NPEs

A month to immerse myself in German life.

I didn’t expect a DNA test to change my life.

Fall had just set in, 1987. My family tree was shedding its leaves,

In 2018, I took a DNA test for fun.

When I was 38, after both parents had died, I found out my mother wasn’t my birthmother.

On Saturday Dave and I are eager to throw off the week’s stress with a spring bike ride along Portland’s waterfront.

Mariska Hargitay is arguably one of the most famous women in America, if not in the world. The star of the longest-running prime-time live action series in television history, she plays Olivia Benson, a tough yet deeply compassionate sex crimes detective who, in every episode, encounters people after unspeakable tragedy—victims, survivors, and loved ones of violent crimes, whose secrets have been publicly laid bare in the most brutal fashion. Beautiful and intelligent, Benson is devoted to her work and guarded about a secret in her own past—that she was conceived as a consequence of rape. In her public life, the 61-year old Hargitay exudes warmth and humor. She’s known as a tender, yet strong woman, a loyal friend, and a loving wife and mother of three. Photographs of her with her husband, actor Peter Hermann, inspire envious Instagram memes with captions like “Everyone needs someone who looks at them like he looks at her.” She’s also a philanthropist, a certified rape counselor, and, as the founder of the Joyful Heart Foundation, a fierce advocate for survivors of child abuse, sexual assault, and domestic violence. But in her wrenching documentary film, My Mom Jayne, Hargitay pulls back the curtain and reveals herself to be the beating heart of a family enmeshed in tragedy and trauma on multiple levels—a family that shouldered the weight of secrets until those secrets could no longer be borne. Deeply sad, the film is also tender, sweet, and, ultimately, uplifting. Like Hargitay, her mother, Jayne Mansfield, was one of the most iconic figures of her time—as Edward R. Murrow observed, “the most photographed woman in show business.” A world-famous sex symbol, she reluctantly leaned into a pinup persona in hopes it would offer an opportunity for her to become known instead for her keen intelligence, acting ability, and prodigious musical talent. She tried to reinvent herself, but couldn’t break out of the mold she’d cast herself in. Unhappy with her career and struggling in her marriage to Mickey Hargitay, a Hungarian bodybuilder and former Mr. Universe, she fell prey to alcohol and drugs and became involved with men who abused her. When she was 34, she died in a car accident. Three-year-old Mariska and two of her brothers survived in the backseat. Although she had a loving stepmother after Mickey remarried, she was greatly affected by her mother’s absence. At the same time she was embarrassed by her legacy and wary to explore her life. As she grew older, with no clear memory of Jayne, she became driven to learn more about her and during the pandemic became a real-life detective, tracking down vast collections of photos, letters, memorabilia, public records, contemporary interviews, and fan mail. Hargitay conceived the documentary as way to fill the hole left in her heart, to learn about her mother what she couldn’t bear to learn when she was younger. Click on image to read more.

By Michelle Talsma I met my younger self for coffee … well, iced chai with soy, at the campus Starbucks. “It’s still our favorite drink to order here?” she asked. “Yes, we get light ice now to make the most of it, because it’s still pricey,” I said with a smile. We hug and sit in a well-lit corner. Outside, the campus of Northern Arizona University is woodsy and gorgeous—green, alive with students scattering back and forth. We both love it here. She’s tired and rushed. In college, she’s taking 18 to 21 credits a semester, too many extracurriculars to keep track of, trying to make sure she builds a future for herself. She has a point to prove yet never feels like she’s doing enough. Some things never change. “She never gets sober does she…” She just asks, point blank, no filter. It’s not really a question. She knows. “No, she doesn’t, I’m so sorry…” A couple of years earlier, at 17, we left a note on our mom’s dining room table. “When you’re able to be a mom, give me a call,” it said. She never makes that call. “Does she ever meet our kids?” she asks. I know she’s worried about navigating that. Like me, she worries constantly about how to make others feel comfortable and seen. She chameleons to others, sliding in and out of lives and relationships, always on a quest to make others’ lives better and to find a place that feels like home. That trait calms down over the years but it never fully leaves. We’re working on it; always working on it. “You won’t have to worry about that…” her eyes don’t change, she knows. “But your dad meets them for a time, and you’ll treasure the photos always.” “I’m a mom?! We’re moms??!” Her face lights up and we both break into tears. I’m not allowed to give specifics, so I use “them.” Life will hit her hard in the quest to be a mom; she needs hope now more than exact answers. “Yes, and it’s as amazing and healing as you think it will be. And you rock it. They’re amazing. Black hair. Brown eyes. Your entire world and it’s the best experience ever. I promise.” I know her and all she wants to be is a writer and a mom, so I let that slip too… “You’ll be published nationally. Locally. Two hardcovers. It gives you the flexibility to be there for every moment of their childhood. Being a mom—it’ll be what keeps you going. You’ll be so grateful for it sometimes that your heart will swell with joy.” I let her soak that in and I feel like I’ve already said too much. But, right now, she needs hope more than anything. She knows plenty of grief. “Do you want to know more?” I ask. “I just need a moment,” she says. I do, too. I don’t know how to tell her to prepare for a life with as many bumps as blessings. How do you tell someone that at 22 their mom will pass? At 24, their dad will follow almost to the day. At 35, they’ll find out that their dad isn’t their biological dad and their world will turn upside down and inside out. Click on image to read more.

