Jeremy’s DNA Surprise

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Jeremy's Story: A DNA Surprise Preview

Even my grandmother, who I never met, Mildred, my father's mother, knew.

And I found out that like my father's mother, my grandmother Mildred, and my aunt, my father's sister, offered to take me and raise me from this attic mother that my father had an affair with.

Now, granted, you know, back in the 70s that probably wouldn't have been an easy task because things were different back then.

But to know that because I always wanted someone to save me.

Like, like I said, I found out through my DNA search just a few years ago, all these relatives on my mother's side that I never knew existed that lived well into my 20s.

And that's really painful to know that there are people out there that you're that is your blood, but they can't save you or they won't, or they don't know to save you.

I didn't even know to call them and say, can I please live with you?

Because I didn't know they existed.

Speaker 2

Welcome to DNA Surprises, a podcast that delves into the world of unexpected DNA discoveries.

I'm your host, Alexis ourselves.

In July 2021, my life took a surprising turn when I found out that I'm an NPE, a person who has experienced a non paternal event.

In other words, my biological father isn't who I thought he was.

Join me as we explore the stories of NP, ES, adoptees and donor conceived people and their families.

Get ready to unravel the astonishing journeys that begin with a simple DNA test.

This is DNA surprises.

You can't unring a bell after a DNA surprise is uncovered, after contact is made with new found relatives.

What's done is done, which is why some people are hesitant to dig into the truth in the 1st place.

You never know what's waiting for you on the other side.

In this week's episode, Jeremy shares why he didn't decide to take his test to confirm the identity of his biological father until his daughters googled his family.

After a tumultuous childhood fraught with instability and abuse, he couldn't bear the thought of rejection.

Jeremy also reveals what happens when he finally decided to take that test and make contact with his paternal family for the first time.

Before we begin this episode, I do want to mention that there is discussion of childhood abuse and suicide.

Thank you for sharing your story, Jeremy.

Jeremy's Childhood: Abuse, Instability, and Addiction

My name is Jeremy and I am 54 and born and raised in Baltimore.

Thank you for having me on as I tell this story.

While there is a lot of trauma in the beginning, there can be a love story ending to adna surprise story and mine is one of those.

It continues to evolve.

I was raised by a mother who's an addict, single mother, pills and boos.

She was married a lot.

My last name has been changed multiple times as they adopted me into the family.

This new husband she had, my name's been changed like 4 times.

Spent the first seven or eight years in a very small 2 bedroom apartment in Baltimore City.

I don't recall a lot of of men there but I was very young.

I was told that a lot of men were in and out of the apartment with her, and to be honest, during those very early years, as an adult now, the only thing I can recall is that I probably was stuck to her leg like Velcro.

You know, It was just me and her against the world, no one else.

No siblings, no father, no grandparents.

My grandmother was in the picture a little bit, but I can recall times of being left at the kitchen table in this little apartment for hours while she made me eat some crazy liver and onions kind of thing that no kid would want to eat and the torture with that.

I've seen pictures of me years ago as a small child, black and blue.

I recently reached out to one of those husbands that she had.

When I reached out to him, he was a very, very nice man.

I asked him what had happened during my childhood.

They were married for about 6 months.

He told me where I was around a year old.

Her addiction is what broke up their marriage.

And I asked him, did you ever witness any abuse?

And unfortunately he said yes to the point that I begged her to let me take you to the hospital.

And when I'm talking to him, I was like, you know, that tracks.

That makes sense, you know.

But then I started going like this, wait, what year was that?

Wait, I was one years old and she's beating me to the point of hospitalization again.

It kind of tracks.

She married again when I was 8 years old, which is still the last name I have today.

That marriage maybe lasted 10 years.

That's when I recall a lot of the horrific beatings.

I I I recall like maybe an 8 year old birthday with a fat lip.

As a young child I would have to help her drive the car so she would show up multiple times if she had to pick me up from somewhere.

Maybe my grandmother's or some school function.

Sunglasses on at night to hide her blurry eyes of course.

Slurred speech and it was pretty common for me in the passenger seat to bring my left arm over and quietly turn the steering wheel a little bit up so we wouldn't rear into the parked car where we're heading towards.

She'd always slap my hand away and then in 5 minutes later I would be doing again.

I've done a lot of therapy and and a lot of folks out there listening this probably can agree and and understand.

Single mother only child an addict you get something called an attachment wound or a mother wound.

