By Sarah Blythe ShapiroWhenever I tell this story, there’s always the same reaction: “I don’t know what to say.” And who am I to blame them? How could they? I wouldn’t either.

Sometimes, I still don’t.

I’ve always known. From my earliest waking memories, I knew I was special; I knew that he was special too. Because he was a donor, and I was a donor child, in our unusualness I had a bond with this mystery man. But I didn’t know who he was, and he didn’t know I existed.

When you’re a donor child with a single mother by choice, something can happen. There’s a certain void. An abyss. Not a crater, because that would imply something was once there. You feel empty. You feel lonely. You didn’t have a choice. In this situation, everybody but you had a choice.

Let’s backtrack. It’s April 2018, and I’m lying on my stomach, stretched out on the stone-cold floor of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, on a retreat. Only three months until my 18th birthday. We were told to take some time to write and meditate. I’d been meaning to write this letter. Now I finally have time to do it. “Dear Dad.” No, that’s not right. Wait, yes it is! “I love you!” “Please love me!” “Please…want me.” Want me, goddammit.

I never sent the letter. My 18th birthday arrived. Finally. I reached out to California Cryobank. The deal is that you get three tries to reach out; if the donor never responds, you aren’t allowed to facilitate contact ever again. And the donor has a right to his anonymity. Anonymous until 18. But he still has a right to turn you down when you turn 18. Such a bright age, 18. Shiny, almost. Full of promise and potential. Hope for the future.

I never heard back, so I figured he hadn’t received my letter or wasn’t interested, and I went off to college, determined to immerse myself and desperately trying to flee from heartbreak. And I didn’t hear back from him. Not then. But I did hear from someone just as interesting.

A half sibling. And then another half sibling. And another. And another. Every week, a new sibling posted in California Cryobank’s Donor Sibling Registry, and I reached out to them. Since I was raised an only child, to suddenly become one of 10 is mind-boggling, to say the least.

But this story is about Caveh. Caveh and Sarah. Father and daughter. He might not agree with that terminology, but after all, he is my father. No, he didn’t raise me, but everyone has two genetic parents, and he’s one of mine.

In late September 2018, I got the call. A third-party mediator informed me that he was interested in contact. For several months we went back and forth over email as Sarah and “C.” All I knew was that he was a married filmmaker with two young children and had never been contacted by donor offspring before. He wanted to maintain anonymity in case I was nuts, which was both understandable and frustrating because I know I’m not nuts. I half-expected a “welcome home” greeting and a general eagerness to know me. I kept thinking that if I was in his shoes, I would be amazed and excited to know that I had helped to produce this young adult. But he was nothing of the sort. Caveh was very uncomfortable with communication for several months and hurt my feelings by continuously distancing himself from me. He acted as if this was an organ or blood donation and not a sperm donation. As if he hadn’t realized that sperm creates children who become adults with their own minds and experiences.

But I still wanted to know him.

In all honesty, I figured out who he was before he told me. After being tipped off that he worked at a school in the Tri-State area, I naturally looked up all 96 New York City universities and colleges. Hunched over my laptop on the floor of my dorm at 3 AM and about halfway through the list, I finally found him. After confirming the ethnicity of his surname, I just knew. That’s my dad. That whole night was a blur, but I do remember calling my mother, intermittently crying and laughing hysterically.

Some of you may find this an overreaction. To you, I say: you cannot know how it feels unless you experience it yourself. If there’s one word I can use to describe my Nancy Drew-like discovery, it’s “relief.” Even though he wasn’t the person I had hoped he was, the bolded, italicized question mark of my life—Who the hell is he?—was answered with a resounding exclamation point. He’s a famous filmmaker!

A little background on Caveh: born in Washington D.C. in April 1960, Caveh Zahedi is an Iranian-American avant-garde filmmaker who prides himself on his commitment to truth, whatever it takes. In his case, truth resulted in the end of his third marriage with his compulsive need to film literally everything. But Caveh is passionate about his work and is nothing if not a risk-taker. There are a lot of people out there who love his stuff. Man, is it weird having a famous dad.

