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.

A writer, I published multiple local and national articles about the experience—my own and those of others in my same boat. An explorer who wanted closure of some sort, I met multiple new family members as I and my son darted around the country.

The big question—have I met my bio dad, as I call him? Yes, once, in November 2022 for a few hours when he was in my hometown. It was a surreal experience that’s hard to put into words. He acknowledges me—which is what I needed for my heart to calm down and the shame to fade—and we keep in casual touch.

Gratitude and growth are my mottos these days. Of course, there’s the occasional ache and pain when I see photos of people I’m related to and haven’t met; but overall, these are the days I’ve waited for. I’m finally (mostly) on the other side of the grief associated with this.

There were some dark, dark days though. A recent study about the mental and emotional health impacts of being an NPE shows that I’m not alone in suffering a variety of mental health and emotional issues. Common feelings include everything imaginable—as I’ve stated, it’s like feeling all the spectrum of human emotion at once. Loss. Betrayal. Grief. Anger. Excitement. All the feelings. There were sleepless nights, passive suicidal ideations, gratitude for the kindness of strangers and loved ones, realizations that it was okay to do what was best for me and my son—even if others disagreed.

For those of you at the beginning of a surprise DNA discovery journey, know that you are not alone and that help and support is out there. There are dark days, but there’s also hope. For those supporting loved ones on this journey, remember there’s no timeline to grief and no two journeys are alike. One day your loved one may be on top of the world, the next they may not be able to get out of bed. And both days are okay. Also, if you’ve been recently contacted by someone with a surprise DNA discovery, I implore you to choose empathy. We did not choose this, just as you likely didn’t, so please remember we’re doing our best.

As for myself, while everyone’s journey is different, I’m so grateful for each rainbow after each storm and for those who supported me through this particular storm. I hope to choose empathy always, and to always pay forward what I have learned.

Michelle Talsma Everson is a journalist, editor, public relations pro, and storyteller from Phoenix, Arizona. She discovered she was an NPE (not parent expected) in March 2021, and since then has been navigating how to best blend her writing and NPE discovery to be a voice and provide resources for those affected by surprise DNA discoveries. Read about her NPE journey on Scary Mommy and the Jewish News of Greater Phoenix. She’s also written about the topic for Next Avenue. To learn more about her career outside of her NPE discovery, connect with her on LinkedIn, visit her website, or follow her on Twitter.

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.

Some people only tell their stories to the people they think might be interested. I think we all have been in a situation where we start to talk about DNA or NPEs and the eyes of the person we’re talking to glaze over. That’s not someone I’d be likely to get into a deep NPE discussion with. Some people are interested initially, but if we keep bringing the subject up to them a year or two later, we sense they are losing interest. Most of us realize that our stories aren’t as impactful to anyone else as they are to us.

Some NPEs feel they need to tell their stories to those affected by their discoveries. This is especially true if they happen to be on the same branch of the family tree—for example, if the discovery directly affects the NPEs children and grandchildren. I knew right away that I wanted to tell my sons and daughters-in-law. It directly affected them as well. I also told my brothers and my sister, even though they are half-siblings. My discovery didn’t directly affect them, but it may have helped clarify some of the family history as it pertained to our mother. I think I told them more out of a need to share with someone who cared about me—someone who might understand, or at least try to understand, what I was going through. Of course, I also told my husband. He’s been supportive but really has little interest in the whole discovery process, so  I don’t discuss it with him on an ongoing basis.

The people I do continue discussing it with are those in the NPE support group that I attend once a week. This group has been my salvation. I am able to share with others who are all in that same proverbial rocky boat I’m in. We all have stories that differ in ways, some slightly, some considerably, but we understand each other and support each other and take every opportunity to lift each other up. I’m incredibly thankful to have been referred to this group by a fellow NPE.

Some of us who have been open with some of our family members have one or several people we’ve decided not to tell. Again, the reasons for these decisions vary widely. We might feel these people will not understand and will just find the whole issue somewhat shameful; they might  insinuate that we should just “put it away.”

Sometimes, when we choose not to tell certain people, it’s out of an effort to protect our mothers’ reputations. It may have come to light that our NPE status resulted from extra-marital affairs, and we don’t want our moms to be seen in a bad light, so we choose not to tell our more judgmental relatives. And other times we don’t feel that a particular person would be able to handle this complicated information.

There are also instances in which we believe that a person will take our stories, throw them into a mixing bowl, stir it around, and bake up big family dramas. They might invest all of their negative energy into the situation, possibly with no regard to how it will affect the NPEs.

Another scenario involves NPEs wanting to spare certain people the heartbreak that the knowledge would bring them. They may want to spare a mother who didn’t know who the father of her child was and who let the birth certificate father believe the child was his; or a mother who may have conceived after a sexual assault; or a birth certificate father who had no idea he was not the biological father; or one who knew and chose to keep the secret and raise the child lovingly as his own. Suddenly we have the truth in our hands but we want to spare our loving fathers the sadness it would bring them. In these scenarios, the NPEs consider it a gift to keep this information from their parents. Others say the parent has a right to know. Sometimes the parents’ health and age may play part in the decision, for example with an NPE deciding that their parent is too close to the end of their life to needlessly lay this information in their lap.

I believe all of these scenarios in which discovery information is withheld, just like many of the other issues that rise up along the pathways of our NPE journeys, are fluid. It may take months, even years, but an NPE might rethink their decision to not tell a certain person. It’s a personal decision.

As part of my journey, I chose not to tell my birth certificate dad. By the time I made my discovery, he was already near the end of his life and suffering with dementia. I simply couldn’t justify bringing this information to him, if he’d been able to understand it.

I’m hoping that at least one person will see this and know that they are not alone in some of these feelings, doubts, and fears they wrestle with while deciding to tell or not tell. If that’s you, you can take comfort in knowing that many of us are in that same rocky boat. There are no right or wrong decisions for everyone. Ultimately, these choices are yours alone to make.  Give yourself time and some grace and know you will make the right decisions for you.

Gwen Lee is a mother and grandmother of four. She and her husband, Don, have been married for 51 years. Lee has lived in Southern California her whole life, and she retired in 2020 from her profession as an administrative assistant. She enjoys reading and crafting, particularly crochet. Her email address is gwenlee84@gmail.com.

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. It 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.

Oddly, through the fog, there was clarity. I knew the connection of that name to my parents. I knew the connection of that name to my mother, who had always seemed particularly friendly with the father of the family. I knew, on some preconscious level, how this had come to pass. My mother would later admit to having had an extramarital affair and said she had planned to tell me on her deathbed. I couldn’t even begin to unpack the narcissism and grandiosity in that statement.

I had never, for one single moment in my life, suspected that my loving and generous “Daddy,” was not my biological father. But I knew this was not a mistake. I knew this explained what had been missing in my life even though I had never thought anything was missing. I knew this was how my life was supposed to turn out. I knew I was losing a father and gaining a father. People speak of life flashing before their eyes at the moment of death; my life flashed before my eyes at this moment of birth as a new person. It made no sense, and it made perfect sense.

I also discovered that I had been right all along: I am related to someone famous. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, renowned 18^th-century philosopher, statesman, and author of Faust, widely considered Germany’s answer to Shakespeare, is someone I can now call “Cousin Wolfie.”

I took the last bite of my turkey sandwich, closed my eyes, and waited for the fog to lift.

Michelle Tullier is the author of nine self-help books, including the Idiot’s Guide to Overcoming Procrastination (Penguin, 2012) and has recently turned her focus to creative nonfiction, with the book No Finer Place in progress—a memoir of DNA secrets and finding one’s sense of self in the murky middle of the NPE experience. A graduate of Wellesley College with a PhD in counseling psychology from UCLA, she is a former university career center executive director and faculty member who taught the psychology of work. Tullier lives on an island in Maine because her goal in life is to not be hot. Find her on Twitter @Tullierauthor and reach her through www.michelletullierauthor.com.

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, 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.

Matthew Jackson is a late-discovery adoptee. A retired police officer, he lives in Omaha, NE, near his birth family, with his cat, Aiden, and an extensive collection of Star Wars props and Lego sets.

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.

 “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.

It has been an honor to be raised by you. It has been a blessing to see you be a grandma to my son. It is a privilege to share your last name. I want to say thank you for loving me. For raising me. For stepping in when my mom couldn’t. For holding space for your own son and the woman who is raising his son. I appreciate it more than words can express. I tell your grandson that God gave me you because he saw I needed a mom. Instead of thanking you with words, I will do it with actions. I promise that your grandson will only know the unconditional love that you have shown me. Not only in words, but in action.

Because it is an honor to raise him, as it has been an honor to be raised by you.

Michelle Talsma Everson is an independent journalist, editor, and storyteller from Phoenix, Arizona. She discovered she was an NPE (not parent expected) in March 2021 and, since then, has been navigating how to best blend her writing and NPE discovery to be a voice and provide resources for those affected by surprise DNA discoveries. Read about her NPE journey on Scary Mommy and the Jewish News of Greater Phoenix. She’s also written about the topic for Next Avenue. To learn more about her career outside of her NPE discovery, connect with her on LinkedIn, visit her website, or follow her on Twitter.

By Michelle Talsma EversonI 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.

“We are so glad you found us,” your sister, my aunt, wrote on a Hanukkah card.

“Well, we recognize you and our children recognize you,” your brother-in-law said.

“It’s ok, I’ve got him,” my best friend says as he takes my son under his wing and allows me the privacy that comes with the occasional breakdown.

“You did nothing wrong, this isn’t your fault,” my bonus mom says as I lose my shit from time to time.

I am so grateful for the amazing people in my life; I pray their awesomeness overshadows those who aren’t supporting or seeing me in the way I would have it if I could control things. I have learned that I can only control myself. (I’d have preferred to learn this in so many other ways.)

So, I move forward and enjoy the moments where it doesn’t sting as much. I embrace those I love, and I keep a small flame of hope and prayer. I tell God thank you and I ask for peace for both of us.

“I have a good history of bouncing back,” I texted you once. It’s true, but even the strong need rest and safety. And I will find that, just not with you.Michelle Talsma Everson is an independent journalist, editor, and storyteller from Phoenix, Arizona. She discovered she was an NPE (not parent expected) in March 2021 and, since then, has been navigating how to best blend her writing and NPE discovery to be a voice and provide resources for those affected by surprise DNA discoveries. Read about her NPE journey on Scary Mommy and the Jewish News of Greater Phoenix. She’s  also written about the topic for Next Avenue. To learn more about her career outside of her NPE discovery, connect with her on LinkedIn, visit her website, or follow her on Twitter.

