he was living in Europe, so it was all very exotic and strange.
Speaker 1: (29:05)
Yeah. Of course. A year someone in Europe would say that a child of an affair is the most beautiful French. Yes. So continental. Very cool. Um, yeah. So, wow. This is really neat. And, and can you just talk a little bit, um, I know that it’s, it’s not necessarily directly related to, to this too, but it is because it’s who you are. Can you just talk a little bit about your music and what you like to sing? And I mean, you’ve got this whole, like row of instruments behind you. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, I mean, I, I love folk music and, um, and so anyway, just, can you just talk a little bit about that? Just, just humor me, humor me. I love talking about music.
Speaker 2: (29:49)
That’s my real thing. So the NB thing, forget that musical theater. So, um, I started, I actually started in an opera partially because it drove my mother nuts because she hated opera. I just, I moved over to musical theater because I really wanted to act and not just stand there and park and bark, as we say. Um, and so I came to Chicago and was musical theater actress. And, uh, five years ago, maybe I was asked to audition for the Johnny Cash show, bring a fire. And I had just gotten a guitar, my first guitar, um, uh, and I could play three chords. So I’m like, I’m going to go audition for this and damned if they didn’t cast me in that show
Speaker 1: (30:28)
And legit soprano.
Speaker 2: (30:31)
And I had to learn how to sing country. And I absolutely fell in love with it. I fell in love with country and folk and I ended up doing not only a classic country album, but I got, uh, the Cohen grapple grant to make an auto harp album. So I actually have an autoharp
Speaker 1: (30:50)
Who else can say that? Right. Um, so I have that. And then the first person I’ve ever met,
Speaker 2: (30:55)
It’s so much fun though. I mean, it’s more than just that instrument that you play, you know, when you’re
Speaker 1: (30:59)
In elementary school. Um,
Speaker 2: (31:02)
So I did that. And then as a companion piece to the book, I’m actually recording an experimental folk album right now with a friend of mine, um, with the music that is interlaced through the book, but also the music that I eventually wrote as a reaction to the MPE discovery. So, so it’s kind of, it’s, it will go along with the book, but it’s also a companion piece, you know, and sort of an expansion of the experience.
Speaker 1: (31:23)
Love it so much.
Speaker 2: (31:26)
Great. It’s I, music is such music is soothing. Music is definitely my, my first language.
Speaker 1: (31:35)
Yeah. And you got that from your mother, you think you, or you attribute her, her, she said she was a singer.
Speaker 2: (31:41)
He was a singer, but she hated it. So I never heard her sing just like I never heard of SAR paint, but, um, but my father, my biological father apparently was, um, quite the singer too. So it was interesting because Lee told me that one of his favorite songs was a Johnny Cash song that we did in the show. And that just kind of blew my mind.
Speaker 1: (32:01)
Like I want to say like the circles keep overlapping or something ripples continue to meet. Um, and you know, when you’re just, this is just, just a, a digression a little bit, but, um, when you said you, you’ve never heard your mother saying, I wonder if I know this exists, but I think that’s also something that’s a little bit of a generational, um, Devon divide or difference that we’re seeing more is that the older generation there was much more maybe, and maybe people do this still. I mean, like you’re a mother and I’m a mother, but this separation between who they are as young women or single women or individual women, and then who they are as mothers, there’s like a very thick line between those two things. And I think that, that, that, unfortunately it contributes to the confusion for lots of NPS, um, uh, and then for, you know, and then, and then it creates its own kind of, um, you know, or confusion or, or situation for those, those of us who are not doing that so much with our children. Um, there’s like a big, there’s a pretty big shift in that I think, um, in, I mean, I’m going to say society, American society. I don’t, I don’t know who I’m talking about, but I think my peer group, um, there isn’t so much in that, but I’m sure it exists still, but I think there was less sharing. I don’t know, back then,
Speaker 2: (33:26)
I think it’s generational too. I think for my mom, she was a singer, but she didn’t want to be a singer. She was in the girl group with her two sisters because her mother wanted that because they were actually really great was never what she wanted, wanted. My mother was, I love this discovery. This also makes me so happy. My mother was a rebel and I recognize myself because I’m the exact same way, you know, but I don’t think I realized how rebellious she was and after she died, I hear these stories of her and, you know, in her youth and she did whatever the hell she wanted. You know, she got married at 19 to get out of the group and away from her mother. And she got divorced when she wanted, she got divorced again.
Speaker 1: (34:10)
Yeah. Like she, yeah, I, I have a lot of that with my own mother where the more I sort of learned about her and write about her, it’s like, Oh, she was actually a wild feminist, but in the body, you know, in the, in the box of a pretty, pretty proper well-behaved Christian girl that like actually was doing a lot of, um, of really like, um, rebellious things. Yeah. That’s great.
Speaker 2: (34:34)
It’s hard for us, but we, you know, we put our parents in a box sometimes too. We think of them just as mothers and fathers and we don’t expect that they have sex and, you know, and there’s one thing I’m really curious actually about, uh, is with NPE. Is, is there a stigma? Do we have a stigma about sex? I don’t know if you want to talk about that at all, but, but like, because of the circumstances of our birth, are we subconsciously taught that sex is bad or because there’s shame around a conception necessarily, you know?
Speaker 1: (35:03)
Yeah. I do know. Yeah, no, I think sex is like totally. I mean the whole NPE, the NPE community, it’s so complex because it’s all about sex. We’re all, it’s all about sex. We all talk about and it’s all about our mothers having sex. Right. And it’s like, it’s all about sex and we never get, we never really, you know, and which is like, you know, a societal thing and a cultural thing. And, um, but like that sex is this kind of difficult topic to talk about in certain circles or it’s not okay. Talk about in some circles and it’s um, and then, and then your conception came from myriad at, you know, ways, but sacks and, um, yeah. It’s, I think it totally is a, is an isn’t not only like one of the layers, but one of the more important layers of the complexity of, of our experience
Speaker 2: (35:58)
And, you know, God forbid that a woman, actually, once
Speaker 1: (36:03)
You imagine the mothers as like, I actually, um, I actually really one of the, one of the first, like in my early, early NPE days, it actually really moved me to think of my mother as having a lover like that. You know, it just like that added a nuance to her as a person that I had never conceived of or thought of, but, but it felt, I felt connected to it more, um, more connected to her, more as a human and a woman then, than I had before. And, um, I don’t think I can tell her that, but, um, but I’ll tell the world in a podcast.
Speaker 1: (36:49)
Yeah. My parents are alive. Um, they sometimes listen to the podcast, but sometimes don’t, um, it’s, uh, comes and goes for them and are they’re working through it, um, their own way and their own time. And, and I have to give them credit. Um, they are trying to support me really hard. They’re trying really hard. They’re doing their very best. They really want to support me and, and the project and, you know, I, and everything I’m doing, uh, and they always have been, so I’ve done a lot of projects in my life that they did not love. This is probably probably the most personal, I’ll be honest, this is the most personal for them, but, um, they have stayed consistent. So I have, I have to really give them credit for that. So here’s your chance say I’m proud of you, mom. I’m proud of you mom.
Speaker 1: (37:40)
Maybe this will be the one she listens to, right? Oh please. Oh, well, yeah. She also loves folk music. I get my love of folk music from her. Um, would you play anything? No, but that’s my on my, um, I used to, I used to have a project road, ask people what’s their one other thing they would be if they weren’t who they are now. And mine always was a singer song writer. I wanted to be, I wanted to be like Juul. I grew up in the era of, um, of all those like little affair women coming up. But, uh, yes, no, but I’d love to sing. My daughter loves to sing. I would love to be able to play the guitar. I understand the concept. Um, I didn’t start till 44, 45, so, well, it’s on my list when I turned 40, I like made this, this list of like, if, you know, if this is mid, the mid point, here’s all the things I would like to do.
Speaker 1: (38:34)
And, um, especially as my kids are just, my youngest is like year and a half. And so I’m just coming out of that bubble into like killing myself, feeling like myself again and starting to, to see a light kind of, I don’t want that to sound like I was in darkness, but Oh, I know what to mean. Exactly what I mean. And um, and so I’m it’s yeah, so I’m, it’s on my list of things to that. I really want to get to do it. I highly encourage it. I will get to that. Okay. That’s what I should start with. That’s what I should start with. It’s it’s insane. The amount of instruments I have now. So only, only the professionals.
Speaker 1: (39:18)
Thank you so much. I have one more question request. No pressure. Okay. Can you sing something for us right now? I could. Can you, can you give me a second? Yeah. I thought the only other option was that I could just, I could, I could doubt, you know, we’ll just play it down, download a recording, but, but I can’t hear you anymore. What’d you say? Oh yeah. You’re going to hear, I can hear you now though. Oh, I was just saying, if you had said no, I would have just asked if we could play something off one of your recorded pieces, but you can play great if you’re editing. Is it okay if I tune? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do it. Do you say what’s the one thing that, uh, and that will kill a concert is a tuning your guitar. Learn to talk and do it at the same time. Right? I’m going to turn this down just so we don’t get any, hang on. Um, I’m not gonna play. Can I play Johnny Cash? Yeah. Do you know that? We love Johnny Cash at my house and our dog’s name? Johnny Cash. Are you kidding me? No, I’m not. We have a puppy upstairs named Johnny Cash. That’s crazy. See Johnny Cash in this house. Holy God. Okay. Yeah.
Speaker 6: (40:37)
Can you hear that? Okay. [inaudible] I fell in to a ring [inaudible] ring. I went down, down, down ring of fire. [inaudible]
Speaker 1: (41:26)
Didn’t warm up a bit. Thank you so much. I love it. Awesome. So wonderful. Yeah. Oh, thank you so much. And the perfect song. Perfect song. Oh, yes, of course. So sorry. I get very excited about Johnny Cash. So cash and June Carter were having an affair.
Speaker 2: (41:48)
The song was written and June Carter actually wrote that song,
Speaker 1: (41:53)
But he gets all the kind of glory and credit, right.
Speaker 2: (41:57)
Her sister, uh, I need a recorded at first and Johnny Cash had this dream when he was in a cave and on drugs and stuff that like, I hear mariachi trumpets. And that’s why his iconic version of it came about and wrote that for him because they were both married at the time that when they fell in love. So
Speaker 1: (42:14)
It’s got goosebumps again. Oh, that’s so wonderful. That’s good to know. Cool. Yeah, no, Johnny, we love Jenna cashier. My son actually wanted to be Johnny Cash for Halloween and it was a whole, yeah, it was a whole, we ended up not being done in cash because when you’re five, you go through a lot of ideas about Halloween that he went through this week of really talking with us about if he was going to be Johnny Cash or the actor Johnny Cash. Because when we looked up pictures, we had to explain who walking Phoenix was because of the movie. And, um, and it was this whole thing about the hair being slick oil, you know, oil back. And it was just so funny and we, and then he didn’t, he decided to be something else. But, um, yeah, we are huge. He’s still cool. Um, all right, let’s go on with our day. Thank you so much for spending some time with me. Is there anything else that I didn’t ask you that you wished I’d asked you or that you want to say to the NPE community? Can I mention my website, please do. Please do, please. So my website is called
Speaker 2: (43:19)
Goodrich.com, which is C O R Y goodrich.com. But then there’s also folk song, book.com specifically about the book and that’s available on Amazon and I’m super proud of it. And I think it will be super helpful if, if you’re going through this, um, because you can see that somebody else’s as crazy as
Speaker 1: (43:36)
You are the commiseration of crazy. I think it’s so important. It absolutely is. Oh, thank you so much. This is so great. I’ll make sure to have all the information about you up on the, on my, on my medias, the social media, so that people can access things and
Speaker 2: (43:58)
Promote the heck out of you as well. So
Speaker 1: (44:00)
Great. And I think, um, yeah, and I th and I’ll definitely get your book and I’m going to get all this music. And, um, so, and I think we’ll be in touch. I have a suspicion that you and I are going to stay at, stay in touch. So
Speaker 2: (44:10)
I think so too, and I’m really excited for you to go, go get a guitar, so,
Speaker 1: (44:14)
Okay. Do you have a latent singer song writer in you? Yeah, absolutely. Yup. Oh gosh. Thanks. Um, it’s like my husband’s worst nightmare. Oh, are you kidding mine too? I always ask. I don’t know why. I always, I mean, it sounds weird if I say I always ask him, but I, I have suggested before, like, what would you have done if when we met, if you would ask what I do when I said, like, I’m a singer song writer, but, um, but yeah, yeah, yeah. My weight and Sarah McLaughlin, Juul, uh, lost more flat. All those ladies that
Speaker 2: (44:52)
Doot doo doo doo doo doo doo. What does that, um, [inaudible]
Speaker 1: (45:01)
Oh, well this games Polish games. Yeah. That was like the first guitar song I learned. I sang that so often in voice lessons. Um, I’m not going to sing it right now. Um, I did it, but I know I’m, I’m working on one thing at a time I’m barely understand, or I’m confident about podcasting, so I will stop while I’m ahead today. Uh, all right. Thank you so much, Corey. I’m going to go ahead and, um, turn all of our recording off so that we can’t stop recording stop. And then Zen.
Mysterious Conception: A Story Unravels
Speaker 1: (00:00)
Like that. And now we’re recording. Okay, great. So, okay, so let’s go back because you’re starting to tell me everything. Let’s start with 2013 when you said, hey, let’s take this, let’s do this ancestry.com thing or, or whatever. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (00:16)
So, right. I, I ordered the kit online and it was mailed to me and nothing in particular struck me as being odd. Um, in fact, it connected me to cousins that I knew already. Oh. And family that had already done it. So I saw it’s supposed to work. Right. And I think for the most part, I was only expecting to get new information where my genetics were concerned as far as what, you know, ethnic backgrounds and stuff like that. And so I was a little surprised with one of the ethnicities that came back. Um, being that I’ve always been raised thinking that I was totally Mexican American and there was no other real curiosity, maybe just a little bit of Asian because it was rumored that there was Asian and my background
Speaker 1: (01:04)
that was before already, you already knew there may be a little bit of Asian. Right. But mostly it was on that to come up with an American pride.
Speaker 2: (01:10)
Yeah, definitely. And then when I saw like 20 something percent of Middle Eastern, yeah, yeah. Took me aback. And then when I told my mom, she was like, no way, nope, we’re not Middle Eastern. Like she totally did not. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (01:27)
There’s no space. There’s no space for Middle Eastern in a Mexican American family.
Speaker 2: (01:32)
See it at all. So, um, it, it made her, I guess, think about her side of the family or my birth certificate, Dad’s side of the family, and just, it was not anywhere she wanted to go.
Speaker 1: (01:45)
So, so interesting. And at this point, what was your relationship like with your mom?
Speaker 2: (01:49)
Well, my mom and I had an interesting relationship because she didn’t raise me my whole life. So right now I would say at that time we were in a great place. I thought, okay, because, um, I had moved back home and because she had, you know, I had only lived with her maybe three years that I remember, like during, you know, my seventh child childhood that, um, I felt like it was kind of rebalancing the scale between us and we were creating. It was, it was kind of like mending those wounds for me. I felt from childhood that, you know, she had raised me and she hadn’t raised me for part of the time. And now it was like we were back in this, you know, environment together and working things out.
Speaker 1: (02:31)
Totally. Well, I can imagine how, especially like as an adult going back to live with a mom, with your mom, it’s, and it’s all would be an opportunity you would imagine would be, would be an opportunity to maybe men some things or get to know each other in a different way. Yes. Um, so you were feeling hopeful.
Speaker 2: (02:47)
Yes, I was. I knew it was going well. It was going really well. Um, and then I want to say maybe December of 2016 I received a notice from my ancestry.com account and they told me that there was a new person and when I looked up at the list, she rose above like so many of my cousins and she was right under my uncle that raised me. And, um, it just was like really striking because the name didn’t ring any bells with me. I’m sorry to interrupt. So the, um, so the aunt and uncle that raised you or from your mom’s side of the family? The uncle is my mom’s brother. Got It. Okay. Continue. Sorry. There’s always like all these complicated details. Right? Clarify. Okay. So my, uh, my first instinct was looking, you know, at the last name, which I have an uncle, I don’t even consider him a step uncle.
Speaker 2: (03:48)
He is my mom’s brother, but he, he technically would be a a half. Okay. So it was the same last name, but um, and asking around the family, there was no person by this name. I don’t even know if I should say her name can make up a name. Okay. So I’m thinking Finkelstein. Okay. So there was no name and I ran it by, we have a couple of subgroups I guess in Facebook, cousins and whatnot. And nobody claimed her. We don’t know nobody. It’s just seemed like nobody was answering. And I thought, okay, maybe this girl doesn’t know who she is. And I felt so sorry for her because she’s this orphan or maybe she was a, you know, all these different ideas and fantasies are running through my head. And then I thought, well, because my birth certificate dad came from a really big family.
Speaker 2: (04:48)
He was one of 17 oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. I just thought, okay, I know I have nine aunts and you know, like I guess six uncles and maybe one of my uncles had a one night stand or who knows anything’s possible in that family. So I kind of left it alone for a while and, but it kept bothering me and I emailed her a few times, maybe like five or six over the course of a year as Merelda. Yeah. I will say as Marilla and she wouldn’t reply. And I thought, why would you even sign up for a system that’s going to connect you with people that are your relatives and were very closely related first cousins maybe, you know, it just didn’t make sense to me. So I took some time off. I did mention it to my mom and, and this was something that had been brought up in conversation throughout my life where I had asked, you know, having an uncle who said that I might not be the same. Uh, so you had an uncle. So, um, what you and I talked about before we started recording was that you had an uncle that would occasionally
Speaker 1: (05:58)
drop sort of passive aggressive comments about how maybe you and your brother didn’t have the same dad. Yes. And I was the milk man. Yeah. Yeah. He would make little, yeah, little jokes. Okay. I could have been my father down the street. That was the joke. Right? So you already had that idea in your mind. Right? So now you’ve got, um, a strange ancestry.com results. And now the second level is that this Esmerelda has shown up. So when you talked to your mom, you had all these ideas. Okay. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (06:27)
Okay. So when I asked my mom about it, she said, well, what would you tell the as Morel just felt not as rosy as a family, but the, the family that I grew up with as thinking that they were my biological father. And I said, well, I just kind of reacted slowly and I said, I wouldn’t tell them anything because I don’t want to hurt them. And they’ve grown up with me. Most of, you know, my whole life thinking I’m their nephew, cousins and there, and I just don’t want to hurt anybody. But I do want to know the truth, right. For myself. So I’m sorry. Um,
Speaker 1: (07:04)
well this is good. I’m just trying to catch everybody up. So no, it’s not confusing. It’s just, um, these things are so layered. And uh, so your birth certificate, father, he died when you were, what was it? You were eight years old, but his family stayed a big part of your life because it’s so much a big part. But they were, they were there, they were there. And you were their nephew and I was their nephew. So you have, you have a relationship with it to him?
Speaker 2: (07:29)
Kinship with them. I would only see them maybe once or twice a year because like I said, my uncle had taken legal custody of me. Right. And then they hit you or moving. You would move to other states? I have them around the state. Okay. Sorry. Continue though. Um, but the biggest thing was that the first time in my life that my mother actually sounded like there could be a possibility that this, that my brother and I could have different fathers and that’s what really blew my mind because I had asked her many times before in the past and she always contended with the same thing that she knew when I was conceived. She knew where she was
Speaker 1: (08:07)
married to see the whole thing. How many years apart are you and your brother? Five years. Okay. Yeah. And did he go live with your aunt and uncle when you were little? Just you. Okay. Yeah, just me. Right, right. And that was always, yeah.
Speaker 2: (08:19)
Question in my mind too, you know, why didn’t they take him? Um, he was a little bit older. Um, probably would have had a harder time with accepting them as parental be a much more memorable transition for him. She was already too attached to my mom, I think [inaudible] and I was, they said I would go with anybody. Like everybody watched me. No, I didn’t give anybody any problems. So, um, yeah, so then,
Speaker 1: (08:48)
okay, wait, now you’re asking your mom again and she’s saying that she’s, oh, waffled a little.
Speaker 2: (08:56)
And so I think I wrote as a morale to again and asked her, you know, about our situation and she never replied to me via ancestry.com so I thought it’s been awhile. I think I need to step up the process here and find out what’s going on because it just felt urgent to me. It was, it was bothering me. It was sitting on my, like my chest, my, you know, my, my shoulder and I just wouldn’t go away. And so I thought about it and I, I asked my brother if he would do the test because I thought this is the one person that I could ask and if it doesn’t match, then middle, it should make sense. Right. That answers that. Right. So I bought it from him. I met him, you know, they mailed it to him. He did it even though he thought he thinks the whole thing is B s according to him, he didn’t feel like it was even worth doing.
Speaker 2: (09:57)
Okay. But, but he, you know, he went ahead and did it and um, the results came back and I remember it so clearly because I was at work when I got the email that, um, his results were in and I went into the account and I was able to view our relationship and all of our matches. And we had cousins, like I said, that were already on there, who of course we matched with. And then here’s Esmeralda. She doesn’t match with him, but she’s still, but she’s matching. Matching. Yeah. So I thought, okay, well how is that even possible if she doesn’t match with him? Then something is up here, we, we, it just doesn’t seem possible. Then we have to have different siblings or different fathers. It just, you know,
Speaker 1: (10:42)
and did it, it didn’t say within the ancestry.com what the relationship is between you and your brother. Did it say half brothers or no, just connected. You kind of said like the close relationship. Okay. Okay. For a few of my family members, it’s come up like that with my uncle that raised me, it says close relationship. So it doesn’t say uncle, it doesn’t say like, I think with as Merelda it said another click close relationship. Right. Okay. Yeah, it didn’t, it didn’t go into each program. Each company seems to have like a little bit of a different system. So, and I’m not totally familiar with them by heart yet, so I feel like I need to look at it to verify it. That’s bothering me now to say exactly this was the
Speaker 2: (11:21)
exactly what it said. But, um, so yeah. So then of course my mom texts me and I said, uh, the results are in and she says, well, is she on your brother’s list? And I said, no, and I think, I said, is there something you want to tell me
Speaker 1: (11:40)
in text message? You know, this is all kind of easier, that it text message.
Speaker 2: (11:44)
And then she said, hold on a second. And then maybe 10 minutes later she replied. It was like waiting the longest long as of your life. And she says there was somebody else and she said that she had an affair while she was married to my, who I thought was my dad. And she said that, um, she had never talked about it and she told me the whole thing, you know, and I, and I, I asked her to tell me everything she remembered about him because I wanted to find him and I needed to, I needed to find him. I needed to see him. I need to talk to him. I needed to know. And you already that you wanted that so sure. So sure that I had to meet him because this is my father, unless there was some kind of situation where she said she was raped or it was an unwilling kind of thing.
Speaker 2: (12:43)
But no, she was willing. And so I, I felt like I need to talk to this guy. I need to find out who he is. And so she gave me the information, his name that he, uh, where he went to high school and when he graduated and that he was in the, she gave me some real specifics, like he was in the, other than his name, that he was in the air force. She knew, she knew a lot of, yeah, there was a lot of information there. And so I, it was bugging me all day at work. When I got home. I immediately went on Facebook and I started looking around, searching. And then I found out that there was an alumni from his high school started going through a list of people. Brilliant. Yeah, right when my own Nancy drew him. So then my, um, my, uh, next thought was after looking through the alumni, um, she had the wrong name.
Speaker 2: (13:43)
First of all, it, she other’s last name wrong. I’m thinking, well, it’s been 49 years, so I’ll give her that. You know, it was close. It started with the right first letter, but it was a little off. And, um, so I found him and he had a Facebook page. And as I looked at the page, I saw that he had, he died, he was deceased. So I was a little heartbroken at that time to find out that here is my search and here he is, he’s no longer here. And the next thing I thought was, well, you know, the person that I was looking for this Esmerelda is she tied to him or what’s the deal? So I went through his friends list and I noticed that he had a, well, I saw that he had a daughter who mentioned who said something about my father passing away and, and um, being really sad. And then I said, okay, so I possibly have a half sister here. And then I went through the friends list and there’s as Morrell Duh. And I thought, oh my gosh, I just solved the whole ministry like in a half a day and found my family. Right. And then I told my mom, I said, I found him.
Speaker 2: (14:52)
Um, but he’s dead, he’s deceased. And she said, no way. He was just here like two years ago. Wait, wait, wait. Exactly. Exactly. I’m like that mom. Yeah. What do you mean he was here two years ago? Like this doesn’t make any sense. And she said, yeah, he stopped by the house and she said she didn’t recognize him because it had been so long and that right. I remember her saying she had, he had a little girl in the car, um, which into being his granddaughter and um, that he was talking to her and she was just kind of answering his questions but still racking her brain. Trying to remember where she knew him from. She thought he could have been one of her friends from high school. One of my brother, one of my uncles friends. She didn’t, she didn’t know. And then, yeah.
Speaker 2: (15:38)
So then they had a short, I think, awkward conversation. And then he walked away, he said by, and as he was walking away, he turned back and he said, by the way, how’s Greg? Whoa. Yeah. That’s when she realized, oh my gosh, this is Greg’s father. Or who could have been Greg’s fault. So then she explained to me she never knew. She wasn’t sure. She always thought that, you know, scary. Right, right, right. So all this information started trickling in. And I remember asking my mom when I was little before when I had heard that there was a possibility and she had told me you were conceived on Valentine’s Day. And so I’m counting the months. I’m like, okay, yeah, my birthday is nine months after Valentine’s Day. That makes sense. But she didn’t tell me with WHO and but, but maybe she just like she says she just, she wasn’t sure and she just accepted that she rather than rock her world, I guess she just stick with the, the husband she was with.
Speaker 2: (16:41)
But she says that he is certainly a path of less resistance. Right. And he never questioned. Um, and she said that my bio dad, this new guy always contended that he was my father. He always felt like he was my dad. So she knew. So he knew about, you knew about communication right after your birth? Yes, but I didn’t know all this yet. It wasn’t until the next day. So, so I’ve, I said I want to go visit this sister, I want to, I want to go talk to her. I want to know what she knows. And so my mom was like, okay, well I’m coming with you. So it turns out he only lived about two miles from me. Oh, heartbreaking. Heartbreaking. And to find out that one of the schools that I went to in like my junior high school, it’s a private Christian school was down the street from him.
Speaker 2: (17:37)
So it really made me feel like he was so close. But yet so far, so far, right. Yeah. So should we show up at the house and it’s this whole thing because his house, it’s like two houses on a lot, but each one of them is facing a different direction on each different street. Sure. So we realize that he’s, his house is hard to get to and um, yeah. So No. Why would I tell them I’m coming? I felt my thing is like, I want you to tell me, cause I’ve, or I did email her on Facebook. She didn’t reply back, but it only been like 12 hours since, you know, or 24 about 24 hours. And so I just thought, I’m more of a in your face person, like I want you to know face to face. Do you want to have a relationship with me?
Speaker 2: (18:24)
Do you want to talk honestly with me? Or look what I was dealing with. It Esmerelda is six months and she still hadn’t replied via email and I just couldn’t accept that. That was not going to be my ending where I have a question mark. So I yeah, I want to know whether it’s good, bad or ugly. I want to know. I felt that I was deserved, you know, I deserve that to know. So I went around to the next street where my sister’s house was and I remember it like she was outside throwing away some trash and I asked for her by name and she said, that’s me. And then I said, I just started kind of running my mouth like, well I did this ancestry test and you know, I think we’re related and as Marella is on the list too and I just don’t know what to do. And I emailed her and finally she stopped me and she said, who are you and your mom is my mom. My mom was in the car. She said she would wait in the car this time. Yeah. So then, um, I said, my name is Greg. And then she said, I know who you are. And I saw her whole face just changed and she said that talked about you. And he told me one day you might come looking for him.
Speaker 2: (19:44)
So I just couldn’t believe that he knew about me because I didn’t know about him. I didn’t know for sure. And had I known for sure that, you know, I probably would have tried to find him. I would have wanted to meet him from a younger age and I’d understand why is this happening to me now? You know, I’m like 40, I was 47 at the time and he’s gone. And it just hurt me. It hurt my soul to know that I’m never going to meet. This man. Must have felt so unfair. It was, it was. And um,
Speaker 2: (20:22)
we talked for about an hour, like maybe 30 minutes, 42 avenue. It just seemed like forever. And then I said, I should go get my mom. She’s still sitting in the car. So I walked her over and then that’s when my mom said that she knew she had made a mistake. And then just to see her face, you know, you never want to see your parent in pain like that. And I just had to tell her it’s okay. I had to forgive her. And even though I said the words, it’s okay, I forgive you. I’m still working on it. Oh sure. It’s not, I mean I wished it would be something that could just happen automatically. But I have good days and I have that days and there are some days where I wished that I had been told a lot earlier just to have that opportunity. And I don’t want to be one of those people that just, you know, sitting around and cries and feels like a victim because I do want to look at what I do have.
Speaker 2: (21:18)
And I was thankful and very grateful that my sister was open to receiving me and I told her right away it’s not anything about like material things or monetary value. I said, I just want to know who he was, what kind of man he was telling me stories about him and that’s exactly what she’s done. Um, we’ve known each other for, there’ll be a year in May and we spend a lot of time together. Um, and we’ve gone to the cemetery together and in fact last Saturday it was his birthday, so we went to visit him together. So it’s just been really tough. As excited as I was to hear about it. It just, it was just as sad to hear about it because I think the biggest thing is, you know, just the fact that, like I said, he’s not here. I can’t hug you him.
Speaker 2: (22:17)
I can’t talk to him. I can’t look at him. I looked at photos and I can see in the photos where we resemble each other. And I hear the stories from my sister and her kids about certain things that I’ve done or certain pictures where I looked just like him. But for me it’s just, there’s that, that just, that piece where it’s like, I’m not going to meet him until I pass away and I’m not ready to pass away. I want to enjoy it, you know, the rest of my life. But, but I am looking forward to the day that I do meet him. Cause I think that all of my questions will be answered when I, when I finally meet him. So it’s been a journey.
Speaker 1: (23:01)
It’s such a journey, and I can’t help but think that, and I, I mean, I think you know this, but of course there’s two things that come up for me about what the little I know about you. And one is that you had, um, a childhood where you were kind of moved around a little bit and you, you had this idea subtextual idea that maybe you weren’t wanted, um, and then you lost your father. So there’s an expectation of higher, supposed to feel about that from inside yourself and then from outside. Um, and then to learn that this man was so close and, and may have, may have offered things that you felt like you were missing. Right? So that is all one level of heartbreak. And then the thing I know is that you work for child protective services and, and so you, what you must, and I don’t even know what you do at now.
Speaker 1: (23:55)
Um, a lot of paperwork. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, I can only imagine my, my minimal experience with that is it. So, um, the administrative, but it’s like administrative and mundane and so heartbreaking and stressful. Um, and so much pressure. And so you deal whether or not you are dealing directly with families, your light, your livelihood is about children connecting or not connecting with the appropriate or inappropriate parents. Um, yeah, it was very low. I feel like you must’ve just been, I was torn. I was torn or, yeah. Yeah. I feel like your brain wasn’t just turned inside out.
Speaker 2: (24:36)
Yeah. And it’s interesting. It’s just kind of strange that it happened at this time. Um, because I was working at the children’s court prior to this where I was delivering reports and didn’t have a lot of interaction with the families, but there were times where I would see, um, and hear things in the courtroom and I would see in here parents, um, in the hallways and it wasn’t always, you know, the greatest experience and some of these parents are losing their kids, some of these kids just seeing them, it was a little heartbreaking to me. Um, and then I thought, I’m transferring to another office and it’ll be different. It’ll be a different experience. And it really was a more intense experience of though I was not seeing the kids or the families per se. A lot of the social workers would consult with my boss in our office. And so I’m hearing a lot of these consultations and I’m hearing, cause I would have to go through the reports to pull out certain neglect and whatever the issue was with being detained. And um, in reading these reports there were times where I would just cry at my desk openly because, oh, absolutely. I’m a sensitive person to begin with and I have no psychology background. So to me the best way to pop just to let it go, let, let myself cry and then move on. That’s what I would recommend. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (26:15)
I feel like you people, the, the p the kind of people that are willing to work in that field are a special kind of people. You really are. Um, because I don’t even want to, like, I couldn’t because of what you’re describing right now and you guys are willing to do it day in and day out with the intention of doing for the greater good. I think that’s really amazing.
Speaker 2: (26:40)
Yeah. I had to take some time off and I knew that I couldn’t stay there and a, I transferred. Now I’m in adoptions, so I’m hoping that this is an area that a little bit happier, a little bit more of a upbeat kind of, um,
Speaker 1: (26:54)
situation and goals. More celebratory. Yes.
Speaker 2: (26:57)
Yeah, it’s, it’s just been, um, a journey, um, and itself and I had to find something that worked for me.
Speaker 1: (27:10)
So it sounds like you’re still finding it. I am. I’m still on that path. Yeah. I’m still on that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (27:16)
Path. Um, because I feel like my career is just starting and I have only been there two years and I’m going to be growing and moving up, hopefully promoting, um, eventually so.
Speaker 1: (27:30)
Well, and you’re now a new person then you went two years ago because this whole thing is turned inside out. Right?
Speaker 2: (27:36)
Right. Yeah. If anything, I think I’ve learned not to be so judgmental.
Speaker 1: (27:43)
Mm. Yeah. I think I have to look at my, I definitely made me look at my mom in a different way. Totally. I think, but I, yeah, I think some of this makes us see our parents in a way that no one as people, but also at a level that we’re not supposed to. Like, it’s just so humbling and I’m not, the guy
Speaker 2: (28:01)
did that before. Even when I knew that my mom gave me a way to my uncle for good reason and felt like she would, she had my best interests at heart old. Was she when she, she was two are born, well I’m the second born so she had my brother at twin. See I think I was 26 27 yeah. So yeah, I mean young, it doesn’t, it doesn’t always matter, but she was young. But the choices she’s made in her life, I really question like it just knowing her, it just doesn’t seem like she wouldn’t make those kinds of decisions. Choices being with certain, marrying certain people and, but I can’t judge her and I think, you know, that’s who she is and that’s what she chose. So yeah.
Speaker 1: (28:52)
Did she talk, did she talk about the affair at all and what, what that was about how long it went or what he offered her that um, well her husband wasn’t, when we start to provide
Speaker 2: (29:03)
rather the story, cause we had, you know, my brother already, like I said, he took the exam, the, the, the kit, the test and send it back. And then, um, I didn’t say anything to him for about a month. And then my mom said we got to tell him first. She didn’t want to say anything to him then she said no, I think we need to tell him
Speaker 1: (29:23)
he had not been logging on. He ain’t doing it in sort of, we were shut off. Think he cared. Yeah. Cause he did. I don’t think he even went on. It’s like my little brother and his friends. Okay. This weird project. Right. So when he did go on,
Speaker 2: (29:37)
Oh, when we did speak with him, um, he said that’s, he didn’t want to do it because he felt like, oh, like maybe he knew. Yeah, I think he knew. I think he knew and then right away he looked at me and he said, it’s not going to change anything. We’re still brothers, which, you know, I always felt in my heart, this is my brother, this is all I’ve known as, you know, the only soul brother that I’ve had. Of course, I don’t think anything will change, but something has changed in me and my search for my father. Did it feel reassuring to you to hear him say that or no, I think he was, I think he was very genuine about the whole thing and I think he was processing it to and was feeling were both sagittarians he’s very different from me though, but I think he has this whole sensitive side that it doesn’t show other people, but he may show us like the family.
Speaker 2: (30:37)
And um, so he went through it and he was crying and he was really, you know, this big macho guy. Like he, uh, he doesn’t really tap into that, his mom in a way. Right, right. Yeah. That wrap their heads around. And I think because we had, he was older, so he remembers a lot more of the volatile recent relationship that my mom and his dad had, or my mom and my birth certificate died because, um, my birth certificate dad was on drugs and he was an alcoholic also, and he was in and out of prison and jail. And so that just surprises me when my mom talks about it and it was in gangs and, you know, it just doesn’t seem like a life that we would ever be surrounded by. It seems so distant from the life that I live.
Speaker 2: (31:34)
Right, right. I can’t see her dealing with all of that drama and being okay with it. And, um, but when I think about it, I mean, she was telling me from the beginning, she met him when he was in jail and she went with one of her friends to go visit somebody and then she saw him and she remembered him seeing him at a party and she thought he was cute. And so I guess he started riding her and the rest is history, you know? But yeah, I don’t know what that archetype is, but there is something about like the Hansen, the bad way prisoner and they’re kind of good looking, right? I mean there’s a whole subculture of those people, but there is something to be said about, especially for young, young women and knowing her now, I think she’s definitely the archetype of like, I’m going to save you.
