Alissa’s DNA Surprise

This transcript was generated automatically. Its accuracy may vary.

Intro

He passed away.

Now here's a kind of a weird thing about that.

I had said that I found out his results on a Thursday and I talked to him on that Saturday and that date was November 6th, 2016.

He died on November 8th of 2020, but the last time I spoke to him was November 6th.

So the first time I ever talked to him and the last time I ever talked to him was on the same day, four years.

Speaker 2

Apart 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.

Many people in the DNA Surprise community grew up with dads or birth certificate fathers, BCFS as they're often called.

We are raised by these men and then one day, through adna test or other means, we learn that they are not our biological fathers.

But what if you never really felt like you had a dad?

How does the DNA Surprise affect you?

In this week's episode, Alyssa shares how her free spirited mother had her and her twin brother on her own before marrying their stepfather.

Alyssa remembers asking questions.

Do we have a dad?

And getting the same explanation each time.

He lived in another state.

He'd gone to prison.

They tried to make it work but did not.

In her early 20s, Alyssa attempted to build a relationship with who she believed was her biological father Jim, even finding an uncle dad through his brother Rick.

After taking Adna test, everything she thought she knew was upended.

Thank you for sharing your story, Alyssa.

Story 1

My name is Alyssa and I'm 52.

I'll be 53 in August and I'm from Portland, ME.

I grew up with a single mom and a twin brother.

She grew up in Maine but when she was in her 20s she would go down to Florida.

She'd go in the winter time and she'd work jobs in the winter time and she'd come back to Maine and she did this for about 5 or 6 years.

Then she got pregnant and she came back to Maine for good to have the baby unmarried.

I don't really know the back story, but I just know that her boyfriend, who she said was our dad, was in prison when we were born and he was from Wisconsin.

So he was back in Wisconsin.

So now she's back in Maine.

She gave birth to us.

The twins was a surprise.

I think she knew just a couple months before she had us that she was having twins.

So she had boy and girl twins.

I, I remember my young childhood not having a dad around.

No big deal, you know, that's just what we knew.

But I remember I was always the one asking, do we have a dad?

Who's our dad?

She always told us the same thing.

She would tell us his name, how old he was, where he was from and a little bit about him and, and that was always consistent, what she would say and never, I never met him.

She said that he had come to Portland.

They gave it a try after he was released from prison and he came to Portland to see if they could work it out and it didn't last long so he left.

Did you want to have a relationship with him or were you curious to have like that relationship?

Speaker 1

Yeah, I was always very curious growing up, but that was in the 80s, so I didn't know there was nothing we could do or that I could do.

And she had no information.

I knew his birthday and my brother, he, he couldn't care less.

He didn't ask anything.

He just had his opinion, his own opinion about the situation.

And I never remember him asking at all.

I was always the one asking about him.

She, she got married when we were seven.

So we did have a step dad, but not, you know, wasn't like we thought he was our dad or anything.

He just was our stepdad.

He did adopt us, although that's another Side Story.

He thought he adopted us, but she kind of pulled the wool over his eyes and it wasn't legal so.

OK, so he thought he had legally adopted you and in reality your birth certificate did not change.

I was not being official.

No, no.

But he kind of thought it was.

What it actually was was a just a name change basically.

But she told him, oh, I got the papers and, you know, I went to court and they're yours now kind of thing.

And he is.

Oh, OK.

So he thought he adopted us.

Wow, and what was your relationship like with him?

It was fine.

It wasn't like, oh, this is my dad.

We called him Dad because we didn't have a dad.

So that was OK with that.

You know, that felt natural to us.

But he was a nice person and he provided.

And so Fast forward through like childhood, when I was 21, that would have been in 1992, I, I had something happen to my personal life that I had my heart broken and all this.

So I decided I was going to leave Maine.

So I myself ended up in Florida from 92 to 97.

But early on when I was there, once I was out of my mom's house, I thought, I'm going to find, I want to find him.

I'd like to know who he is, see if I could find him.

I didn't expect much.

I just wanted to see what he looked like, things like that.

So the place I was working at, there was this guy that worked there that also worked at the police station.

I was talking to him about it.

He's so well, do you know his birthday?

I said yes.

And gave him what little information I had.