After he finally revealed his identity to me, we first met in September 2019 in Chicago at a film screening. He flew there from NYC (my birthplace, by the way) and I took an 8-hour Megabus from St. Olaf College to meet him. We had agreed that our first encounter should be filmed, to be made into a documentary. Caveh apparently has a database full of fans hoping to get the call that he needs them for his films in some capacity. So when he asked, three eager crew people showed up with equipment—working for free—and completely unaware of what they were about to film. They just hoped it would be interesting.

They weren’t disappointed.

The whole night felt surreal. We filmed for three hours; hell, we even had a drone follow us in a park as we walked side by side, “bonding.” It was pretty awkward trying to fill the time and keep up a dialogue. But I won’t talk much about that. You can see the film for yourself when it comes out. Just look for “I Was A Sperm Donor.”

The most memorable parts of the night for me happened off-camera. After our filming session, we retreated to another filmmaker’s apartment to watch the first two seasons of “The Show About The Show.” At one point in the show, Caveh recounts the filming process in “I Don’t Hate Las Vegas Anymore.” Sharing some cashews from the vending machine, he leaned over to me, pointing, and said, “that’s your grandfather.” Both the grandparents I knew were dead. But being reminded, just for a moment, that I have more family out there, including two other grandparents, that was a blessing.

The other special moment happened after 3 AM (both Caveh and I are night owls). He walked me to my car to say goodbye. There was a lot of shuffling and twitchiness and not a whole lot of warmth. But we both noticed the chalky full moon. As he walked away, I watched his narrow, suited figure slip away, with the same moon watching over us both. I had the urge to take a picture and capture that moment, but I was afraid he would look back.

So, where are we now? Most recently, we’ve been editing “I Am A Sperm Donor” together. While watching clips of our film, I had the chance to watch myself. Hair done up in pin curls, makeup on, beaming. When Caveh opens the door and asks if he can give me a hug, I let out this little girlish giggle—so eager to please—and say, “yeah!” Willing to do just about anything for my dad. Seeing this from the outside, I am struck with a pang of grief. Grief for that little girl who missed out on all the daddy-daughter dances and first introductions of her new boyfriend and graduations with her dad standing in the audience, waving proudly. I deserved a standing dad.

You know, I had planned for this essay to also address all the reasons why donor anonymity shouldn’t exist: there is no way to prevent a donor lying on an application and there’s no limit to how often a donor can donate at many clinics. Anonymity deprives donor offspring of important medical information, such as risks for potential cancers and genetic disorders, and half-siblings run the risk of committing incest if they don’t know they’re related. The list is endless.

But somehow I realized that the primary point I want to emphasize is the relationship you lose out on when your donor is anonymous. There’s no one to whom to attribute that dark, curly head and olive skin and those almond-shaped brown eyes. And where’d you get that tiny figure with no hips? And why are you so assertive and reckless and obstinate? Certainly not from Mom’s side of the family. The closest comparison I can make is to phantom limb syndrome. You feel this burning pain where one of your legs used to be (though I suppose I was never born with that leg) and the only way to quench the pain is to hold up a mirror to your other leg to trick your mind into believing you have full function of both limbs. That’s what it’s like growing up with a single mom; especially one who tries her best to be both mom and dad. But when you find your father, it’s like you’re finally fitted with a prosthetic and you’ve been given a chance at approaching a normal life. You’ll never have two real legs, but other people might think you do and eventually you’ll start to believe you do, too.