Speaker 2: (32:21)
You’re not going to, I’m going to change you one of those women, she’s just going to take him in and yeah. And he was going to change and be a good guy and you know, but still have that edge maybe about him, but just enough to stay sexy. Right. But not enough to be dangerous. Right. So, um, I, when we sat down with my brother and the way that my mom told the story was, do you remember when I was, this was before I was born. Um, I was really sick at the end of 19 six, what was it, 1969 she said, I was in the hospital during Christmas and my brother’s like, are ready, getting sad and crying. And he goes, I thought you were going to die. I thought I was going to be, you know, like an orphan or whatever. And then my mom said, well, I was really sick.
Speaker 2: (33:03)
And then I got well, and I went out and I started partying and new lease on life, duly sunlife. And she told him, you know, she met a guy at a bar and right away he said, so that’s Greg’s father. He knew that it was gonna be were what the pathway was where we were going down. And she said, yeah. And she said she tried to go outside of like the regular bars she would go to. But, um, but yeah, I guess they had this little fleeing. And then I believe she told him she was married and when she got pregnant and he said that he knew that the kid was his. And, um, and I guess at that time, maybe my birth certificate dad was, have wasn’t in prison or jail and then got out and then she said, I’m pregnant. And maybe he wasn’t too bright or didn’t do the math or who knows? I don’t know. But they, everyone has pretty much contended that they think that he thinks that I was his kid all along. That there was no discrepancy. There was no, he wasn’t a magic. Anything else? No. And the other guy.
Speaker 1: (34:15)
Okay. And why would he write? No, unless there were some kind of right at times there seems to be really obvious physical differences and things, but I guess she was
Speaker 2: (34:23)
good actress. And in as far as, you know, I’ve been faithful and nothing’s happened while you’ve been gone and,
Speaker 1: (34:31)
and so often pregnancies can be such an exciting thing. And for a couple that is still trying to make it work and he’s always in trouble and she’s trying to save him, I can see them just sort of like focusing on the fun of like, and we got pregnant. Yeah. Like we’re going to do this. And
Speaker 2: (34:47)
I remember my mom saying that I was not planned prize baby. Right. But when she told me, you know, like I said, she, I’m standing at the doorstep of my half sister and she says, I know I messed up. And I said, you know, you didn’t mess up, you doing an abort me. And I said, how’d you a boarded me? Then I could say, you messed up, but I’m here. I’m happy, I’m healthy and we’ll figure it out. Right. You know, we’ll figure it out. Right.
Speaker 1: (35:13)
So you, okay, so, so I’m gathering that you wish she had told you sooner. Do you feel like there was an age for you that would have been the right age? There’s no, I mean, and I’m just curious because that’s become something that we’ve talked about almost and everyone, everyone I’ve talked to, we come up with this sort of situation that I was given away at such a young age. I pretty much started, I felt like I was growing
Speaker 2: (35:38)
up a lot faster than I should have to begin with. Then you know, you, you got my uncle, my mom’s brother who took me, and then they moved out of state. So we moved to Tennessee, the New Jersey, and here I am just, you know, part of the family. And then like I said, my mom never really disciplined to me. She never really parented me so much. Um, and my uncle and my aunt were always the disciplinarians and always, you know, they would give the spankings and they would tell me what to do. And so what was I going with this? I guess what I, what I was thinking was maybe she should have told me when I came back to move with her at 11 when I came back and live with her at that point. Um, but even so if she hadn’t told me then I think 18, 17 or 18 would have been great because what happened was when I met my sister at the door, she told me, dad had pictures of you.
Speaker 2: (36:39)
And I said, looked at my mom. And I’m like, well how would he get pictures of me? How would he know me? You know, what, how does this all possible? And she kind of like a blank, like a blank stare. Like I don’t remember giving him pictures. I don’t remember talking with him. And so my sister said, I’m going to go through his stuff and I’ll text you later, take pictures of the pictures and send them to you. So may cause that’s a timeline right there. So we went to dinner, my mom and I, and as that, right when we got to dinner, we sat down and here come these text messages of my photos from when I was a baby, until my high school graduation announcement. And it broke my heart again because I’m thinking this man could’ve gotten to my graduation. Um,
Speaker 1: (37:26)
and then it just uncovering the taste of this almost relationships. Relationships, yes. Right there. And knowing he had stopped by the house numerous times throughout my existence and I either wasn’t home, like, how come I wasn’t home? Where was I? You know, I just wish she had stopped me even on my own.
Speaker 2: (37:44)
I would have been open to receiving him.
Speaker 3: (37:47)
Yeah.
Speaker 2: (37:48)
Uh, that’s what hurts. Right. But if he just pushed a little bit harder or approached me without anybody around me that I would have,
Speaker 3: (37:58)
okay.
Speaker 2: (37:59)
I would have been open.
Speaker 3: (38:01)
Yeah.
Speaker 2: (38:02)
Because it was there and my, my brain.
Speaker 1: (38:04)
Right. It’s like all along was making those suggestions. Right. So if someone had come up to you with more of that story, I would’ve believed, may have been opening,
Speaker 2: (38:14)
I would have believed him and I would have said, how can we find out? How can we be for sure that this is true? You know, and this is like maybe the seventies and eighties so there wasn’t really a lot of enemy hear about a lot of paternity.
Speaker 1: (38:30)
Right. They weren’t easy. There certainly weren’t eating right. Like mail order, DNA. Exactly.
Speaker 4: (38:36)
But it sounds to me like it’s more about the relationships and not, not so much the DNA. And you’re, are you mad at your mom? I don’t want to say I’m mad at her. I’m disappointed. I’m disappointed. I am.
Speaker 2: (38:55)
I’m sad, I’m disappointed. I feel like I thought we had a better relationship than that. You know, like my mom and I felt like we were really close. Like she was a, a friend and a mom. And when I was about 14, I came out to my mom and I told her that I thought I was gay. And she said, yeah, it’s just a phase. You’re going through, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I’m like, no, I’m pretty sure. And then we didn’t talk about it for a few years. And then I think when I was about 17, 18 years old, um, and I started dating and going out, my stepdad approached me and asked me and I said, yeah, that I was gay, just like I said, and, and, and right. And, and he goes, I want you to tell your mom. And I said, I told her when I was about 14 or 15.
Speaker 2: (39:44)
And he goes, well, I want you to tell her again. And he said, I love you and I support you and I don’t want you to, you know, the whole thing. So it wasn’t like it was some traumatic experience. It was more, um, it was a loving experience. Actually. I was very lucky, very lucky. So for me to come out to my mom about certain things and tell her things about, you know, my love life and my sexuality, it just felt like bared your soul. Right. And I’m thinking, you’re not doing the same. This is not reciprocal, but, and it puts her back on that whole, like she’s keeping secrets. And I felt betrayed. I felt betrayed and I was very hurt, very hurt. I think I was still working through it all. It’s only been a year, right? It hasn’t even been a year. Right. Oh yeah, man, we’re not even to make, it will be a year. So of course the first thing I thought was I need therapy again cause I’ve done therapy, you know, on and off throughout. When I first found out I was gay or first started actualizing and speaking about it.
Speaker 4: (40:58)
MMM.
Speaker 2: (41:00)
So, yeah, I, um, started seeing a psychiatrist and then he talked about, you know, going on Prozac, which I really didn’t want to try anything. That was just thinking I should be able to feel good on my own. Um, but it was worse than I thought because I, and, and I’m still dealing with all of that mental health stuff. Um, because I felt like I’m going through the motions with work and with going about my life, but I’m still kind of in a fog and I still need a lot of push to get out. I’m a procrastinator already, but now it’s just like, oh, I’m not going to like, I’ll deal with that next week or it’s even worse now. That sounds like you’ve got, you have this trauma and then on top of that, like a compounded grief, right? Like no one would expect you to be 100% functioning happy person.
Speaker 2: (41:52)
A year ago when she did tell that to my former boss, because she just thought, who did I hire? Like this kid was, I don’t know, magical at first and now he’s crying at his desk. He doesn’t, you know, he walks out of the office is calling out and you know, plus I wasn’t, I have insomnia and sleep apnea. So it’s like, for me, sleep is, you know, a really hard thing to come by or I want to sleep where I shouldn’t be sleeping, you know, behind the wheel or, which is very dangerous. So I love that. My new job, I can take the train or the bus and alleviate the car altogether and it gives me time to think and meditate. So has the therapy helped? Well, I need to find a regular therapist. I’ve been seeing the psychiatrist and I’ve been calling around looking for therapists and it’s really been tough. Tough because of you, because you don’t feel like they understand your situation or just tough to connect with somebody or Tufts because everybody I’ve called is already has a capacity and they’re not taking new clients and I’m trying to find somebody that, you know, see like Monday through Friday evenings or weekends. And so the, the hours and all that fluctuation, it’s just been a,
Speaker 2: (43:11)
uh, you know, a little challenging. I’ll say it’s been challenging, but I haven’t given up. But I know that I would benefit from speaking with somebody on a more frequent basis because I feel like I’m still
Speaker 3: (43:26)
okay
Speaker 2: (43:27)
processing all of this. And when I went out to visit one of my cousins in Arizona, um, a few months ago, I mentioned to his wife that what was going on about this whole DNA thing and she said that she saw something on TV and so I would immediately searched for it and it was a support group and I joined the support group and I started reading all of the stories and I was just blown away that all these people are going through the safety show and it’s like those damn kits are so cheap now. And you know, there’s some of them two for one and, and it changes people’s lives. You just don’t know. And I think even though I thought it’s a possibility, I didn’t really think it all through, but if I had a chance to go back and do it all again, yeah, I would still do it. What I do it in 2013 no, I probably would have gotten, you know, a lot earlier. As soon as I first heard about it, I would’ve taken it more seriously. Yeah. Wow. Had you, I mean, I feel like
Speaker 1: (44:32)
that could be the name of the podcast is like, had I known, had you known, how do we know? And you know, could we, what would we do differently?
Speaker 2: (44:40)
The other sad part is that my sister, when I met her at her door, she said Dad and I did 23 and me,
Speaker 1: (44:49)
oh my gosh, people talk to me about 23 and me and I only did the ancestry DNA. I went to the wrong store. You know. So this is like the American tale move. Right? So if you’re, if you’re not in the bullets right there, right, right. But I am,
Speaker 2: (45:06)
Shelly went and bought the 23 and me the next day I ordered it and got the results and though he was there, he was number one on my list and she was number two. So there was no, no doubting it. It’s not bs like my brother wants to, you know,
Speaker 1: (45:25)
does he still sort of say it’s bs where he,
Speaker 2: (45:28)
he knows that it’s true, but I think he, I don’t know if he feels like it changed things or,
Speaker 1: (45:37)
or if all it did was deliver heartbreak, what’s the point anyway? And that’s what’s bs. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (45:42)
You know, he talks to one of his coworkers about it and it was funny because the guy has a, you know, a lot of siblings and he said, well all of us have different dates so you’re not going through anything that’s too unique. But my brother actually put my mom on the line and hold you a little bit more accountable than I did because I couldn’t yell at her. I couldn’t argue with her. And I just thought, my mom’s already 75 years old. I don’t know how much time we’re going to have left if I died tomorrow or if she, you know, anything could happen in this world. I’d want to be happy. I want to have a good relationship with her for whatever time we have left. I don’t want to spend time yelling or being pissed off about it. It is what it is and now I can work from this point. But my brother told her, you were never going to tell us where you, you were going to take it to the grave at my mom’s said, yeah. So I’m just grateful that my brother did it, that I did it and that I know because had she passed away and then I found out then I probably would have had a lot of it
Speaker 1: (46:49)
are on answer questions. Yeah. I would have been pissed. Like really? I asked you how many times? Yeah. Rightfully so. Rightfully so. You’d be angry. Yeah. Wow. What a story. Um, do you have any advice for anybody that is new to this situation?
Speaker 2: (47:13)
I would say, uh, join the, the online group because it is beneficial hearing other people’s stories and you find out that your reality is not, I mean, I hate to say this, but you read of the stories and you think, wow, this person really has it.
Speaker 1: (47:31)
That one’s really bad. My situation is all at buddy with somebody with a worse story.
Speaker 2: (47:37)
But I hate to say that because you know, there’s always gonna be somebody with that war story, but where families have totally Sean people on where they don’t want to deal with them anymore, the mother doesn’t, you know, people just cut people out of their lives because of this. And you know, and I’m not one of those stories. If anything that sadness, like I said, would be just that I didn’t get to meet my dad. Um, but you know, it really depends on the person. If you’re able to handle all of this. Um, I think w r cof, the founder of the group says there should be a warning label. You know, that this could change your life for good. And you may find out some things that you’re not ready for. This could totally destroy your family, right? So if you’re willing to go through all of this and you know, your mom ain’t never talked to you again and you’re, you know, some of these people reach out to their bio father and it’s like the bio father might be kind of interested, but maybe he’s married and she wants nothing. The wife has, wants nothing to do with you or the bowel father wants nothing to do with you.
Speaker 1: (48:34)
I couldn’t, maybe those warnings should be very detailed, right? It’d be like, these are all the things that could happen,
Speaker 2: (48:40)
right? These are the side effects. So, um, and I, I have to think about like my situation where I don’t know how my father would have reacted if I came knocking on his door. My sister says he would have been open and she says, and he would’ve taken you in. He would’ve, oh, open with open arms, you know? So I take solace in that. I find comfort in that and, um, that he would have loved me unconditionally, is what it sounds like. So, so I just want to stay there with that and that’s the best we can all hope for. Yeah. So, um, and that’s where it is, but I just think that you gotta get completely through how it’s going to not only affect you but everyone else around you. And if you’re willing to still go the limit, then go for it.
Speaker 1: (49:35)
Man. I wish we could, I wish we could have a warning like that and then take a survey of how many people read it and continue to go through with it. Because I think people still think, well, that’s not me. Right. It’s not my family. Right.
Speaker 2: (49:50)
And some of those worst case scenarios, I mean, there are so many variations of stories, like maybe the mother was raped or you know, maybe it was incest. And that was my biggest thing. That I was so afraid that it was going to be something really dark. And I thought, what if she was raped? What if she was, you know, it was a product. I’m a product of incest or some other situation that
Speaker 1: (50:13)
when the man contacted me about, uh, about my situation, that was where my, I, my mind just went to dark. Like, I didn’t know what it meant, but I was so afraid he was going to have really dark information and he didn’t. But, but to, I mean he yet devastating information and a lot of ways, but not as dark as I had imagined. Yeah. So I really relate to that, um, to the way that your mind opens up to ideas that you never thought about and you just never ever fathomed. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (50:45)
Just like with my genetics, cause I didn’t really know. Uh, and then my sister says, oh, well, you know, we have a Lebanese blood. And so to find out that my dad’s dad was from, uh, Lebanon. And so that was just really mind blowing. And an then doing my research and finding out his dad was from Saudi Arabia. And so it’s just kind of crazy. I never expected any of that to be that close in my, you know, linkage of my family, like maybe way, way back, like centuries or something with Spain or something like that. But this is like just, you know, two generations ago where they were in another country.
Speaker 1: (51:27)
So much traveling right in your roots. Right. Right. On all sides.
Speaker 2: (51:31)
Yeah. So I’m just in awe of all of that. Um,
Speaker 1: (51:37)
yeah. Wow. What a story. I’m so grateful you came in today. Thank you so much. Um, yeah, I don’t eat like time and time again. I’m just stunned at the end of these are just, I don’t, I don’t know what to say, so I guess we’ll just say goodbye when we’re done, but, uh, I’ll turn the alternate Mike off. But um, yeah. Wow. Thank you so much, and thank you for being so vulnerable. Thank you. With me was really awesome. Thank you. I think people really need to hear that.
Speaker 1: (00:27)
And I’m just gonna start recording just so that we have the tape going. We don’t have to worry about it. Probably we’ll edit it. Um, we don’t want to have all of our, like all of our chitchat included. Um, so I’m here with Denise. I’m in a library. We’re in a room. We were just discussing. We feel like we’re in a fishbowl. It’s kind of a glass glass study room in a library, but they’ve been kind enough to give it to us for two hours. So, um, we’re just going to talk about your experience, whether it’s like, whether you call it an NPE experience or a DNA discovery. What do you call it? How do you describe it to people? I’m a nightmare now. That’s, that’s okay too. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I wasn’t, um, my story is a little crazy because it actually started in 2009 when a girl came forward saying that my dad was her dad.
Speaker 1: (01:23)
Okay. And, um, so yeah, I already have questions up to that point. Were your parents married? They’re still married, still married, but this girl came forward. And was she older or younger than you? Um, we are 21 days apart. Oh, okay. All right. I have a lot of questions that probably your mother and you had, so, okay. All right. So she came forward 2009 and said she wrote letters and um, said I might, I think I’m looking for Frank [inaudible] I’m going to say last name. And um, I believe he’s my father. And so I called my brother because I didn’t want to upset my mom. So she contacted you? She sent us letters. Should my brother got one? I got one. Apparently she had been sending them to everybody. Okay. Last name. Thorough. Being thorough. Okay. So, um, well she had been looking since she was 18, so, um, so, um, I called my brother, you know, cause I didn’t want to upset my mom and so we talked about it and then I decided to call her and so I called her and you know, I was listening to the story and I’m like, hey, you called the girl, not your mom, Debra the sister.
Speaker 1: (02:52)
Okay. And, um, listen to her story and it was sounding like, you know, this the sounds like it could have happened. I was tracking. Yeah. So then my brother and I, we went to our parents and sat down and talked. My Dad denied it. Um, he, he just denied it. My mom was upset this, that, um, she wanted him to take a DNA test. A Debra. Debra did. Yeah. And he didn’t want to, so we were like ready to take his toothbrush, take you know, hair, whatever we could do to do it. So they did a straight paternity test and, um, they, it was an at home one though. And the results came back that he was not the father
Speaker 2: (03:46)
and, oh, she was wrong. Well, no, but Phil can wait. Sorry. Sorry. What’s wrong?
Speaker 1: (03:54)
So, um, and at this time, you know, I had talked to her a couple times and I, I felt really bad listening to how she grew up and, you know, I just, I felt bad, like I was drawn to her and, um, so it came back that she wasn’t, and you know, everything went on. And then I think I was
Speaker 2: (04:16)
well, much to your Dad’s relief and conceived wife’s relief
Speaker 1: (04:21)
at this time. He’s still denying that he never slept with her mother. So, because my parents, they were dating for nine years, they were getting ready to have a wedding and he had, um, he, they lived in Boston. Um, he was right out of school. They had a, um, he had a job offer in Boston and a job offer in la and he didn’t want to be in the snow, so he went down to la. So he was down here for a couple months before came back. So he met, you know, so came back and they got married the end of September. So, um, you know, so I just felt bad for her. So I, I don’t know what happened. I just heard, she popped into my head and it was like 2012 and
Speaker 2: (05:14)
okay, so the DNA test said, or the paternity test said like, no, he’s not the dad. And you got, it was 99.99%, not the phone now. And so you just want, you guys were like, Oh, I’m so sorry. Continue on your journey. Yeah, we’ll all just go on with our lives. Okay. So 2012, three years later, yeah, you,
Speaker 1: (05:30)
I opened Pandora’s box and I, um, messaged her and I’m like, did you ever find your dad? And she says, no, I still believe that he’s my dad. And I’m like, but you guys did a DNA test. She goes, I just, I just don’t know about that. And I’m like, if you want to buy a DNA test, I’ll take a DNA test. She lives in Albuquerque. So she was down on vacation. I met her up in Carlsbad. My brother wanted nothing to do with this. He’s like, I don’t, I’m not going to take it. He was happy to close that door. Yeah. So I went down better. My husband and I, and she resembled my cousins back east and I’m like, this is weird, you know. So did the DNA test, the results come back. We did 23 and me results come back and it says we’re not related.
Speaker 1: (06:23)
So I’m like, you know, she goes, I just feel that he’s my dad. And I’m like, well, you need to move on because he’s not here, you have two tests. And I’m like, you’re going to have to like try to move on and figure it out, you know? And so that didn’t go very well cause then you know, there was, well I know your dad’s slept with my mom. And I’m like, right. Regardless if they slept together, you didn’t, you’re not, we’re not related. And I never opened up the [inaudible] part of my test. I just, you know, I wasn’t, I didn’t think anything of myself. So that was 2012 so off and on, I would check. I checked in and I think a little bit later because she had some names and I remember one of them was Kaputo and I was like, oh, did you find anybody?
Speaker 1: (07:17)
You know? And it was like always, no, no, no. And then 2016 she started matching on ancestry with some of the family members on my dad’s side. So yeah. And she sent an email to me and she said, have you told frank that I’m matching up with his family? And I said, no, I have it. I said, I go, I don’t understand this. You know, we have two tests done and Dah, Dah, Dah. And you know, and then she said something, she goes, you know, I think you need to look at your, your results because I noticed you don’t have Italian in you. And I’m like, oh, that’s strange. You know, so I didn’t think anything of it. I’m like, one step ahead of you and realizing where this is going. Okay. So I was getting ready to have, I have in the past four years, I’ve had like three major operations, so I didn’t even open it.
Speaker 1: (08:16)
And, um, I remember it was like 4th of July, 2016 and we’re going to my moms and I see this post from like my grandmother’s sister, she’s like in her nineties. And she goes, Carol, there’s a on fate, right on Facebook. There’s a girl saying that she’s spraying starr or Kate’s Katie’s granddaughter. And so I messaged her and I’m like, you know, we know who that is. Just don’t talk to her cause you know, we’ve done DNA, this and that. So he got there, I said something to my mom. And so, you know, my dad called my aunt and you know, cleared it up. Yeah. So moving on. So, um, this past June, so I was supposed to talk with her and then with the surgeries I couldn’t, so in June I, my husband, well my husband’s adopted and he was getting ready to do a DNA test to see if we could find out, you know, anything about him.
Speaker 1: (09:16)
So I had like joined DNA detectives and adoption search, all these things. So I was like already looking in all this stuff. Well I seen this post on DNA detectives that she wrote and basically say searching for her in it or is it just came up and you saw it and you’re like, oh, there she is again. Yeah. And it, cause it was like, I think that somebody else took his, this test and it wasn’t him. And I was like, it was like, are you kidding me? You know, I’m like, what is wrong? And, um, so I write on their note, but there was two witnesses. It was him, you know, Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah. And so I started looking into everything and then I go into mine and I see that I, I’m 50% Jewish and I’m like, you know, I’m just, I don’t even think at that point I was thinking he wasn’t my dad.
Speaker 1: (10:14)
Um, like I told my husband and my best friend, she’s like, oh, Denise. She goes, do you know that DNA was done in 2012? You probably need to Redo it. And I’m like, this is, you know, just crazy. So it’s 4th of July, we’re up at my mom’s and I go in there and I go, mom, you know, my DNA tests came back and I goes, just looking at it and it says, I’m Jewish. I don’t have any Italian in me. And there was a whole bunch of people there, so she kind of, she didn’t say anything. She goes, that’s strange, you know? So, um, but otherwise she didn’t flinch. No. Like didn’t Pale or anything. Yeah. So August comes around and, um, my brother was taking my parents on like a week cruise with him and his family and I was watching the dog. So I go over there and I just have him say, I go, Scott, did you ever do that test, that DNA test?
Speaker 1: (11:06)
He goes, yeah. And I said, I go, can I see it? I go, because mine just says that I don’t have Italian in me. He goes, oh, you’re just creating drama, you know? And I’m like, no, it really says that I don’t, I have, I’m half Jewish. I go, I have no Italian. I have mom, but no Italian. So I go, will you show me? Cause he did 23 of me, but he didn’t share his, he didn’t want his mom public. Yeah. So, um, we go up into the office, this is the Monday we go up in the office and I see he’s got the Italian and he’s got my mom and I’m just like, I’m like, Scott, I go, you realize what this means? He goes, oh, Denise, she came out of mom and I’m like, yeah, I know it came out of mom, but I don’t think he’s my dad.
Speaker 1: (11:47)
He goes, Denise, you’re just this. Let’s just deal with this. When I come back and I go, when you come back, we’re going to share information. So this was on a Monday, so Friday comes and, um, my cousins were, how did you feel at that point? I, you know, I, in my, I was just thinking that maybe it was wrong, but then I’m like, you know, I don’t think it had sunk in yet cause I had like my girlfriend telling me, Oh, you need to Redo it. And I’m like, I’m not gonna Redo it. And even my brother, he’s messaging me that day on the cruise and he’s like, you need to order DNA tests. You need to retake it. Something’s wrong with yours, you know, this and that. So I guess the wheat that day, my mom had seen a text message and she thought it said, um, Dad’s not my dad.
Speaker 1: (12:41)
And so she freaked out. And so my brother and his wife were sitting there, are you sure there’s no po? Could Denise have gotten switched at the hospital? Is there, you know? And she’s like, no, no, no. And I guess she was ended up, she was sick the whole week, so they came back Friday. Who is, who wouldn’t be sick the whole really? So Friday comes along and I had cousins out and I met them down in Santa Monica and the one cousin, she’s like my dad’s first cousin, but we called them aunt and uncle, so she had to give up the baby for adoption. So we’re sitting there talking and she goes, yeah, Michael ordered me this DNA kit and you know, like sent away and just doesn’t, I have this person come along and says, I’m her cousin. And I’m like, I didn’t know you when we were little, so I don’t know you now.
Speaker 1: (13:30)
And I’m like, oh, what is her name? And so she goes digging it up and it’s Deborah and I’m like, oh my God. I’m like, okay. Some everywhere. Yeah. So it’s like, I’m like in my husband’s away. I’m like two and a half hours away from home and I have the kids in the car and they don’t know anything about this. And I’m like, just going crazy cause I need to talk to somebody. I didn’t tell my family about any of this cause I wanted, I wasn’t going to tell them right then. I did so, so I’m like, it’s fraught. So I get, I’m, you know, driving home and my cousin, I’ve called my husband and he’s like, I’m getting on the plane. I’m like, you’re not going to believe this. He goes, just let me guess Deborah. Yeah, he did. He did cause my like the week before, it was kind of funny.
Speaker 1: (14:17)
I was, I kept talking about her and my friend goes, why are you so obsessed with Deborah? She goes, you get over this, you guys have done the DNA test. And I’m like, I don’t know what it is. I go, it’s just bothering me. And so, um, I’m calling my brother Friday night and he’s not answering. And so Saturday morning comes along and he’s not answering. So I’m tech, I’m like, share your results with me now. I’m like, come on. And so he’s still not answering. So I call my nephew, I go, will you please tell your dad to do what he needs? Yeah. So yeah, that’s funny. I bet he loved that. Well I guess my brother had come back that day in Saturday morning and he asked my mom one more time before. So he shared and it said we were half siblings and I just like, I couldn’t believe it.
Speaker 1: (15:06)
And then my, I call my brother and he’s not even answering the phone and I’m like going crazy. I’m, I start crying. I’m like, what is going on? And so I’m like, we’re going over there and my is so my husband comes with me cause my mom watches my brother’s kids Thursday and Friday. So we go down there and I walk in like we need to talk. She goes, I don’t want to hear Debra’s name one more time. Nice pick up Deborah. I go, this isn’t about Deborah, this is about me. And she goes, what are you talking about? I go, mom, why did my DNA just come? I go, we, Scott and I are half siblings. She goes, I want to see the Snyder and understand what you’re saying. And so I see her getting like panicky. And then, um, my husband’s like, mom did, is there a chance?
Speaker 1: (15:51)
And she’s like, can you give me a minute? I want to see this. And so then she’s looking, I’m trying to show her this and she really doesn’t know what she’s looking at. And he’s like, mom, is there a chance? And she goes, yes, there might be a chance. And I’m like, what? You know, I’m like, you’re this. I’m just in shock because I never ever expected that this was just not on even on your radar. It wasn’t, I mean, it just wasn’t the only, I mean, when I was a kid, I always asked where my freckles came from because they didn’t have freckles. And I’m like, you know, I have freckles and you know, I had light, real light, freckles, I guess. So, um, she blurts out I was raped. And so then I start really getting upset, right? So that’s a darkness. And I go in the other even considered that, no, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t tell her.
Speaker 1: (16:49)
And she felt like we were, so I go running into the bathroom cause like, my brother’s kids are outside and I’m just like going, oh my God, she was raped. And Bill’s like my husband bill. He’s like, why did you just talk to her like that? He goes, you don’t need to talk to her like that. And she’s like, you don’t need to be here. And he’s like, she’s my wife. Yes, I need to be here and you don’t need to talk like that. So then I come back out and I’m like, Bill, stop yelling at her, you know, and I’m still sitting here crying hysterically. And, um, she goes, I go, I go. She goes, no, I wasn’t raped. And I’m like, why would you say you were raped? So she brings me in the other room and she’s hysterical. And she’s like, Denise, she goes, I swear to you I was not raped.
Speaker 1: (17:36)
And I’m like, she goes, I just felt like you guys were, um, you know, on top of me you like, right. Or you’re too fast, too serious. I’m just, cause you know, once I heard rape, everything else just going out the window, I’m not defending her. Yeah. I’m like, Hey, cause you know, I’m just like, I can’t believe that she would, that she still had me. And you know, I’m wondering if in my head, I’m thinking if every time she looks at me as she’s seeing a scar, I mean millions of questions. So I’m, we go in the room and she’s all, she goes, I, she goes, his name was Michael and it was, she goes, he worked at your uncle’s bar, cause a bartender and one night your aunt wanted to stay with your uncle for a little bit longer and you know, Dah, Dah, Dah.
Speaker 1: (18:25)
And it was the one night thing, one thing led to another. And I’m just like, I’m just Florida sexy bartenders. I don’t know. So in Boston, in Boston, yeah. So, um, I’m just, I’m in shock. I don’t even know what to say, but I keep having this rape thing in my head, you know? And so she’s, no, he was a gentleman and you know, told me afterwards that if you know, if your ended up pregnant, I can’t marry you but I’m in. She goes, I don’t, I’m not pregnant. And she goes, I’m getting married. She knows. She’s like, you know, I’m not going to be pregnant. So you know, so I’m just like, so she tells me that she had told my dad about her. Oh. So that, let me, so she had told my dad before that she had this one night stand cause she didn’t want any lies.
Speaker 1: (19:23)
He tells me she, they got married, she had had a period and she didn’t think anything of it. And I’m just like, even when I was, I mean you didn’t think anything cause I mean she’s like no. So you know, I don’t know whether to believe her or not. And because there’s no way to know. There’s just no way to really know. No. Cause you know, the only people that know is her hand and God, I mean that’s it. You know the people that were there. So, um, I was so then my dad comes in, he doesn’t even know what’s going on. He thinks it’s about Deborah. And then I’m like, yeah, he’s like, oh, I didn’t step in your life. It was just, it’s so, um, I’m like, I told my brother, I said, you need to share your DNA with her. So then my quest at that minute was I was more concerned about her than I was about myself cause I think I was still in shock.
Speaker 1: (20:23)
Yeah. Now that might’ve just been an easier concept. So in my head, I’m going, cause once my cousin had matched with her, I’m like, either he’s covering for somebody. Cause like I said, he, she looked like my uncle’s kids. Okay. And my brother and I, we didn’t, you know, we have Irish in English, so we didn’t really, we didn’t look like our cousins from back east, you know. So, um, we looked more like my mom’s side of the family. So, um, I was like on this crusade for that, that as far as she told me, my, the only, there was only one other possibilities. His name was Michael didn’t have the last name.
Speaker 2: (21:05)
And your brother’s like at work during all this? Or did he come home? Um, he was out doing stuff when he was Saturday. Yeah. But he was not home. He was not home. So this is all happening in his house, but he doesn’t, the kids are off. He’s like at home depot, we’re telling him
Speaker 1: (21:20)
go, you know, stay out there. So, you know, I went into a separate room, so my dad were just like, you know, you need to come clean. You know, we’re back to Deborah. You need to come clean. And it was just, it was just, that day was like all, so I remember, you know, I just went home.
Speaker 2: (21:37)
This was in 2016. This was 2000 when this just happened. It was this past August, 2018 so not even a year ago. Okay. All right. Caught up. So this is, this is fresh for you. Okay.
Speaker 1: (21:48)
Yeah. So, um, she’s telling me, you know, we’ll find him and I’ll go with you and I’m going to be right by your side. And I’m like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I don’t know if I even want to meet this person. I go, how do we even know if we’re gonna find him? I go, you don’t even know his last name. She’s like, I’m going to call your uncle and you know, see if he can remember and I’m, you know, so, um, we go home and I’m just like, I had to basically lock my door because we’re in like a small place. I got four kids at the house. They can see, I mean my eye.
Speaker 2: (22:21)
That’s enough. I’m sorry. Uh, did your, so did your dad that raised you, did he know at this point between, I mean at the house when you said he came in, did he,
Speaker 1: (22:34)
I th I, you know, he, it was all, I didn’t sleep with her.
Speaker 2: (22:38)
Oh. Cause he was focused on thinking this was about Deborah. Right. Okay. Here hearing problems,
Speaker 1: (22:44)
we’ll be talking about something and all of a sudden something comes out of his mouth and you’re like, what conversation are you in? So I don’t, he didn’t even realize it, but then, you know, my mom’s trying to tell him, but then my mom told me while we were in that room, she said, I seen this text this week and I went to your she, she said, well, in June, July she went to my dad and said, Denise’s DNA didn’t come out with Italian. He goes, what are you talking about? She acts just like my mother. She has to be mine. And he didn’t want to do a DNA test. She goes, we need to do a DNA test. And he thought that she was tricking him cause of death. I know. And so, so, um, so that was July. So this week they’re on the cruise. She went back to the cruise room, the room, and she’s like, oh my God, Frank’s, I’ve just got, you know, some that she’s, Scott knows now.
Speaker 1: (23:39)
And she didn’t want to tell my brother anything until she told me first. You know, that’s considered it. That makes sense to me. So I like that. I said, I went home, apparently when my brother got back, they went upstairs and they were trying to Google this Michael and nothing was coming up. And then I’m just Michael Boston bartender. Yeah. And, um, I’m just like, you need to share your DNA with Debra. And he didn’t want to at first, I’m like, no, you need to do it. And my mom’s like, no, just do it because you know, we need to figure this out because obviously either he’s covering for somebody, cause we’re like, maybe one of the uncles came down, you know? And so he share, I called her and I said, Scott’s gonna share with you that it came out half siblings. So yeah. So, um, it, you know, so we’re now experiencing somebody coming in and then me looking for this and my, it’s just, um, my dad was like, you know, I don’t think you need to go find anybody.
Speaker 1: (24:43)
And I’m like, Dad, I go, I need to see a picture of this person. You know, I, I need to try. He goes, yeah, but you have your family. And I’m like, I know, you know, but at the time when he’s saying this to me, I couldn’t even look at my dad for a long time without crying. I was just so sad and I just felt like I was hurting him even though I didn’t do anything. But I just felt, you know, so my mom actually bought the ancestry kit for me, sent it in. Um, it came back like September 15th, I think it was a Friday. My results came in. And um, so I start going and trying to look and I’m looking for Michael and I’m like on this other side. So I go on the DNA detectives page. Okay. And had, and had you and your dad still wasn’t coming cleaned even though Scott and Debra came up as she said, you might as well come clean.
Speaker 1: (25:39)
And he’s like, he’s like, Whoa, mom didn’t say anything. So they had gone home and he, I guess said to my mom, let’s go have a drink. And she said, I’m not going to have a drink with you until you want to tell me the truth. And I guess then he broke down to her and said, yeah, I did sleep with her and you know, but I didn’t know about her. And he goes, I didn’t know this, you know, and he goes, I was so afraid of losing you. And um, so they’ve, okay, they’ve been, there’s getting ready to celebrate their 50th and they’ve been together forever and they both had an indiscretion during this two month break. Yeah. That’s young people. Okay. I know when they both ended up with pregnancies, it’s crazy. That is kind of crazy. And centering, how miraculous a pregnancy is.