He actually came back and said I found him.

So I wrote him a letter and I left my phone number on the letter and I don't know a couple weeks later he actually called me and he was really excited and we corresponded and then we ended up meeting He at that time he actually was living in Florida.

He was a truck driver, but he was actually living in Florida.

So my spouse at the time we made a plan and we went to meet him.

So we end up having a fairly good relationship for a couple years.

I had my first son in 1996 and when in in 1997 I came back to Maine, he had already at that time moved around.

He was a truck driver and married and they moved to another state, so my son was one.

But it's when I got to Maine, he stopped really corresponding with me, which was weird.

What was your feeling like when you met him?

And I know hindsight's 2020, right?

But when you met him, did you feel like, this is my dad?

Did you feel connected with him?

I did, I I really did.

I he was so nice.

He was so handsome.

My mom had always said, oh, he he was gorgeous.

He was so good looking.

He looked like Superman, like Christopher Reeve and and he really did.

And I was like, OK, mom, I see, you know, I see what you and yeah, so I really liked him and I thought everything was fine.

He had a not great relationship with his family, so I didn't meet anybody else, except I did meet his mother once and then he actually ended up meeting my brother.

My brother took a little bit to come around.

His name was Jim.

Jim, the truck driver.

He actually met my brother before I met him.

So we both had a little bit of relationship with him.

But like I said, when I came to Maine to live, he just stopped having a relationship with me.

So I just let it go.

You know, I wasn't going to force anything.

So that would have been, like I said, 1997.

Fast forward many years, all these years go by and I never really reconnected with him, but I actually connected with his brother.

His brother Rick was a totally different person, kind of different personality.

He like scooped us up with open arms.

Oh, my niece and my nephew and this was Uncle Rick.

So we had this great relationship with Uncle Rick.

And this would have been in about 2013.

Somewhere along there I took the DNA test because I was really big in genealogy.

I had done my mom's genealogy.

I did Jim's genealogy.

I had, I had everything.

I knew.

I knew where the countries that their ancestors were from and everything, pretty much.

I just was curious to see what the DNDNA test would show as far as ethnicity, like how much German, how much Irish, you know, and pretty much thinking it was going to be all English, German, Irish, maybe Scottish.

Well, the DNA test came back and it showed that I was half Italian and that did not jive at all with anything that I knew.

I had a Co worker at the time that also was very big in genealogy and DNA and so I showed it to him.

He's like, you're half Italian like this, 'cause I thought, well, maybe, you know, the migration of people and, you know, trying to rationalize how it could show that I was Italian.

But the gymnastics, right?

Every time we start going OK, trying to make it make sense, right?

Yeah, Yep.

Trying to make it make sense.

And it just was like, no, you, you are half Italian.

Like this pretty much says that one of your parents has to be full Italian.

And you know, your mom's not.

It's like, no, she's not.

So I was confused and I told Uncle Rick about this and I I even said to him, do you think that Jim was adopted?

He's like no, no, he's not adopted.

I'm like, OK, he goes, why don't I take adna test and clear this up?

OK, so he submits adna test.

I managed it him and I both could look at it.

So I was anxiously waiting and I was at work and I opened it and I could not believe my eyes when I saw that he was not matching me at all.

And I already, I was kind of just ignoring all the signs.

You know, I'd already seen that there was nobody in the match list that had their last name or their grant, you know, any of their family names.

I didn't have anybody with those names in my match list.

He couldn't believe it.

But when he came back that he wasn't related, like we weren't on each other's list.

I we both were devastated that we just it was, it hurt.

It hurt my heart 'cause he was a wonderful guy.

Did you still think maybe Jim was adopted or at that point did you accept the results for what they were?

I think I pretty much knew then that it was that was not my family.

And it it was hard for both of us.

Rick was a very, he's a very sensitive, loving guy.

And he scooped us up.

We even started calling him Uncle Dad because we didn't have his brother in our life.

He wasn't into it.

So he said to us one day, well, if Jim doesn't want you, can I have you?

And we said, well, yeah.

So it was really, it was really hard when that came out.

And he said, well, whatever, you know, I'm still here.

We're still family.

I still love you.

We kind of just moved on.

We made sure our relationship didn't change and it didn't.

And it still to this day has not changed.

