Barry’s DNA Surprise

This transcript was generated automatically. Its accuracy may vary.

How a DNA Test Led to a Life-Altering Discovery

It all happened the way that it was supposed to.

I found out what I needed to know at when I needed to know it.

At 56, I found out.

But look what happened after that.

And it's been really good for like a lot of my dad's family and his friends because now they have me, you know?

And so it's like now I have all these new friends that were my dad's friends who are part of my life now and they care about me and I care about them.

And it's just awesome.

I never expected that.

So it's like if I can't have him, I have everybody that knew him and also the family that's that's still there.

And it's a lot.

It's almost like I'm a whole person now where I wasn't before.

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.

Speaker 3

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.

So much of our identity is wrapped up in the stories we tell ourselves.

How we came to be who our parents are, who our grandparents are, what they did and how they lived.

And for adoptees, many of those details are a mystery.

In this week's episode, Barry shares how he discovered his father's incredible story.

After taking ADNA Test, he reveals how learning more about his father created a powerful connection with him.

Barry also reveals where things stand and what he has learned about his biological mother.

Through it all, he remains focused on his purpose.

One that he found.

By connecting with his father.

Just not in the way you might think.

Thank you for sharing your story, Barry.

Speaker 1

First name is Barry.

I'm 58 years old and I'm from Ormond Beach, FL.

Well, I was adopted, first of all, just a disclaimer.

My my adopted parents are the best people in the world ever.

They gave me an opportunity that I never would have had I come from the furthest, most northern city in, in state of Maine, which is Eastport.

It's right on the Canadian border.

And I was born in Bath.

What I received was just the most ultimate, you know, unbelievable gift that gave me a life.

My dad was a doctor.

I grew up in an upper middle class neighborhood of, of New Jersey, but you know, like I knew from a young age that I was adopted.

And so there's always that, who am I?

Where do I come from?

The family adopted me was Jewish and I grew up in an Italian town and I looked more like the people in town that I did in my family.

I just never felt like I belong.

I never fit in.

I just, it's always felt different.

And it bothered me, you know, and for for a long time and my parents unfortunately didn't know what they were getting.

So I mean, what we're talking about here is a lot of stuff.

We're talking about, you know, pain and healing.

We're talking about genetics, We're talking about, you know, reconnections.

We're talking about people's life paths coming together after 56 years.

I mean, a lot of stuff had happened because of this whole thing.

So I had a lot of problems as a kid and and kind of straightened out, you know, later in life.

The DNA Test That Challenged His Identity

But again, I always wanted to know who my parents were.

My mother gave me the adoption certificates in my 20s.

And so now I had a last name for my mom and it was really weird because of my birth certificate, they named me, they named me Thomas, which was an old family name.

I'm like, why would you give somebody up for adoption and name them?

So it was really weird.

So I tried to find her, right?

And there's a lot of stuff that I, I didn't know.

I didn't know that she didn't want me to find her, right?

So I looked and looked and looked.

I found out that the name was a very old name.

Once I did, my DNA on my mother's side goes all the way back to the 1700s.

So I'm really able to trace that lineage.

And it's French shipbuilders.

And I said my mom didn't want to find me.

I had wrote her a letter years ago saying, listen, this is who I am.

I turned out OK.

You have daughters.

If you want to get in touch with me, great.

If not, I respect you.

And she never did, you know, And it's because of the life that she created and also because of the the secret that she had.

So in my 20s, I would call every on the phone book.

Do you know my mom?

It's like the Doctor Seuss book, right?

Do you know my mother and actually an uncle had answered the phone if he knew who I was because they all knew that she had a child that she gave up for adoption, but she was told not to say anything.

So he goes, no, no, I don't know.

So before I did my DNA thing, I actually had my mother's birth side find me.

And they reached out to me and they're like, you know, your mother didn't want us to find you because of who she married in her life now, but we decided that we wanted to know you.

So I didn't realize that she had five brothers and sisters.

And so I had all these cousins and all these people on her side that really wanted to meet me.

And so they found me.

