Lori’s DNA Surprise

This transcript was generated automatically. Its accuracy may vary.

Unraveling Identity: The Weight of Unexpected Roots

They're just unexpected roots and I'm interested in them, but I don't know how to express them and I don't know what feels right and what feels right to claim.

Because wherever, whatever I do, I feel like an imposter.

Like whether it's my Jewish side, because I know that I'm not 100% Jewish, whether it's, you know, the Latin American side because I know.

OK, so my mom is from Latin American.

I grew up visiting her country, and I have cousins that still live in her country and they have children.

So I have all this family and I do speak the language and I do eat the foods and all all that cultural stuff, but it's still not exactly the same.

It's a subset of culture.

And then this African American piece that I didn't know anything about.

And I don't know what I have rights to, especially since I wasn't created on purpose.

Speaker 2

Welcome to DNA Surprises, a podcast that delves into the world of unexpected DNA discoveries.

I'm your host, Alexis Oursalt.

In July 2021, my life took a surprising turn when I found out that I'm an N P/E, a person who has experienced a non paternal event.

In other words, my biological father isn't who I thought he was.

Join me as we explore the stories of NP, ES, adoptees and donor conceived people and their families.

Get ready to unravel the astonishing journeys that begin with a simple DNA test.

This is DNA surprises.

Who would I have been if I'd known the truth about my identity?

This is a question people in the DNA surprise community often ask themselves.

Where would I have lived?

What choices would I have made?

What about my life would be different from how it is today?

In the season 11 finale of DNA Surprises, Lori shares how much of her childhood and who she is today was shaped by her parents efforts to keep her donor conception and the truth about her ethnicity a secret.

Now I'm going to break the 4th wall here for a moment.

I've spoken to dozens of guests in the three years that I've been making this show, but few who have made discoveries so similar to my own.

Laurie also learned through DNA testing that her genetic parent is black.

In this episode, she articulates how challenging it can be to navigate a major change in ethnicity in an authentic way and why she identifies as mixed as opposed to Black or African American race, ethnicity and culture are complex topics that require so much nuance, and they can be difficult to talk about.

My own racial and cultural identity is something that I continue to struggle with in the aftermath of my DNA surprise, so speaking to her was incredibly validating.

I'm so grateful for our conversation.

Thank you for sharing your story, Lori.

My Parents' Secret: Hiding My True Appearance

Hey, I'm Lori and I'm 46 and I grew up in New York.

So I found out two things.

First of all, I found out that I am not 100% Ashkenazi Jewish.

I am 50% African American.

And secondly, I found out that I'm donor conceived.

It probably makes sense to really start at the very beginning because I think it puts into context the decisions my parents made and also how I grew up.

I know you had a racial DNA surprise as well.

And so one of the big questions that people get when they hear about it, they're like, what do you mean you didn't know?

Like, are you dumb?

So I think the back story is sort of important for giving that context because like, no, I'm not dumb, but I do feel dumb.

I was born in the late 1970s, and donor conception wasn't really a thing.

My parents apparently struggled with infertility.

They got married four years before I was born, and then about three years after they got married, they had a baby boy who did not make it.

So he died a couple of days after he was born, and then I was born about 15 months after that.

So looking at those timelines, it's not a situation where I would suspect that there were fertility issues.

My parents weren't particularly old.

They were in their late 20s when I was born, but I didn't find out about any of that stuff until the DNA surprise.

So I grew up as the oldest of two kids.

I'm four years older, just about than my younger brother, and my mom is from Latin America, but she is Ashkenazi Jewish.

Her parents came from Europe to escape World War 2, and my dad grew up in Brooklyn, so I grew up in this very Ashkenazi Jewish family.

But on my mom's side also very much colored by her growing up in Latin America.

My mom's family speaks Spanish, and so we grew up eating both Latin foods and Jewish foods.

That's important to the story because it was kind of part of that story that I constructed for myself because I looked a little different than everyone else in my family.

And it was pretty obvious that I look different to other people from the time I was growing up.

You know, I would get a lot of those questions like, where are you from?

And I would, you know, play around, be like, I'm from New York or whatever.

But really the answer that I would give is like, oh, you know, my mom is from Latin America.

So a lot of people, like, would just accept that at face value because they wouldn't.

They didn't really realize that my parent, my mother's family was all from Eastern Europe.

And the whole thing didn't 100% make sense.

But I'm ethnically ambiguous enough that at least to some people, curly hair, you know, a little bit darker skin, it kind of all made sense, you know?

Yeah.

Enough.

And so was that right?

Right.

And I'm obviously very much relating to a lot of the things that you're saying right now.

When you would tell people that my, my mom is from South America, Latin America, was that just so that they would leave you alone, stop asking?

Or did you also internalize that story that that is why you look different from your family?

It was.

Speaker 1

A combination of both.

Because there wasn't any real reason why that would be the case.

Because I knew my both of my grandparents, I knew they were both born in Eastern Europe.

I knew my mom and her sisters.

And Jewish people from Eastern Europe don't look exactly like Eastern European non Jewish people.

They might be a little bit darker, they'll have often times curlier hair and so forth.

But like people were specifically assuming that I was African American or that I was mixed or something like that.

So like it was really intended to be an explanation.

So I definitely made sure that my Spanish was good because I felt like it kind of added authenticity to that story.

And I also grew up in a neighborhood where everyone was pretty much Italian or Irish.

I already was an outsider being Jewish in that neighborhood and then looking African American.

I was an outsider in the Jewish community because people would always be confused by me.

And then also in in the area where I grew up, it was 100% white people.

Did you at any point question did you think that you looked African American?

I didn't really know, I just knew I looked different, right and I'd ask my parents about it and they would just deflect and then it really came became more noticeable to me.

You know, like people would say the N word to me in school and I'd be like, why are they doing this?

This is so confusing, but I really noticed it when I went to college more because like I got there and I thought like the reason was me because they're, there weren't that many Jewish people where I grew up and I'd go to college and I'd fit in.