By Ilene Alexander Old stories and new stories are essential: They tell us who we are, and they enable us to survive. We thank all the ancestors, and we thank all those people who keep on telling stories generation after generation, because if you don’t have the stories, you don’t have anything. – Leslie Marmon Silko You likely know the 20 Questions game in which players ask yes/no questions to identify a particular person, place, animal, object, or concept one of the players has in mind. A game for passing time with family while travelling or among friends learning a bit more about each other’s lives and interests while just hanging out, this game focuses on discovering answers to trivial questions. An amusing pastime that evokes good feelings, it seldom leads to forming memorable insights about people. I have in mind a different set of 20 questions, the Do You Know Survey developed by Marshall Duke, Robin Fivush, and Sara Duke. Their questions cluster into two broad categories—family origins and histories and birth and family trait stories. Overall, these who, what, when, where, why queries focus on basics such as parents’ and grandparents’ growing up, meeting, and marrying stories; their recollections of good and bad experiences in school, work, life, and health across generations; and learning appreciatively about family members’ national, ethnic, cultural, and/or immigration backgrounds. The key factor is how the stories are transmitted—through consistent, undistracted conversations during which family members listen and engage with multiple perspective-taking stories over many years. These regular gatherings create opportunities for children to hear a family’s history, build emotional strength, foster resilience and well-being, as well as develop a sense of self-identity within the intergenerational narratives. The power of family storytelling lies in its ongoing, meaningful presence rather than in isolated moments of information sharing. Given the gift of oscillating stories—the “life has ups and downs” stories told overtime by multiple people—I believe I’ve navigated, dare I say enjoyed, my DNA discovery because my raising up families sparked curiosity to seek stories however family shaped itself. Now, let me tell you a bit about how I came to realize old and new stories as essential for sense-making of the new DNA-provided stories. Click on image to read more.

By Laura Jenkins I first saw Wicked on stage in 2009, while my husband and I were honeymooning in San Francisco. Though it didn’t make me a superfan, I loved it enough to take family members to see it —on two separate occasions—when the tour came to town. But before the curtain fell for the third time, I found myself wishing it would hurry up and be over. I’d had enough.  So when my daughter invited me to see the film, I hesitated. Did I really want to sit through it a fourth time? No. But since she and her kids were only in town for 36 hours, I went. And by the end of the movie, I was so overcome with emotion I sat on the verge of tears through nearly ten minutes of credits trying to understand why it affected me so deeply. Two days later I saw it again. Within the week I preordered my digital copy. What happened to the woman who said she was finished with Wicked?    In a word, Elphaba.    Cynthia Erivo took a character I thought I knew and cracked her wide open. I’d seen three brilliant actors play Elphaba on stage, but until the movie I’d never really seen her. Not only did Erivo’s intimate portrayal give me a deeper understanding of her story, it also shifted the narrative in a way that brought a great deal of clarity to my own. The first thing that struck me when I saw Elphaba on an IMAX screen was her greenness. Of course I already knew what color she was. But seeing her up close made me think about why she was green: like me, she was the offspring of an affair. Her viridescent skin was a dead giveaway that she and her sister had different fathers. I don’t have statistics to back this up, but when people in monogamous relationships betray that commitment, they typically want to keep it hidden. And that’s pretty difficult to do with an accidental baby around—especially if she’s green. Children of affairs are, by nature, whistleblowers. We tell secrets by simply existing. Elphaba carried the stigma of her parents’ tryst on the outside. When I saw her on screen, it occurred to me that green is a perfect way to describe how I always felt on the inside—tarnished. Tainted. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t have a gnawing sense I didn’t deserve to be here. My sister told me the truth about my biological father when I was 21, but I felt the immense weight of the secret long before that. Since I couldn’t get anyone to talk about it, I drew my own conclusions: there must something about me that was too awful to tell. Was I born innately bad? Click on image to read more.