Caveh and I don’t have a great relationship, and it’s strange and awkward and uncomfortable and not warm. But there is also a beauty in having shared this experience with him, of having met—father and daughter—for the first time. I am grateful for the circumstances, and I am very curious to see how our relationship unfolds in the coming years, but it’s not a picture-perfect story. This is really meant to describe the grief and repercussions of not having met your bio parent, and the completely earth-shattering and ambivalent emotions that occur when you find out that the person is not at all how you pictured. I couldn’t have written about how grateful I am to have met him and how happy I am to know him, since that would be a lie. And if he said that, it would be a lie too.Sarah Blythe Shapiro is a 20-year old student from Wilmette, Illinois, conceived by donor sperm and raised by a single mother by choice. She has always known she was donor conceived. Her mother used an Open ID at 18 donor, since known donors were not available at the cryobank. Since discovering that her donor is a famous filmmaker, she has found 14 half-siblings. Shapiro is a passionate advocate for the rights of donor conceived people and is hoping to encourage families and donors to prioritize the needs of their donor conceived offspring. She actively works to explore the intersectionality of donor conception as it pertains to both LGBTQ fertility rights and racial biases of cryobanks and clinics.Severance is not monetized—no subscriptions, no ads, no donations—therefore, all content is generously shared by the writers. If you have the resources and would like to help support the work, you can tip the writer.

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By AllyI suppose my story begins once my parents realized having a baby wasn’t going to be as easy as everyone makes it out to be. Infertility is a weight on the soul, a burden that my parents carried for ten years while they tried to have me, or whatever version of me would have existed had they been able to use their own gametes.

Here I am now, my parent’s daughter, though not wholly. My parents resorted to using a sperm donor. The only people who knew about my genetic roots were my parents and the doctor who performed the artificial insemination. The burden of infertility transformed into the burden of a secret, one they kept for 28 years until an AncestryDNA test ratted them out. That’s the rub, I think, for many donor conceived adults who find out late in life they had been donor conceived. Why lie? Why keep a material fact about a child’s identity hidden from the world? I blame the infertility burden. I picture it as a force pressing down on my father’s lungs whenever he heard comments that my eyes looked just like his late father’s. I imagine it, too, as something that squeezed my mother’s jaw shut every time a pediatrician asked about family medical history.

If I had closed my eyes tight on the day my parents explained to me everything they knew and remembered about my conception, I might have been able to feel their burden roll off of their backs and onto mine. The weight of my new reality isn’t eased by the fact that I have since located 14 half-siblings and the man my parents used as a donor.

I feel it every time I go to a new doctor who asks about family medical history. It’s ironic that now—as my new doctors are gynecologists, fertility specialists, and genetic counselors—I, too, am shouldering the weight of living a childless life when I so desperately wish to be a parent.

I feel it when I grow tired of telling my story again and again. Like a top starting to wobble after it’s been spinning for a while, I’m running out of steam. “Yes, my parents used a sperm donor. Yes, I know who he is. Yes, I know my dad is still my dad. Yes, crazy, I agree.”

I really feel it when I look at my aunts, uncles and cousins who likely don’t know we aren’t genetically related. I know I could tell them—it’s my story to tell now—but there’s another burden: I want to be seen as my dad’s daughter, wholly and genetically. There are the questions they’ll ask, the relationships that will change, and the nagging feeling that maybe I don’t belong.

It’s an emotional burden, without question. There are days when I can’t help but say out loud “I wish I were my dad’s daughter.” There are days when I’m captivated by the gut-punch stories of other donor conceived adults, especially those who didn’t have the idyllic childhood I enjoyed.

My parents aren’t narcissists. They didn’t keep this secret from me to hurt me or as a way to bury their heads in the sand. I’m allowed to say that because I know who they are at their core. My parents have fiercely loved and protected me for 39 years (I’m 29 now, but I will add in the 10 years when they tried and tried to get pregnant). They have nurtured me, supported me, laughed and cried with me. I know how they love me, and thus I blame their secret-keeping on that massive burden of infertility grief and shame. They shouldered that weight so I wouldn’t have to. A part of me is really grateful for that. I enjoyed 28 years of white-picket-fence life without having to wonder about half of my DNA.

