Family Secrets

How does it feel to think you’re related to a monster—and then, decades later, to find out you’re not?

The gossip reaches me on New Year’s Eve, two days after my birthday—worth mentioning only because birthdays often put me in a reflective state that can easily turn to melancholy, and this year is no different. I’m in Mexico City, on vacation, about to go to dinner with my husband, mood beginning to lift. Then I receive the email from my sister.

It reads: “Considering that Mom could pass any day, I thought I should tell you a.s.a.p. in case you don’t know about it, which I assume you don’t.”

The news she shares is second-hand gossip from an old family “friend” who showed up to visit my mother—then dying of brain cancer—to reminisce, burn private letters and relive the good old days. The friend, who played little part in any of our lives for decades, revealed to another family member that my father wasn’t really my father. That person told the sister who emailed me. Now I’m the last in the four-person chain to find out.

As for my mom: she’s not talking, and never will, which isn’t surprising given her love of secrets and lifelong fear of being judged for parenting errors. Her fears are valid. I do judge her, most of all for not keeping my sisters safe when we were all younger.

Before leaving our hotel room to go to dinner, I reply to my sister: “That’s a big surprise! How lucky I don’t feel especially attached to ‘Dad’ or his side of the family or it could be upsetting.”

I take pride in my stoic response and the fact that I severed relations years ago with our late father—an undeniably “bad man.” But that stoicism is really only disorientation. I have no idea, at this time, that my identity and much of what I’d thought about both my parents will have to be recalibrated.

I never would have imagined that my mom, a self-identified, non-practicing Catholic with an affinity for the Virgin Mary, probably had multiple affairs when she was still married to her first husband, who came from a large Sicilian-Polish family. But there was a lot about our family I never suspected until each bomb dropped: for example, when, at age 14, I learned that my two older sisters, then 16 and 19, had been molested for years by the sweet-tempered, funny and charming man we called “Dad.”

How long did you spend researching and writing The Lost Family?

Altogether, about three years. I first wrote about Alice Collins Plebuch’s fascinating genetic detective story in The Washington Post in early 2017. The response to that story, which was hundreds of emails from other consumers sharing intimate and moving DNA testing stories, convinced me the topic needed to be a book, and I started researching for the proposal soon afterward. But the bulk of the work was done during 2018 and 2019. In The Lost Family, I revisit Alice’s story and tell it much more fully. I was able to travel to Washington State and spend time with her, as well as do historical research going back a hundred years to illuminate her family’s astonishing story. And as I follow her story, I also tell many other tales from people I Interviewed—wrenching, moving stories of how this technology is changing how we see ourselves and how we talk to one another, not to mention how we think about truth and the past.

What so intrigued you initially that you were willing to devote so much time and attention to this issue? Did you realize early on how complex the subject would be?

I was really intrigued by the idea that questions about genetic origins and family could lead individuals, families, and the culture at large to deep explorations of essential human questions about identity, what makes a family, and how we define ethnicity. The science was indeed quite complex, and so were the experiences of people affected by this technology. I got to interview a lot of genetic genealogists about their techniques and the history of the field, and to tour a DNA testing lab and speak with a number of scientists and historians about human genetics and autosomal DNA testing.

If keeping a secret—or being a secret—feels detrimental to your physical or mental health, it’s not your imagination. The expression “toxic secrets” is neither hyperbole nor a figure of speech. Researchers increasingly are learning that secrets place a profound burden on mental and physical health.

It appears it’s not the secret itself, or the act of concealing it in social situations, but rather the psychic energy it requires that contributes to the burden. It’s a pain that plays out in private. Researchers at Columbia University who have been studying the effect of secrets found that the degree to which secrets affect well-being is related to the frequency with which the mind wanders to them, suggesting that it’s the ruminating about secrets that’s damaging. This was true regardless of the significance or importance of the secret. Any secret frequently and turned over and over in the mind, researchers discovered, diminishes wellbeing. The damage is related to the extent to which a person is preoccupied by a secret. In other words, it’s not keeping secrets that hurts, according to Michael Slepian, PHD, lead researcher of the Columbia studies, “it’s having them.”

And what most causes people to obsess about their secrets? In a study called “Shame, Guilt, and Secrets on the Mind,” published in the journal Emotion, Slepian* and his colleagues surveyed 1,000 participants about feelings of shame and guilt associated with their secrets. They also asked survey responders how often they thought about and concealed their secrets each day in the prior month. Perhaps surprisingly, participants spent less time concealing than they did dwelling on their secrets, and it was shame rather than guilt that caused the greatest amount of daydreaming about secrets.

The 1953 discovery of DNA’s double helix and the 2003 completion of the Human Genome Project not only have transformed medicine but also have led to the advent of direct-to-consumer DNA testing, an unforeseen consequence of which has been that many people who test unearth long-buried family secrets.