Speaker 1: (26:27)
Oh boy. Oh Man. Okay. Yeah. So it, he, you know, he had, he, you know, broke down and then he wanted to, when he, they came back the following week and, um, he had called me up and he want to talk me. So we went up and we were talking alone and it was just, it was hard. And you know, he’s apologizing saying, this is all my fault and this and that. And my question to him was, what did you do to that DNA test that you took? And he’s like, Denise can do anything because your mom and Scott were there. I wasn’t there cause that’s what I was thinking. He did something to the DNA test, but he was, you know, come to find out, um, well he’s a heavy smoker. He had gotten, he had a meeting, he had drank, you know, ate and came home and the test was there.
Speaker 1: (27:14)
My mom wanted it done. So they did the test. So that’s the only thing we can think, cause it didn’t come back like inconclusive or it just came back. And when you go and you read, you know, they’re saying people that smoke heavily or, and you’re not supposed to eat. Oh, okay. So smoking can be a thing that messes up the results I guess. And well that’s what it says. They don’t want you doing anything like that. Half an hour to whatever. Be Like, Oh okay, I didn’t know that. And just, yeah, when you take [inaudible] they don’t want you to drink anything, eat anything they want you to for at least 30 minutes before eating and just did it. Yeah. Wow. So maybe that’s, and he hasn’t done it again since no, because Scott came up with, right. I mean it doesn’t need to. Yeah. So, um, yeah.
Speaker 1: (27:56)
So you know, he, he just said to me, he’s like, you know, nothing’s going to change your still your mind number one. And I’m just like, you know, I still couldn’t look at them. It’s just like was, I don’t know. I felt so heartbroken and my mom and I, we have a, we’re a really close family. That’s why I just didn’t even see this coming. I mean it was such a shock cause they had dated for so long and it was like, it was more accepting having her coming. Then it was looked like with finding out the surprise about myself. It was just, um,
Speaker 3: (28:31)
yeah,
Speaker 1: (28:31)
shock. I mean, how that is left field. Yeah. I was, I just never, ever would have thought I wasn’t treated any differently. I was loved. I was, are you being, you know, and my mom and I are so close, so this is killing us right now. I’m just going to ask you the next, it’s hard. My last question was what’s your relationship like with your mom right now it’s been, we have ups and downs in the beginning. Um, it was just, she would tell it, you know, I, you need there, you need to get over this and I know how you feel. And I’m like, you need to stop telling me, you know how I feel because you don’t know how it no, I do. And I’m like, no you don’t. And I’m like, I, I pretty, if she knew how you sell, she wouldn’t suggest to get over it.
Speaker 1: (29:17)
Yeah. Well she knew. I mean it’s okay. I don’t even know. I don’t know. It just, you know, I didn’t, I don’t even think I talked to her, cause usually we talk couple of times a day and we see each other every week. And I had delay back away and then, um, but it didn’t last for long because I can’t, you know, my brother was like, you know, Denise, they’re older and you know, we don’t know how long they have. And then he was like, I wish this would have happened to me. And I’m like, well, that wouldn’t have been good because they were married when they had yeah.
Speaker 2: (29:51)
You know, so thanks. But no thanks Scott. He goes, I couldn’t handle
Speaker 1: (29:55)
that better. And I’m like, I go, you say that, but you don’t really know how this feels. I felt like, you know, my eye, but I didn’t have any feelings towards this. Michael Nun and I, you know,
Speaker 2: (30:08)
your identity has been whipped out, but the replacement, there’s no like replacement
Speaker 1: (30:12)
the Tim or longing. Yeah. I didn’t have a, I just wanted to see his picture and um, it, I still don’t have, I don’t even think, I think because I had such a great dab that I’d not missing that. Whereas Deborah didn’t have a father figure growing up and her mom was, you know, in the beginning wasn’t so great. So, um, you know, I think that’s why I don’t feel this towards Dan, but plus what I found, well come to find out, I’m looking for a Michael and that’s not even his,
Speaker 2: (30:51)
yeah, mom. Well I was looking
Speaker 1: (30:54)
kicking in the wrong direction for this Michael, cause you know, I wanted to see it and um, so I got a search angel to help me and like within 24 hours she had my, she had me matching with this ingle family and I’m like, mom, are you sure? His name was Michael [inaudible]. She, I called her like three times and asked her, she’s like, yes, his name was Michael. So my search angel’s like you need to order the death records cause there’s only one Michael that I’m finding. So I had a second cousin pop up and I was afraid he was an attorney and I was afraid to mess the chin, but I did on that Sunday and I was getting ready to order the death certificates of this, of one of the, the women in that section that could add, they had, they had remarried and how to Sunday Michael. So, and, um, he, I go, I, I, I just messaged him saying, I think, you know, we might be related through Michael. And he goes, well, can you tell me more details? So I’m telling him 1969 and revere beach at a bar. He goes, well, I was too young for the establishment then he goes, but I did have a cousin named Michael, but his real, his legal name is Myron and I’m like,
Speaker 2: (32:08)
yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay. So maybe not so far off that she would remember Michael, but he went by Michael. Okay. Yeah. Okay. All right. You’re forgiven mom. Yes.
Speaker 1: (32:19)
Um, I’m like as the ally and he’s like, no, he passed away in 2007. And, um, I go, do you have any pictures of him? Cause I just want to see a picture. And he’s like, if I find any then I’ll let you know. So later that Monday, all of a sudden I get a message from if this is the person talked to so and so, um, I’m Michael Son, so we met, we’re messaging and he lives in Japan. And um, he, um, he’s messaging me and then he wanted to talk to me. So we just like did a Facebook talk with Nate and he’s telling me and he’s like, I hope there’s no tears there. He goes, you know, he wasn’t that great, you know, and I’m like, he wasn’t in my life. And we have an older brother and sister, but I didn’t know about them until 2016.
Speaker 1: (33:10)
Oh, okay. So, yeah, so there’s two older siblings and then I would be his third. And then Michael’s the, the, the fourth, the youngest. He was active. Yeah, he was active as a bartender on the beach, I guess. Yeah. And I guess like the family, they keep secrets and you know, and basically everybody on that side, it’s kind of gone that would have any answers. So I’ve been talking to Michael and my half brother, his results came in. Um, I think it was like right before thanksgiving. And it was so funny cause when it came in, cause this other person that I was waiting for the death certificate, um, you know my search, she had everything, like everybody’s Facebook profile and it was like she was the f I’m like, how did you get off this? Like, oh man. So I’m looking and there was this picture of this little girl and she looked like me when I was younger.
Speaker 1: (34:04)
And then two of his grandsons looked like two of my boys. And I’m like, this has to be him. And I was kinda hoping for that one, cause I’m listening to this, you know, and I’m like, oh, I just, you know, I would have liked him to hear him that he was, you know, I mean, I can’t say cause I don’t know him and I have, I’d never met him and I’m just hearing from him and I don’t have contact with the other two siblings. The one, the older brother, the first one, he lives actually in Hollywood, like Pisa hour away from me. And, um, he finally just one of your siblings? Siblings? Yeah, from the biological father. From Myron. I call him Myron. I don’t refer to him as my, I can’t, I just don’t, I, you know, it’s different for every single person. It is because I, you know, and the nice that [inaudible] should I be having feelings?
Speaker 1: (34:59)
And I’m like, I just don’t, I don’t. So, um, I don’t think there’s any shuts. And I know, so, you know, it’s, it’s been, it’s been difficult, but I’m trying to take it as the blessing is that I’ve met Michael. He’s excited. He’s coming out in June [inaudible] Japan. Oh, cool. Yeah. He wasn’t supposed to come this summer, but now because of this, he’s coming. And he did, he grew up in the Boston area. He grew up in Boston and then he graduated and moved there. Like quitting. He was 22 he just slept cause he was like shipped around from house to house. And I’m from family to family. So he, he only lived with Myron for about three years. Okay. So he was close with him either. Interesting. Yeah. So that’s what I’m saying. It’s like I got really lucky. Really lucky how I was raised.
Speaker 1: (35:53)
Yeah. So wow. You don’t even know until you see all the other possibilities. Yeah. Cause the other two don’t. They like when he passed away, they didn’t even go to the funeral. And that’s like when Michael found out. But the Jewish side of the family, they were prejudice because Michael’s half black. So that was a big thing because everybody in that family only dated Jewish people and apparently Myron was equal opportunity. So you know, he didn’t, he didn’t keep it. And when you look at a picture of him, he looks like this, like an Italian bad boy. He does it, you know my does. He does. And then I looked at him and I was like looking at their pictures and there’s like, I have no real, I don’t resemble them at all. Huh? So that’s like no answer to the freckles. Yeah. When I got that DNA back and it said that we were, you know, siblings, the first person I want to talk to is my dad. So I went over and talked to my dad and we had like a talk for over an hour and then like that’s when I realized that, you know what, he’s fine. He just wants me to be fine. You know, like we’re always like huggy, feely tight. But like when this first happened, I could just, even now when they hugged me like they just like I, they don’t, they don’t let go for awhile, you know? So,
Speaker 2: (37:11)
yeah, I think it’s really scary for the parents, regardless of their personal, whatever their story is from a, from a secrecy place or a shame place or I think that, I think that their fears that they’re gonna lose their kid is, I think that’s really real. I don’t know. I would like some parents to come talk to me, but I think that’s the fear is that you’re gonna probably just be like, well, I’m in my friend’s family now. Goodbye.
Speaker 1: (37:41)
Yeah, well now there are none of them. They don’t, none of like everybody’s gone. And um, obviously with Michael, he’s, you know, just turned 46 and he just found out about the other two, two, you know, when they, you know, it’s so secret, secret, secret,
Speaker 2: (38:02)
so many secrets and it just blows open your understanding of family on so many. Like I keep saying, I’ve said this so many times today, but like on so many levels, like I don’t know how to, it’s just, it’s just tangled and layered and your understanding of what family means.
Speaker 1: (38:22)
No ma’am. I think, I think no matter what you think, you believe it gets pretty shattered. Yeah. I mean, cause you know, you don’t expect, especially like I n my they had, they still have, they have such a great relationship and I never seen anything that would like, you know, I just, you know, you and you look up to them because then I, you know, I go back from, I don’t hate my mom. I don’t, I’m, I’m disappointed. I feel like she, when I went to her and said that in July, I feel like she had opportunities to come to me, but I don’t think she, I don’t know. She obviously, you know.
Speaker 2: (39:02)
Right. And think about how many years it had been.
Speaker 1: (39:05)
And
Speaker 2: (39:07)
I don’t know. I like to fight. I mean, I like to think that I would handle it differently, but I don’t,
Speaker 1: (39:14)
I don’t know. Yeah. It’s like with my husband being adopted, his mom, you know, never wanted to tell him anything about, wouldn’t tell us anything about the adoption, this and that. And like we had a little health issues in the beginning with my daughter. And, um, I would like, we’d go to her and beggar her and she wouldn’t say anything. But this whole time I thought, oh, I know my half, you know, and now I know, I know a quarter and now you know what I’m finding out isn’t so great. So now I’m like, I’m telling my husband, I’m like, I, you needed, he goes, I’m not doing this dad.
Speaker 2: (39:45)
No. It’s like if you were the example of what can happen, I would rather not participate.
Speaker 1: (39:52)
Well, he’s so funny because he’s come to our meetings because it was, he’s come to the side group meetings that we have with our NP. And um, it was funny cause I was wa I had never watched like those morning shows and I turned on the TV and it was, um, I think it was, I said, good morning. It wasn’t good morning. I can’t think of which one it was, but, and this was on Catherine was on there. So I was like, oh, so then that’s when I, you know, so he just realized like on our second meeting that he wasn’t an NPE. I go, no, you know,
Speaker 2: (40:29)
no, but it’s when it’s a surprise, that’s the element. Right.
Speaker 1: (40:34)
Tell him I go, Bill, you knew that you were adopted. I didn’t know this. This is different. Well, it really is. And I’m like, yeah, but it is. But with him, he’s been really supportive and with him going to the meetings and stuff, he hears like everyone else talking and you know how we feel. And so that’s been,
Speaker 2: (40:53)
that’s great. Yeah. Yeah. That’s probably something more partners could do. I don’t want to say what anyone should do, but yeah. Hmm. Yeah. Something to think about.
Speaker 1: (41:02)
Yeah. It’s been good. Yeah. You know, have bad times. I mean, the holidays were really bad. Yeah. We had stuff that popped up that wasn’t good. So, um, you know, and then that’s when my emotions go and I’ve just, I had to tell my family, I’m like, look, if I’m emotional, just let me be emotional and I have to deal with it my way. If I’m not bothering anybody, it shouldn’t affect you. Right. So that’s a, that was something my friend, she goes, you didn’t have to explain anybody. How you feel? I go, I don’t even know what I’m trying to explain.
Speaker 2: (41:36)
Wayne. Yeah, you’re like, I don’t know either how I’m trying to, how I feel.
Speaker 1: (41:39)
You don’t have to tell anybody but how, you know, I’m like, but I feel I go, I don’t even know what I’m trying to explain. Just like you don’t know anybody, an explanation. And I like really helped. And then I like relayed that message to my mom. Then it seemed like, you know, everything was good and then, you know, just we weren’t, I haven’t told everybody yet. I’ve only told certain amount of friends, but I know when I’m, because Deborah came in, she came out in September and met the family and then they came her, she came back and for Thanksgiving. Um,
Speaker 2: (42:15)
yeah. So she’s in the mix of course. I mean, of course she’s been a part of this podcast the whole time, but um, okay, so she, she’s still in the mix. So there is like, it’s almost like, um, overlapping circles like, or something of like you’re going through your experience and your discovery. She’s going through her discovery and your parents are going through a discovery and then your brother is also having his own experience of, of we’re all learning about who his parents really are.
Speaker 1: (42:46)
So it’s like, you know, we’re all experiencing different things. So, you know, when I see other people writing or whatever, like about how when they see the family, their biological family and pictures, then I’m like, oh, she probably feels like this. But then, you know, I had to actually tell her I needed to take a step back from her.
Speaker 2: (43:08)
That makes sense to me. You go through my stuff and um, and she knows now that her journey, like her, her adventure, like exposed yours.
Speaker 1: (43:18)
Well I had said to her, I go, you know, cause I feel like an idiot that I didn’t open this up in 2012 cause I could’ve solved this sleigh back then, you know, for her. And I go, why didn’t you tell me? I go, you know, I had to go back into emails and like read what was written. And I was like, how did I miss this? But I had, like I said, I had had many surgeries like right when she had contacted me in 2009 I had just had a knee replacement and I got, you know, I wasn’t doing well.
Speaker 2: (43:48)
Well, like life is still happening during all of this. That has been, my experience is like life is still happening. You can’t just stop everything. So far I have not been able to stop anything to, to refocus everything, every can’t stop any, anything to refocus everything onto, onto this, this new chapter that you weren’t even asking for. Um, yeah. And you have your fan, you have family, you have kids, you have your life, you have your job. Like, um, yeah, I really relate to feeling like, I don’t know that I can, I mean it sounds, maybe it sounds too, um, flippant, but it’s like almost, I don’t have time right now. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: (44:32)
I, I have had, well, you know, they, we were having this like big Thanksgiving and we were over like the night before at my brother’s and her and my sister in law start talking about the DNA test. Right. And we’re still fresh and we, I didn’t want this brought up because I had to, well my brother didn’t want to tell the kids and my mom was worried that my kids were gonna think of them differently. I’m like, you’re still, and I was so upset. I had to tell my kid, my friends, all Denise you to tell them because if they hear this, you know, on this side, then, well they were like devastated your kids. They were devastated because they, I, you know, I had to tell them about her coming in and then this happening to me and they were like, he’s not my grampy. And I’m like, he’s his, you’re grumpy.
Speaker 1: (45:21)
I go, he is, he’s my dad. He is your grampy. Nothing’s going to change. And you know, so my brother has six, I have four. So he told his three, oh, I just said I have to tell my kids and you know, our kids are going to talk, so you need to let your kids know. So the three younger ones don’t know about me. But then, you know, then the questions come like his nine year old. How did all the sudden we get another aunt? Well she lived in a diverse state, so you know, and, and they’re like confused. So they’re really gonna be confused when they see, um, my brother come out. Right. So, you know, oh my gosh, yes. So it’s, you know, it’s been, it’s been hard. But I had, like I said, I had to take a step back and there’s been like a couple things.
Speaker 1: (46:06)
I don’t think Deborah means it, but like she even asked me if I was one time she asked me if I was going to change my name and I said change my name to what? And she said, your mom’s maiden name. I go, well why would I do that? And that really upset me cause like I told him, I told him, I see those discussions and I’m like, I, and that seems, um, I also am sensitive to that idea cause I was, well she said my mom’s maiden name, I was like, you know, wait a second. No, I, my, you know, [inaudible] is my last name and I’m not changing it. Cause if she would ask me if I was going to angle, then I would be like, you know, but that, and so I’m telling my mom and they kinda got upset about that and I just said, okay, well if there’s any more of these ms towns then I’m done.
Speaker 1: (46:51)
I go, you guys can out of your relationship. I don’t need to be involved. I go, I cause it. To me, I feel like I’m being like, like I feel like I took away her life even though her mother, if she knew or I don’t think she really knew who the father was in the beginning, but she could have put him on the birth certificate. You know what I mean? The state could have went after him. I mean they could have found if you know, there could have been something. You feel like it affected Debra’s life. That’s what you’re saying. Well, I feel like, because I know when she came out and she seen our family the first time, she was like, this is the family. I always just, Oh, oh that’s hard. Yeah. So I feel, I feel guilty. It’s like the other day I was posting a picture.
Speaker 1: (47:38)
I feel guilty just from 2012. I just feel guilty for the whole thing. The whole across. She grew up and like didn’t know my dad, you know, as a kid and didn’t have that experience, didn’t have a male in her life, you know, didn’t have a dad. And so that makes me feel bad. It’s just like listening to Michael’s story. I feel bad for him, you know? And that’s just my nature. But um, I just felt like just some of these things that have been said from her, I just feel like almost like, I don’t know, it’s probably, I’m just very sensitive I guess. But I feel like, I don’t know if I’m getting, like, if it’s like this a sarcastic remark that she’s make or she’s trying to be sly because we always really got along and now it’s like I’m very like reserved now with her. So, cause I, I had to just take my step back.
Speaker 2: (48:31)
Yeah. Well, I think that’s something that, that it has to be said that people like everyone, it seems like, like all the people that come into these situations, like you’re all are, we all are all really different people with really different understandings of what is okay and what is not. Okay. And what is an okay thing to ask or what is, what makes perfect sense, right. What’s, you know, lots of people are discussing the name change thing, um, which just didn’t even occur to me and you know, but like I but there’s some people that’s like the first thing they think of. So you just have to remember that like, I don’t know, everybody’s coming from different walks of life. It’s so,
Speaker 1: (49:15)
well she she um, diverse. Yeah, she um, actually cause she goes by her mom’s name and she, cause she’s not married, but she has a son and a partner. And um, so she put all of a sudden the scene, Debra d Yvonne’s, that was weird seeing that. Like she put it in her face look thing. She changed her last name just on Facebook. She, okay. Debra d Alonzo. Then her last name her when that she was given. But it just, it’s kind of weird to see.
Speaker 2: (49:41)
So for her it was like maybe completing a missing piece.
Speaker 1: (49:44)
Definitely. Cause she had been searched for forever. Yeah. Mom told her when she was 18 apparently she had come to the house when we were 18 when she was 18. Oh Wow. And so, but nothing like it never was pursued. Cause in my head I was like, Oh dad, this test would have just came out. I would have never have had to know. But you know that, I mean, that’s why I say my blessing is having Michael and, you know, I guess, you know, I have to, and my kids, I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for that, you know, I wouldn’t have my family right now. Absolutely. My kids and for the world. So, you know, they’re, they’re just having, you know, it’s just, it’s hard because we’re seeing it from all aspects. When I listen to somebody going in and not having a good experience like I can see, you know, but it’s like, you know, it’s like what you said that everybody’s different and you know, we’ve all been raised differently and you know, it’s just, it’s
Speaker 2: (50:44)
step one. So for you, cause you’re still pretty fresh in this, um, less than a year, what do you feel like there was a, there, there is advice that you would give somebody that just found out or something that you wished someone had said to you?
Speaker 1: (51:02)
I just think that my biggest thing that I’ve learned from this is that you need to take a step back first before and really, I mean I’m still processing, but I feel like you need to take a step back and like think before you just go react. But I would have, I mean I would’ve liked my mom to come to me. You know, that’s just the whole big disappointment. I just think people need to be aware when they take this DNA test. Cause like I didn’t take it for fun, so,
Speaker 2: (51:38)
Oh yeah. You didn’t even take it for fun. I did it to hell. My God. Your surprise was like,
Speaker 1: (51:43)
yeah, you didn’t even, okay. Yeah. Yeah. So wild. Yeah. Wow.
Speaker 2: (51:55)
That is so interesting. Okay. Well, thank you so much for sharing the story. I really hope, I mean, I actually know that it will help people, but um, yeah, and I also really hope for you that you, especially with your relationship with your mom gets more, um, peaceful for you, that you, with time, the, you guys find that find a place, um, find a place in the middle. But yeah, not, not a single story has been the same. And you, you wind today for sure. It’s not a contest. It’s not a contest, but really interesting. Okay, let’s, I’m gonna turn this off.
Speaker 1: (00:00)
Knowing in our canyons. Oh really? Oh, that sounds, sounds so nice. So nice.
Speaker 2: (00:09)
Beautiful. I like the cooler, but I’m not ready for this though yet. So
Speaker 1: (00:13)
yeah, snow it. Snow is its own animal, but, uh, but I am ready for cooler days in LA for sure. I bet. How’s your baby? Um, she’s good at it. She’s really good. She’s, um, yeah, she, I’m like, I’ve got to say, I don’t, I don’t even know. She’s, you know, like seven week old baby. So she’s, uh, sleeping and eating and crying and that’s about it, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’re just starting, I think the whole family is starting to finally settle into kind of a routine and get the feeling for how things are gonna go for a little while. Oh, right. Yeah. But we’re, we’re in. We’re so grateful. She’s a pretty easy baby. Well, good. I’m glad to hear it. So tell me, um, we can just dive right in if you want or we can talk some more, but you, your story is a little bit unique because it includes like birth certificate discussion. Yes. Yeah. So we can, we can just dive right in. I’m gonna tell ya, tell me, tell me what’s going on. And I may interrupt you. I’m sorry, but I have five questions. Um, but, uh, yeah, otherwise I’m here to listen. Okay, perfect.
Speaker 2: (01:36)
Um, well when I, I kind of tell you like how I grew up.
Speaker 1: (01:44)
Okay. All right.
Speaker 2: (01:46)
So my mom, um, had me when she was very young, she had me when she was 17 and I was her second child. She had my older brother right before she turned 16. Wow. So, yeah, you know, kind of a lot going on. And she, my grandmother, um, took custody of my brother because my mom was so young and you know, kinda said like, Hey, you’re not going to be able to do this type thing. You know, my mom was still very involved and his father was actively involved in his life and he and my mom kinda continued, you know, on and off for quite awhile. And then my mom met the man that raised me and he was not ready to take on somebody else’s child. So at that point, my grandmother legally adopted him, like took full custody of my brother and, um, my mom found out she was pregnant with me.
Speaker 1: (02:49)
[inaudible] how old was the, was that man, just out of curiosity?
Speaker 2: (02:55)
The man that I believed was my father, he was much older than her. He was about six years older than her, so she got pregnant with me when she was six. Well 16, seven, let’s see. Yeah, she got pregnant with me when she was 16 had me when she was 17. So he was in his twenties at this point. And um, you know, so she found out she was pregnant with me and my older brother’s dad, you know, isn’t my child, she said no, you know, it’s, it’s his child. Like she was young, naive. I think she genuinely, you know, honestly didn’t know at that point how close they had been and you know, kind of what the, so she, you know, stayed with this man that she believed cause my father and went on to get married three years later, had two more children and they, you know, they ended up getting divorced when I was a teenager and she went on and had one more child.
Speaker 2: (03:54)
So I had four siblings total. Two I believed were full siblings and then two half. And you know, kind of through my whole life, I honestly, I never really knew where I fit in. And what I mean by that is that, you know, I, I constantly looked in the mirror and I didn’t see that I looked like anybody, like my older brother and I looked a lot alike. Like I saw that for sure because we both have very unique eyes. We have yellow, green eyes. Like, that’s the first thing that people always say about us and you know, so I always was like, how do I have these eyes yet my full siblings have like these deep blue eyes, you know, and I have thick hair, they have thin hair, you know, I’m, I’m much curvier than the girl that I thought was my sister.
Speaker 2: (04:50)
Like you know, my full sister. And so, you know, just kind of all these things that I always ask these questions and my mom just always said, you know, you favor my side of the family. But I never saw that either. And you know, sadly I grew up in a house full of addiction and you know, a lot of, a lot of stuff there. But the man that I believed was my father, he and I never, like, we always butted heads. We’d never going to have that. I never fit. Like I could never fit into the box, if that makes sense. Like, you know, here I was trying so hard to fit into this box that I didn’t fit into. No matter how hard I tried. And, you know, I was just always more outspoken. I was, you know, I just had a, a mind of, you know, I always just had a mind of my own, I guess.
Speaker 1: (05:44)
So I always had these ideas. And you felt like you wanted, you wanted to fit into the box, you know, I think he could have, you know, I think I just wanted his approval,
Speaker 2: (05:58)
you know what I mean? Like I, I never got that approval that I feel like I thought my whole life and you know, he and I just constantly butted heads, butted heads. And when my mom and him got divorced, I left with my mom and my two siblings stayed with him. And you know, that that caused even more strive please. You know, me and him continued to have issues. And
Speaker 1: (06:27)
how old were you at the time?
Speaker 2: (06:29)
Um, I was 15 at the time and then when I was 17, I got pregnant. And um, that cause even more issues with, between him and I because basically it was, you know, you’re, you’re going to be like your mom type thing. You know, you’re young, you’re pregnant. You’re,
Speaker 1: (06:51)
that’s so interesting. Cause I thought I had hoped when you first said that, that he would have maybe understood, had empathy for the situation because he had been so close to it. No, no.
Speaker 2: (07:02)
Okay. Well, you know, and that was exactly, that was, you know, I mean, you would hope so. And unfortunately that, that continued through the years.
Speaker 1: (07:09)
[inaudible]
Speaker 2: (07:10)
and he and I always just had this very turbulent relationship butted heads. It unfortunately fed into my relationship with my siblings. Like a lot of now after going to counseling and stuff, I see it with a lot of triangulating relationships because they have unhealed trauma of their own. Right. Right. And so, um, when I wa, you know, fast forward, um, 2012, I went to go get my driver’s license renewed and I could not find my birth certificate everywhere. So I go to vital records and I get a copy of my birth certificate and you know, I didn’t even look at it. They’re like, put me on below. I get to the DMV. Yes.
Speaker 1: (08:01)
Right. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (08:03)
So I’m sitting there at the DMV. I like pull it out while I’m waiting for my number and there’s no, it just has my mom’s name on it. And I was like, that’s weird. So I get my driver’s license, I call my mom and
Speaker 1: (08:20)
did it. Sorry, did it say unknown or anything? Or just was blend. It didn’t know even, huh. I didn’t even know you could do that even though that was like, I was a little bit surprised.
Speaker 2: (08:35)
So, you know, I called my mom and I said, Hey, I just got a copy of my birth certificate. This is a little bit weird. Why is my dad’s not listed? And she said, well, we fixed it. And I said, you fixed it. What do you mean? And she said, you know, which I kind of knew the situation a little bit, but like when I was born there was questions about, you know, basically like the man who raised me was like, Hey, am I really the dad type thing? And but she, she said that when after they got married, they went in fix my birth, should have stayed and had him added. And so I just kind of shrugged it off. Like maybe they give me the wrong copy, right. Like they give me the amended copy.
Speaker 1: (09:23)
Right, right. You know, I put it in my space. Right?
Speaker 2: (09:27)
Yes. You know, so I put it in my space and I honestly just kind of shrugged it off and you know, as the years go on and I continue to have all of these different, you know, issues, everything with the man that raised me. And in 2016 ironically, after a very big fight with him, I called my mom and I was like, you know, can’t you just tell me that? Like, you know, maybe we, we butt heads so much because he’s not my dad.
Speaker 1: (10:03)
And
Speaker 2: (10:04)
you know, I didn’t, I didn’t mean it in like, you know, I, I met, no disrespect, I met no anything by it. It was just, I genuinely could never understand why we couldn’t connect and why, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: (10:18)
Like, I just felt like
Speaker 2: (10:20)
I was treated very different than my siblings with him between, you know, I wasn’t invited on a certain vacation or, you know, just random things that really hurt my feelings. And I’m, I’m not saying I was the perfect child and I made things easy on him by all means, but I was the child. Right,
Speaker 1: (10:41)
right, right. Yeah. I mean you don’t have to defend to explain it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (10:46)
Not my job to facilitate the relationship and I know this now, but then it really hurt me, you know, over and over again. So, you know, she laughed and she was like, no, there’s no way.
Speaker 1: (11:04)
Again, only interesting. Only interesting. Cause we may already know the end of this story, but yeah,
Speaker 2: (11:09)
exactly. Well that’s good though. No, we laugh about it because it’s, you know, I mean I was actually on the something, so, um, so in 2018, um, you know, everybody starts doing all the deeds. Well, I’m guessing people were doing them long before that, but it kind of blew up on social media. Right.
Speaker 1: (11:29)
It’s like, Hey, look what I did. Right. So you know, my husband and I are like, Hey, this will be fun. Let’s jump on this bandwagon, you know? Sure.
Speaker 2: (11:41)
So we got our tests and we did them. I got my results six weeks later, you know, no big surprises about my ethnicity. Like it’s 100% European, you know, I’ve scanned really led eyes like it fits. So I honestly glance, but then I think once or twice and then I didn’t do anything else with the app. Like I didn’t know that there was like a messaging feature on there. I didn’t, I knew there was the relative feature. Like I went in and glanced at the relatives, but I didn’t see any names that I knew. So I was like, okay, no big deal. So Steve, you’re not looking for it if you’re just not expecting it. I just, yeah, I don’t see, sometimes I was right in front of your face. [inaudible] well, and that’s what’s so funny is I was just like, okay, I have no idea who any of these people are.
Speaker 2: (12:33)
But it didn’t shock me just because like when it came to the man that raised me, we never knew any extended family outside of like our immediate cousins and stuff. And you know, I mean, I knew a lot of my mom’s family, but I, you know, I still didn’t see any names or anything that jumped out at me. Right. And so I, uh, I ended up getting a new phone and I didn’t even download the 23 and me app at the, you know, at the end of 2018. I was like, Oh, I’ll download it later. And, uh, on January 3rd of 2019, my husband and I went to a comedy show January this year. Yeah. You know, he’s talking about his 23 and me results and you know, just funny stuff and we’re laughing about it and we get in the car when we leave. And I was like, Oh, I keep getting emails from 23 and me that I have new relative matches, I should really check that out.
Speaker 2: (13:34)
You know, I didn’t even really know what it meant. Yeah. And so, so we get home and you know, we get into bed and I download the app and I log in and um, you know, I’m trying to figure it out because I hadn’t really taken a lot of time and I was like, Oh, here’s the relatives. I click on it and I have a first cousin match and I see it. And I just kinda like stopped because I immediately recognize the last name. [inaudible] it’s my older brother’s last name. Right. And I just sat there and I was like, huh, that’s a coincidence. Like, you know, my first thought was, Oh wait. Right. I was just like, huh. And so I like turned my phone to my husband and I’m like, do you recognize that name? And he goes, yeah, that’s last name. And I was like, I was like, it’s saying this person is my cousin. And we’re both like, huh. And so I screenshot it and I text my brother. I’m just hoping he’s awake because it’s almost midnight. Yeah. And I texted my brother and I’m like, Hey, I’m like, really weird thing. I just matched with this that has your last name. And I sent this screenshot and he goes, Hey,
Speaker 1: (14:57)
I know her, that’s my cousin. Yeah. And I said, I said, well, Facebook the best. That’s my cousin.
Speaker 2: (15:06)
And he goes, Oh my hell, like in big letters like, and he goes, you know what the scenes. And I was like, you know, I just sat there for a second like kind of I think just like everything, like almost went like a movie reel in my head of like all these revenue things in my life. Like I don’t know her but I, I, I just sat there and I thought of all these things that I had like asked questions about or, you know what I mean? Just random things. And
Speaker 1: (15:38)
I was like, how many forgettable moments that become
Speaker 2: (15:41)
crystal clear? Like, yeah, exactly. You know. And I said, we send me a picture of your dad because I hadn’t seen him since I was much younger. And so he sends me a picture and like my hands were like shaking at this point. Like, you know, me and my husband are just sitting now, we’ve got like the lights on, we’re sitting here and my hands are shaking. And I opened that pitcher and I think like both of us, just like our jaws, like wow. Because it was, I mean, everything, my lips, my cheekbones, my smile, my like rounder face, like just everything. And I was just like, Whoa. Yeah. And my husband goes, that’s your dad.
Speaker 1: (16:29)
That’s like,
Speaker 2: (16:31)
you know, and I’m just kinda like [inaudible]
Speaker 1: (16:33)
and your block, I guess your brother just didn’t had never thought of it or hadn’t seen, hadn’t, wasn’t close enough to,
Speaker 2: (16:47)
yeah. Like we, so here’s the thing, like once we start talking, he goes, this all makes sense.
Speaker 1: (16:54)
[inaudible]
Speaker 2: (16:56)
you know, you start kind of putting it together of like, you know, he and I looked like twins when we were little, like, yeah. Identical. Oh wow. And you know, we’re only 15 months apart. And so it’s like, we’re not, you know, and so, you know, at this point it’s like 1230 and I’m like, I have to call my mom. Like, I can’t wait until the morning. Oh wow. Huh. So I, yeah, I was just like, I have to add. So I, I sent her a text and I said, Hey, are you awake? And she called me. Right. You know, she called me right back and she was like, are you okay? What’s up man? And so I kind of go through everything.
Speaker 1: (17:39)
He goes, he goes,
Speaker 2: (17:39)
what? And I, I’m like, hang on, I’m going to send you a picture of this. I want you to look at it on your phone. And she says, so she, I think first she was shocked and then she laughed and she goes, you know, well, DNA could be wrong.
Speaker 1: (17:59)
[inaudible]
Speaker 2: (18:01)
and I missed like the DNA. I don’t, I don’t know how DNA can be wrong. Like, and so then
Speaker 1: (18:09)
even if it was wrong, it would be such an amazing coincidence if like it was wrong and it identified this other family.
Speaker 2: (18:20)
And so she goes, well, I hate to break it to you, but this, this isn’t correct. And she said, because we did a DNA test when you were a baby. And so then I’m like, Whoa, that’s new information. Like, I remember you telling me that he questioned, but you know, so she proceeds to tell me that it was actually my, his parents. So my, you know, I still consider it my grandparents of course, but they, they were suspicious that he wasn’t my father based off of what I looked like, that they hadn’t been together for so too long. So on the down-low, my mom’s mom, my mom, me, and then my alleged father, his parents, they all went and took me and got me a DNA test that supposedly came back and said I was his child. Um, this was a 1980 so I don’t know what DNA testing was at that point.
Speaker 2: (19:26)
Um, you know, I, I don’t know the specifics there, but you know, that’s what she tells me. And I was just like, well, this is really suspicious. Like I’m looking at this picture of this man that I look like, like I’m telling you, you know? And she says, yes, well, you know, she’s like, it’s just, it’s not possible. And I’m sure she was just in shock at this point. And so we hang up the phone and, you know, my husband has to go to bed, he’s got to be up for work in the morning. And I’m just like, really? And you know, my mind is just like, Whoa. And so, you know, my, you know, my kids are all night owls and so start talking about with my kids and then we start digging out photo albums. Like, look,
Speaker 1: (20:11)
can you get me as a kid? How different I look
Speaker 2: (20:16)
my siblings? Like it’s just, I mean stand out, you know, I’m there with the, the dark hair, the led eyes, like it’s just very obvious. And so, you know, the night my mom called me back actually about an hour later and she’s like, she’s like, I’m just tripping out.
Speaker 1: (20:39)
He, yeah.
