Guy’s DNA Surprise

This transcript was generated automatically. Its accuracy may vary.

Speaker 1

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Speaker 2

My mother again, because she thinks I think, she thought she was the funniest person in the world that nobody got her humor, and there are lots of things that she used to say to us.

I didn't get until I was older and one of the things she commonly said when I would ask for something and and you know it's funny, my sister does not remember this.

So I don't know if it was something she said to my sister but she definitely said it to me and it was she would say oh you know just ask your real parents when they come back from Europe I'm just watching you.

Or sometimes you would say, don't ask me.

I just work here and then sometimes she would like stroke my, you know, white blond hair, and say, you look, just like your father.

And I'd be like, Mom Dad has red hair and shoots him your real father.

Like, if you should, let me do me, she wasn't saying it for me to believe it, but it was just a, you know, it's the humor, in my family,

imagine spitting into a tube sending.

Off your DNA and unknowingly turning your life upside down for me and thousands of others.

This is our reality.

I'm your host Alexis ourselves in July of 2021, I discovered that I am an end PE someone who has experienced a non paternal event.

In other words my biological father isn't who I thought he was this podcast shares.

The journeys of people who were shocked.

By a DNA Discovery mostly through Modern DNA testing.

We're telling the stories of NP.

He's adoptees and donor conceived people and their families.

This is DNA surprises, not every DNA.

Surprise is filled with trauma and upset.

In this week's episode guy joins me for a delightful conversation about his npe Discovery.

He discusses why he always felt like he didn't fit in In and the other reasons, he thought explained his Outsider status in the family.

He shares why he feels Vindicated and relieved to learn that.

He is an N PE and how he's tackling his case.

Like a detective.

Thank you for sharing your story guy.

My name is guy and I'm 55 and I am from Indianapolis.

Well, my DNA surprise story in a nutshell, was that I discovered at this late age that my the father who raised me was Was not my biological father.

He is the biological father of my older brother and sister but not me.

My parents were together for 50 years before my mother passed away.

Then he died three years later there was never any suspicion and that there could be other paternity other than me growing up, feeling like an outsider.

I always felt like especially my father's family.

I just, I didn't look like any of them, they're all like redheads and very pale skinned and I'm blonde.

Bond with a kind of dark skin for a blond.

But the thing is, you know, I looks almost exactly like my mom, I mean, it's creepy.

I mean, like, you look at the photographs and she was once walking, give my dorm hallway and somebody's like, oh my God, you must be guy's mother.

So I guess, you know, although I felt alienated, I felt like I wasn't part of the group.

I know evidence to go on, you know, but even growing up, when we would go to my father's mother's house, the only photograph she had of our family.

Was taken before I was

born.

Mmm, and she never had a different photograph, but up there was never a photograph of me at that

house.

Did you ever ask about

that?

I think I really just internalize it as a kid.

I don't remember ever telling anybody about it and I remember mentioning to my sister just recently under, you know, because of all this and she said oh yeah you're right.

That's true because there were pictures of her and my brother here they looked like members of that family and I didn't and I Always felt that they just treated me.

They weren't crazy about my mom because my dad is from a very tiny town and came to Indianapolis to go to school, and my mother met him on a blind date.

Unbeknownst to him.

And all of us until many years later she was secretly, putting away money to move away to California with some girlfriends.

But a woman.

She worked with said, come and meet my my boyfriend's roommate.

We're going to double daily outside.

It won't be any big deal.

Mom said, you know, he made her laugh and that they got together and that changed her plans.

We found out later that she must have gotten pregnant really quick in their relationship and that sort of changed, everybody's plans, okay?

And so they got married only, I'm going to say probably five months, six months after they met.

And I've heard my mother say things she never really talked about that.

I've pieced that together as a kid sitting with my grandmother her mother and said, wait a minute, they got married in this year but you know, many wasn't born until this year and my grandma was like, yes, for mother was pregnant when she got married because that's how my grandmother was.

She was very straightforward, she always treated me, we had a great chemistry between the two of us and she always said that, you know, the I just seemed like a friend of hers even as a kid, you know?

And so she always told me this truth about stuff which makes me think She had no idea about this.

My mother's mother at my dad's family.

Again, we're on.

Well, they were unkind in many ways, but his mother was not warm.

Let me put it that way.

Okay, where's my mother's mother?

I mean, was myself vacation at me.

She really was the person who made it possible for me to be the person I am today because she just gave me so much support and so much unconditional love, and so much encouragement about everything.

I was interested in.

And also she spoke to me honestly which is again, why?

I think she didn't know about this.

She told me a lot of other stuff about people in the family.

So anyway they got married.

They lived she moved back within.

This would have been like 1959, they moved up back where he was from and they lived there for and might where my sister was born and then four years later.

So, my brother was born and I knew from spam least.

Another is miserable from her telling and her mother's telling and other family members.

She felt very much, not welcome there and they treated I think they had a kind of like this fancy City woman had come down and stolen one of their, you know, homeboys there, you know, hometown boys.

And you know, my mother was very beautiful.

And you know, this honey, blonde, Marilyn Monroe, kind of figure because she was still trying to be very feminine.

And back then and she was an intellectual.

I mean, that's really the only way to put it.

She was a deep reader.

I think that she felt out of place and she didn't really try to fit in honestly, mmm.

She always had sort of a look on her face that she knew.

She was a smartest person in the room and some people gravitated toward that because they were like, oh thank God, but other people found it off-putting so that brings us to item.

If you just ignore.

My brother is born.

My brother is the spit and image as they say of my father.

My raised by father.

I think that's what people say, or birth certificate, father.

I mean, really creepy again.

Like we don't waste faces in my family, we just keep recycling them in the family stories.

I was born and like, maybe four months later, my dad came home from work and my mother was packing up the station wagon.

And she said, I'm taking the cats and the kids in that order back to Indianapolis and you can come with us if you want, hmm?

And I told that story in front of her once years and years later and she said she laughed as to what wasn't quite that dramatic.

It didn't happen.

Exactly like that.

But you know the feeling was there that's that's sort of what it felt like but years later that I heard a story from my her mother, she'd come up to help my mom pack as they were packing up the car.