So when a baby does not connect at that crucial time during its infancy with his with his mother, he ends up searching for the rest of his life.

And that's what I still do to this day.

So when I was running away as an early teenager and teenager, I would run to friends houses and basically just get mothered by their mother.

And I would eat it up.

Oh my God, it was so good.

I'd have to sleep on sofas or in a sleeping bag on the floor.

As a teenager, I worked at a local hospital in Baltimore and ended up working with a lot of, like, soccer moms who had, you know, kids that were much older than me.

And they finally found out what was going on, too.

And I would spend a lot of time at their houses running away.

My mother would somehow find out where I was, would scream and yell on the phone to the mom who was taking me in for the week or two.

Where's my son?

I know you have him.

Not fun.

Unpacking Mother's Secrets and Father's Absence

Did.

You ever ask her about your biological father?

And what did she say?

Yeah.

Speaker 1

You know what, it's funny.

She would, when I was old enough, probably preteen or teen, she would tell me his name and the fact that she was in touch with him through lawyers.

So if I go back to the beginning, she had an affair with a married man, someone she worked with, the person who owned the business that she worked at and while she was pregnant.

And again, this is all second hand knowledge I've learned from my siblings that I've just discovered that we'll get into.

They told me a lot about my childhood as they learned it from our father and their mother.

When she was pregnant with me, she tried to commit suicide twice with me inside of her, all to get his attention, try to leave his wife.

She would show up at their house while my siblings were five and three.

I think at the time when I was born, at least two of my siblings screaming at the top of her lungs.

Why won't you see your son?

The police were called.

She just is unwell and and and is always a a negative factor in a lot of people's lives.

I learned a lot about my childhood from my new siblings.

I learned after I was born from them and their mother that she was committed into a mental ward.

I don't know who took care of me then.

And I'll be honest, the suicide thing, I learned that maybe three years ago and that took me some time to get past that was that was a tough one.

I say, I say in the book that I'm writing, my mother had a my mother got pregnant out of leverage, not out of love, which isn't fun because you just end up asking a lot of why questions about your existence and your identity and and all that.

So you came to learn all of this from your siblings after you found them growing up.

She told you his name and that she had contact with him through the courts.

So was there never any like encouragement of you reaching out to him or him being in your life to your knowledge you know at that time?

Yeah, she asked me a lot if you ever want, she would always say if you ever want to reach out to him, I can get in touch with him and listen, you don't want me, I don't want you.

I mean, fuck off.

I can't comprehend at that age when she would tell me these things as a preteen and a teenager to get up enough courage to even begin that journey.

I'm the child, you know, and, and a lot through this journey and you'll find out a lot of things were asked of me, like why didn't you reach out?

Why didn't you do this?

Why didn't you?

And I'm, I'm the kid, you put me on this earth.

It was your choice, you know, and some people in my life who have made those statements still don't get it.

So no, no, there's no way up.

And I mean, even in my 30s and 40s, I would tell my story at a party or something, you know, just say, what was your childhood like?

And I'd tell them and they were like, you never want to ask, reach out for your father.

And I'm like, fuck no.

No, no, no.

But it's more like she.

So she didn't truly offer.

She kind of parentified you and made it your responsibility, but she didn't say I'm going to take you to go meet your father.

No, she never did.

Wow.

You're bringing up something I never thought of.

She probably would have thought that I would have wanted to go to him and be with him and and leave her all alone.

I never even thought about it the way you just said that.

Yeah, she she just said if you ever want to, you make up your mind and I can make it happen.

Maybe, you know.

Yeah, that's funny that you asked that.

Thank you for that insight.

You probably are familiar with IFS or parts work, internal family systems and that whole parentified.

You know, there are parts to me like a performer part.

You know, I'm a musician back here and there is no better high than to be on stage for me.

I mean, if I can get the adoration and the love that I missed as a child through music, where I can take something in my head and have many, many, many people see it and appreciate it.

Oh my God, that's like, there's like 50 mothers in the audience in this bar for me right now, you know, and then there's other parts that are like protector parts, you know, the one that shuts down and goes, I can't deal with this at all.

I'm, I'm, I'm running, you know, you know, and, and, and I've learned there's a lot more parts out there than I'm trying to integrate in this moment.

So.

Absolutely.

So you had a very tumultuous childhood, to say the least.

I mean, just horrific abuse from your mother and men in and out of your life, and no connection to who you know as your biological father.

