Trudy’s DNA Surprise

This transcript was generated automatically. Its accuracy may vary.

Speaker 1

The funny thing is, my niece, when she had me on the phone, she, oh, yeah, we knew all about you.

We knew all about you.

Dad told us about you that he had this other family that didn't know about him.

So we weren't to tell anybody.

But yeah, we knew about you.

And that's just like, you know, where we had nieces and nephews, you know, that we could have known growing up too.

So I'm so close with all my first cousins and my first cousins kids.

We had relationships growing up.

So I've missed that.

We've all missed that, that that familiarity of when you grow up with someone, there's just this bond, you know?

Speaker 2

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

I'm your host, Alexis Ourselt.

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 families navigating these discoveries.

Get ready to follow the incredible journeys that begin with a simple DNA test.

This is DNA surprises.

One thing we know for sure about family secrets is that they don't always disappear when the people who kept them are gone.

Sometimes they remain hidden for decades until ADNA test brings them into the light.

Trudy had spent years researching her family history and felt confident that she knew where she came from.

But when an unfamiliar close match appeared in her DNA results, she began unraveling a story that had been kept quiet for generations.

In this week's episode, Trudy shares what she discovered, how it changed her understanding of her family, and why she believes everyone deserves to know where they come from.

Thank you for sharing your story, Trudy.

My name is Trudy.

I am 65 years old, and I live in the Okanogan Valley of British Columbia, Canada.

I need to go back to where it all began.

My dad's family has been in America since the late 1600s, and so I kind of grew up pioneer story after pioneer story and knowing who and where I came from, and nothing really surprises me about that.

And the other three branches of my family all came like in the mid 1800s.

So they've been in America for a very long time.

I've been interested in family research for years.

I have three older brothers that I grew up with and very much a normal nuclear family.

When my brother started researching back in the 70s, I was his young teenage little sister that I would do all the typing up.

And so I got kind of interested in family history back way back then, But I didn't really pick up the mantle until like the early 2000s.

And I researched mainly using ancestry.com and just really getting into the family tree and knowing a lot of the family history already because my brother had done a lot of research.

And about 1520 years ago, I was going, I was travelling for a business trip and I needed to stop over.

And one of the stopovers I have a first cousin living in.

And I just contacted her and she said, hey, sure, come stay with me.

We'll have a good catch up session.

And like I'm 1 of 24 first cousins on my dad's side of the family.

So it's large and I'm one of 11 on my mom's side.

So this was a mom cousin.

This was the first cousin on my mom's side, and she and I stayed up to all hours.

Of course, I'm the youngest of all of those first cousins, so they all are much older than me and have kids like my age.

So I kind of grew up with their kids.

And anyway, we stayed up very late talking, and she ended up telling me these two crazy.

Like, you know, those stories, the stories that the older generation knew, but maybe us youngers didn't know, Just kind of scandalous, you know, it seemed like scandalous couple closet skeleton stories.

And I was shocked.

I was oh, wow.

And I let that fester for a little while.

And I don't know, I saw my mom a while after that and I just asked her about those and she like totally freaked out that we don't we don't talk about that.

And she kind of threw a fit.

So I just let it go for then, you know, I thought it's, Oh, well, she doesn't want to talk about it right now.

I'll figure this out at some point.

I'll talk to her later, maybe when she's calmed down.

Kind of forgot about that.

Speaker 3

Did these stories, I'm assuming they involved your mother and no.

One was from her side of the family, which I won't really talk about, but the other one was from my dad's side of the family.

Well, I thought it was from the dad's side of the family.

I wasn't really sure because my cousin said did you know that we had a secret relative at your dad's funeral?

Because my dad died when I was 10.

I was just a little girl and I was, no, I don't know this story at all.

And I remember sitting beside her mom, my aunt at my dad's funeral.

And so I, I don't know, stories kind of jumble up, you know, when you hear skeleton stories and you don't have all the details.