And so I found my first blood connection, you know, with relatives, cousins.

And so a year later, my wife and I are joking around.

And again, I'm thinking that I'm Italian, right?

Because I grew up in this Italian town and I grew up working in pizzerias, and I kind of fit in with them and not really my family.

And that's why I wanted to be that whole fantasy.

And so my wife and I are joking around.

She's like, you're not Italian.

You're Portuguese.

I said, I'm not Portuguese.

I know I'm definitely Italian.

So you know, the whole thing about doing the DNA thing, because I was adopted and because I kind of knew who my mother was and what was wrong and I knew my background and I knew the difficulties that I had growing up.

I was, you know, tremendously difficult and got in a lot of trouble.

And so I'm like, do I really want to know who my dad is?

So I finally said, you know what, let's just do it, you know, as a joke to prove to my wife that I wasn't Portuguese.

So I I did the ancestry.

We waited and came back.

Not only was I not Portuguese, but I wasn't Italian either.

So I was Scottish, French and Northern European the the entire family.

How did you feel when you saw that after being so sure that you were Italian?

This felt right.

You know, it was funny because years and years ago somebody said, oh, you look dark Irish.

I'm like dark Irish.

What's dark Irish?

Is there such a thing?

You know?

But on my father's side, they come from Corker, Ireland and Corporate Castle and that whole thing.

So I mean, like, I, I finally was able to find all this stuff, Northern European, Scottish and Irish.

And so I was like, wow, that really makes sense because my mother's family too, they all came from that whole area from there over to Maine, right?

Learning About His Decorated Veteran Biological Father

And so, you know, back to my dad, I was floored all of a sudden, like I find out who he is, I see him and it's really healing because I'm 56, you know, it's just like I had planned on going to Maine so many times, but it never happened.

And then I, I, I finally found out who I am and the family reaches out.

Not only did I find out who my dad was, but I also found out that he had three brothers and two sisters, one brother still alive and then my cousins.

And then I also found a half brother who has a different, you know, mother with my father.

Unfortunately, Tom had passed away in 2000 due to Agent Orange, but I got to whole learn the whole back story about him and then go to his hometown, meet relatives and actually meet his friends.

So in Vietnam, he enlisted when he was 18 and a day before his 19th birthday, December 7th, 1967, he had shipped out in May of 66.

He was also, and I say genetics, you know, it's like finding out who my dad was and everything about him really makes sense of all the stuff that I had gone through because he was a mess.

He got in a lot of trouble, like even before they sent him to to Vietnam, even before he enlisted.

And I'll tell you a couple quick stories, but he was in trouble and they had sent him to the rear away from his company and he was serving as a cook.

And he found out that his company was going into this really bad battle.

And his quote was, and I heard this from his Lieutenant because I've been in contact with a lot of people since then.

This is only about two years ago.

Fuck them.

They can make their own pork chops.

I'm going to help.

He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, which is the medal right below the Medal of Honor, the Silver Star.

At the end of his tour, he ended up with two bronze stars, an air medal, the Medal of Valor from the Republic of Vietnam and the Purple Heart.

And he re upped after that.

And so that his brother didn't have, he did 2 tours and he re upped after that.

So his brother didn't have to do.

He had over 21 aerial combat missions.

And so he did a lot and it took a toll.

You know, I mean my dad was but he was out there was a partier.

He was wild.

And when he came back, he was affected by it.

He, he was disabled due to shrapnel.

He'd gotten injured and he couldn't work.

But he helped a lot of people coming back.

He helped a lot of vets.

He was a part of a lot of the American legions.

And he really was involved with that's missing in in action.

One of the guys in his hometown was Mia.

And so he really, really stepped out there and used what he did in, in, in the Army and his medals to help, you know, with, with families in the search for guys that are Mia and then also current guys that really needed services through the VA.

And so I found all this out and it was just flooring to me.

And it was healing because I finally knew who my father was and I knew who I was.

And I had pride now knowing how much alike we were and knowing the things that he did, you know, And then we decided to take a trip.