And what I ended up doing is all my friends were Hispanic for the most part.

And then people would again just assume that I was African American.

And when I said I was from Latin America, a lot of Hispanic people are multiracial.

So then that just like put an end to all the questioning.

And then because I spoke Spanish, because my mom actually was from Latin America, it provided this off ramp.

So I didn't really have to do a lot of exploring or probing because I think, you know, when people ask, like, how didn't you know?

It's because your parents kind of tell you where you're from and like who your family is and who you are.

So you just like don't you don't distrust your parents in that sense, especially when like you just believe them.

And I think you're programmed to believe them.

My parents definitely like, you know, they would do certain things like I was always very self-conscious about it.

When I was 4, my mom started taking me to this hair salon in Queens.

And like, they would prop me up on all these phone books and they would relax my hair with these relive relaxers.

And it was our secret.

And it was painful.

Like they burned my head and I would sit there and I'd pretend not to notice it because I wanted my hair to be as straight as possible.

And I wasn't allowed to tell anybody about this.

It was our secret.

And like in the summers, my brother was very fair and he fit perfectly into the family.

I wasn't supposed to go swimming until the sun was going down because like, they didn't want me to get too dark.

So there were definitely things that my mom in particular was doing in the, I grew up in the 80s, by the way.

So like the curly hair thing.

Like I wanted curly hair and I was like can I have a perm?

I was like, no, you can't have a perm.

Like it was all about trying to like portray this appearance and like, so I knew that these things were weird and it bothered me because it made me feel very insecure.

Like I always felt like there was something wrong with me.

Like I was too dark and I tanned too much and my hair wasn't nice and I had bad hair.

And I spent all of like basically until I was 25 trying to do, even later trying to deal with that, but I didn't understand it and I didn't understand the context of it.

Did you ever ask your mom?

Like why?

Why can't I go swimming when my brother can?

Well, she's.

Like you get too dark and she would always it was that it was because of the tan and so.

She would actually say I don't want you to get too tan.

And for people that are listening, Lori is light skinned.

Pretty like relatively fair, right?

I think.

I mean medium.

I guess because the lighting is really bad in here.

Yeah, it's really bad.

So it's more of a medium complexion, I would say.

Like whenever I buy cosmetics it's usually like in like the medium range, medium to tan, something like that.

Same.

OK, same here.

But but during the summer time I can get pretty dark and so I imagine similar for you.

OK, Yeah.

So I could get super dark.

And so, yeah, so she was trying to keep me in this sort of more medium kind of complexion, which is probably a little bit darker than your average, like Southern European, but not like so dark that you'd be like where this makes absolutely no sense.

So, right.

Wanted to keep me light enough where there was some sort of plausible deniability.

My brother didn't.

He was like, really white, OK.

So your brother did not look like you either.

No, in addition to the the tanning thing, my mom had me have my nose thinned out when I was 18.

That something that you wanted to do, or was it mostly from her?

I was.

Always told that my there was something with my nose and so it was like a lot of pressure.

But then when I went back and like looked at the pictures and also like when my ex-husband like saw the pictures of me as a kid, he was like, you really looked blacker with your nose, like whiter, you know, like more of an African American feature.

And I think like in retrospect, like even if it wasn't like my parents like consciously trying to do that, I think like it was subconscious.

You know, I was also really tall.

That was the other thing that was super off about me.

My mom is like 4 foot 10 on a good day, claims to be 5 foot.

And my dad is about 5 foot 3.

And my brother grew up to be about 5 foot 4-5 foot 35 foot four.

And I'm closer to 5 foot 7.

And also my mom wore a size 5 shoe and I wore a size 8 shoe.

And they would call me Bigfoot.

Like they would just make fun of me for being so big.

So I felt like this huge giant in the middle of this really short family.

Like on my mom's side, I'm literally the tallest person, male or female of all my cousins.

Like everybody.

Wow.

So everyone.

'S really short and then on my dad's side, my I have one tall uncle, so I would latch onto that.

I'd be like, well, that's probably why.

I'm tall cuz like.

You know, my uncle is tall, you know.

The stories we tell, yeah.

So I was like always trying to find pieces that would fit.

And I would Google like Jewish people who looked black to try to figure out.

It would always be like people like Lenny Kravitz or Lisa Bonet who are actually half black.

Because like what would happen was like in college and in law school and in grad school, I would always be added automatically to the Black students associations because people would just assume that I was like biracial or mixed or something like that.

And at the time my hair was relaxed, which I think added to the perception, which is the opposite, I think, of what my parents intended.

How did it?

Affect you how did you feel being kind of stereotyped, however accurately in hindsight, right but being stereotyped and just automatically put into these groups and people automatically making assumptions about your race and you really believed you were something else How did that affect you it was.

Awkward because like in a couple of different ways, because like, I didn't, you know, I never wanted people to think I was trying to be something that I wasn't.

And it's just like uncomfortable if people think you're something you're not.

So what I did is I kind of leaned into more like the fact that my mom was from Latin America.

I'm like, I know I'll get more involved in like the Latino student associations because I'm like, you don't have to be any race being Latino.

Like you can be any religion.

It doesn't matter.

So that to me made sense.

External Pressures: Why I Took the DNA Test

But you know, that also kind of leads into how it was that I eventually decided to do the DNA test.

And again, I'd been ongoing over the years and like when I got divorced, my ex-husband was like, your mom had an affair.

She must be a swinger because there's no way that you're completely white.

And like, I was just like, so like standing my ground, like, no, like my, that's not my parents.

And he would use that like to throw in my face.

He was trying to get my kids to take DNA tests to try to figure it out.

But really what ended up getting me to do it?

And I actually bought Adna last like a couple of years before I actually did it.

And I lost it.

It disappeared.

Found out later my mom had found it and thrown it out in my house.

She had been staying over.

I had bought it and I shoved it in a drawer and she saw it and threw it out.

I'm so disorganized.

I thought like I was just like, I don't know what happened to it.

