Tamarra’s DNA Surprise

This transcript was generated automatically. Its accuracy may vary.

Speaker 1

I have children and husband and I love them unconditionally.

So I, I feel that whenever I talk to my aunt, as soon as she found out about me, she connected with me and was like, Tamara, I just want to let you know that we didn’t know about you, but I love you and I want you to know that I love you and I want to get to know you more and I want you to call me.

And it really made me feel seen, right?

Love cared for and also like grief, right?

Like, Oh, I, I really needed that as a kid.

Little Tamara would have loved that, would have loved to have family like that, because I do feel like I missed that.

I do feel like I wasn’t treated the same because I I was different.

Speaker 2

Welcome to DNA Surprises, a podcast that explores the life altering world of unexpected DNA discoveries.

I’m your host Alexis Hourselt.

This show centers the stories of people who’ve experienced NP, ES or non paternal events.

In other words, people who’ve learned that their biological father isn’t who they thought he was.

We’ll also hear from adoptees, donor conceived people, and the family is navigating these discoveries.

Get ready to follow the incredible journeys that begin.

Speaker 3

With a simple DNA test.

This is DNA surprises.

One of the most disorienting parts of adna surprise is realizing that the truth has often been there all along, things that once seemed insignificant the way you.

Looked.

The questions you asked, the places you felt like you belonged, can suddenly take on an entirely different meaning.

Tamara grew up knowing that she looked different from the rest of her family.

She asked questions about her darker features from an early.

Age, but accepted the.

Explanation she was given about where they came from.

Years later, Adna Test finally gave her a very different answer.

In this week’s episode, Tamara shares how her DNA surprise changed the way she understood her childhood, her identity, and her family.

She also shares her search for biological relatives and the connections that have helped her finally feel seen.

Thank you for sharing your story, Tamara.

I am Tamara.

I am 42 and I currently live in Oregon.

DNA surprise story was definitely that of a surprise.

I did the DNA testing and I remember I got my results was like a really chaotic morning.

I had a three-year old and a five year old and I’m like trying to get us sorted for the day and pack lunches and water bottles.

And I get an e-mail letting me know that my DNA is in like kind of felt my world kind of stopped.

And I decided that I would run and check my e-mail and like see what my DNA results say.

And I go into our office and I look and I see that I’m connected with my mother.

And I also noticed that all of these other people are not lining up with what I have come to know.

And it, it was quite shocking because it’s all last names that are Latino, last names, all, all people that are in Texas and in Mexico.

And I am completely thrown off.

I know my uncles, I know my aunts.

I am there.

I’ve been to all of the family functions on my dad’s side.

And I am shocked because these are saying these people are my uncles and aunts and it’s not.

To your knowledge, were you Hispanic or Latina when you took your test?

No, so that was the the big surprises.

My whole life I was told that I was a white person.

I had dark features.

I have dark eyes, and I had dark hair, and I have olive skin tone is what, like, everybody in my family would say.

I grew up in southern Missouri.

Like, I was one of five kids.

You know, my mom had blonde hair and blue eyes, and all of my siblings have these beautiful blue eyes.

I mean, they still do, right?

And I was the only one that didn’t.

And I always question, like, why do I look so different?

Like, oh, I’m the black sheep.

Oh, Tamara.

She goes by the beat of her own drum.

She has a sassy attitude.

It’s like all of these things.

Were you given any sort of reason for why you had darker features than your siblings, or was it kind of left unexplained?

My mom told me that the reason that I have these features is because my dad’s side had an indigenous bloodline.

But it’s kind of complicated because my dad, that I knew of my dad, he never lived with us.

He was the person who my mom had two children before me and it was their their dad.

And he had dark hair.

So it kind of like felt like it could fit this narrative, right?

But he had these like really pretty blue eyes.

And so now as an adult, you think about it and you’re like, oh, wow.

Like, that genealogy is not matching up.

Like 2 blue eyes don’t really make brown.

So yeah, that was kind of the base of it.

But yeah, they told me that it was because of indigenous, like, background.

And that’s why.

And then it just picked up more on me.

And I was kind of like, the reasoning.

And I just remember being like, probably like 4 and being like, Mama, like, why is my skin, you know, more brown than yours?