Unveiling His Biological Mother's Secret Adoption Scheme

And so this is where it gets really crazy, not only finding out that stuff, but this also loops in my mother's side of the family too.

So we decide last year to go up and we're going to meet my uncle and some other relatives.

Well, not only did I have a stepbrother, but I also had a step sister and the step sisters kind of ostracized by the family.

The step sisters wasn't really a good person and did a lot of bad things and did a lot of bad things to my dad.

And I won't get into the gory details, but let's just let's just say nobody really will or wants to have anything to do with her based on some of the things that she did.

And one of the things that she did is when she died, she sold his medals and, and the family thought they were gone.

Nobody knew.

And this is and he died in 2000.

Well, what happened was is we went up there and I met some of my birth relatives from my mother's side.

We had a party in or island, we had a lobster party and I met that uncle and he said, I'm sorry, I didn't tell you this at the time, but your mother told us not to, right?

He goes, but I later found out that my mother wasn't my father, wasn't even my father.

So he goes now I kind of know how you feel.

And it was just like I was welcomed in by the rest of my mother's family.

Unfortunately, she decided, you know, not to.

And it's because of, like I said, there was a secret.

So this is the other story behind my adoption.

My mother and her sister wanted to get out of Bath, and they were looking for a ticket.

Well, back in the 60s, there was a doctor and a lawyer in Bath that had a thing going.

They were adopting kids in that area to rich, affluent families in Boston, OK.

And so her and her sister came up with the scheme that they got in touch with this doctor and this lawyer and basically if they were able to give up children for adoption, then they were going to have the means to be able to leave.

And they both got pregnant within six months.

They both delivered at the same hospital and both to name their kid the same, just in case anybody came looking just to kind.

Of like almost like a, a, not a surrogacy because there wasn't a, a family who had contacted them, but essentially they got pregnant with the intent to.

Basically got hired, Yeah, this doctor and this lawyer where they were, they were adopting kids out to these rich families.

And so any women that came to them, they took care of them.

My mother and her sister were working at a bar, the bar that was right outside the base that my dad shipped out of.

So they had met as he was shipping off her over there, you know, and he was the, he was the good looking lucky guy that got to meet my mom that night.

And that was her ticket out.

And she went to Reno, never looked back, got married and had a family.

And so he had no knowledge of you.

He had no knowledge of me, but she did right?

And she didn't want her current family to know.

That she had done that so.

Yes.

Do you think?

And I respected that.

I'm not going to interfere with her life.

Yeah, but it's like a shame based feeling of why she doesn't want to meet you.

Do you think that she feels detached almost?

Like she.

Was a surrogate and it you were never meant to be hers, and so she just doesn't.

She didn't want her her married family to find out the story behind how she exited a man with her sister.

She married into an affluent, you know, prominent family, worked in the government and were highly religious.

And so didn't want this coming out, you know, and so I wasn't going to push it.

I, I wasn't going to, you know, I didn't have any.

I was grateful she gave me life.

If she didn't do what she did, you know, I never would have had the opportunities that I had.

So I always respected that.

Did your adoptive parents know about this?

Recovering Father's Medals and Finding Family Acceptance

No, my adopted parents were told that they were college kids unprepared and ready for children.

So OK.

So they they bought into a story.

It was a lot.

And were they supportive of you finding your birth parents or how did they feel about it?

You know, it's funny, it's like I'm really grateful for, for the childhood and the family that I, I was given.

I didn't have a close relationship with my father or my brother.

I did have a very close relationship with my mother and she always supported me up until the time she died.

So my mom and I, my adoptive mom and I were very, very close always.

And I'm close with my dad now more than I was.

But we didn't gel.

We never did.

I was never fully accepted.

I always felt like, you know, I was the, I was the black sheep.

You seem sort of excited and energized by what you learned about your biological father.

So was there any moment like learning this about your your biological mother?

Or maybe it was it was hard to process this information because you believe this story, right?

That they were young college kids and they weren't.

Oh, I never believed that story.

Oh, you never did.

No, I.

Never believed that story.