By Eve Sturges

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-discovery adoption, donor conception, and non-paternal event. As in: “I found out that as a teenager I had fathered a child; 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’s 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 TikTok 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. 

I do what any responsible person with feelings does in 2022: I post about it in a Facebook support group for MPEs. I know it’s the only place I will be understood, and I am right. The community love-wraps me in digital hugs immediately. Emojis rain down in solidarity. When I read the comment from a friend with rainbow hair, “wrapping you in my arms,” I cry harder. 

The only unusual detail about my non-paternal event is that my biological father reached out to me; typically it’s the offspring who deliver the news to unsuspecting parents, most often after a mail-in DNA kit offers unexpected results. But when I was 38 years old, a man named Peter called and said, “We’ve been waiting for you to find us!” “Us” included five new siblings. I had always wanted siblings. 

Let me start over. 

I grew up with three siblings and married parents. My parents are still married, despite the phone call that revealed I was actually the product of an affair they’d hidden long ago, hoping to forget. They met in high school and are determined to stay together forever. In a complicated and heartbreaking state of affairs between my family and a government foster system, one of my sisters left our home at age 12 and later died from medical complications resulting from her Down syndrome. My other sister suffers from myriad mental and psychological challenges that keep her functioning like a highly anxious 6-year-old. I have a brother, too, and it isn’t that we don’t get along. We do, it’s fine. But that seems to be as good as it will ever get: fine. Somehow, the three-year age difference between us makes an endless sea of different childhood experiences, and we have very little in common. It seems as good a place as any to mention that they—my brother, sister, and parents–all have blue eyes. My dark features were just minor details, explained away with shrugs and vague ancestry references, a song and dance familiar to many of us in this special club.

So, yes, I have siblings. I have an entire family, intact. But this photograph staring at me from Facebook? We’ve never had a photo like that. Congenial, familial, comfortable. Everyone at that dinner table in Montana has brown eyes. My dark, thick eyebrows were MADE to be with those people. They are my people. I am their people. 

And yet … is that true? As a psychotherapist, I take my clients through an exercise called “feelings are not facts.” I first learned it from a mentor when I was in my twenties, and I learned about it again while studying cognitive behavioral therapy in graduate school. A lot of emotional experiences aren’t based on the actual world around us, and it can be helpful to check one against the other. 

My biological father died shortly after contacting me. He turned my whole existence upside down and then left me holding the pieces. The truth will set you free, but the truth will fuck everything up, too. With my identity shattered, the relationship with my parents fractured, my world spinning, I finally connected with a few of these brothers and sisters on Facebook in early 2020. Three were receptive, two were enthusiastic. The pandemic prevented in-person meetings, but so did the stress of all the challenges that came with it in our everyday lives: lockdowns, mask mandates, toilet paper shortages, disastrous testing centers, grounded flights, zoom schooling, doom scrolling, and life evolving around us faster than we could keep up. I have three children and a private therapy practice that I run from home. Oh, and a podcast. How and when was I supposed to connect with these siblings, and where would we even start? 

I can hear my mentor’s voice in my head, and I can see myself with clients: feelings are not facts. I let myself cry, and I also start to list my feelings out loud: I feel like I would fit in at that dinner. I feel like it would be the sibling connection I’ve always craved, and they’ve left me out on purpose. I feel like we would all know each other in an unspoken understanding about having dark, thick eyebrows. If I were at that dinner, we could finally explore the millions of questions we have about each other, our father, and who we each are as his individual offspring. We would probably stay up all night and take another beautiful photograph with the sweet light of dawn coming in from the other direction. I take a minute to scream into a pillow about the maddening powerlessness of it all. 

There’s nothing left except the facts: If Facebook is any kind of evidence, I actually would not fit in with these people. We have extremely disparate opinions, lifestyles, values. They’ve made little effort toward me, but I haven’t done much better. The truth is that I don’t believe I was left out on purpose; I wasn’t even a consideration. It’s still an idea to chew on, but it’s different than an intentional snub nonetheless. The fact is that more than one sibling has suggested to me, in our brief message exchanges, that there are brewing tensions in the family, and they have their own complicated history; it is unlikely that the golden hour glow stayed for long. 

The fact is that I am often lonely in post-ish pandemic Los Angeles. I miss the ease of companionship and get-togethers, and we’re all exhausted by Zoom. Transition fatigue is real, and I’m unsure how to transition into six or seven new sibling relationships while we’re all navigating everything else. The fact is that I love dinner parties, and I’ve always wanted Fiesta tableware. The fact is that I am scared I’ll offend or frighten them with my millions of questions. The fact is that there’s a lot I don’t know about every aspect of this complex situation, and that is the hardest obstacle of all. 

The fact is that there are, actually, no dogs in the photograph at all. 

I’ve adapted the “feelings are not facts” exercise for and with my clients and added a second tier—the Serenity Prayer. This isn’t from my mentor or CBT therapy. Originally written by a theologian in 1933, it’s famously known as a foundational tenet of Alcoholics Anonymous. (No one reinvents the wheel.)

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, 

The courage to change the things I can, 

And the wisdom to know the difference. 

The fact is that despite not having an idyllic relationship with the siblings I grew up with, I do indeed have a family that extends to many aunts and uncles and cousins who love me. We don’t have a cabin in Montana, but we have taken plenty of photographs over the years. A recent reunion was in Idaho, and I don’t remember feeling lonely or unsure about the definition of “family” on those days. I can’t control this picture on Facebook that made me cry, but I can contact my cousin, Jesse, who always brings the best camera. 

“Hey, didn’t we take some group shots on the beach? I’d love a copy please!” I shoot off using a family thread in WhatsApp. Others chime in: My cousin Mariah in Ethiopia also wants a copy; my aunt Ginny in Portland was wondering about it just the other day! Within minutes, a new photograph dominates my screen. We don’t all have matching eyebrows, and there isn’t a golden glow because it was overcast that day, but everyone is smiling. I remember that we are a supportive, fun group despite various challenges over the years. I consider the differences between us, and the family history, and remember that a photograph only captures a single moment, and a photograph doesn’t tell the whole story. 

I write a second message, this time to a half-brother in Wyoming. He posted the dinner party picture that started it all. Our relationship, thus far, is Facebook acceptance only. The courage to change the things I can. “Hey! I saw that family picture at your mom’s house. It looked so nice and fun. I hope you’re well. Now that COVID seems to be fading, maybe I can finally meet y’all one day soon.”  It’s met with silence, but I know I did my part. 

24-hours later, a message rolls in. “That’d be awesome. Sorry, I was at the gym.” 

A few weeks later and we’re still exchanging small notes back and forth, some kind of awkward attempt at conversation and getting to know one another. I messaged a half-sister too, and she wrote back about a recent move to Florida and with sweet questions about my own family. I feel less forgotten, or ignored. I’m holding back on the really big questions, but it feels like we’re closer to a dinner party than we were before. That’s something. 

I’m reaching out to my people here, too, the ones I consider my Los Angeles family, instead of feeling sorry for my lonely butt and waiting by the phone. I’m working on gratitude for the life I have, instead of wondering about the life I could have had if every single thing was different. I am allowing myself to feel my feelings, but I am trying to remember to check them against the facts, too. Eve Sturges is a writer and licensed therapist in Los Angeles, where she lives with her family. She’s expanding her private practice to serve the NPE population through counseling and education. Contact her for more information. Her podcast, “Everything’s Relative with Eve Sturges” can be found on all the podcast platforms. Visit her website and follow her on Twitter @evesturges and on Instagram @everythingsrelativepodcast. She’s also the creator of Who Even Am I Anymore: A Process Journal for the Adoptee, Late Discovery Adoptee Donor Conceived, NPE, and MPE Community. Order it here. 

By Eve SturgesBy Eve Sturges

By Mark OverbaySo what are we supposed to do the day after—the day after our lives are upended by a call, an email, a Facebook message, or by clicking on new DNA results?

Mail-away DNA kits promise adventures of discovery, mysterious and exotic cultures, and inspired histories of relatives once lost; they are instead Pandora’s boxes and, once opened, can never again be closed. My kit certainly led to discovery as promised, but not the kind seen reflected in carefully crafted and nostalgic commercials. In my case, half of my family tree, meticulously constructed over decades, lay in pieces on the floor, leaves violently stripped from limbs in a sudden storm. The father who appeared in my now fading childhood photos and forever inscribed on my birth certificate, prominently positioned on the first branch in that tree, hadn’t, I discovered, created me. His leaf was the first to fall. I numbly stared at the screen as each of my four paternal half-siblings faded entirely away. A full-sibling transformed into a half-sibling. My paternal tree was bare.

DNA tells no lies, and the truths it reveals can be shocking. Day One, Discovery Day, raises questions rather than answering them. What the hell just happened? Who is my father? How does one deal with a half-empty tree at 58 years old? How does one process a nearly sixty-year-old lie? With these and countless other questions racing in my mind, I did something counterintuitive and went to sleep, my brain pleading for time to decompress.

On day two of my non-paternal event (NPE) journey, I woke surprisingly calm and energized despite having no earthly idea what I needed to do next. I was accustomed to dealing with complex problems, but this was like no mystery I had ever tried to solve. I paused, took a deep breath, took inventory of what I had at my disposal, and was encouraged by what I found.

The abundance and quality of my DNA matches were tremendous assets. While there were no parent or sibling matches on my list, there was an individual labeled as a possible “1^st cousin” who had a publicly available tree with 1000+ entries. All by itself, that was a gold mine. I also matched with several dozen second and third cousins and noted the same surname repeatedly appeared in that group. A quick cross-reference with my first cousin’s tree found that same name within his first two generations, so the odds favored I was on to something important right away. Was that my father’s name?

While I technically had a free Ancestry account, I quickly discovered that I would need to upgrade to gain access to any of the choice information I needed to fill in the many voids in my understanding, so I paid for the cheapest version offered. The resources available through this paid account were immense and much better than expected, but I hadn’t opted for the more expensive plan that provided access to old newspapers. I quickly learned that was a mistake, so I did what any other mature and law-abiding citizen would do in my situation and became a Google and social media stalker.