I don’t want to think about it in terms of it now being my turn to carry the burden of infertility and donor conception grief and shame, but I do think I’m in a place to chip away at that weight, to lessen it for myself and for my future children. In the seven months since I’ve found out, I’ve spoken to dozens of donor conceived adults about their truth and their stories. I’ve made real connections with intended and recipient parents, spoken with several counselors, and shared my story, semi-anonymously, with an audience of thousands. I talk to my parents about questions I have, both around my conception story and my newfound infertility issues. While I do still have some dark days, the trend is upward, lighter, and heading in the direction of a reality without the weight of a decades-old secret.Ally, who hosts the Half of Me podcast about donor conception, is a 29-year-old teacher living in New Jersey with her husband. She’s located 14 half siblings. Find her on Instagram. 

Look for more essays on various aspects of genetic identity here. Do you have a story to share? We want to hear from you. Find our submission guidelines here.

By Amanda SerenyiFrom age four, when Mom began nursing school, whenever she saw the tops of my bare feet or the inside of my arms where my skin was nearly translucent and the blue veins running underneath looked like inky branches in a milky sky, she’d say something like, “Those veins! I’d love to practice starting an IV on you.” She might as well have asked to amputate my foot. The thought of needles piercing my skin made me involuntarily curl into a ball and turn my hands into a living turtleneck to protect my exposed neck and inner elbows.

Mom and Dad gave blood routinely when I was little. I would go with them to the blood bank, first as a family, then individually with each after the divorce. Inevitably, I would be the one lying down on one of those sky-blue leather recliners with orange juice and a cookie offered to me, to prevent me, the person who was not giving blood, from passing out. I’d love to say it was all a ploy for free cookies and juice, but I wasn’t talented enough to fake draining all the color from my own face.

What I remembered from those blood bank visits was that both of my parents were blood type A+. Thinking in report-card-terms, it didn’t get any better than that.

In seventh grade biology, our teacher, Mr. Hayes, required all students to poke a finger and type their blood in order to get an A in the class. My grade depended on the needle prick, so I relented, but was too afraid of the tears that would flow in front of my classmates to do it during regular hours. I was the know-it-all in class who aced every assignment and test. Showing a weakness was not an option.

Mom came in after school to help restrain and calm me. While I panted with my eyes squeezed shut, she held my hand down while Mr. Hayes stabbed my index finger. I felt Mom tip my finger over onto a glass microscope slide. She put a band-aid over the puncture site while Mr. Hayes dropped a little solution on the blood confirming what logic already told me: My blood type was A. We didn’t test for the Rh factor (the + or -).

According to the Red Cross website, among Caucasians, like me, the most common blood type is O, with 37% O+ and 8% O-. The next most common blood type is A with 33% A+ and 7% A-. Type B is rare, with only 11% including + and -, and Type AB is only 4%. If I were Type A, then, given my parents’ types and the breakdown of + and -, the odds were overwhelmingly in my favor that I was A+. Perfect.

For our first married Valentine’s Day, I ordered a matching set of Road IDs for my husband Denis and me. They were a sporty, modern version of medical ID bracelets. Each small metal plate was threaded on a piece of Velcro, meant to loop through shoe laces.  Mine included my name, address, Den’s name and phone number, and my blood type. It tickled me to see my new married name etched in metal, both on my own tag and as the emergency contact on his. Being an overachiever and former straight-A student, I also enjoyed seeing my blood type, A+, declared proudly.

As weekend warriors, we spent Sundays and warm evenings running and biking on the paved rails-to-trails paths near our home. We wore our amulets of safety to ward off catastrophe for a year or so before they found a new home in our entryway table, where they rattled amongst unlabeled keys, orphan batteries, and crossed-off to-do lists. The novelty of my new name and the protection our new union seemed to need had worn off.

Years later, when learned I was donor-conceived, I turned to 23andMe for any health- and ancestry-related answers I could find. After finding my biological father and half-brother, I reviewed the Health Tools section to see what else I could learn. My results indicated that my blood type was probably A, and my Rh factor was probably negative. I was probably A-. I tried not to think of this in terms of being 100% (A+ grade) vs. 92% (A- grade), but it was hard not to feel like something in my sense of self had loosened, lessened.