Speaker 2: (20:40)
You know, she’s like, I don’t know how this could happen. I don’t know. I, I don’t think this is true. And you know, she always maintained a very good cordial relationship with my brother’s father, despite my grandmother having, um, custody. Um, her and his dad always just talked and you know, they stayed in touch all these years. And so she said, you know, I actually talked to him today and she said, I’m going to call him in the morning. And I said, well, I’m sure Jason will want to call him. You know, my brother. Yeah. Give him the heads up. And so, you know, we hang up and the next morning, you know, I’m getting, I start getting all these messages because my brother is very excited for a couple of reasons. Number one, you know, he kind of always felt like the, um, I don’t know if I can say this, so bleep it out if I can’t. He kinda felt like the bastard child. Um, you know, he, he didn’t ha, you know, the whole situation with my grandma and my mom and them. [inaudible] didn’t want to raise him, you know, had no full siblings, you know, just kind of this whole thing. So he’s just excited.
Speaker 2: (22:02)
Oh my, you know, it makes sense. And he’s so happy and we just, you know, and so, you know, the next day we’re just talking and I said, okay, well to settle this for everybody before you know, it kind of explodes. I’m an order, we’ll do like a sibling DNA test, you know, it’ll be me, my brother will do my mom’s CMA as well because that makes it more accurate. So I get online, order the kit, do all of that. And then my, I was contacted by somebody else in the family that, um, basically told me that I shouldn’t like open this door. Ah, okay. Know that I’m, I’m opening a door that I shouldn’t open and I’m going to, you know, I should keep this on the down low. It’s nobody’s business. It’s, you know, like I stopped right there and like I called my husband after and I was like, you know, first my first emotion was I was angry and I was angry.
Speaker 2: (23:06)
I know because I was upset that it’s like my truth that I should get to share how I want like, but other people are trying to, I don’t know, I felt like I was raised that way a lot. Like you keep stuff under cover, right? Like let’s just sweep it under the rug type thing. Like, so, you know, I actually contacted my, I had been going to counseling for awhile at this point anyways because of my issues with the man that raised me, me, you know, and just my all stuff. Oh. I actually texted my counselor and kind of gave her the rundown of what was going on and she said, you know, it’s your decision. Like you know, your choices, you can, you can say what you need to say in a respectful way that’s not shaming anybody or you know, all of these things. And so she just said, remember like this is you, this is your story. You don’t have to do what anybody else wants you to do. Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah. You know that I, I understand that perspective for the fact that it was different times in the seventies and eighties right. Like women were shamed a lot more for, you know, having, you know, multiple partners. Like it’s not like my mother was out sleeping with everybody at once. It was two people in a very short amount of time. And you know,
Speaker 1: (24:28)
yeah. About like, Oh no, I just thought type of thing. Like, I think that was,
Speaker 2: (24:37)
I was going to make her look bad in a certain light or something. Right.
Speaker 1: (24:43)
Never my intention. Right. People would say things or people are, yeah, yeah, I know how people do it. People talk. I think that’s so, I think people, people, a lot of people on the podcast talk about like, which, what era it was. And I still, I’m not sure that we’re that much more progressive now really, honestly. But I agree 100%. We haven’t made much progress. Continue,
Speaker 2: (25:10)
you know, all of this is kind of going on and then I start getting messages on Facebook because my brother’s excited. He’s talking to people. Um, some background on that is that I knew a lot of my brother’s family, like his uncles and because me and my brother were always really close to right now growing up in the same house, I would go and hang out with him.
Speaker 1: (25:34)
Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 2: (25:36)
A lot of our uncles are our age [inaudible] and so, right, right, right. Yeah. You know? And so we were always close like, so I started getting messages and they’re like, Hey, we just want you to know we love you, support you, we’ve always raised you like in our family, like your little sister type thing. And you know. So I felt so welcomed because then everybody starts reaching out to me that I didn’t even know. Yeah. And so sweet. And so we, so fast forward to Sunday, like we had gotten the DNA test. We did, we went up to, my mom’s all met together, did it. I shipped it out on Monday morning. And then my brother called me on Monday morning and he said, Hey, my dad wants to talk to you, are you ready for that? And I was just like, I don’t know. What do I say? What if it’s weird? Like,
Speaker 1: (26:31)
you know, I just panic
Speaker 2: (26:34)
and I was like, you can give him my number. I said, you know, tell him to call me in a couple of hours. Like I need to kind of get my mind. And I think my whole underlying thing, there was majority of my interactions with the man that raised me were always so tense. And I always felt like I had to be on guard, I guess. Like I could never let my walls sound because no matter how hard I tried, I wasn’t successful, you know, in, I never got what I wanted out of the relationship I guess. Like I never got the praise or you know, any of those things that I wanted so badly. And so, you know, I kind of waited like on pins and needles. Like what if he doesn’t call? Like what if he doesn’t want to talk to me or, yeah. You know, I kind of start like building it up in my head like it’s going to be a negative experience.
Speaker 2: (27:27)
And I got a phone call and I answered and the weird, like the sense of calm just kind of went through my whole body. Like I heard his voice and it was just so, he’s just like McKell and I just like, I want to cry because I, I felt so instantly like connected to somebody that I didn’t even know, like, Oh my gosh. And it was just like, how, how does that work? Do you know what I mean? Like, yeah, I’ve met this man a handful of times in my life with a child and I can talk to him on the phone. And it was just, it was, I was still worried about like, awkward pauses or, you know what I mean? The idea of it is awkward, undeniably. And it wasn’t though, like it was just, it just flowed. And it was, you know, he asked me, you know, just about me.
Speaker 2: (28:27)
And he was like, are you okay? Like, how do you feel about this? Like, you know, and then he was very honest with me and he told me, he said, you know, we were young and he said, when your mother found out she was pregnant, I asked if you were mine. And you know, he says, I, I truly believe that. She didn’t know it was such a small window. And um, you know, then he just proceeded to tell me about like his wife and then about, you know, I have eight other siblings from him. Oh my gosh. And, and this is, this is the crazy thing. So my dad has 10 children total. And so we range in age from my older brother’s 40 and then it goes all the way down to us having a seven year old brother. Oh wow. Isn’t that crazy? Yeah. So, you know, he’s, he’s telling me about everybody and he’s asking my kids and he’s asking about my husband and you know, I just, it was such a genuine conversation and it just like when we hung up, I felt so, like my heart felt so full because I, I had always like wanted that.
Speaker 1: (29:42)
Yeah. So I was thinking was like finally you finally got to cut the conversation you wanted or that, or the relationship.
Speaker 2: (29:49)
Exactly. And that was our first conversation, you know, and we talked for an hour and it was just, it just was fine. It wasn’t awkward. It wasn’t tense. I wasn’t worrying about, you know, like being reprimanded or something for, you know, and so, um,
Speaker 1: (30:10)
it sounds exhausting. The other kinds of conversations.
Speaker 2: (30:13)
Yeah, it really was a bit, you know, I mean it’s still makes me sad and so to go back to the band that raised me at this point, he doesn’t know what’s going on because we wanted to wait until I had the DNA.
Speaker 1: (30:25)
Right. That makes sense. That makes sense to me.
Speaker 2: (30:29)
You know, in the same sense, like I have not had a consistent relationship with him for many, many years. Like at this point when this all went down in January, I had not talked to him for months
Speaker 1: (30:42)
and he wasn’t even married. He hadn’t been married to your mother for so long and forgot it
Speaker 2: (30:47)
many, many years. Exactly. Right. And so, um, you know, just, that’s just kind of how our relationship went, like here and there. And it’s not like we talked on the phone, it would be a random text here and there. And so the day, um, like that Tuesday I had meld in the results on Monday and that Tuesday I text him and I said, I said, Hey, you know, I would like to talk to you. I said, I, I would, I would like to do it in person. And I said, I know that, you know, we have our issues and stuff and you know, but I would like to come and see you. And my ultimate goal there was, you know, me and my husband go and meet with him. And that way I could sit down with him, I could explain the situation. And you know, this man has been in my life for 38 years. So it’s not like I just want to say, Hey, see you. Regardless of our relationship. And you know, my, my whole goal was, Hey, maybe we can sit down, I can explain everything and then we can maybe move forward. Like, we can try to build a relationship. Like, you know, my hope was that he would be like, Hey, you know, you’re my kid. It doesn’t matter. You know, I still love you. Like, I do need to try harder I guess is what I want.
Speaker 1: (32:06)
Which I well, well I was, I was, yeah, I was imagining that the two of you might find a connection over both being being sort of surprised and both being accidentally, I sort of accidentally tricked or you know, not that your mom was malicious, but of course, and that, you know, this would be, this would be, this could be a way to come together. I can like opening the door, I can tell them, see, I can totally see where you’re optimistic intentions came from.
Speaker 2: (32:41)
Well good.
Speaker 1: (32:43)
No, I look at it and I’m like, Oh my God.
Speaker 2: (32:48)
So you know, he responded hours later and he, you know, he was like, why, what’s going on? And so, you know, at first I was just trying to be like, Hey, you know, like everything’s fine, but I want to talk to you in person because I felt like this needs to be something that I said face to face, not a phone conference.
Speaker 1: (33:09)
Yup. That makes sense to me.
Speaker 2: (33:11)
So we kind of text back and forth and then, you know, I, it was late. I didn’t hear from him again. And the next day I got the results.
Speaker 1: (33:20)
My brother and I were full siblings.
Speaker 2: (33:23)
So, um, I took, I took a screenshot of the results and I sent it to, um, my mom. Um, my biological father, I included my brother, and then I also had my step mom’s number. I had talked to her the night before. My dad had called me back and said, Hey, you know, I would like you to speak, you know, with my wife. Like, are you comfortable
Speaker 1: (33:48)
when you say step mom? You say step-mom, you mean like your, your biological dad’s wife?
Speaker 2: (33:52)
Yes, yes, yes. And so, you know, I sent a text basically with the results and I said, it’s a girl with a pink cart,
Speaker 1: (33:59)
but it really don’t
Speaker 2: (34:03)
like I, you know, I was kind of shaking like, Oh, I don’t know what to say at this point. Right.
Speaker 1: (34:08)
LOL,
Speaker 2: (34:09)
you know, and you know, everybody responded very well. And, um, at this point, the only, well, so my youngest sister knew at this point, um, from my mom and cause I had talked to her. And then my, my sister from my, um, from my, the man that raised me, she, she and I had talked, I had updated her and um, you know, so she and I spent some time talking and she, she and I had many years where we had a really rough relationship because of that kind of triangulating. So we both after going through counseling, like she and I have a very close, very positive relationship that we were able to, you know, like she’s been a huge rock for me in this situation. Soundboard and you know, so I made sure to tell her and then I text the man that raised me and I said, you know, I still would like to talk. Are you able to get [inaudible]
Speaker 1: (35:11)
yeah,
Speaker 2: (35:12)
he ended up, he ended up like panicking type thing thinking that something was wrong with my health. And so, you know, I guess I needed to be, I was trying to be vague but not, you know what I mean? It’s kind of a hard line, like
Speaker 1: (35:24)
totally hard. Yeah. Especially in this day and age of text messaging.
Speaker 2: (35:28)
Exactly. You know, and we had not talked on the phone for almost a year at this point. And so finally, like I was to go over to his house at 11 o’clock at night because he was pestering me and pestering me. And then I finally just said, you know what, I’m going to call you. And so I called him and you know, he’s like, what’s wrong? What’s wrong? And I was like, I said, you know, my health is fine. I said, but this is something that I really want to do in person. Can we talk tomorrow? And he was like, no, no. And so finally I was just like, okay. And so I just kind of blurted it out and you know, he sat there for a minute, really quiet, and then he said, um, he said, how do you know for sure? And I explained like we did DNA test question me.
Speaker 2: (36:19)
Yeah. And then he said some, you know, not so nice words about my mom, which I can understand like his probably frustration at that point. And I said, um, you know, I just kinda sat there for a second cause I didn’t quite know what to say. And he was quiet. And then I said, did you know I wasn’t yours? Which I felt like was a third question based off of our relationship. And he said, well, I suspected it when you were little, like when you were born and you know, then I asked him if he knew that they did a DNA test on me when I was a baby and he said, no, he knew nothing of this. And, um, I kind of felt almost in that moment like back to being like a teenager between them, like triangulating the parent relationship because it was just kind of, you know, and I didn’t want it to go there and I explained to him, you know, where I stood on things.
Speaker 2: (37:23)
So, you know, I did plan to meet my biological father that I did plan to pursue a relationship with my family who he was. Yeah. You know, and he said, you know, I think that, you know, and then he goes, why? Why would you do that? Yeah. I said, why, why would I do that? You know? And I, I tried to explain to him like, I’m not doing this to hurt anybody or to do anything, you know, like, my intention is not to hurt you and asked you out of my life. And I explained, I hope this is like a stepping stone that you and I can actually genuinely try to build a relationship now. And, you know, he said, you know, you’ve, you’ve been my child. You know, I hear my child, you know, which it did. It gave me kind of that little, that little spark of hope that we could actually build something.
Speaker 2: (38:13)
And, um, you know, he and I texted a lot those first couple of weeks. Um, you know about everything he was, that was the first time that he told me the reason that, you know, that he was in the wrong when it came to like my brother Jason, he’s like, I was a coward. Like I wasn’t ready to be a father. Oh, sure. And that, so that, that was huge. Like I thought that was very big of him because he’s not the type to admit he’s wrong and you know, so we talked a lot those weeks and I told him where I stood and that, you know, I was going to meet my family and then kind of radio silence, you know what I mean? Like we, I still haven’t, I still haven’t seen him. I don’t really talk to him.
Speaker 1: (38:57)
Okay. So this, cause, this all, I’m still reeling this, so this all started this year in January, so yeah. Okay. So it’s only been, it’s only been eight months total that his entire experience. Okay. So when you say you haven’t talked to him, it’s like that. Okay. That’s like all this is.
Speaker 2: (39:16)
Okay. It’s still new. Yeah, it’s still fresh for sure. And, uh, so fast forward to like two weeks after I found out, um, my biological father, my step mom and six of my siblings.
Speaker 1: (39:29)
Okay. Is everybody in Utah or in the area?
Speaker 2: (39:33)
Um, they’re kind of all over. So I have a sister that lives in Boise, a sister that lives in Virginia and then a brother that lives in salt Lake. And then my other like the younger siblings based delimit go home with, with my dad and step mom in down South in Utah. So. Okay. Um, so they came into town, we rented, we got like a banquet room at a hotel close to my house just because you know, my husband and I have five kids. But then, you know, you’ve got my dad and myself.
Speaker 1: (40:07)
It makes perfect sense to me. It’s a lot of people. A lot. You don’t, I wasn’t wondering why you got a conference room at all.
Speaker 2: (40:17)
So we, you know, we all got together, we just catered food. We, you know, my mom, my mom came as well, which I thought was nice. You know, my, my biological father wanted to include her. That’s really nice. And so she came. And then my youngest sister from my mom’s side, we had her come as well because, you know, we didn’t want her to feel left out of anything.
Speaker 1: (40:40)
Well, it seems like it seems like excluding people is the, uh, like the wrong, uh, like I don’t know the wrong message, the wrong opposite of value system that, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: (40:56)
So, you know, that kind of started, you know, like we, that just kind of started it. And then, um, a couple of weeks after that I met one of my, I met my other brother that lives local and probably can, um, you know, he and I kind of clicked like pretty quick and you know, we, I guess the first thing that like going back to when we all got together as we’re all sitting there and it’s so funny, my sister Denise lives in Boise and we’re sitting across the table from each other and we’re both history as each other. And I’m like, I’m not trying to be creepy, but like, we pulled the same facial expression
Speaker 1: (41:31)
[inaudible]
Speaker 2: (41:32)
we’re watching each other. Like
Speaker 1: (41:34)
if we smile and just like all of these, you know, things and then you know, half of my, half of my siblings from my biological father, they, we have, we all have the eyes. I was just going to ask what else, where else
Speaker 2: (41:50)
that’s, yeah, that’s the other thing I should say is that first conversation that I had with my biological father, that was one of the first questions that I asked him as I said, what color are your eyes?
Speaker 1: (42:00)
[inaudible]
Speaker 2: (42:01)
and he said they’re like a yellowish green. And I was like, okay. I was like, that’s a big burning question for me. Right?
Speaker 1: (42:12)
Yeah, you don’t, I mean, and I don’t, I don’t, I certainly don’t want to like pressure your mom about it. But she, she, she insists that that didn’t feel like a connection to her when she, that the eyes were the same.
Speaker 2: (42:28)
Well, and that’s kind of what I asked her because she had seen my biological father like randomly through the years, you know, when they had like connected, like when they were like crossing through town, like when he was in salt Lake or she was down South. Like they would see each other, they talked on a regular basis and you know, that that was something that I asked her and I said, you know, I’m not, I’m not attacking you. I said, but you met up with him so many times. How did you not see my face? Yeah. Like, you know, you looked at my face every day for how many years? Like, and that was always my big thing because like I said, when I meet people, that’s the first thing people say to me. Right. They go, Whoa, let me see your eyes.
Speaker 1: (43:12)
And is your mom able to reflect on that or cause I,
Speaker 2: (43:17)
um, that’s been kind of a, you know, we, we’ve talked, it got kinda messy, kind of dicey there for a bit because, um, my, my brother and I were, we both had very like, strong personalities and stuff. So I think sometimes, like when, when we’re talking, she feels like it’s an attack. Like on her personally, like even when we’re like just saying, Hey, like what about this? Like when it’s more, I just have all these unanswered questions. Right. You know, and I’m, I’m getting better at not playing the, what is game because those first couple of months it was rough. Yeah. You know, I, I would, I would, I would be like, what if, what would be different? And you know, my whole thing is like everything happens when it’s supposed to. I believe that and reason being is if it would have been different, like maybe I wouldn’t have met my husband and I want to have my children or you know, and I would, I would never change that ever, ever. And so, um, outside of, you know, like getting the relationship that I’ve always craved and I have this whole new family mean I have, my dad has one of 13 children and so I have 101st cousins.
Speaker 1: (44:39)
Wow. Well my gosh.
Speaker 2: (44:43)
So I have this huge extended family, whereas I grew up, this the man that raised me, you know, he only had three brothers and I had like six cousins, you know, five, five or six.
Speaker 1: (44:56)
This feels like an obvious question or an obvious, maybe an obvious answer, but I feel like people will, will make the assumption. So I’ll just go ahead and ask. Is, um, is everybody Mormon? Is that why there’s so many kids? No, I understand. That is a common question.
Speaker 2: (45:13)
Some are, but not all that, that’s always a question people and you’re taught, right?
Speaker 1: (45:20)
Yeah. Well, it kind of is. And then it was like, Oh, this is, I’m just going to, I found myself this stuff.
Speaker 2: (45:27)
No, he’s not. He’s not either. So, um, but yeah, that, that’s a common question. I, I do have a lot of family that is LDS, but, okay. But we’re not practicing,
Speaker 1: (45:37)
but they had 13 kids. Just, just then you’ve got biking just goes. Okay. Okay, great. Continue.
Speaker 2: (45:45)
No, it’s funny. I love it. But, uh, you know, when I, I guess I just realized that I skipped over when I announced on Facebook.
Speaker 1: (45:56)
Oh.
Speaker 2: (45:58)
So when this all went down in January, I, you know, I, I wrote up a post and I was very careful with my words and, um, you know, I, I was embraced by, you know, everybody was like, Whoa, this is crazy. Like, you know, people don’t realize, I guess how often it happens and, um, nobody has any idea right now, you know, so definite shock, everything along those lines. But I was, um, I was surprised by the outpouring of love of people just like messaging me personally or texting me and saying, Hey, I just want to make sure you’re okay. I’m here, you know, all of those things. And in that same sense, the cousins that I grew up with from the man that raised me, I didn’t hear from one with them. Huh, interesting. I still haven’t like this many months later, we’re, we’re friends on Facebook. They see my posts of me and my new siblings or me and my father, you know what I mean? Like all of you, which, you know, it’s okay. I mean, I, I felt the pain of hurt there for a minute, and then I was just like, you know, it’s okay, move on. Like I can’t focus on that kind of stuff, you know? But, um, okay. So let me fast forward. Oh, okay. So I decided to change my name.
Speaker 1: (47:24)
Yeah. That’s as I get to it, I want to get to the birth certificate.
Speaker 2: (47:29)
Yup. So after, after a couple of months, um, you know, just kinda thinking about it, I, I talked to my husband first and I said, Hey, like, I mean, I’ve had my husband, I got married when I was 17 [inaudible] and so I got married very young and I’ve been with him, we’ve been together for 22 years. So we grew up together and, uh, you know, I told him, I said, you know, I think I want to change my name. Like obviously keep your name, but I think I want to add my dad’s name. And he was like, that’s cool. Like, I understand, you know, I mean, I, I’ve had my husband’s name longer than I have my maiden name, you know, and so when I, you know, when I talked to my dad, I, I was, I was like scared to bring it up and I don’t know why I was like nervous and I was like, Hey, I, I’ve been thinking about changing my name, um, you know, with, would you be comfortable with that?
Speaker 2: (48:28)
Like, what your wife’s be okay with it. And he was like, that’s great. He’s like, I want to do your birth certificate. Like, you know, he brought up the bursary and you know, that that’s like meant so much to me. I was like, Oh, thank you. Like, um, I went to, I’ve had to go to the, it was pretty easy to change my name. I went to the courthouse, got the paperwork, I had to fill it out. I went to a 15 minute court session, explained why I was changing my name and then, um, then I had to wait a couple months because my dad lived four and a half hours away and I had to have both my mom and my dad there to be able to change my birth certificate. Oh, okay. So we, uh, we were able to do this in August and we, you know, we went in there and got everything all done and the, it was kind of funny though because the lady, you know, as we’re filling out the paperwork, she calls my mom up, she calls my dad up, calls me up, and she’s like, okay, before you guys like finalize this, are you guys sure.
Speaker 2: (49:40)
And I laughed out loud.
Speaker 2: (49:43)
I was like, if you only knew the story behind the whole thing, and so, you know, we got it all updated and we don’t see that every day. Right. We got, um, you know, we got him added, we got my name legally changed on there. And, uh, that’s when I posted those pictures online, you know, that, um, you know, that was, that was a huge thing for me. And it’s, um, you know, I told my husband like, it almost feels silly because it’s, it’s a piece of paper that sits as an for right? Like it’s thing, you know, but it just, it meant the world. Um, I just felt so good when I left there and you know, it’s the, it’s, it’s just like looking in the mirror now I guess. Like, you know, how somebody had posted the other day on our, on our group, how, you know, when you look in the mirror, like, you know, when you almost don’t know who you are type thing.
Speaker 2: (50:44)
And mine was the opposite. It was like this, I woke up after all this kind of went down originally in January and I looked in the mirror and for the first time, like I saw myself, I knew who I looked like, you know, I, I wasn’t looking and searching for, for something, you know? And I think that’s been my biggest thing here is that all of these years I just kind of felt like there was this big piece missing. And now it’s just like, I don’t feel that anymore. And you know, I sound so grounded. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and I, I mean, I still, I have a lot of like unresolved stuff, you know, with the man that raised me that I’m still trying to work through. And, you know, I, I get pains of guilt there that like, my relationship with my biological father is so, it’s so different and I feel so good about it.
Speaker 2: (51:47)
And you know, I, I guess I felt the guilt because, you know, the man that raised me, like, you know, he was my dad for a long time. But I, I just feel so different about my, about my biological father and I know it’s all, you know, it’s, it’s okay to feel all those emotions and that, that’s what my counselor reminds me. Like, it’s okay, it’s okay to feel sad about it. It’s okay to feel, you know, angry about this, that, and the other. But you know, all we have is like going forward. Like I can’t, I, I can’t do the one F four right. You know, any of these things like that’ll kill you or it’ll make you crazy. Exactly. You know, it makes you, it makes you go crazy, you know, in your own mind. And you know, this has been like the, the best thing for me though.
Speaker 2: (52:36)
Like overall it, his, it’s life changing but it’s exactly what I needed and I, I still don’t understand why it happened at this point. Like I said, like, you know, how many times points in my life was it? So, you know, where I just felt so lost or so sad about my state of the relationship with the man that raised me and you know, it all happened at the right time. And my, my biological dad is just so, you know, he has 10 kids, but he has a way of making you feel so special in your own way. [inaudible] even when he’s in a room full of his children, like, you know, we all just went on our first camping trip together last month and I got to meet, I got to meet my final, my last sister that I hadn’t met yet. And uh, you know, we’re, we’re all together and it’s just, it’s still, I guess just like a shock to me when I’m looking into like my face and my eyes.
Speaker 1: (53:34)
Yeah. Yeah. It’s so beautiful. It’s so cool. This is the story. I mean, people have, people have, other people have had like good quote unquote good stories but, or good ending stories kind of. But this is a different, it’s just a totally different angle to be like, to be like, it’s what I was always waiting for and didn’t even know.
Speaker 2: (53:55)
Well that’s exactly it. It’s that piece of the puzzle that was missing. And um, you know, for both myself and my older brother like it, it’s been so good for, for both of us because you know, he, he’s never been like super active in all the families, like going to family reunions and stuff like that. But guess what? We went to our first family reunion.
Speaker 1: (54:18)
You roped him in. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (54:21)
Now, now that’s important to him. And it’s, I love that because I know that that’s the same thing for him. Like that it was just like, you know, we always have that connection that was there no matter what. Like we, you know, even when we went through times where we were kind of at each other, we always like found our way back and we were always just had that close relationship and you know, we know no, there’s a reason why. Right.
Speaker 1: (54:48)
Yeah. And I know well, and you’re definitely the first person that’s ever S that’s, that I’ve talked to that said this is just the best thing that ever happened to me. Um, Oh yeah, that is a fun and like refreshing perspective for sure. Um, and, and like the good, that’s like, it’s like one of those like, uh, I don’t know. We always talk about all the warnings that should happen on the, on the day, but now it’s like, you’re like, I got the life I always wanted. Well, you know,
Speaker 2: (55:22)
and I’m just, you know, I, I’m so grateful when I see those posts of like people being shunned by their, their new biological family and I’ve just been embraced by everybody and you know, and I still haven’t met everybody, obviously because there’s so many.
Speaker 1: (55:38)
Right. I mean, could you,
Speaker 2: (55:40)
but I did meet, I did meet my, um, paternal grandmother and to lie for her 84th birthday. So that was that, that was awesome. That was huge for me, just because, um, you know, my, my grandfather, um, unfortunately passed in a plane crash back in 1996 and so I believe that I met him when I was younger at one time or another. Um, but I don’t, I don’t remember, but to be able to, you know, meet my grandmother and, uh, do that was a pretty cool experience. Yeah. And that’s where it, that’s where the ice came from, by the way. She’s got the yellow, green eyes.
Speaker 1: (56:18)
Ah, good to know. I’m just saying the mystery is solved, but I’m not sure it was ever really [inaudible], but in my head. Right. Oh dad, it’s really beautiful. I love, I love, I just love the idea of all these people with yellow, green eyes connecting anything your brother and you just realizing how to just, it’s really cool. I love it.
Speaker 2: (56:47)
You know, like I said, there’s still, you know, it’s still those random moments where I, I feel bad that nothing has changed and, you know, but my whole thing there is I have to remember that I, I can’t control it. I can’t change it. Like it takes, you know, takes two to work on that relationship and, you know, until, until we’re at that point, you know, it is what it is. I mean, I’m just grateful for the future and I am, I am grateful for, you know, all the support that I’ve had. My, my husband’s been amazing. My kids have been good. And, um, you know, I’m just blessed all the way around with, you know, this huge extended family now that just kind of pumps up all the time. I guess. You know, I, I went to the family reunion and everybody’s like, Oh, you’re the one, you’re [inaudible]
Speaker 1: (57:37)
[inaudible]
Speaker 2: (57:40)
when they put two and two together as to who I was.
Speaker 1: (57:42)
Right. Oh my gosh. I can only imagine what that was like for everybody. Um, yeah, I don’t know why you wouldn’t, I just, you can, I mean like nothing, none of these things are like a hundred percent critical or clean, but why wouldn’t you just lean into where the love is instead of spending energy? Isn’t that makes perfect sense to me.
Speaker 2: (58:04)
Yeah, I agree. And that’s, you know, moving forward and just continuing to build those new relationships and you know, that’s really all I can hope for.
Speaker 1: (58:13)
[inaudible] that’s beautiful. That’s cool. Well, the questions I ask everybody are, or the question, um, do you have advice for anybody that’s just figured this out or that has maybe just like entering their own DNA? PRI
Speaker 2: (58:35)
I, I have somebody close to me now that just went through this. My husband recently connected with a first cousin on 23 in me that I actually helped her kind of solve her mystery and find out which of my husband’s uncle, but it’s her biological father.
Speaker 1: (58:51)
Oh wow. And
Speaker 2: (58:53)
so she and I have really connected over this, um, you know, and I just told her that, you know, the best advice I can give is just like fill every emotion. Like, you know, him embrace all the feelings, even the negative ones, and um, you know, talk to people. I think that’s the big thing is that, um, you know, like we had talked about before is there’s sometimes a lot of shame associated with these type of situations. And I, you know, in my case, I don’t think it was intentional that, you know, it was like kind of pushed that direction. Like, keep it quiet, hush, hush. Right. Um, you know, but everybody, everybody has a right to have their voice and you can do it in a respectful way and you can, um, you know, you have the right to, to find out who you are or where you come from. And, you know, I, I love seeing all the good stories that everybody shares on our, on our group. And, you know, I, I try to always encourage anybody who’s having a bad day or who’s having a rough one. Like I don’t personally understand it from their perspective, but, um, you know, always gives me encouragement. Like, you know, Hey, don’t give up. Like, you know, you maybe wake up tomorrow and the situation’s totally different.
Speaker 1: (01:00:08)
Right? Yeah, yeah. I mean there’s just no way to know.
Speaker 2: (01:00:13)
Exactly. You know, and uh, all I can hope for is that anybody else that you know goes through this situation that, you know, they can find the peace that, that I did. Like, you know, this, this whole thing basically made me feel like I wasn’t crazy, I guess.
Speaker 1: (01:00:30)
Yeah.
Speaker 2: (01:00:30)
I don’t know how to explain that other than, you know, I, I always saw these things or had these random things and I really thought I was just seeing things or misreading things or you know,
Speaker 1: (01:00:43)
it just, well, it just goes to show how strong intuition is.
Speaker 2: (01:00:48)
Well, and that’s exactly, it is like you, you know, you follow this gut instinct, like if you know something’s off, like trust.
Speaker 1: (01:00:59)
Yeah, exactly. [inaudible] and you never, I just remembered this because I was gonna I mean I just remembered that I was going to ask it. You never got to the bottom of the DNA of the DNA test mystery from when you were a baby.
Speaker 2: (01:01:16)
So we did not like I’ve asked my mom about it. And so, you know, unfortunately everybody else who was there aside from my mom and I asked path, um, and so my mom said that my, her mother arranged it. They went to a doctor’s office of her choosing. She said that they poked my finger, they poked her finger and then she doesn’t even know the timeframe or anything. And then she just, you know, she said she doesn’t know if it was weeks or, you know, she just said, yep, it’s his kid. And when I brought that up to the man that raised me, you know, he says there’s no way that happened because he said, my parents want to keep that from me. And he, you know, so he, he doesn’t believe it. My mom doesn’t have obviously any paperwork or anything, you know, along those lines. And there’s not really, you know, she’s like, I honestly don’t even remember where it’s
Speaker 1: (01:02:22)
right. Like how to even get, or any records of that. Yeah. Oh, that’s so, so it’ll just be like a mystery of tell somebody’s not telling the truth somewhere in there, but impossible to know.
Speaker 2: (01:02:38)
Exactly. And that’s, you know, that that drove me crazy for a little bit. I’m not going to lie because I was just like, okay, did, like my grandmother knows something and she, you know, because my grandmother did not want my, like my mother to be with my biological father. She is actually the one that introduced my mother to the man that raised me knowing that he was much older than her and kind of like pushing her in that direction, you know?
Speaker 1: (01:03:11)
Right. So maybe, yeah, I’m sure everybody has it ever DOE. Right. And I’m sure everyone had the best intentions, whatever it was, but, um,
Speaker 2: (01:03:20)
and that’s exactly,
Speaker 1: (01:03:22)
and it’s a good, you know, yeah. It’s just another, like another sort of testimony to like the truth will come out.
Speaker 2: (01:03:30)
Right. No, I agree. You know, it always comes out somewhere and it’s, uh, the interesting thing is that, um, so ancestry.com is based in Utah. It’s LDS based. I’m sure you know that.
Speaker 1: (01:03:47)
Oh, I didn’t know. That. Makes perfect. That makes perfect sense. Okay. It does.
Speaker 2: (01:03:53)
So I, you know, I’ve interacted with numerous people in Utah and when I tell them, you know, kind of my story about it, um, one of the, is it called the genealogist? Is that the right word? Um, he told me that it basically comes down to one in five people is being raised by someone that is not their biological father.
Speaker 1: (01:04:18)
That is twice as many as I’ve heard one in five, one in 10, one to 10. I’ve heard one in 10, one in five.
Speaker 2: (01:04:29)
Wow. Huh. And this was probably like two months ago when he and I talked and he said, you know, they feel, you know, they have all these people who they felt these calls and people are like, there’s no way. There’s no way. And you know, it, it is coming down to one and five.
Speaker 1: (01:04:44)
Wow. Oh my God, this is like a, it’s like a tight title wave of a phenomenon that we didn’t even even imagine
Speaker 2: (01:04:55)
we have in our, even our, you know, in our group every day is, you know, the numbers are creeping up faster and faster and um, you know, that’s just, that’s wild to me. It’s absolutely shocking and
Speaker 1: (01:05:08)
wow. But yeah, I’m going to, that’s gonna like, I’m going to have to think about that for a little while. Right.
Speaker 2: (01:05:17)
I was just like, wow. Wow. Like you’re walking around and you know, I mean, you see that like now I, I do, I look at people all the time. Oh, sure. Oh wait, it’s one of your kids looks a little different. Totally. Like that one’s a little darker. Yeah, exactly. It’s just how we overanalyze everything else.
Speaker 1: (01:05:43)
Right. Oh, well thank you so much. This is so great to get your story and to hear such a positive good. I want to say conclusion, even though the story’s not over. But, um, I like where you’re feeling feeling really whole and, and then it was like a really overwhelmingly good experience. Like, so happy for you and your brother.
Speaker 2: (01:06:05)
I appreciate you having me and letting me share and kind of have a voice and all the chaos, right?
Speaker 1: (01:06:12)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean that’s, that’s what all we can do. [inaudible]
Speaker 2: (01:06:16)
exactly. But no, I appreciate you and taking time out of your busy day to talk to me and
Speaker 1: (01:06:22)
okay. Yeah, no, that’s great. That’s really, it’s really fun. It’s really, really fun to hear all these different stories and no two are alike, that’s for sure.
Speaker 2: (01:06:31)
Exactly. Well, I’m always on countdown to Fridays when you release the pods, my phone like right when it comes in.
Speaker 1: (01:06:41)
Oh, how funny. Great. Oh, good. I’m so glad. Um, so if you, I tell everybody this, if, um, if anything comes up that you feel like you want edited, like if you think of something that you don’t want to be in it or you think of something you want to add, just just send me a message or if anything else comes up. Um, and I will let you know when it’s coming. It’ll probably be, it’s going to be pretty soon. He’ll probably be in like four weeks. Um, I’ll, yeah, but I’ll let you know and thank you so much. This is so cool. And I’m tell, you know, I, I would love to know what your 100 cousins think and um, right.
Speaker 2: (01:07:20)
But he goes, he goes, my Facebook friends tripled in a matter of weeks. But I will tell you the funny, I have to, I have to quiz my husband to name all my siblings because I now have 12 siblings and so we have to go down the line so he can remember who everybody is. Well, their name, flashcards or like photograph, right, name, tags, mindset of an understanding of family. And
Speaker 1: (01:07:53)
Oh, it sounds really fun to me.
Speaker 2: (01:07:56)
I love it. So thank you so much for your time and I cannot wait to hear it.
Speaker 1: (01:08:00)
Awesome. Thank you so much, Nicole. This was awesome. I will be in touch with you.
Speaker 2: (01:08:04)
Okay. Sounds good. Have a great day. Bye. Okay, bye. Bye.