You've got a name.

What happens next?

Like take me through maybe how you got to the place of wanting to learn more.

Finally ran away for the last time in my teens again, slept on many sofas.

And you know, I'll say one thing.

And the reason why my mother was in touch with my father through lawyers is that he held some money, a small amount for me for school.

So I ended up going to a Catholic High School here in Baltimore, which was phenomenal for me to get me on the right path.

And then four years of state school, which again was phenomenal for me to have determination and wanted to make something of myself.

So I'm in college marketing.

I worked at a hospital in Baltimore and ended up running into this young girl, her name is Tammy, and she was a physical therapy intern there and 33 years later we're here.

She's my rock.

I don't know anyone in this world that can put up with me the way she does and all of my baggage.

We had kids, 2 girls, and I said to myself, I'm going to do everything different than my mother did raising me.

And of course, what do I do?

I go to the extreme, the other end of the spectrum, and I'm like this Uber helicopter parent.

No crumbs on your face, no dirt on your hands to the nicest clothes.

You get everything you want the second you want it.

So So that's how I was as a parent.

It got even worse during girl teenage years, as you can imagine, just trying to protect the girls from everything, which was not a reality.

Daughters' Google Search Reveals Hidden Family

And then when my girls were 19 and 17, my birthday's in July.

And for the last few years, we would go and eat crabs like we do in Baltimore, like everyone does in Baltimore.

And they finally said, how come we know nothing about you?

We don't know your family, we don't have grandparents on your side.

We have no cousins.

There's just you.

We know nothing about you.

And I said, all right, well, you're old enough and I'm dying to tell you.

And I told him about my mother, you know, as any 1917 year old can understand, not a very nice person.

My mother was and left home early.

And then this, I picked up my phone and I said, listen, this is what the Internet tells me about my father.

It's his picture and his name.

And they picked up their phone and they found my two brothers and my sister within two minutes while we're eating crabs.

This is your brother.

This is your other brother, and this is your sister.

Now, I know the first question everyone's going to ask is you could have done a Google search and done that yourself.

Yeah, I could have.

But there's no way in hell I'm going to go down that road and risk getting rejected because rejection and abandonment.

My mother rejected me for her addiction, and my father abandoned me at birth because he was married.

So my life is spent not getting rejected or abandoned.

And the performer in me, luckily I learned this, this part came out as a young kid.

I can charm really well.

And my motto is, is I'm going to charm you before you reject me.

So I will do everything it takes to connect with you as quickly as possible, unhealthy or not, just to feel secure.

You could be the lady behind the counter at the restaurant or something, you know what I mean?

That's just how my brain is wired.

How did you feel when they pulled up that information and you saw these real people on their phones?

Well, of course I went like white as a ghost.

I immediately saw a resemblance.

The kids saw a resemblance, which, you know, I'll say this a lot.

When you finally see someone in this world that you look like or you share eyebrows with or eye color or hair or whatever it is and you've never experienced that before, it is amazing, like absolutely amazing.

Someone like me and others out there, they have an identity crisis.

My last name is just the fourth marriage my mother had.

You know, I don't know any of her side of the family.

That's a whole nother podcast of finding out the fact that there was all these relatives on her side of the family, but she was the black sheep.

So I never met any of them and more importantly, none of them saved me.

None of them took me into their house in Baltimore because you don't do that back then.

You brush everything under the rug.

So yeah, I was blown away.

And this is July of 2019.

So for the next 6 months I sit on this information and I cyberstalk the fuck out of my siblings and luckily they're absolutely amazing.

Everything I find is beautiful and my wife everyday and I have a conversation about what are we going to do?

What are we going to do?

And you know, there's one side of me saying I have every right to know where I come from and I have every right to meet my blood.

And the other part of me is if this destroys that family, you have to go to your grave with this.

At the end of December, early January of 2020, I had made a decision not to contact them because, I mean, something like this ruins families.

It does.

And I'm not going to do that.

You know, I would say to my wife, I'm blessed.

I have two kids.

I got a wife, I got a good career.

I got a house in a roof over my head.

What do I need?

But apparently you need more in this life.

So like I said, I'm a musician.

I played a wedding in 2020, in January of 2020.

And at the reception, I overhear this friend of a friend talking about the high school she went to.

And since I cyberstalked my siblings, I knew the high school they went to, and it's the same high school.

And I said to Emily, you went to the school?