I’m one of them. When I was an infant, my parents divorced and my mother disappeared without a trace, so I’m well acquainted with the yearning for an unknown parent. I felt abandoned anew when, 50 years later, a test revealed that I’ve never known either of my genetic parents—that my father wasn’t my father. At the same time, I discovered I’m Italian, not Russian; my family was Catholic, not Jewish; and my fear of the cancers rampant in my father’s family was unfounded.

My story—at least the second chapter—isn’t unique. A 2019 PEW Research Center survey found that 27% of home DNA test users discover unknown close relatives. Of these, those whose tests reveal misattributed parentage are known as NPEs—a name referring to the circumstances of conception—a non-paternity event or not-parent-expected.

These surprising results and their ripple effects illustrate what Libby Copeland, in her new book on the subject, The Lost Family, calls the “profound and disruptive power of DNA testing.”

DNA surprises often appear to cause a great deal of emotional upheaval. Would you describe it as traumatic?

Any surprise can be traumatic, but a DNA surprise raises one of life’s most fundamental questions: Who am I? Your very identity is made up of your memories, your shared stories, and experiences with family and friends. When you find out that something is not true, or not exactly true, it is a major shock to your emotional system.

Would it be accurate to say that people experiencing this kind of trauma don’t always recognize it as trauma? Perhaps they think they’re overreacting or are less capable than others of handling things?

It is easy to tell yourself, “This is no big deal. I should be able to handle this.” But “handling something” is a process. And that process may involve feeling upset and expressing various emotions. Like any trauma, the emotional reactions can come in waves and when you least expect them. You and your family members both may minimize your experience by emphasizing you had good parents, you shouldn’t be upset, or even that you’re being selfish by looking for answers. I tell people that I don’t know what qualifies as an overreaction to news that changes your understanding of your world. Your reaction is not a sign of emotional weakness—it’s a sign that you are in touch with reality enough that you react when reality changes. I suggest you accept your reactions, your feelings, as being there. Accept that they are what you need to feel in the moment. There’s no need to try changing them—that doesn’t work anyway. You need to work through the process.

Learning about family secrets that fracture your sense of identity can be profoundly shocking and destabilizing. If you’ve experienced a powerful emotional blow that’s left you feeling bruised, battered, and off balance, though you may not recognize it as such, what you’re experiencing is trauma. If you’ve been told or you suspect you’re overacting, be assured that feeling traumatized is a completely normal response to an exceedingly distressing event. While many around you may not understand or take seriously your feelings and expect you to brush it off and get over it—trauma isn’t something you just get over. It needs to be acknowledged and addressed, and it may be useful or even necessary to seek professional help that will allow you to move forward with less distress and integrate the experience into your life

Jamie Marich, PhD, a clinical trauma specialist, talks with us about recognizing trauma, understanding its consequences, and helpful strategies. She’s founder of the Institute for Creative Mindfulness and the author of seven books on trauma healing and recovery. Among the approaches she uses with clients are EMDR therapy, mindfulness, yoga, dance, reiki, and expressive arts. She’s led trauma recovery retreats at the Kripalu School for Yoga & Health in Massachusetts’ Berkshire Mountains and at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. Her most recent book, published this year, is Process Not Perfection: Expressive Arts Solutions for Trauma Recovery.

In our society, we engage in age-old rituals that help share the burden of grief after a loss. We hold the hands of the bereaved through services and at gravesites. We send cards and flowers, make donations, and create meal chains. We stand in solidarity and share stories about the lost loved ones to buoy the spirits of those who mourn them. We offer practical and spiritual succor, shoulders to cry on, and a promise of being there for the bereaved when they need us.

Only sometimes we don’t. For losses that fall outside of society’s norms—particularly those linked with something perceived as shameful or socially embarrassing—the rituals are often absent or ignored, the grievers left alone to tend to their wounds, without empathy and support.

Kenneth Doka, PhD, formerly a professor of gerontology and now senior consultant to the Hospice Foundation of America and author of numerous books about grief, coined the term disenfranchised grief in 1987 to describe the sorrow associated with these situations that stand outside society’s norms of “legitimate” loss. It refers to the emotional aftermath of losses that are not acknowledged or validated by others—a solitary state in which individuals are unable to mourn openly and may suffer in silence. They believe—or are made to feel—that they’re not entitled to the ministrations typically provided when bereavement is socially sanctioned, that their losses aren’t worthy of grief, or that their feelings are inappropriate.

Until recently, most people likely haven’t encountered someone who’s been knocked off balance by a DNA test result, so it’s understandable they might not appreciate the magnitude of the impact. But it’s just a matter of time. Mind-blowing DNA revelations are becoming so common that some DNA testing companies have trained their customer service staff representatives to respond empathetically. While those employees may know the right thing to say, here, in the real world, the people around us often haven’t got a clue how it feels — like a punch to the gut.

If you’ve become untethered from your genetic family, you might get a second surprise: some of your friends and loved ones may be remarkably unsympathetic, often infuriatingly judgmental, and sometimes even hostile. It’s clear that although DNA surprises have become ubiquitous, social attitudes haven’t kept pace, and a stigma remains.