So I bought another one.

And then that one sat for months.

And I finally took it because there were a couple of things that happened where I started worrying that I was gonna like, get like, found out for pretending to be something that I wasn't because, you know, there was a Rachel Dolezal thing.

And like, I never ever said that I was African American, but people often assumed it.

And I was always feeling like this need to correct people.

And I think that could be off putting too, because it wasn't like I had an issue.

I just never wanted to be seen as pretending to be something I wasn't.

And then there was a professor at a university that was Jewish, that was pretending to be Puerto Rican.

And then I was like, oh, crap.

Like I wasn't pretending to be anything.

I felt like I legitimately like my mom was legitimately from Latin America and like, it was reasonable.

But at the same time, I was like, what if people don't agree and they think because you're Jewish, you don't have a right to claim that you're from Latin America?

And then I was like, well, shoot, what do I do?

Because I was really freaking out.

Like, what if people find out that I'm a fraud?

And then I end up losing everything and I started like having this whole like freak out.

So I finally decided to send in the test and I didn't know what I was going to find.

And I was like, it'll put it to rest one way or the other.

Like a fear.

And would you say that this was a big part of your life and your identity?

Was this ambiguousness and people questioning you?

Did you feel like that was a big part of who you were?

Absolutely.

It was because it was happening constantly because I think, you know, a lot of different settings.

People just want to know how to characterize people.

So, you know, like in school there were different affinity groups and also in companies.

This was like when I started working and like in the professional world, you know, it was like a couple years before 2008.

But like when Obama became president, there was a lot more focus growing over the years on diversity and things like that.

Like they wanted to know like, how to characterize you.

And so like, it started to become more and more important to know how to characterize myself because like, whenever, like if I said like, oh, no, I'm just an Eastern European Jew.

Like people would make the mailman jokes and the milkman jokes.

And it was just like, so sounded so ridiculous that it wasn't an acceptable response because nobody believed it.

Like literally nobody.

And so the only response people believed was, oh, I'm Hispanic, which was true.

But it was also like, again, it wasn't like I looked that way because my mom was from Latin America.

It was just a coincidence.

Right, right.

You didn't have Spanish or indigenous.

There are African, you know, roots, but you didn't think that you had those.

So you couldn't do on that, right?

Exactly.

And also like what ended up kind of coming to a head too.

So it was like, so that professor who is like Jewish, pretending to be Puerto Rican.

And then around the same time, I got a big promotion and people were upset that the African American affinity group didn't say anything about me getting promoted because I would have been the first, like, black female to have been internally promoted.

And then somebody called me.

So one of the people, she was one of the few black female partners at my firm, called me.

And she was talking about how excited she was for another black woman to get promoted.

And it was so awkward because I didn't like, I was trying to figure out the right way to like, interrupt and tell her I'm actually not black.

And it was so awkward.

And so it was like.

That combination of things that had me male in the test.

So like I ended up having to like send her a note like, you know, like I really appreciate it, but I'm not actually black.

Like so like that's the thing.

And it was just so awkward because people, it didn't even occur to people.

And I think also people were offended because they were just like, is she like, does she just, like, not like herself or what?

And then there's also like, a tension between the Afro Latino community and the African American community because not all Latinos embrace their African heritage.

There's some of that, too, right?

And like, I was sort of tripping into all of these different things inadvertently.

White people just would assume I was black or, you know, something.

And then black people always saw, like, the African American heritage in me, you know?

Sure.

Unveiling the Truth: My Donor Conception Story

OK, so take me to getting your results and opening them up.

So I got my results.

I sent in my test and it was like part of like the Christmas flood of tests, you know, that went in.

So I mailed it out like, I don't know, sometime after the new year, like pretty early on a couple years ago, I guess this was about four years ago.

And I was kind of stalking them.

Like I put them in the mailbox.

Like my parents live nearby.

So I put them in like the mailbox, like when I knew my mom wasn't around.

And then I literally watched the mailman take it out of my mailbox cuz I was worried that like, my mom was gonna see it.

Cuz my cousins on my dad's side had done DNA testing and they were talking about it.

And I was like, Oh my God, that's so cool.

And then in the car on the way home, this was about like maybe six or seven years ago, like my mom, like flipped.

She was like, don't you dare, like, promise me, promise me you're not going to do DNA testing.

And like, obviously that was super suspicious.

So at that point, I was like beginning to suspect that perhaps that's why my DNI test disappeared, Like, and I was starting to put two and two together.

So finally, even though I didn't know what I was going to find, like by the time I sent my test, I had a pretty good idea that there must be like, my parents were hiding something.

I didn't know what.

I was like, maybe it was something like my grandmother did, although that didn't make any sense based on like my mother's appearance.

But like, it's really scary to take the step to find out.

Like it's one thing if you innocently send off a test and you don't really know what you're going to find, but I think it's another one, you know, that there's probably a greater than 50% chance that something is gonna be uncovered.

I had no idea cuz.

Also, my mom is very conservative so I didn't think she'd had an affair.

I was so confused I couldn't figure out an explanation.

Like she was very into like that purity culture.

I didn't know what to expect.

So I sent it in.

And then the day before the test results came back, I had eaten like a bad burrito.

So I was up all night and like super sick with awful food poisoning.

It was like miserable.

So my mom stayed over because I was dehydrated.

I had all my kids at home.

Like it was just a nightmare at 7:30 in the morning, I woke up and it was March 7th.

I checked my e-mail and I see that my results from Ancestry came in and I was like, oh, so like she was there.

And then I was like, oh, can I have some tea?

So I sent her down to make me tea.

And I go quickly look on my phone and I click on, I ignore all the warnings and I look and right away, like you can see like the pie chart or whatever, it came out to exactly 50% Ashkenazi Jewish, which is what I, I expected Ashkenazi Jewish, but not 50%.

And then there were a whole bunch of different other things.

The second largest ethnicity was like Nigeria.

And then it was just like a whole list of African countries.