And I wasn't even sure gender, like boy, girl, whatever, but she said this closet relative.

So it's always kind of confusing to me about that.

I had, I had this fear of missing out.

We call it FOMO up here.

I don't know if you call it that.

And if some friends of mine were doing their 23andMe and I said, hey, why are you doing that?

Oh, we just want to know if some of our medical maybe records, maybe where our family came from.

And I thought, oh, I'd like to do that.

So that was kind of what drove me to my first DNA test.

And I did that think it was in 19, the fall of 2019.

And you know, those tests, you get them back and you look at them.

Oh, yeah.

OK, this is this, this matches up with all the family records and history that I've been told.

I remember thinking, well, I I think I recognized some of those relatives.

I didn't really look at the relatives list too close because I was just doing it for the health really.

Just maybe to find out if there's something that I didn't know about.

I went ahead and did my ancestry.com DNA as well.

I did that one in kind of after COVID, you know, after the shutdown, I gotten back into the research and realized 23andMe's DNA relatives didn't really help you build a tree much if you knew your relatives.

That all made sense.

So I thought if I do my Ancestry DNA, maybe it'll help with building the tree.

So that would have been, I think I did it in the fall of 22, something like that.

And I just remember finally kind of looking back in to the list of relatives, trying to take the ones from 23andMe and put them in my tree and ancestry and go, I know where all these people are, whatever.

And most of the relatives are already new because my my family was just really connected.

Lots of connections between my mom's family and my dad's family, just knowing who who's who in the family tree.

But this one name stuck out and I just couldn't figure it out. 23andMe does their DNA sharing a little.

They do it by percentages.

And so they don't they, I mean, it does equate to center Morgans, but I wasn't able to really do a proper comparative with Ancestry.

But this person, it was a female that I matched with.

They said it was either a great aunt of mine or like a great niece.

And I was thinking, well, there's no way it could be a great aunt because I'm the youngest of all these, you know, kids.

So I started reaching out to them to this this gal and I just said, hey, just see, we match DNA.

Do you know how we are related?

And she really, you know how it is with the 23andMe people do their DNA and they don't even look at messages.

They don't even pay attention.

Oh, here's my ethnicity and this is my health stuff.

And then they just forget about it.

But those of us that are avid researchers were in there like a dirty shirt, right?

Or like, OK, how did this person fit in?

And if you're in my family tree, like if if you're in my DNA list, I'm going to figure out where you fit.

It's just the way I'm wired.

I remember going back to a couple of my brothers and just say, hey, I I've seen this name as Adna match.

Do you recognize I saw the surname?

I thought that sounds familiar to the area where we grew up.

They agreed that name sounds familiar, but with the first name and the last name put together, that made no sense.

So Fast forward, I don't know how long it took for for my match to get back to me, but she finally did.

And I was thinking I had looked at her ethnicity and like I'm 100% European.

I just from knowing all that from where I came from and it all matched this match was like 46% European, 54% like sub-saharan.

And that combination is not new to me on my mom's side, but my dad's side is.

I just couldn't figure it out at all.

So when she finally reached back out to me and said, oh, we're related through my mom because my dad's black, then she started to ask me questions and I think she kind of strung me along.

I was starting to remember how many days.

But once your interest gets piqued, you know, like and such a close relative like her DNA like it was more symptom organs as close to the same amount of symptom organs that I was matching on ancestry with my first cousins.

And that just totally like, OK, she must be a daughter or granddaughter of one of my first cousins.

So that's what I figured.

I kept looking, couldn't figure it out.

When she finally got back to me, she said, oh, was your dad's name this?

And did you have siblings?

And I said, yeah, that's my dad's name.

I also have a brother by that name.

And we had a couple other half brothers and sisters that had died from our dad's first family.

He had had a first marriage and his wife had died and both the babies had died.

Long story, but that was kind of what I had given her for information.

And then she just went, Oh my God.

And then it went, she went quiet.

Oh, what a cliffhanger.

I even went back and reread the messages that we were.