When my big toe swelled to the size of a lime after a competitive yoga class, my doctor had two concerns: a broken toe and gout. An x-ray was required to rule out a break. A blood test would rule out gout. My stomach somersaulted in dread. I turtled my limbs into the protection of the billowing dressing gown.

“Can you add blood typing on top of the gout test?” I asked my doctor.

“You know, the best way to determine your blood type is to donate blood,” he said.

“That’s not an option for me,” I said.

I begged.

He relented.

When my results arrived, I texted Mom: “Did you ever have my blood typed?”

“I’m pretty sure your blood was typed as a pre-op when you were little,” she wrote.  “Not because it was needed, but just so I would know. You were the same type as me. A+.”

“I’m A-,” I wrote.

“Really? I don’t remember that,” she wrote. “Aunt Theresa is also A-.”

Oh, well, as long as someone else has the same blood type, then being wrong about it all these years is fine, my inner snark snarled, still miffed that my donor-conception had been kept from me for 33 years.

“I’m pretty sure I would have remembered if someone told me you were A-,” she wrote.  “I wonder if it was typed wrong in the past? Didn’t you give blood once?”

“No,” I wrote. “Too afraid of needles.” How could she not know this about me after all these years?

It’s such a minor detail, one’s blood type, until it isn’t. It’s doesn’t affect me on a daily basis, but it’s part of me. The most frustrating part is it’s one more thing that I thought was one way before I found out I was donor-conceived, but now is something else. Just like “I used to be Irish-Italian” back when I thought I was related to my great-grandfather born in Dublin and great-grandmother born along the Italian/Swiss border. That Irish-Italian half has been replaced by a Jewish half. What else have I been mistaken about all these years?

After Mom involuntarily told me I was donor-conceived, I was frustrated at not knowing half of my genes, my family, and myself. She asked, “Why does it matter? Nothing has really changed. You are who you are.” That attitude works if you really know who you are and are comfortable with who that person is. It’s easy to shrug off minor pebbles tossed at your armor. Finding out I was donor-conceived stripped away any defenses I thought I had. My raw flesh was exposed and every minor pebble thrown my way felt like a flaming cannonball.

I’m grateful to have never needed to know my blood type for an emergency. I’m grateful to have never had to rely on the Road IDs since mine wasn’t accurate anyway. There will come a time when I will need to have key information about myself, or Denis will need to have it. I just hope when that day comes, I will have finished piecing together the mysterious parts of me. Until I feel whole and fully knowledgeable about myself again, I’ll keep searching for the little clues that help define me from the inside out. A- wasn’t a death sentence. It just meant there was room for improvement.Amanda Serenyi lives with her husband and dog in San Francisco.  She’s working on a memoir, “Family of Strangers,” about rediscovering notions of family after learning at age 33 she was donor conceived. Learn more about her at at her website.  

Look for more essays on various aspects of genetic identity here. Do you have a story to share? We want to hear from you. Find our submission guidelines here.

By Laura McMillianAs a teen, I’d once imagined I had a secret identity. Little did I know that I was right.

All my life, I’d learned to live with what could be described as a pervasive form of impostor syndrome — a sense that I was never fully able to know or be myself, whoever that was. Sure, I recognized certain stable personality traits in myself, such as kindness, rationality, humble priorities, and interest in the well-being of others. But they weren’t enough for me to fully know who I was on a gut level. I could also list all the factual pieces of information about myself, including the good, the bad, and the neutral — my ethnicities, behavioral and emotional tendencies, intellect, biases, tastes, political and religious views, and personal principles. But the sum of these facts never quite added up to me feeling like a full person.

I craved an understanding of the core aspects of myself and sought it by asking my parents about themselves and their family histories and by trying to understand my psychology and physiology through clinical testing and professional feedback. Still, something was always missing. Why? How could I fill it in and gain the self-confidence I should have had? The mysterious identity gap had me grasping at straws for all my young adult and adult life.