I created a private family tree focused entirely on my new paternal side, buoyed by the perks and freedoms offered by a paid Ancestry account. In the beginning, this unique tree was winterized, not a leaf in sight. Despite that, it was comforting to know I could use this proxy as my personal DNA spreadsheet, adding or subtracting new names and dates as I experimented with various paternal hypotheses. There were also many unfamiliar terms and tools I’d encountered early on this path. What was a centimorgan, and why was that important? Who was an NPE, and was I one? What does “DNA Painter” paint? I needed to learn this new language of genetic genealogy and took up this study earnestly and with a focus that would have made my medical school professors proud. I cheated, though, and watched YouTube videos repeatedly until some of it sunk in. Please don’t tell them.

Armed with a new vocabulary and growing confidence, I added the names of the people I thought were my paternal grandparents to my proxy tree. As it turns out, they were very distantly related (5^th cousins) and, before marriage, shared the same surname. This explains why there were so many of my close matches with that name. While no one source identified all their children, I was gradually able to piece together a comprehensive list. They had seven children, six of them boys, spaced over fourteen years. Each son became a leaf on my proxy tree.

In the meantime, I sorted through my mother’s archives. My mother was the family genealogist, historian, and archivist. She’d neatly cataloged our lives by carefully collecting, storing, and displaying family photos and memorabilia. From my first haircut to her grandson’s kindergarten graduation, no momentous event went undocumented. Mom left behind crates and boxes of scrapbooks, photo albums, and genealogic records. Since her passing, I hadn’t looked at them, so years of dust added weight to these treasures. She was a packrat, and there were mountains of records to pour through. While I didn’t expect to find an envelope with my name on it containing a letter titled “Mark, this is the real story of your father,” I was sure hoping for exactly that. There was, of course, no such letter. Even though she, like me, was born in Tennessee, I knew after college she lived and worked for a few years in central Florida, in the same area that my newly discovered paternal grandparents had lived. That had to be an important clue, but if she’d ever told me the details of where she lived and taught, I’d forgotten them. I was looking for that kind of needle in this voluminous haystack. I didn’t find anything revealing in my first pass through her archives. On a second pass, though, on a card measuring a mere 2 x 2 inches, the name and dates of where and when she taught were printed. I had missed it the first time through. As it turned out, this unassuming little card was the key to unlocking my mystery.

My best guess was that my biological father was close in age to my mother and so, at least temporarily, eliminated a few of the possible brothers from contention. I had narrowed my list to the three most likely and began to dig deeper into each one. By sheer luck, the first Google search I started yielded an obituary that stopped me cold. When a photo is included in an obituary, typically it is one taken within a few years of the individual’s passing. This image, however, was of a much younger man who, to my eyes, looked just like me. Breathlessly, I read his biography. He had taught at the same school as my mother during the same time. The physician part of my brain reminded me that it wasn’t proof but was extraordinarily compelling evidence. The emotional side of my brain, though, knew I had just found my father. The author of this obituary had unknowingly left me breadcrumbs to find him.

I was both thrilled and unnerved. Many take years to find their father. I had found mine in just a few days. This had been too easy, and that made me nervous. I needed someone to look over my work to see if I had made a mistake. I contacted a group I read about in some genetic genealogy-related material. I turned over all my DNA information to a DNA angel, including my proxy tree. My angel was thorough, compassionate, and amazingly efficient. In just a few hours, she confirmed my research. I had found my father. She recommended that I ask a half-sibling to submit a DNA sample for a more visually comforting verification, especially for my new biological kin. This, however, would require a massive leap in my journey.

I knew from the obituary I had five new half-sisters, but reaching out to one of them felt too big a jump to consider. Instead, I contacted my closest DNA match, who I now know was a half-nephew. He was kind and empathic while also protective of his mother and aunts. After thoughtful consideration, he agreed to share my information with his mom, telling me he had no idea how she would respond. Knowing that the road to biological family connection was littered with bad outcomes, I waited nervously for whatever awaited me, braced for denial, anger, and rejection.

Twenty-two days after my NPE discovery and five agonizingly long hours since I last heard from my nephew, I got the news. The youngest of my new half-sisters reached out through Facebook, warmly welcomed me to the family, and included three photos of our father. She volunteered to submit a DNA sample. We began to talk immediately. Three days later, I heard from another sister. She was equally kind and accepting. Many more photos and long conversations followed. Within a few short weeks, I had heard from them all. Each graciously shared photos, press clippings, and memories of my father. While we had no script, we began to process this most unlikely of unions through, at times, challenging but honest conversation, laughter, and tears.

I had been made whole again. The bare half of my family tree now had budding leaves. Together, we pondered what came next.Mark Overbay is a (retired) physician and in his second career as an academic school dean at a small college nestled in the mountains of Tennessee. He’s an avid reader, captivated by the wonder and complexity of the human condition. At 58 years old, an unexpected DNA discovery forced a reexamination of his prior perceptions of family and identity, and that ever-winding journey continues. Overbay is an amateur painter, novice writer, and a lover of freshly-brewed, loose-leaf Chinese teas. He met his wonderful and supportive wife while both attended medical school, and they have been inseparable for more than 35 years. They have one son and two high-energy Labrador Retrievers, Whiskey and Yona.

By Michelle Talsma Everson

By Michelle Talsma Everson

By Mark OverbayIn a single afternoon, I experienced both sides of the non-paternity event (NPE) / biological family fence, and it all started with an unexpected phone call from a friend.

I was traveling out of state and three hours from home. Only a few minutes after I transitioned from the backroads of scenic North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains to congested I-40, I received a text from a familiar name. Because I was driving, I called back rather than texted. I knew him as both a friend and professionally from a previous vocation and didn’t find the text unusual. Although the call started with small talk, like many conversations, I perceived some nervousness and hesitancy in his tone, so I encouraged him to “just spit it out.”

He told me that he’d purchased a DNA kit as a Christmas gift for his sister, the family’s historian and amateur genealogist, and she’d discovered something unexpected in her results. The entirety of their father’s side was missing in her DNA matches. Perhaps thinking there was a mistake, she encouraged her brother, my friend, to submit his sample. He found the same results; there were no DNA matches on his dad’s side. Over months of research, she had carefully and painstakingly pieced together a picture that seemed to reveal their biological father. His sister had reached out to this person and he consented to submit a DNA test for confirmation. The results were in. My father was their biological father. My friend told me we were half-brothers.

Life doesn’t equip you for every moment, and this was one of those moments for which I was unprepared. I had no script to follow, no foundations on which to rest or react. While still weaving through increasingly heavy traffic as I slowly edged toward Asheville, I inquired about the ages of my friend and his sister. Quick mental math revealed that the older had been conceived when I was two and the younger three years later. Though my parents later divorced, they were married during the births of both of these individuals. As shocking as it was, this news somehow too comfortably aligned with the mental image I had developed about my father. My father and I were significantly misaligned in nearly every meaningful aspect of personality, temperament, demeanor, and worldview. We have been estranged for years. I chuckled out loud as I processed it all.

There was, however, a certain uneasiness that began forming in the back of my head. I had submitted a sample for DNA analysis several years earlier, primarily because of curiosity about my ethnicity. I had given the DNA matches section little attention. My father, my friend, and his sister, all closely related, should have been recently added to my match list, yet I hadn’t received a single notification from the DNA company that these new persons had been added for my review. As several direct-to-consumer DNA companies offer this kind of service, I first thought my new relatives had used a test from a company different than the one I used, but my new half-brother confirmed that they’d used the same company I had. My next thought was that I was no longer notified when matches appeared. This seemed entirely plausible as I gave very little thought to these matters. I didn’t have the company app on my phone, I had forgotten my password, and I hadn’t brought my laptop. I was several hours from home and unable to further investigate this possibility.

In the continuing awkwardness that this kind of conversation quite naturally brings, my friend blurted out the question: “You’re the adopted one, right?”

“Adopted? Hell no, I wasn’t adopted,” was my immediate and somewhat embarrassingly defensive reply.  I’d seen my birth certificate on many occasions. I had a copy at home. My father was listed as my father. The brother I was raised with couldn’t be adopted either, as he favored dad in both looks and several aspects of disposition. This adoption thing was wholly unexpected and unsettling. I wasn’t chuckling any longer. He was surprised by my reaction and referred me to his sister, as she had supplied him with this bit of information. I called her immediately, and she confirmed the story. My father had told her that mom was pregnant but not by him, and he married her and “adopted” me despite that. Never once in my 58 years had he or mom told me this story. Instead, he decided to reveal this to a stranger, assuming that I already knew. My mother, stricken with Alzheimer’s in her last years, had taken that secret to her grave. The rest of the drive was a blur. When I finally made it home, I rushed to my laptop, opened the DNA app, and checked my matches. There were no new close matches. My father, my friend, and his sister weren’t there. I searched all 80,000+ of my DNA matches for my surname. Not a single match appeared. As a series of waves rushed over me, a realization unfolded. My father wasn’t my father, at least biologically. The brother I was raised with was likely not a full sibling. My friend and his sister weren’t new half-siblings after all. I wasn’t adopted as my father had revealed, at least in the legal definition of the term. My mother was my biological mother. I found several names I recognized from her side of the DNA match list. I had no idea who my biological father was. In just a few hours, my family history unraveled. Fifty percent of my family tree was utterly wrong. I immediately shared all this with my wife and son and then called my brother and friend to inform them of my discovery.

As the reality set in, an unexpected calmness enveloped me. This genetic enlightenment, oddly, was both liberating and validating for me. As I became older, the differences and distance between my father and me grew wider and wider. I struggled to understand how two people could be any more unlike each other. I didn’t want to be anything like him and feared that somehow the pull of his genetic nature, whatever that meant, would slowly invade mine. I was conscious of the possibility and intentional with my thoughts and actions to guard against it. To learn there was no genetic blueprint with his stamp on it inside me was cathartic. A virtual weight had been lifted from my shoulders that I hadn’t realized was there. The change was immediately palpable.

After a fitful night’s sleep, I awoke energized. Although I had no idea how to do so, I was determined to find my biological family. While that’s another story, my “both sides of the fence” experiences helped better prepare me for what was to come.Mark Overbay is a retired physician in his second vocation serving students in higher education. An avid reader, he’s highly interested in exploring the magic and mystery of the human condition. He’s an amateur painter and a novice writer. Overbay believes that writing informs and, hopefully, improves his thinking and processing. He and his wife of more than 30 years have one son and two young, energetic chocolate labs, Whiskey and Yona.