Like, why do I have like, a brown, brown skin tone?

You know, How did that happen?

And you have such light skin tone and she’d be like, oh, that’s just cause your dad isn’t, you know, the bloodline and just DNA, just how it picks up is just, it’s just how it is.

And I just kind of took it like that.

You know, you’re 4, you don’t really know better.

And so.

Right.

We believe what we’re told.

We believe our parents.

Yeah.

OK, so Fast forward to years later.

You’ve accepted this narrative that your coloring and features come from an Indigenous ancestor.

You’re just different.

You’re the black sheep of the family.

But now you get these test results and you see a whole bunch of people that do not line up with the story that you’ve always believed.

How are you feeling when you see that?

Like mix like I feel like now I know like 2 feelings can exist at once right?

I think shock and relief are like my 2 feelings at that moment it was shock like how how could this happen?

Like how could my family not have told me?

Like how many people know in my family?

Does my dad know?

I know that there was a conversation that my mom and him separated and like, is this going to be a shock for him also And like start worrying about like other people’s feelings too.

Like, oh, this could like hurt his feelings and not really thinking about my own.

And also relief because for so long I wanted to be like, you know, asking my mom, like, am I adopted?

Like we do not look the same.

I have a very different personality than a lot of my family.

I’m very headstrong, you know, like all of these things.

There’s just like, it doesn’t really match up.

But it was a sense of relief to find out that it wasn’t in all in my head, you know, looking in the mirror like this person, like she just wasn’t really who I really was.

What did you do next after you found your results?

Did you talk to your mom or any other family members?

So that’s when it gets a little more complicated because I was estranged from my mother at that point and I didn’t really know if I would get the full story either.

And so I actually had contacted my older brother where we were told like, we have the same dad and I kind of wanted to get to the bottom of it, like in a roundabout way.

So I actually sent him ADNA test.

Well, I asked him first, right?

So I was like, are you interested in doing DNA testing?

I think it’s all in my situation ’cause we are estranged as well.

And he’s like, yeah, I always wanted to do it.

And so I sent him a test and he did it and he was excited about it.

And then the same thing happened right?

I get an e-mail saying like I have a family member that’s linked to me and the 2nd results came in that he is either my first cousin or my half sibling.

Then I definitely knew like the person I grew up thinking was my father is not my father, he is their dad and I have been lied to my whole life.

Did it become more real to you then at that moment?

It definitely became more real.

And then I wanted to get to the bottom of the story.

Like I really, I don’t know if that’s how like I’m healing and I’m processing.

It is like this detective work, right?

I’m trying to figure out like connect these puzzle pieces because for some reason and if I connect these puzzle pieces, it’ll make more sense to me even though we already know what the real situation is, is that he’s not my dad.

But since my mom is estranged for me at that time, I I called her and I confronted her and I said I know.

And so I would really love for you to tell me the story.

She’s like, OK, she told me her side of the story, which is that her and my dad were together and then they split up and she moved back to Missouri.

And when she moved back to Missouri, she started dating.

You know, she was like, young.

She was like 25, You know, she had two kids.

I mean, she didn’t have that after high school, college, like, time to have fun.

She had to be a housewife and just started like bringing out babies.

And so she was taking that moment for herself.

And so with that she met my bio dad and then they got together and she ended up pregnant.

She said she was on birth control but it didn’t work.

So I’m I’m not sure on that.

And then she said that he wanted her to have an abortion and she said no.

And I don’t really know what the conversation was with that.

All I know is is that she had very strong opinions about no, he wanted her to just because he already had two daughters.

But when she said that to me, I was surprised ’cause that was like another clue.

I have two sisters and I walk through life with two sisters that I’ve never met, and you both took that away from me.

And so that started a whole other journey, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Did your mom seem remorseful for keeping this secret, or did she justify it in some way based off of the fact that he didn’t seem to be interested in being a part of your life?

No, she wasn’t remorseful.

She didn’t say I’m sorry.

She just kept telling me about, you know, we’re in Missouri.

I am a multicultural child that it was better this way and I should be grateful that I had a dad who gave me grandparents and a lovely childhood when in reality, like that father, he wasn’t around, he never lived in my home.

So she had this false narrative of my childhood and what this man brought to me, which they just as an adult.