Oh, that's awesome.

Yeah, he's a good guy.

But then I had this other problem of well, who the heck is my dad?

Talking to Mom

Did you talk to your mom at this point?

Yeah, I did, Mom.

She's she's tough.

She's a tough one.

If you think about what she did back in the late 60s, going back and forth to Maine by herself, working, she just, she was kind of like a little bit of a rebel.

She always told me, oh, I used to date everybody.

I date everybody.

It didn't matter their age, their race.

And she raised my brother and I to be very open and treat everybody the same.

And so she was always open about her past.

I did approach her and it was difficult because she's, she's just a hard person to talk to about stuff like that.

Anything that's like more personal to her, she that generation, they like to keep everything inside.

So I told her that Jim was not our our father.

And her eyes got real big and she's like, what?

And I said no, he, you know, I then I explained the, the test to her and she had actually taken a test as well.

So I did, I was able to separate all my matches and everything.

And I knew the ethnicity, you know, what was hers and what wasn't.

So she had taken the test.

So I tried to ease the the blow.

And can you think of somebody that you might have dated back then?

That would be our dad.

She said, well, there's only one other person it could be.

And his his name was.

And she gave this name.

And when I heard the name, I thought, well, he's not Italian.

And yeah, I said, yeah, I said, was he Italian?

And she said, no, he was Irish.

He was like full Irish.

I said then he's not our dad.

By then she was done with the conversation.

She's like, well, well then you don't need to know.

I was, I don't need to know.

I said, well that sucks.

And she's like, what sucks?

I said that I'm 45 years old and I don't know who my father is.

And she says, Oh, well, she was done.

She was not talking about it anymore.

I was on my own.

And my brother, again, he kind of kept to himself with it.

He didn't have any interest in finding out.

He even said, well, Jim's my father.

I don't know who your father is, but he's my father.

I said it so.

He he was thinking it might have been one of those rare twins from different.

Fathers.

Yeah, I said as much of A cool thing it would be to be a medical anomaly, I just don't think that's the case.

So he didn't want to admit it.

And he was in law enforcement and had no interest in helping me do anything.

He he didn't want to rock the boat with mom anymore.

And all right, I guess I'm doing this myself.

So back to the DNA test.

I, I had a high match, a close, close ish match that was an Italian name.

And it, that person had a very small tree and I could see like up to his grandparents or something.

Everybody's Italian in this, in that family.

So I reached out to that person because what I figured out with that person, let's say his name was John, That person, my match named John, I knew based on the centum organs that whoever my father was, was a first cousin to him.

So I reached out 'cause I wanted to talk to him about who Who are your male first cousins?

I'm trying to find my biological father.

And he didn't really want to help.

He just had done the test to help someone else in his family.

So he really wasn't too helpful.

So I took his small tree and I just started researching it and for some reason his mother's parents, kind of, I was drawn to them.

And even more so when I looked at one of the death records and the family had been like buried in West Palm Beach, FL, which is where I always knew I was conceived.

So I thought I might be on the right track and I'm thinking I'm going to keep looking into this family.

So started doing that and I came and kept coming across this one woman that had family trees on all different sites.

I contacted her and I started explaining the situation and she turned out to be a cousin of John as well.

So she would have been in that same generation of that family.

And I said, can you help me with your male cousins or do you have any brothers?

We started discussing all this and she said, well, I do have two brothers.

One she kind of explained that this one of her brothers was had never even had a girlfriend.

He had lived with his mother his whole life.

And she says it's probably not him.

But I do have this other brother.

His name is Billy.

And he would have been about the same age as my mom and their family all lived in that same city that my mom had gone back and forth to for six years.

Her relationship with Billy wasn't great, but she was intrigued.

And she's like, I want to help you figure this out.

And so she's asked me to send her some pictures of my brother and I and my mom.

And she took all this information and I believe she sent her husband over to talk to Billy.

She didn't get along with her brother, took all this information over to Billy.

And Billy was OK, I have kids.

And he saw the pictures and he was willing to do adna.

Test How long did it take from when your mom said you're on your own to you have potentially identified Billy as your biological father?

It wasn't too long, it was a couple of months.

How are you feeling?

Like you're so close to getting that confirmation?