By Holly BerryFrom a very young age, I was always deathly terrified of cockroaches—these slimy, dark creatures that live in the smallest and darkest crevices where nothing else could ever imagine existing. I think this fear originated from being allowed to watch horror movies with my older brother before the age of 5. My mom told me that if I started to believe any of the movies were real, she wouldn’t let me watch them anymore. She assured me that the events in these films were just fiction, even though a lot of the scenes felt very realistic. If I started to have nightmares or be afraid because of the movie, I would not be permitted to stay up late and hang out with my older and cooler brother. I simply hid my terror about the many scenes that elicited fear. That’s how I continued to hide my feelings for the rest of my life, stuffing them below the surface so no one could access them and use them against me.

I specifically remember watching a particular episode from the 1980s series “Creepshow” in which a cruel germaphobe is killed in his apartment by a swarm of cockroaches. I don’t remember all the details, but I was terrified by the scene in which hundreds of bugs crawl out of his mouth and over his eyes. I was convinced that these filthy, awful creatures would find me and bury me too.

In the southeast, we make up special names for these creatures so they don’t sound so grotesque. In coastal North Carolina, they’re referred to as water bugs to differentiate the larger insects from the smaller bugs. The large cockroaches usually thrive in conditions with more rain and humidity and typically are more present when the seasons change to cooler weather as they search for warmer environments indoors. This important distinction is made so people will know that this type of cockroach exists through no fault of theirs. The other kind—the smaller variety—may signal to others that there’s an infestation due to less than ideal conditions, such as uncleanliness. As an adult, I find this differentiation ridiculous; it seems to reflect the way that our society silently judges others for their simple existence today. Because why would an infestation be anyone’s fault? This seems to place blame on being dirty or being poor or having no ability to rid yourself of the infestation.

In the picturesque city of Charleston, South Carolina, a true representation of the genteel south, these disgusting creatures are referred to as Palmetto bugs. I still remember the first time I saw one. I squealed in a panic while my then-boyfriend calmly explained that the Palmetto Bug is the other state bird of South Carolina, a true beacon of the city—a flowery term to describe a very ugly insect in hopes of accepting its indigenous right to exist in a city that barely stays above water.

Strangely enough, I’m not that afraid of spiders or other insects. I have a healthy fear of snakes, but an irrational fear of cockroaches, especially the large ones. Regardless of what they’re called, my fear of them continued to grow. Whenever I saw one, I broke out in goosebumps all over while silently trembling and desperately trying to escape the room. What is it about the creatures that live in the dark that make them so terrifying? Is it the idea that they live in a place of darkness or is it the darkness they bring with them that’s frightening? Maybe it’s the darkness that morphs them into these ugly creatures. Or is it that they live in the dark because they are terrible and are unworthy of living in the light?

Whenever I saw one, I’d chase it down with bug spray until it eventually drowned and went belly up. I couldn’t force myself to get close enough to hit it with a shoe; even the thought of hearing its shell crack or seeing its guts splattered would terrorize me. Being close to this  roach would seize me with a fear I struggle to describe. I’d wait until I could find someone else to dispose of the remains after the cockroach had died. I couldn’t even face the dead carcass in fear that it would come back to life and fly in my face. It was irrational, but most fears are.

When I was older, I’d learn about the idea of totems—spirit beings or spiritual objects that tell stories. An early form of communication before writing and documenting history with words became the standard—a way to provide value and show respect for all people and living things of the world. Any time I’d see a random animal—a bunny rabbit crossing my path or a tree frog in my window—I’d look up the significance or the totem meaning, much as I might try to interpret a dream. It gave meaning to everything.

During a pivotal time in my life, I decided to take an over-the-counter DNA test “for fun” and unexpectedly discovered that my dad was not my biological father. After uncovering many lies and secrets that my mom had used to manipulate me, I decided to estrange myself from these family members so I could focus on developing my truth and reclaiming my identity. At this time, I started seeing cockroaches everywhere. My house was sprayed twice a year for insects and yet I saw three in my kitchen over the span of a month as the weather turned cooler. I sprayed a third time that year. At a restaurant, one crawled across the wall behind my back. At a coffee shop, one crawled up the wall and flew across the seating area, much to the barista’s colossal embarrassment. I woke up in the middle of the night to see one crawling next to my night stand, dangerously close to my face. For some reason, I was seeing them everywhere.

I searched for the totem meaning. As a default, every totem website includes a picture of the juiciest cockroaches. As I scrolled quickly past these pictures with my eyes half closed, I found this description: “Cockroaches can sneak into a place through the smallest openings, so they bring the message that you should utilize every opportunity life offers you. Moreover, this creature is likely to come to you if you’ve been hiding your true self from others.” As I went on to read about the cockroach totem, I learned that cockroaches symbolize resilience and survival.

I thought about my own journey. Discovering at the age of 37 that my dad wasn’t my biological father opened a Pandora’s box of lies that had been built around me. My dad, with whom I could never form a connection, had always suspected I wasn’t his biological child. I was expected to have a relationship with my older, wiser brother, regardless of the abuse he inflicted on me as a child. All of this was facilitated by a mom who so desperately wanted me to think she was the most important person in my life. Born out of her own desire to not feel bad for her terrible past and a desperation to be loved unconditionally by someone, she withheld information.

Inadvertently, she’d teach me that I must be unlovable if my brother could hurt me and my dad couldn’t even hold a conversation with me. I felt I must be a bad person if, after their divorce, my dad would move far away and not take me with him. Eventually, I also grew apart from my mom and pursued my own interests. No matter how much I tried to anticipate her changing emotions and be what she needed me to be, it always ended in brutal arguments that left me emotionally drained. I concluded that also made me a bad person. If I could no longer be around the woman who did everything for me, then I must be bad. To cover my guilt, I worked tirelessly to make her happy. I put myself through countless holidays and numerous family events to show her that I cared for her and would never leave her, even when she made poor decisions about money and relationships. And she reminded me she’d never left me, even when everyone else had, and, therefore, I couldn’t leave her. I would be her fallback plan. It was my duty and my calling in life because I must be bad if no one else loved me but her.

I didn’t use the revelations of the DNA test to find belonging in a different family, but rather to find belonging within myself. I became the detective of my own life. Finally asking the questions I’d like to have to asked my dad decades ago, I wanted to know more about what the relationship between him and my mother had been like and why he left me after their divorce when I was so young. My childlike brain remembered it one way, but I was curious about his memory. I could finally understand that both of our experiences were valid and provided important information for my healing. Through these conversations, and, eventually, telling him that he was not my biological father, I discovered much about him as a person. He also carried a lot of blame about his own shortcomings as a father. We weren’t able to have a meaningful conversation when I was younger because he was also running away from his fears and guilt about not being the dad he wanted to be. I was simply a reminder of a very difficult part of his past, but I was also his obligation, much like how I felt about my mom. Ironically, after discovering he wasn’t my biological father, I felt closer to him than I ever had before. I could see him as a perfectly flawed human who was willing to take accountability for his mistakes and apologize for them.

By speaking my truth to my closest friends and family members, I discovered how much they hadn’t known about me. Many knew I wasn’t close with my dad, and because they hadn’t met my older brother, they thought of me as an only child. They saw me as super smart and fiercely independent. My mom was okay in their book because she was very charismatic and she seemed to love me. I felt as if the people who knew me only loved me because of the version of myself that I had built for them to see. As I spoke more about my truth, many were appalled that I survived such terrifying conditions. But as I unraveled all the information, even I was appalled that I had survived. Looking at the life I had made, it was difficult for me to be proud of myself. I was a highly functioning trauma survivor. I was the first in my family to go to college and achieve a secondary education. I had a successful career, a beautiful home, a financially stable life, and a very handsome dog. By society’s standard, I was just missing a close intimate connection and children of my own. Even with all that I’d accomplished, society reminded me that I did not have the thing I craved the most, a connection with other humans, but also with myself—one that I would only find after discovering the truth. I was still lacking this connection because I had buried who I really was under the fear that no one could love me because of my history. Knowing the truth and opening up about my past, finally living as my most authentic self, allowed me and others to love the truest version of myself—a bold, bright, beautiful, and resilient woman.

That DNA test shined a light on all the dark corners of my past and cleared the lies that had scurried to find darker corners. It gave me freedom from the dark and made way for the truth, which liberated me from the lies. Today, I’m not perfect, far from it actually. But I live my truth and I love myself more than ever. I forgive myself for the pain I inflicted on others when I was living in the dark, and I forgive myself for all the opportunities I lost to allow others to love me. I was trying to protect myself from being hurt by loved ones again. The truth is, I never would have been able to let anyone love me until I loved myself first. The truth, I now understand, is that I am loveable and I am loved. I am full of love for myself, and that love spills over onto others, even those who have hurt me. That doesn’t mean I allow them back into my life; those healthy boundaries are for my protection. But I can practice loving kindness from afar so the darkness stays away.

Now, when I see a cockroach, I welcome the opportunity to reflect on where I might be hiding again, where I might be falling back into habits of self-loathing or negative self-talk to keep myself small and hidden and safe. But I also grab a shoe or a book and I squash the bug and dispose of it quickly. Because I haven’t quite mastered the Buddhist zen of letting it live peacefully. (That’s my next lesson.) I can face the fear now; it doesn’t hold onto me or terrify me in the same way. While I’m still scared, I know that none of this is my fault. Cockroaches exist as the most resilient creatures alive today. They don’t seek to terrorize my life and they don’t exist to remind me that I am unworthy. They remind me that secrets live in the dark and have a way of escaping from the smallest cracks and crevices. It’s best if I just accept them as they are and face them head-on instead of allowing them to bury me in fear.Holly Berry is a healthcare professional in North Carolina. She was an aspiring creative writer in high school and college until she gave up these pursuits for a predictable career path. She was even featured in the extra credits of the film adaptation for the novel “Big Fish” as one of Daniel Wallace’s creative writing students. She’s revisiting her passion for telling and writing stories after a DNA discovery helped her understand her purpose. Berry is drawn to healing and hopes to use writing not only to further discover herself but also to help others discover themselves too. You can find her budding fiction book review account on Instagram @bottomlinebookreviews and follow her personal account @holliipop.

By Dawn DaviesIt was winter up North. I was four, riding shotgun with my dad in a car on the highway. The naked trees scarred the grey sky, and now and again, birds flocked and dipped in the wind like shards of glass slicing the clouds. My cheeks burned hot. My dad had rolled the driver’s side window down an inch and the whistle of the cold wind sucked his cigarette smoke out the crack. Every time he took a drag, the tip of his cigarette glowed orange underneath the grey of the ash. When it got low, he lit a fresh one from it, then tossed the butt out the window. The inside of the car smelled like Kool menthols, sedan vinyl, and drugstore aftershave.

