By Ann T. Perri
When it first happened, I thought my DNA discovery broke me into a thousand pieces, but now, that’s not what I think happened. Instead, as one set of beliefs about identity peeled away, I expanded and reassembled.
Before I knew I was an NPE (not parent expected), many of my beliefs about identity came from my family, particularly my father’s family. To them, blood is everything. You put your family first and never betray them, because they’re your blood.
In my earliest childhood memories, in an Italian house with plastic-covered furniture and the scent of sautéed garlic always wafting from the kitchen, my grandma told me the story of her family, our family. I learned about her siblings, her no-good father, and her long-suffering mother. I absorbed it all and built my identity on that family lore.
My grandma would tell me how she waited generations for a girl to be born into the family, and here I was, her prayers answered. And best yet in her eyes, I was smarter than the boys in the family—just like she knew a girl would be with our blood.
She mapped out the person she expected me to be when I grew up. I would travel and attend college, yet I must remember that cleanliness was next to godliness and always that blood is thicker than water.
The only thing was—which we didn’t know then—was that I wasn’t blood. I didn’t share a single drop of their blood or a centimorgan of their DNA. I wasn’t like the men in the family because they weren’t related to me. But nobody knew that, except maybe my mother.
Decades after my grandma died, some saliva and a DNA test revealed my genetic truth. I was a middle-aged woman going through menopause with an identity that felt shattered with little warning. The pieces of my family stories left a debris field through my life. It was as SpaceX says when a rocket explodes, it’s a rapid unscheduled disassembly or RUD. And it feels like shit.
I didn’t know who my biological father was, so I had no stories to replace the old family stories. The only story I had was that every time I looked in the mirror, a stranger looked back. Somewhere out there were strangers who probably looked like me. At the time, though, I felt like I came from a lie, which is like coming from nowhere.
It felt like whoever I had been before was dead, yet I was still breathing and moving numbly through the world. The universe shoved me off one path and one narrative onto another path only illuminated by a wisp of faith that I would find my way.
Eventually, I found out who my bio dad was and I contacted him. We met, and I looked like his side of the family. For the first time, I saw people who looked like me. And yet, I’m not really of that family either.
I could hear their stories, but I couldn’t share their past, the emotional charge of their memories or their long-held family beliefs—even though they, too, were Italian. The shared ethnicity wasn’t enough. Although, it probably helped.
I was and I am someone different than any one family. I’m a hybrid of nature and nurture on my own path. The childhood stories I was told were about people I love and who love and nurtured me. That matters. Those stories didn’t evaporate or disassemble. They still exist. I view them now from a different lens. They are true to what formed me, and so True with a capital T. No DNA test can change that.
What’s in my beautiful, unique, shiny soul and who’s in the tenderest parts of my heart is more important than who or what’s in my blood and DNA strands.
Ann T. Perri is a writer from the Chicago area. She discovered she was an NPE in 2019.