Some neighbor ladies came over to you know, sort of say oh well you know we're Sgt and my mother apparently was like, you know, you gossipy old biddies.

That's a word she is.

You know, get, you know, get your ass back over and stay out of, everybody's business and my grandmother shocked.

Because that's not how my mother would.

She was raised as a southern lady with manners, and my mom was like, hey, you know what, you know, they know what they're doing, they're just over here to, you know, gossip and I'm not having it, I'm getting out of this town, so she was not happy there fast.

Forward to the moving to Indianapolis in the big city and my brother and sister never stop talking about the idyllic life.

They had led in this small town and growing up.

It really did feel like they were kids who raised in the country versus me who grew up in the City.

Indianapolis is not a, you know, huge sophisticated City but compared to the rest of Indiana, it sure

is.

How much older are your older siblings?

Then

you my sister is seven years older.

And my brother is three years old.

Okay, so by the time I came around they had been married about seven years.

And Mom had been living in this small town for about seven years.

And I think it was hard for the meet my brother who was only we would have been three with me moved.

I think that that transition was tough for them because you know, it was just a whole new house and I have no memory of that small town.

I have no memory of until we moved into this house, you know?

And, but growing up again, I always felt like an outsider.

I my mother didn't help things by dyeing her hair.

Like a dark red.

Go out the whole, you know, my whole childhood Good.

So even in our family photos, like these three, these for dark haired people and your red to red heads and Duck.

And then, you know, there's my huge enormous blond head that just looks like.

I also had like my head was adult size as a child and so like I'm like, no matter where my head is taking up the room and then all the photographs of my cousins from my dad's side, you know, I again, I look like the neighbor kid who's just dropped in because I just don't fit in at all.

So I mean, I grew up very much, not part of this family's culture, but very much embraced by my mother's family because I look like her and they were very fond of her and also very much encouraged by my grandmother to be an original person to be my own.

Follow my own drum beat and she liked that about me because I think she had been sort of an Ava why she called it avant-garde.

Her said, you know, as a teen in the 30s.

And so, you know, look I was a teen in the The 80s and, you know, I look like a blond Boy George.

So look him up.

If you're always there, I mean I played with dolls from I have no memory of not playing with dolls and my mother because she was a feminist encouraged it and allowed it.

And, you know, defended me from family members who would try to shame me for it and my Grandmother.

I think that came from my grandmother because I think my grandmother was very much.

Let him be who he is, you know.

And I think also, I'll be honest with you.

My mother enjoyed the past Che mmm of having a child who wasn't like the rest of her choke, you know, the rest of the kids that he was clearly artistic.

And, you know, and I think that she dined out on that, you know what I mean, she enjoyed the how that made her special as a mom, you know, reflected on her.

Yeah.

Up to a point, okay.

I think, after a certain age, it became she joined in with the rest of the grown-ups, who feared with, that was a signal of.

Hmm.

You know, that what that would foretell.

And I think it began to make her uncomfortable because I think she started with her own ginger for so long that she did not feel feminine.

And she hated being tiny, and dainty and being put in this little box because of being blond and being, you know, barely Levi be tall and this.

She's like a doll.

And so she really rebelled against that during my childhood.

I see her in pictures with my brother and sister and she's still in makeup and beautiful clothing and then the pictures with me and she's got this Butch haircut and these pants suits and one of the stories that my mother used to tell is about taking me to something at my school.

And one of the kids saying, excuse me sir, whose Daddy are you sure?

And I think again she sort of enjoyed that.

How did your father You enter Alternatives.

I had friends in high school who thought my father was deaf because they would come over and he would never say a word or he would pick us up some place and take us someplace and he never said a word and I never spoke to him.

And he ever spoke to me?

And another friend kind of was worried that maybe my father was dead, you're like never talked about it and that's not an accurate way to place it because he never spoke.

He was a very quiet person, very buttoned up I mean in hindsight I see that both of them suffered from depression.

And you know a lot of untreated stuff that I think their lives would have been a lot happier.

Frankly, they were not happy people.

I mean sometimes they were fun people.

They weren't happy.

Yeah so he didn't get my way.

Okay.

And I think that was because my mother wouldn't let him in my grandmother wouldn't let it but he never.

I mean every time I would leave the house he would make the same joke going to a costume party but but and you know that's has Residents of microaggressions.

Yes.

But he also didn't say, get back in there and take that make up.

All right?

They did grow up with this feeling of feeling like an outsider, which at the time growing up I thought was really about being gay.

You know, I thought it was that from a very young age.

I had a secret and until puberty.

Hit the secret, was that I played with dolls and that was something shameful that people couldn't know outside of the family.

And then when I hit puberty that turned into, oh, this is something else.

My Outsider status is something else within this family and being an outsider in a group.

You have a view of the family.

That's different than the Insiders do.

Any any minority group or, you know, historically disenfranchised group has that experience, although women are not minorities, they still are disenfranchised from this society, and so they have a different perspective.

Active of it than men do.

And men don't even get that, that can beat there can be a different way of seeing world, the world.

My perspective is skewed because although I don't consider myself non-binary, we were when I was going to.

But I'm so old now that we say, we said and dragic yeah which meant being both male and taking the best of both.

And that's how I sort of felt, you know, once I kind of integrated my personality was like You know I'm feminine and masculine and that's fine with me.

Yeah it's not that simple of course, but so that that just sort of made sense to me that you know those are the reasons.

I'm not part of this man.

Like and that the grown-ups who have alienated felt alienated from me or couldn't relate to me.

That was that was why?

Because that, you know, they were uncomfortable with my gayness and the fact that I also wasn't like a quiet, A closeted gay kid that, you know, I was pretty out

there sir.

Yeah, I think it's so interesting.

How often with npe stories, we hear some other difference that we attributed, our Outsider feeling to.

Whether it's, I was the outspoken one or I was the one who was gay, or whatever, the whatever the reason we usually pointing at something else other than I'm not genetically linked to half of this family, right?

It's fascinating, isn't it?

And you can't help but wonder, you know, that whole argument about nature-nurture of courses is specious because it's really those two things about separate.

They are so ingrained you can't pull them apart.

But what I wonder is a red ones.