What did you think?

You know, and it's funny because what I thought, you know, you have these crazy ideas in your head of like who your parents are.

So I thought that it was probably my dad that was the bad guy and my mom was the compassionate when I got my compassion and my caring for my mother.

And I got the the anger and the bad boy stuff from from my dad.

Well, I did get some of that from my dad, but you know, but it was more my mom who really, what I found out later about really who she was, that she really wasn't that nice of a person, unfortunately.

And this is coming from her family.

And so I'm not trashing her, you know, it's just what I've been told about her because the rest of the family decided we're not listening to you.

We see this guy on Facebook, we see the life he's creating, we see his daughters, we see what kind of person he is and we want to meet him.

And so my first cousin reached out to me and my other second or third cousin reached out, and then my mother's sister's son, you know, reached out to me.

And then a year later, we're up having a a party and I'm being welcomed by the majority of her side of the family.

At that point, I didn't need my mother's approval or vindicate, you know what I mean?

I didn't need that peace anymore.

I understand who she was and I understand why she did what she did.

And I accepted it.

And I don't have any resentments or hard feelings over it.

I'm just grateful that I was able to meet, you know, the rest of the family and that they wanted to meet me, you know, and I would have respected them if they didn't.

But after meeting them, the crazy story is I went to visit my uncle Billy, who now has Parkinson's and I was able to his other brothers and sisters had passed.

So he was the only brother left, my father's brother Billy.

We're in Eastport now and Eastport is just an amazing little small town, USA hay right on the water in this deep port.

I mean, it's the coolest little town you've ever seen and, and 4th of July is huge there.

So we were up there for the 4th of July and we're staying for about 5 days and I'm going to meet my brother too.

So I met Bill and I met his kids, I met three of my cousins and then the next day I was gonna meet my brother who looks just like me as well and he grew up with my father and so did my sister.

Well, the next morning after we met them, I get a call from Bills wife Paula saying, you know, your dad's friends contacted us about a week ago and they wanted to do something special to honor him.

And they know a guy named Don who might have an idea of where your dad's medals are.

And this is all happening while we're there.

And he was, we're going to call that.

We're going to call them and maybe we can go over there and meet him.

And I said, yeah, we can go down to Bangor.

I can stop there on on our way to the airport.

And so they found him.

This one guy knew another guy who from the American Legion found out who bought the medals that were sold because my father gave the medals to his girlfriend who had them for 10 years.

And then she felt that in some way they should go back.

And so she sent them to the American Legion Post that he was a part of in Maine.

About 5 or 10 years ago, the American Legion Post closed so they didn't know what to do with them.

And so they found the step sister, his daughter, and they gave them to her.

Well, she immediately sold them and she sold them to a coin and metal dealer.

And well, this one gentleman who contacted my aunt to want to do something for my dad contacted another guy who knew the guy that may have had him.

And now we're driving down on the last day, you know, getting ready to fly out.

And we show up and he has the medals and I meet two couples, both my my dad's friends.

One of them was one of my dad's ex girlfriends.

And we were walking up to the store, she cried.

She saw me and she cried because they didn't know anything about me, but I looked just like him and this guy.

I mean, this is how God works.

This is serendipity.

He bought them, but he didn't break them up and sell them.

He kept them intact in case at some point in time, somebody from the family, he would be able to return them and give them back.

Along with a certificate that my father received when he was inaugurated into the Legion of Valor by Congress in 1990s.

And all of us are in there and it's emotional.

And they knew my dad.

And now they're meeting me.

And day before I met my my brother, he gives me my dad's flag from his military funeral.

And he says to me, he goes, the oldest son should have this and the two bullets that they fired when they had the service.

And so we took him home with us.

And then I had them all all framed together, all the medals with the Legion of Valor certificate in the middle and the flag on top, you know, with the Purple Heart on the flag and his name on the bottom with the bullets.

One of the things that I have been able to do for my dad, a lot of his friends wanted him to get upgraded to the Medal of Honor.

The three star general in the field could have issued the Medal of Honor and my dad actually requested it right before he passed.

