To Tell or Not to Tell

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.