A lot of confusion is what it brought me wondering why doesn’t he call me on my birthday?

You know, why isn’t he present?

Why isn’t he had any of my games?

Did he know?

He did know, yeah.

So that was four years ago.

So two years ago me and my family went to Missouri and we met up with my dad and he’s told me that that when everything happened and my mom said that she was pregnant that they were technically still married.

And since where they’re from is the southern part of Missouri and some things are not proper even in the 80s right?

So having a child out of wedlock, still being married to a person and him having a wife still and she’s pregnant by somebody else would bring a lot of shame to him and his family.

So he decided to just take that on and he said, yeah, I will say that’s my baby and we’ll just move forward accordingly and you’ll stay with me until the baby’s here.

And then after the baby is here, then we’ll fully separate and go about our life however it works out.

Did that change your perception of him in any way to learn that information?

You know, I thought two things, right?

He really prides himself to be like the good guy.

He really wants to be like the good guy.

And that’s why he really was never vulnerable because he didn’t want to be the bad guy or always put her like as the bad guy and all scenarios when I was a kid.

And so I think that it makes him look like the good guy.

But in reality, he was scared.

I feel like he was just scared of her.

It was shame, you know, he didn’t want to bring shame to his family and his parents having to like, confront his parents and let them know.

The mother of my children is pregnant by another man and she’s married to me.

Like, I think that it’s shame and I think he’s scared of her.

She’s a very abrasive person.

So I think that it’s shame and fear.

I do feel for him.

I think that it’s really nice that he did do that and included me, right?

I did go to his house, you know, for the 4th of July and I did have grandparents and that part was really nice, so.

And yeah.

And if I would have known my real bio dad, I would have had a grandmother that would have embraced me.

I would have had aunts and uncles that would have enjoyed knowing that I exist.

And so it’s like this sort of reality of assumption, right?

Like assuming that, Oh, well, if he didn’t do this, I wouldn’t have these things.

And it’s now as an adult, it’s like you can’t, you can’t assume.

No, you can’t.

And I’m also curious on something that you touched on about being, you know, a multi ethnic person.

So your mother’s white and your biological father is Mexican.

Is that?

Correct.

Indigenous Mexican.

And did I hear you correctly that your mom kind of alluded to like that wouldn’t have been OK, it was better for you to be raised by your white dad?

Was that her perception or was that based off of where you lived?

Definitely.

I mean, I grew up in southern Missouri.

Southern Missouri, unfortunately, is a red state.

It doesn’t hold people of color to kindness, right?

I can’t even tell you about like when I was a child getting told that I was yeah, a Mexican and how I was treated, even though I would be like, I’m lying.

Like, what are you talking about?

Growing up and being like, why would anybody treat somebody unkindly just because, like, you assume I’m Mexican, but in reality, I am, right?

I am hot Mexican, right?

Growing up, were you ever like naturally drawn to any Mexican culture?

Were you exposed to any of those things?

They weren’t celebrated, right?

I remember for birthday dinners, right, Like birthday dinner, like if it’s your birthday, you can go to any restaurant that you choose.

Pick your favorite restaurant.

And I would always pick Mexican villa.

That was like my favorite place.

I love Mexican food.

I love all of it.

And I remember my mom being like, oh, we all don’t like it.

We all don’t like Mexican food and I’d be like, what’s my birthday dinner?

Like I get to go wherever I want.

Like this is what I want.

It’s it just was, it was felt really like suppressed and I like later on now I’m like, oh, well, she’s doing that ’cause she was really trying to like get the Mexican out of me, right?

Like, no, like we need to really like whitewasher as much as possible, you know, And even I remember I wanted to learn to speak Spanish when I was in middle school.

I was like, oh, I really, you know, want to learn to speak Spanish.

Like a lot of my friends in school I really connected with were children of color because I could identify.

I have, you know, hair, black hair that’s like thick and coarser.

And my mom didn’t know what to do with it.

So it’s like kind of just like all over the place.

So like who do what I identify more with, right?

And it would be like, oh, like some of the children that have like Mexican background, Mexican heritage.

It’s kind of wild to think about like those, those things.

I feel like it’s it’s like flashbacks, right?