By Tracey Ciccone Edelist It took some imagination to see my dad in me. We look nothing alike, so I had to go beyond the obvious to find similarities: crooked teeth, hidden skin tags and blemishes, a propensity to worry, maybe cheekbones and chins—he hides his under a beard so it’s hard to say. I share more physical similarities with my blue-eyed, blonde-haired stepmother who has been my mom since my birth mother left one day when I was barely a toddler. We used to look at each other and smile conspiratorially when strangers commented on how much I looked like Mom. I worked hard to see those bits of Dad in me, so when my eldest child did a consumer DNA test “for fun” and uncovered my birth mother’s secret about my paternity, I didn’t know who I was looking at in the mirror anymore. Within a few hours, we’d found photos online of women, sisters of the suspected DNA father, who looked like me and my children. Then I found a black and white photo of him from 1975. I would have been four. It’s a close-up shot. He’s sitting in the driver’s seat of a car wearing a wide-lapelled winter coat and ‘70s patterned scarf, smiling for the camera, his arm resting on the open window. I saw my eyes, my forehead, my face shape, my lips, my skin tone. That photo, and those of his sisters, my aunts, made it hard to deny what the DNA test had revealed. The first time I caught my reflection in the mirror after looking at their photos, I jumped, and then I stared, unbelieving. I saw him and his sisters looking back at me, their features superimposed on my own. I had spent so long convincing myself my cheekbones came from my dad, so many years establishing that untrue story of who I was, and now, there were these unknown people who looked like me, presenting themselves uninvited in my face, pushing Dad away from it. For months, every time I saw myself in the mirror, and every time I looked at my young adult children, I felt an electric shock of disbelief zap through me, wrenching me into a surreal world that didn’t make any sense. I no longer knew who we were, who I was, except that I was now half Italian. It took quite some time for my brain to adjust, for my synapses to rewire to incorporate this new information, to rebuild my identity from scratch. I began to write to help me process everything, to get the intrusive, persistent thoughts out of my brain and onto the page. The story below is a short piece of creative non-fiction that represents an unsettling that follows these DNA discoveries. The woman seeks refuge in nature. It grounds her, but the turmoil underneath remains and breaks through. Click on image to read more.

By Ann T. Perri When it first happened, I thought my DNA discovery broke me into a thousand pieces, but now, that’s not what I think happened. Instead, as one set of beliefs about identity peeled away, I expanded and reassembled. Before I knew I was an NPE (not parent expected), many of my beliefs about identity came from my family, particularly my father’s family. To them, blood is everything. You put your family first and never betray them, because they’re your blood. In my earliest childhood memories, in an Italian house with plastic-covered furniture and the scent of sautéed garlic always wafting from the kitchen, my grandma told me the story of her family, our family. I learned about her siblings, her no-good father, and her long-suffering mother. I absorbed it all and built my identity on that family lore. My grandma would tell me how she waited generations for a girl to be born into the family, and here I was, her prayers answered. And best yet in her eyes, I was smarter than the boys in the family—just like she knew a girl would be with our blood. She mapped out the person she expected me to be when I grew up. I would travel and attend college, yet I must remember that cleanliness was next to godliness and always that blood is thicker than water. The only thing was—which we didn’t know then—was that I wasn’t blood. I didn’t share a single drop of their blood or a centimorgan of their DNA. I wasn’t like the men in the family because they weren’t related to me. But nobody knew that, except maybe my mother. Decades after my grandma died, some saliva and a DNA test revealed my genetic truth. I was a middle-aged woman going through menopause with an identity that felt shattered with little warning. The pieces of my family stories left a debris field through my life. It was as SpaceX says when a rocket explodes, it’s a rapid unscheduled disassembly or RUD. And it feels like shit. Click on the image to read more.