And I said, hey, what's up?

I can take it.

Like, are we more closely related for a reason?

Like, And then she came back to me later and she just said, hey, I know all about this, but my mom is more knowledgeable of all of this.

This is her name and this is her phone number.

We're definitely related.

And she's waiting on your call.

And that's all I got.

So this is from this person that supposedly a great aunt or a great niece or whatever.

And so I figured it had to be a great niece, but she had given me, oh, on the one day of messages she had given me her name of her parents.

So me like, you know, and the avid research in the background, I'm going in and I'm looking and sure enough, I found, I found her dad living with his uncle in the same county where we we grew up.

So he grew up in the same area that we all grew up.

But it's just really weird.

Yeah.

How are you feeling at that point I.

Was like reeling.

I was reeling.

I definitely wasn't and I ended up making this phone call when I finally got up the nerve to call her, I think it was the next day.

I just like, I was like, OK, I got to figure this out because the names that, that my, my great niece, that now I know that she's my great niece had given me.

I, I just couldn't make them work.

I knew they were sort of neighboring farming families and, but I couldn't make it work at all.

And so when I called the next day, I ended up talking to who my now I know is my niece.

She said, well, I wondered if this day would ever come.

I, I, I just don't know how to tell you this, but my dad is your brother.

And I went what, what this, no, this can't be.

I said, first of all, I said, what year was he born?

And she was kind of nervous too, you know, she was, she's breaking news that I had never heard.

She's oh, I think he was born in the 50s.

And then I, it sucker punched me so hard.

No way, no way.

That's when all three of my brothers were born there.

This can be, I know my parents relationship and everything they've been told me my whole life.

There was no affair.

I just do, there was no affair.

And so that's where I was just reeling.

And then I finally, I finally got around saying, well, wait a minute, just can you just tell me how old he is?

And then she said, well, he's in his 80s.

He go, oh, oh, OK.

It ends up this is a brother from a relationship my dad had way before he was married.

And back in those days, it was the hush, hush.

And apparently the other grandfather and my grandfather, they didn't get along so well or something was going on.

It's sort of like a forbidden.

That grandfather said there's no way, no way any of my kids are marrying any of those kids.

Just kind of the way it went down.

That's how she told this story to me.

So it had been kept a secret for years, for years and years.

So to go back to when she told me, I said, I kind of need proof.

This is just, this is just kind of she was here.

And so so she was sending me.

She's she's showing me pictures, she's texting them to me and I'm looking at them and going, oh, my.

Like the first picture she, she showed me of her dad being in the in the military and it looked like another one of my cousins.

And she sent me a picture or two of him being very young and he looked like another one of my brothers.

And I like from then on, DNA aside, I didn't need any more information.

I didn't need adna test, even though I had adna test that ended up matching me with my brother's granddaughter.

And that's how I found out.

And so my niece tells me Dad knew about you guys and as well.

How did he know?

I think that's his story to tell.

You'll have to talk to him about that.

What?

So I did later on find the story out his mother had gone on to get married to someone else and lived in another community, basically leaving her son, her first born to grow up in our community.

Kind of.

He moved around a lot.

But.

She was back in town visiting and he he was already in high school, was a teenager.

And he says, mom, you got to meet my girlfriend.

She's she's a real sweetheart.

I want you to meet her.

And so they in the process of introducing them, they were having a visit and his mom said, hey, you, you seem very nice.

You know, she's really impressed with her.

And so what's your what's your name?

What's your full name?

And she said her full name and his mom just went, no, uh, uh, this, this isn't happening.

And he, he's just just asking his mom like, what do you mean this isn't happening?

We're quite fond of each other.

We've been dating and, and she just said your, your dad's were brothers and they just, they kind of what, what do you mean?

And so that's how he found out because another name was on the birth certificate.

His mom was too scared to put down the name of the real father.

So she chose a name from some, some community that they knew of because she was afraid, afraid of her family knowing.

So she never told anybody so.