Well, did you know this family?

And I gave them the family's last name of my brothers and sister.

I graduated with so and so and so.

And so, of course, I went white again.

It's a whole new like, what do I do with this kind of information?

And then a bottle of wine later, she convinced me that I had every right to contact them.

And so I did the whole spit in a cup through ancestry and connected all the dots in the tree and and everything was exactly like I had figured out over the Internet anyway.

Ask is is did you decide to take adna test to really just solidify?

Yes, and it was really just for more of a CYA in case because, you know, this could get really controversial.

I spent days in front of the computer going, Oh my God, this is my grandmother.

Oh my God, this is my grandfather.

This is my great, great, great grandfather.

And I'm this percentage Jewish more than I ever thought I knew.

And and I have Russian Jews in my family and Polish Jews.

And it was such a beautiful foundation to start understanding who I am and where I come from.

And I hadn't even met them yet.

First Contact with Cousins and Biological Father

So anyway, you know what happens when you turn your profile from private to public on like an Ancestry?

It starts pinging folks and they get emails.

So turn my profile from private to public.

I had missed a bunch of messages through Ancestry from someone.

And this someone was named Kathy and she's my cousin.

Never had cousins growing up.

And she's, you know, she's putting stuff in ancestry like through the message saying like, hey, I think we're related if you want to contact me.

And then like an hour later, I still hadn't looked at my phone.

She sends another one saying I'm pretty sure I know how we're related.

If you want to, you know, contact me.

And then by the third message, when I finally looked at my phone, she was like, yeah, I think I know how we're related.

I'm pretty sure, so we should probably talk.

And she had figured out that her uncle, my siblings father, my father has a sister, which is Kathy's mother, that she figured out that there was a child at a wedlock, you know.

So I finally contacted her through Ancestry that Monday night and we talked for like 3 hours till like one in the morning.

It was amazing.

I can't explain to you what it's like to have a conversation with someone that has your same blood and you've never had a conversation with anyone like that in the 50 years you've been on this earth.

And she's so beautiful and she's like, do you want to meet?

And I'm like, are you fucking kidding me?

Like, what are you doing now?

I know it's like 1:00 AM, but you know, maybe there's a bar open-ended up having dinner the next night and her sister, my other cousin, came along and I was a a few minutes late.

And I walk into the my neighborhood kind of restaurant bar here in Baltimore that we were at all the time.

Everyone knows us and the place is packed.

And there's these two beautiful women, these two gorgeous Jewish women at this table.

And I knew it was them and this crowd.

And we're crying and drinking and trying to eat.

And then they're kicking us out as they're putting the tables up, the chairs up on the tables next to us as they're closing down.

I told them at the end of the night, listen, I, I have to do this the right way, which means I have to contact my father first before things may.

I don't want things to backfire.

I don't want things.

I don't want anyone to come to me and say, you did this first and you're a scam and all that.

So I got his e-mail address and contacted him the next day and said, hey, my name is so and so, my mother's so and so.

And I recently joined the ancestry and can see your entire family, wink, wink.

And I'm sure they can see me too.

Wink, wink, 20 minutes later, e-mail me back.

I'm freaking the fuck out.

I'm like Tammy, I can't read this.

Please read this.

I was sure it was going to be like fuck off.

You know, I, you know, you would understand this every step that I'm telling you every and, and, and it's going to continue as I tell the story.

Every the every little thing, every e-mail, every contact could be a rejection, you know, and I have to weigh the fact that this may not work out.

And how am I going to come back from it?

If I had gotten rejected by this family, I don't know how I would have come back from that easily.

You know this is my blood.

Right.

And without the connection to your mother or anyone else, like you're putting a lot of stake in that.

I don't want to be alone in this world, you know, right.

He replies and says, you know, it's been a it's been a long time.

If you can give me some time, like a couple days to digest all this, I'll be in touch.

And we had a phone call a couple days later.

It was horrible.

He was such a Dick.

I mean, I know he doesn't mean to be.

He's very business like and like he's 80, you know, and that's how, you know, a lot of 80 year olds are.

And he asks stupid questions like, I thought you would have reached out in your 20s.

And again, I'm like, I'm the kid.

I feel like I'm the only one that understands that when I say that I'm the kid, you're the parent.

It's not your responsibility.

You put me here.

I'll I'll never understand why he asked that.

And I said that.

I think I said something just like that.