And when I did the math, it came out to about 40% African countries and 10% European countries.

I haven't taken science since college, but I knew enough to know that in order to have 40% African DNA, that means that like my one of my parents has to have 80% African DNA and neither one of my parents have 80% African DNA.

And I knew nothing about ancestry at that point.

But I did see that I could Click to see matches and there's a warning there.

And I was like ignore all that crap.

And I went and I clicked it and I saw that my highest match was my mother's sister.

I did some Googling and it was pretty clear that she was 100% like my first aunt.

And then my second highest match was, I still remember 632 Santa Morgans and he was an African American man from the Bronx.

And I looked through my list and there are tons of African American people that are connected to me genetically.

So I thought to myself, I'm like, well that's weird.

My DNA must have mixed with somebody else's, you know, like, and I'm like, no.

That is the next logical thing, right?

This is super confusing and I'm like cuz there's no way cuz neither one of my parents are African and it was too high for it clearly wasn't my mother.

So that threw out like the theory like the Latin American theory like that made no sense.

And then I'm thinking about I'm like wait so if I match with my mom's sister my that means my mom must also be 100% Ashkenazi Jewish.

And then I was like Oh my God.

So I immediately went on Amazon and ordered a 23andMe kid and I waited for that to come.

And 23 Me is a little easier to read, I think, because they break it down by continent a little bit more clearly.

And that came a couple of weeks later and it came out again to the same 4041% African DNA and 10% European DNA, similar kind of list of countries, slight differences, but basically the same.

And I didn't really have many matches on 23 Me.

I had a lot of matches on Ancestry.

I was mad.

But yeah, I was gonna say, like, what was your first reaction?

It was anger.

Oh my.

God I was so mad like and I didn't say anything to my mom.

I'm like cuz she'll kill herself or something cuz she's very emotionally volatile and she threatened me that she would if she took it if I took adna test like years ago.

And like she's just like that.

Like I didn't know if she was going to do it or not, but I didn't want responsibility for that.

But I was so mad.

So at the same time I was like, I can't tell anyone so this is awkward but I wanted to know what was happening and I was trying to come up with all these different theories.

And I was like, well it's possible she was depressed after she lost her baby and had an affair.

It didn't sound like her, but maybe because again, my DNA matches were in the Bronx and at the time my parents lived in New York City.

So I'm like, that's possible.

They didn't live in the Bronx at the time, although my mom did live in the Bronx at one point.

They did not live in the Bronx at that point, but you never know.

Maybe they were in Manhattan because she worked in Manhattan and maybe like something happened.

Maybe she was sexually assaulted.

That's possible.

I didn't have any sibling matches.

Donor conception didn't really occur to me because I was like, why would they give an African American sperm donor to like a white couple?

Right, usually they try to match the ethnicity of the parents and and you didn't have fifty siblings, right.

And that's.

What I was expecting, which now I realize for someone who was born in the 1970s, it's not unusual necessarily because I was born before frozen sperm was really a thing.

Like they were just experimenting with that at the time.

But I didn't know that.

So I was pretty mad.

I didn't know what to do with the information.

I'm like, I can't tell anyone.

But I did end up telling my 16 year old, which is probably not the smartest, but we were driving around and like I was super upset and she could tell immediately that something was wrong.

And like she kept trying to ask me.

And then I finally just handed her and she like realized rode away like what was wrong.

And I called my brother.

We were trying to figure it out together.

Like this is so weird.

So I got him to agree to take ADNA test because in my head I'm like, well, maybe he's half African American too.

Even though like there like it would have to be like a genetic miracle for him.

I mean, I guess anything is possible.

Sure, sure.

You never know the way DNA works.

OK, so he takes his test.

Yeah, and he got his results a while later.

It took him a while to send it.

But in the meantime, you know, I joined like the Facebook pages and then I ended up pretty quickly getting involved with the DNA Angel.

It was like an obsession.

But I don't know anything about, like, actual genetic research.

And I'm really busy and like, I didn't have time to learn about it and I wanted quicker results then I could possibly muster in my time because I don't know what I was doing.

Like, I've never been interested in geology ever, but I did a lot of homework on it.

And then I within a couple of weeks, I connected with Adna Search Angel and you know, they did a lot of work and there was a dead end that they hit because, spoiler alert, it turns out that my biological father was also an MPA.

Oh wow, there was.

Just some triangulation.

So we knew last names because we figured out pretty quickly, like just based on the number of Santa Morgans with my closest match, like we knew it was a close relative.

So it turned out that ended up being 1/2 uncle.

There was one person that we were able to narrow it down to because it was a family of I think six children.

I think one died like way younger than would have been able to donate.

Two were girls.

This guy was not my father, There were three girls I don't remember, and then there was this one brother who was not a young medical student or anything like that.

But at that point I didn't know about the donation part but I was trying to figure it out.

But anyway, he was around the same age as my parents, born around 19491950.

So it fit and then we're like, this is who it might be.

Also, his age triangulated with the NPE piece because we were able to trace his paternal line and we found some documents that show that his mother was married to the closest male ancestor on that line.

Somebody that I was connected to biologically happened to have been a genealogist in that family.

So started working with the NP Search Angels to help me like as like a distant cousin.

So putting it all together, we had a pretty good idea that this guy was the father because we had found records that his mother had very previously been married.

She had had twins that had died in infancy and then she had had a son.

And then there was no record of what happened to her first husband.

But then there's a later record of her remarrying.

And it all kind of lined up.

He would, they were in the Bronx.

It just kind of all lined up but we weren't sure but had a pretty good idea.

OK, so for people who maybe aren't as familiar with the genealogical piece and all the mapping, the half uncle that you matched with, did he know that he had a brother out there who was your father or was he raised with your genetic parent?

I, I guess I should say, have you referred to her?

Your genetic parent?

So your half uncle knew your genetic parent.

He.

Did he did not, you know?

So then I kind of reached out to him on Ancestry.

So I kind of was poking around and then I kind of asked some questions.