This theory about why often gay men are alienated from their fathers and it's nuts.

It's not necessarily that they as gay people, young gay people have done it.

You know, I've done anything that makes their father, not like them, but they're probably senses that.

That even if their father doesn't know yet their father senses, that there's something that separates them.

And I wonder if that's true, especially in family situations, where at least one of the parents knew it there was a sense that this kid is not one of

us.

And they may not even be conscious, but they treat that kid, slightly different.

And of course, it's a lie for anyone.

Any parent says, oh, I retreated you all the same.

Well, of course you did, because You were different parent at 20 than you were 27, right?

I mean, how course you were

children.

Different people with different

needs?

Absolutely.

I mean, look at the three of us in my family and that we grew up in the same environment, literally the same house for our whole childhoods.

And, you know, our parents were married that whole time, but we couldn't be more different.

You know, my brother and sister are much more like culturally, but again, having a sense of being an outsider at such a young age, I was probably drawn to things that helped me Understand my Outsider identity that they didn't have to do, right?

That's why I said, when you asked me how I was doing with this news, I felt liberated but I felt let out of jail and I felt let off the hump because I realized I had been carrying no matter how proud I had claimed to be and how story of my sexuality.

So different from many other people.

I know who faced much more horrifying treatment from their parents and exchange them, or People who chose a strange man, just a ghost, their family to not deal with that, and I didn't have that and I did.

My parents were not going to pflag meetings, but they also weren't testing me out of the family.

Yeah, it sounds like they were doing maybe the best that they could at the time, that's what they

had.

Yes, people can't give you what they don't have.

And they didn't have as far as I know any gay friends.

So when I guess technically came out to my parents It would have been, you know, 1987, that's not a time when they had any images in pop culture to, in any way understand.

And also, you know, there were so few that they had no idea that there could be all kinds of different people that there was nothing no such thing as reggae you know,

monolith by any

means.

Exactly.

You know, that's the whole thing I'm so grateful.

Now that we talked about is that, you know, when you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism, you know, in the same way we do, Groups is that you you can't let one person be the you know the totem for everybody in that who shares that, that experience.

So anyway, yeah, you know, I just sort of accepted that I was never really gonna feel part of this family and I made my peace to a large degree with that.

I've made my peace, that it was never going to feel great, you know, and the whole idea of like, does this bring me joy?

Oh my God.

Joy joy to me is like a static feeling, so I'm not aiming for Joy.

I'm not even aiming for happiness.

I'm aiming for the absence of pain and I think that's sort of how I came to my being comfortable.

With my alienation with my family is that it does not didn't bring me pain anymore, I accepted that was never going to bring me a great comforting feeling so, you know, but was fine.

I moved back here after many, many years in New York to work in theater.

Here.

And when I turned 40, and I was living with my parents, when I first moved back because it was also, you know, 2008, when the economy just I mean, I could not have picked a better time to move, leave New York because I shudder to think of how I would have been surviving back then.

So I was living with my parents, it's an enormous house.

I had the whole top quarter myself and my mother did often say to me, you know, no offense to my brother and sister.

I was the one that they would be willing to live with you know because Cuz I guess because I left so early because I moved out when I was, you know, I moved to New York at 19.

So I left and then like, literally a year after I moved back, my mother was diagnosed with cancer and given three months.

And honestly, by the time she was diagnosed, it was brain cancer.

She was gone.

I mean, she she was conscious and functioning for maybe another month or so.

She had a stroke from the cancer and it did damage her language a lot and so she didn't she was able to really talk to us.

She would she could do some writing but it wasn't really legible and so she really was kind of gone from that moment.

Wow which made her death actually a lot easier because we had this three month and it was really like they gave her three months and it was like to the day and that was all okay.

You know that was I mean we made our I think each of us Us dealt with that in different way.

I used to, you know, accuse her of me being an accident and and she said, no I had you on purpose and I wanted one more because I was like why do you bother?

You know, you had a boy you had a girl.

You want you to stop there and she said well because I had one kid for my family and one kid for his family and I wanted the one that was just for me, interesting.

Which of course, in this new, you know, with the information we have.

Now that's a very telling story.

It is so.

So what made you take a DNA test to begin

with?

Well, my sister has had been in contact with our cousins, on my dad's side and she because about her dad's side had started doing all of this research on the family, but she was learning all this new stuff about it.

And Mindy was getting really interested in it.

My sister and she took her test and it was interesting to hear her results of things that she found out.

And, you know, But I never really had a lot of Interest, really.

Honestly, I mean, I have a weird face that people would always, like, where are you from?

What is your background?

Because for my colouring, I have strangely shaped eyes, and it wasn't until I moved to New York and met.

A lot of Ukrainian people that the ladies would say that I work with would say, oh, you must be Ukrainian like, well, I know that I have a Ukrainian and no, no.

You look just like my granddaughter and then I would meet people from Ukraine and they all were like, blond and blue-eyed.

And then when I went to Europe, First time, people just started with speak to me in German or, you know, Swedish and they just assumed.

And so, I did sort of wonder about that and there had been sort of a legend from my other side of the family, from my mother, she had sort of been some research that she thought that her father's family because they're the ones that we look so much like had come from Russia and that they were Jews that had escaped Russia.

There's no real evidence of that.

This is her Theory.

So I thought, well, maybe that's true.

Maybe, you know, I mean it, I look like them, you know?

And look like and you know even even Jewish people in New York has said he would stop me and say, oh, are you Jewish?

And I was like, no, no like you know well you must feel it was very, very strange.

So I started thinking okay well maybe that's why that explains the you know, the other nests is that you know, she said Gene that got handed to me.

So anyway Mindy wanted to find out and so at Christmas last year she bought for me and my niece and my nephew.

You neither my sister and I have children.

But my thought, my brother had kids and he's not part of our family anymore, but many died, sort of, you know, have taken them on.

You know, it's our our default children frankly and so she bought them for the three of us and my nephew and niece her brother and sister took there's pretty quickly and compared their results which they thought was so interesting that one of them was a little bit more Irish than the other and it was just an interesting story, but nothing.

I'm nothing they discovered and I just couldn't get around to doing.

I kept forgetting about it.