He didn't know his dad growing up.

No.

So in visiting with him, mind you, this is all over the phone because he lives a very far away from me.

He would.

He told me stories.

He says, yeah, as a kid growing up, you know, I'd go to ball games, football games and basketball games.

And it was just really strange.

This this really nice guy was buying me hot dogs and hamburgers at the concession stand.

And he said he thought it was weird.

And they just said that every once in a while, this guy would buy him food and was really nice to him and he didn't know why.

Keep in mind, he's not growing up really with his mom.

He's with his uncle and his his family.

So that's how he he recalls it.

Oh, this is the guy that used to buy me hot dogs and hamburgers at the ball games.

So that he found out.

I think he was either 16 or 17 when when he found out who his real dad was.

So your dad knew that he had a son, but he never shared that with you all.

No, so, so go back.

It's, it's interesting that it was kept quiet, but it's totally understandable.

A small farming community, everybody knows everybody's business.

It's it's kind of one of the reasons why I left.

You know, I just, I mean, we all, we kind of all left except one of her brothers is still on the farm there.

This farm's in the Midwest and so we all went away to have families and we, we still, we're really a close family.

So we, we stay connected and, and all that.

So after I talked to my niece on the phone, I said, I, I think, I think I need to talk to my brothers before I could ever get close to being able to say anything about this.

So I, I Facetimed the next day with two of my brothers and I said, hey, remember when I was asking about that relative in the DNA like that last name and we couldn't figure it out?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, that happens to be a granddaughter by his brother that we have that they went why we don't have, we know we have, we have the two over in the cemetery.

You know, we had a brother and a sister that had died before we all came along.

No, no, no.

I said, you want proof?

Here we go.

So I was holding up the pictures off my phone and.

And they were like, oh, oh, oh, yeah.

It's just that the family resemblance was just so, so strong.

So strong.

You you couldn't deny it.

And then I, I let our other brother know the next day and we all like cool, like this is great.

We have another brother and, and everybody that was trying to hide it for the most part was, was dead and buried and gone.

We have a few first cousins that did know about it.

And I, I have to say I was a little angry at first because, hey, you know, like we had a brother.

We got ripped, kind of ripped off of, of knowing about, you know, that was, that was the afterburn for me for sure.

And I did, I did call the cousin who was the sister of the one that was being dated.

And I just, hey, I just heard this story about, you know, dad's son was dating your sister.

And she said, Oh yeah, we, we knew about it.

And just I always said to my mom, like, why don't we tell them that they've got a brother out there?

It's not our place, not it's not something we talk about.

You know, it's just that generation, they just the ones that have been sworn to secrecy, kept it in secret.

And then interesting enough, the cousin that actually told me that that story of the closet relative when I had my brother on the phone for the first time, I said, so I heard a story years ago about there being a relative at our dad's funeral.

And I'm just curious, was that you?

He goes, oh, yeah, yeah.

And he didn't even live anywhere near.

He had married and moved off somewhere too.

But he'd heard our dad had passed and he came back and he was at our dad's funeral and he was there.

And this is the closet relative that my my cousin had been talking about.

So that was interesting.

You know, that explains.

Your mom's reaction about not wanting to talk about it at the time.

I mean, I'm struck by truly kind of feeling a lot of empathy for folks that are involved in this story.

I mean, your dad, who clearly was trying to reach out as much as he could throughout your brother's life while still keeping this distance.

Your brother growing up without father or mother in his life regularly, Did he have any other siblings on that side?

Yeah, I think his mom did have a a few other siblings and I think he's he does have relationships with them, yes.

Yeah, but he missed out on you all.

Yeah, he did.

You all missed out on knowing a big piece of your dad's life and then your brother.

So, yeah.

How are you feeling as you're like processing all of this?

Yeah, well, when you live far away, it's easier because actually this new founder brother of ours lives not too far away from our brother that still lives on the farm.

And, and The funny thing is, my niece, when she had me on the phone, she.