And then he was like, hold on.

And I think he went to talk to his sisters because I don't know if he was aware that his older brother was from a prior marriage.

OK.

So your genetic parent was the third born child to his.

Marriage of the 1st.

Marriage and then the older two died, he was born and then she remarried.

And then the person that she remarried raised the genetic parent as their own Childs.

OK right.

And then everyone else was younger than him, so they wouldn't have known necessarily.

And this was like late 40s, early 50s, and, you know, people were kind of cagey about all this stuff.

So I don't know what was known and what wasn't known doesn't seem like it was something that was widely talked about.

So, you know, I found all of this out, but I still had no understanding of how it all came to be at the same time.

Like I was still researching all of the options.

So I knew like just from research that he was not a doctor.

Like he dropped out of high school.

He had his first child at 15 years old and his second child also as a teenager.

I knew from doing research that I also have a genetic half sister that was born about a week before me, and she was in and out of prison and died in her 30s.

So I knew just from all of the research that the family definitely was, you know, I think more troubled from like just family research and all that, which didn't fit the perception that I had of who a donor would be.

Because there was another branch of the family that we had zeroed in on initially on his biological father's family that had been more educated.

And I thought maybe that was the side of the family that the relationship would come from.

And the DNA search engine was like, no, it's not pointing that way.

But in my head I'm like, but it makes more sense if it was the other family because like they were journalists and they were like professors and they were really educated.

And that seemed to fit more with the type.

Like at the time, like I was still going on, like I was going on different theories.

I'm like, that's still kind of fit with like the, my mom like freaked out and had an affair theory.

And also they were from Staten Island and my parents were from Staten Island.

Yeah, because at this point you still did not know the origin story.

You did not know.

So you you were able to identify that as this person.

But it makes sense.

You're thinking, okay, what's the kind of person that my mom might have seen socially in some way?

Right and they were from the same place and my grandparents lived in Staten Island.

In my head, I had this whole story.

I was like, well, my parents baby died.

I knew that my mom and my dad had a hard time when the baby died and my parents were resentful.

And I know that my mother stayed with my grandparents for a while.

So I was like, well, these people are from Staten Island.

Like maybe it all makes sense, but that was not what happened like at all.

Confronting My Parents: The Deep Shame of Their Secret

So finally my mom knew like she could sense that was hustle.

And so she finally said something to me and I just like kind of was like, well, why am I black?

Like what happened?

Like I just kind of like finally head on like after all those months.

And I think she was just trying to figure out like why I was so hostile to her for like months.

I finally asked and then she said we have to talk.

And then she took me to her house and they both told me that they couldn't conceive.

And they used a donor.

And their first baby died.

And they thought like, maybe it was because of a donor.

They didn't know.

And then so they went like, they saved their money and they used a donor again a couple of months later.

And my dad said that they mixed the sperm together because he was told that that would help, like, increase the motility of his sperm.

And it was a medical student and all of that stuff.

It was a doctor, and they were supposed to look like him.

And so my mom's theory was maybe they like kind of decided to give her a different donor because they hurt her accent.

My dad used to teach in New York City public schools in like very diverse classrooms.

So he noticed that I looked like the little mixed and black babies in his class pretty early, but they just never spoke about it again.

Like they just.

Never talked about.

Using a donor.

Nope, they never talked about it.

They just kind of pretended it didn't happen.

They used the donor again to have my brother and I was like hey you really need to talk to him cuz he at that point had mailed in his DNA test and hadn't gotten the results.

So I told him you may wanna say something to him because if you don't, I will because he's about to find out.

But yeah, they never talked about it because at the time, like, they didn't even use, like, the same doctors.

So like their doctor didn't know, like when the baby died, like they didn't sue the doctor because there was medical malpractice because they were worried that they would find out that they used a donor.

Oh wow, so there's some like, deep shame.

Yeah, very deep shame for them.

And like, they were devastated that I found out.

My dad was more understanding because I think he kind of knew over the years there were just certain things that would happen.

And like, he just knew that people were perceiving me in a certain way.

And I think he understood that it was probably like not the right thing.

But then on the other hand, they were both so afraid of people finding out.

Like at this point, like they still don't want people to know.

Like they think nobody knows.

Like, they don't seem to understand that like, people can tell and they form their own conclusions about it.

Oh wow, that's that's heavy that they just never spoke about.

Never.

My dad was really apologetic.

He's like, I'm so sorry.

Like I knew your mom was doing all those things to try to cover it up with the hair and the sun and the nose and all this stuff.

And he's like, and I didn't intervene because I didn't want anyone to know.

So it was like they were kind of stuck in a secret and they were both like separately engaging in their own cover up and like they just became so invested in this secret that they didn't, I don't think know how to get out of it.

I still, I think carry a lot of resentment about it.

I think especially because of my mom, because my mom took more physical attempts to hide it.

Whereas my dad, he was like a dad.

So he just like acted like he didn't know what was going on and like, that's just what he did.

And he would also try to help me.

Like, for example, at one point I was getting my house appraised to refinance the mortgage.

And when they did the comps, like I was there for it, But when I got the report, my house came in like well under $100,000 below what the estimate should have been.

And then I looked at the addresses and I emailed them back and like, why didn't you pull actual houses in my neighborhood?

Like they were pulling comps from like a totally different neighborhood.

And I knew right away what had happened, like, And so I and my dad did too.

He saw it.

And he's like, next time I'll be there.

And you just pretend you don't live here.

Wow, so.

He knew that they were perceiving me, whereas if I asked my mom, she'd tell me it was all in my head.

So that's yeah.

So this topic of race, I guess my first question is, do you feel like any of your mom's actions were at all tied to racism that she may have had in like not that she's overt, overtly racist or or was it more just about hiding the truth?

I think it's a combination of both to be honest.

I don't think if my parents adopted or if they knew they were going to have a biracial child, I don't think my dad would have minded.

There is no way my mother, like my mom wouldn't have accepted me like she would.