And frankly also, I take so many medications that dry my mouth, that I was dreading having to come up with enough saliva to build text.

And but finally, I was like, okay, finally I'll do it.

So, I don't know.

Sometime in April, I did it around my birthday.

I guess shipped it off, and I really didn't think much about it, but the thing that's interesting is that, this like, Ukrainian Jew thing had become sort of a backstory for me to sort of explain, ah, you know, These are the people I come from maybe that it's just, you know, and I kind of really was drawn to the culture and I thought well you know, I have a really Russian Personnel.

Yeah, this is ridiculous again, that whole confirmation bias.

You know and I would look at pictures of Russian people specifically why actually not Russian but you know now that you came hopefully remains its own country and I think oh yeah you know what?

I do look like that.

So when I got the results back, finally my niece and nephew and my sister.

Her and my nephew's wife, we all share text chain.

It was like, like a week before Father's Day, and it was like later in the evening, not 9:30 or so.

And so I was sitting them screenshots of my results saying because the devastating news that I saw in it was that I was not at all Ukrainian or Russian.

And although my sister and my nephew and niece had, I don't like two or three percent European Jewish background at none at all.

That I was not even really that German that I was like 50% English and Scottish and so I'm texting them.

I'm like how on Earth did I end up being the whitest person in this family?

It is unfair and unjust.

How can I just be English?

That is wrong.

I was willing to accept at least being German that has some flavor, but the thought of just being plain old English.

And the other thing about this is the Ridiculousness growing up.

You know, the bicentennial happened when I was nine and so I was deeply We in love with all things about the Revolutionary War and I had a weird patriotism that some people are sometimes surprised.

I called myself a James Baldwin patreon, a patriot in that, you know, I love this country so much which is why I feel.

I have the duty to ensure that it's holds up this its standard.

Yeah, and sometimes people mistake that for not being, you know, go USA, of course I am.

But I want it to be everything it can be right.

And so again people sometimes Sighs.

Bye.

My love of Revolutionary, War history.

And all of that, my bedroom is a child was decorated in all revolutionary.

Very frankly, honky sexy Revolutionary War soldiers.

And anyway so again I was appalled

you just you wanted something a little more interesting.

Yes I felt like you know what, I felt like genetically I deserved and so I'm really just joking this way with the family, right?

And I'm sending them the what it says and my nephew's like, look at that, it says Is that Mindy is like 99% likely to be your grandchild or grand, father, grandmother or like a half-sibling and and then it said look do you see mine?

Because they make something sent me screenshots, and there's and said that you're my half Uncle.

I was, I guess I was just joking at that point.

I was like, haha, Uncle, what do you mean, does that mean?

I wasn't getting it.

I mean, the chain is, you know, like several bits of dialogue.

I've been trying to get me.

To see what.

What's before me?

I did not see it.

I wasn't looking for it and so find me they were like, dude, grandpa is not your dad.

Wow, that was like and I really did keep looking at it going, what?

But again, it instantly made sense.

I did not expect to find that news out, but it made total sense.

It just made total sense.

Now, there was a whole backstory that I couldn't put together, but the feeling made Sense.

And even in that evening, as I was going to sleep, I felt something.

You know, I'm not a very spiritual person but I did feel a weight McDonald.

And the way that I felt liftoff, me was my mother has still been present in my life.

I don't believe in ghosts or anything like that, but she still been here, and I talked about her a lot.

And there are times when I miss her, she was a pain in the ass, but she was a genuine person like a Full 3d person that you could never stop talking about the rest of your life and shoot you.

So interesting, she's such a fascinating story.

I've never missed my father, the man who raised me, I never think about him.

Mmm, I don't have any thought of memories of him and I felt guilty about that especially living in a tent, essentially, his house.

And what she did not leave to me, by the way, I had to buy it from the estate.

Hmm, there's a whole Lot of economic aspects to this of things that my parents did for other children in the family that they did not do for me, that I kind of just always told myself, oh well, they need it more, you know?

I'm, you know, in New York, I was just a but of course, again, this new lens does make me think it was that

about it.

Someone knows something.

So, did you have any matches that were not matched with your sister?

It's a bid and Was the next step.

My sister came over because the other layer of this my mother's best friend is she's known since junior high.

They became friends again living up in the small town.

They randomly ran into each other, they lost contact After High School.

They randomly ran into each other.

They were, of course, then thrilled to find each other in these small towns.

And they spent as much time as they could you gather, our client family, sort of Blended, we called the mauryan are cousins.

She had stair-step kids between my mother's I'd always heard a story versions of a story of how my cousin Karen, and I are the youngest and we're months apart.

So, you know, they have been friends, but they became really like sisters.

And they called each other, sister and her youngest my aunt's youngest.

And I are a grew up very close to one another more than cousins, really?

Even like like brother and sister.

So my aunt and I just saw her what a no couple years ago.

I went to visit her and she told a story about how they came to have The two of us and it was sort of linked up with my mother's story about this.

I need to have one per cell but what she said was that the mind you, this would have been like, early 66.

Apparently my mother wanted to stay on a birth control.

I was a new birth control.

Their doctor was giving her and it was coming to a point where should it be off of it for three months, and she begged him to not do that.

Because she said, I will immediately get pregnant because apparently she got pregnant very fast but he had to take her off a bit and she was pissed about it, she wanted to have, she said then you know I want to have my tubes tied and he wouldn't let her because she was only 26 of the time and in 66, but I thought I was too young to, you know, for women to make that and also she would have had to have my dad's signature to get it, done course.

And so she was pissed and she stopped at my aunt's house and who was also just coming from a situation where she was trying to divorce.

Her husband who'd been playing around on her the whole time and was being basically told by their Church, you can't.

That.

And so, she was also not really happy, right?

Then, apparently, they commiserated, and my aunt said to my mom, you know what let's do.

We'll each have one more and then we'll be done.

That'll be it.

And so, that's the story that they always told about how we became the ones that they were having just for us.

You know, of course, now that story takes on a whole different light because it makes me think yes.

My mother would be the kind of person who be like screw you.

I think get out of this marriage.

But you can't control my uterus and so I could have a baby I can, you know, go have a baby with anybody.