Letters From a Listener
Speaker 1: (00:08)
Hi. My name is Linda Lagoonis. Um, I am going to read to you an email that I sent to Eve a few weeks ago. Um, this is like my 15th take. So whatever mistakes I make from here on out, it’s just going to have to stay that way. Where to begin, thank you so much for your podcast. I was born in El Paso, Texas in 1968 up until about 15 years ago. I thought I shared a father with my two brothers. My birth certificate father was violent and abusive. Honestly, it was a miracle that my mom survived that situation. I was born about a year after my mom left him. My mother also always told me that she’d lied to him about the pregnancy because in Texas at the time you could not divorce the father if there was a child on the way. Strangely, I have never fact checked that, but there you go.
Speaker 1: (00:58)
She ran away from home and had an RV in the desert with the boys. My mother had to go straight to work with three kids to support. We went to live with my grandma and she essentially raised me as her daughter and I’ve always thought of my mom is more of a father figure and a mother and the years after I, after I think my grandmother tried to tell me, well, I know she did, but she got all the characters wrong and it all boiled down to me being, according to her, the bastard child had an Italian sailor, wrong branch of the service and wrong ancestry, but she tried. Fast forward to 15 years ago and I met my godmother’s house. I love her, but she’s the one with the big mouth who always lays an egg at major holidays and birthdays. You learn to expect this and to duck and roll.
Speaker 1: (01:44)
I was telling her about a clinic I go to here in San Francisco called the native American health center. I told her it was low income and you don’t even have to be native American to go there. She stopped and looked at me and Mo and looked me in the face with that one twinkly eyes. She always gets in, said, well, your dad was native American. Wait. What I also happened to be Mexican as was my birth certificate father, so I naturally assumed she made, she met native Mexican just as many tribes and just as screwed over by the government as their Northern cousins. It all comes rolling out. She and my mom were running wild in the streets of El Paso with military men off the face off the base of Fort bliss. No one can remember this guy’s name, Jack James. John, of course, the first chance she got my cousin confronted my mom in front of me.
Speaker 1: (02:36)
Her eyes teared up and I knew it was true. She told me he was Irish and that was kind of weird. When you grow up thinking you’re Mexican, it takes a bit of adjusting to believe you are half white. It’s not that just something you have to wrap your head around, but it makes sense. I’m dark but with freckles and a very long sharp nose, which I can only describe as looking a little like Elvis Presley’s. There’s a point to this long ass story and I’ll get to it. I tried for years to look for him, but what’s such a common name? I got nothing, absolutely nothing, but something in my heart told me that he was dead. There’s not a trace of him. My mom says the guy on my baptism certificate was his best friend and to look him up, it was an Italian last name bonus points for having an Italian godfather, a.
Speaker 1: (03:26)
I managed to find him on Facebook. He was kind and asked after my mom and my godmother and her son and my brothers, so it’s legit. He tells me he can’t remember much, but he’ll save my number and if he ever finds anything, he’ll call me. After a while, I just give up until last year, 10 years after I stopped looking. I was in a car with my mom and my cousin and we invoked his name and I was telling them both that I didn’t think I would ever find him and that I thought he might be dead. And then ding, I had a message, I’m not lying. It was my godfather with a text. He had a picture of my father, him and another army bunny buddy. He hadn’t forgotten. He had catched my name on a slip of paper in his wallet all that time and the minute he found a photo of him, he sent it to me.
Speaker 1: (04:23)
He’s gone on to be such a dear person to me and he takes his job as my godfather quite seriously. Are you still with me? It’s long right from this picture. I can see his rank from the bars on his arm and the shape of his hat. 10 years after I give up, I see that someone has finally put up a Memorial of him. He also looks a teeny bit like Elvis in a way. He died in 1996 and this is why there was no information about him on the internet and hadn’t been invented yet. In his bio. There is a notation that his great grandfather is the governor John for Brown, the last standing chief of the Oklahoma Seminole nation. His great aunt is Alice Davis, the first female chief of the Oklahoma nation, some Seminole nation. His mother is registered as Creek and his father is English or Irish from what I can tell, but he looks by racial in a way that my son does Hazel eyes, Tawny skin.
Speaker 1: (05:24)
But this answers to question why it turned out so dark for being half white and why my son turned out so light for being such a dark mama and my son looks like his spitting image to me anyway, so I ran off to do a DNA test. I know, I know people in Texas have always had a bit of a giggle whenever we hear of someone who by all appearances looks fairly Caucasian. When they say they’re related to Pocahontas or some other native princess, you hear it a lot. People have rented written entire college dissertations on it. It’s a thing. I’m 43% native American and 41% Spanish. My mother is miss Theasa, so the most weak she could have passed down to me is around 15%
Speaker 1: (06:10)
if my biological father is just some Irish English person, from what I understand, we are direct descendants from the family that made it to Oklahoma from Florida. On the trail of tears. My other ancestor is cha chief John jumper. We are from the tire tiger clan, which is where all the chiefs come from. I know it’s crazy. I’ve since found out, found two sisters, both of whom are tribal members. My father and his brother died of heart attacks in their mid fifties they were, the sisters were very receptive at first and they knew about me. My birth father had told them about me and told them to be on the lookout for me. They told me everything, everything, photos, history, everything, but they will not take an ancestry test and after I asked, they stopped corresponding with me. I suspect this is because the older sister.
Speaker 1: (07:06)
Anyway, there are more of us. Seven total. I suspect I got a hit from half-brother, but he absolutely will not message me back. I’m trying to find a definitive DNE leak so that I might find it so that I might become a tribal member. Native American ancestry is difficult for many reasons. Many took on European last names. There weren’t last names before this, so you might have a person named Doherty who looks like me or Benson. It just isn’t, isn’t apparent and it’s very difficult to trace back. I also have a suspicion there are some questionable branches and NPS on my birth, father’s paternal side. I want to mention here that there are also identity politics involved as well. Just because you have native blood, it does not make you a native American. This is a grand journey of learning and reading and study and building up native American consciousness, fostering relationships and kinship.
Speaker 1: (08:06)
I’m not going to stolen thinking I have some sort of birthright. I don’t want to presume anything and you know, if it doesn’t happen, I accept that too, but I would like to find my four other brothers and sisters. I will end the story with a short little anecdote. When I was little in living in Texas, there were annual rodeos and powwows. My stepfather took me to one once. It was gorgeous at night afterwards, people lined up to get their pictures taken with the dancers in the regalia. I remember looking up as I pose next to them and thinking, huh, a little light went off in my head and I sort of felt that maybe I wasn’t so different from them. Maybe I kind of look like them, but as I was standing there, a family with children put them right up next to me to get a picture of me with her kids and I think maybe that’s when I knew.
Speaker 1: (08:56)
Thank you for having the patience to Wade through this. I’m still working through the story. I don’t have proof, but what my grandmother, my godfather and my godmother and my presumed sisters have told me I would really like to meet a search angel who would be equally fascinated by what I’ve uncovered for now. I will send you pictures to link to my father’s grave and his photo. I have many more pictures. I hope motherhood is treating you well. I never set out to be a mom, but now that I am, I cannot imagine my life any other way. Kindest regards to you and thanks for all the work you do. And thanks for putting up with this weird little recording that I’ve made here. My name is Linda Laguna sapwood.
Speaker 1: (00:12)
Hello everybody. Welcome back. Season two is coming. Um, welcome at all. If this is your first time with everything’s relative. My name is Eve Sturgis. I’m the host of this podcast, which seeks to create and nurture conversation about modern DNA testing and all of the things that are happening to people and their families and their family secrets because of them. I’m a lot about, this season is going to be similar to last season, uh, but I’m hoping that this season is even better. And I thought long and hard about what that meant. Could I say the word season anymore? So let me back it up a minute for the new people. Um, I started this whole project because, uh, more or less a DNA discovery happened to me. Um, there’s a fun, elaborate, complicated, terrible, dramatic story. But the gist of it is a man contacted me two years ago to say that he believed he was my real father.
Speaker 1: (01:15)
Um, as opposed to the man who had raised me, who I thought was, was my father, the man who was, whose name is on my birth certificate. Um, so we did a DNA test because that seems like the next indicated action. Uh, and he was correct. So in less then a week, my entire identity and understanding of my life, uh, and who I was completely deteriorated, Sue. That was really hard. It’s still really hard. Um, for me like this, this, when something like this happens, uh, it, for me it has not been an isolated incident. Like it has permanent ramifications that are still unfolding around me and inside of me, um, and for my family. So, um, that’s the answer to that. Uh, but something that came out of it though was this discovery along the way that there are tons of people like me out in the world and most especially, uh, the numbers are growing because of these male in DNA kits like 23 and me or ancestry.com, uh, family secrets are spilling out onto people of all walks of life.
Speaker 1: (02:33)
Uh, it’s blowing up. Families is changing lives sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worst. And more than anything, it seems that everyone experiencing this, no matter what their role in the dynamic feels like they are alone. They’re the only ones and almost every time, regardless of the story, people feel shame. So there is secrecy and shame and isolation and I’m no expert at this DNA stuff or DNA test, genealogy results. Um, and like honestly, I didn’t even study family systems extremely thoroughly in graduate school. Um, but as a person I’ve been through a lot and as a therapist I’ve seen a lot. And there is one thing I definitely know in order to heal shame, we’ve got to talk about it and we have to open up all these secrets. So on the one year anniversary of my biological father contacted me last year.
Speaker 1: (03:35)
So let’s see, it was the one year anniversary I announced I was starting a podcast. So that was a year ago. It has been two years since he contacted me. Um, I just announced that I was starting a podcast and I want to talk to people from all angles of this DNA discovery experience. I’m not just the person who discovers that they have a different parent, but all the angles. I want to talk to women who kept secrets from their partners for myriad reasons. Men who get contacted by adult children they didn’t know existed and all the people in between who had suspicions about their families or about their own identity or of the identity of their children or their parents. And I want to talk to people who work in and exist in this sphere. Um, for example, last season I brought in an archivist to talk about what he’d seen and his position at the archive place.
Speaker 1: (04:27)
Where does an archivist work? The stacks? I don’t know, but I’m so sorry that it don’t remember the location. I’ll go back and listen to that episode. Uh, it was great. It was informative. It had gave me a lot to think about. Um, I also talked to a woman in a who’s in a same sex marriage to talk about what donor conception looks like today and how that may change as this information spreads and anonymity becomes harder and harder to maintain. And more than anything else. I talked with people who have had these NPE experiences through mail in DNA kits. Um, and in the end, um, most of my guests were women and most of my guests were white. So part of my goals for season two is to really dedicate more space to finding a diverse representation, diversity, um, like on all fronts. So I want race, gender and perspective.
Speaker 1: (05:22)
All of it. I haven’t, um, and I haven’t, like I haven’t finished collecting all my episodes yet, episode. I mean, season two isn’t completely finished with episodes, but so far, um, I think that I’m doing a pretty good job of meeting that goal. Um, I’ve got men, I’ve got people of color, I’ve connected with a father, I’m tracking down an author who has a book coming out about a secret brother. Um, so I think that season two is going to be, uh, even better and really start to shed light on all the different facets of, uh, this sort of cultural phenomenon, which I keep telling people that we’re having. Um, so also I’m just kind of like a personal goal. I want to be a little bit bolder in my conversations with people. It’s hard because I want people to feel comfortable with me so that they feel safe being vulnerable.
Speaker 1: (06:16)
But I also know there are times when I could or should. Um, I hate the word should, but like I should press people to really think about what they’re saying, you know? And I’m like, for one reason or another, there’s just been so many times when I don’t, I just don’t like follow up with, with people when I’m with them, like asking these questions cause I don’t, I don’t feel like I’m a journalist. I don’t, I’m not, I’m not like trained at, at catching all the idiosyncrasies or the odd things that don’t make sense or so I just want to get better at that. Um, so that’s just like a personal goal. I thought I would let you all know, I guess. Um, and so it has to do with trusting myself and trusting the people, trust me. And um, yeah. So, so I think I’m going to be, that’s going to be a part of it too.
Speaker 1: (07:07)
So, um, I hope that all of that me rambling at you was enough to get you excited about season two. Uh, what I feel like the past four months and I’m putting it all together. I’ve thought of this trailer and thought of all the things I wanted to tell you that’s coming. And, uh, of course I forgot to include like all of it or most of it here. I can’t remember right now. Um, but I will just, I’ll just tack them into the episodes as I think of them or as it comes up appropriately. I’m really pumped to get this ball rolling. I hope you are along for the ride. Welcome to the new people. Welcome back to the season one people, uh, and uh, get ready for everything’s relative coming April 3rd episode, one season two. Bye.
Fertility Fraud: Doctors with a God Complex
Speaker 1: (00:00)
Alright. Cool. Alright, you’re on. I’m on. Hey. Okay. Cool. I’m so glad we finally got to connect. That was getting to be, um, embarrassing for me. My hands are not, it was like we were trying to run and, you know, we’re in some kind of a Olympics course trying to connect and find the right time. So exactly. Yeah. No, and I feel like I feel so bad when that happens. Cause I feel like for every nine, you know, or every T I don’t know, for every 10, um, scheduling like plans that I have that work out. Right. There’s always one person that somehow for some reason always gets to be like the same person that I keep having to change and reschedule. And it was you this time. Well, that is okay. I’ll take it. I’ll do it. It’s kind of it’s mom life at its at its finest.
Speaker 1: (00:54)
That’s for sure. So yeah, absolutely. Totally get it 100%. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, that’s all. It was definitely all mom life related. Um, yeah, and I mean this with a lot of love, there’d be a lot easier without them. Right. A little less complicated, way less complicated. Um, awesome. So you’re here with me. Um, and you are calling me from Texas. Yes. Um, Houston really? I live in pear land. Um, but Houston, you just kind of general area, so good. All Houston, Texas. Okay. Where you or you, is that where you were born? Is your family still there? No. Um, most of my family is actually in East, Texas. I was born in Nacadocious so Texas super toxic, so. Okay. So, well, speaking of you being born, um, that is what we’re here to talk about today. Um, so you let’s, um, establish right away.
Speaker 1: (02:01)
You’re not an NPE because you knew that you were donor conceived from the beginning. Correct. But, um, but you have a lot to offer about the, about the ways in which the ways to talk. Um, hold on, let me say that sentence again. We’re going to edit this out. Um, you, we talked. Okay. So why don’t you tell your story, tell yourself, well, um, I guess, I don’t know if it would be easier for me to kind of start from really the beginning, beginning, beginning, like before I was even a thought, but I’ve known my entire life that I was donor conceived just because my mom was always very, always very transparent with me. She always was, uh, you know, very candid and wanted to make sure that I knew and
Speaker 2: (03:00)
That, that was part of my conception story. And it’s something that I honestly, I treasured and to literally any human being or any non-human object that would listen to me, I would talk about it and tell, cause I was just a chatty Cathy. So do you remember, do you remember what, how, how old you were when your mom explained it to you? So as far back as I can remember being three, that is about as young as I can remember. I’m pretty sure my mom talked about it to me before then, but that’s just, that is literally, that is as far back as I can really remember my mom having these conversations with me and how did she explain it at that time? She just told me that, you know, she was, she was really having trouble getting pregnant. You know, my dad just wasn’t able to produce and they were recommended to, uh, seek fertility treatment with a doctor and at that doctor’s direction and help, they were able to conceive me.
Speaker 2: (04:04)
Um, and they just, they had a donor and, and that was really all. I remember my mom telling me his donor until I got older. And then, you know, she started using, you know, verbiage of eggs and sperm and I really began to really piece it all together. Um, but she always gave me a very vivid picture. And when she described what my donor looked like based on what the doctor told her, right. So I’ve just, I’ve had this image in my head, my entire life of, of what he potentially looks like just from a physique standpoint and certain features. But his face has always been when I, you know, dreamed about it or thought about it. His face has kind of been this blur. Like I just don’t know what that is. So tell me that I know a little bit, but I know the listeners, if they haven’t, um, unless they’re really avid listeners who research my guests or, or they come on well, no.
Speaker 2: (05:03)
So why don’t you tell me what your, your mom and dad believed that the donor looked like and who he was? So my mom always told me that, uh, her fertility doctor described the donor as you know, six, five, six, six, very, very tall, uh, red hair, loved music. And he was a medical resident at the hospital that I was born at. So he’s new. I’m like, okay, if he was a medical resident, as I got older and you know, was more educated understanding, okay, he must be a doctor now, you know, and he’s tall. He loves music. You know, this must be where I get a lot of these things from, you know, I don’t have colored eyes. Like I thought he did, but, uh, you know, that I would have because of him, but I just had this, this picture drawn out in my head of this very tall redheaded man who was a doctor in a lab, coat, love basketball and music. And that’s just, that’s, what’s stuck in my head for the last 30 years, you know? And are you tall? I’m very tall. So yes, I’m very tall. I am. I always joke. Cause people always ask me when you’re tall, they always ask you these like common questions. Like, do you play basketball? How tall are you?
Speaker 2: (06:23)
So I’m actually six one and a quarter. But I always tell people, I always tell people on five 13 when they asked, just because I like to see their reaction to me, like their, like their minds. So, um, but I always joke that I’m five 13, but I am 61. Quarterish so, so yeah. So that tracks with like, with a donor that was tall. Yes. Very much so. Okay. And what color is your hair? My hair is red. Okay. So this whole story is like everything’s lining up everything lined up. So, so, so you’re, you know that you are a donor conceived baby and you’ve become an adult. And now tell me what happens then.
Speaker 3: (07:11)
So
Speaker 2: (07:13)
To kind of, I guess like fast forward, um, after I had my third child, about five plus years ago, I started noticing a lot of, um, health issues and doctors were not able to give me any clear diagnosis. They were kind of just throwing random diagnosis at me. You know, they’re like, Oh, you must be diabetic. That’s why you’re losing your vision. Oh, you must be this. This is why this is happening. You know, they just were like throwing just blindly diagnosis at me. And so I actually, I had been to several doctors and I went to see a, um, a GP who was like very much into more holistic things and trying to really get to the root of the problem versus just throwing medications at you and a diagnosis that’s probably not accurate. So she, she wrote down on a piece of paper at one of my, at my visit.
Speaker 2: (08:04)
And she was like, she suggested that I take a humor, a commercial DNA test. And she specifically wrote 23 and me and, um, a couple of books that I should read just to kind of reset my mind and really guide me in some sort of direction to get answers. So that was in 2018, actually. So fast forward to December 20 or 2019, my brother-in-law bought my mother-in-law a commercial DNA test. She took it, got her results back at beginning of January. And she was so excited to show us all the stuff on the app. And you know, I was like, you know what, Jessica, like, why don’t you just take one? Like I hadn’t done it. You just had suggested to do so. Go ahead and done it yet. Okay. Correct. Yeah. I had just, you know, been saying, my doctor just told me to do it and I just, I put it off, put off and that’s just my nature.
Speaker 2: (08:56)
Like I take care of myself last, everyone else first. So of course, right. So after my mother-in-law got a results in and she was showing us and she was just so excited, I was like, you know what? I’m like, just take the stink and to test Jessica just do it. So I got 23 and me and I did ancestry and health just because that, you know, I figured, okay, this may give me some sort of answers. So early January, 2020 took the test after I got it. It literally sat on my, um, like it’s a table in our living room behind the couch, sat there for a handful of days every day. I just stared at it before I went to work after work. I’m like, Oh my God, why are you not taking? Like, I just was so apprehensive. I don’t know why. I really still don’t know why.
Speaker 2: (09:39)
Finally I took it to work. And one of my friends, Ashley was like, Jessica, hurry up and spit in this dang tube. Let me ship this off where you let’s do this. So the next day on my way to work, I’m like I have it with, I’m literally carrying it with me everywhere. It’s retarded. Ridiculous. Okay. So on my way to work the next day, I’m trying to get enough saliva in this dang tube to fill it up to the top of the line. Right. So I do it, put it in the box, put it all back, um, you know, download the app, register it. I take it to work. And, um, my friend Ashley, she’s like Jessica, when are you going to mail this test? Like, I’m tired of you procrastinating. Right? I was like, I finally did it this morning. I was like, I’ll go today at lunch.
Speaker 2: (10:21)
I’ll just make sure I make time. So that day passes. I didn’t go. Of course, it’s like four o’clock in the afternoon. I’m still busy. Hadn’t taken a lunch. Next day comes around and ashes like, give me the box. I’m taking it for you. Now took it from me and went and dropped off at the post office. So, you know, when you take the test, they give you updates. They tell you, you know, they’re like, Oh, it’s on its way. Oh, we received, you know, you get these updates. And so I was like, you know what, quit looking at it. You’ve waited 30 something years. Quit. You know, whenever the results are in, they’re going to be in, it’s not going to be in any sooner, just cause you’re checking it every five minutes. So I was like mentally checked out of it. Okay. And then fast forward to Sunday, February 23rd, uh, I’m playing in my, my youngest two kids room.
Speaker 2: (11:05)
My girls were playing dolls, just having, you know, normal Sunday morning PJ’s and pajama, you know, PJ’s and Barbie. And I was like, you know, I’m gonna go check my phone real quick. Uh, so I went in my bedroom to picked up my phone, just to check messages, if any missed calls from like my mom or whatnot. And as soon as I turned my phone on, I start to unlock it. And I get a notification, literally that moment from 23 and me saying my DNA results were ready and my heart stopped. Like I got, literally I could just feel from my shoulders up, gets so warm, full body hives. Like it just, it was almost like time stopped. I was just like, Oh my God. You know? And the reason I took it was for the health stuff. Right. But because I’ve known my whole life that I could potentially have siblings out there, I just, there was, I was just like, Oh, what if this is the moment?
Speaker 2: (12:01)
Like, what if I find my siblings? Like, what if there are siblings in here? And I, I want to back pedal just for a quick second, because there was something that happened in 2007 that made me believe that I would never find any siblings and or who my donor was. So my, um, my husband was in the Marine Corps and we were stationed in San Diego, California. Um, I was at home with my son and I was watching a friend’s little girl and we’re sitting in the floor playing. And my son’s probably like, I don’t even know, like nine, 10 months old. And there’s an episode of Oprah playing behind me. And they were talking about the donor sibling registry. And that like, literally my ears lit up when they mentioned that I was like, Oh my God. And you know, there, there’s all these people on stage.
Speaker 2: (12:51)
They’re talking about how they found, you know, 19 siblings and Bobbitt, yada yada, yada. So I immediately pick up the phone and I call my mom and I’m like, mom, I need my donor number. I found out that there’s this website. I can get a membership for. It was like dirt cheap. I don’t even remember like 20 bucks or something, but I need my donor number for this platform. Like that is how I’m going to be able to find who my donor is and siblings she’s just like, okay, Jessica, this is normal Workday week or weekday during business hours. And mom’s like, I’m going to call you back, hangs up, calls her doctor’s office. They answer. And they tell her, she tells them, you know, she’s looking for it to get her donor number, um, whatnot. And so they’re like, you know what? We just, you know, we don’t have those records, you know, it’s just been so longer.
Speaker 2: (13:38)
And at this point I’m 20 years old. So they should have had, they should have still had my mom’s records. Cause they have to keep them for like, once the offspring is 18 years old, plus three year plus seven, I think at least until I’m 21. So they told my mom that they, they don’t have her. It is. Yeah. And at the time I didn’t know that I just was like, Ugh, like it just hit me like a ton of bricks. Like that was, that was it. So she tells them, you know, she’s looking for a donor number. They say they don’t have her records. And then they, the girl who answered the phone actually told her, she said, you know, to be honest, I’m at this point in the eighties, they weren’t really keeping records of donor numbers. So, you know, even if we could find it, there would have been no name tied to it.
Speaker 2: (14:22)
Anyway. So there was really just, no, you know, there was no answer. So, so when my mom called me back, she was like, Jess, she was like, I, you know, unfortunately had bad news. They answered, but they don’t have my, they don’t have my records. They don’t have the donor number. They don’t have anything. So after that conversation, I really just, I honestly thought, you know, like that was it. That was my only shot to, you know, that was, that was the puzzle piece I was missing. And there was no other way to get, like to recreate this puzzle piece. Right. It’s gone. So, all right. So back to 23 and me Sunday, February 23rd, 12, 14:00 PM. And you’re right in there. I literally, I was standing beside my bed next to the nightstand. And when that notification came on, I literally just, I got weak at the knees and I hit the floor, literally hit the floor.
Speaker 2: (15:19)
My husband’s like, what are you doing? And I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t talk. I really like, I couldn’t think, and I literally felt like time was just standing still. And I don’t know how I got it out, but I was like, my results are. And he’s like, what, what? We’re like, what? So he climbs over the bed and I’m sitting on the floor and I opened the app and you know, you’re going through, I was looking at the ethnicity part cause I was like the first thing that when you open the app is what you see, I’m looking and I’m, I’m looking, but I’m not really looking at it. I’m just scrolling. Like, I’m really not recognizing what I’m looking at, just because my mind is in a totally different place. And so my husband’s like Jessica, get to the relatives, like where do you find?
Speaker 2: (16:01)
And so I scrolled past that option probably 12 times, because again, I’m, I’m scrolling, but I’m not really looking like I’m not paying attention. So finally I see the, the area where it’s like, um, I don’t remember the verbiage anyway, but it’s something about DNA relatives and I click it and it starts spinning. And it was probably a good 15 to 20 seconds, but it felt like eternity watching her, like literally just watching that little thing, just spin and spin and spin. So as soon as it, it says, loading your relatives, as soon as it stops, spinning your matches, pop up. And I just let it matched me with three half siblings. And I was just like, Oh my God, like, is this real life like, do I really have siblings? Is this, this is really it. So it matched me with two half sisters and a half brother. That’s amazing. Yeah. It’s not, it’s not amazing within like the concept of donor, um, donor clinics and donor conception, but right.
Speaker 2: (17:14)
I’m trying to imagine what it would be like to open it and have it, have it be siblings, just like one, two, three. Um, yeah, that would feel really, really intense. Cause most people get lots of distant cousins and things like that. So yes. To have siblings right away. And three of them would be a lot. Yeah. Yes. So that was, it was a total shock. And so my husband’s like leaning over mouth, breathing on my neck, like, Oh my God. So he immediately, he climbs back over the bed, gets his phone and he calls my mom on like on speakerphone. So I’m immediately requesting to connect with three, these three half siblings and I’m on 23. And me now, because two of the siblings have their first and last name. Of course, what do you do go to social media? Like I am, that’s where you’re going to find them.
Speaker 2: (18:09)
Right. So I immediately go to Facebook and search for one half sister who has a full name and a half brother who has a full name. And I immediately find them and I click friend, you know, to request their friendship. The third half sibling only had her initials, which was EDW. And so I was like, crap, how am I going to find this one? Like, right. I’m going to find my initials. Like I’m just hoping and praying to God that she will be on 23 and me and request my friendship and speak to me and, you know, talk to me. So no sooner than me requesting to connect with the three half siblings on 23 and me, and then two half siblings on Facebook, I get the re it’s accepted the friend request for the two half sisters on 23 and me, and then the sister that I found on Facebook, she accepted my friendship.
Speaker 2: (19:01)
And then I immediately got a friend request from a name that matched the initials. And this is all happening so fast. I felt like it was in slow Mo but it was not, it was literally, it was like, bam, bam, bam, bam. Right. So fast. And it was just like, Oh my God, is this really happening? So my mom’s on speakerphone on my husband’s phone. And he’s like, mom, Jessica got her results and she has three siblings. And my mom was like, Oh, you have got to be kidding me. And so we’re, I’m connecting with them. And as soon as the connection is made on Facebook, I’m not even looking at 23 and me anymore. At this point, I’m looking at Facebook messenger because I get a message from both of my half sisters and the first one. And I’ll have to read it to you just because as I’m reading this, I’m thinking some other things.
Speaker 2: (19:55)
So the first message that I get is high. Just check 23. And me, I guess, in our relationship, uh, I guess you’ve seen the relationship we’re born the same year. And so I’m like, Oh my God, we’re the same age. Like, this is so cool. And this is this sister that only has initials on 23 and me and the other sister also messaged me. But because of her circumstance, she has to remain anonymous. So I’m going to exclude part of that conversation. But, um, so I’m reading this and I’m a re I’m reading it with my eyeballs, but I’m also reading it out loud at the same time, because my mom’s on the phone and she’s like, Oh my God, we’re just, Oh my God. Oh my God is all we literally can say. And the next message that she sends me is do you know the details of our birth story?
Speaker 2: (20:42)
And as I begin to type, I’m thinking in my head, she just thinks, I probably don’t know I’m donor conceived because most people, I just, I’ve just kind of gotten that in my head that most people that are donor conceived don’t know like their parents didn’t tell them their parents were not as transparent with them and candid as my mom was. So as I’m trying to type, Hey, Oh my gosh. And then trying to explain, I, you know, I’m donor conceived, you know, trying to write my answer out, sorry. I have some water the wrong. So into the story, I can’t even function. You’re like, I’m holding my breath for you.
Speaker 2: (21:27)
It’s okay. It’s okay. Okay. Let’s go back. So you’re typing. So she says, do you know like how you were conceived and you’re thinking she’s she thinks that she’s going to tell you that your donor conceived and so you’re writing back, right. So she said, do you know the details of our birth story? So I’m trying to type, Hey first, because I haven’t even acknowledged the conversation yet. Like replied I’m like, Hey, Oh my gosh. And so I’m trying to type yes. You know, my mom had artificial insemination. I’m like trying to like write out this reply, but no sooner than I can even finish typing her next message she said was doctor. And I don’t know if I should say the name yet, your mom’s doctor. And so, um, I’m trying to answer and I said, Hey, Oh my gosh. And then I was, I’m trying to also then delete all of the, what I’ve wrote and try to reply.
Speaker 2: (22:18)
She says, hi, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but he is also our biological father. And I, I just, I couldn’t even, like I was trying, I was trying to finish saying that out loud and just think at the same time and I read it out loud and I was trying to process what I read out loud and what I read with my eyes. And my mom is like, what? There’s no way, there’s no way, like how, and we’re both speechless at this point. Like, there’s just no way, like, that is not a thing. Right. Let’s just not that right. What I’m like, I’m like, right. Like trying to like talk myself down off this ledge. Like, what I just read is, is not correct. Like she mistyped silly, you know, like she doesn’t understand the way donor conception works. Right. So I’m like, Oh my God.
Speaker 2: (23:18)
And then, so then I told her because as she was typing that to me, the other half sister was also sent me literally almost the identical message. So I’m, you know how you see the notification pop up on your phone. So it’s like popping up as I’m receiving the message from this sister. So I’m like, Oh my God, like I had, you’re being like pelted with it. Yeah. I’m just like, Holy cow. Like I just, I can’t swallow what I was just fed. Like, I, I don’t, I don’t understand. And to be honest, I literally was just so speechless and my mom is on speakerphone. The, you know, my husband’s phone is in my other hand and I’m just like, I can’t even talk to my mom. I can’t, I literally cannot form words. I can’t form thoughts or phrases or feelings, anything I just was silent.
Speaker 2: (24:10)
So I’m just, all I can answer is, Oh my God, I think I said, Oh my God, like two or three times, honestly, before I could type anything. And she said, this may, you know, this may be too much, but we can three way call. Cause she was on the phone talking to the other sister as they’re both typing me. And I’m like, Oh, I’m like, Oh my God. So I said, yes, please. And I gave her my number and within seconds I was on the phone with both of them. Wow. And it was just, it was so surreal. Like there was so many things happening at one time. Like, you know, it wasn’t like, Oh my God, I found my siblings. It was like, Oh my God, if all my siblings, Oh my God. I found out I’m a product of fertility fraud. Oh my God.
Speaker 2: (24:51)
Like that’s, I think what would be such like you just got so derailed, that is literally the best way to describe it is 100% derailed because I felt like I was just all smiles and just excitement and all things happy. And I felt like someone literally just flipped a switch, turned off the lights, unplugged the power. Like, I mean, and derailed is honestly probably the best way or word to describe it. I mean, you’re absolutely 100% accurate in that description. Yeah. It was such a multilayered experience to, to be connecting with your siblings at the exact same moment, um, that you’re, you’re, you’re finding out, um, you know, the dishonest behavior to say the least, um, exactly what was happening. Um, that must’ve yeah. Yeah. Confusing. I guess it was very confusing and it was just, it was just so hard to understand like how and why.
Speaker 2: (25:57)
And, and, and I still, even to this day, eight months into knowing this, I still have those questions are literally asked numerous times a day. Right. You know, I just, so, but that, from the time my results came into getting on the phone with them, I mean, it was, it just, it just happens so fast. I mean, it was literally from the moment my results came in to the time I was on the phone was probably less than seven or eight minutes, less than an hour. I know it was because I got my results at 12, 14, and at seven 20, I sent her my cell phone number. And literally as soon as I press send, she, they called me on to like, they had me on three way call. Yeah. That is, that is how fast all of that went down. And I was, you know, I was just, I was just still, I was so excited about the sibling situation and being able to connect with them on the phone and hear a voice finally to this like imaginary person that I thought were people that I thought might be out there.
Speaker 2: (27:09)
So I was overwhelmed in that moment and the, you know, the, the whole unethical behavior. So were you able, I mean, are you, um, are you able to articulate like what you were hoping for, with siblings? Well, prior to finding out all of this, I I’ve always wanted and longed for a sibling connection because my, my brother is 17 years older than me. So I’ve grown up as, as an only child basically, because I’ve been the only, you know, the only one at home, my brother went off to the army when I was born. So I’ve always wanted that. I’ve always wanted, you know, siblings that I would, I could be close to and have a relationship. And you know, all the silly things share clothes, argue over. Boys would stay up late at night. You know, girl talk just, I mean, all those little, all those little moments that may seem like nonsense and just silly, but I’ve always wanted that because I didn’t have it.
Speaker 2: (28:27)
And one of my best friends that I grew up with, um, our moms are best friends and her mother is my godmother. We always told people, we were sisters all the way, look, nothing alike. She’s got dark hair, tan eyes are tan skin, green eyes. And I’m glow in the dark white, red hair, bro. You know, like light Brown eyes. But we always told people we were sisters because we were so close and we were such best friends and you know, our moms are best friends. We grew up together. So I kind of, we, we formed that. And so I always hoped for that. But with someone, you know, I was blood related to, you know, a true blood related sibling or siblings. Right. So you keep saying siblings, but really you mean sister, correct? Yeah.
Speaker 2: (29:10)
You’re gonna share clothes and fight over boys with your brothers, which is totally know. I mean, if I’d ever thought of a voice with brother, you know, whatever, but so, you know, this day and age anything’s possible. So, but yes. Yeah. You know, I’ve just, I’ve always wanted that, that sister relationship and bond and, you know, I, I essentially, I kind of had it with my, my best friend and I made that, but it wasn’t, you know, we weren’t really, we really sisters, you know, we were best friends. So, so to have a really real one might be as magical or more fun. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 4: (29:53)
So that, that
Speaker 2: (29:56)
Definitely derailed me, um, that moment, but I will say, and there’s, I mean, there, there’s so much more to this, but the, the silver lining and I don’t want the silver lining to over shadow or overpower, what’s really, you know, what really happened and what I’m continuing to fight for. But the silver lining honestly, is that I, I do have siblings and I have a lot more than I ever imagined that I would ever have. We’re currently at 10. So, um, and on the search for more, we’re pretty darn close. Um, but yeah, it’s, it’s been really great having, at least my, I love all my half siblings. I do, even though three of them, I will probably never get to know, but, um, it’s been really great having my, my half sisters, especially because we talk every day. I mean, literally throughout the day, it’s like, we can’t go an hour without talking to each other.
Speaker 2: (31:10)
We’re in this, you know, we’re in a group message. And we, I mean, it could be about silly things. It could be about just things that we’re going through. And honestly, in the beginning, and even to this day, they have been my ride or die my rock and my mom as well. But because they, they have gone through this, they have been in this situation longer than I have. They’ve really been helpful from an emotional and psychological standpoint, to be honest, I’ve always been strong. Like my mom, my mom was very independent. My, she raised me, you know, she heard my dad divorced or my birth certificate father divorced when I was two. So it’s just me and my, me and my mom. And so she’s raised me to be independent and not depend or rely on anyone else. So having this really put a huge dent in me emotionally and psychologically, it’s been phenomenal to have them because it’s like every day you wake up and you’re like that wasn’t real, you know, like that was a bad dream, you know, and you have this emotional hangover every single day. And so it’s just nice to have that support, you know, them. And so, and to be able to, you know, not be embarrassed about having these, you know, feelings or just literally wanting to break down and cry in the middle of Kroger because it takes you, you know, so I hate that this is, you know, that they’re a part of this too, that we’re all, any of us are a part of this, but it is nice to have them to go through it together, you know?