How are you feeling at that point?

Well, it turns out that Billy was kind of like a local celebrity in that area.

I was able to find all kinds of stuff online, YouTube.

He was a musician.

He sang.

He he had been in some movies.

He had multiple bands over the years and, and I had access to newspapers.com at one point.

I found so much stuff.

I saw pictures of him and his brother.

And I have to tell you, when I saw a picture of his brother, it was like a profile picture.

And I don't know if you can see I have like this little like line on my nose, but I saw this newspaper clipping of his brother.

It was just a random thing.

He was getting a haircut.

He was a hippie.

And he they just did this little article on him getting his haircut.

And it was like this profile shot.

And he had my nose.

I thought, Oh my gosh, that's my nose.

But I thought maybe I'm just trying to see it.

And he had my hair.

I have really dark hair.

His hair was about this long and it was dark, curly.

And he had this little dimple in his nose.

And I thought, wow.

Nobody in my family has that.

And my brother's nose is slightly different.

So it was kind of funny.

I was like, hmm.

And then I just kept looking at pictures of Billy going, is he my dad, you know, and younger pictures of him.

I was like, whoa.

And again, I'm thinking, I'm just trying to see it.

I'm trying to see that there's similarities.

So I tried not to get my hopes up and I had asked the his sister if this comes back that he's not, will you help me try to figure out?

She says, Oh yeah, you know, we've got all.

She had a big family and we got cousin so and so and cousin so and so.

Oh, it might be him.

He was a ladies man and she was going to help me figure out who to approach next.

A couple weeks later, I was getting ready to go to work and I checked my e-mail.

It said the results were in.

I'm looking at it on my phone and it said Billy or William is your father.

And it just like said that.

And I was blown away that I actually found him that quickly, like I found him on my own.

And the fact that that family name, I would just for some reason, when I had seen that first tree, it was a very small tree.

It only went up to like maybe grandparents or great grandparents.

And I just gravitated towards that family.

And then finding the sister, she was all over the Internet with different trees and contacting her and her actually responding to me.

It just was crazy that it just boom, boom, boom, it came back and he was, he was the person.

Wow, I mean, it's incredible, right?

Because it, it really, and I say this all the time, but it really is some parts hard work and and being a great detective and then also a little bit of luck, like you didn't go down the wrong path at first.

You you picked the right one.

Yes.

So what happens next?

So she claimed that she couldn't hear very well.

So all we did was communicate through e-mail.

And I said, can I please call you?

I got the results, can I call you?

And she said no, no, I would just e-mail me.

And I, so I emailed her, said well, say hello to your new niece.

She was like, Oh my gosh.

She asked me again, you know, send me all this information so that I can show him that you're his daughter.

So I sent it to her.

She and her husband went to talk to him and she came back and told me that he was shocked and would welcome a phone call from me.

She was given the OK to give me his phone number and this was like on a Friday that she came back and said I got the results on a Thursday, She talked to him on a Friday.

I waited till Saturday morning and I called him.

That was crazy.

Yeah, take me through that.

Like you waited a little bit, but how was the conversation?

So I got up the nerve to call him.

He picked up and the first thing I noticed was his voice was so like cool.

He just sounded like a cool guy.

He's like, well, I guess you're my daughter.

What do you want to know?

He was, he was so nice.

He's just started telling me about his life, about his career.

I asked him, like, are you married?

Do you have other kids?

He was a lifelong bachelor.

He actually had no kids that he knew of.

And he was married for a very short time to a woman that's actually like three years older than me.

And that was it.

He other other than that, he he was a lifelong bachelor, musician, entertainer.

He was big into Dixieland jazz.

He played in New Orleans for many years.

He was pretty successful at that.

He made a a good career out of out of it and people knew his name and he enjoyed his life.

And he even said I would have made a terrible dad.

I was always traveling and you know, and I'm like, I don't think so.

I think you can't really say how good of a dad you would have been since you didn't know.

And who knows?

You would have, you know, you would have made it work.

But that's neither here nor there.

Did he remember your mother?

So that was difficult because I think he was a lot like she was in that they were just la, la, la, just dating everybody.

And, you know, he's, he saw her picture and he was just kind of like maybe.

And I told him, you know, she would have been either a maid at some hotel or a waitress.