I was unbuckled because we all were back then, and I fidgeted in my seat, uncomfortably eager to reach a bridge I would be able to see from the driver’s side window. I didn’t know why I felt nervous, only that I had a knot in my stomach that periodically lurched into my throat.

When we got close to the bridge, I slid across the bench seat, grab my dad’s arm, and peered down the divide between the two sides of the highway into a gully that led to a tunnel, where I got a quick glimpse of a black hole framed by the arch of the bridge. I could never quite see what was inside that little hole, but I kept trying. I needed to see it, but I didn’t know why.

I suppressed a thrill of fear whenever I saw it. Mostly I feared missing the opportunity to look inside the hole, because I believed I must look inside it, or else the day would go wrong. The hole bothered me then, and the memory of it bothering me has bothered me for most of my life, with the kind of prodding nag you feel when you are on a 46-year hike and there is a pebble in your shoe. You can ignore it for a while, but eventually it rubs, then blisters, then becomes infected. Then it festers and begins to rot, and you worry about it possibly killing you.

For years I didn’t remember where we went on those rides, so I didn’t know what to make of the memories, or of my fear of seeing that bridge, so I banked them alongside other memories that made no sense, like the time I was awakened from sleep by yelling and the shattering of the storm door glass, and the next day, after the doctor had stitched up my mother’s hand, I broke the household silence by asking what had happened and my parents said, “Nothing.” Or when I once got up the courage to ask my dad why he was always so mad at me, he told me to ask my mother, and the bitter way he said it made me afraid of the truth. Or that time when, after several years of chasing his love and not catching it, I asked my mother if he was my real father and she said, “Shame on you.”

Years later, while visiting my dad, I brought up that morning drive and the bridge and he said, “That was when I used to take you to daycare.”

“I went to daycare?”

“You don’t remember? It was a home daycare. Run by a guy. You cried every time we pulled up there. Every day for a year you cried, and I never knew why.”

“And you kept dropping me off there? To a home daycare center run by a guy? To a place that made me cry every day?”

He shrugged.

“Lots of things made you cry.” He shrugged again. He was dying from cancer at the time, so I didn’t push, but a bolt of electricity shot through me. My husband, who was with us, raised his eyebrows and gave me a look of alarm, while my soul cracked and shards of it flew off like birds in a long-ago winter sky. My cheeks burned hot and I felt jitters akin to those I had felt when I looked for that hole under the arch of the bridge so many years before. My body puffed up like a balloon, rose to the ceiling, and tried to find a way out of the room. I needed to get home. Later that night, I couldn’t sleep.

I know most recollection involves reconstruction, and most reconstruction involves some sort of distortion of exactitude, especially early memories, so we are right to question ourselves. As a memoirist, I do this often. I even question my subjective truth and sometimes feel guilt when I have a memory I think someone else won’t like. This could relate to how my family viewed truth. Even into adulthood I was told by my parents that what I experienced—or what I believed or what I witnessed—either was not true or was not worth paying attention to, which may be why my dad could repeatedly leave me at a place that made me cry every time we pulled up to it. Or why, when after the 23andMe results came back showing that he and I were unrelated, my mother told me it was a mistake and the DNA test must be wrong.

I can’t know for certain, but I suspect this emotional trickery has affected my short-term memory even now, since I often struggle to precisely remember things that have recently happened, specifically things people say in heated conversation, especially when I am upset. And during conflict, even though I have no interest in it doing so, my body tries to puff up like a balloon and find a way out of the room.

After my dad died, the fragments of this part of my childhood came out of my mind like shards working their way out of my skin. They found each other and glided in place in a tectonic way, fusing into a coherence I hadn’t possessed at age four or seven or ten because I’d had no context.

Enlightenment is often delivered by the plunging of a two-edged sword. You get the truth, but then you must live with it. I think I understand why my dad was so cavalier about what happened to me, then, and throughout the rest of my life—I wasn’t his child and he knew it, and what’s worse, he’d been tricked into thinking I was. I also understand why I cried every time we pulled up to the daycare, thought I don’t remember much more than what I’m about to say and I’ve no interest in trying. This will be the last I speak of it:

It was winter up North and I was four. My dad drove me to daycare in a smoke-filled car. It was part of our morning routine. Each day we passed a bridge with an arch, and inside that arch was a little hole that terrified me every time we saw it. When we pulled up to the plain house off the highway, I cried, then my dad peeled me off his legs and led me up the front steps to the house, where I went inside and watched from the window of a weatherized front room while he drove away. There were paper cups with juice and plastic bowls of graham crackers. There were other kids who were, like me, too young to go to school. There was a medium-sized man with a beard who wore his camera like a necklace. He held my hand as we walked down the cellar steps for our special time together.

“Isn’t this fun,” he’d say. “We’re going to play a game. Let’s take off your shirt and you can show me your belly. Now your panties. Good girl. Lie back on the beanbag. Smile. Bend your legs like a frog. Show me where you go pee. Let me see that little hole.”Dawn Davies is the author of Mothers of Sparta: A Memoir in Pieces (Flatiron Books, 2018), which won the Florida Book Award Gold Medal for General Nonfiction and the GLCA New Writers Award for Creative Nonfiction. Her essays and stories have been Pushcart Special Mentions and Best American notables. Her work can be found in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, The Missouri Review, Poetry Northwest, The Alaska Review, Narrative, Fourth Genre, and elsewhere. She lives in Florida. Visit her website and find her on Instagram @dawnlandia.

AnonymousThe Girl’s Mother left The Girl’s Father when there were just two young boys—before The Girl existed. She left the alcohol and physical abuse. She actually divorced him, though none of her children were aware of that until 83 years later, when a granddaughter stumbled upon the records online.

The Girl’s Mother built a small home for herself and her sons. Life was good and she was happy. She had a boyfriend, though no one remains to speak of him, and she was happy for the first time in years. She was as kind as the day is long, plus some, and deserved every happiness.

The Girl’s Father had been raised by a harsh and demanding mother, thereby creating a son of similar demeanor. One day post-divorce, The Girl’s Mother opened the door to her ex-husband and his angry mother. The angry woman said, “You will take him back and you will make it work.” Wanting to do right by her sons, The Girl’s Mother allowed The Girl’s Father to move back in. Best guess is that until that day she’d had as long as two years of happiness, free of this alcoholic anchor.

The Girl had been born during one of her father’s many temporary stretches of sobriety, and he loved her from the start. The Girl had given him back his family. Many years later, he told The Girl that on the day she was born, he went to the home of her mother’s boyfriend and told him that she would never be his now—that HE had won. This was the first The Girl had heard of a separation and a boyfriend.

The Girl grows. There are now two older brothers, a younger brother, and a younger sister. The older siblings like to point out her differences—her different-colored hair, her build, her personality. What they don’t know is she already feels different—odd. She doesn’t feel like she belongs. She is her father’s favorite but her mother’s attention isn’t as easily obtained. Years later, when he is a grown up with children of his own, one brother acknowledges that The Girl’s Mother raised her with a higher level of indifference. He tells her that he has doubted her place in the family and always assumed she was adopted. As if she hasn’t felt this disconnect her entire life.

The Girl learned early that being a daughter—especially the quiet and different middle daughter—meant there would be expectations. She began waitressing when she was 12 years old, with most of her earnings going in the bank and the rest going to pay her way and buy her own school clothes. The Girl’s Mother didn’t have such expectations of her other children. Because The Girl had a strong work ethic and a kind heart, she was often called upon to help, and she minded her younger siblings on the days she didn’t have to work. One day, The Girl’s Mother sent The Girl’s often troubled brother to retrieve her from school. He hadn’t made his truck payments and would inevitably lose it. When The Girl was a teen, her mother instructed her to empty her savings and pay off the son’s truck, telling The Girl she would own the truck. However, because he was a son, The Girl’s Mother would not make him keep the bargain. The Girl then had no savings and nothing to show for her kindness. The subject was closed. She was just a daughter.

Even after a lifetime of pleasing only to be held at arm’s length by her own mother, The Girl is still a fixer. She flourishes when she is needed. She has unknowingly carried forward the family legacy of ‘sons over daughters.’ She is always fixing her own son, which makes her feel important—included.

Still striving to connect, The Girl moves her family 1,000 miles to be near her parents. When her mother calls, The Girl comes. The Girl’s children love their sweet grandma, but even as little bubs they feel from her a lack of emotion or possibly even interest. A disconnect exists between The Girl’s Mother and The Girl’s children, but not between The Girl’s Mother and her son’s children who live nearby. The Girl’s children are, after all, just the children of the middle daughter.

The Girl stumbles through her journey. She wonders, “Where do I fit?” She doesn’t feel she belongs. She is sad. The feeling of not being enough, of being a square peg in a round hole, is still there all these years later. An emptiness permeates her, and life is a daily struggle. The Girl’s son continues on his path of self-destruction and selfishness. The Girl uses her father’s alcoholism to excuse her son’s behaviors. There’s always an explanation for his poor choices. The Girl’s Mother loves her grandkids but, quite obviously, the son’s children mean more to her than the daughter’s.

The Girl’s Daughter seeks counsel during a rough patch in her marriage. The Girl has previously advised her separated son to return to his wife and stay together for the children. Yet she advises her daughter to leave her husband while she’s young enough to meet another and, possibly, have a son. The ultimate prize.

Life continues, and The Girl’s expectations and hopes have dimmed. The Girl’s daughter is grateful to have had daughters and, gradually, also thankful that she won’t blindly perpetuate the cycle of superiority of sons. Not having a son also means her daughters won’t suffer at the hands of a brother as she did, struggling from age 5 to 16 to keep her brother way from her—from trying to touch her and expose himself to her. He was physically violent, too, throwing things at her and hitting her. The paint on the inside of her bedroom door was splintered and falling off from him banging on it so hard trying to get in. She was a quiet, religious girl, so it was especially traumatizing. The feeling of filth he bestowed on her during her childhood that she pushed down has left her scarred. Yet, when she told her mother this, her response was, “It happens.” The accused is, after all, her son. Did she feel that prioritizing the son would make her own mother proud? What other reason could there be for sweeping away such a confession?

The Girl’s Husband gets sick, and there are hospital stays and new worries, yet her indifference to her spouse of 58 years continues. It becomes obvious that the indifference in which the girl was raised has followed her into her own marriage.