Speaker 1: (32:50)
Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. At least one is very close in age to you. Is the other one close in age?
Speaker 2: (32:56)
Yes. So, um, that half sister, um, her and I are only, let’s see four months apart. Okay. So we’re, and I’m, so I’m March 87. She’s July 87. So, and what’s crazy is we also have another half sister. Who’s also the same age as us born the same year, but it’s his, his social child. Um, so
Speaker 1: (33:21)
Child I’ve never heard, but I think I understand exactly what it means. So quote unquote child.
Speaker 2: (33:29)
Yeah. Correct. Yeah. So he, yeah, he has three social children that he had with children.
Speaker 1: (33:34)
Yeah.
Speaker 2: (33:37)
That right. That he had with his, his first wife and then so far confirmed via DNA testing. We have seven illegitimate and I hate that word, but it’s, you know, I don’t even know if that’s a better way to describe it, but
Speaker 1: (33:51)
Right. I mean, so many of these episodes are spent speak, talking about language and that we don’t quite have the right words. So, yeah. Okay. I have questions, but I, but I, I was trying to wait till the end, but you, so you tell me when it’s ready, when it’s time for questions, you guys,
Speaker 2: (34:04)
You can dive in, you can ask me any questions. And, and I mean, like I said, there’s, there’s so much to this story, so maybe your questions will spark more. Cause this goes deeper. This is only the outer shell, so,
Speaker 1: (34:16)
Well, yeah. So I kind of want to get into all that. Yeah. Um, okay. So the questions so, so far, um, so the three of the three of you ladies know that your sisters, your three sisters, you, you all know about, um, about this. Um, I don’t, I mean, we can say like elite illegal or like we’ll get into that, but unethical behavior. Um, but D does all seven or all seven, was this a surprise for
Speaker 2: (34:50)
Yes. Yes. It was a surprise for all. So the oldest of us seven that are from fertility fraud, basically the best way to describe it. Um, the oldest one, he didn’t know who his donor was until about two years ago when the half sister, I was her name’s Eve,
Speaker 1: (35:16)
She actually called me on Facebook recently. And I was so critical today. I mean, it’s only like you’d never, ever, ever meet anybody named Eve. And, um, and so when I noticed her on Facebook recently, it was like, Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. She’s. And then when I was reading the article earlier today, I was like, Oh my God, it’s Eve it’s that Eve it’s her sister. Yes.
Speaker 2: (35:38)
Yes. So, uh, you know, when we originally talked, I told her, I was like, okay. So if all goes, well, you know, we’ll get to, I’ll get to have a conversation with another ear.
Speaker 1: (35:48)
It’s a big deal.
Speaker 2: (35:50)
It is. It is. So, um, actually when Eve completely uncovered this whole thing is when the oldest sibling who actually he has known for over 13 years, he was donor conceived he’s he was, um, he’s older than us. Um, and he took a DNA test. And so it just kind of just sat there in limbo with no connections except for like distant cousins. So when Eve’s results came in and it connected her, um, and she had initially initially told this half sibling who she thought the donor was, who she had known for 13 years. Um, she told him, you know, this is, this is our biological father will then lo and behold, it comes that that’s not actually their biological father. And so she thought, yes,
Speaker 1: (36:35)
Somebody else, she thought she’d bring her it out.
Speaker 2: (36:38)
Right. And so until, okay, correct. Yeah. So until she talked to a first cousin and, and traced it back to our actual father biological father, um, that’s when it was discovered. So all of us seven, none of, kind of have to like phrase this. Um, so almost all of them did not know they were donor conceived all of their life. Right.
Speaker 1: (37:05)
That’s almost that says one of my separate questions. Um, I have written down. Um, so, so we can do this in a two part, two part one. Did anybody else know they were donor conceived? And the answer is basically no
Speaker 2: (37:20)
Correct? Yes, basically. No.
Speaker 1: (37:23)
Okay. And so they’ve all processed it in, in different ways. I’m sure. Go ahead.
Speaker 2: (37:32)
That wasn’t to say the boys seemed to process it differently than the girls. And I hate for it to kind of be a divide. Like the girls are processing it this way and the boys are processing this way because there’s bits and pieces that are similar, but there’s bits and pieces that are they’re polar opposites. So most of us have, we didn’t really have a father like figure in our lives. And if there was, they weren’t a good father figure or they weren’t really present. That’s interesting. So that presents quite a conflict internally when you’re processing this whole thing and trying to separate the deception behind our conception. And the fact that now you’ve found your biological father, because there’s a part of you. And I mean, there’s a part of me. That’s still, I feel a lot of guilt. I feel, you know, I feel there’s a lot of that feels robbed and I feel like they probably feel this way too robbed of, okay, now that I know who my biological father is, and for them just finding out they were donor conceived and then all this, but there’s a part of me personally, just speaking that I’m robbed.
Speaker 2: (38:52)
Like I will never, there’s so many ways I played out meeting my biological father for the first time and they didn’t go that way. I, you know, I figured, Oh my God, like, it’s going to be this moment in the movie where I’m going to like, literally see him for the first time and take off running towards images, hug him as tight as I can hug him and look at his, look in his eyes, like listened to his voice. You know, what is his demeanor? Is he a hand talker like me? You know, like, do we have the same ears? Just trying to like find similarities in and having that beautiful moment. Right. But I’ll never have that because to him I’m a transaction. And you know, so
Speaker 1: (39:32)
Which way go ahead. Um, I guess this is a little bit of devil’s advocate and I’m sure you’ve heard people say this, but that could happen even if it had been a legitimate donor. Right.
Speaker 2: (39:46)
Know that, that is very true. That is very true because I, you know, if there’s donors out there that maybe don’t ever want to have anything to do, they were just like, alright, I’m donating peace out. Like, I don’t want anything, you know, like, that’s it, that’s, that’s the extent of my relationship is I just made a donation. So yeah, you’re absolutely right. It can definitely happen. And, and it, I’m sure it is happening and it will happen. You, you know, you just have this preconceived notion of how things will go down. You know, you, you have them played out in your head and then this picture painted and absolutely.
Speaker 1: (40:17)
No, I agree. I think of that for sure. Um, and he, and I don’t want to jump too ahead in the story, but so does, does he does, um, this doctor at this time know that all of, you know
Speaker 2: (40:32)
Yes, he is. He’s very aware. Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (40:37)
It’s not, we all got a loving fatherly hand just to clarify. We’re not hypothetically, but really we already know that he did not, um, offer yeah. A figure now that you all know who he is. Correct.
Speaker 2: (40:53)
Yeah. He does not want anything to do with all of us except for one the oldest one. So yeah. And I don’t even know the extent to that relationship. I just know that there has been communication, a physical meeting communication on the phone that has happened in is I think still going on, um, just since July. So, but for the rest of us, we are a transaction and that is it.
Speaker 1: (41:24)
Yeah. I’m just, um, we talked in season one, I talked with two to donor conceived people for D for, for, for David reasons, different episodes, Carla enjoy. Um, and we laughed about it then, and I just like have to do it now is that we have to just kind of talk about sperm for a minute. Um, so, so to click, so to sort of clarify what this guy was doing, or do you know what he was doing? Um, or like, is the idea so stumbled up right, right here every time, like this is the third time I’ve done it. And I’m like, I don’t know, like sperm masturbating,
Speaker 2: (42:04)
Just uncomfortable. I don’t know what to add. It’s definitely a really uncomfortable conversation. Um, I will say so to kind of just give a little bit of backstory. My mom, uh, went, she started seeing this fertility doctor under the direction of her regular doctor in 1984. She went to him for two and a half years, uh, for fertility treatment doing artificial insemination. She would go two, three, four times a month. Um, at each appointment she would pay for sperm, donor sperm that she had selected from a donor catalog. So
Speaker 1: (42:41)
Yeah, like I want a really tall red head who loves music. Right,
Speaker 2: (42:47)
Right. There was traits that she had picked out based on the donor catalog. And so at this time it was in the eighties, it was in the midst of the AIDS pandemic. So there were specific protocols in place, you know, brushed sperm was not allowed. It was all had to be, um, California Cryobank was the only Cryobank at the time that was allowed to access, you know, to, to basically sell their donated sperm.
Speaker 1: (43:10)
Yeah, I know.
Speaker 2: (43:12)
Yeah. Okay. I mean, I already knew it was all gross and unethical, but yeah. But okay. This is a whole nother. Yeah. I’m telling you many questions and I wish all of your stuff
Speaker 1: (43:24)
We’re here right now. I’m suddenly getting this whole idea
Speaker 2: (43:26)
DIA of how much I will talk. I would say, well, we should definitely do when with, uh, my other siblings, uh, because there’s some that will definitely be on here and there there’s Oh my God. It’s the best. So, so, so,
Speaker 1: (43:41)
So as far as we’ve talked about this a little bit before, um, but, but in what part of why I wanted you to come on here was to talk about how the donor industry is very like unregulated in a lot of ways, but we’re now telling me that in 1984, there was at least one rule with fresh sperm and it needed to come from California Cryobank. Correct. They could do, um, they would, they would do screening. Thank you.
Speaker 2: (44:12)
Yeah. So the protocols were, um, the sperm was to be the donated sperm must be frozen for a minimum of six months quarantined and then retested before then, you know, then basically shipped out and purchased. So there was a specific protocol, right? And so with him being a doctor he’s exposed on a daily basis to bloodborne pathogens. And so he was not being tested for HIV and all these other things. And because this was the AIDS pandemic, this was that, you know, these were the years that this was going on. So, um, my mom had these treatments, like I said, two, three, four times a month. She would call when her temperature was right. And, you know, she was oblating yada, yada, yada. And she would pay for a donor based on this donor catalog. And then she’d be inseminated. And to be inseminated, you, you know, you, you go into a treatment room, your you get undressed from the waist down, stirrups beat up.
Speaker 2: (45:05)
Your pelvic is prepped. You have to, your body temperature has to be a certain temperature. And then the sperms, you know, the specimen is then you’re inseminated with it. Well, my mom had many miscarriages during that two and a half years, many, many miscarriages. And it was, it was awful. Plus prior to that, she had lost a newborn child due to hospital neglect. And it was, my mom has just literally been through so much. So part of this, the reason then we’ll talk about it in just a minute, but I’m doing this for her. So to do a fresh donation was really not what was supposed to have been done during this period because of the AIDS pandemic. And that was one guideline is that sperm was to come from California crabbing because they were properly quarantine. They were frozen for that six month period of time and then retested or rescreened.
Speaker 2: (46:04)
So upon my mom’s the day that she actually had me, you know, that she conceived me June 6th, 1986. I wish I knew the time timestamps, but, um, her fertility doctor recommended, you know, he was like, he suggested let’s do a fresh donor, but, and my mom was very much against it because this is a small town they’re coming from all these small towns. Everybody knows everyone in every small town in any Texas. And she just was worried about accidental incest and you know, most people in East, Texas, they stay because your family’s there, your family farm is there. You’re, you know, like people just don’t leave. And so my mom was just very worried about that, but he, he reassured her, you know, he’s a medical resident at Nacadocious medical hospital and, uh, you know, you know, residents, they go all over. So, you know, and he, you know, he’s a doctor he’s educated, he’s, you know, six, six or six, five tall red hat, you know, gave all those, all those demographics.
Speaker 2: (47:06)
So yeah. So my mom finally, you know, agreed. She was like, okay, all right, well, I guess let’s do this well after research eating, after all this I’ve confirmed that Nacadocious medical center or hospital has never been a teaching hospital. Therefore there have never been medical residents at this since its existence, which goes beyond when, you know, when this was happening. So it’s just, there’s so many lies, but sperm was supposed to have come from a Cryobank and been screened. You know, that’s what the patients are consenting for. That’s what they’re, you know, that’s what they are, they’re consenting to they’re assenting to. And so he, so,
Speaker 1: (47:55)
So even in that moment with your mom, back in June,
Speaker 2: (48:01)
He was already suggesting that like, he had like a black market, right. Fresh sperm access. So already he was kind of like, well, I have this other, this. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (48:16)
And then, but that was like, totally
Speaker 2: (48:20)
Like a bold face lie to her face. Absolutely. Cause he was the black markets firm. Yep.
Speaker 1: (48:27)
And okay. You keep talking.
Speaker 2: (48:35)
I get, so honestly I get so caught up in the idea of this man. Yeah. Like I don’t understand. And like, was he in the bathroom? Was he doing it right then? Like how fresh was it? Like he gets real gross real quick. It does. And you know, to make it even more graphic is that sperm only lives outside the mucosa area for 30 minutes max. Oh no. Oh yeah. That is how fresh it was 30 minutes or less wham. Bam. Okay. Yeah. It’s so just so you know,
Speaker 1: (49:13)
These are the answers I wanted.
Speaker 2: (49:15)
Yeah. 30 minutes. Alright. Okay. Yup. Next room or his office, which was down the hall. But the thing is that the way my mom describes him and I’ll have to read you this little, you know, paragraph, my mom kind of put together after she kind of got herself together after finding all this out. But he was a very well known man. He is, he still to this day, you know, people protect him. They’re like, you know what, he’s a good Christian man. He, you know, he would do no wrong. And if he thought that that’s how it should have been done, then that’s how it should be. It’s just that kind of backwards thinking. But he, you know, you, you’re a very, in a very vulnerable place in time. Number one, just going to your gynecologist, right. Being a female. You’re, it’s a very vulnerable time.
Speaker 2: (50:06)
You’re again, you’re half naked from the waist down. Sometimes waist up, just open down to the front, right. You’re naked and beat her up. Your lady parts are wide open, you know? And so you, you put a lot of trust into this, this person. And if you’re going through fertility treatments, number one, at that point, you’re already, you’ve already beaten yourself to death thinking that you’re broken, something is wrong with you. Why can’t you create a child on your, why are you having to do this? You know, like there’s just all this of these other layers, again, more layers that are going on. And you’re just, you’re literally, you’re putting 100% of your dressing. You’re like, please, I just, I just want a child so bad. Please help me. You’re hopeless. There’s nothing I hadn’t. Yeah. There’s like a level of that, that I had just never considered about the, the vulnerability of sort of placing your, not only your, your physical medical trust in somebody like your dreams, like exactly.
Speaker 2: (51:07)
You know, and, and for, for anyone, whether it’s going to be your first child or your 10th or what, but for my mom, she has had a very traumatic upbringing, but losing a newborn shot, a newborn baby and trying, and trying and trying for 13 years to, you know, miscarriage after miscarriage or, you know, whatnot. And then, and then to finally find that there’s a, there’s possibly an answer there’s possibly a way you can have a child. Of course, there’s going to mean, you know, it’s going to science is going to intervene and you know, a medical doctor, but you’re going to be able to have that baby. You just, you just have this, like, I don’t know, but it’s, so you, you put all your trust in this person and you you’re just like, please help me, you know? Okay, whatever you think I need to do, you know, you, you put that trust into them and you don’t think that they’re going to hurt you or do something wrong to you or do something unethical.
Speaker 2: (52:05)
You trust them to do the right thing. They’re a doctor. They take that oath, you know? And so to, to ultimately find out that you were a number one, you were deceived, you were violated, you were lied to either. It was just, there’s just so many things. But I, I think to kind of circle back to, you know, Sony that I hate to say that there’s, there’s a way that the girls are processing. And there’s a way that the boys are processing of the siblings and this, this comes full circle to this, this, because men don’t go through what, when women go through, when it comes to pregnancy or fertility, fertility, or literally just going to a gynecologist. Yeah. You know? Yeah. They get their prostate checked, turn your head, cough, whatever. No. And I guess that’s not fun. That’s not fun. That’s vulnerable, but it’s exactly, it’s not the same.
Speaker 2: (52:55)
And one of my half brothers explained it to me. He’s like, you know, like I totally, I get it, Jessica, but here’s the thing, women, the moment you get that positive pregnancy test, you’re a mom. Like, you’re like, Oh my God, this is it. Like, I’m going to have a baby. You’re a mom that second, you pee on that stick. And there’s your mom, you know, but for men, it’s not that way until that baby comes out and they put eyes on it, then they’re a dad. So then that connection happens. And so that I, you know, being woman and knowing what we know and feeling what we feel, we don’t understand how they don’t understand that. But when my half brother explained it to me, that way, I’m like, you know, I get it. And it makes sense. But I still, like, I still don’t.
Speaker 2: (53:40)
I want you to understand this side of things, you know, and this is because your, your half-brothers recognize the unethical, the unethical element heritage, but don’t seem to be as bothered by it. Right. 100%. So all, all of the, the half brothers that are from the same circumstances as we, you know, the us seven, they don’t that it’s like, they’re like, you know what? Yeah, it was wrong, but I have you guys like it should that overshadows. And then the, all the unethical behavior is just swept under the rug. And it’s like buried in the sand kind of thing. And, and I, it doesn’t seem to, and of course I am not going to speak for anyone but myself, but it just doesn’t seem to really have done the damage to them as it does us. And I’m thankful for that because I don’t want anyone else to feel this way or be going through this or disrupt any more lives because you know, it sucks, sucks.
Speaker 2: (54:42)
And so I’ve said that to that mechanic, you know what, I’m, I’m actually thankful that you don’t feel this way. I, I wish you would understand on this side of things, but I’m thankful that you don’t because it fucking, so, you know, I mean, it’s just not good. It’s not okay. It’s not cool. So, but that part of it, like being a woman and going through all that, and in those vulnerable, vulnerable times, it’s, it’s a bit easier for women to understand the deception and all the pain that comes from discovering this situation versus it’s like a psychological rape kind of, it is. Yeah. I mean, with, with, with human tissue of the medical device, you know, it’s yeah.
Speaker 2: (55:37)
Oh, and, um, so in the past eight months, and, and you, um, since connecting with your half sisters and, um, and Eve is very active in this, um, in this sort of advocacy awareness and like legislation of this as well. Um, what kind of things have you found out about, uh, fertility fraud? Well, you mentioned earlier that this industry is just, there’s not a lot of regulations, to be honest. And that’s why there’s so many people that come from overseas or out of the country to have fertility treatment here, because in the U S especially, there’s not a lot, there’s not a lot of regulations. You know, it’s projected to be a $15.4 billion industry in the next year to two years, that’s insane, right? To have been minimal $15.4 billion, it’s projected to be a $15.4 billion industry by 2023. And right now, one of eight women struggle with fertility.
Speaker 2: (56:38)
And that’s not even including the LGBTQ community, that’s not even including them. And so that’s one thing that I literally have my at my jaw has hit the floor on is like, why are there not more regulations? Like, I just, I don’t understand it. Why number one, like, why should this have had to have been a law back then for people to not do it? It’s unethical. Just don’t do it. You know what I mean? Like it just to a normal human being, you just know don’t do unethical things. Like why does there have to be a law, but, but there wasn’t. And so therefore it wasn’t illegal when he was doing this. And more than 2% of doctors in the eighties were fertility. Doctors were actually doing this. I’m sorry, which is more than it was on average. In the early eighties, they were averaging about 2% of fertility doctors were doing this. We’re using their own firm.
Speaker 1: (57:34)
That’s so 2% of donor conceived babies in the eighties, early eighties find out that it was their doctor. They may find out it was a doctor. Okay.
Speaker 2: (57:49)
So those are some, it is. I mean, it’s just, it’s, it’s mind blowing 2%. Doesn’t sound like a lot. Right. But in, in this industry, you know, it’s just,
Speaker 1: (58:01)
That’s crazy. I just, so do you think, do you think that, or I, you know, maybe he’s even said, cause you, I know there’s been a little bit of connect of, uh, communication with, with your, um, biological father. Um, does he think he was doing a good thing? He,
Speaker 2: (58:19)
He thinks that he was first, it was a lot of lies saying it wasn’t, he didn’t do this. And then it turned into, Oh, I went back and got my donor sperm from the early seventies from UT and B Galveston. I went back and bought it in the late eighties. I went back and bought it and brought it back to East Texas. We’re like, okay, that’s, that’s not a thing. Like, once it leaves your body can’t pump the brakes, bro. Like I thought you were smart, but, um, you know, so that was, that was initially, you know, it was like, Oh, I didn’t do this. Oh, well actually I went back, he knew and got my donor sperm and I bought it and brought it back. And I was using that one or two times. So it turned in from one or two times to now because there’s seven of us that it’s like, okay, now we’ve gotten information.
Speaker 2: (59:12)
That’s potentially up to 15 of us, but in siblings don’t count, which in this group they’re siblings. So that’s kind of crazy. I’m like real legit siblings. And so his thing is, you know, I was just trying to do a good deed and you know, we, why are we just so ungrateful? Why don’t we just, you know, appreciate what he’s done for us. He’s given us life. It’s a major narcissistic. That was my next question was, do you think he’s a nurse when you said you went, when you said going back to get my thing, I was like, Oh, only in our system, even, even if that is a true story and I don’t believe that he did that, but no narcissists would be like, that’d be awesome. If I could go get all my sperm from Korea, my sperm is pretty great. I’m going to go back and find it.
Speaker 2: (01:00:04)
Yeah. So yes, 100% narcissists, uh, I, 100% think he has a God complex and just, but yeah, I mean he thinks he was doing a good deed and that we need to be grateful. That’s it? And speaking, God, God, God complex. Um, there’s also an element that you haven’t talked about. Um, I think, tell me if I’m wrong, we’ll just take this out. But, um, he was present for your birth. Oh, 100. He, yes. So when my mom went into labor with me, my, my birth certificate father actually wasn’t there. And so, um, she got admitted to the hospital. They got her in the room, they called the doctor and said, you know, you know, my mom was ready, you know, she’s in labor. And so he came in and checked her is like, you know what, I’m just going to go home, shower, eat dinner.
Speaker 2: (01:00:56)
And I’ll come back in a few hours, you know, cause it’s going to still going to be awhile. My mom said no sooner that he walked out of the hospital room, doors, the door shut and then reopened. And he came back in and he waited in the room with her. And I can’t remember the time, but I do know that it was longer than an hour. It was like a couple of hours that he waited in the room with her while she was in labor for her to then go into active labor to deliver me. And after my delivery, he even stayed in the room longer until my birth father got there. Yeah. That’s creepy. Very weird. And so now looking back, my mom just replaying that in her head. She’s like he knew, right. He knew that that was his child. Like no other doctor is gonna late at night going to sit in the hospital when he can go home.
Speaker 2: (01:01:52)
You know, like if they’re on call, they’re on call. You know, he lives like two minutes from the hospital. He’s not, you know, it’s not a big town. It’s not a big city. It’s a small town, you know? So he knew he was there. He delivered me. And he, he was there after my birth for quite a bit of time. Gosh, when I imagine being in your mom’s shoes and I, I think what comes to mind is like being like part of the violation is that she was for I’m imagining. And I’m sorry, I’m not putting words into your brother’s mouth, but I just like, she was used for his God complex. Yep. Like he used her body. I’m just trying to think of more ways to describe like the psychological violation. Like he used her body for his to feel powerful. Right. Um, so sure he could be there as a doctor and he could say he was, he was being, um, a gentleman as a doctor because your birth certificate father wasn’t there, but now knowing the truth, there’s just no way not to exactly.
Speaker 2: (01:03:00)
To think of that. Other layer just most, most feel confusing and in an explicable, like I just don’t you. Yeah. I don’t quite have the words, but there’s something, you know, and it’s foreign, right. It’s foreign to like, it’s like, you know, and not that death is ever easy, but it’s something that you find familiar. You know what I mean? You, you have familiar feelings like sadness and this whole thing. None of it’s familiar. There’s no playbook to like, I mean, like we joke about like, even I were like, we’re going to need to make a protocol book for every new sibling. Like here, here’s the, here’s the welcome packet, told you an orientation and all, you know, here’s the family tree so far. Yeah. Like, you know, there’s no playbook to this and, and none of this is familiar to any of us to navigate through, but we’re trying, you know, we’re just trying to navigate through every emotion and every feeling that is, you know, that is present or pops up or, you know, it’s just, it’s just, it’s an unfamiliar situation, you know, it just, and all the lies.
Speaker 2: (01:04:17)
And I just, I’m a very strong person. Again, my mom taught me to be strong and independent, but this breaks me from my mom. Like I just, for everything she’s been through and whether she’s been through none of that traumatic upbringing, it’s not okay. It was never okay. Whether it was illegal or not, it was 100% unethical bottom line. And the fact that he doesn’t acknowledge what he’s done, you know, a good person, a normal human being with a heart and a soul would say, you know what? I am so sorry. I’m so sorry. I did this to you. I didn’t mean harm. I was just trying to do good. And you know, it wasn’t, it wasn’t illegal back then. Yeah. It was unethical. But what can I do to help like acknowledge the pain, acknowledge what you’ve done wrong and apologize. And this, this could play out totally different than it’s than it’s going to continue to play out. You know, it’s, he just refuses. He, he is not sorry. He is 100% okay. With what he did and feels he did absolutely nothing wrong. And literally has such a huge ego that even with this whole thing we’re pursuing with the Texas medical board, he doesn’t think anything’s going to happen to him. He literally has that large of an ego that he’s like nothing. I’m good. I’m golden. Wow.
Speaker 2: (01:05:50)
Wow. Wow. And, um, what, um, and, and have you have you and your siblings connected with other, um, other donor conceived, um, people who are born in fertility, fraud, fraud, and are working on that kind of thing. Have you guys, do you guys have your own sort of like networking communities of people working on things? Yes. Unfortunately it’s actually a large community, you know, it’s unfortunately it is. And so, um, you know, connecting with them and linking arms with this legislative stuff that we’re pursuing. It’s been therapeutic, to be honest, I hate to say that in this whole circumstance, but again, it’s, it’s all unfamiliar for us, but to be able to talk to someone who’s in the same boat as you is kinda nice, I mean, you know, it’s yeah. I mean, that’s huge. And I think having a, having a project, um, can be incredibly
Speaker 1: (01:06:50)
I’m good.
Speaker 2: (01:06:51)
Get busy, get better. Yeah, exactly. And you know, one thing with this is that, and again, I’m only going to speak for myself is, and I know that my mom is not, you know, not taking this well, you know, but I mean, I’m suffering. And at first I was really hesitant. I’m a natural share. Like I’m a social media junkie. I love social media. I love sharing all the things in my life. Cause my kids are crazy. My life is wild and chaotic. Like I just, I’m a natural Cher. So when I found this out, I’m like, Oh my God. Like, you know, like I, there, um, you know, again, the loss for words, and I’m like, I’m not, I’m not going to share this. Like, this is, this is dark. This is evil. And that, that’s not me. I’m the cheery one. I’m the one at the morning huddle at work.
Speaker 2: (01:07:43)
Everybody’s like pipe down, Jessica, bring it down a notch. You’re up here, we’re down here. We got in gutter today. Start like, I’m that natural cheerleader, just, you know, silly, fun all the time. But this has broken me. This is literally brought me into darkness and I hate it. I, I’m not, I’m not meaning more. I I’m, but if I don’t acknowledge that trauma, I’ll never be able to eat. I’ll never be able to heal. And so I, I share and I, all my people, my friends and family that follow me and people that don’t know me, but follow me whenever I finally decided that I’m going to do this, I’m going to share all of this. I, I repeat myself. I taught me, you know, I promised I would share the good, the bad, the ugly stuff that I don’t want to talk about.
Speaker 2: (01:08:34)
Stuff that, you know, it’s just, it’s embarrassing. You know, I don’t even know if embarrassing is the right word, but, but being able to, yeah. So being able to do that, it’s hard. It’s so hard, but uh, you know, writing my feelings down or just taking like short little clips, like on my way, home from work, when I have that moment of silence, like, how am I feeling today? Like what is going through my head? Like, and sharing that, even though people are probably like, Oh my God, here we go again with fertility, you know, it’s like, I find, I find it therapeutic to share my feelings and, and helps me to kind of filter through what I’m feeling versus bottling it up and letting it fester and turn into something, you know, worse. So that, that has been very therapeutic for me is, is sharing that with my friends and family and complete strangers. But I think it’s important. And I hope that, you know, even if I could just help one person to get through this, if they’re, this is, you know, their new circumstance or they’ve been going through it, then I’ve, you know, then I, it makes me feel better about sharing, you know, what, I’m, what I’m going through and, and my siblings too. Yeah. Yeah. I think somebody, um, somebody said recently,
Speaker 1: (01:09:57)
Um, my story becomes the next person’s guide book, survival guide, survival guide. Yes. And, um, that’s, that’s been going around lately and that really resonates really strongly with me. Um, and it, it sounds like that’s, that’s something that’s also
Speaker 2: (01:10:15)
Absolutely.
Speaker 1: (01:10:16)
So on that if somebody is hearing this story right now, um, and wants to reach out or find more about the fertility fraud committee,
Speaker 2: (01:10:27)
What do you suggest you do? Is there other websites where all just hashtags is going to be powerful? But so there, there are several groups on Facebook, um, there’s, uh, donor deceived groups, um, Facebook, you can just type in donor deceived. Uh, there’s also, um, a webpage that actually Tracy and our donor deceived community has, uh, put together. And I believe I’m pulling it up right now. I believe it’s donor deceived.com. And I’m just going to type that in to make sure that I have that correct, but I believe it is donor or maybe donor deceive.org. I believe that that’s actually correct, but yeah. Donor deceive.org. And, um, so this, this is a great resource for, um, you know, if you’re just discovering or you’ve known, but you haven’t really dove deep into it. It gives you a lot of, um, a lot of information on, you know, donor doctor fraud and, you know, permission, fraud, and large, like these, you know, super donors.
Speaker 2: (01:11:40)
You’ve got these large donor group siblings that are, you know, 40, 50, 80, a hundred, 200 group, you know, siblings. Um, so there’s, there’s some really good information on there. And really the, the Facebook groups are really great as well, because then you can interact and ask questions and, you know, it kinda, it gives you again, more people in your boat to, to relate to and, and really help you kind of filter through all this and, and navigate through all the feelings and emotions that come along with this, because you will feel if you’re anything like me, any and all emotions that are humanly possible at any given moment at any given day. And, you know, like I mentioned earlier, you wake up feeling like you have an emotional hangover and yet a horrible dream. You’re like, it’s not real. Or you’re like waiting for Ashton Kutcher, jump out and be like, you’re on candid camera, like are just waiting for that moment because you’re like, there is no way this is my life.
Speaker 2: (01:12:41)
There’s no way this is my circumstance. It just, there’s just no way. So, but those, those are great resources, 100% great resources for those in the same situation. Amazing. Um, and, um, you said your mom is struggling with all of this. Um, and understandably is there, is there, um, is the same community able to support the mothers? Yeah, so, um, I believe there are parents in there. There’s also another group on Facebook and it’s, um, I need to look it up, but it is, it’s like recipient parents. Okay. It’s a recipient parents group and, um, I’ll have to look up the name of it, but, but honestly they can go on Facebook and surgeon recipient, parent, you know, of donor or artificial insemination, but I believe it starts with re recipient parents. Okay. Um, on there. So it’s, that’s a great area, you know, to be in for parents for those like my mom, and I’m hoping there’s other groups out there. Um, I just really haven’t, to be honest, dove that deep into searching for groups beyond what I’m in right now. Um, I was just, I was just curious. I never, I could have probably sat here and written out, I dunno, 40 different phrases
Speaker 1: (01:14:12)
For how to describe what your mother was. And I would never have come up with recipient parent, so you just wouldn’t know. Wow. Um, okay. And can I, um, w um, in my, uh, in my intro, which I’ll do later, can I talk about the New York post article? Absolutely. Yeah. Um, linked to that and stuff. Yeah. New York posts. And I mean, it’s an, um, several other platforms as well, Texas observer, I news UK. Um, I mean, that’s, uh, tons of leaks, sank links, I can say to me. Yeah. Yeah. I’ll send them to you. Yeah. But definitely a New York post did a story, uh, which was great. It was actually shocking that they had someone come down during COVID too. So that was, that was kind of, um, fun, I guess. Uh, but yes, absolutely. Yeah. It’s, again, everything just seems so surreal. It’s just like, I’m just repo, you know, I’m just retelling something from a movie, but it’s my life.
Speaker 1: (01:15:24)
So I’m like feel, yeah, exactly. So, yes, absolutely. You’re more than welcome to share. Okay, cool. Wow. Thank you so much, Jessica. I feel like you have shed light on something that is just, I mean, similar to the NPE NPE phenomenon, like this is actually something very common and is another way that DNA testing is like turning people’s worlds upside down. Um, it’s like, uh, it’s also this sort of next layer, other layer it’s not next, but it’s, um, another layer and it’s, um, yeah, it’s uncomfortable to say the least. So thank you so much for talking to me about it. I really appreciate you allowing me to, I just, I feel like if we can get our, you know, our story out as far and as wide as possible that, you know, again, if it can even just help one person, you know, filter through all this and navigate through it, then I’m just grateful that it, you know, at least one person has been able to, you know, be helped.
Speaker 1: (01:16:30)
So, yeah, no, I, um, I am 100% sure that at least one person will be helped. Um, and I’m, I’m, I’m actually sure it will be more, but, um, but, but I can, I can definitely tell you one, um, I mean, even me, like, I mean, it’s like depends on your definition of helping, but I mean, I just feel like my mind has been, um, really blown open tonight about, about, more about this industry and the idea, and I’m just having this, um, this whole separate sort of wheel going on in my brain right now about thinking about the vulnerability of fertility, um, how much, how much of an industry that’s built on people wanting something so bad that they they’ll do anything. Um, yep. Yeah. So interesting. Yeah. Thank you so much. So, yeah. And, and, um, I mean, I’ll talk about this later anyway, but, um, like we actually didn’t even talk, we didn’t even talk about half your story.
Speaker 1: (01:17:32)
Like, I mean, I was like, yes, I made those links so I could post them to go read all the details so they can get everything, but, um, yeah, but it’s are really late for you there in Texas. Um, so thank you for giving me a late night on a school night and, um, I will be in touch with you. It will be very soon that this comes out. Awesome. Thank you. And I will say just, I really appreciate your time, but one, one word of advice I will give, just because I was just thinking this in my head is that
Speaker 1: (01:18:10)
If this is something they’re uncovering because of a DNA test or because their parent’s family decided to tell them, but just to take it slow or as fast as you’re comfortable with, and really like lean into to those around you, because it’s really the only way you’re really going to be able to get through it and to not let it bottle up there, there’s so much secrecy behind fertility treatments and, you know, being donor conceived. And so just lean into those who support you and who are, you know, around you. And if, if you’re trying to lean in and people aren’t supporting you lean in a different direction because I’ve been hurt by so much, so much of my family through all this, because, you know, I was told to keep my mouth shut and to quit stirring up trouble. And the way I’ve been treated is just, I just, I never would have imagined that I would have been treated this way and the victim shaming that comes along with it. So lean into those who support you and you know, who love you. And if you’re leaning in that direction and they don’t lean another direction, you know, because it’s just, it’s hard enough. And then to get pushback and ugly words and things thrown your way, it’s, it doesn’t make it any easier. So just take it as slow or as fast as you need to as you’re comfortable.
Speaker 1: (01:20:01)
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for saying that. Um, I think that, that that’s excellent advice, um, in this community, um, and, and the broader community to the two, the two big pieces, which are to take it slow. And I love the way you phrase that to lean in to the people that support you. And if they’re not supporting you lean a different direction. Um, I love that. Yeah. Thank you so much for, thank you. I really appreciate you listening and letting me talk again. It’s super therapeutic to be able to talk about it, so I appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely. Um, thank you. Well, I will be in touch with you. Send me all those links. Okay, perfect. I will. And, um, yeah, we’ll get this. We’ll get this ball rolling. You’ll probably be up within three weeks or something like that, but I’ll be in touch. Awesome. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Absolutely. Keep in touch. Okay, Jessica. Awesome. Thanks. Have a great night. You too. Bye bye.
Speaker 1: (00:00)
You know, and then, so we’re recording.
Speaker 2: (00:03)
Hopefully my tablet has enough battery. Okay. If not, we can switch to zoom on my phone. Okay. Totally. I just knew Zencaster wouldn’t work on my tablet. Yeah, sure.
Speaker 1: (00:21)
The saying about Doncaster, is it, um, demands? You have a computer.