Those are the things that she did as jobs.

And that kind of ring rang a bell for him.

He's like, well, I do remember dating a waitress and I, you know, I was a security guard at the time and he's like, I think that's when I knew her.

And, and then at one point he even said, I think I had coffee with her and I noticed she was pregnant.

And I remember thinking, is that my kid?

And we didn't talk about it.

We just kind of had coffee together.

But she had been dating all these different people, and apparently he had been too.

So it wasn't necessarily like a boyfriend, girlfriend kind of relationship.

So it was easy to dismiss.

Kind of like a fling.

Yeah.

Yeah, he just called it an affair.

You know, a fling.

So once you found him, did you go back to your mom and brother and tell them?

Telling Mom & Brother

So I'll start with mom.

I decided not to tell her right away because she had made it very clear she was not interested in talking about it.

And at one point I think I asked her, well, if I ever find him, do you want me to let you know?

No.

OK, I can't imagine not knowing who fathered my children, but that's just how she was.

And I've heard that on some of the other stories that you've had that the mother's just kind of like, I'm, I'm glad.

They just kind of check out they they push it down.

I mean, I think that denial and doesn't sound like your mom was ashamed of her past, but I think sometimes that factors in.

It I think it does too, and we even talked about that and she talked about how much fun she had She and she's like, I have no regrets and I even tried to tell her I don't I have no judgement whatsoever.

Whatever you did it, I don't care.

You know, I just I want to know who my dad is.

She's like, well, good, I'm glad you don't judge me because I don't regret anything.

You know, she's have like this attitude.

I'm like, OK, but sure wish you'd give me a little more to go on to.

But she's just got mad at me and it was awful.

So I did not tell her.

Now, my brother, he was still like, I don't care what you find out.

Whatever doesn't concern me, I have no interest.

But obviously when I found out who our father was, I said I found him.

He's like, really?

Do you want to know anything about him?

I don't know.

Not really.

OK, so he's kind of a macho guy.

If he was interested, he wasn't about to let me know that.

So Billy gathered up a bunch of pictures and things and he sent me a little package and it was kind of cute.

He had double S of everything.

He had two of everything.

And I started looking at these photos, and there was one, one or two that when he was younger that I thought, Oh, my gosh, my brother looks so much like him, it's crazy.

I didn't really look like him a lot.

I had his brother's nose, and I had dark, curly Italian hair.

I remember texting my brother and I said, can I send you a couple pictures?

Meaning I was going to take a picture with my phone and text it to him.

Can I send you some?

He's like, yeah, I guess.

So I sent it to him and he did not respond except for I think he might have said, oh, wow.

It's like, yeah, oh, wow.

And he really did not comment further.

Well, later on that day or the next day, he said, do you have a picture of Jim when he was in high school?

So Jim, the one we thought was our dad, I said I think so.

So I dug around and I found a young picture of picture of young Jim, and I sent it to him.

I had no idea what he was doing with it.

Well a couple days later he called me or texted me and he said so I took a picture of Jim and Billy to work and I asked all my Co workers who do I look like?

Which one?

They all said Billy.

And he was like I don't know if I can swear on here but he said oh you know the F word?

And I just kind of laughed.

I'm like well you look a lot like him.

He said, OK, I guess he's my father too.

And then I don't know how much later it was a couple weeks, he said, I I want to do a DNADNA test as well.

OK, so we got that going and I was upset thinking, well, what if he comes back and he's just my half brother?

You know, that would be crazy.

And I was I, I remember thinking how upset I was going to be if that actually did happen, but it didn't came back.

Billy's your father.

And so I told him that, and he's like, wow.

OK, So he started learning a little bit about him.

Billy and I talked all the time.

The first conversation I had with him that Saturday morning was about 45 minutes.

And I hung up the phone, and I thought, wow, he's really cool.

And I love his voice.

And he was so nice to talk to.

He was just easy to talk to.

And he was just like, oh, OK, this happened.

Oh, I guess I have kids.

You know, he didn't bother him at all.

And his brother was like, I have a niece and a nephew.

Yay.

So you're talking all the time.

Do you make plans to meet in person?

Definitely.

So I was, you know, in Maine, he's in Florida.