I want to whether that was true, whether that was a conscious decision on her part, obviously, we'll never know that.

But she definitely is the somebody who would be like, haha, you, you have all the power but this is the power that I have this very big deal, like, in many ways that's Again, part of the lore the next day.

My sister comes over and says she is called my cousin immediately, because growing up, that had been rumored somehow even growing up.

We had all heard rumors that possibly eventually my aunt to get divorced, but we had heard that, you know, there were some rumors that certain a certain guy was really her father, mmm, but never never could firms.

I don't think that she and her mother ever talked about it so I don't really even know.

Now, how we knew that, but it's one of those things that, you know, in a family And I think that my cousin just didn't really ever pursue it because she didn't think that there was anything for hurting to get from it.

My sister called my cousin, immediately was like, okay, this is what we just found out.

My cousin was like, all right I will take the test then and and also she called her mother.

And she said, look guys, I just found out this news so he's going to want to talk to you.

But apparently, my aunt said.

All right, well tell him to call me and I'll tell him what I know which was the first time that I was really like, oh, Okay, then this Israel

and somebody knows

something.

But the next day my sister who my sister came over and tells me that story and I'm sharing with her the names that I've that did come up and I say one of them she goes oh my God, I know that name there was somebody with that name who would come over and that you know she remembers her only six I shouldn't remember a lot about it.

Yeah and so that really did strike her a little I think that I need had enough.

Now, we had a suspect that's we've been calling it, my family and my family again, you know, my niece and nephew.

All of them have been very much.

Like how you doing with this and how are you?

And I'm like, yeah, I feel fine.

I'm not.

I mean, I'm embarrassed that I'm not undone by this.

I'm actually put back together by this frankly.

So we went to see my niece, my aunt and you know she's getting older and I think you know hard to keep her on the track and it took a long time to get her to She finally sort of made up an excuse to get her husband out of the room with my sister and she really she really didn't talk about it and she told me that my mother had once said to her when I'm gone.

Don't tell anybody about our Misadventures, how she put it?

I think she might aunt was facing figuring out how to talk about it in a way that she didn't also have to talk about things that she put behind her in her own life.

The biggest worry that I had in talking to my aunt was, am I going to find out that this was not a consent?

What situation?

It was the only thing that I really thought this will this will be hard and how will I find a way to honor my mother's story there?

And that's the thing I was most worried about frankly.

But no, my assured me because she asked me about the name that that may be recognized and she said, yes, that would be the guy.

And I said, well, can you tell me a little bit?

And she said, well, you know, it's a small town gossip and all these Busy Bodies were always trying to Cause Scandal and and they were, you know, should since issue there is two guys who are just trying to protect them, they're always around, they're just trying to protect them.

Meaning my mother and my aunt and I was like what do you mean by protect you?

But you do get us out of situations that you know might we might find ourselves in where you know people gossip about us.

It's like okay but I didn't say this to her I was like clearly there was something behind that gossip.

Don't mean surely gave me was your mother and I As close as sisters, but your mother still kept stuff from me.

There were still things.

Your mother didn't tell me.

Now whether that's true or not.

I can't judge.

It sounds like her, I can, I completely can buy her having a soul mate friend that there was still stuff, she kept from her.

So that's as much information as I could really get from my aunt.

So you kind of you, you get confirmation that, yes, that name, that's somebody that we did associate with that, probably would be it, but I don't know the circus exact.

Circumstances under which you were

conceived.

I've been viewing this all as an investigation in terms of how to what evidence can I really bring to the judge to make a case?

And and so there's a known associate, he was in the right place at the right time and then when I said, well, you know, my pretty likely that my conception would have happened around Fourth of July 1966 and she had sort of a reaction to that, but she didn't really go into it, just like that.

Okay, yeah, I can see that and she kind of got distracted by talking about her own running around, but not actually admitting it and she did sort of talk.

She knew her daughter was having this test and she knew that she was shooting and she said, well, and I know who it would be and she said, well, they were best friends and they work together and they hung out together.

Hmm, so these two guys seem like Prime suspects.

It wasn't really helpful, but I got don't the most important thing I got from her was Knowledge meant that as far as she knew, it was a consensual, it would have been a consensual situation because mum apparently did have some kind of relationship with him, okay?

But she didn't give any more than that, then she had a phone call and it was going on and on.

And so I was like, you know, I'm going to go and she said, but we're good, right?

We're good.

And I said, well yeah, I mean, if I have any other questions, I'll let you know and she said, oh God, don't make me go through this again.

Mmm.

And then she was like, oh, I guess I'm gonna have to if the test Comes back with, you know, cut to, you know, a couple like last week, sometime my cousin, got her results back and we were actually, sort of, kind of secretly hoping that would be the same person.

Yeah, because we thought that'd be fun.

Yeah, exactly.

And we were fine with it because we already felt like brother and sister anyway, but it would have just been a little bow on this bizarre story, but her did turn out to be the guy that and it always been rumored to be Is targeting her

father and she's also an NP

e.

And so she's at the really beginning business back.

She and I are going to talk about that.

We're gonna chat later.

It is fascinating, you know, these two women who are best friends.

So does students and intentional, doesn't it?

It's weird.

I mean, it may just be a coincidence, but they both, you know, got pregnant with other men who knew we were best friends.

Yeah, but here's the thing, my family now keeps been started.

Researching this suspect and trying to find connections and everything and pictures of him and and they're all like, but look at this picture, those look like your hands, you know, then it turns out so weak, you know.

Apparently this person has to weigh a handful of years ago.

Let's say still living in that small town but, you know, he was married that whole time.

And he has kids that are right around me.

I would have been at school with those kids.

I can't the thinking His part of that story that Mom got the hell out of town before I grew old enough to look like all the his kids.

You know?

That's yeah.

That that would have been a whole other funny, right.

But then I told my best friend about all this.

She understood.

Everything.

Immediately was amazing.

What she said to me is he's retired, figure out, did Mom me like, I didn't tell me did Dad, know is the way he treated me because he knew, or is it just that, you know, he really doesn't like me and we Which answer do you want?

But she said this, I never thought about this and said, but your mother couldn't have known that there was no paternity test that she could have taken.