By Lezlee Lijenberg Dear Friend, We may or may not have ever met but we remain kin. We may not share DNA but we are kin in the sense of sharing a common bond in the discoveries of our histories—the profound feelings of having lost a part of ourselves when we learned our father was not our father, perhaps we were told of a different birthmother or half-sibling popped up on our 23andMe family tree. We are more alike than you think. We have been lied to and deceived by people that in most cases we held dear and loved unconditionally. These are the same people that pulled the rug out from under us when confronted with the revelations. Some of them denied us of the truth, while others were angry and resentful that the secrets had been revealed. Our stories follow a long gamut of possibilities and outcomes, but we remain in the same family of broken hearts. In the beginning, many of us do not know where to turn or what to do. Our commonalities grow as we try to determine how to handle the situation. So many questions. How do we address it? How to share the information we learned weighs heavily on our hearts. At times fear takes hold and at other moments anger, tears and confusion replace the ecstatic joy of knowing that craziness did not win. I do not take our relationship lightly. In fact, it is probably the most serious connection I could ever experience. It is irreplaceable because it is not a relationship of choice but one of necessity and survival. It is a bond created by decisions out of our control. Our relatives will never understand what has evolved between us because whether they want to believe it or not, they connected us without even realizing it. People want to be a part of something. They want to be included and accepted. We are no different yet, as NPEs, we are facing situations of rejection and inclusion all in the same breath by people that have always been a part of our lives and by complete strangers. This is not a club membership we aspired to being a part of throughout the years. It is not a group anticipated to be an answer to hold us up when we are down, to pick us up when we falter or to celebrate with us when another cog in the wheel falls into place. It is a club of united human beings coming together to share our experiences and through the accumulation of stories we help one another heal. Today I reach out my hand to you. Let’s embrace the moment because it can pass all too soon. For the moments of hurt shift and then, when we least expect it, return again. We have a sense of false security when we think we have a handle on all of the secrets. Then in a flash, the past hits us fully in the face and a new and strange feeling must be contended with one more time. Each feeling is different, and it appears there are no right or wrong answers. All we seem to have is ourselves to face the consequences and the results of the actions of the past. However, I am here to tell you my friend, you are not alone, and you never have to choose a path of exclusion. You have thousands of NPE family members just like me that are here for you. We are a shoulder to lean on and a heart to listen. Most of us are willing and able to stand by you until the storms subside. We remain a life raft in the turbulent waves of your discovery and if you are drowning we will row you to shore. With love and the heart of a lioness, Lezlee Click on image to see more.

By Michelle Talsma Everson On a red eye flight home from visiting my best friend, my 13-year-old son’s sleepy head on my shoulder, I message my aunt to ask if we can visit her beach house this summer. She says yes enthusiastically, and we check on dates. I message my little brothers’ mom to say hi and catch up. I make a note to message my sister. To another aunt, one who helped raise me, I send photos of my sleepy teen. It all feels so normal, and for that I am grateful. Recently I told a friend about two aunts who helped save me. One, my mother’s sister who took me in when I was 17. Another, my biological dad’s sister, who did very much the same almost 20 years later. In between, I was honored to be mentored and raised by other amazing women. I count my blessings and they are many. Two years ago, a surprise DNA discovery rocked my world. I was raised knowing my dad had other children out in the world—and more than a decade after his passing, I spit in a tube for two at-home DNA tests in hopes of finding these long list siblings. What I found instead was that my dad, who had passed in 2010, wasn’t my biological father. My biological father was very much alive and living in the city where I was born. What ensued over the last two years brought me to the brink of insanity and back again. The best way to describe it is to imagine feeling all human emotions possible all at once. Grief, pain, betrayal, curiosity—the works. Overnight, I went from being an only child to having multiple half siblings. My ethic identity changed too—I was raised identifying as a Mexican American, and, it turns out, I’m half Jewish. An identity crisis followed. I’m an NPE (not-parent expected), and I needed to find out where that fits into who I am as a person. Click on the image to read more.