Speaker 2: (00:25)
Yeah. But it works on a phone, which is stupid. Yeah. It’s not great, but,
Speaker 1: (00:33)
Um, that’s okay. I’m I’m, we’re, I’m uh, at this point I am very used to technology, not working and scrambling with a guest to figure out how to make it work. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (00:45)
So thanks for your patience there. No problem. I actually like had the wrong day in my head. I was thinking it was Sunday. And so then I got your email and then I’m like, Oh my gosh, does it today? Let me look back. And I’m like, Oh, it’s Saturday. Okay. Okay. We’ve got to get,
Speaker 1: (01:07)
There’s a part of me that wants to be like, well, if you want to do it another day, we can. But I also love getting people just like, kind of, not kind of what not like when you least expect it, but I love sort of just like getting thrust into it. Cause if you get too prepared, sometimes it’s harder to have a conversation.
Speaker 2: (01:24)
Um, and I know, and I’ve told a million people in my life about my story. So like, um, I’ll just wing it. I didn’t, I didn’t like write notes or anything.
Speaker 1: (01:37)
What I really like about this one is that, um, in the same, in the same vein of you thinking it was another day, I don’t know anything about your story. And a lot of times people send me, you know, like detailed the deep, the story already. They send me these long emails. And um, so I always, but so there’s something to be said about being prepared and knowing what your story is. And then there’s a different kind of enjoyment and process of like, having you tell me a story that I have no idea what we’re about to get into. It’s like walking blind into a movie theater or something.
Speaker 2: (02:06)
So, um, so,
Speaker 1: (02:09)
Um, just, uh, either correct me or affirm, how do you pronounce your name? Dalan it is Dalan okay.
Speaker 2: (02:17)
Yup. Yep. Um, it only has one Y in it though. So it makes it a little funny it’s okay.
Speaker 1: (02:24)
Right, right. I wrote, I keep writing it day, like day,
Speaker 2: (02:28)
But it’s very common. Yeah. That’s how you say it.
Speaker 1: (02:34)
We’re phonetic here in this co in this culture. Um, okay. And where are you?
Speaker 2: (02:40)
Minnesota, Minnesota. How’s the weather cold. Yeah. It’s so cold. Yeah. It’s literally the coldest day. We’ve had all winter today. It’s it’s zero degrees. So no warmth, no nothing. Zero.
Speaker 1: (03:03)
Yeah. Wow. Zero. The lack of heat. Lack of temperature. Okay. When you’re inside, you’re warm enough. Um, so tell me, tell me how you tell it.
Speaker 2: (03:19)
Well, I mean, there, there are, there are several angles we can shoot. I have this bizarre thing called, um, circle cousins that I that’s what I call it. Cause there’s no name for it in Michael cousins.
Speaker 1: (03:35)
I’m just going to take notes. Cause I, and I don’t even know if they’re really going to be helpful, but I just want to write down. I like, I like writing while listening circle cousins. Okay.
Speaker 2: (03:45)
Yeah. Okay. So let’s go, I guess, to the beginning. Um, so I’ve always had an interest in genealogy. I had, I’ve had a humongous family tree on ancestry for like, I don’t know, 10 plus years, because just last years. Oh yeah. That’s just one of my things. That’s just like something I liked. It was always really cool to me to like get into history and things like that. Are you more? No, I’m not. Okay. There’s not many Mormons in Minnesota. We’re Lutheran. Okay. Oh, of course you are. I knew that. Okay. That’s just about everybody up here. Right? Anyhow. Um, so I had this huge family tree. I always thought, Oh, it’d be so cool to do like the DNA test to just because I’m interested in the history of it, but sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 1: (04:43)
All right. So you, so when you say you have, you had a family tree on ancestry.com that was primarily based on documents, records and documents. Okay. Continue, carry on.
Speaker 2: (04:54)
Yep. Um, so I was just like, Oh, it would be so cool to do the DNA test. Um, but you know, we it’s, me and my husband, we have three kids. You never feel like you have that extra money to just spend on something frivolous. Really. So I just was kinda like, nah, you know, we don’t really have the money right now. I’ll just wait, I’ll just wait. I’ll wait. Cause it wasn’t like, it was just for fun. And so we just had a little bit of extra money and I’m like, it came on sale again and it had, was advertising to me and I’m like, Oh, it’s on sale. And I’m like, Oh honey, can we do this? Can we do this? It would be so cool. You know? And he’s like, sure, whatever. So I ordered them and uh, I like, I was excited about it, but not like so excited where it came and it was like the number one priority on my list. So it really sat on my husband’s dresser for two months. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (05:53)
Let’s us, that’s becoming such a part of the story for everybody. It’s where, where did it sit and for how long? Yeah.
Speaker 2: (06:01)
And so it just sat there and I’m like, Oh, I guess, I guess we should probably do these. Cause I don’t know if like they expire, they go bad or if I spent this money and it’s going to go in the garbage, you know? So, um, so about little after new year’s day of 2020. So about a year ago, um, we spent in the tube, we sent them off, um, waited several weeks about mid February. My results came in. So I’m like, Oh cool. You know, I was like, so excited to go and like look and that the ethnicity and the matches and all the things. And I wasn’t like looking for anything specific, just, just for fun. And uh, but I’m really smart. And I know a lot about this and I know a lot about how the site works. And um, so I went into my matches or I went into my ethnicity, looked at my ethnicity, you know, it’s like Norwegian German. I mean I’m from Minnesota. That’s pretty standard.
Speaker 1: (06:58)
Pretty standard. Yep.
Speaker 2: (07:01)
Yeah. So nothing out of the ordinary in my ethnicity. And uh, so then I’m like, Ooh, I should see who I match. Like see if there’s any of my cousins that I know or anything like that. So I go in right off the bat and my very closest match. It says it’s a first cousin and it’s a name I don’t even know. Oh, I’m just thinking, well maybe someone put someone up for adoption. They didn’t tell anybody, you know, no big deal. It happens.
Speaker 1: (07:30)
And so I’m like, all
Speaker 2: (07:31)
Right, I’ll come back to that later. So I’m like scrolling down and just looking for names that I know. And I calmed down to ’em about, it said it was about a second cousin, but it was a name I know like I was like, Oh yeah, that’s my mom’s cousin. You know, like I knew exactly how I was.
Speaker 1: (07:49)
Well, yeah. I mean, it’s, you’ve been doing the family tree for 10 years. Like you’re pretty, you’re pretty versed, versed in the, in the yeah.
Speaker 2: (08:00)
Um, and I knew in real life, so I’m like, Oh yay, cool. You know, and he had a huge tree on there too, like that he had built and it’s my mom’s cousin. And um, for anonymity of other people, we’ll call him Adam.
Speaker 1: (08:14)
Sure. But, uh,
Speaker 2: (08:18)
Yeah, this huge family tree and I’m like, Oh, that’s so cool. I’m so glad I found someone. I know. And I found a few other cousins on my mom’s side. Um, I didn’t find any that I specifically knew were from my dad’s side. I had a bunch of unknown ones, but uh, my dad was an only child, so I don’t have any first cousins on his side. Only second cousins are further. And so it wasn’t totally out of the ordinary that I didn’t see anyone I knew because you don’t always know like you’re second, third cousins and beyond that’s the stretch. So that didn’t raise any red flags. And um, so like the second I grabbed my results, I got a message on ancestry from this first cousin of the name. I didn’t know. And he said, I’m adopted and it looks like we’re a close match.
Speaker 2: (09:11)
Like first cousins, could you help me find my birth family? And I’m like, Oh, fun. Like what? This sounds so cool. Of course. All of you, you know, and I’m like, Oh awesome. I can figure out how this DNA thing works and help people connect and all the things. So, um, so the tests were still on sale at that point, or it was like an, a new sale or something. So, uh, sure. So I’m, I’m fairly close with my mom. So I asked my mom, I was like, if I buy you one and test, will you test for me? Because it might help this other guy solve his mystery because this cousin was like around my mom’s age. So my thought was maybe he’s a generation apart from me and maybe my mom will nap in closer and that might help, you know? And she’s like, yeah. She’s yeah. Okay. That’s fine. So, so my mom tests and her results come back cause I’m a manager for results. So she doesn’t even see them cause she really doesn’t care if she’s doing it. Um, and uh, she matches me. Of course she doesn’t match this mystery cousin. So I’m like, okay, well that’s on my dad’s side then, but I’m like, I don’t have any first cousins on my dad’s side. My dad’s an only child. This doesn’t make sense. So then
Speaker 1: (10:38)
There’s still, I’m sure there’s a logical explanation to all of this.
Speaker 2: (10:43)
It’s still on sale. Um, so I go to my dad and I asked him like, Hey, I have this weird cousin match. I’m trying to figure it out. You know, would you mind testing because then I can see how close he is to you. Cause he’s not related to my mom. So he must be related to you. And he’s like, Oh sure. You know, and he
Speaker 1: (11:06)
In Minnesota, I sure will do it. Okay. Yeah, no problem. Um, quick question. Are your parents, or are your parents, uh, w uh, where your mom and dad married at this time?
Speaker 2: (11:20)
No, they’ve been divorced since I was five and I’m 30. So, um, no relationship is like, it doesn’t matter what, whatever happens beyond that, but, um, but yeah, so he tested as well, um, in, well, waiting for his results. Cause it takes six to eight weeks to, it takes a long time. I’m continuing to do my research on ancestry. And so in order to do my research, um, beyond this first cousin who, I didn’t know this mystery cousin, we’ll call him, uh, right below him. Adam second. Yeah. No, that’s the, we know
Speaker 1: (12:01)
No mystery cousin. We don’t. Okay. Sorry. Sorry.
Speaker 2: (12:05)
That’s okay. Um, so down further from him, there was another cousin with a name, I didn’t know. And she was like a second cousin or so. And she has a pretty big family tree that I can see and I’m looking and looking and I’m like, how can she be this closely related to me? And I don’t know any of the people in her family tree and she’s not related to my mom. So she has to be on my dad’s side. So I’m like, this is just weird. I have stopped
Speaker 1: (12:35)
Breathing. I have stopped breathing by the way, on the edge of my seat, what, okay,
Speaker 2: (12:42)
This makes no sense. So she had her full name on there. So I found her on Facebook and like, sometimes people don’t get your messages, but sometimes they do. So I sent her a message on Facebook and I said, Hey, I think we’re, um, ancestry and ancestry match. You know, I said, would you mind, um, I’m trying to help someone else. And I explained how this guy was adopted and he’s related to both of us. And I’m trying to help him figure out where he fits. Would you mind sharing your tree with me so I can see the living people because how ancestry does it is if people are still alive, it says private, unless the person shares with you. Right. So I can only see people that have passed away, like her great grandparents and beyond historical figures. Yup. Yup. And so she was like, Oh, sure. She’s like in her twenties, from Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: (13:40)
We’re all in the Midwest and we all get along.
Speaker 2: (13:44)
Yeah, exactly. So, um, so she shared her tree with me so I could see the names of the living people. And I’m like, okay, great. So I made my own tree using her. Cause she’s my top match that knows something about where they come from. That’s on, not on my mom’s side. Cause my cousin Adam is on my mom’s side. So, uh, so I start looking at her tree and I built my own version of her tree starting with her. And I started building it up and out and up and out based on records to try to find how she matched other people. We were related to me and her, because if I can figure out how she matches, it might give an indicator of how I match them or why they met, because I don’t know them,
Speaker 1: (14:34)
Which would then help understand how the Mr. Heads in matches.
Speaker 2: (14:39)
Yeah. Right, right. Because he’s such a close match to me. Right. Um, and so while I’m doing this, I look at mystery cousins, uh, matches in common. Okay. And he is her, which is great. He also has my cousin, Adam, who is related to me on my mom’s side. But my mom is not related to mystery cousin
Speaker 1: (15:07)
Where I would have, this is where I would have just put it all down and given like the, I can’t, if this isn’t Nope.
Speaker 2: (15:16)
Yeah. And so I’m like, well, that doesn’t make sense. I’m like, because Adam is related to me on my mom’s side, like his mom and my grandma are sisters. So I know exactly how we’re related. And this is on my mother’s side. How can he be lated to mystery cousin? Luke will say, Luke, it doesn’t make sense. Like, it doesn’t make sense that Adam’s related to me on my mom’s side. My mom’s not related to Luke, but Adam’s related to Luke and I’m related to him. So I got ahold of Adam. I called him cause we know each other, you know, would you mind sharing your matches in common, um, with Luke, like show me your list because I have my list in common with Luke, show me your list. So he shows me his list
Speaker 1: (16:12)
Because he’s from Minnesota too. So he’s just totally open and willing to do this, huh? Yup.
Speaker 2: (16:18)
Okay. Um, and so he shares his list and well we know each other too, so that helps, but every single person on there is different except for me and every single person on my list is different except for him. So us three, Luke, Adam and me are, are all three related to each other, but we don’t have any other people like in common that cross that cross.
Speaker 1: (16:54)
Right. You just, you just poofed into existence out of a vacuum. Okay.
Speaker 2: (17:00)
I’m like, this doesn’t make any sense. I don’t get it. Then I started thinking, I was like, so I haven’t found any matches specifically related to my dad’s side. Like that. I know that I know for sure, like this is on my dad’s side. So I was like, what if, uh, what if Luke, what if one of his birth parents is related to Adam on his father’s side? And the other birth parent is related to me on my father’s side and me and Adam are related to each other on our mother’s side, cousin circle, cousins. I,
Speaker 1: (17:46)
This is where we it’s like, okay. The podcast, it needs to start having animation, like a CR like we need a whiteboard. I,
Speaker 2: (17:54)
Well, yeah, like I almost have no idea if you want to write it down. You can,
Speaker 1: (18:01)
I am. I’m going to write it down. I’ll okay.
Speaker 2: (18:04)
All right. So, okay. Wait. Okay. So there’s me. All right. You. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. On one side of me would be Luke. And on the other side of me, Adrian or Adam, sorry. Nope. It’s okay. We can fix that. Okay. Um, and so Adam is sorry, go ahead. Yep. Luke is related to me on my dad’s side. Adam is related to me on my mom’s side. Yeah. Okay. Adam is related to Luke on Luke’s mom’s side and Adam’s dad’s side. Pretty much. Once we discovered who Luke’s parents were. Um, his mother is related to Adrian and Adrian Adam’s dad’s side. Sorry. Nope. That’s okay. And his father is, um, is related to me on my dad’s side, but me and Adam are connected through our mothers. Okay. It makes a big circle, but it’s not like a, it’s not hillbilly stuff.
Speaker 1: (19:34)
Right? Like cousins never. Right. First cousins number got married or something like that. It’s that great first cousins. Oh my gosh. So it’s it the generation. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (19:46)
Above them. Um, I don’t even know. I don’t even know what I’m asking. I don’t even know if I can draw you a big diagram.
Speaker 1: (19:55)
You totally have to send me. You have to, you have to, because this, I just have circles overlapping one another and it says, father, mom, mom, Daylin. Don’t bother mom, like cousins.
Speaker 2: (20:07)
Right, right. It’s it’s the most bizarre thing, but so how I solved it. So, um, my dad’s results are not even in yet, still today as of today. No, they are now.
Speaker 1: (20:23)
Okay. They are now, but at this point in your journey, right?
Speaker 2: (20:26)
Yes. And so I’m building and building and building on this fake tree that I created off of this girl that’s related to me and Luke. Okay. And, um, I built up from her. Okay. So like up would be like parents, grandparents. Okay. Then if you build like sideways you’re into like grandparents, sisters, and brother, you know, from them, you would go down to like their kids and their kids as kids. Does that make sense? Yup. Yup. Yup. Okay. So I built up from her. I started building over like her grandparents and great-grandparents brothers and sisters and then on down. Okay. To find other DNA matches that we have in common. So I find a second cousin that is from her great grandfather. So it goes off to the side. Like one of his siblings had kids and kids and it’s a second cousin. And then I find a second cousin that’s from her great grandmother down and over.
Speaker 2: (21:35)
I don’t know if you know where I’m going with this, but I can’t share DNA with person a and person B, unless I shared DNA with this couple, right. Like I have to share DNA with both of them in or this one and this one, you know? And so I’m coming to this realization that how do I share DNA with both of her grandparents? Because that doesn’t make any sense, anything that I’ve ever known. So I look below her great-grandparents and below them, they have four sons. The youngest of these four sons is seven years older than my mom. Okay. So like, I can’t come from any generation below that because the Aprils wouldn’t work. Yeah. Got it. I have to come from this generation right here, these four, the one of the four sons. And so at that point I called my mom and I said, um, do you have something that I should know? And she’s like, what? And I was like, so which one of these four men is my dad, my actual dad, because I didn’t know I had a different dad, but the DNA is telling me I do.
Speaker 2: (23:04)
And, uh, she just, she started crying and it, and she was like, I didn’t know. And I’m like, what do you mean? You didn’t know? How, how did you not know? Hmm. You said, uh, she was with my dad, the one I grew up with, she, they got into a fight and she went to a party in another town, which is where these men were from. And, uh, she was with this guy one at that party. And then she was right. She was right back with my dad. She found out she was pregnant and assumed that I belonged to my dad. The one I grew up with. Right.
Speaker 1: (23:58)
I’m having reconciliation love making.
Speaker 2: (24:03)
Yeah. Well, through that, they got married, they got married when was like, uh, four or five months pregnant with me.
Speaker 1: (24:15)
Oh, I really, I like, I really feel like, I pretty much know these, I know the direction of these stories often, or like, I know how these things, but that one really CA I was like, okay, so it’s like a cousin story or like, okay, so this is going to be so, because your parents were, so your mom was so willing to give you the DNA, the do the test. So I was like, okay, so it’s not her and her mom.
Speaker 2: (24:42)
Yep. Wow. Yeah. So I was like, so which one of these guys is it? So, as I said, the youngest was seven years older than my mom. The next one up from him would have been 17 years older than my mom. And then went out from him would have been like, I don’t know, 20, 20 plus years older than, so it was, it was less likely to be, it was most likely to be the youngest one possible, but less likely. Yeah. But I wanted her to tell me, like, I didn’t even, I just gave her the four names and I gave them to her in a random order. And I didn’t tell her how old they were or anything because I wanted as concrete of evidence as I could get from her memory without leading her. And, uh, so she told me which one, um, she remembered that it was, and she’s like, it it’s, it’s Tom. And I’m like, okay. Uh, and, uh, yeah. So then, uh, she was like, now, before you go blow up your whole life, and I was like, what do you mean?
Speaker 2: (25:47)
And she goes, just, just wait awhile, just wait awhile. And I’m, I’m in tears and I’m freaking out. Cause like, everything I’ve ever known is not what I thought it was. Um, and I’m not close with my dad, not at all. Um, his, his wife is not great and she’s been around for a long time and him and I had not gotten to develop, um, a close relationship. And, uh, so of course in my mind, I’m like, well, I want to meet these people, you know, because, because I’m not, you know, I’m not hurting anyone else. Like if I am hurting them will, that’s their problem. I mean, my dad lives two miles away from me. My dad, I grew up with and we don’t ever see each other. We see each other in holidays. I mean, yeah.
Speaker 1: (26:45)
Yeah. I have a question. Were you, were you communicating with, um, like Adam and Luke during this whole time and mystery? Like, were you communicating with them? So they were all kind of in this conversation
Speaker 2: (26:58)
To figure it out. Okay. Yep. And so, uh, so then I went back to my tree research and granted my dad’s results are not in yet still cause this takes six weeks. So I’m like really deep diving into this. But at that point I had my answer. I mean, I mean, I knew before his results even came in like that he wasn’t going to be related to me at all.
Speaker 1: (27:26)
How did that feel knowing that,
Speaker 2: (27:28)
Uh, I, I was freaking out, you know, I was crying. My mom said, she’s like, well, you know, what’s everyone gonna think of me. Everyone’s gonna think I’m a horrible person. And I don’t know if this was cruel of me or not, but I just said, um, who cares? And like, what do you mean? And I said, this is not 1955. This is 2020. You haven’t been with my dad for 33 years right now. I was like, no one cares what you did when you were young and stupid. And 22 years old, if anyone should care, I should care. My opinion matters. And it doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks, you know? And I was like, you know, I can’t say for sure if you knew where you didn’t, you tell me, you didn’t know. And if you didn’t know, I mean, my way of thinking was, Hmm, sorry.
Speaker 2: (28:28)
My way of thinking was I get it, like I was 22, right. Stupid. And like, you’re not always paying attention to that kind of thing. And it is what it is. I can’t ever know if that’s the truth that she didn’t know or that she did know. Right. If she’s not going to tell me, I can’t go back to 1982 and like be a fly on the wall and see exactly what happened. Right. So I can only can control what I’m going to do with this information now. Um, and so my choice was not to dwell on any ill feelings toward her, because I’m just like, I just need to, I just need to focus on like, what is now, like, I don’t need to worry about that. Or like have some crazy falling out or some big relationship issue. I can move forward with what I want to do, which is, um, contact these people and let them know like that. I exist and see what happens from there.
Speaker 1: (29:33)
Yeah. I think that’s really generous of you, um, too generous and, and like diplomatic to, and I think it’s so important for us to every, I know everybody has different stories and there are certainly lots of factors that go into each one, but empathy for our young, young, young parents is so important. It’s like such an exercise in remembering what we were like and the kind of things we or our peers were doing. Um, it’s very, I think for a lot of people just like shocking and eye opening and some people can’t do it. They just can’t do it. They just can’t go there with their parents. But so, um, yeah, so I, I really recognize a lot of that. Um, that really resonates with me. I think a lot of people do. So you want to meet these people?
Speaker 2: (30:20)
Yeah. Yep. Um, so my, my mom was, you know, just like, just wait before you blow up your whole life. Just think about this for a couple of days. And I’m like distraught and I’m beside myself, I’m bawling my eyes out, like off and on that whole day. And I’m like, I’m not going to wait. And she’s like, what do you mean? You’re not going to wait. I’m like, I’m not going to, because if they don’t want to be a part of my life and if they want to reject me, why do I want to have all these crappy emotions right now? And then calm down and then have crappy emotions again, I’d rather just like, get the whole ball of wax out of the way, if it’s not going to work out. Like, I, like, I want to just feel all these feelings now and like purge myself of them and be done with it in case I have to move on, you know? And maybe they want to be a part of my life. Cause I don’t know. Um, and so she’s like, okay. And I’m like, well, yeah, I’m probably going to try to contact them today day. I was just like, I got to do it. And so, uh, so I started, you know, light Facebook stockings. So I, I knew was I knew who his wife was. I also knew he had four other daughters. So I have four sisters
Speaker 1: (31:43)
After growing up an only child.
Speaker 2: (31:46)
Oh no. Um, I had, I had a younger brother and then I had a half sister from my dad.
Speaker 1: (31:53)
Okay. All right. So now the family has just expanded exponentially.
Speaker 2: (31:58)
Yeah. Yep. Um, so I’m like, okay, I want to contact these people. So I start like looking up the name on the internet to see if I can find a phone number, what I can do. So then white pages.com comes up and you know, they only give you limited information unless you want to pay for a subscription. And it said a subscription is four 99 a month. And I was like, um, I think this is worth $5. Right. I can do this for $5. Yeah. This feels worth it to me. They got
Speaker 1: (32:40)
You. What a sucker. It felt, it felt pretty big. Yeah. Yeah. The least. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (32:50)
So I signed up for the subscription and I tried to find my dad’s number. My bio dad, and the numbers were wrong. Like that showed up. Okay. So then I’m going down and I’m like, all right, I better pick one of the sisters then like, that’s the next thing I can do. Brilliant. Okay. Yeah. And so the sisters, so how it, I had done all my research and I knew where everybody fit. So he had had a prior marriage before me and, uh, had, had, had, had one daughter and then was divorced and there was a gap and I have,
Speaker 1: (33:28)
He went to a party during that gap. Yep.
Speaker 2: (33:32)
And then he met his new wife and they had three more daughters. Got it. So the bright side is I wasn’t a part of any infidelity on his side. So with that going in. But, um, so my thinking was, well, I’ll call the oldest sister because she might be more empathetic to my situation cause she has a different mom to, you know, than the other three. Um, and so I called her or, well, I started out by texting her.
Speaker 1: (34:04)
Uh huh.
Speaker 2: (34:07)
Hey, is this Annie? And, and she’s like, yeah, who is this? And I’m like, I think I should explain that in a phone call, do you have time for a phone call?
Speaker 1: (34:19)
She’s like, what is this freaky thing that’s happening to me?
Speaker 2: (34:23)
And she goes, okay, but who is this? And I said, I really need to explain it over the phone. And so I talked to her and um, she seemed very skeptical,
Speaker 1: (34:37)
Of course. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (34:39)
Like very standoffish, you know? And I said, and I was like, I think your dad is my dad. And she’s like, well, who’s my dad. And I said the name. And she’s like, that’s not how you pronounce our last name. And I’m like, I’m sorry.
Speaker 1: (34:55)
Yeah.
Speaker 2: (35:00)
And um, I mean, so she stayed on the phone and she listened to me enough and I was like, I have, I have evidence. I have proof. I have DNA matches. I can text you them. You can look at my Facebook. I’m not a crazy person. All the things I was pretty desperate, you know, sounding I’m. Sure. Um, and then, uh, um, she said, well, do you mind if I talk to one of my other sisters about this first? And I was like, no, that’s fine. I mean, I’m pretty sure I would’ve agreed to anything just about
Speaker 1: (35:31)
Like anything to, to, to,
Speaker 2: (35:35)
Yeah. I want to be able to talk to who is my dad, you know? And, um, so she talked to her other sister and then they both called me both these two sisters and we’re talking and like from the minute we spoke, the other sister, it was like we were inside each other’s heads. Like there all along. It was crazy. I think I talked to her for an hour and um, they’re like, okay, well we’ll bring this information to mom and dad. It probably won’t be til tomorrow that you hear back. And I’m like, okay, that’s fine. You know? Um, you know, like I said, I probably would have agreed to anything. Um, and, uh, so they, they brought the information to, uh, their mom and dad. They didn’t seem surprised at all. In fact, they were like, well, you know, we had a conversation about this early in our marriage that if anything, like this ever happened, how we would handle it. Oh, okay. And I was like, that’s so mature.
Speaker 1: (36:43)
So imaginative and mature. Wow.
Speaker 2: (36:46)
I mean, I guess my bio dad knew that he had had a really crazy time in between marriages and he told her right off the bat that he didn’t, uh, he wasn’t discounting the fact that there could be random kids, you know, amazing
Speaker 1: (37:03)
Mom, wait, that’s really, self-aware dad. Very honest. And self-aware
Speaker 2: (37:09)
Right. And so, uh, so then my, my one sister texted me and said, Hey, um, he said, you can call him and gave me his number. And I’m like, now, am I supposed to call now? It was like 9:00 PM. So in he’s in Florida. So it was in Florida and I’m like, am I supposed to call now? Is it too late? He’s like, yeah. Now I’m like, Oh my gosh. Okay. So, um, so I called and, um, it was so easy. It’s like, we have the same personality I get from him. I get my nose from him. Like it, yeah, it was. So it was so weird. It was so surreal. Um, it like fast forward, you know, this was may, this was made by the time I had finally figured everything out and contacted them. And uh,
Speaker 1: (38:08)
Hold on one second, one second. Um, because the, the I’m going to text my husband and see if he can take the baby just to any other room than the one right here. Can you hear, I don’t know if you can hear, I can hear it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (38:22)
Yeah. I can. No. I said when they’re, when the, uh, sound started at the very beginning, we weren’t actually talking yet. I was like, your house sounds just like my house. Yeah. Like you were in kitchen. You were
Speaker 1: (38:36)
There. I always feel, I always feel bad when I ask them things like this. But when he does his podcasting, it’s like, turn off the water, turn off the air. Can’t be in the room, move everything. Don’t have TVs on. He’s like, no problem asking me all that stuff. You see what happened? All I can do is ask. I think, I think by now everybody knows that I’m in a, not sound, whatever the opposite is of soundproof room and a pretty, um, amateur setup.
Speaker 2: (39:11)
Yeah. I mean, you have kids. I have kids. I get it. Yep. Yep. Daughter’s room. I’ve banned her from her room.
Speaker 1: (39:21)
It’s so yeah. It’s like, yeah. Um, all right. So you’ve contacted him. You have the same nose. You’ve got your smarts from him. It was so easy. Yeah. He is a nice guy.
Speaker 2: (39:33)
Oh yeah. Yup. Uh, so I mean, fast forward to now this was may and now it’s February. Um, last or December. Um, I flew down there to Florida with sisters. So it was my whole family and her whole family. And we stayed with them for two weeks and two weeks. Yeah. And I got to meet him finally, but we’d been talking, you know, all the time up until then. Uh, they they’ve fully enveloped me in their family. Wow. Like this just is, you’re just a part of us now.
Speaker 1: (40:14)
I love people like that.
Speaker 2: (40:17)
But then on the flip side, my dad, I grew up with who I wasn’t, I of course tell them, you know, him and his wife. And it seems fair. My sister and my brother, cause I don’t want to be hiding anything. If I’m going to have a relationship over here, I need to let people know. I would never cut people out of my life. Um, but they’ve kind of done that. Yeah. So, I mean, we had our first Christmas this year where we weren’t invited over there or anything like that. Um, cause that’s really all the only time we saw them was holidays. Right. That’s the only one from that family that still talking to me is actually my sister, which half sister through my dad. So now she’s not,
Speaker 1: (41:07)
She’s your closest, longest friend?
Speaker 2: (41:10)
Well, my sister, she still calls me her sister. It doesn’t matter what our family does. I was like, you know, our relationship can be the same. We can talk. Like we always have, because she was the only one I ever really talked to consistently. Anyway. It’s really not anything different. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (41:34)
Yeah. Isn’t it interesting how, how it changes from person to like, I want to say from person to person, but like from like, if, if, if you’re the center it’s like you and your sister are going to be sisters through and through forever, no matter what, and, and you sort of that sort of like a heart, a heart feeling, right. Or like a, an emotional connection. And then, and then your, but your dad, you weren’t really connected to, now that he’s not your biological dad, you don’t have the, like your, my dad through and through forever feeling.
Speaker 2: (42:14)
Right, right, right, right. But I still call him, my dad, like, I’ll talk about him as my dad, but I’ll talk about my bio dad as my dad. So like, I, I have to just explain, like I just totally.
Speaker 1: (42:31)
Yeah. I mean, it’s complicated. Like it’s, it’s complicated because life is complicated. Like people are complicated in the world is complicated. So you can have all these things, you can have two dads. Um, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, wow. So, okay. And then did you, and um, did just to, just to bookend the beginning of this tale, did you help that the adopted cousin figure out his story?
Speaker 2: (42:59)
Yes. So, um, so as I’m building out this tree and I’m realizing that I have a different dad than who I thought things are making so much more sense with, with this girl’s tree that I made a mock-up of it.
Speaker 1: (43:13)
Right, right, right. Right. So now it’s like all the pieces fall together.
Speaker 2: (43:16)
Yeah. It’s my tree. I mean, she ended up being her great grandparents or my grandparents, you know, like she’s my first cousin’s child. And so because of the age difference. So I said, my dad was seven years older than my mom, but his next brother was 10 years older than Ryan and his next brothers, his other two brothers were older than that. So there’s a generation gap in the cousins. So like I mystery cousin, Luke would be my mom’s cousin or something because he was born in the sixties and I’m born in 1983, but turns out he’s my actual first cousin, all my first cousins were born in the sixties. On my dad’s side. There’s just a big age difference because of his difference between his brothers. Yeah. So, uh, so it turns out that Luke is my actual first cousin from my bio dad’s brother. Wow. So not only did my bio dad gets a surprise of me. His brother got the surprise of a son that he never knew existed because he was full for adoption.
Speaker 1: (44:33)
Wow. So, Oh, in the same year,
Speaker 2: (44:36)
Few months we’ll found out because, so my bio dad, just to put a neat little bow on everything, took the ancestry test too, just to make sure and solidify that everything I did was correct. He believed me right off the bat. He said, you know, I want this here so that no one else can say like you’re full of it or anything. I want to be able to show people, you know, I love this guy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (45:10)
Oh, nice. Yeah. Wow.
Speaker 2: (45:13)
Yeah.
Speaker 1: (45:15)
Wow. And have you, how, um, you, you said you have three children, are any of them of an age of like talking about this kind of thing where they have all these new family members or
Speaker 2: (45:26)
So I have a 15 year old and 11 year old and a seven year old. Um, so they’re all really of that age. Um, I introduced it to them as we have new family. We have more family. Like I never, I never would negate like older relationships. Like I never would say like these aren’t your grandparents anymore. This isn’t, you know, like I tilt, still tell them my sister is their aunt, you know, her. Yeah. You know, because they all go to the same school. So like I never would do that. It doesn’t matter if they want to be a part of my life or not. Like they’re still going to be what they are just said, we have new family, we just have more people to love us, you know? So, yeah. So they’ve just, they’ve taken to them really well. Like, um, when we went down to Florida, uh, my dad, you know, taught my son how to wear a light on do his, um, shed because my son was getting really into electricity electrician type stuff. Cause he’s like, yeah. Um, and we went fishing and you know, just like it was really cool. It just, you know, all the fields. Yeah,
Speaker 1: (46:47)
Totally. Oh man.
Speaker 2: (46:51)
Uh, so, so when I took, uh, that one cousin’s tree and I built it up to figure out my story and Luke’s story on his father’s side, once we figured out who his father must be, um, at the same time I was using Adam’s tree to build up the other direction because I had a hunch that the other parent was in his tree. And so we actually identified both his mother and his father. Oh, I didn’t even think of that. I was so focused on the, the brothers. Well, that’s how the circle of cousins. Right, right. Of course. Yeah. So his mother is, uh, so in the end he ends up being, he’s my first cousin and he’s Adam’s second cousin. So he’s related to Adam through his biological mother and he’s related to me through my biological father and by pure coincidence, me and Adam are related through our mothers. Wow. Nice big circle. This huge circle. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (48:00)
Yeah. I keep saying that every, I keep saying that I’ve, I mean, I keep saying like, I continue to be surprised. Like I kept yet. I keep waiting for, for, for the day when we have heard them all, but we it’s like every story has its own like twist and branches and roots that, um, that just show how complex this is. This is me.
Speaker 2: (48:24)
Yeah. Well, and I looked it up and there’s like, there’s no name for that. Like, there’s such a thing as double cousins where like a brother, two brothers and two sisters marry each other and you know, like people can be cousins on both sides. Right. But this isn’t that this is like some, some different sort of thing. But somehow, you know, we’re all related to each other in life.
Speaker 1: (48:50)
Well, cousins, I think you invented it. You maybe discovered it and we will call it circle cousins, the Daylin, the Daylin effect, circle cousins. Have you heard of it? That’s funny. Um, the, so cool. Thank you so much for telling me your story. And I think I also just want to, like, I want to thank you for, for being honest about your sort of like your emotional experience and, and talking about the stuff that’s been nice. It’s been really nice when people have nice stories, but you’re also acknowledging the stuff that’s been really hard.
Speaker 2: (49:24)
Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, my mom unfriended me on Facebook dad and grew up with, hasn’t talked to me since my grandma’s funeral.
Speaker 1: (49:34)
Yeah. That’s really hard. Yeah.
Speaker 2: (49:39)
So, I mean obviously as expected, his results did finally come in and what I, what I knew already. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (49:48)
Yeah. That’s hard, hard stuff. Um, do you have any advice for anybody else? That’s going through something like this at any and any fake, fake, fake, you know, chapter of this or any phase of this that you feel like you could have used or, or looking back on you, you want to like impart to people?
Speaker 2: (50:11)
I mean, one, I would say, just do what’s right for you and worry about your feelings first and foremost. It’s not like you don’t need to care about other people’s feelings, but don’t let it be about them when it’s more about, you know, don’t let that, that negative stuff, fill your head. And just, uh, I guess in my mom’s case, I don’t know that she knew, but you know, if you’re a parent and you do know something like that, tell your kids sooner than later. Because the thing that I struggle with the most is that these people are great. And, and I really, you know, love being a part of their lives now, but there’s so much that we missed. Right. You know, that we can’t get back. There’s nothing we can do about that. Right. I mean, if there’s an opportunity to, to tell people sooner than later, like just do it. Yeah. Um, and then, I mean, my passion for genealogy has just grown and I’ve helped a couple of people as a search angel. I helped a couple people find their families beyond the ones that were in my story. So that’s been kind of fun.