He died of a a brain tumor.

He had Agent Orange, he had a throat cancer and he had a tumor in the brain.

And then he ended up playing him a stroke, but he petitioned for it.

And they said, well, the three star general could have given you at the time, but the Distinguished Service Cross holds a lot of weight.

But I really felt like he should with being the second highly decorated, you know, veteran in the state of Maine, that he should have a place somewhere because he didn't have, he didn't have a marker in the Eastport Cemetery, right.

And so right now I'm waiting for one certificate that's being mailed out to me.

And they're going to, they're going to put him in Arlington.

And so then they schedule the service and takes about a year, some Uncle Bill and my cousins, all his friends that are still alive.

So no.

So they're going to all come down for the ceremony at our Arlington.

Oh, that's amazing.

Connecting His Life's Work to His Father's Struggles

And I imagine just hearing all of that made you feel closer to him, You know, a lot of the.

Yeah, things that come up for.

People who have had these.

DNA discoveries as those what ifs and kind of that longing, especially after somebody has passed.

Do you have?

Questions for him that you want to ask?

I mean, I know we can't dwell too much on the what ifs of it all, but you know what?

What's still there for you?

I have no questions.

Like my dad's a part of me now, you know what I mean?

It's like he might have passed, but I see him and I say prayers every morning and he's part of them, and we communicate to each other and I know he's there.

He's in my heart.

It's almost like I didn't get to meet him physically, but we connected, you know, Like once he found me, his medals found me.

Once this all came to me, my dad found me and he's a part of me, you know?

And I know him and I know the good of him and I know the difficulties of him.

There's a lot of genetics going on in that family, like alcoholism and drug addiction on both sides of that family.

And those are the things that I struggle with.

And so that's really part of my life today.

I struggle with that in my life.

I ended up working in that field and I run a non profit and one of our programs in one of our missions now is to open up a veterans only sober house in Jacksonville that helps veterans with PTSD.

My dad struggle with substance abuse and PTSD.

And so it's almost like everything that I've been trained for, everything that I went through and experienced in my life, everything kind of like brought me to that DNA story and then that DNA story has brought me to my purpose now.

And were you doing all of this like addiction and recovery work before?

Prior.

To discovering him so.

So you were already kind of on that, the serendipity of it all.

Yeah, I already had our nonprofit.

We were already doing work in the field.

I was already working with trauma groups in, in drug courts and I was already doing a lot of stuff within the community.

Prior to that, I was a certified addiction professional years earlier.

I worked in rehabs and I worked for drug court and I did other things.

I got my doctorate and I got my MBA and I thought I was going to teach.

And then I'm like, no, I need to get back.

And so that's when I created the foundation and we started doing this work.

And so now we have this umbrella foundation that's uniquely set up to really now be able to start this program. 75% really overlaps of PTSD and substance abuse with veterans.

And so, you know, like my dad gave back to veterans.

And so I'm going to use his story and what he did to really reach out and promote the mission of second mission.

And I'm so grateful for that because, you know, it's, it's almost like I found, I found him and, and I found my purpose and it was his purpose.

And I'm a veteran too.

And so now, you know, we can really kind of do this together.

If people are curious and want to learn more about your nonprofit, where can they find you?

Veteran sober house Veteran Sober house.org Second Mission Veteran Sober House.

OK, You said that you grew up very close with your mother, who raised you, not as close with your father and brother.

But you said you're closer to your to your dad now.

What does he think of all this?

He's interested.

You know, you got to be really delicate.

So, you know, like my mom passed years ago.

My mom's not here anymore.

My father's going to be 90 in a couple days, and I'm 58.

So as we've grown older, it's become easier.

You know, I'm not the crazy son that I used to be stabilized and really gone the other way.

And so he's really proud of that.

And we don't talk about it a lot, but I did tell him what I had found and we found it interesting and, and he thought that it was good.

So it's nice that he has some acceptance of that now.

We were just always different people, you know, he was, we're just very different.

And it was just hard for them.

