Be Kind to Yourself. It’s a Journey.
By Kara Rubinstein DeyerinIt’s been about 18 months since I discovered the man on my birth certificate was not my biological father and I joined the growing tribe of people who are lucky enough to call themselves NPEs, or Not Parent Expected. I thought once I discovered who my biological father was and had time to process my feelings, I’d be able to put this NPE nonsense behind me. It took me about six months to be sure I’d found the man behind half of my genes. I gave myself another six months to let it all sink in and then, I hoped, everything would return to how it was before my DNA surprise.
Great, I thought, let’s wrap that rollercoaster ride up, stuff it in a box, put it in the deep recesses of my mind, and slam the door shut. I processed. It was time to move on. But I couldn’t. When my best friend died of cancer 15 years ago, I was eventually able to work through my grief. She’s still in my heart, and sometimes something reminds me of her and I smile. Smile! With my NPE status, I compressed all of those emotions and tried to consider myself “over it.” But it wasn’t working, I still couldn’t smile about it.
In DNA NPE Friends, an NPE Facebook support group, a fellow NPE asked everyone to list just one word to describe how they feel about their NPE experience at that moment. The emotions you feel when you discover you’re an NPE are intense and change over time. I tallied the more than 600 responses and generated a word cloud.
What struck me most was the number one feeling—lost. As soon as you realize you’re an NPE, you lose your tether to the world. To the family you grew up with. To the person you were just moments before. You are adrift. You are confused and overwhelmed. I remember reading a description of an experience in the “Twilight Series” that reminds me of what it’s like to discover you’re an NPE. In “Breaking Dawn,” Jacob describes what it feels like to “imprint” on Bella and Edward’s baby daughter Renesmee the first time he sees her. “Everything that made me who I was—my love for [Bella], my love for my father, my loyalty to my pack, the love for my other brothers, my hatred for my enemies, my home, my name, my self—disconnected from me in that second—snip, snip, snip—and floated up into space.”
For Jacob, seconds after he’s adrift, millions of new cables immediately chain him to his new center, Renesmee. When my NPE status was new, I was afraid I might float away. I felt alone, confused, and overwhelmed. As I considered my name, who my pack was, what it meant to have a different biological father, other emotions bubbled to the surface: cheated, betrayed, anger. I thought about all the times I didn’t fit it and now I knew why. Feelings of truth, vindication, and validation were added to the mix. Rejection was next as I reached out to my new family, only to be told they did not want contact. As an NPE, I’ve had to work hard to retie many of my lines and I still am. In rebuilding my identity with the information my DNA surprise imposed on me, I’ve also added loved, supported, and awakened to the list of my NPE emotions.
Even after you’ve remade your connections and feel tethered to the world again—this may take days, weeks, or months—there are still those terrifying moments when something reminds you of your NPE status. In an instant, you lose your grip and find yourself lost or overwhelmed again. It’s funny the things that may send you spiraling: someone mentions adoption, you have to check your race on a box, father’s day, a photograph, a memory . . .
I now understand I will never be “over” being an NPE. This is something I will carry with me for the rest of my life. My NPE status will forever be part of the definition of who I am. Sometimes I will have rough days, but the ties connecting me to my world are now stronger than they ever were before. I feel reborn.
Oh, in case you’re wondering, Monochopsis means the subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place.At age 44 through over-the-counter DNA testing, Kara Rubinstein Deyerin discovered she wasn’t half black but Jewish. She’s an NPE (not parent expected), mom, wife, writer, cook, knitter, and connoisseur of all things human. Follow her on Twitter @UnexpectedlyJ and look for her blog, Unexpectedly Jewish in Seattle.