He'd already said he doesn't have a lot of money.

He can't really travel.

I said that's all right, I'll figure something out.

But right about that time, he was getting set up to have some pretty serious heart surgery.

So we had to wait till that happened.

So that was over the course of like two or three months.

He almost actually died during the surgery.

I remember his sister was keeping me in for his sister and brother, like letting me know, like he's not doing good.

You better call him in the hospital.

And and I remember thinking, God, do not do that to me.

Like I haven't even met him yet.

I just found him, you know, please don't die.

And he made it through.

We had some recovery and then I planned a trip down there and yeah, I was super excited.

He was so cute.

He's like, I made a list of all the things that we can do and all the places I want to show you.

And sure enough, I fly down there.

He meets me at the baggage claim and it was just really cool.

He gave me a big hug.

He he said, you want to go to lunch?

He takes me to lunch and I remember taking our first selfie together and I was amazing to me to finally have like, this is my biological father and he's so cool and we had a nice visit.

I didn't stay with him.

I stayed in a hotel and he picked me up every day and we went and did all his things he wanted to do.

And I met a ton of his friends.

I got to hear him play.

He plays the trumpet.

I got to hear him play and it was just really fun.

He was at the time, he was in his late 70s.

And I thought, this guy is still going.

He'd call me up and say, I wanted to call you now because I'm getting, I'm going out with my friends and I'll be out late and I'm like, wow, he's got like a more social life than I do.

And yeah, it was pretty neat.

So I met him and he, he totally looked like the, you know, Italian guy with the shirt unbuttoned and the jewelry and the nice shoes and, and flirting with everybody.

Yeah, it was, he was pretty cool.

It was fun.

We connected really well right out, right out the gate.

He would sometimes ask, you know, about my brother, does he know about me?

Do you think he wants to meet me?

And I just, I didn't want to hurt his feelings.

But I would say he's getting there.

You know, he's warming up to the idea.

You know, he had to come to that on his own time and he finally did.

My brother end up going down there.

They met.

I have one picture of the the two of them together and I ended up going down like a second time.

I brought my two sons with me so they get to meet their grandfather.

That was really nice.

That was really fun.

My brother has one child and I have two, so he has three grandchildren.

He never did meet my brother's daughter, so yeah, we had a relationship for a few years and he passed away in 2020.

Navigating the loss of a brother

So it's about four years, yeah.

And how did you navigate that?

I went from being so grateful for what I did have and what we were able to form between us.

I went from that to being, you know, this really bites.

I didn't meet him until he was an old man and I didn't have enough time.

I went back and forth with those.

I didn't want to be ungrateful for what I had because I'd seen so many DNA stories, you know, the rejection and everything.

And I did not have the rejection.

So I was so thankful for what I had and that I had met him and his siblings and some cousins and and I still have contact with a lot of his family.

His sister won't talk to me.

I don't know why she just kind of got weird about the whole thing.

But I will add the sister, she also had a set of twins, she had twin daughters and they were born like 8 months before we were.

So that was kind of.

Neat.

And I met one of them and we looked a lot of like, a lot of like.

So it's fun to see family that that you look like because I only knew half of my family.

Well, first of all, I just want to say I'm so glad that you did find him before he passed, because I'm sure you hear a lot of those stories too of.

Yeah, I always feel so bad.

But but I think it's important to acknowledge, like, both things, right?

Like it's OK to be disappointed and however you feel about the lost time.

Have you found a way to make peace with that?

I do think about him a lot and I have so many wonderful pictures of him.

I have two movies that he was in that was kind of fun to watch that when he was younger.

And I actually have contact with his best friend.

So every now and then his best friend and I will talk.

His brother had passed away like two months before he did, so I don't have anybody in that family anymore because his sister won't talk to me and her daughters.

They just got really weird about my reasons for finding the family, and I don't know.

So I just had to kind of let that go, you know?

Were they concerned that you were after money or something like that?

Or I think so money, property.

And it's like he didn't have hardly anything and I don't care.

I, that wasn't it at all.

And I wasn't going to try to defend myself constantly.

It's like, OK, think what you want to think, but I got what I need out of it and met him.

I I know his whole family line.

His sister was an amazing genealogist.