Like as soon as I found the results, I feel like I get flashbacks of these like moments where I felt other and I felt like I didn’t belong and.

Feeling those feelings and other times were like I felt seen, right.

I remember going to one of my friend’s house and she had a white mom and her dad was like, you know, she lived down the street for me.

Her dad would call me Tamale, even though my name is Tamara, right?

But he would just joke around with me and, like, you know, joke around with both of us and just, like, made me feel like I was being seen as a person and, like, here’s like, a dad.

That’s such a great dad, you know?

And like him kind of like watching out for me, if that makes sense.

And then now I feel like, oh, because he saw me.

He knew what I was, you know, it’s like all of these, like, flashbacks.

You know.

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, and that validation is so important.

I also want to go back to something you said about if your grandmother had known or if your aunts or uncles had known that they would have wanted to know about you or would have been in your life.

Do you end up connecting with your new found family and learning more about them?

So we’re actually in like reunion and it’s quite lovely now with my grandmother.

Unfortunately, my biological grandmother passed away I think in like 2012, which is a missed opportunity because I feel like she would have been somebody that I would have loved to met.

It sounds like she really loved her family.

She treated her family how I treat mine.

Now I have children and husband and I love them unconditionally.

Like, oh, I, I really needed that as a kid.

Little Tamara would have loved that, would have loved to have family like that, ’cause I do feel like I missed that.

Can you take me through what steps you took to connect with the family?

I know you matched with many on Ancestry.

What was it like to actually like, figure out who they were and make contact?

I became a detective like I really wanted to like put the puzzle pieces together and really figure this out because I knew I had two sisters, right?

And these aunts and cousins were popping up and uncles and I was trying to understand who is here.

And so I reached out to a few of my like, second cousins who was saying, trying to figure out who my biological dad is because at that time, I hadn’t talked to my mother about it.

And so they kind of were like, it could have been this person or this person and kind of like started narrowing it down.

Did you have to do detective work to find out who he was or did your mom give you a name?

She gave me a name and when she gave me a name, I had already had connections with my aunties who were also doing kind of like detective work also.

So whenever I gave him, they were like, yes, this is his first name, this is his last name and this is what he goes by.

I reached out to him, but it was on social media.

So because it’s underneath his business and it’s, it’s challenging ’cause he’s older, right, ’cause like we’re not dealing with like a 65 year old man, right?

So I was like, well, I don’t want to send him a letter to his home, ’cause like what if he’s remarried and his wife gets it, ’cause like in my home, like if something gets addressed to us, I’m the opener of all the mail for the most part, right?

So it would be like I didn’t, I wanted it to be more just for his eyes only, right?

And that was the only way I could do it.

I sent him a message and his response is terrible, terrible.

It’s you know, what do you want from me?

You have so my hair is Gray, right?

Like I started becoming Gray very early in my life, right?

And I love it and it’s so.

I love it too.

If anyone’s listening, at the beginning I was like, I just need to tell you, I love your hair.

It’s so beautiful.

Well, I mean, all of my aunties on my bio dad’s side, they had like I have an auntie that Oh my gosh, we look so similar and her hair is Gray too.

And it’s so beautiful.

And it was just so amazing to see somebody that looks like me and be like, Oh my gosh, like you have this Gray hair too.

But anyway, so he sends me a message and like you have Gray hair, you must be sick.

I don’t have any money.

I’ve been divorced and my ex wives have taken all of the money.

So I have nothing for you.

OK, so you’re not maybe feeling the most hopeful about a relationship with him at the point, but he knows about you then for sure.

He knows that you were born, he knows that you’ve taken a test, and he knows that you found him.

Then it became like, well, I don’t need I don’t need you.

I don’t need a bio that like, you know, like I’m a grown up, but I do want to connect with my sister.

Like is she out there?

Do we look alike?

Do we have similarities that like we don’t even know like all of those questions, right?

Finally, one day I went up to my husband.

We did ancestry DNA and I was like, you know what I’m going to do 23andMe because I can’t find her.

I can’t find my sisters and I want to find them And so I did it and then I found my sisters.

Well, I found one of them.

I also did like a health on it and to be like, well, I mean, why not, right.

I don’t know anything about the other side.

And so I got the results for it and I saw my sister was on it.