Speaker 1: (51:31)
Yeah. That’s such a great way to be of, be of service with your, with your knowledge and your, your emotional experience too. That is really neat. Taylin. Thank you so much. I’m so glad you contacted me this week. I’m so glad it worked out because, um, exactly how I said, like, I love going into a story, not knowing what’s going to happen. Um, I think I’ve heard them all, but I stopped breathing. Number of times through that story waiting, waiting for the, like the shoe to drop, like, who’s it gonna be? Who’s it gonna be? What’s it gonna be? It was really, really exciting. Um, well thank you. Thank you so much. Um, and okay, well, I’ll be in touch. We’re banking, we’re doing a ton of interviews right now, and then they’re all going to come out like, uh, in a couple months, but of course I will be in touch.
Speaker 1: (52:22)
If you want to send me a chart, explaining everything that you said, please send me all the charts and all the photographs that you want, um, and that you’re comfortable with, you know, or not, it’s totally up to you. Um, yeah, but thank you so much for giving me your morning. I guess it’s kind of closer to noon for you, but yeah, well, it’s, it’s 1230 afternoon. It’s afternoon for you. Thank you for that. Um, I really appreciate it. You’re very busy with three kids. Um, I know a lot about that, so I appreciate it. Thank them for me. Uh, and your husband. Um, and uh, yeah. Okay. Like let this is it that we did it. This is, this is what the podcast is like. All right. Thank you so much. I’m going to end the meeting. I’m going to hang up our recording, um, be in touch with me though. Okay. Perfect. Awesome. Thank you so much, Dylan. Bye bye.
American Baby: Author Gabrielle Glaser
Speaker 1: (00:02)
I’d like to promise you that it’s more graceful than this normally,
Speaker 2: (00:06)
But I wouldn’t worry about it if I read it,
Speaker 1: (00:10)
But that would be a lie. It would be a lie. Hi. Hi. How are you and how do you pronounce your last name? Glaser. Gabrielle laser. Not Glasser. Okay, ladies. Okay, great. Good morning.
Speaker 2: (00:31)
Um, you want to take a breath? Take a breath, take it out. Let me just take a breath. Let’s just talk and you get over your, um, please. Don’t worry. I’m not a fancy person. I am completely. We’re all, you know, we’ve all had these, these glitches, please. Don’t give it a second thought. What’d you have for breakfast?
Speaker 1: (00:52)
I didn’t have breakfast. You didn’t have breakfast? No, but I had two cups of coffee. Okay. Um, are you in New York?
Speaker 2: (01:00)
I am in New Jersey. Oh, where is miles? West of the empire state building.
Speaker 1: (01:06)
Okay. I kind of only barely can place that in my mind. I, but
Speaker 2: (01:13)
It’s a very journalistic town.
Speaker 1: (01:16)
What’s it called? Montclair. Oh, I didn’t realize it was. I know, I know people have moved to Montclair. Everybody’s moving to Montclair. Oh, everybody’s leaving Brooklyn. Everybody’s moving there. I didn’t know it was that far away. I thought it was more like a Hoboken.
Speaker 2: (01:31)
Oh no, it’s a little, yeah, it’s a little bit for their way. It’s the reason it’s not Hoboken. He is because it’s full of trees and parks and it’s really pretty. Are all your friends from Brooklyn moving here?
Speaker 1: (01:44)
Everybody’s moving there. Yeah. I mean, when I say everybody, but it’s just like, I mean of the people I know that are moving, it’s like comes up with them.
Speaker 2: (01:53)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It’s a cool town. It’s um, well it’s becoming wider. It didn’t used to have a really sizable, um, black middle-class, which made it not a lily-white place to raise your kids. And I think the prep, the housing prices have just that’s changed. It’s changed a lot. We’ve been here 12 years and I think my kids are grown. I have three girls and they’re all at the house. So we’re just in this big rambling house that we want to probably try to sell cinnamon little thing. Oh my God.
Speaker 1: (02:28)
At the end of the summer. And it’s just looming like at F almost at all moments of the day, it is there.
Speaker 2: (02:36)
Where are you moving to?
Speaker 1: (02:37)
We don’t know, but it will be in the air. It’ll still be in Los Angeles. But my, um, my it’s not a complicated story, but my in-laws own our house and they would like to sell it. So, so they have asked us to vacate. So we have said, okay, we will tell them. So, um, it’s okay. We always knew it was going to happen. So it had been an ongoing conversation and his parents are very nice and very patient. So it’s but yeah, so it’s been an on and off conversation. So they’d like us to be out by September. My daughter’s going to college at the end of August. Um, we don’t yet have a destination to move into. So in the meantime, I’m just, we’re just purging an order.
Speaker 2: (03:25)
Yeah. I’ve got, I just figured the rest of the details will fall into place. I have to purge and it’s just, yeah. I mean, and I’m not a hanger on her. We’ve moved a lot and even so it’s, you know, 12 years in one spot, you still, you accumulate a lot of gunk. It just piles up. Yeah. I, I did a big like purge
Speaker 1: (03:49)
Year ago or two years ago, a year ago. Um, but a lot of it, I didn’t get rid of, I just put it in the garage and it was just to see if we ever thought of it or needed it. And I don’t think we did. So now it’s a matter of convincing my husband that we never thought of these things. It’s been two years. Have you noticed that
Speaker 2: (04:07)
This was missing? Right? We’ll see. We’ll see. Right? Yeah. So
Speaker 1: (04:16)
You’re Gabrielle Glaser, you wrote American baby. And I have to tell you that people in the end, I come from the NPE world, which I’m sure you know, what that is now. Um, and this book was, it was sort of, it was circulate. People were talking about it, you know, on the, in the, in the support groups. And I saw it and I, um, I was like, Oh good. And you know, another book and kind of put him down a distant one day, one day, I’ll read it, reading lists that I have that always. And, um, and then Pamela contacted me and sent me the book and I was excited. I was excited for lots of reasons, but I was excited, um, that I didn’t even know it would apply. I didn’t even know. I honestly didn’t know what it was about. All I saw was that people were reading it and had something to do with adoption. And so I was like, um, well that doesn’t exactly apply to me. And um, so starting reading it, um, after, yeah. Can’t, I don’t even know,
Speaker 2: (05:23)
Could
Speaker 1: (05:23)
Not put it down. I’m not quite finished. Um, but, uh, I’m totally blown away. So I don’t want to, I don’t want to talk about the whole book because I want people to read it. Um, so what I want to tell anybody what, everything that goes on, but, but it is, it is a book about adoption, but that is not what this book is about. Look, if I, if I may say so, um, this book is it’s about the adoption industry, but it’s about, um, American society and it’s about the boom and it’s really about people and humans, um, and women, young, young women. Um, and so I, I have my list of questions to ask you, but I have to say that like I, um, I even was, was messaging with some, some groups of, of NPE and LDS and, um, DCS that I, um, kind of am in regular communication with it.
Speaker 1: (06:18)
And I kept saying like, you guys, I can’t stop crying. Like this book just like crushed me. And I’m not somebody that I’m a very emotional person, but generally if a book weaves story with historical information or, um, like, like, you know, narrative with fact, or like, I, I can, I can stay a little bit distant, but this time, um, this time I just couldn’t do it. And my, um, it could be because I have a daughter that’s 17, it could be that I had her when I was 22 and unmarried. Um, and those were just two. It was just sudden all of a sudden this whole concept was too close to home. Um, but it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful. And it’s powerful. Um, yeah. Well, I’m, I kind of know what some of the things that happened, but I’m just really still sort of on the edge of my seat for Margaret. And, um, so I’m gonna, um, have other people responded with, had emotional experiences like that with you, with this book? Have they,
Speaker 2: (07:28)
Yeah. Um, first of all, thank you for that. I really appreciate that. Um, introduction to your introduction and also for sharing with me, your reaction, a lot of people adoptees I’ve heard from, well, I’ve had a lot of emotional reactions, um, adoptees, particularly who were, um, adopted in the baby scoop era. Many people have contacted me from who were adopted through that same agency, that Louise wise, New York city. Oh, wow. Um, many people have reacted, many adoptees have reacted with shock and bewildered meant wondering w w you know, without giving too much away, we can, I don’t know if we’re going to get to this or not, but, um, you know, I, I discovered with the help of, uh, adoptive rights activists, I discovered some really serious, um, barbaric experiments that had taken place on adoptees surrendered through Louise wise services. And many people have reacted to that with utter shock and horror.
Speaker 2: (08:45)
Wondering if they were part of those, you know, part of that experimentation. They want to know if it’s possible to find out if they, of course, unfortunately it’s not. Um, we can get to that too. Uh, birth mothers have also responded very emotionally, many women from who are not politically active in the adoptee rights movement. They may have seen me New York times book review, or heard me on a podcast and then bought the book. I’ve heard read the book. I’ve heard from many women who have been unclear about whether they should try to reunite with their lost sons and daughters. And I think for them, it gave them an under it, it lessened the loneliness and the shame that they’ve been experiencing for 40, 50, 60 years. Um, I heard from one woman at an extraordinary woman in Maine who said that her life really mirrored Margaret’s in many aspects. And she couldn’t, you know, she was told to forget that she’d ever had her son. And of course she, she, she couldn’t, and it gave her the, um, wherewithal, I believe, to, to try to locate her daughter. Um, so yeah, I mean, I’m, I’m, I’ve heard from a lot of people crying and, and, and, um, moving and, um, w it, writing that book was the challenge and the honor of a lifetime. It was, it was a lot, there was a lot there.
Speaker 1: (10:34)
Yeah. I couldn’t imagine what that was like to sort of, well, you can tell me, I need to open my, I wrote out questions, but then in all of my turning off and turning back on the computer pave disappeared, so I’m going to find them. Um, but I can, I, I mean, I want to know what the process was like, but I imagine there was a sort of can of worms that you opened, or a Pandora’s box experience of thinking you were looking a little bit into the adoption industry, and you had, you had, in the beginning, you talk about being inspired by this friend of yours, um, uh, who was an adoptee and, um, was, did you just, was it just bigger and more than you ever imagined what you weren’t going to?
Speaker 2: (11:21)
Yes, it was much bigger than I had imagined. I covered adoption and assisted reproductive technology as a beat in the early two thousands in Oregon. So I was aware I’m having, well, let me back up. So one of the first stories that I ever covered as a reporter about adoption involved the following, I was in my Portland coffee shop, and I saw a flyer. These were the days before social media, and I saw a flyer that said it had, um, yellow stick figures, highlighter, yellow stick figures with Asian features and black hair. And I thought, what? This is so racist, what is, what, what is this depiction? And then the words of the flyer, then I looked up and it said, are you an angry Korean American adoptee? If so, so are we call this number? Here’s a support group. So I called the number.
Speaker 2: (12:18)
I pulled out the little, you know, one of those little things you tabs and I, I, uh, my editor and I, um, just decided, wow, this is a really interesting story. Oregon was the center of the birthplace of, uh, transracial international adoption. There is an agency called Holt based in Eugene that began, um, Korean American adoptions during the Korean war in the 1950s. And there was a whole history of social engineering and cold war politics involved in that that was riveting. But for this one story, I interviewed four different adoptees and we, I didn’t get in the way of their words. I didn’t try to craft it into a story. We just let, it was one of those in their own words, pieces with beautiful portrait photography as well. And the response to that story, which I think ran in 2003, maybe 2004, I think it was late 2003.
Speaker 2: (13:28)
It was so overwhelming. My, in my inbox, I was inundated the next day with emails from, um, Korean-American adoptees, but also from adoptive parents who were outraged absence on my list of questions, still boot lead outraged. They said, how dare they? How dare you? Oh, and the, and, and, and the, the, the adoptees were, they were angry about their experiences. They were angry about being deracinated. They were angry about their losses. They were angry about not knowing Korean. They were angry about not having access to food. They liked their whole lives. It was, it just opened my eyes so much about the narrative of adoption. And I realized, and I had a wonderful editor. He’s just an incredible guy. And we, you know, with that response, we realized, wow, we’ve hit a nerve we’ve, we’ve touched on something that is sacred in our society. We have this belief that adoption is a beautiful thing.
Speaker 2: (14:33)
And, you know, the response from the adoptive parents was we rescued these kids. How dare, how dare they, how dare you, they threatened to cancel their subscriptions, and you’re not allowed to talk about that. And so I really hit a nerve. And then I really started examining what adoption meant. I spent quite a long time, maybe a couple of years investigating what really happens, what the research behind it was, the losses, what it meant to have an open adoption, which, you know, that’s another can of worms. Um, but I, so to answer your question, I had a deep sort of understanding of the, um, of the parameters, but I didn’t know, once I returned to this story in 2015, 2016, I didn’t realize the breadth, the depth, the deceit. I knew that it was a deceitful industry, and I knew that it was a lucrative industry. And I knew that there was a lot of money made on the transaction of selling baby. Let’s be honest, the transaction of, of providing an adoptive family with a baby there’s money involved. And I didn’t realize, I didn’t realize for myself how powerfully, um, uh, money-driven the whole enterprise was. So I hope I answered. Did I answer your question?
Speaker 1: (16:16)
Absolutely. Absolutely. I think, yeah, I think you’re, yeah. You’re yeah, you’re completely, I think you’re saying that you, you had been studying it for a while, and then as you dove in for this book, it just was bigger, bigger and bolder than you had imagined. It was. Um, and I think for most people, I think most people, myself included and you just acknowledged it about yourself. We all have this, um, this one particular, we all, we all who are not adoptees, um, have this like one idea of what adoption is. And it never occurred to me that that was a creative narrative will get me. I thought that accepted it as part of the fabric of, of life or of America or of society or of altruism. I just thought, um, I, I keep thinking that my, that I have a really open mind and I have a really broad imagination and I can, you know, I’m pretty open to, to all possibilities.
Speaker 1: (17:16)
And then within this NPE experience for the past two years, for me, or three years, it’s like, I just continue to, to find that another layer of something I haven’t thought about, about peop people, about people, the people around me. And, um, I thought also coming to your book, I thought, well, I know two stories. I know one, I know of a person who, who, who pursued finding her, um, the child she had given up for adoption and was devastated to find out that, that her life had been so wonderful. And, and it, um, that story blew my mind. I learned, I heard it in college and, um, it totally blew my mind and I thought it was unique. You know, like I thought until I tell Gabrielle this story, what do I read this book? I’ll know about this one story. Um, and then I know somebody else that had a, um, a really intense experience having a child very young, um, that she did not give up for adoption, but the child, um, uh, uh, became ill and died, passed away.
Speaker 1: (18:25)
And I am constantly thinking about the way that when you meet people, you don’t know what they’ve been through. And this, by the time she was 22, she had already had a baby been married, lost the baby, and then divorced and, and she’s. Um, and I just, like, I just think, I think about her a lot. I think about that story a lot and this book, so I thought, I thought, Oh, well, I really have thought of these things. And then this book was so much bigger and I, and I thought, Oh, my one unique story. And then I’m reading. Then you’ve got numbers in there in the millions, millions of young girls, um, young women, having their babies taken from them in all sorts of different ways, coerced from them, um, or they were manipulated into giving them up. Um, and then what has happened to these children and nightmare? Um, um, yeah, yeah, I can, and I hope I don’t sound too dark and heavy and doomsday. It’s an excellent book. I really recommend reading it. It’s, it’s, um, uh, uh, fun and, and sort of intriguing and compelling narrative that carries it along as well. Um, so was what was the biggest surprise for you going through, um, the, because you’ve written a few books before, and you’ve done re you’re a writer you’ve done and your journalists. So, um, so some of this process was practiced. So what, what surprised you about it?
Speaker 2: (20:05)
What surprised me? There were many things that surprised me. Number one, the numbers, at least between 1946 and 19, the early 1970s, 1972, um, an estimated 3.5 million women conceived babies out of wedlock. And, you know, there was no birth control even for married couples at that time until Griswold versus Connecticut in 1965, legalized the pill, um, for, for married couples, think about that. Um, there was no sex education. Of course there was no birth control. Uh, I just said that, sorry. Um, and no abortion. And the sexual revolution was simmering. And a lot of young women got pregnant. There was privacy and new suburban homes. Uh, there was privacy in the backseat of the family Buick and these children who were conceived or a problem that was supposed to go away and they helped fill the need during the conservative years of the baby boom of couples who were unable to conceive, they helped them have the perfect American family, and this was supposed to just be the best solution for everyone involved.
Speaker 2: (21:31)
And I was unaware of the secrecy of it. I was unaware that in most cases with the exception of Alaska and Kansas adoptees in every other state were issued an original birth certificate that was sealed everyone, but state officials or adoption agency officials. And then they were issued an amended document listing their adoptive name and their adoptive mother and father as the original parents in its stead, as the, as, as the document that gave people, their origin stories. And as somebody who is, who is an historian, who looks at history, who looks at documents, I was blown away by the fact
Speaker 1: (22:19)
Dad is one of the things that has just ripple. I don’t know, ripping rippling, rushing, like pounding through the community right now is people discovering them. Birth certificates were the second document, right? And they’re falsified, right?
Speaker 2: (22:35)
Exactly. These are federal documents that have been falsified their lives. And that, to me, the stolen origin story of millions, of these men and women and for their birth parents and for their adoptive parents, for everyone involved, this was a, this was a foundational lie, a social gigantic social experiment that was built upon a foundational lie. So that part of it was shocking. The part of adoptees still in 41 States unable to be able to access those, those documents. I mean, it is an ongoing legal battle, adoptee rights, uh, um, ability to, you know, the, the, the, the rights of adoptees, the human and civil rights of adoptees to be able to, to obtain their original birth certificates is, is I can’t believe anybody’s still fighting about it, but they are.
Speaker 1: (23:43)
I have a question that I thought of when I was reading the book and you’re reminding me of it now. Um, and actually it comes up whenever I talked to the late discovery adoptees, especially, but so, so, so the government changes the birth certificate, and then the original one is quote, unquote sealed. Who is that for? Like, if no one can get you, if that’s sealed, like, what I mean is, is it just because sealed is a more, um, civilized for lack of a better word, um, word than burning? Like, why didn’t they just burn? Like if no one can get to them, right. When and how and why, and where would anybody need that sealed docu?
Speaker 2: (24:30)
That is such a great question. And, you know, part of the, the, the, the, um, history of that is that in the 1920s and thirties, there were baby fever. There was one particular woman who operated out of Memphis, who would steal babies, literally snatched them from women in homes throughout the South, who were to Porsche. Her name was Georgia tan. And she told mothers that she was going to take their sick children to the doctor. And then she would later report that the children had died. She snatched babies from nursery schools. She snatched babies from women who were still under anesthesia after having just given birth. And she had a really elaborate, um, scheme to sell those babies to prominent celebrities politicians, um, in, from Joan Crawford to the sister of the Supreme court justice, Abe Fortas. And if you wanted a baby in those days, there was no w w w the only way to get one was to adopt there.
Speaker 2: (25:50)
Weren’t if you couldn’t conceive, there were no assisted reproductive assisted reproductive technologies that could help you. So if you had the money, you would just buy a baby. And that secretive system began in California. It then, um, sort of ripple throughout the country. It started in Tennessee ripple throughout the country. California was one of the first biggest States to adopt it. New York was right along 19, mid, 1930s. And it was to cover the tracks. That secretive system was to cover the tracks of black market babies. And yet the laws, those anachronistic laws put in place to protect a crime are still, we still have them California’s to have some still has them, Florida still has them. You name it, Virginia. Um, they’re in place throughout the country. And who are those secret sealed birth certificates for? That is a great question. That is a great one.
Speaker 1: (27:03)
Yeah. Yeah. Wow. I mean, I just said, I don’t want to, I don’t want to sound like this is all doom and gloom, but this is really heavy stuff. This is really, um, the thought the thought of, of babies being is, uh, uh, is, is horrifying. And I think one thing that, that struck me is that I think probably if you’d asked me, did I know that, that there were, you know, did I know about babysat teaching in the olden days? I would have said yes. Um, but the dates that you’re saying, I mean, this whole thing was happening up into the seven people I’m talking to people who were those babies. These people are still alive. No. I mean, I’m sorry, P people that were adopted, adopted, you know, people that are discovering, they were adopted, um, you, you mentioned babies being born up through 1972, right? So like, that’s, that’s like yesterday, this, this, this is like very recent history. Um, and, and maybe that’s part of, part of the, the, the heaviness, um, is that this is, this is, this is still alive in people’s. This makes sense. It’s still alive in people’s history. Consciousness is still alive in their, in their living experience. Um, so that being said, um, can you speak at all to the ways that the adoptive industry has changed?
Speaker 2: (28:39)
I was just going to go there. I was just, I was just, I was just going to go there. Well, the hope is, um, adoption fraud still exists. There are, you know, there is still deceit, um, on all sides of, of the, the deceit that, that I talk about in the book is that birth mothers were deceived, adoptive, families were deceived and adoptees were deceived. They were all deceived. Everybody was told the adoption agencies really played God. They, um, created fictitious origins for about the babies themselves, for the adoptive parents and for the birth parents, they created fictitious, um, destinations, Oh, your baby’s going to go live with the diplomat or your baby’s going to come with college. Professors got a circular driveway that was routine. And adoptees, of course, were deceived with the narrative that their mothers didn’t want them. And, um, their mothers loved them so much. They gave them to someone else to, uh, and that is a foundational lie. Of course. Imagine what that does to your sense of trust. Oh, the person who was supposed to love you most in the world, uh, made the choice not to, not to raise you and to give you to strangers. I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s a very reassuring narrative that’s still used, right? Yes.
Speaker 3: (30:04)
Okay. So if you, before now, I would have said like, that’s what you said, but
Speaker 2: (30:09)
Here’s the, here’s what changed. Okay. So in 1973, when Roe V Wade was passed, women had far more reproductive choices. Single motherhood became much more acceptable. Birth control became far more available, and something had to change in this secretive systems. So w across the country, it’s sort of happened, um, organically in a variety of different places. Adoption, social workers realized, look, we have to get these birth parents, these birth mothers, a choice about what’s happening. They already, if they’re unable to raise a child on their own by them, that the research was clear that, um, it was difficult on adoptees to not know their origin stories. And it was certainly difficult on birth mothers to not be able to know what had happened to their sons and daughters. So even w it began with adopt the birth mothers, uh, providing maybe some medical history, full medical history and some photographs, and then evolved to a much more open arrangement where the birth mother actually chose the family with whom she wanted to place her children.
Speaker 2: (31:34)
And then in the best of all possible worlds can remain a part of the child’s life, a part of the, her son or daughter’s life. And that gives the adoptee the ability to integrate his or her, what, you know, okay, this is my, this is how I came into the world. This is my birth mother. This is my, these are my adoptive parents. And that’s a much more, I mean, it just makes so much sense that you don’t have big secrets that way you understand, okay, well, this is why my birth mother made the choice she did. And these are the people who are raising me and I’ve got this. That’s how that’s how open adoption is when it works. And when it works well, that’s how it is supposed to look, but it is still a very difficult, you know, I don’t want to be able to do doom and gloom either, but, you know, we need to, we need to realize and be very open about the fact that adoption begins with loss period, full stop.
Speaker 4: (32:42)
It begins with a rupture and ruptures are drama. And even if it’s a very happy, wonderful, I mean, I don’t know what celebrity adoptions actually look like, you know, on the, on the inside of them. I mean, Oh, how cool you get to be raised by, uh, you know, uh, a superstar, but what is that like on the inside that super certain mother and that superstar father might be extraordinarily good parents, but even so where is that? You know, where’s that connectivity to, to, to your, your own genetic tree, to your own family tree, to your own family history, to people who look like you, people who
Speaker 2: (33:35)
Like vinegar. I mean, I hear these stories from people, Oh, I grew up in this household where they were, everybody loves sweets. I can’t stand sweets. I have assault too. That those are the kind of really small, but they’re not small details. They’re huge. If you grow up in a household where you have to be 18 before you really discovered that you can indulge your, your salt tooth, because at that point, you’re able to buy your own food or choose your own food. When you go off to college, it sounds crazy. Right. But it’s not, that is, that is trying to fit a round peg into a square hole, right. For a really long time. And it’s mysterious and difficult.
Speaker 4: (34:23)
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (34:25)
So, so in the research there are still, what do you, w what would you say still needs to change around the adoption? Um, do we call it the adoption industry, adoption culture?
Speaker 2: (34:43)
I think adoption should not be secret. Everything about adoption. Shouldn’t be open adoptees, deserve the right to know who and where they come from, regardless of, of, of, of, uh, regardless of whether it is an orphanage in Ethiopia or the girls who were adopted from China, who are now coming of age and are, you know, finishing college and launching their own, you know, early adulthoods, everybody deserves to know more than just the, the, the, you know, the bare outlines of, of their stories. I’ve heard so many. And a lot of it from a lot of adoptive fathers actually, who, Oh, I’m a father of two adopted daughters from China, and they were just plunked down in a rice Patty. And, um, that’s how we got them. And I, to me, I just want to say, Whoa, that is such a reductive story of your daughter’s life, and you owe it to your daughter to try to help her find out more. So we, I just think, I’m not saying that we should not have adoption. Of course, parents are able to raise the children, they conceive and bring into the world, but we should abolish secrecy around adoption. That’s what I believe.
Speaker 1: (36:24)
Yeah. It’s not all or nothing. It’s so complex. So, but opening up, opening up the conversation, opening up communication, stopping the secrets. That’s really like the, the theme, uh, these days, um, you know, especially in an NPE community, but
Speaker 4: (36:42)
Yeah.
Speaker 1: (36:51)
What would you, do you think that you had was the most, cause I already asked you about what surprises there were, but, um, has there been any unexpected outcomes from this project that you, you didn’t see it coming?
Speaker 2: (37:12)
No. And I think because I had covered adoption as a reporter, I was aware of what some of the reactions were going to be. There has, there has been some defensiveness on the part of adoptive parents. Um, there’s a lot of when I’ll give talks, there’s a lot of response along the lines of my adoptee. Doesn’t think that way. Um, that’s not how my adopting it and it’s, there’s, there’s just, there’s a defensiveness there. So that, that didn’t surprise me. And, uh, I need to find the language to be able to gently, uh, approach that in a way that does provide for more openness, without being accusatory. Um, I’ve heard from a lot of adoptees who are disappointed with their birth families. Yeah. A lot of adoptees are disappointed with their birth families, um, and some, and more than I expected in. So let’s just go, I don’t mean to be so wonky here, but in the States that have allowed birth mothers to redact their names.
Speaker 2: (38:33)
So couple States, handful States, New Jersey being one of them fewer than one half of 1% of the mother. So, but let me just back up in New Jersey, New Jersey passed a law, allowing the opening of, uh, original birth certificates in 2014, it gave mothers two year birth mothers, a two year window to redact their names. So with the law eventually opening, um, the birth certificates on January 1st, 2017. So again, one half of 1% of all birth mothers chose to redact their names. It could be that many of those mothers may live in California and they weren’t up to date on New Jersey adoption law changes. But even so typically, you know, in the, in the States that have done that have offered that that is, that is a real, it’s a fraction of 1% tiny,
Speaker 4: (39:31)
Teeny tiny,
Speaker 2: (39:33)
But I’ve also heard from a number of people who have more than that, you know? So in other words, more than a fraction of 1%, and maybe it’s just, you know, representative who, who chooses to write to me, whose, who adoptees, who, whose birth mothers have refused contact, um, that has been, um, that that’s really sad. Something else that’s so incredibly painful, um, is when, uh, adoptees learned that their, their birth parents have passed away. Yeah. That is, I cry every time I’m going to cry just right now, just thinking about, Oh, I finally worked up the courage to be able to, um, take a DNA test and to, to, uh, file away for vitals, for the, you know, in States that have opened to file from my original birth certificate. And I discovered that my birth mother had died three years before or eight years before, or that is just devastating because along with that loss is the story it’s gone. It’s gone. Not only were those records lost all those years story is gone.
Speaker 4: (40:54)
Yeah.
Speaker 2: (40:55)
So that has been, that has been a very powerful to hear.
Speaker 4: (41:07)
Yeah. Yep. Um, and, and what do you think, do you have any, anything, um, how do I want to ask this, uh, that you, that you feel like, what would be your, what would, what does do you feel like with this, with this project, you, you have a book, but do you have an ultimate goal?
Speaker 2: (41:38)
Oh, without a doubt. I, um, absolutely squarely, um, in the camp of every single state opening, giving adoptees absolute open access to their original birth certificates. That is my hope. My hope was to draw attention to this secretive system. And especially during this period of national reckoning of our social injustices, that isn’t gigantic one equality at this moment where we are looking at our own racist history, our own racist present, we need to extend what equality looks like for everybody. And there is a whole class of people who are adoptees, who, who, who are lacking the human and civil right to, you know, I keep, I keep saying it, uh, you know, to access their origin story. There are just think about it. Okay. 3.5 million adoptees from that period, add another, um, about a million and a half other adoptees. Many of whom were adopted from overseas and people who were not counted in those statistics.
Speaker 2: (43:03)
There are as many there isn’t the government doesn’t track adoptions. It used to, it did briefly and in perfectly, and, and, um, partially there are an estimated five to 6 million adoptees living in the United States today. And just add the millions of people who are connected to those opted people, millions upon millions, their parents, their birth parents, their siblings, their children. This is something that ripples and ripples and ripples and ripples. So, yes, my hope is that we draw attention that I, you know, that, that, that this book, that this work, that these podcasts, that w w your podcasts, the work that you’re doing to draw attention to the secrecy of your experience, it’s, to me, it’s, it’s, it’s high time that we examine our secret pasts, and I have to hand it to you to, you know, do what you’re doing and to not only recover from the shock, but then turn around and, and, and put the shock to work.
Speaker 4: (44:18)
Right. Yeah. Yeah. I like putting it that way. Absolutely. Is there anything that I didn’t ask you that you wished I had asked you, is there anything that the really good interviewees V viewers always ask? Um, I think you really covered it.
Speaker 2: (44:43)
I also really love how you, uh, identified with the story of Margaret as a young woman who had had a baby as a single mother. And then as someone who’s got a 17 year old daughter, I also have three daughters. And my youngest was a teenager when I was just still a teenage she’s 19. Um, but she was a teenager when, when I started writing the book and it was about a four year process. So she was probably 13, 14. She was probably 13, 14 when I started. And just watching her go through young adolescents in the late 2000 tens, all the wild talking to Margaret who’s the protagonist of the book, the birth mother, um, involved in the book, Mark and Margaret, and I became extremely close and she lives about 45 minutes from me when there’s no traffic. And it was just these, these bookends of, of looking at this, this woman’s experience, she’s now a grandmother and, and seeing it through my daughter’s eyes and also remembering
Speaker 4: (46:04)
The shame of
Speaker 2: (46:12)
The shame of sexuality during the years, even when I was growing up. I remember once I lied to my mother and said that a friend’s parents were going to be home, and then of course they weren’t, and it was a Saturday afternoon. And my mom found out that I had lied and she came back and sort of yanked me out of the basement and, and it was humiliating and, and frightening. And I got grounded and, and, and I still, I w I just wonder what was going through her head. Was she afraid I was going to, what was, you know, what was, was it that she was afraid we were up to no good. Which we weren’t, somebody had a, you know, somebody had a joint.
Speaker 4: (47:00)
No,
Speaker 2: (47:04)
Yeah. Just, you know, I I’ve, I’ve, I’ve reflected on my own, you know, my own upbringing, how I brought up three girls, what it’s like today. Um, that’s been, that’s been a powerful thing as well, too, to look at how luckily, how times have changed and how we are accepting of, you know, women’s sexuality in a way that
Speaker 4: (47:27)
We teach more, so much, so much,
Speaker 2: (47:30)
But yeah.
Speaker 1: (47:33)
Work to be done. But indeed, and I can say that as a observer of society. And then also as a mother, it’s hard, it’s very, very hard and complex, harder than I it’s harder than I imagined it would be. Um, not in, I mean, that sounds like I was very naive going into parenting and I was, I was 22, but, um, but I just thought, I thought I’m so open and communicative, and it’s, it’s still, hasn’t been, um, a straight path or, uh, you know, to dealing with, um, my, my own daughter’s development and exploration of the world and what I’m comfortable with and what I want her to be comfortable with and what she’s comfortable with me being calm. You know, it’s just, it’s, um, this is complex
Speaker 2: (48:18)
And I look back and I think there were things about which I was not terribly, um, intentional. I just sort of was reflexive on some certain things. And, and I wish I wish I could go back and I know this doesn’t really have to do with the book, but I wish I could go back. It has given me really a different lens to go back and look at the messages I was transmitting, the messages I continue to transmit. And, you know, I remember I wouldn’t let my daughters get their ears pierced until they were 12 or 13. Why did that come from, right? Where did that come from? And what did that mean? What was I conveying with that? So,
Speaker 1: (49:03)
Yeah, so many things, so many small, small things that add up into a life, you know? Um, yeah. And, and I, I keep coming back around to this so often, um, in this podcast and, um, and, uh, it all, it’s just comes back to feminism just so much comes back to the way that women are treated in the rights of women and the, um, legal, legal, littoral rights of women and the, um, societal community conversation, rights of women. And, um, so this, you know, this book is about adoption, but like I said, it’s about so many other things,
Speaker 2: (49:46)
Really. Yeah. One thing I didn’t, I forgot to mention, which was just shocking to me to discover that premarital sex was actually a crime on the books in New York state until 1971. It was a crime until 1971, Margaret Earl who’s the protagonist of the book did not Margaret Earl cats. She did everything she could to try to keep custody of her son as a young teenage mother. But at the end of the day, she was threatened with legal action. She didn’t sign, surrender papers for the crime of having sex before marriage. It’s, that’s pretty shocking. 1971, finally, those laws were allowed to expire.
Speaker 1: (50:34)
Okay. There you are. Yeah. Where I lost you was, um, Margaret did everything she could.
Speaker 2: (50:43)
Oh boy. Wow. That was a long time. Margaret did everything she could to maintain custody of her son as a young teenage mother. Right.
Speaker 1: (50:51)
She did. She does every, I mean, can you just imagine, I mean, of course you can imagine this was your book, but it just, I just think about all the planning she did and how meticulous they were, and they didn’t even have the internet and how
Speaker 2: (51:03)
Right. And at the end of the day, she didn’t, even though she was defying her parents, even though she was defining her religious community, even though she was defying, you know, she, she, she sort of went through these concentric circles of how, how, how much she didn’t care, what people thought she was going to keep her baby and marry her baby’s father. At the end of the day, she was thwarted by New York state law, which made premarital sex a crime until 1971. So yeah, that’s, that was shocking to me. She didn’t have a leg to stand on once that was, and then nobody explained it to her of course. But of course. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: (51:46)
Yep. Yeah. So difficult. Well, thank you for writing this book. Thank you for sharing these stories. I’m um, I’m so grateful that it, it, it came across my, this, this, this, this, this opportunity came across, kind of came across my lap, um, came across my desk. Um, I am, uh, it’s really, it’s really got me. I mean, just for lack of a more tequila, it’s like really opened my mind or more original way to say it’s really opened my mind, but it’s just got me thinking. Um, there’s just so much to think about the way that we do things, um, in this country when it comes to parenting and family and children and, um, and birth, we just have so, so much to, to think about and work on. Um, and I, and I, and your book, I just can’t even, I can’t recommend it enough to people. It just, I really think people need to know about, um, about what went on and then what there is still to do and, and, you know, legit, legally and logistically, there’s a lot to do, but, but also just within the, just the paradigm, just the paradigm and the conversation around adoption, um, there just needs to be more awareness
Speaker 2: (53:01)
Well about all sorts of issues that are secret and secretive. And, um, I really have to hand it to you. I really appreciate your having me on and your kind words and your generous appraisal. And, um, I’m really intrigued by, by the work that you do and think it’s just so important. And, um, yeah, there’s lot we have yet to continue to, to, um, to work on.
Speaker 1: (53:30)
Yeah. Yeah. But maybe if we, you know, between the two of us, um, you know, the conversation is growing and that’s all we can do.
Speaker 2: (53:39)
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Great. Thank you so much for your time. You so much. Thank you so much. All the best. Good luck moving. What purging sending your daughter off? It’s hard just to know she going to go far. Does she know where she is in New York? Wow. Where’s she going to be? It’s going to be at the new school. Wow. Congratulations.
Speaker 1: (54:01)
It’s very exciting. We’re very excited and very proud. Um, so, and we love New York, so that’s great. Won’t be, won’t be such a foreign place.
Speaker 2: (54:12)
Good, good. Yeah. Wonderful. All right. Have a great day. You too. Bye. Thank you so much. Bye.