Oh, yeah, we knew all about you.

And that's just like, you know, we had nieces and nephews, you know, that we could have known growing up too.

Well, at least all the ones that are still alive.

You know, I and we, we had relationships growing up.

We've all missed that, that that familiarity of when you grow up with someone, there's just this bond.

You know, my new brother, I still call him my new brother, my new brother, my oldest brother, I will never have the same relationship with because I missed all those founding kind of years with him.

Yet I do treasure him and I have, I've met him in person.

We, we had a family reunion and he came and his daughter came with him.

And I've met all of his kids now that are alive and I've met one of his grandkids and they're lovely.

I mean, when I first got into the room with him, I was a little apprehensive.

I mean, because I lived far away and and I remember trucking back home and my brother on the farm said, OK, we're going, I go, where are we going?

We're going over.

We're going to go meet him.

OK.

I didn't even get a choice in the matter.

And off we went.

And I just remember being a little apprehensive, a little nervous because it was easy when it was a distance.

So walking into the room and of course, he's an older man.

He's way older than the rest of us.

And sitting down, I mean, our noses are the same, our eye colours the same.

He's got freckles and he's got a crooked smile like our dad.

He loves to go fishing.

Your dad was an avid fisherman.

It was just a piece of me.

He was like, wow, this is my brother.

And it's it's really hard, you know, just like I've missed out a lifetime with him.

And and then since we found this all out, our our mom had passed as well.

She had passed a few years ago.

And I think I found I figured this all out the year after she died.

And just talking to the first cousins on mom's side, they were sworn to secrecy.

You're not allowed to talk about that with anybody at all.

You just don't talk about that story.

So we, we all four of us that grew up together, had no clue.

We had no clue.

So my anger was towards our mom.

Like Dad was gone.

He'd been gone for years.

Why couldn't you have told us?

Why couldn't you told us like one of my other brothers?

He said, oh, don't you think Dad was just waiting until Trudy was old enough?

You know, because I'm the youngest, maybe maybe when Trudy was like 18, Dad would have told us, you know, perhaps that would have been the the case, you know, because our dad was a, we always knew him to be a man of honor and integrity.

And, and just hearing those fond stories of how he used to buy the stuff, you know, at the concession stand over the years.

It's just, it was just heartwarming, but gut wrenching and heart wrenching at all the same time because our dad had lost a family in between two, he'd lost a wife and two children to medical problems.

It basically.

And it's it's just was a sad story.

We we carried forward in our life that we had these two siblings in the cemetery, you know, and yeah.

Yeah, he'd he'd been through.

He'd.

Been through a lot and it is an interesting point that you bring up about, you know, why didn't your mom say something not to, to blame her right 'cause she came after all of this, but like you know, why she maybe didn't share?

Especially as times changed too and it's kind of become more acceptable or normalized for these sort of things to happen.

That's what I may remember having the conversation with her 15, 20 years ago and say, hey, mom, what about these stories?

Like, we don't care.

You know, they could.

The people that probably were involved here are not alive was.

And she just was going to take those stories to the grave.

Just.

And she did.

She did.

Yeah, both of our parents did.

Wow.

So that is my DNA surprise.

But I mean, I've noticed how much it it did affect you.

I think some so many of the stories we hear on the podcast are are the people who are surprised to learn that one or more of their parents isn't isn't their biological parent.

Your situation is learning that you have another family member out there and it's still, you know, deeply affected you.

I just want to say when.

Remember the discovery of this brother existing and how much we revered our our dad.

I just remember thinking like, Ding Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding, dad falling off the proverbial pedestal, you know, like.

Yeah, 'cause I had this moment where you weren't even sure.

Like was he around your age?

Or.

Your brother's age, Yeah.

Yeah, and then learning it just all fit together.

Our dad was a father of compassion and love and, and he he had a lot of years of struggling because he had had a lot of loss in his life, right.

So when when my mom came along and then all of us came along like it was, it was all good in the end.