I told him about the abuse on the phone and I knew in my heart right away that he didn't know about it.

He just knew my mother was crazy and if he was going to save his marriage, he had to get my mother out of his life.

And I do believe he didn't know.

And come to find out soon after that, he went into therapy.

He spent the next 18 months in therapy until we met.

Overwhelmed by Siblings' Unconditional Love and Support

He didn't meet me for 18 months.

Was he still in Baltimore?

Yeah, he splits his time between Baltimore and Florida like a bunch of old people do.

The next day, which was January 16th of 2020, which is my gotcha day that my siblings tell me every year.

This is when we got you like a dog.

But I love it.

They they had found out and sent me ancestry message and all three of my siblings wrote it together and it was phenomenal.

They said stuff like, we're all going to figure this out together.

You know, they use the word like awe or, or the word together or, you know, they said we're close as siblings.

Like, they don't hate each other, you know, which is, again, everything I wished they would be, you know, close and they would talk.

They said, we're very grateful that you did this and we hope to hear from you soon.

Was so positive.

And, you know, it took me like 20 minutes to digest it.

I take it downstairs to Tammy, my wife in her office and I collapse on the floor.

She thought someone died and I'm holding the phone up going.

They use words like together and all of us and you know, all these other words that that created a unity theme in their letter.

And my wife's like, you're crazy.

This is happy news, you know, But again, I mean teacher.

That's a lot to take in.

Yeah, when you search for something like this or you want it your whole life, you know, listen, I get trauma made me who I am and and I've learned a lot.

My vulnerability is a gift and, and, and and I'm I'm grateful for all of it, but doing it alone was miserable, was absolutely miserable.

And I wished I had some siblings to just put my head on their shoulder after a beating or to ask them why is this happening to me or us as why is mom this way?

You know that none of that was answered for me.

So I replied back to the ancestry e-mail about an hour and a half later after I picked my mushy stuff up off the floor.

And Tammy and I put together a response that was coherent through all my tears.

And I said something like, you know, thank you so much for reaching out.

This is a dream of mine.

I can imagine how trauma, traumatizing, or, or how crazy all this is for all of us.

I tried to be inclusive too in my writing for all of us.

I said, you know, this has been quite a roller coaster ride for me during a time of indescribable uncertainty.

And that sentence is something my siblings always go back to when they when they tell the story, because I can't explain to you how scary this process was.

I can't explain to you it takes every ounce of bravery inside of you to do something like this because most of the time it doesn't end up well.

But you know, I do believe my vulnerability.

I do believe the fact that I came to this family with my heart on my sleeve.

And listen, I'm sure they looked me up on the Internet and they wanted to know if this was a scam or not.

And my profile on the Internet is is nice enough that they wouldn't think anything bad.

This was five years ago.

So we spent the next many months, unfortunately, during COVID, which ruined everything because we couldn't see each other.

We had planned to make all these travel arrangements to meet and we just had to do it over Zoom or Webex.

We would get to know each other.

It took my sister a little bit longer to contact me, but my brothers contacted me right away.

A lot of face times my sister took about 3 months, which was was devastating for me because you know, someone like me, they, they, if they don't connect quickly, they feel useless or or rejected or something.

You know what I mean?

But I learned that, you know, everyone has their own process during these types of events.

And you can't expect someone to move 1000 miles an hour like I do all the time.

You can't expect everyone else to move the same speed during their process.

It's one of the first major things I learned during this in therapy.

So I was able to say to myself, oh, you know, my sister is taking a little bit longer than the brothers, but she's maybe working things out with her mother because she's really close to her mother.

And it took a long time to to be OK with all that.

It took my father 18 months to meet me and he was in therapy because of the guilt he has over the the abuse.

First of all, like this is this is a remarkable story just in, in how resilient you are.

I mean, I like kind of hate it when people call me resilient because it's like, you shouldn't have had to go through all of the things that you've been through you.

Shouldn't have resilient?

But but but it is a story of resilience.

Did your siblings have any inkling that you existed or was this a total surprise to them?

Like I I guess I'm wondering if your father ever disclosed anything to them?

Did his wife know?

Like what did you learn there?

Yeah, I did learn a lot from my siblings about my youth, which is funny, from from their mother and our father.

So their mother knew of the affair.

Their mother knew that there was a baby out of wedlock because my mother was at their house screaming and yelling outside on their front lawn.