And so I sent her my health thinking like it could be just like a soft tap to be like somebody in your family did a health like here it is to be like, I don’t know.

Does she know me?

Does she know I exist?

Is she on talking terms of my bio dad?

Is she strange from him?

Is this going to be like hateful?

Does she going to think that I want or need something from them ’cause this is a very common misconception, right?

It’s like, what do you want from me?

And it’s usually not anything.

It’s usually just to be seen, you know, and validate.

To be seen, maybe get some health history, just learn more about the family, but very rarely is it monetary.

Exactly.

So with my sister, I did the health nudge and she didn’t do anything.

No messages or anything.

I was like, I give it a month.

So finally, like one night I make this declaration after my kids are in bed.

And I was like, I’m tired of this.

Like I just want the puzzle pieces to be matched.

I just want to know like does she know I exist?

Does she care?

Does she want me to even exist?

And so I sent her an e-mail being like, hi, I’m your sister.

We have the same biological dad.

I just, you know, I want to reach out to you.

And I was really scared.

I was scared that she was going to, you know, not, not want me too.

And that was like 10:30 at night, right?

Like in LA because we were living in LA at the time and she lived in Missouri.

And so, so 10:00 at night, well, I get a message at like 3:00 in the morning from her and she’s like, what?

Like what’s going on?

Like this is really wild.

I’m gonna be leaving on a cruise.

Like I’m leaving today.

And this is such like wild timing because I’m actually leaving on this cruise with our bio with, with her dad, my bio dad.

Oh wow.

And she’s like, I don’t know if I’ll have service, but I want to know everything like what is going on.

That makes for an interesting family vacation.

I know I was like, so sorry, right before your trip, she’s, you know, surprised, shocked.

She’s, you know, sending me these like paragraphs just of questions and answers and you know what she’s doing.

What’s her life like?

Right, telling me, you know, she’s married, she has two kids also.

And it’s like, oh wow.

And her kids are two years apart just like mine, and just girls and, you know, all of these things and where she grew up, she lived only three hours away from me my whole childhood.

You know, it’s so mind boggling.

Was she born after you?

Was he married when you came around?

Or were these daughters your sisters after you were born?

Well, that part is also I think why he really didn’t want me around or also kind of when I reached out to him even more so was like, Oh no, like you need to go because they’re older.

So I have older sisters.

So I have two older sisters.

She is, I want to say like 6 years older than me.

And then I also have another sister and she’s only like a year older than me.

So talking to my sister, right?

And kind of like putting these puzzles pieces together, she’s like, Oh yeah.

Well, during this time, he was married to this person.

So we had one that’s like 6 years older and the other one that’s a year older.

She passed away right before COVID so I didn’t get a chance to to meet her but he was married to her mom during that time and she was like a year old so the puzzle is a little more clearer with that.

Yeah, that often complicates it seems like the being able to build a relationship, although he was not married to her mother at the time.

You reached out to him, correct?

He was married to a new woman.

OK so your sister that you connect with is sending you paragraphs.

She’s shocked she’s about to go on a cruise with with your bio dad.

Does she tell him what happens during this cruise?

Yeah, she, you know, I really appreciate her, like so much.

She’s she’s wonderful.

She is like a great sister to have.

She is, you know, just really full of life and very I wanted to get to the bottom of things also.

And so she asked me, you know, permission, like, do you want me to ask him?

Do you want me to say anything?

Just all the things.

And at that time I was like, oh, like I don’t think so.

And so she kind of went on this cruise being like, I want to talk to you, like I want to really like get to know you and all these things when we get back, like, you know, so she went the whole cruise with this man for a whole week and didn’t say anything to him in regards to me.

But then when I told her everything like my story and she told me her story.

And then she asked me if I reached out to him and at that point shared with her what he had said to me.

And she was like, what?

Then she like messaged him and was like I’m really mad at you and went off on him in regards to it and then he like sent me a text and then I blocked him ’cause I don’t have time for that.

Like, oh, so was his text angry?

No, his text was like, oh, like, I kind of remember, like, maybe meeting your mom.

Oh, maybe, maybe she was roommates with, you know, Natalie’s mom, which is my sister.

And I was like, she wasn’t.

I feel like he was like trying to like make it, try to turn it around right And a weird way, but I don’t know.