Do.

You think it was easier to accept and welcome your brother because he was from a past life in a way as.

Opposed to definitely, definitely.

And I, I have met all of his, his kids that are alive.

He he lost one daughter is no longer alive.

But I've only met one of his grandkids.

There's a lot of grandkids yet to meet.

And actually one of my nieces and nephews actually don't live that far.

They're they're in the Pacific Northwest.

So I have driven and seen them and met them.

It's lovely and and they don't live too far away from our other brother that lives out in the Pacific Northwest as well.

So I've, I make efforts at this, just who I am.

I've said what I said before.

If you're a DNA relative, even if you're not, even if you're raised by one of my DNA relatives, you are my family and I will stay connected to you sometimes, whether you like it or not.

You know, I'm just one of those people and it's my forever passion to I mean, you asked me what do I want to go do going forward?

It's now my passion to help other people that I stumble across in the DNA relatives list that are looking where they connect.

Sometimes I'll reach out.

Hey, I'm trying to put you to my family tree.

Well, I have no clue.

I was adopted.

Oh, do you want me to help you figure it out?

Sure.

And I have actually three different people in the family tree.

I've helped them figure out who their biological parent was.

Or is that incredible?

So that's where it's taken me.

It's it's actually a passion to me.

It's kind of a ministry.

I mean, we are people of faith as well.

And I just feel like everybody has the right to know where they come from, whether there's going to be a relationship down the road.

Like fortunately for us, we've we've all, other than the grandkids that I haven't met yet, I feel like we're all connected.

We, we're all a growing love.

It's just different.

It's just not that same bond that I had with the three that I grew up with.

But I love them all.

And I stay connected.

Phone calls, birthdays, Christmas, we contact each other, phone calls, visits when I can.

Yeah, I was just back.

I was back there in the summer and I visited my brother and I got to meet his older daughter who I'd never met before.

So yeah, it, it's a process we're learning.

And, and the brother that lives there on the farm, he's close now and he, he can check in on our oldest brother and, you know, it's, it's just fun.

It's kind of a fun relationship for him too, because all the rest of us moved away.

Now he's, he's got a, he's got a sibling nearby again.

So it's it's been kind of fun.

I mean, you're such a good example that so many of these secrets don't stay hidden.

And you might think that you that it is, but then somebody down the road takes a test and uncovers something.

And you know, your brother knew about this.

You know, he knew maybe not who his dad was, but he knew kind of some of his story and all of this and then and then he found out, but he still wasn't going to reach out.

He was going to wait, right, I assume.

And it's.

Very, Yeah, very respectful.

His cousin lived down the road from us and he would drive by our house, apparently to go visit his cousin.

And his cousin kept telling him, hey, don't you think you need to tell them that you're their brother?

He goes, no, you know, I'm just.

I think they've lived their whole lives without knowing about me.

It's it's just probably best not to tell them, right?

So he was, he was just being respectful.

Yeah, and he was carrying that, too.

How does it feel being the person in your family who unlocked this mystery?

I mean if none of your siblings had taken ADNA test or never did.

We would closely.

You never would have found, or maybe the next generation would have found out, but it could have been years.

Before any absolutely and and you think about it like my niece had told her kids as well.

So you know, my great niece obviously knew the story.

She was, oh, I know about this, but my mom knows more about it.

Like if that generation, you know, if they didn't take adna test, someone in our family had.

I don't know, I can't get anybody in my family will take adna test.

I think they're all scared of it.

And I've gone to the Looney Tunes, you know, sister mom, you know, like, can we take adna test?

We'll I'll help you fill out your your family tree from your dad's side.

No, no thanks.

Not not going there.

Like, interesting, but you remember years ago there was the Y test.

It was the Y test.

It was way before the DNA tests are out now.

And I remember stumbling across other cousins and relatives researching online and they were saying, can you get one of your brothers to take the Y test?

It sure would help tracing our line back, just verifying because there's so many, so many family members that we could have been related to.