I was very outgoing, the camping hunting kind of guy.

And they were like, you know, the math kind of guy, you know, we were, we're just were different.

And it's, you know, but as a kid, you don't understand that, you know?

Sure.

Did he have any reaction to the reality of your adoption circumstances?

He didn't say anything.

You could just kind of tell by his expression that it kind of probably answered some questions for him.

Really.

Unfortunately, they really didn't know what they were getting themselves into.

I was a terror as a kid, you know, in in school in my early teens, in my early 20s, I got in a lot of trouble.

I was a lot like my dad, you know, had those genetics.

And it's funny because I mean, it's so much like him because now that I'm able to hear true stories from cousins who were around him a lot as kids and now they're older and just to hear the things, it's just so similar.

It's crazy.

And not only looks, but sometimes you get like the personality of 1 and the looks of the other.

It's just like I got all him, you know?

And for better or worse.

How His DNA Journey Brought Healing and Advocacy

Yeah, you do so much work around addiction and recovery and and support for veterans.

Do you have any thoughts on adoption and like adoption policies and things like that?

Because a lot of people who have been through similar stories to your own are in the adoption advocacy space.

So I'm curious on how that's affected you.

Well, I'm always for adoption.

In fact, I was always planning on adopting myself.

I ended up having two daughters.

It just never was in the cards for me.

But I really wanted to.

And it's like now it's pretty cool because now I'm able to work with so many people.

It's almost like I'm adopting them, you know?

But I think that it's a shame that they weren't told the truth.

You wonder if a lot of these children would have gotten adopted.

But I mean, I, I really kind of thought that it was a business for them, you know what I mean?

So they were making, they were, they were making money, you know, off of, you know, people's, you know, in a desperate area in a desperate time.

If I had grown up knowing who I was, if I had grown up like in an orphanage in that area, I would have turned out a lot even worse than I had I heard it was.

I mean, the only, I think, you know, say in addiction and in recovery, you know, we tell our stories.

And I always say that they saved my life, not just because they adopted me, but because of the area that I grew up in, the love that they gave me and I had food and I was safe and they were nurturing.

I wasn't necessarily super close to them, but I mean, I was still very cared for.

And that touched me, that changed me.

And it probably turned out, even though I was still difficult and still got in trouble, it would have been a lot worse hadn't I gotten all that.

So nature, nurture, I mean, the nurturing that I got definitely saved my life and really helped, I'm sure, develop me into the person with the values, the core values and the character that I was brought up to know and understand saved my life and gave me a chance.

So they gave me more chances than just the adoption.

And so I'm really grateful for that.

I would always want a child to get adopted in instead of, you know, being, you know, the alternative, you know?

Yeah.

But there should be transparency.

Yeah, that's what I was going to say.

I guess.

I guess my question is maybe around reform in in adoption, you know as you said it was sort of a business.

So you know, if you had any, any thoughts around that?

And I don't know what it's like now to adopt somebody.

I mean, I don't know what the vetting process is or what the transparency is.

You would think that it was better in the late 60s up there.

I mean, they're not just the late 60s.

It was the entire 60s because a lot of kids got adopted by this, this lawyer and this doctor.

That's probably just the Wild West.

They were just doing what they wanted to do.

There was all these kids, there's getting pregnant.

There was nothing really to do up there.

It was rural, desperate, you know, area.

You built chips, it snowed and you drank.

So at least maybe they were making money, but at least they were giving these kids the opportunity because they knew they were going to good families.

So maybe that's how they justified it.

I don't know.

But they were all, but they were also, you know, getting the kids that they got.

Right.

You, you kind of talked about what's next and hopefully getting to lay your father to rest in Arlington and you've talked about how your your connection has grown a bit more with your adoptive father.

Sounds like the path with your mother is closed off for now and not something that that you're going to pursue.

I'm curious just overall how this experience has affected or transformed.

You.

It's healed me.

It, it's healed me.

You know, it's like you spend a good part of your life not knowing who you are, where you come from, who your people are.

Why were you giving up?

Why weren't you wanted?