Other adults in the family during that time, like my aunt, my cousin's mother, Kathy's mother, they knew too.

Even my grandmother, who I never met, Mildred, my father's mother knew.

And that's really painful to know that there are people out there that your that is your blood, but they can't save you or they won't or they don't know to save you.

Right, right.

So my siblings didn't know and when their parents divorced, they just said they were getting divorced over the many infidelities that our father had.

And, and to answer your next question, I'm sure is coming is yeah, they were really pissed at their parents that they weren't told there was a sibling out there.

My, my, my siblings have never used the word half brother.

Never.

They say brother.

And and they know the words I like to hear.

They know what I need to feel secure because, you know, it's been five years.

And I'll be honest, like in the beginning, I was 10% sure they were not going to go anywhere and 90% sure they were going to be like, well, this was fun, but we're out.

This is only temporary.

And then over the years, it's gotten bigger.

Now I'm at like 9095% sure they're unconditionally going to love me forever.

But I need to hold on to that 5% because I just need to be ready to put my wall up and block the rejection when it comes.

I need to have a plan.

Yeah, if, if it comes.

It's not gonna come.

But unfortunately, you know, our brains are wired so much in trauma that that's how it thinks.

That really doesn't sound like.

It's going to.

Which is amazing.

Embracing Identity Through Therapy and Family Rituals

How much time have you spent in the what ifs?

Because I think it's a natural thing, right, to spend the time wondering, what if my grandmother had been able to save me?

But I also think that that can just wear you down, right?

Because you can't go back in time.

So how much time did you spend on that and where are you sort of out with it now?

Well, I still have what ifs, you know, 50 years of wiring in your brain isn't just fixed overnight, you know, and this family wasn't going to fix it all.

I mean, I'm an intensive therapy and have been for the last five years.

I have like 4 therapists and I use psychedelics, which are amazing in a therapeutic environment to rewire your brain and neuroplasticity.

I thoroughly believe in it.

Listen, what if this person took me in?

What if I contacted my father early?

What if I grew up with my siblings?

I mean, I know it sounds so clicheish, but I wouldn't be who I am today.

I wouldn't have met my wife.

I wouldn't have my children.

All of me and my siblings could have hated each other by now if we had met early.

I mean, now we meet and, and our brains are, are, are mature and we're adults and we can put aside, you know, stupid stuff and immature stuff and really get to the point of healing.

What ifs are.

I mean, listen, I always wanted to be a rock star.

What if I met Tammy at 21 and broke it off because my dream was to go to LA and make it?

I mean, honestly, I probably would have been dead by now because, you know, somebody wired like me is going to constantly be running for that next tie of adoration and love.

And of course, that's going to involve some unhealthy behaviors as well.

What if they're still there?

They are.

They're just fewer and far between.

And, you know, you learn.

I mean, I study Buddhism now, which is amazing.

Have you had any contact with your mother?

Does she know that you are in contact with your family?

No.

So besides, when my grandmother passed in my 30s and I had to help her with the Funeral arrangements, it's been 30 some odd years.

She's never seen her grandchildren except maybe once when they were babies.

They're grown, they're graduated from college, one's getting married.

She's missed it all.

The very first time I met my father was at a restaurant and his new wife was there of the last like 20 some odd years, wouldn't even look at me.

And I'm describing as I talk to my father, I'm describing more of the abuse and he's telling me about what he remembers from that time, how he met my mother, etcetera, etcetera.

And I, you know, I'm bawling the entire, I mean, I must have bawled the first dozen times we met.

And he goes to the bathroom and I look at her and I say, please look at me.

Like, please acknowledge my existence in this world.

You know, I've been a secret my entire life.

Will you please just look at me?

And she finally did and broke down.

But it was one of the first times in this journey that I stood up for myself, you know, and I said, I'm here and don't brush me.

Don't put me under the rug anymore.

Don't brush me under the rug.

I'm here.

There were, you know, there were many times after that.

There was one specific time later that year or the next year where my father and I had lunch alone, just the two of us.

And he spent most of the lunch saying these words, I'm not going to abandon you.

I'm not going to abandon you over and over and over again until he believed that I believed it.

And by like the 12th time, of course, I'm losing it, bawling my eyes out.

This family has done a wonderful job of not only facing the secrets they have in their family, but understanding my pain and giving me what I need.

Another example of that is like I'm covered in tattoos.

Most of my tattoos are about this journey as well as my childhood.