By Gwen Lee I settled into the chair, ready for the stylist to begin my long-overdue haircut. I’ve found that there are varying degrees of chattiness among stylists. While I tend to be fairly quiet, if the person who’s going to hold me captive in their chair for the next hour or so starts an interesting conversation, I’ll gladly participate. Salon chair conversations are usually innocuous enough. On this particular day, the conversation took a different turn. The stylist, Sophia, launched into a story about how she was angry with her ex-husband because he was trying to convince her daughter that she was not his biological daughter. There was a matter of the daughter’s hair coloring (that had to be how we got on this topic) not matching the ex-husband’s color. Sophia was considering having her daughter take a DNA test to prove that her ex-husband was indeed her daughter’s biological father. I didn’t, and would never, interfere in anyone else’s family drama, especially that of a virtual stranger. Otherwise, I might have been inclined to tell her to tread carefully. Warning bells starting going off and red lights started flashing in my head. It had been about a year since I’d learned I was an NPE (not parent expected). My discovery that the man whose name was on my birth certificate was not actually my biological father came, like so many others, after I took an Ancestry DNA test in 2017, purely out of curiosity about my ethnicity. When I started looking at DNA matches, I noticed a lot of names I recognized as maternal relatives. I didn’t know a lot about my dad’s family. He and my mother had divorced when I was 5 years old. He moved across country, and I’d only had a handful of visits with him since. But I knew enough to know that I didn’t see anyone from his family on my list of matches. There were also a lot of names I didn’t recognize at all. It didn’t take me very long to figure out what had occurred. It didn’t seem impossible to me. After all, years ago, my sister discovered she was an NPE. That was before Ancestry DNA tests. Someone gave her a hint and she used the services of a private detective, who also happened to be our brother, to find her biological father. After researching, talking to some cousins on my paternal side, and using the services of a search angel, I was able to determine who my bio father was. I then asked one of his daughters to test on Ancestry. The result confirmed she was my half-sister. By the time I made my discovery, my mother and my bio father had both passed away. Consequently, I’m left with many unanswered questions. I’ve come to accept that there are many details around my conception that I will never know. I wrestled with the decision about whether I should talk to my birth certificate father about this situation. That brings me to one of the dilemmas faced by many NPEs at some point after the world turns itself back upright again after they make their discoveries. To whom are they going to tell their stories? We all have to make decisions about whom we can trust with our stories. It’s not really a matter of comfort, because I doubt that many of us feel “comfortable” telling our stories to anyone. It’s not a situation that engenders comfort. But I know from listening to many NPE stories that many of us do tell someone, and often we feel better for having shared. There is no NPE Discoveries for Dummies manual. We’re left on our own to decide how to handle these matters, and telling or not telling is a decision that we have to make on our own. Even for those NPEs who are lucky enough to have therapists or counselors helping them navigate their journeys, and while there are likely some professional opinions, I believe it has to be the decision of the NPE. So many circumstances go into the decision about whether NPEs will share their stories with someone else, and they are all very personal. We talk about how there a few basic premises behind NPE discoveries—the things that put us all in the same boat. Yet, everyone’s story has many individual aspects. It’s the same with the tell-or-don’t-tell decision. Everyone has very personal issues that cause them to grapple with this decision. Decisions range from I’m not telling anyone because it’s no one’s business but mine to I’m very open about it—I even told the grocery store clerk. Many decisions fall somewhere between the two. The vibe I got from Sophia, my stylist, is that she’d be one of the more open story tellers. Many NPEs tell some, but not all, family members and a few select friends. Some tell most of the family, leaving only a few relatives in the dark. Based on my own decision-making processes and on other NPE stories I have heard, there are a variety of motivations behind some of these decisions. Click image to read more.