There was no, unless, you know, your father was away at War, you know, during your conception, which wasn't true.

He was right there.

They're living together.

And having one assumes, a sexual relationship.

So it's very possible that she had no idea,

right?

Or it was a possibility, but it

wasn't a possibility, right?

And, you know, my father, Job in, which he came in contact with probably at least half of the population of this Tiny Town and an environment where people came and, you know, would shoot the shit believe that if there were rumors that he couldn't hear them

right.

But again, that's that's that's a potential.

We don't know that

supports your theory though.

You are a baby and she's like we're leaving, we're out of here.

Even the idea that she was, you know, drummed out of town, you know, kind of because My mother would not have been like I'm gonna stay here and put up with this notion of in like I'm out of here.

Good.

Because she used to say, God made the World man-made the city, but the devil made the small town.

Wow.

Right again makes so much sense, right.

How

about this for like the gossipy women

and and then we would go up there every other weekend because I danced family.

Another hey that I hated it too was a miserable experience for me because his father would call Sissy every time.

I mean he was haul off and you know no grown-up ever stopped yet, you know, because they were all such paths that people and they were, I have a vivid memory of refusing to get out of the car for an entire day.

When we went to visit there, it was just so torturous for child's, go through that.

Yeah, so you kind of had the I don't want to say luxury but you had the fortune of quickly, identifying who your bio

father is in theory.

Okay, in

theory, he hears when I keep saying to my family because they're all ready for this to be again that confirmation bias where they think they see you know, similarities and even I I've seen pictures of their on a lot, but I've seen pictures of him from high school and I can go like, see it, you know, and I've seen pictures of his kids online, and I'm like, it would not be hard to believe that.

These are my siblings though, if you see the ones I grew up with, you would be like, you're not related, but you are

genetically related.

To some of his genetic relatives,

correct?

Yes, that's what we know.

I'm related.

All I can see is I'm related to it a second cousin.

There's a second cousin, who is a close enough match to be my second cousin, but none of his immediate family comes up.

Now, that's of course, a part of the problem with ancestry and all those other websites, it's only people who've done right.

So you've narrowed it

down, you have a prime suspect as you say but you don't have 100%.

Come in, first all

that proves Is that I am related to somebody who is related to that person.

Have you connected with that

relative?

Yeah, that's the next step, right?

I have not because I have not come to a decision.

Why clearly actually have come to a decision.

I haven't decided to say that I decided this because if you know what I mean.

Yeah, the big thing I keep talking about with my family and with, in therapy, as I don't believe at this point, there's anything I can benefit from knowing one way or the other, that would outweigh the potential for harm to that family.

You know he's gone the son died, a few years later and the mothers still alive, she's not an old lady and she's you know, I just feel like what's the point of coming in here now?

I just I don't know that I could really ever and there's another part of me that thinks it's terrible but it I think the devil, you know, is sometimes better than the devil you don't and and I'd rather deal with the memories of growing up with this typical father, then find out this person, I can't ever know might have been somebody who would get even worse, you know, small town, they never left that small town so you know the likelihood of them being part of a that's not fair, that's a

Prejudice.

I know that I share about that provincial world but oh no.

There's reasons for it.

Yeah and I don't know if I want to find that out, you don't want to find out.

I'm afraid of what I might find out.

Hmm, But more than that, I'm going to have the right.

You know what I mean?

I don't know that I have.

I mean some of it was somebody else I would say, of course you have a right.

It's your, it's your family and we do, but I'm not at risk for anything.

I'm not, there's no inheritance at stake, you know.

It's not like I have to claim my Birthright to the castle doesn't get foreclosed on, you know?

I mean and and And I'm old enough that I don't have children, so there aren't people that would, you know, that would value knowing this or, you know, get grandchildren that that band those those sisters would get to know as then he has a nephew you know that's not really part of it.

Now of course you know if because my sister and I talked about this, if somebody came to us it was like I think your dad, you know, we would be like, oh my God.

Yes and we would because that's how we are.

We would it would be like oh that's a surprise but we wouldn't We Embrace that person into the family because that's just how we are, you know, we're like the blob, we just, you know, take people into the family and they never get to leave.

I mean that in a nice way, you know that it's, that's just how we are.

We welcome people but I don't want to risk these people finding out something that would shake their memories of somebody and maybe it wouldn't.

We don't know that we don't know.

Maybe.

Do you feel like you want that confirmation?

That this is your bye.

Biological father or you at

peace with it it's not because if I don't know, it's not real.

That's not it at all.

It's that I don't need to know anything else because it's like not having a father at all and in fact my therapist even said to me.

Well yes sort of raised yourself didn't show.

And I was like, well yeah, yes we're so he really, you know, who I am is really on My fault completely.

But, you know, I'm fine with that.

But I think that's such an interesting perspective to just kind of weigh the risks versus the benefits and kind of land with your good with what, you know at this point.

Is there anything else that you want to

know?

I don't know if I were younger, it might be different.

You know, if I was younger, I think I would have a fantasy and might, there was Stephen asked me this and something I hadn't thought about like, well, What was my fantasy growing up of what, kind of father?

I would like to have had and I knew immediately it was like, you know, TV bothers that I, you know, I do remember having that feeling of watching certain shows, Family Affair, things that are way before your time.

But you know, that often times had single men, raising children courtship of Eddie's father.

And just, I know I had a crush at a very young age on Bill Bixby and it was not a romantic crush.

It was like a bad crash.

I wanted him to be my dad.

Yeah because, you know, I would See people with their parents friends and even other relatives and their parents were so demonstrative.

And so affectionate with them in a way, I never imagined my parents being and in a way that I thought, wait a minute is that what having a father is like, and it really did kind of throw me for a loop of like, there are people who love their

father.

That was surprising to me.

has this Revelation changed your view?

You of your mother.

And

father, it not only lets me off the hook, I don't have to feel like I was a disappointment.

I don't have to feel like I was that, I'd been anything.

Uh-huh.

Telling me and I think that's how I grew up feeling.

That's why I got out of the house, so young.

And it's why I never took money from them.

It's because I felt like I had broken the path that I by being gay and not just any old gay, but being, you know, a feminine gay person who wore makeup and you didn't hide.