She'd actually gone to Italy and gone to all the places she'd gotten Italian records translated and things.

So she had a really, really good family tree already.

And I'm thankful for that.

I have a lot of the family history.

There's so many interesting families.

You know, like my father's cousin was an inventor.

His grandparents were inventors.

His mother actually held the patent for inline skates for 25 years.

She invented those.

Yeah, she had the patent for that, but she could never get anybody to build them.

So eventually the patent ran out and someone else got credit for it.

So it was a little tidbit about her that was kind of neat.

She had a couple of sisters that were Rockettes.

They were models.

They were all just beautiful women and had interest.

There's a lot of interesting family stories.

One of my father's cousins was a beauty queen in Connecticut.

His father was a championship boxer.

Just a lot of neat stuff to find out and the pitchers are great and so I am very thankful for what I got.

I got to meet him.

I I know I'm very lucky in that sense and I don't know what else I could ask for really at this point.

Have you gotten in touch with any of the Italian side?

Getting in Touch with the Italian Side

Like culturally, a lot of people will start cooking recipes or they go and visit Oh.

My gosh.

Well, well, guess who latched on to that?

My brother.

He the resistant 1.

He, yes, he is now fluent in Italian.

He is actually in Italy right now.

He's been to Italy multiple times.

I had contact with a distant cousin.

We're still not sure exactly where our lines meet, but she's on like a couple of different DNA sites and she matches me.

And her name is Lena and she lives in the town that a lot of our family was from.

And so my brother had asked, hey, do you do you have contact with anybody that's in Italy?

I said, yeah, as a matter of fact, I do.

So they connected.

He went over there.

She he met her family like her husband and two sons.

And while he was doing that, he sent me a picture of They took a selfie of him and the family, and for a minute I couldn't figure out which one was him.

Her two sons and my brother look so much alike that it took me a minute or two to go.

Which one is my brother?

Wow.

Oh that is so funny that he is the one that's like oh.

Yeah, yeah, he's all about it now.

And he always look, he always had people asking him if he was Italian or Greek.

He's very Italian looking and he hated when people ask him that.

And now he makes his own pasta, he makes his own sauce, he has an Italian tutor, and Oh yeah, he's embraced it.

Oh, that's so awesome.

Is your mother still alive?

Is Your Mother Still Alive?

My mother's still alive.

I was in the car with her one day taking her to her sister's memorial.

And it was just the two of us.

And I said, so I did end up finding out who our father was.

And before I even got it out of my mouth, she said, I'm not interested.

She didn't want to know.

OK, we'll shut that conversation down.

So she knows that Jim is not our father and that it is someone else.

But when she talks to people, she will talk about Jim being our dad.

She'll say, my brother looks so much like Jim and I don't know why you're not as tall as he was.

Jim was like 6 four and my brother was like 5-9 and and my mom would say, I don't know why you're not as tall as he is.

You got the jeans.

And this is way after we knew that that's not our dad and that she was told that he was not our dad.

I think that she was in love with Jim and that was like the love of her life and the fact that she had his kids was like the only thing she had of him.

And when I crushed that dream it she just couldn't handle it.

It just not something she wanted to believe and it was like taking that last thing away from her that she had of him because she did have a relationship with them.

They had a long, longish relationship, but she just figured her her her dates wrong.

I think she really did think that he was our father and that she just, you know, messed up the dates or something.

She always said we were born early.

Oh, you were, you were due in October, but we were born in August.

Like the reason for that?

Yeah, as I'm talking to you now, you really seem like you are OK with it or that you're at peace with it.

Finding the Father

And if I'm wrong, you can tell me I'm wrong.

How did you get to this place?

Honestly, that short period of time that I didn't know who my father was was scary to me and very uncomfortable.

So just being able to figure out who it was, it settled that part of me and I just said whatever I get out of it will be a bonus.

And I got way more than I ever really thought or expected.

And that's, that's sort of why I'm, I'm OK with it.

I actually got like a little, I got a little, it's his signature with a little trumpet on the bottom.

I can't get it to now it's upside down, but but his his signature.

And then there's a little trumpet that he used to draw on the end of it, and I got that.

Alyssa has a yeah, she has a tattoo with his signature and a trumpet.

And that's my little dedication to him.