By Michelle Tullier “Are we related to anybody famous?” I asked my mother when I was about twelve years old. I didn’t like that the answer was “No,” so I repeated the question until she walked over to our encyclopedia set and took down the volume for the letter L. Her finger made a quick skim of the index, and she flipped to the page covering Louisiana. “Him. We’re related to him,” my mother said. I grabbed the book eagerly and saw an image identified as the 17th-century French explorer René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle who canoed the lower Mississippi River and claimed its fertile basin land for France. Something didn’t feel right. If we were related to someone as important as the founder of Louisiana, why hadn’t I ever heard about him? Why hadn’t we made a family trip to walk in his footsteps? I wanted to believe that man was my ancestor. I had longed to be related to someone who was not just a celebrity but a person of import and impact. In high school when I learned about Simone de Beauvoir in philosophy class, I daydreamed about being related to her—a possibility, I thought, given my French heritage, though I knew few specifics of that lineage. Seemed every time I asked about family history my mother swooped in like a defensive back making an interception to save the game, and I didn’t understand what game she was playing. Decades later, I ordered an Ancestry.com DNA kit just for kicks. I hoped the results would shed light on my French ethnicity, hand me a long list of not-too-distant relatives, and, perhaps, reveal a notable person in my family tree. When the results came back, my ethnicity breakdown seemed odd, showing more Irish and English than I would have expected. Disappointed by the ethnicity results, but not suspecting anything untoward, I turned to the people matches. I did not recognize any surnames, but that didn’t concern me either. Most were third or fourth cousins, or even more distant. I was very busy at the time that I saw my results, juggling a demanding job and parenting a teenager. I told myself that someday I would take time to build a family tree and figure it all out. Two years later, that someday had still not come, but I was having an unhurried lunch at my desk, so I took a few moments to log back into Ancestry. I was heading to Ireland on a work-related trip and happened to remember those ethnicity results, so I thought it would be interesting to revisit them before the trip. I logged in and was met with a red dot on the bell-shaped notifications icon. The bell tolled for me, so I clicked there rather than going straight to the ethnicity page. The message said I had new DNA matches to explore. Anticipating screen after screen of unrecognizable names stretched out to Saturn’s seventh ring, I rolled my eyes. But I still had half a turkey sandwich to eat, so what the heck, I would take a look. The first match was displayed as initials only, with the statement “Predicted relationship: Close Family.” The match was made at a confidence level classified as “Extremely High.” I pictured long strands of genetic matter strutting amongst puffed up DNA coils, double helixes cocked, so proud of the match they’d made for me. I saw that this person’s profile was administered by someone who listed their first and last name in full. I recognized the last name as that of close family friends when I was a child, and I realized the initials of the person I was matched with were those of a son in that family, who was around my age. There is a technique in photography called bokeh, from the Japanese word boke, which means “blur” or “haze.” Taking a bokeh photo makes the primary object of focus sharp and clear, while surrounding or more distant objects are blurred. There is good bokeh—Isn’t that a striking close-up of a pink camellia with the green leaves softly blurred behind it? And there is bad bokeh—What is that jarring mess of shapes and shadows, ruining a perfectly nice picture of a flower? I didn’t know if what I was seeing in that moment of discovery was good or bad bokeh. The books that lined the wall several feet across from my desk, arranged by topic and by rainbow colors within each grouping, streamed like melted Neapolitan ice cream. The files stacked on the credenza a few feet to my left blurred. The cell phone resting on my desk was barely visible through the fog. The keyboard below my fingers was, well, maybe not even there anymore. Click image to read more.