I wasn't a closeted person, which I think I could have had the decency to at least do that, but I wasn't, but I left town so they didn't have to deal with it.

I always felt like, well, you know, I don't deserve that sort of stuff because I broke the rules.

So if you don't like the rules of a club then you don't get to be in that class.

That's all there is to it.

The club gets to make the rules.

None of this was ever spoken.

This is what I into did as a child.

But I felt when I found this out, I was like wait a minute, okay, I didn't break the rules or even I did I owe you nothing, you know.

You ain't in charge of me and and then even thinking that, he knew that in a way.

I kind of think it lets him off the hook too because if that's true, if he knew about it or even suspected, I mean, that's got to be hard.

I mean, I don't think there are a lot of people out there who that generous.

I'm so grateful that I was raised not by my parents with oh, but they were funny.

They were funny in a dark sort of way.

My grandmother though was so funny, my mom's mom and And the things she taught me so much was life is real and it's happening and so you might as well.

She was to say, it is what it is but you might as well.

Find something funny in that it's not going to make you not have had a stroke or something to make you not have by worrying and kvetching and crying about it.

So you might as well find the humor in it because and Carrie Fisher once said, my life has to be funny or else it would just be true.

And I think that that's something that has guided me and made me able to joke about the This and if I found this out again over time, I think it would have made me think I could have a relationship with a father that I never had, and I don't know if that's possible, you know, when you fantasize about, you know, this loving finger that would have supported you.

Nobody has that really and even the people that loved, you know, their fathers kids and parents have difficult relationships, regardless.

Yes, families are complicated.

And so for me yeah, I feel like my There, I have let off the hook, doesn't change any kind of affection for him, but it does make me think.

Okay, well, you know what, again, people can't give you what they don't have.

And if I was a constant reminder of like the worst part of his marriage, I think you did a really amazing job, not being worse to me honestly, you know, there's a Cinderella movie called Ever Ever After as it is with Drew Barrymore and she says to her stepmother, Mother Angelica Huston was ever a moment when you really loved me and Anjelica Huston says, how can you love a pebble in your shoe?

And so I would say that that I think he did a great job if you did know not taking that out on me more.

So in many ways I'm sort of like okay you're done you can go on and I don't feel bad about not missing you or feeling nostalgic for you.

So I feel like that's just sort of done by mother.

More complicated with my mother.

It's like I didn't need one more thing to make you a full rich person.

They were already complicated enough and now I will never know what that story is.

I will never know.

Was this actually like a real true love of her life?

Was this?

Just a fun Affair?

And there's no way to ever know that and that's fine.

It makes me actually more sympathetic to her because I think I did after she died feel like, why couldn't you He has been more loving.

Why couldn't you have been more supportive?

But who knows.

Did I actually remind her of this period of her life that she felt bad about or that she felt guilty about or or did she just not even think about it?

Did she think it would never come out?

I don't know.

I just I do Wonder.

Yeah, but I do have affection for her in a different way.

Now in that, I think, wow, that must have been tough to not know.

And and I think we'll why didn't she tell me why didn't she ever let me?

No, I think she didn't even hear the risk.

I think, honestly, I think that she thought that it's very unlikely that would ever come out.

And and we've all talked about, what if we had taken this test, while she was alive, I think she what I lied.

I'm she thinks you and said well, that's just not true.

I don't think she would, she was not, she left, no diary.

She left no letter, she left, nothing, I know people that she had correspondence with.

I don't know if she burned it all, I don't know what, I don't know, you know, nobody's come forth with any kind of all I wanted to.

Share this and lovely letter from time like probably the only person in the world who has a box of letters from her.

So I don't know.

I think it makes me more affectionate toward her in a way that I'm surprised to find out.

Yeah, you know, because I think that she was not a happy person and it makes me feel like, was this some moment of happiness for her.

You know, was this a time that there was some pleasure that she could make her own and make a private thing and make You know, in this like it's always us and it may not have been perfect and she may have felt guilty about or she may not have, she may not have given a second thought, right?

Consequences?

It's so hard to know.

It's like you'll never

know I guess I don't know if I do feel fonder of her.

Oddly,

I do just have to observe.

It's interesting that you're so into like Revolutionary War history and then you were conceived around July 4th.

I think that's really funny.

Yeah, I didn't put that together, that's hilarious, that is funny.

Also, you know, I'm a designer.

So I've studied history and you know, I mean,

what's next for you?

Then you're at peace for now without, you know, reaching out what's next for your journey?

I would, I will say that I keep going back to.

I paid for the, you know, luck, the deluxe membership and I'm still learning.

Thing extra, I mean it's really I don't know what I'm looking for, you know, I'm looking for when I keep going back to the app that maybe one of those relatives would join on and I would find some connection and and you know, I've heard stories of people contacting distant cousins and that's the way they kind of do that in.

I mean, it wouldn't probably take too much to basically and probably one person removed.

That's again, such a small town.

That I'm probably two phone calls away from being contact with his family.

So well, it's worth it.

I don't I don't know that what they could gain.

As I said earlier from finally, I mean, maybe maybe who knows?

There's a whole other novel here where his marriage was miserable and they love their dad and they would love to find out that there was something that he loved in his life or, you know, maybe they've Known that they had this Rift early in their marriage and you know, that they lived under the Specter and ruined their whole childhood because of the way it affected their parents.

So, you know, again, I got no, I got no dog in that race.

I had nothing to do with it.

I didn't cause it.

I didn't, I used to tell people years ago, I mean, I thought of this analogy of why I didn't really fit in.

I said, well, look, I don't blame them for it.

I was it.

Hippopotamus that was dropped off in a group of giraffes.

I mean, they did the best they could, but they were never going to really turn me into a giraffe and they had no idea how to raise a bottomless.

And and so I can't blame them for that.

That's not their fault.

They took me in and I'm grateful for that.

The way this is changed is huh, have to feel so grateful anymore.

But I mean by that, is that I think I grew up with this sense that I was like this orphan who should be grateful that He is given, you know, the nook under the, under the stairs.

And now I don't feel that way now, I feel liberated so I don't know that there's anything I need to do about it because I feel kind of like I have to have the burden of paternity on me anymore and that's good.