My brother told me like when this whole thing came up, when the DNA results came out, he was like you didn't notice?

He's like everyone would always ask me why my sister was black.

And also he told me something interesting too when he was I guess about college age.

She'd asked him at one point if he'd ever date someone like me.

And then you know, when I met my now ex-husband, like I didn't want my parents to meet him at 1st and it was mainly because my mom was so into me getting married.

Like I just didn't, I don't know.

I just didn't want them to meet him initially.

And my mom thought the reason was because she kept asking me.

She's like just tell me is his mother black?

They would barely have accepted me marrying someone that wasn't Jewish, let alone someone that was a different race that would never have been acceptable.

So I always was aware that like I didn't match and I always wondered if they could really love me because I wasn't what they wanted.

So I, I was always a pleaser growing up, like I always wanted to be the best.

And I felt this intense pressure.

And I think some of it like now it kind of makes sense because if for a couple of reasons, I think they invested a lot of money to have children, they were also promised like that they were getting like the offspring of medical students that were going to be destined for greatness.

So I think there was that expectation tied up and everything.

And also I felt like my main value in life was to please my parents.

So like I got married to please my parents.

Like I chose the career I did to please my parents.

Like mostly my mom.

I think my dad didn't care as much.

Like he would have been, I think, happy with me regardless of what he did.

But my mom was the dominant person in my house.

My dad was just there, like he paid the bills and like he's a better grandpa than he was.

He's a good dad now, but he wasn't like a great dad for young kids.

Like he was just kind of there.

I'm curious.

This is a totally selfish question about how you have navigated the fact that you were perceived as something for so long.

You just said your brother was even like hello your sister's luck.

Like, why is that?

People have assumed you talked about at work, people were disappointed that you weren't acknowledged as like the first black woman to receive a promotion and and you kind of had to walk that back.

And how have you been able to like or have you been able to reconcile that you had this experience where you went out into the world and people treated you like a Black woman or mixed race Black woman and you never accepted that about yourself?

I mean, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this too, because I still feel like I have this knowledge, but I don't feel that necessarily that I have the right to.

Like I haven't figured out how to slap myself because I kind of feel like I fit nowhere.

Like even before all of this, I knew I wasn't a white woman.

Like I knew that because it just never, I knew I wasn't perceived as one.

So, you know, that's why I was always trying to figure out how to explain myself because I knew I wasn't being perceived as a white woman.

So I've never seen myself that way.

But now like, even just like filling out forms, I'll click two or more racist because I feel like that's accurate from a racial perspective.

But you know, race and culture are two different things, right?

So I didn't grow up in the black community.

So I don't know, like what's right?

And it's something I struggle with to this day.

Navigating My Mixed Identity and Donor's Difficult Past

And I think part of that also is because like I still have to kind of be on the down low about it because my parents are still like completely ashamed.

And they also don't feel like it's my story to tell.

So it's just like, again, like it's weird scenario.

And my mom still is very racially insensitive and she was furious when she found out that my kids knew.

I'm like, well, they were being asked at school.

Like when I told my youngest, I told her about a year and a half ago and like she I would say she looks more Hispanic than black.

But like when I told her she's like, well that makes sense.

Like.

That was her immediate initial reaction.

She's a teenager.

She's 14, and she's, like, talk talks to boys and like, she often talks to black boys, which sets my mom off.

And I've had to pull her aside many times.

And she gets super mad, you know, when she gets called out on it.

But like, she has a lot, I think, of internalized racism.

And it's really tricky because even though I think she doesn't mean to, I think some of it has been directed at me.

And I think also when she does that, it also reminds me that she would never accept me and that she wouldn't.

She didn't get what she paid for.

That's how I feel.

And then adding to that too, is there were certain issues too, I think with the way I was conceived because I was conceived in late 70s with a fresh donation.

I mentioned earlier that my biological parent father was, you know, not a Med student.

He dropped out of high school, teenage father.

I also found out later through DNA testing, I connected with two of his grandchildren via DNA, which really confirmed the biological connection.

One of them it's like a 1200 centimorgan connection, which is really close.

And another one, it's like in the like around 900 and 80 or something like that, like it's really high.

So it's unequivocal that this is my biological father.

So when that was proven, then I sent the, a person that I found on Facebook that I believe was my half to sister Adni test.

And it seems that she gave it to her daughter.

So that's how we found out.

And then I asked her some questions.

When the results came through, I'm like, it's confirmed And I found out.

I knew he had died in 1997, but I didn't know why.

I found out he was a drug user and he died of AIDS.

And I think the AIDS epidemic, I was born a little bit before it, but my brother was born in the 80s, early 80s.

It was right at the beginning, before they were really testing sperm.

People had contracted HIV through sperm donation in the early 1980s.

And think about the fact that my mom was doing that and the clinic where she went, the doctor where she went, like they literally, I have no idea where they found him.

Like no idea.

And I also have connected with people whose parents use the same doctors.

And there are some stories of him like pulling random boyfriends of people that work there.

Like, I have no idea how like he ended up being in the donor base like or how they, I mean, it was almost like they pulled someone like off the sidewalk and was like, here, you want to make some money, like be a donor.

We're in a bind and we need some sperm.

Like, yeah, like, I can't understand.

Like, cuz I was like, well, maybe there was like an African American family also trying to conceive at the same time, but then there I didn't connect with them, right?

So there was nobody that I connected with genetically.

And I feel like if there were another family that they were actually looking for an African American donor at that time, I would have connected with them.

So I almost feel like my parents were coming in and they had like a sperm shortage and they just picked some random person from somewhere just so that they could inseminate my mom.

And I don't know what they thought was gonna happen.

Have you?

Seen photos of him?

Yes.

I look a lot like him, especially before my house was fixed.

I have half siblings, so I have 1/2 sister and then there's AI think there's 1/2 brother and then I think there may be one or two other siblings.

Like I said, one of them is exactly my age, like born in the same month, same year, but she struggled with addiction and prison and she died really young.