But this family held this huge Hebrew naming ceremony for me where they gave me my Hebrew name and it was a huge thing, rituals.

And I'm in my underwear laying in this sand circle and there's eucalyptus and all these prayers.

And they gave me my Hebrew name, which is it's called Amiasov or AMI.

Everyone calls me AMI for short.

And it means beloved son come to unite.

And this family will say that while I always thought I found them so I could heal, they'll say it's the opposite.

You're healing this family.

You're, you're making us think about what it means to be family and have blood and talk about your emotions.

And I still don't get it.

Amazing.

I still don't get it.

It's, it's a honestly, I, I've, I've talked to a lot of people who have found family and I don't know how many I've really spoken to that have been so welcomed.

Like at that level, that's really, really special.

Yeah, I mean, now, you know, remember it's been, it's, it wasn't easy, you know, and maybe I'm welcome, but reluctantly in the beginning.

But I showed up.

I showed up as a real person with, with real emotions and like everyone would say to me in the family, why are you doing this?

And I said because I discovered I had siblings and I want siblings.

I discovered my blood, you know, and that means so much when you don't know your blood and my life has changed.

I mean, I know who I am, I know where I come from.

You know, not everyone in the family is as close to me as others.

And it takes a long time to accept that because I thought I would walk into this family and they would love me at 10,000 miles an hour like I fell in love with them.

And it doesn't happen that way.

The best part is learning how to deal with that because it's a life skill and you know not everything is going to work out the way you want it to as fast as as you want it to.

That's true.

Now your daughters are the ones who kind of made this happen.

What has their reaction been to this and and your Tammy as well?

Yeah, so Tammy is definitely involved more than the girls because the girls are on her own or in college and stuff.

But we have taken some family vacations together.

When I am out in Phoenix, my oldest brother's out there and the girls will come out for their spring break and spend a lot of time with my brother and my sister-in-law out there.

My family welcomes the girls so beautifully.

One of them's getting married and, and the siblings are invited, but the girls, they step back and they're letting me go through this journey.

I will say this for any spouse that's going through this with their spouse, like if you're the the spouse of someone that's going through it like me, Tammy felt left out like for a lot, a lot of times.

And it's, it's understandable.

I mean, I am consumed with this journey early on.

It's it I eat, sleep and drink it, you know?

And she graciously took a step back while also making sure I was mentally well during it all.

But it's worked out.

I couldn't have done this without intensive therapy.

I couldn't have done this without a beautiful family, a stable family and a stable marriage.

Because you can't do it alone.

It's, it's, it's too big.

It's a beautiful love story and it's got a lot of bumps in the road.

But whose life doesn't you know?

Jeremy's Advice for Navigating DNA Discoveries

What advice do you have for a parent who may be keeping a relationship with a biological parent from their child?

Don't keep the secret secrets kill families.

It might be hard, but again, if the foundation of family is there and love is there, When I heard my brother speak and he uses the same inflection in me, it is.

It is a beautiful thing.

The first time they said they loved me.

I have all these firsts the first time, my niece said.

Uncle, you know, all these beautiful firsts are just indescribable.

They really are.

And what advice do you have for someone who's just uncovering their DNA surprise story?

Don't do it alone, take it slow.

You have every right to find out your story and like I said before, everyone will have their process of meeting you or not meeting you unfortunately.

But if it's a happy story, just remember that everyone has their own baggage and has nothing to do with you.

Like if you're starting a journey like this, all the shit, everything that went down has nothing to do with you.

None of it's your fault.

It's going to feel like it's.

Important.

You're going to blame yourself all the time and why won't this person love me or why won't this person call me?

I wish the best for anyone who has to deal with this, but having a strong support system behind you and not doing it alone is very important.

Very important SO.

I think that reminder that it's not about you, other people's reactions are not about you is so important.

Well, Jeremy, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast and bravely sharing your story today.

You have been through so much in your life, but to see you kind of emerge with this positivity and gratefulness and just a positive outlook moving forward is really inspiring.

Well, thank you so much for having me.

Thanks again to Jeremy for sharing his story.

If you have Adna surprise that you'd like to share, please submit your story at dnasurprises.com and for early ad free access to episodes, join me over on patreon@patreon.com/DNA Surprises.

Until next time.

This episode of DNA Surprises was hosted, produced and edited by me Alexis Ourselt.

It was mixed and mastered by Josh Ourselt of Siren Recording Studios.