I’m just really not interested.

You knew I existed and then I reached out to you, giving you a benefit of the, you know, trying to be like, oh, maybe you know, XYZ.

My mom is, you know, I said like, she’s abrasive, like I understand, like she could have said, like, get out of here, you don’t wanna deal with me.

And so I gave him the chance and he blew it.

And like I don’t have an interest so.

Where are things today?

Have you become close to your sister or what kind of happens next in your journey?

Well, that’s interesting.

I mean, I talked to her and I have a relationship with her.

I, I love her and her children and her husband.

We went to Missouri two years ago and I met with my, my dad and talked with him, but I also met up with her and her family and like my family and her family all got together and it was really beautiful.

So we’re building a relationship.

I think that with these kinds of life circumstances, we’re slowly building, but it’s definitely like a process of, you know, getting to know this person, but also feeling like, you know this person and, you know, figuring out your boundaries with one another and making time for each other.

She lives in Missouri and I live now in Oregon.

So just trying to figure out that relationship.

But it’s definitely like a work in process.

So that part feels really good about all this discovery is finding her and the rest of my family too.

I love it.

I love that I’m part of like such a big family.

Like, it’s really amazing.

You mentioned you lived in LA, large Mexican culture in LA, Now you live in Oregon.

Have you taken any steps to get more in touch with that part of yourself?

It sounds like you’re naturally drawn to it as a child, but now as an adult knowing that that’s part of your background.

So, you know, it’s really interesting that you say that cause in Lai felt so great to be a part of the community and I really felt like I belong because there’s so many people that are Latino and just multi, you know, any ethnicity is so beautiful there and diverse.

So yeah, I feel like I was even drawn to LA because of that.

And I mean, we have children and I wanted our children to be Spanish speaking because we lived in LA and that’s the culture.

You need to know English and Spanish.

I don’t want my children to walk out the house and not know Spanish because we lived in LA and even now, now that we moved from LA, like I make them do Spanish classes and tutoring because I want them to know Spanish.

And I think that’s how I’m really trying to connect with that.

How would you say this discovery has changed you overall?

I think today it makes me feel so much more validated, right?

Like, I feel like I was gas lit my whole life.

And it’s really nice to be like, you know what?

I was gas lit for 37 years and knowing the truth and like, cracking the case and I mean, the soul, that’s kind of made my heart feel like more full.

Like I don’t really look at it as like so many missed opportunities.

Like, yeah, there’s a lot of missed opportunities and things I cannot get back, but I really want to focus on my future and my children and my children really embracing that part of them too, and knowing that this is our culture and we’re proud and we’re resilient no matter what happens.

And yeah, I think, I think that’s it.

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

I would say tell them, like, tell them as soon as you can.

The longer you wait, the harder it’s gonna be.

And there’s no reason that these children shouldn’t know their like lineage, their background.

Like, under no circumstances.

And what advice do you have for someone who just uncovered Adna surprise?

That you’re not alone.

I think that’s like really challenging, right?

Like it’s you feel like your world is kind of closing in and you know your sense of belonging, Like where do I belong?

Like do I belong here?

And just know that there’s a lot of us and you do belong and you can belong with us.

This isn’t a linear situation, right?

We as a community of N P/E SI feel like we think or some people think like, oh, well, shouldn’t you be grateful?

Or should you be this or that?

And it’s like these things are so complex and there’s so many emotions into it and healing that needs to come from it and that it’s not linear.

Some days I feel very like positive and I feel this.

But like other days like I don’t.

And I feel like it’s, it’s very complicated.

But for the most part, like for myself and my story, there’s nothing but like better, like everything is feeling good.

Four years out, I feel so much better about everything that’s happened.

And it’s just, it’s amazing to feel so.

Well said, Tamara, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and sharing your story.

I’m so glad that you’ve been able to make these beautiful connections with your family and also respect your own boundaries in terms of how you.

Want to be treated.

And finding the relationships that you want to seek out.

Thank you again for coming on.

Thank you for having me.

Thanks again to Tamara for sharing her story.

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

Until next time, DNA.

Surprises is hosted, produced and edited by me, Alexis Oursalt.

It is mixed and mastered by Josh Oursalt of Siren Recording Studios.