So one of the people, the nephews that I connected with was actually her son.

And then the other, like I said, was the daughter of my half sister who was born when he was like 15 or 16.

Do you?

Have any relationship with those people?

Not really.

I mean, I've messaged with them a few times, but like, I, you know, it's awkward.

I think number one, I still feel like I'm supposed to be keeping it a secret.

Number two, I was not supposed to be here, you know, and I think it's upsetting to them.

Like, I don't think they're dying to meet me.

And they live in New York.

I do go to New York, but I've never really tried to connect with them when I'm in the city.

Like when I'm in the city, I'm like either there for work or I'm with my kids or my family.

And it's just like, I've haven't been in the headspace.

And also, it sounds like, you know, we've had pretty different lives, you know?

It's hard to kind of go back and try to make sense of that especially I think probably the donor conceived part, right, because it's not even like if it had been the other family that you thought it might have been where maybe they have some more like it if.

It was more similar right?

But I also think knowing what I know now from what my half sister has told me, like he probably was just using the money for drug money or something like that, which also isn't a great feeling.

Yeah, I mean.

She said he was a good man, but he struggled.

And like, I find it really upsetting to think about.

There are all of these people.

I'm genetically connected to you and they've had really hard lives.

I was hoping that the family would be more like the other side of the family.

Yeah, yeah.

Have you wow, kind of keeping this on the down low as you said, come to find any connection with that black part of yourself?

I mean, I think I've tried in different ways.

It feels though, like sometimes I feel like I'm trying things on for size, which I don't know, feels respectful or not because I'm trying to figure it all out in the most respectful way that I can.

So I do kind of think about like where I've come from, I'm always looking, you know, at the genetic updates.

Like, I did a lot of poking around, try to figure out what I can about the ancestry on that side.

About a couple of months ago, my brother and his family were visiting, so we went down to Mount Vernon, which is George Washington's estate, which isn't far from here.

It's about half hour, 40 minutes.

I made sure to go to the slave cemetery and to pay my respects there.

I mean, I always was interested in it, but I think it feels a little bit different because I also know that my biological family, like part of it were held as slaves in Virginia.

And also, I think another thing that really resonated was when I was doing that research and kind of learning about my family, I found out that, so I'm biracial and then my kids are about 1/4 African American, something along those lines.

And around the time my oldest was applying to college, she loves theater.

And we talk about the founding fathers.

And like, Sally Hemings was 1/4 black.

And that particular fact really sat with her because one of my kids like looks totally white, but the other two look like there's some sort of mix going on.

And then also for her in particular, like a lot of people assume that she's mixed.

You know, I never thought I had real ties to American history or anything like that.

And finding out that I have like, this deep tie to American history, not to Sally Hemings, I mean, just the fact that I have ancestors, right?

Here in.

Some ways since the 1600s, you know.

Right, because they're very different from like the Ashkenazi Jewish history.

Or my mother that came through Kennedy Airport in 1960 something.

And my dad that was born in Brooklyn, but his grandparents came from Russia around the turn of the century.

It's just a very different history, you know, like that history, you know, like when we went to the Tenement Museum a couple of months ago in New York City, that's that history.

And that's the history I grew up with.

And almost everyone I grew up with had a history like that, whether they were Jewish or Italian.

It was a very similar story of like they came in at that time.

And then my mom is, again, a recent and more recent immigrant.

But still, I never thought of myself as having these deep American ties.

Like, I thought we were just like 20th century Americans, you know.

So in that level, I've really connected with that because looking at how my biological father's maternal family came from slaves in North Carolina and Virginia, his father's family actually came from Bahamas, from the Caribbean.

And so they came to the United States more recently from the Caribbean, which is a bit of a different history as well.

So there's all these pieces like, and I don't know them, but I do feel like a connection to that.

And I think because they're just unexpected roots and I'm interested in them, but I don't know how to express them.

And I don't know what feels right and what feels right to claim.

Like whether it's my Jewish side, because I know that I'm not 100% Jewish.

Whether it's, you know, the Latin American side because I know.

So I have all this family and I do speak the language and I do eat the foods and all that cultural stuff, but it's still not exactly the same.

You've said that a few times, like I'm not supposed to be here.

I wasn't created on purpose.

Why do you think that that comes up so strong?

Because I.

Wasn't because nobody would have chosen this, right?

Like if somebody maybe had an affair or one night stand or something, even if you were inadvertent, there were decisions that were made that kind of makes sense, right?

Or but like for this, there was nothing about my existence that anybody would have done on purpose.

No doctor in his right mind would have accidentally created a biracial baby for white parents and my parents knowing who they are, especially my mom, she would have adopted like a Hispanic baby because she's from Latin America and like she but she would never have wanted a biracial baby.

So it's just hard because my brother was exactly what they wanted.

He came out 100% Ashkenazi Jewish, and I always felt he was the favorite.

He was kind of like the golden child.

And I always felt like I didn't measure up.

And I feel like this is kind of part of it because like, they just wanted a baby.

So they were happy to have a baby, but I wasn't what they wanted.

Where have you landed with your parents today?

We don't talk about it at all.

Not really, no.

From Grief to Grace: Embracing My Authentic Self

Has your.

Relationship changed.

Yes, especially with my mother.

I still am very hurt, I think because she hasn't learned as much as I would have hoped.

You know, she's not really racially sensitive.

She's still doesn't understand and it's all about her.

Whereas my dad, I think he apologized right away.

His apologies were genuine and I think in a way I think he would have told me earlier even though my mom blames him for the whole thing.

I think he would have told me earlier because I think he just knew and it was weighing on him.

But I think they were both in this lie together.

And there was a part of my dad too I think that thought that I wouldn't love him if I knew that we weren't related, which isn't the case.

Like the reason I'm out of my mom and we are related is because I felt that she knowingly inflicted pain and cause insecurities and didn't care.

Have you reached a place of of self acceptance with your racial identity and some of those insecurities that you grew up with?