By Matthew Jackson Our assignment was to find an ugly coffee mug. One we hated, or at least had an indifference to, and then smash it to pieces. Then we were supposed to record our thoughts and feelings as we smashed this cup. But this isn’t about my take on that assignment. Not exactly. One of the other members of the writing group talked about a ceramic bowl she’d had for a long time. Over time, the bowl became cracked, but she still used it. Until the day that she found a piece of the bowl in her salad. She knew it was time to stop using it. So, it sat, unused. Then along came this writing assignment. What better way to dispose of this cracked, useless bowl than to smash it and then write about it. So she took the bowl, placed it in a box, and destroyed it. She posted pictures of the smashed bowl and talked about it. And it bothered me. I didn’t know why at first. Would I have thrown away this broken bowl? I will admit that sometimes I find myself holding onto things like that without reason. Sometimes I do get rid of stuff that I don’t use, or can’t use, and it makes me feel, well, better? Maybe? Maybe a bit better that I have more room or less clutter. But the bowl bothered me. Couldn’t it have been repaired? Did she try to glue it and it didn’t work? Why the fuck did I care? It was her bowl, not mine. And it was just a fucking bowl. Then I remembered reading about a way some ceramics are repaired. Not just in a functional way, but as art. If something is broken, the pieces are carefully gathered up and put back together by a special process. It’s Japanese, and not just an art, but a philosophy. Kintsukuroi, sometimes called Kintsugi, is more than 500 years old. Kintsugi means “golden joinery,” and Kintsukuroi means “golden repair.” Kintsukuroi is the art of repairing cracked and damaged pottery with gold dusted lacquer. The process is used to accentuate the damage and show the beauty in the flaws, the breaks. To show that there is beauty even in broken things. Especially in broken things. There is no attempt to restore it back to original. No attempt to hide the damage. It becomes whole again, but with bright golden lines where once there were cracks. And it goes even deeper. Wabi-Sabi is the Japanese philosophy of embracing the imperfect, the flawed. It is the belief that nothing stays the same forever, and we must accept that. We must see the beauty in things that are used, worn, broken. Sometimes, ceramics are even broken on purpose, in the belief that Kintsukuroi is the way to bring out its true beauty. All of us struggle. That’s one of the reasons some of us are taking a writing course/support group for NPEs. I don’t think I’m out of line by saying that every person in the group has cracks. For fuck’s sake, I’m shattered. And I’m not even sure I believe it’s possible to fix me. But maybe there’s a way to mend some of my cracks. Maybe there is someone out there that would look at a broken, heavily used Matt, gather up the pieces, pull out some lacquer, and start gluing. Maybe that’s why the bowl bothered me. It represented a need. It, like me, like all of us, needed someone to embrace its cracks, its flaws, its breaks, and to mend it back together. Not like new. But with shining, golden seams that make it whole where once it was broken.

By Michelle Talsma Everson “It has been an honor to raise you…” She met me when I was 21 and broken. Now, a lifetime later, I’m 36, and she’s sitting across from me at Disneyland, pausing to make sure I understood that. Also a mom, I understand the honor that comes with motherhood. Still very much broken but actively seeking healing now, I don’t comprehend how that honor can be applied to me. It’s like I understand it theoretically, but my heart is working on accepting it. One day at a time. I am an NPE (non-parent expected). The dad who raised me isn’t my biological dad, and the man who is isn’t interested in taking up space in that realm. It’s like someone being raised from the dead and dying again. Not many people mourn the same relationship twice. Even before I knew I was an NPE, I was the daughter of alcoholics, addicts, two people battling undiagnosed mental illnesses. They died when I was 22 and 24. I had their grandson in between. I was never loved how a child should be loved. Love is conditional, of course, dependent on how you act, who you pretend to be, and the moment itself. My parents tried—likely doing the best they could with the tools they had—but betrayal, abuse, and diagnoses of anxiety, depression, PTSD, and more tell a story that’s not pleasant to hear. “Sometimes we are the casualty in someone else’s battles against themselves” is my favorite quote from the internet. “It has been an honor to raise you…” She met me when I was 21 and broken. Now, a lifetime later, I’m 36, and she’s sitting across from me at Disneyland, pausing to make sure I understood that. I refer to her as my bonus mom in my narratives. Mother-in-law no longer fits, and the guilt from that is something I battle. I want to apologize to her that her son and I couldn’t make a marriage work. I want to ask her forgiveness for me being so much. So much trauma. So much talking. So much anxiety. So. Much. Everything. Instead, she simply says, “I love you for you, unconditionally.” The thought floors me. I love my own son unconditionally. There’s nothing he could do that would change that. So, in theory I understand, but my heart has a hard time believing that could be applied to me. I often think of my own parents, dead now nearly 14 and 12 years, and I wonder if they’d still love me knowing that I found out about a long-held secret and—to heal—I share it with the world. I know they wouldn’t approve of how I live my life in that aspect and so many others. I hope they’d still be honored to have raised me. I’m not so sure. But my bonus mom shows it through action, not just words. We have boundaries, but she knows my secrets, she includes me, she stands in the grey between being my ex’s mom but also being my friend, advocate, and bonus mom. She encourages us to be the best people we can be and to do what’s best for her grandson. Beyond that, she simply holds space and is there when we need her. She doesn’t play favorites between her son and me. It’s a balance not many manage.