Yeah, because we, what we did have for four, four years, almost to the day was really special to me.

And I'm really glad I got to meet him.

I'm bummed that he passed away in my eyes too soon.

But you know, I, I still have a lot of memories.

I have pictures, I have all kinds of stuff.

I got all his, almost all his belongings.

I have his ashes.

His best friend made a, took an old trumpet of his and put his ashes in it and sealed it and sent it to me.

So I have his ashes.

That's really.

Special Yeah.

My mom had such a different attitude about it.

My brother had such a different attitude about it, and I just had to come to terms with everybody handles it differently and I just need to worry about myself.

I got my truth out of it, which was the most important thing to me.

Like I said, that period of time that I didn't know was awful.

It's just awful.

When I first met Billy, I said I've never had a dad on my birth certificate.

Would you be willing to be put on that?

And he said, yeah, in a heartbeat.

What do I whatever I have to do, I'll do it.

Ancestry DNA or those website DNA is not like a legal DNA test that could be used in court.

I said, well, we need to do like a legal DNA test so that we have that documented like that.

And so we all did it and got the results.

And of course it was, you know, 99.999, you know, probability.

And so I had what was considered basically the only DNA test that would would be used in court.

So now that I have that, I knew that I could probably get my birth certificate fixed.

And it turned out to be a blessing that my stepdad was never actually my adopted father, because had that been the case then I probably would not have been able to change the birth certificate, especially like getting him involved.

But it was never their birth certificate was never changed.

So there was nobody listed.

And so after after he passed away, I it was actually pretty easy.

I submitted the paperwork, there was some forms to fill out.

I had my brother do the same.

We got them notarized, sent to the courts and they sent us new birth certificates.

Both of us have him on our birth certificate now.

How incredible.

With that little Side Story you told at the beginning of your stepfather not legally adopting you, it ended up working out like that's incredible.

It goes back to that hard work and a little bit of luck, right?

Exactly, Yeah.

What advice do you have for a parent who might be keeping adna surprise from their child?

Advice for parents who keep adna secret from their children

I think that a parent that has adna surprise or secret should share that with that child as soon as they think that child could handle it and even possibly set up counseling before they drop that.

I have a friend that had a child and she wasn't with the child's father, but she married soon after that and they raised the child with her thinking that her husband was the father.

And I always told her right from the beginning and she knew my whole story.

I always said to her, please don't keep that a secret.

Please tell her like before she's like a teenager and she went to counseling for it about it, to talk to somebody about when would be a good time to tell their daughter.

And they ended up telling her and it went really well.

It was upsetting, of course, in the beginning, but it went really well.

And I just remember saying to her, you know, I'm really glad you did that because I know it was hard, but she we need to know.

Like I was that kid once, like I didn't have a dad.

I didn't know him.

Parents should really put their child 1st and realized that they need to know the truth for so many reasons.

I shouldn't even have to list that, although it's a hard conversation.

They just need to do it.

The the child deserves to have their truth known.

What advice do you have for someone who just uncovered Adna Surprise?

Well, I know that I couldn't breathe for a few minutes.

I say breathe and take it slow and and just as much as you can handle.

You know, you may have to put it on the back burner for a little while until it sinks in or you figure out your next move.

But you deserve to know the truth.

So if that's what you seek, you shouldn't let anybody else's feelings get in the way.

Because I know I felt really whole finally when I found out everything.

People deserve to know who their biological parents are, whether you're adopted or whatever the scenario is.

It's a feeling you can't describe.

I remember asking a friend of mine growing up, I'm like, you have your dad, try to imagine not knowing him.

Try to imagine it and she would say, I can't.

I can't imagine not knowing my father so well.

That's how I feel.

It's a weird feeling.

It's it's not a hurtful feeling, it's just an empty feeling.

Alyssa, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and sharing your story.

I loved hearing your outlook and your journey.

I hope that you make it over to Italy and I wish you the absolute best.

Oh, thank you.

There is a plan for my brother and I to go to Italy together in two years.

So yeah, we're planning to do that, Sure.

And I can't wait to see where my family is from.

Thanks again to Alyssa for sharing her story.

If you have Adna Surprise that you'd like to share, please submit your story at dnasurprises.com.

And remember, for early access to ad free 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.