In an attempt to find common ground, The Girl’s Daughter gives her parents DNA kits. She hopes that between tests and surgeries, they will explore their roots.

The Girl has lived a lifetime of distancing and an inability to truly connect to anyone but her son. She believes it to be based on the fact that she is just a daughter. She’s carrying on the mistakes of the past, handed down from her mother. Today, the effects ripple through the next couple generations: indifference in marriages, the sons being given privileges, the inability to form friendships.

A year on, a widowed woman sharing her home with her overly enabled son and daughter-in-law, The Girl still asks the question “Where do I fit?” This feeling of unmooring, and the question of being, have haunted The Girl from the beginning.

The Girl returns to her DNA test for answers, and the quest to discover the identity of her mother’s unknown boyfriend changes from a simple historical query to a genealogical necessity.

The Girl realizes that her deep-rooted question—where does she belong?—has morphed into a new but equally perplexing one: Was the indifference shown to her as a child rooted in the difference in gender? Or a difference in paternity?

The next generation, The Girl’s Daughter, commits to finding the answers. She spends hours, days, weeks, and years researching. She now knows that The Girl’s Father has no branch in The Girl’s family tree but The Girl’s Mother’s unnamed boyfriend from years past does. There are new ethnicities to study, new family stories to learn, new relatives to meet. The Girl’s Father will always be The Girl’s “dad,” but the unknown man is actually her father.BEFORE YOU GO…

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By Christine Jacobsen*For months after I received the surprise DNA test results that revealed a not parent expected (NPE) event, I was obsessed with research into all things regarding a deceased Black man named Paul Keith Meeres, my biological father.

During the Vietnam War, I was more likely to identify with draft dodgers and conscientious objectors than someone who had actually served in the military, so it was a surprise to find out that Paul Meeres was a Marine in 1943 in World War Two.

Ancestry.com’s extensive records cited his rise in rank from private to sergeant and back to private on the muster rolls, and I was curious about the reason for this military inconsistency. I’d already received his death certificate, so I used it when looking for answers and requesting information from the National Archives.

Discharge papers arrived with a picture of Paul Meeres on his first day of muster. It was sad seeing a photograph of my biofather as a teenager going off to war. He looked so young. I was relieved to learn he was honorably discharged because I was learning about some of his self-destructive behaviors and feared that they might be the cause for a demotion in rank. Unfortunately, there was no information about the demotion. I would need personnel records to obtain that information.

On a beautiful warm day in September 2018, I was in Dumbo, Brooklyn, sightseeing with out-of-town friends. The change in military rank continued to trouble me as I wandered through photography exhibits under the Brooklyn Bridge. Separated from my friends for a moment, I stumbled upon an exhibit by the Marines. I asked Sergeant Bryan Nygaard if he knew how a demotion in rank happens. He asked where my father had been stationed.

When I told him Camp Lejeune and Montford Point, he said with an air of admiration, “Oh, he was a Montford Point Marine!”

He told me that in 1943 the first cohort of Blacks were allowed in the Marines, and that there could have been any number of reasons someone got demoted; racism could be one of them. He gave me his card and said to contact him if I had any further questions.

As I walked away from the Marine exhibit wondering why Sgt. Nygaard seemed so impressed with where my father had been stationed, my first cousin, whom I found on 23andMe.com, called me. She had a close relationship with Paul Meeres, who was her uncle. After we spoke, she texted me a photo of him in the Marines while he was stationed in Japan.

When I got home that day, I resumed my obsessive researching about my paternal line, focusing on the Montford Point Marines.

In 1941, Black civil rights leaders pressured President Franklin D. Roosevelt to issue a decree banning discrimination in the defense industry. They threatened to send tens of thousands of protestors to Washington, DC.

Days before the protest march was to take place, President Roosevelt signed an executive order prohibiting government agencies from barring employment in the defense industries on the basis of race, color, national origin or creed. It was the first presidential decree issued on race since Reconstruction.

Thousands of Black men were eager to serve during the Second World War. They enlisted in the various arms of the military, and following this decree were allowed to become Marines. Once Marines, they were sent to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and were stationed at the adjacent segregated base camp called Camp Montford Point.

I thought about my teenage biofather coming from New York and being forced to ride in the segregated area of the train once it crossed the Mason-Dixon line—the indignity of it. And the further injustice of shuttling him and his fellow Marines to the base camp barracks in the backwoods. The segregated base camp was substandard compared to Camp Lejeune: the decrepit buildings were falling apart. When the men left base camp, they were often spat upon. As I became aware of the racism he experienced, I felt a confusing mix of emotions: guilt as a person who’d identified as white and anger reckoning with my new ethnicity.

Then on Wikipedia I saw that 66 years after my father’s tour of duty, President Obama and Congress awarded all 20,000 of the Montford Point Marines the Congressional Gold Medal. The greatest civilian honor Congress can bestow. My hands shook as I sobbed at this on my computer screen.

I knew the family never even knew about or received the awards in 2012. Could it still be given posthumously? I wondered how I could make that happen.

Since Staff Sgt. Nygaard had given me his business card, I reached out to him for advice. He said he would look into it and sent me a photo from military archives dated 1944 depicting the Montford Point Marines at a swimming pool in the camp. A man stood on the high dive looking down at the swimmers. The caption read: Black Marines practice descending cargo nets in Montford Point’s training pool under the watchful eye of Sergeant Paul Meeres (on board) (USMC Photo 8275). I was thunderstruck with pride.

Finally, after I provided the New York Chapter of the Montford Point Marines Paul Meeres’ discharge papers and death certificate, they wanted to present the Congressional Gold Medal to the surviving family at the annual dinner/dance less than two months from then, on November 18th, 2018.

I wasn’t sure why I was so anxious for Paul Keith Meeres to get this medal—whether it was for him, for me, for the legacy of the Montford Point Marines, or all of these. Was it for redemption?  If so, who was being redeemed?

And then I was asked for a biography of my father’s postmilitary life.

Because he had been a minor celebrity, I was able to learn from online photos that after the war he’d had an international dance career; he also had a violent streak. He struggled with sobriety and fathered multiple children he didn’t support or know about, like me. I grappled with the idea of honoring a man who behaved dishonorably at times, but the more I found out about the Montford Point Marines and their struggles with racism and segregation, the more passionate I became about honoring courage and service to country.

“I’m stuck,” I said to my adult son, Alek.

All I’d been asked for was a simple biography of his postmilitary life. At first I thought about writing of his illustrious show business career, but then paused because of his messy, complicated, flawed side. I still had an unrealistic idea about the military; I imagined the attendees at the ceremony would be upright citizens who were morally correct and intolerant of  behaviors they might consider dishonorable.

“What do you mean?” Alek asked. At times like these, when I admit to feeling unsure in front of my son, I feel less like a senior citizen, and more like a confused child.

“I’m embarrassed that Paul Keith Meeres’ life was so out of the normal. I bet the Marines at the ceremony have had education, jobs, marriages, and children they raised. He didn’t do any of those things.”

He asked me, “Do you think any of the Marines or their families have experienced any of these conditions? Have they had alcoholism, violence, and dysfunction in their lives?”

I thought about the foolishness of my assumptions—that because they were Marines they didn’t possess the character flaws and defects we all struggle with. With Alek’s guidance, a layer of humiliation slid off my body. I could still respect Paul Meeres’ service in the military during World War 2 while opening my heart to his humanity. I wrote that biography and a speech because my son was right—the Montford Point Marines and their families would understand, maybe better than any others, the struggle to be human. This was part of my inheritance as the daughter of a Montford Point Marine, a mixed-race woman whose ancestors echoed down to her from the past.

I invited all my newfound relatives to the ceremony, but only my half-sister, Paula, whom I had just met just twice prior to that evening, was able to come. With my husband, Angelo, now four weeks after hip replacement surgery, I picked her up at her house. She wore a glittery top and ruby red lipstick. Alek met us at Antun’s, the venue in Jamaica, Queens.

“Do you want to stand with me during the ceremony?” I asked Paula. We held hands a lot that evening, and later, looking at the video of the event, I noticed I put my arm around her almost instinctually.

The color guard marched in as an Audra Day track of “I’ll Rise Up” played in the background. From the first bar of that song, I tried not to cry.

On easels behind my sister and me were framed declarations from President Obama and the Marines. The medal, nestled in a velvet lined box, was heavy as I held it in my hand.

The inscription read For Outstanding Perseverance and Courage that inspired social change in the Marines Corps.

The tears I tried so hard to hold back flowed down my cheeks as I stepped up to the podium to give my speech:

Nelson Mandela said “what counts in life is not the mere fact that we lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead.” The Congressional Gold Medal affirms the significance of the life of Paul Keith Meeres and the other Marines who trained at Montford Point Camp. In this day of increasing intolerance and division in our country, it is heartening to realize that Congress, in 2012, was able and willing to show the national appreciation for the distinguished achievement and contribution the Montford Point Marines gave to American history and importantly, to African American history. The qualities of standing firm despite formidable odds, racism, and inhumane treatment is the mark of a hero, the making of the Montford Point Marines. My family and I are grateful for the patriotism Paul Meeres exhibited and the difference he made in the lives of the Marines who followed him. Semper fi.

After the ceremony, in the photo session, several Montford Point Marines, all in their 80s and 90s, were brought up to pose for pictures with us. One came up to me and said, “I remember Sgt. Meeres. He was my swimming instructor.” It was a great honor to be in their company, to acknowledge the Montford Point legacy, and mark my allegiance to my biological father. We were in a sea of multihued faces and military uniforms and were welcomed into the Montford Point community, descendants of Paul Keith Meeres.

Always faithful.

When the ceremonies were over, the dance floored was cleared and we all boogied to the tune of the Electric Slide, Paula, me, Alek, and Angelo, who stood on the dance floor with us, leaning on his cane.

*Adapted from her book, “Dancing Around the Truth”Christine Jacobsen is a retired school counselor who dedicated 20 years to education in upstate New York. Prior to that she had an engaging, decade-long career in the performing arts, appearing on Broadway and feature films. She’s written for local magazines and school journals highlighting topics of human development. Her debut memoir was inspired by a DNA test surprise, which left her asking herself, “Who Am I?” Follow her on Twitter @Christinesstory and on Instagram @christinefromqueens. 

BEFORE YOU GO…

Look on our home page for more articles and essays about NPEs, adoptees, and genetic genealogy.

• Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts.
• Let us know what you want to see in Severance. Send a message to bkjax@icloud.com.
• Tell us your stories. See guidelines. 
• If you’re an NPE, adoptee, or donor conceived person; a sibling of someone in one of these groups; or a helping professional (for example, a therapist or genetic genealogist) you’re welcome to join our private Facebook group.
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By Candy Wafford“Dad had the same color green eyes,” my brother said as he slid into the booth across from me. I was meeting him and my sister for the first time, and as much as we were trying to keep things light, it was awkward. I took a deep breath, willing myself to relax, and smoothed the navy sundress I chose to wear for an occasion that was casual yet monumental. I smiled and looked at my new brother’s face—the face of a stranger—yet one in which I saw a whisper of familiarity. Squirming in my chair, I realized I could be talking about my own face, one I barely recognized anymore.

How did I get here? I’d taken a DNA test for fun, never imagining it would change my life and my identity. Finding out that my dad—the man I grew up thinking was responsible for my thick hair and long skinny feet—was not my biological father rocked my world and led me on a journey of tearing myself apart and putting myself back together again.

Stumbling across the word ecotone recently, I learned it is the area between two biological places with characteristics of each. A marsh, the boundary between water and land, is an ecotone. Like a marsh that is part this and part that, I too, am an ecotone.

Finding out the truth of my paternity was a gradual process; I was like an archaeologist painstakingly cleaning layers of dirt from an artifact. First were the DNA test results with unexpected heritage. This led to examining my existing family tree, each climb up it leading to dead ends. DNA testing companies notify you when your DNA matches someone else in their databases, and as I began to receive these notifications, the names of the matches were foreign. I realized something was out of place, and my gut was telling me it was me. I began receiving messages from my DNA family, each one kind and inquiring, as they too were trying to make me fit.

Eventually, suspicions turned to proof, and my biology shifted. I was out of place. Unlike tectonic shifts that move the Earth’s plates either toward or away from each other, finding out that I biologically belong somewhere else, simultaneously moved me away from one place and toward another.

At times I felt adrift, clinging to what I had always known about myself and my family, and at others time slowly swimming to this new place, like a chunk of an iceberg breaking off and floating alone in a dark blue sea. Often exhilarated and sometimes exhausted, I felt like I was straddling two places, two families. Not really fitting into either. Bits and pieces of each floating inside me, like the delicate snow in a globe before it settles to reveal the scene that had been hidden.

Someone asked me recently if I had suspected anything growing up. I didn’t. No one did. I had often wondered why I was different, but attributed it to being a middle child or maybe to my parents’ divorce or my mother’s death. Never questioning made the surprise even more jarring, a lightning bolt striking the relative calm of my life.

I played it cool when relaying the news to my siblings, the ones that I grew up with, each one shocked, because none of us had questioned my place. “You always were different than us,” said my brother, upon finding out we didn’t share the same father. And I was different than my family, but the differences weren’t startling. They were subtle, like one of those which-one-doesn’t-belong puzzles where you squint to find small differences like an extra stripe on a tie or one sleeve longer than the other.

As my new truth sunk in, I began seeing evidence that this other part of me had been there all along. My husband and I were on vacation in Lisbon and had spent a hot and sticky day sightseeing in the city. As we stepped into the cool air of our rental, I spied myself in a mirror, my hair, curly and wild, a halo of frizz from the humidity. “We should have known, just from my hair,” I said wistfully to my husband as he brushed past. And all those summers growing up, before parents slathered their little ones with sunscreen, it had been the Mediterranean blood running through my veins that protected my fair skin as it became the color of honey, while my sister’s skin turned as red as a berry. A hundred little signs.

Now when I see snapshots of my past, I feel a confusing jumble of emotions—sadness, anger, and melancholy—as tears sting my eyes. I pore over the photos, looking for things that didn’t belong in one place and those I found in the other place. I’ve become a new version of myself. An ecotone adapts and absorbs elements of two places; so had I.

I’ve made peace with who I am, but I often feel like a shadowy figure in both families, not fully belonging to either. I have eleven siblings, but none with whom I share both a mother and a biological father. This once stirred feelings of loneliness, but I now see it makes me unique, and I am working on appreciating it. I still search my face, with eyes the same color of green as a father I’ll never meet, but my face is my own again. And just as an ecotone is rich and diverse because it is made up of two lands, so am I.Candy Wafford lives in Lexington, Kentucky with her husband and her cat, Roxie. When not selling software, she loves baking, traveling, spending time with her daughter, and eating ice cream. Her memoir-in-progress explores how she was able to find acceptance and release her grief from early mother loss and finding out she was an NPE. Follow her on Instagram @whereivebeentravel and check out her blog about travel and food, Where I’ve Been Travel.BEFORE YOU GO…

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By Richard Wenzel“My mother believed in me, and because of that, I believe in myself. And I really can’t think of a greater gift that a parent can give their child.” Those words ended my eulogy, so I stepped down from the podium and solemnly returned to my seat. Later, as I mingled among the crowd, quite a few people praised my remarks. While kind words are standard at funerals, their comments seemed heartfelt and genuine. I thanked them, adding that praising my mother came easy because of my strong, life-long bond with her, a bond that would be her legacy forever.

“Forever” lasted 16 years, ending the day my mother reached up from the grave and wrought emotional ruin on the living, particularly me.

I distinctly remember being 11-years-old when my dad heartlessly embarrassed me at a school event. Being at odds with my father was commonplace during my childhood and peaked during my teenage and college years, after which I largely eliminated him from my life. As a child, I recognized fundamental differences between myself and my dad. I looked nothing like him. He was athletic, I was not. I excelled academically, whereas he had struggled as a student. The list goes on. When I returned home after the embarrassing school event with tears in my eyes, I bluntly howled at my mom, “How is he my dad when I’m nothing like him and he’s nothing like me?” “He’s your dad, just try to forgive him,” she replied. Over the next quarter century, I asked her some version of that question on dozens of occasions, sometimes in a calm voice, sometimes in harsh tones through gritted teeth. She always responded with some version of that same answer. For some reason I just accepted her words rather than taking my question toward a logical conclusion, probably because I never realized that trusting your mother was fraught with risk.

Today, I know her answers were lies. Presumably well-intentioned, but calculated deception nevertheless. I cannot condone dishonesty, but I might forgive her for lying to me when I was an impressionable 11-year-old. But she lied to me when I was in my 20s, past the age when I needed her protection. And she lied when I was in my 30s, when I had attained a level of stability, independence, and success that her life never had. I will not forgive those transgressions. Where is the inflection point between my mother’s lying being a misguided protection of her child (and herself) from embarrassment and her lying being a selfish, unkind act of cowardice toward her adult son? Frankly, I believe that upon my 18^th birthday my mother should have been criminally charged for having knowingly falsified a legal document—my birth certificate. Imagine a world where parents and their enablers face legal consequences for their DNA identity deceptions! Unknowingly, I’ve been her criminal accomplice; over the years information I wrote on critical documents such as family medical history questionnaires or life insurance applications was fiction, even though I believed it to be true at the time.

I was not my mother’s only secret. When I was 8-years-old and already had two younger siblings, she gave birth again, immediately placed the child for adoption, and then spent the remainder of her life pretending that event never occurred. Other adults—my dad, aunts, uncles, and family friends—kept silent as well. I stayed silent too, as I’d been conditioned to do. To this day, I regret my blind obedience and lack of inquiry, as I will never know why my mother chose different fates for me and my sibling. Attempting to rectify this error, about a year ago I submitted my DNA test.  The results did not reveal my sibling, but I will keep searching. The results did, however, provide an unexpected-yet-not-entirely-surprising discovery—confirmation that my dad is not my biological father. A few months later, I discovered my biological father’s identity. Unfortunately, he, too, died years ago.

Great, just great.

Like any rational person uncovering the lies of their existence, I have many questions for my biological parents, the two people ‘at the scene of the crime,’ so to speak. I wish to ask my mother:

What happened? 

How and when did you two meet? 

Did my biological father know a baby resulted? 

Why did you falsely tell my dad that I was his child? And maintain this charade for decades? 

Why did you never tell me the truth, even though you repeatedly told me how proud you were of me and how mature, responsible, and successful I was?

Actually, my conception may have been a crime: circumstantial evidence suggests that my mother was sexually assaulted. Since the alleged perpetrator and his victim now reside in the afterlife, I’m left to ponder whether I am the product of a rape. How can I remain angry at my mom’s dishonesty and offer her compassion for her trauma? Try falling asleep while such questions bounce through your head. I have no choice but to do so.

My mother had 35 years to find the fortitude to share the truth, a difficult truth, to be sure. Yet she never offered her important words, not even a deathbed confession. For her sake, I wish she would have spoken up; among other harms, she denied herself the catharsis she might have found in honest expression.

Being an NPE sucks! Being among the NPEs whose biological parents are dead at the time of discovery sucks even more! I have empathy for and jealousy toward other NPEs who complain about their arguments with their parents (or in some instances, parent). I yearn to have an argument with my mother, but that opportunity is literally buried underground. I would be grateful to simply meet my biological father, just once, let alone hear his version of this story. But he now exists only in someone else’s memory.

My mom was a strong, intelligent woman I admired. How do I reconcile my memory of her with the truth I now possess? How do I mourn, why should I mourn, can I mourn for my biological father, a man I never knew? My mother’s dishonesty denied me the right to know the authenticity of my existence and so much more.

Sorry Richard, your mom’s dead, your dad too, and they took all the answers with them. So, toughen up and just move on. 

I am trying. What choice do I have?Richard Wenzel grew-up in Illinois, working hard and joyfully playing on his family’s farm with siblings and friends. A health care professional by training, he’s turned his healing skills inward since learning his true DNA heritage. To help raise awareness about NPEs, he writes and speaks whenever opportunities arise and was recently a contributor to the podcast NPE Stories. You can contact him at lone.tree.road.npe@gmail.com.BEFORE YOU GO…

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By Lana BrammannI recently visited Earth Sanctuary—a perfect place to reconnect with my soul and nature. There I found peaceful ponds, sacred stone circles, a labyrinth, Tibetan prayer and Native American medicine wheels—all nestled in a protected forest.  Perhaps, I thought, it would also be the perfect place to connect with my recently discovered BioDad, Michael,  who passed in 2017. After my NPE (not parent expected) discovery and after having found his family, I understood my gravitation toward all things Native American. Visiting this land, with its sacred Native spaces, had me hopeful and happy for a soulful adventure.