Was it fairly common name and I couldn't get anybody interested?

I I still I ask.

Maybe I'll get one of my nephews to take take a DNA test.

Hopefully he won't.

Uncover any more secrets, but it might help.

Yeah, some of.

That yeah, yeah.

I mean, once you find out secrets and like my one brother that's been a researcher for a long time, he said because I figured out another, the other of those two stories, I figured that one out too.

And he goes, that's the end of the stories.

There's no more secrets.

I go, oh, I bet not.

I bet.

You There's more DNA surprises out there, but they're.

So.

And women, yeah, I'm wondering.

I mean, I can hear how much you love your dad.

Yeah, I do.

I I love him to this day, even though I only had him in my life 10 years.

I mean, if there's anything that you could say to him about all of this, what, what would you want him to know?

Or I know you're a person of faith, So what do you say to him about this?

We love, we love him.

We love your son.

And we wish we would have known about him earlier.

We love you.

It's so.

Beautiful how welcoming you all are to him and accepting of, of all of it.

I think that's what people hope for.

So it's really heartwarming speaking from the other side of it, you know, with, with the Who's Found family, it's really heartwarming to hear how open you all are.

Thank you.

And I just encourage anyone that that is a researcher and if you haven't done your DNA, do your DNA, it really does open the doors.

You have to be very opening open and prepared for what you may find.

To be honest, Alexis, I never had a clue.

I because I was so confident where I came from and my family tree.

I was just looking at it just to add to the research.

Who else can I add?

I just never dreamed that I was going to add a relative that way.

So you have to be prepared for what you may find.

And it's nothing to be fearful of.

I mean, I have met people that have connected relatives, you know, like DNA that they're, you know, like you get to love them from a distance for a reason, you know, and there's but for the most part, this has been a wonderful journey.

I have discovered cousins now that are friends for life that I never knew prior to this DNA journey.

So it's I love it.

I'm not not the person looking for my parent.

I'm not the person looking for my child or grandparent or whatever.

But this was a surprise that was so beautiful.

It was gut wrenching at 1st and beautiful in the end and very thankful and grateful.

Or being able to find find my brother What?

Advice do you have for a parent who may be keeping adna surprise from their family I've.

Heard it a million times it seems like on your podcast.

Please tell your children where they come from.

Tell them early and if if it's time restrictive for age difference, just tell them at at some point before they get too far into their 20s.

Because it is it is reeling to find this out.

For me, I found it out in my 60s.

It was it was quite the surprise.

So tell them early if you can, and make sure you let them know that you love them regardless.

What advice do you have?

Or someone who just uncovered adna surprise and maybe learn something new about their parents or uncovered a new sibling.

Take a breath, don't jump to conclusions, Sleep on it.

Give it a day or two or a week, whatever you need to settle.

Get really good and grounded and settled in yourself before you try to face it with to the family.

Like I jumped right in.

I was like the next day I get guys, you know, I just, I think if I'd given myself a few days to just assimilate it myself, maybe I would have been a little more coherent when I was talking to my other brothers about it.

Yeah, just take time.

Be really gentle on yourself to and not so judgmental to the parents.

Our parents did the best they could with the time that they lived in, the information that they had and how they knew to raise their children.

I think they did the best they could.

I just just remind people, no, don't be too hard on your parents.

And I'm not angry at my mom anymore.

I'm not angry at my dad.

It's just our story now, right?

It's just our story.

It's part of who we are.

And.

And yeah, be gentle on yourself.

Take some time, don't rush into your next steps.

Good.

Advice and I love that it is your story.

Trudy, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast and sharing your your family's story.

I'm so glad that you took that DNA test and me too made that connection for your brother.

I'm sure that that was really powerful for him, just as it is for you.

I wish you the best as you continue building your relationship.

Thank you so much, Alexis, and thank you for all that you do for this community.

Blessings.

Thanks.

Again, to Trudy 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, join me over on patreonpatreon.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.