I mean, I mean, look at still weird.

It still makes me think I still have a lot of Investigation of looking through, like to me because of who I am.

I'm not take a little time going through every moment of my life.

Laugh and sing it through this new lens.

Because it does change.

My sister, is she, she kept saying, will never it doesn't change anything.

Does it change anything?

And she's like, I'm sorry.

I even got that test and I said, but it does change everything, it doesn't change anything between us, but it changes everything for me.

And having I think what from that's it, for me, is trying to help my family, understand what that feels like.

I'm not sure you need confirmation.

Like the fun of it, might disappear a little bit if I knew exactly who it was joining me.

And yeah, now I can kind of just imagine it and, you know, when we first playing with this, I had all these celebrities that could have, you know, you know from 1966.

Okay, who is my mother's type, you know this guy Donald Sutherland.

Yeah, he's a real Prime Suspect here at I mean again it's I think it's an interesting story that you come to more interesting when it doesn't have finality to the store.

Ori for me, at least.

Yeah, I'm I'm comfortable with not knowing its how I feel about any kind of spiritual thing is.

I'm not going to deny anything.

There were things that don't really, you know, I'm not interested in and they don't affect me in any way in terms of spirituality, but I'm sort of like, well, I can never know the answer to this and I'm cool with that.

So and kind of how I feel about this is like I ain't never going to know it's highly unlikely everybody that could tell anything is gone.

So Make your peace with not knowing

I really like that perspective.

So, what advice would you offer a parent who may be keeping a DNA surprise from their

child?

Golly, it's so particular, isn't it?

I mean I think that they're great reasons that a parent might want to not share that.

And that I think you would have to weigh what the benefit to your child is versus what the damage it might be for you because I do think that yes, it's your the child's life and their right to know these sort of things but becoming a parent is never simple and I'm not a parent myself, but I watch everyone in my family and all my friends deal with Parenthood and some tissue.

Choose it and Summits haphazardly happens.

And, and every baby seems like a bad idea at the time and then turns out to be an amazing, you can't imagine your family without them and my grandmother used to say, people, waited until it was a good time to have a baby.

No one would have babies.

I think you have to decide.

What's it going to be?

Like, if she finds out and I didn't tell her because I think that's the part.

It's not the truth.

That it ain't the crime, it's the cover-up.

That's you know, it's a Watergate rule.

And I think that's what you have to examine you.

I want to deal with the consequences of telling her this now or do I want 20 years from now, to explain why I lied why I fabricated all of this.

And I think that's an individual Choice look, if you're like, my mom, you think?

You know, I can ride this through.

Ain't nobody gonna know about this.

Then, you know, go ahead and your scare off your scot-free but now but I can also yeah.

And my family, always say that Sunshine is the best antiseptic.

Get the story out.

Now, you know, I would say get front of the story, you know, be the one to tell your kid instead of your kid coming to you and saying something going to share with me, you know.

Well I guess I would say ultimately.

You two should tell your kid unless there are situations where revealing that truth is going to cause harm to you or to your child.

There are certainly people in situations where they could be really at risk.

No, that's a complaint.

It is very nuanced.

It's like, when you tell people, like everybody should come out of the closet when everybody has that luxury.

You know, not, everybody is safe.

It's safe area to do that and it's so I guess it's a, you know, you got a look at your situation and see if it's safe to do that, too.

And what advice would you offer someone who just found out that they're in npe?

Well, I personally, listen.

To your entire podcast.

Because and I even found your podcast because I always say whenever anything comes up among my friends and family, somebody has done a YouTube about this, somebody probably has a joke.

Now well whatever it is, somebody's probably got a podcast about it and so you know I just immediately started Googling new found out parent or I'm getting what I put in there and your podcast came up and I was like okay we'll see.

This is clearly not a rare occurrence and There's a whole podcast about it, I would say think about what helps you most in a crisis when I am in a crisis, what helps me is have as much information as possible.

I want to learn, it helps me to know that other people have gone through this.

It helps me to to know that what I'm feeling is not crazy.

And I did spend a childhood feeling that what I felt, Was not true or that, there was some in that what I was feeling wasn't violent and of course it turns out, I was right all along.

And so, I would say that what's best for you to handle some people are going to have different coping mechanisms, and I think I would reach out to people that, you know, to be there to support you because if you have coping mechanisms that are harmful, this might trigger that.

But I would say listen.

I'm to your podcast.

I'm not doing a plug, thank you.

But I would, and I have sent it, you know, I've since to my guns and because I think hearing other people's experiences who really Enlighten, you not only about what you're feeling and how to deal with what you're feeling.

But also about how other people around, you are going to react to this.

And also the resources to find all this out, you know, because very few of us would know how to play detective, or what do they call them DNA angels to get more information and all that stuff.

I mean, I never thought about any of that.

So that's what I would say is there's people out there who can help you figure out what you don't know.

And I think that is the best thing that we can look.

You can say all you want about social media and all the negative stuff about it, but the blessing of it all is I say blessing a lot for somebody who's not, you know, religious or spiritual.

But the good thing about it all is, it allows people all over the world to connect in a way that would have been impossible.

Possible, 30 years ago, and take advantage of that that there's somebody out there who has gone through this and as and wants to hear about your experience.

Yeah, I highly recommend therapy.

It's great.

If you can afford it and probably your insurance can, if you have Ensure again, if you that's a luxury.

I don't, I don't.

It is a luxury and I, but if you have it, use it and ask for that help.

That's, I would, I'd say ask for that help.

That's great advice.

Well guy, it was such a pleasure talking to you today.

Thank you for coming on the podcast and sharing your story.

And I hope that things continue.

So, positively, for you, I think, your outlook is so wonderful.

I feel very, very fortunate.

Again, I can only attribute that to humor and, and, you know, being so old, you know, there's a point at which every I would say every decade there's a, you know, a certain level of crap, you don't care about anymore and it just keeps getting better and better.

Thanks again, to guy for sharing his story.

If you have a DNA surprised that you'd like to share, please email, DNA surprises at gmail.com until next time, Thanks again, to guy for sharing his story.

If you have a DNA surprised that you'd like to share, please email, DNA surprises at gmail.com until next time,