Leaves crunched beneath my feet on the winding path. Deep breaths and deliberate steps… inhale… crunch, crunch, crunch … Exhale… crunch, crunch, crunch. Wearing low-tread sneakers instead of hiking boots was an intentional choice that forced a more mindful gait on the muddy, slightly hilly trail. At each activity location I said a prayer, left an offering, and felt lighter. The Native American prayer place surprised me. It felt familiar, though I’d never been to or seen one. Intuitively, I peeled off my sneakers and socks, then stepped barefoot on the flat rock at the pond’s edge. With hands outstretched and palms up, I closed my eyes and thought of Michael. In my mind’s eye, I had a strong vision of the man whose genes created me. His face was clear from photographs shared by his family. The stories they’d generously shared of his struggles and joy created both peace and sorrow. One deep breath and a tear ran down my cheek. Two breaths, another tear.

I told him how sorry I was that he’d passed before I found him. I explained that for a year and a half I’d begged my mother for information; yet she insisted he was not my father. I asked Michael if he knew I was his child during those two times, 47 years ago, when he came out of his home in an attempt to speak with my mother and peered around her at me. I thanked him for helping me find my new house (it was nothing short of a miracle) and for watching over me, especially as I navigated this traumatic discovery. I purged silent tears and years of sorrow for Michael, the father who created me, and for Skip, the assumed father forced into a teenage marriage then also withheld from me after his divorce from my mother. Tears fell for my mother’s family, who turned their backs, and for both fathers’ families, who have recently enveloped me in love and warmth. Tears fell for puzzle pieces that finally fit together.

As if to indicate I’d overstayed my welcome, a squirrel eventually emerged from the bushes a couple feet from my toes and watched for a few moments before scampering behind me to the place where offerings were left. It’s as if the squirrel was saying, “Okay, that’s enough… go on your way.” I left an offering of sage and thanked Michael and the squirrel before putting on my socks and shoes and continuing along the path.

I took solace in the realization that Michael is in the rustle of wind in the trees, the solitary call of the owl every night at dusk, and the shimmer of the lake. He’s in the notes from my cello, flute, and mountain dulcimer. He’s in the activities that bring me comfort and joy, which seem so foreign to the rest of my assumed family.

His relatives have shared that he was flawed and far from perfect, but a very kind and loving human. He loved nature, was musical, and his soul ran deep with his Native American heritage. He and my mother couldn’t have been more opposite. With this knowledge, certain memories with her take on a different significance. It makes me giggle to recall the time I dragged her on a surprise adventure through two inches of mud for hours of mushroom hunting. What makes the recollection so sweet now is knowing he would have relished the spectacle with impish joy, as my very urban, very perception-conscious mother had no option but to indulge me by investigating fungus in the mud.

Although I didn’t know then I was an NPE, when I was a child I was confused by interests and perspectives different from those of the family in which I was raised. I was kept from Michael, and, ultimately, from Skip, the man assigned the role of father. I’m grateful to Skip for stepping in as a father when he had no obligation to do so, and to Michael’s family for sharing stories, photographs, and accepting me as if I’d been part of their world all along. I just wish I’d met him myself. For a child who had no fathers, who would have thought I’d be blessed as an adult to have had two?Lana Brammann grew up in Orange County, California, where she never quite fit in. She now thrives in caffeinated bliss with the natural abundance of Whidbey Island, Washington. She provides love and sanctuary to unwanted tortoises, retired racing greyhounds, and parrots. The parrots, like Brammann, sometimes say things they shouldn’t. She’s a member of the International Society of Genetic Genealogists. Look for her on Facebook.BEFORE YOU GO…

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By Eve SturgesI used to think in paragraphs, sort of dream in sentences, always in love with the way words work. In high school, Mr. Riley taught us how to string sounds together regardless of meaning. I fell in love with lilting Ls, rolling Rs, phrases like “cinnamon vanilla turquoise.” I loved speeches in the movies, and in real life, where every word packs a punch to create sentences that change the world. Annie Dillard, Joan Didion, Julio Cotazar, and David Foster Wallace served as totems while I prayed for guidance at the keyboard. Essays were a voice for me, a way to process events, both traumatic or hilarious, and create a record of my life in a world where I often felt unheard. Screenplays were a way to create images and dialogue where written words were not enough. I was getting support from people I admired. I was getting paid for pieces about all the stupid thoughts in my head about the events in my life. People asked about a book. I was looped into pitch meetings. It wasn’t always positive; hearing “no” always stung, but it meant I was putting myself out there.

And then a man called my husband, and my husband called me, to say: my whole life has been a lie. There was a convoluted story about a group of Christians in the late 1970s, betrayal, secrets, heartbreak. The man explained he was sure that I was his daughter; the man who raised me was, in fact, not my father.

As one might imagine, drama ensued. Everything stopped inside me. Paragraphs and word play were replaced with whispered phone calls, difficult emails, awkward conversations, countless questions, a million tears. Try as I might, I don’t feel like there is anything to write about because everything to write about is loaded. Secrets and shame are the throughline. My lost identity is the lede. My book proposal for a memoir about the relationship between mothers and daughters? Null and void. My mom said please don’t put this on Facebook. My dad said please just wait before putting pen to paper about any of this.

Now it’s been two years. The world outside me did not stop or wait for me to sort through the myriad feelings. There has been a job, kids, marriage, groceries, holidays, global pandemic, American facism, whatever. It all keeps happening whether I can process who my father is, or not. I insisted I was fine, kind of. And yet, the thing I was the most proud of—writing—became an idea of something I used to do. It’s a dream deferred, a sad side effect I didn’t expect.

And yet.

I woke up the other day thinking about the sound of footsteps on gravel. It’s crunchy. It’s familiar. Crunch, crunch, it kept looping, until it formed a sentence about memories, about horror movies, about a young man on the side of a road pacing back and forth with a cigarette. It’s the opening sound in a mediocre screenplay I cobbled together in my 20s. I woke up thinking about that sound, and thinking that maybe my old script should be a novel, and maybe I could write it.

Instead of pulling up that old screenplay, today I wrote this essay about how I was afraid that I might never write again. It’s an exercise in meta-reflection, which is a term I just made up. It feels good putting this all together. It’s not exactly like riding a bike, but like remembering the notes of an old song that used to be my favorite. My voice is squeaky, off-key. But present.

The most obvious thing to write about, for a person who has always written about personal experiences, is the events of the past two years. Instead, my mind keeps going back to the novel. I’m still worried about what will happen if my true story comes pouring out. My thoughts say “write, but write about this, instead.” A creative defense mechanism, of sorts.

Developing a podcast was a defense mechanism, whether I intended it to be or not. It is like the opposite of my writing; I don’t have time to massage words into beautiful sounds. It all comes out awkwardly, unedited. My words are halting; sometimes I am at a loss altogether and I sputter and repeat myself. I need it that way. Our stories are not often beautiful; they are often awkward at best. Adults who are experiencing this loss of identity are raw, and I want to capture that. By listening to others tell their truths, their own DNA discoveries, the lies they’ve uncovered, or the secrets they’ve unearthed, I am listening for my own. I am feeling relief every time I can say to a guest, “Me too.” I am using their words to fill the place where the paragraphs used to be inside me.

But since the other day, I feel a small ember of something coming alive. It’s words, slowly forming with lilting Ls and rolling Rs, it’s beautiful sounds like vanilla cinnamon turquoise. It’s hope; this part of me isn’t, actually, dead. It’s the stories inside me waiting to spill out, in a world where I otherwise often feel unseen. It’s an ember that may turn into a fire of words that upset some people and change relationships, whether I ever post on Facebook or not. It’s an ember that is my truth; it hasn’t stopped glowing. I’ll take it one step at at time, starting with the crunchy sounds of gravel.

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 Billie BakhshiMy dad is my dad. I said what I said. You can’t change my mind.

My therapist has tried to—or at least tried to change the words I use to describe my father.

Over my lifetime, I’ve called my father daddy. I’ve referred to him as my father or Steve.

But he was my dad.

My dad was an NPE (not parent expected). He grew up with a drunk mother and without ever knowing his own biological father. He bore his stepfather’s surname and wasn’t welcome at the stepfather’s family homestead over the holidays, unlike his two half brothers—his stepfather’s sons.

I find it interesting that my dad referred to his own missing biological parent as his “sire.” He seemed to be a stickler for labels and calling things by their proper names, although I suspect, in his case, his choice of label was heavily peppered with anger and resentment.

He never knew his father. Or why he left. Or why none of his father’s family sought him out.

But my dad—he was my dad until I was almost four years old.

But then he abandoned me.

My therapist thinks that because he left me, and because he never resurfaced, his title should be nothing more than sperm donor. She thinks by calling him dad I give him too much power and influence over me.

There is language in NPE, adoption, and donor conceived circles to describe family members and relationship roles, but it’s complicated. Words and roles—like dad, father, donor—just aren’t simply defined anymore, and I’ve had trouble unpacking the roles and titles in my life.

The dictionary is useless on this topic.

I had a great conversation with a friend I met in an NPE Facebook group. Our very first conversation was on the topic of fathers. She was donor conceived but was absolutely adamant that this man—the donor—was her father. So I asked her about my conundrum.

When I explained myself she said, “If your dad had died in a car wreck when you were four years old, would his title be changed to sperm donor because he wasn’t there for you anymore?”

I certainly don’t recall seeing “beloved sperm donor” etched on anyone’s gravestone in the history of ever.

My dad was my dad.

Period.

Even if it was for just short of four years.

He was mine. My dad.

You can’t change my mind.Billie Bakhshi is now a fatherless daughter, a second generation NPE whose maternal grandmother was illegally adopted. Her mother was impounded at Booth Maternity Home for Unwed Mothers in Philadelphia, where Bakhshi’s sister, Donna, was given up for adoption through Catholic Charities. Bakhshi has half a dozen (maybe more) half siblings from her father. Where are they all? She’d love to know, too. Bakhshi lives in Las Vegas, Nevada with her husband, four children, a cockatoo, tuxedo cat, and neurotic chihuahua mix. You can follow her on Facebook and read more of her writing at The Family Caretaker. See her previous essay here and here.Do you have a story to share? We want to hear from you. Find our submission guidelines here.

Please return to our home page to see more articles about genetic identity. And if you’re an NPE, adoptee, donor-conceived individual, helping professional or genetic genealogist, join Severance’s private facebook group.

BEFORE YOU GO…

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