As I became older, the identity gap closed a little bit, and by the time I was in my mid-thirties, I might have felt as if I were 80% of a complete, knowable person. That missing 20% remained like a chronic pain I’d learned to live with and was resigned to always having. I still suffered from confusion in my career and relationships, and there seemed to be no answer or solution. But being stubbornly genuine, I never put up a false persona so that others could more easily grasp me. Those who did grasp and befriend me seemed to share a similar sense of alienation.

When I was 34, a 23andMe DNA test revealed that I was not genetically related to my dad, leading me to conclude that I had likely been donor conceived. Once I overcame the initial shock and denial, I felt as if a new door had opened. Finally, there was hope for a way out of my inexplicably confused sense of self. I’d always loved my dad and never suspected or hoped not to be related to him, but I chose to view this development in as positive a light as possible. This new knowledge offered me the chance to get answers about why I was the way I was — why I was different in personality and thinking style from the parents who raised me. Generational difference was never a sufficient explanation. Being donor conceived absolutely was.

The drive to identify half of my origins came over me like a tornado; this new and all-consuming obsession swept up everything in my world. The human mind naturally seeks completion, and mine very badly wanted it. For three years, I underwent trials and tribulations that failed to give me definite answers.

Finally, when my biological father appeared in my AncestryDNA test match list, I was able to walk through the door that had opened three years earlier. His four daughters, who didn’t know he’d been a sperm donor, had purchased the test as a gift, ironically, for Father’s Day. He hadn’t been expecting to discover offspring; he’d simply been looking to further explore his genealogy. Just as I had done, he reacted with denial and skepticism. But once the reality settled in, he was very excited to have found me and happy to get to know me.

The hopes that had been raised by deducing that I’d been donor conceived were fulfilled by getting to know my biological father. It’s been a wonderful and remedial experience, not only because he’s an incredibly kind and warm person, but also because learning about my genetic paternal origins has changed me for the better. After first spending time with him, I immediately felt a shift at my core. At age 37, that ineffable part of myself that had always felt missing finally appeared in its proper place. It felt as if something at the back of my mind was finally healing. There was both emotional relief and a physical sensation of calm — an unprecedented feeling of serenity and wholeness. I think my levels of oxytocin (the cuddle hormone) went through the roof during that trip, just from being with him. Before, I’d felt like a house with only half a foundation. Now, with a whole foundation, I feel complete and stronger than ever.

One of the clearest changes relates to how I deal with difficult people. In the past, when people were at odds with me in any way, my sense of self felt threatened, as I was easily thrown off balance. I avoided confrontation at almost all costs, with the exception of those rare occasions when I was completely confident about my position. I was afraid of being tongue-tied due to all the second-guessing and self-doubt, too easily believing others’ insulting statements or comments intended to correct my errors, at least until I later analyzed the situation. Speaking out usually wasn’t worth the risk, and I missed out on some important opportunities to stand my ground. I thought I’d always be that way, no matter how much therapy or self-development work I did. But now that I’m certain of who I am, my sense of self is tethered in place, allowing me to stand firmly when I’m challenged or mistreated. Or, if I really am wrong about something, I’m more comfortable accepting and admitting it, then moving on. This actually makes me more relatable and likable to others. While I try to choose my battles wisely and to be tactful, I’m no longer frightened by challenging conversations. For the first time, expressing myself is starting to feel completely natural and comfortable. I’m unafraid to be fully assertive, and even my professional confidence has improved. Putting myself out there isn’t so scary anymore. The self-consciousness and excessive self-inhibition have evaporated.

Not only were these changes instantaneous, but they’ve also been enduring and will likely last for the rest of my life. I’ll always be grateful for my biological father’s warm reception, alongside my upbringing by loving parents.Laura McMillian, PhD, CPC, ACC, is a certified professional coach who provides services to donor conceived individuals, donors, and parents. She lives in Hideout, Utah with her loving spouse Kevin and their 3 small dogs. Learn more about her practice here.