I think about you almost daily, but it doesn’t sting as much anymore. I am so grateful for that because I don’t think that people are meant to hold onto that much pain for too long. “You are your father’s daughter…” the Disney song played on my radio. Yes—yes, I am. The man who raised me will always be my dad. I cling to my maiden name like it’s made out of gold. Pictures. Stories. Tattoos. I cling to them all. “You can sit in the suck while still looking forward to the future.” My therapist chirps and I wrote it on my phone notes. For once we’re not talking just about you. The passing of time does help. Still, those same phone notes have a list of things I want from you—bare minimum bullet points that I hold close to my chest. When I mention them—those closest to me re-affirming, “No, it’s not stupid to want that.”—that helps. Each small acknowledgment helps. You’re the part of my story that almost broke me. The part only those closest to me know. However I came into this world, half of my genes are yours. Still, I only whisper your name to those I trust wouldn’t “out” you. (I am so scared to out you.) I apparently have your nose and your hustle. I, too, can work a room and make strangers into friends. I’m hurt. I’m embarrassed and self-conscious (though I did nothing wrong). I’d never expect anyone to replace my dad, but to know you exist and that your life won’t change because I also exist is a pain I cannot explain. A friend put into words what I couldn’t: “You expected his life to change too.” Yes, unmet expectations perhaps hurt the most. I could corner you, rant and rave and ask about my list. Or calmly “make” you admit X, Y and Z. But I will not force myself into your life (no matter how much I want to). The person who is coming to rescue me is me. (Which is so hard to tell my inner child who apparently was still waiting for someone to come.) And everyone, all well-meaning, have their opinions on what I should do or how I should act. But they’re not the ones whose world crashed, and they weren’t left putting the pieces back together. They’re not the ones whose hearts break at nearly 1 a.m. in the bathroom, tears falling, wanting to scream into the ether that, “It’s not fucking fair.”  Some days I’m glad it happened. Other days I wish it never did. Always I don’t understand how you could see photos of my growing boy (genetically, your grandson) and not want to rush to know him. If roles were reversed, I’d have been on the first flight. As time goes on though, so many wonderful people restore my faith in humanity.

NPE: Non-Paternal Event  (noun) A genealogical term used to describe the disconnect that occurs in familial lineage when a person, as an adult, discovers at least one parent is not biologically related. (noun) a qualifying term used by people who have experienced the unexpected discovery of a genealogical disconnect between themselves and at least one parent.As in: “When I found out my parents used a sperm donor, I realized I am an NPE.”  MPE: Misattributed Parentage Event  A social term used to describe the myriad DNA-discoveries that can occur, including Late-Disocvery Adoption, Donor Conception, and Non-Paternal Event. As in: “I found out that as a teenagerI had fathered a childr; when this person reached out to me, I realized I am a part of the MPE community.”  Genetic Mirroring A term or phrase used to describe the powerful experience of seeing similar physical traits in a relative. “Without genetic mirroring, I’ll never understand where my green eyes came from.”  Facebook:  (noun) Modern society’s downfall. See also ‘social media,” “Twitter,” “Instagram,” “Discord.” It was a lovely photo, an innocuous post. A group of dark-haired adults sitting around a table, smiling at the camera, golden hour sunset glowing from a side door. Colorful Fiesta pottery suggests a delicious meal is imminent. Wood side-paneling screams “Montana cabin,” and I swear there are golden-retriever puppies asleep on the floor.  “It’s a truly amazing feeling when I can see all my siblings at one time again. The nostalgia hits hard and the old and new memories made are truly a blessing.”  For a split-second, it is no big deal. I scroll social media quickly these days, tired of its mundanity, confused by the chaos, embarrassed to be addicted to it anyway. I stop at this one, caught off guard by the golden hues. My heart leaps into my throat, and my breath quickens. I feel angry and sad at the same time. I think I am being ridiculous and try to move along to more important posts like parenting memes and Tik-Tok tips. But my thumb is out of my control, bringing the handsome family back to me again and again.  They are my handsome family; I was not invited to dinner.