Are you wanted?

Is there somebody looking for you?

All these questions, you know, it all happened the way that it was supposed to.

I found out what I needed to know at when I needed to know it at 56, I found out.

So it's like, if I can't have him, I have everybody that knew him and also the family that's that's still there.

It's also really good because I think at the time if it maybe if I happened when I was a little bit younger, it would have gone differently.

But because I'm a little bit more mature, I'm really to able to accept everything and really be open to the entire experience and really then try and use it for whatever good I can.

It's been really fun, interesting for my family, my wife and my kids and all my friends that know me.

You know, it's just, it's God working in my life and I'm just so grateful, you know, for that.

Navigating Secrets and Surprises in DNA Journeys

All right.

Well, my last two questions that I ask everyone and I'll probably tweak them a little bit for your scenario, but the first question is what advice?

Do you have for a?

Parent, or in your case, maybe a birth parent who's going to relinquish their child for adoption but maybe keeping the circumstances a secret.

What advice would?

You have for those people.

I would say don't hold anything back.

I mean, it goes back to the conversation I had with my parents.

And you know, what really affected me as I, I found out that I was adopted at a very young age.

I was in second grade and that kind of messed my head up.

I think that I was really too young to be told at that time.

But as I got a little bit older, I told my parents.

I said I need to find them.

I need to find, you know what answers that I can.

But it has nothing to do with you.

It's no reflection on you.

I love you.

I'm so grateful.

You're my parents.

You're always being parents.

I'm not trying to replace you.

Just understand.

I have this need to kind of know, you know, kind of understand.

So knowing that as a parent, if you're getting ready to go for a kid up for adoption, they may want to know, but it's also the parents, right?

Like it's also my mother's right.

When I wrote her that letter, I said, this is who I am.

I just want you to let you know that I, I turned out OK.

You know, I have kids.

This is who I am, this is what I'm doing.

If you want to get a hold of me, man, I would love that.

That'd be great.

But if not, I respect that, You know what I mean?

Unfortunately, she probably wasn't in a position to really have a have a child, right?

And so regardless of the circumstances, she did decide to do a very selfless thing and to give her percent.

So that's a huge sacrifice.

What advice do you have for someone who just uncovered a DNA surprise or a DNA discovery?

I think you have to make that decision before you get the results.

You have to really be able ready for whatever you know the circumstances are.

In my case, it turned out to be more good than bad.

But you do hear stories where it doesn't turn out, you know, positive.

I hate to give advice, but how I look at it from you personally is I'm grateful to be alive.

I'm grateful that I was adopted.

I'm grateful to have what I have it.

In the event that it didn't go the way that I wanted to or that I found information that was disturbing, I would have to accept it and just know that that's not me, you know, that's them.

And maybe it was better in that case that I didn't know them or didn't meet them or that I wasn't raised by them.

But at least I know you know what I mean.

And it doesn't have to be public information.

Everybody else doesn't have to know about it, you know, but just be willing to accept my connection.

I can have some, you know, some peace, some peace with it, you know, and at least you could find out who you are.

That's good advice.

Awesome.

Well, Barry, thank you so much for joining me today.

I really appreciate you taking the time to Share your story.

I'm so glad that you've been able to connect with the people who want you in their lives on your mom's side and that you've made these amazing connections on your father's side and gotten to learn so much about him.

Please keep me posted on how things go with Arlington.

That's such an incredible story and and journey and thing that you're doing for him.

So thank you and I wish you the best.

Thanks and Alexis, thank you and what you're doing because, you know, really being able to tell the story, you know, put it out there that it may help somebody else.

I know that it is.

I've listened to the other podcasts.

This is life.

And this is really an important thing that people go through, you know, and so we do need to come together and to share that.

So thank you for, you know, allowing me to be part of of that and what you're doing and and part of the story.

So thank you so much.

Thanks again to Barry for sharing his story.

If you'd like to learn more about Barry's work, I've included links in the show notes.

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

Until next time, DNA Surprises is hosted, produced and edited by me, Alexis Oursalt.

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