I mean, I don't know if you had this experience, but I think finding out I think in a way like led to more self acceptance because it made sense.

I think making sense kind of makes you like yourself more.

Where is constantly trying to explain away things I think makes you feel more insecure.

I think it felt really good.

Like I stopped relaxing my hair.

I stopped like wearing so much.

I mean I don't go out in the sun that much anyway now cuz I don't wanna get wrinkled and like it's hot but it's not the same as when you're 7 right?

But like, I think I felt more like I made sense because it's really hard.

It was weighing on me to not make sense.

What do?

You say now when people ask you.

Mix cuz I think that probably more captures reality.

You don't say I'm mixed.

You know?

My mom is from Latin America so I have both of those cultures.

But I think saying I'm black doesn't feel right because I didn't grow up in black culture and I feel like black is not a race, it's an ethnicity.

So like, that doesn't fit right.

But I think mixed fits because it's accurate.

Like I'm racially a mixed person and that is why I'm perceived the way that I am culturally.

I'm a combination of someone who is of Jewish, Latin American culture in American, obviously.

But I think that kind of is where I've landed because that feels the most authentic.

I mentioned I had googled like African American or Jewish people that look African American and I'd found like Lisa Bonet and I'd found Lenny Kravitz.

Well, I saw an article in the New York Times a couple of years ago, it must have been about 8 or 9 years ago about Lacey Schwartz and she had this documentary called Little White Lie that was on.

I saw it on Amazon and I read the article and I forgot all about this, but I immediately wrote to her and I didn't know any of the story.

This was before the DNA test anything.

And I wrote to her and I'm like, Oh my God, like I'm not black, but this so much.

Your story resonates.

And I've always wondered, but it just kind of goes to show like I've been really trying for a very long time to understand the story.

And that story resonated with me.

And it must have been almost 10 years ago at this point, like.

Well.

Before any of this and I still like when I found out like you know when I told you I had the you know I knew that my mom was hiding something.

I tried test like I had bought a test and it disappeared like all of the stuff.

But then when I found out, like I felt like the dumbest person alive, like so dumb.

And like people tell you you're dumb too.

I don't know if they do it to you, but they they tell me like, are you dumb?

Like, how did you not know?

And I'm like, I'm, I just didn't like I knew and I didn't like, I think that's probably the most accurate answer.

Like it's not that I didn't know, it's that I didn't know, you know?

Like I knew.

Yeah, it's just what you said though.

You believe what your parents tell you.

I mean, I feel like I probably didn't get as much of the are you dumb?

Because my dad is Mexican and he's dark.

Why would you say no?

I, I don't believe you.

Why would you confront your mom and be like, did you have an affair?

Like, I mean, that's a bold thing to do, especially as a child.

And your origin story is fundamental to who you are.

And like, also when you're Jewish, like your ethnic identity is such a huge part of who you are.

And also there's a huge part of being Jewish that really focuses on like this, the line, the matrilineal line and like all of that.

And like these like the fundamental thing, like you meet someone and the first thing as you Jewish, like it's the first thing that they ask.

So it's so fundamental.

So for me to like even question that.

And also my mom was very conservative and like to question her integrity.

Like I, it took me like over 40 years to develop the guts to even like mail in Adna test because I was so scared, like I didn't know what I was gonna find by the time my mails in and I knew there was something going on.

But even then, like there was still so much denial going on.

I literally ordered a 23andMe right after I was in acceptance.

A little bit before the 23andMe results came, I called my brother and he was like, well, that's got to be correct, you know.

And by the way, my parents didn't tell him he was donor conceived.

I didn't.

They never told him didn't they never discussed and.

How did he take Well I.

Think by then he was staying up to date with the saga and then he was just like, well, I was like, it's possible because you're short and you kind of resemble them.

I'm like, it's possible that the sperm mixing micro magic, whatever they told my parents worked.

I don't know.

And it did not.

I know he found like 1/2 sibling.

We haven't really talked about it.

I think it affected me more deeply than it did him.

I think personally he's a guy and I think for whatever reason, I think men don't react the same way.

And secondly, I think he looked the part.

So I don't think he had like a lifetime of unanswered questions in the way that I did.

I'm.

Interested in your perspective here because we had similar discoveries but in different ways, right?

Did you have do you have any grief about the fact that you didn't know earlier and therefore aren't really able to connect with that half of?

Yourself 100%.

I think my experience and yours too.

In a lot of ways, it's similar to the transracial adoptee experience, right?

Because they grow up.

They're brought here from the United States, and they grew up.

And like, when I was a kid, people didn't really bother to teach them their culture.

And I've heard a lot of stories where people would say, you know, like, they outwardly look to be like Asian or whatever the race is, but they don't know anything and have any connection to that culture.

Like it was just kind of cut off because the parents never bothered to teach them about it.

And there's a family in our neighborhood.

Some of the kids went to school with my kids.

And both of the kids were adopted from Ethiopia by like white and white South Asian parents, so not African parents.

And the parents, like had the kids go to these Ethiopian groups.

Like they fed them Ethiopian food.

And then they actually took the kids back to Ethiopia and reconnected them with their biological family.

You know, I thought it was amazing.

But then also in a sense, it's like, wow.

Because they never, I mean, maybe they do in some level, but on the other hand, they were raised to know who they were and where they came from.

And there wasn't this expectation that their identity become subsumed by their parents identity.

Because when you're not the same as your parents, like there's a whole half of your identity that matters.

And I feel that I lost the ability to learn how to move and navigate in the African American community in an authentic way.

Because in a lot of ways, I was just taught to navigate in a very different world.

And then there were times when, like, there was a mismatch, like when it was really obvious that I wasn't being perceived, you know, as a white person, when I'd have to try to figure it out by myself.

And I wish I had the chance to, like, get to know more, like, eat African American foods and understand black culture better and grow up among black people.

Like I grew up in a 100% white neighborhood, there was literally nobody like me and I wish I had that because it's not my fault.

No, it's not your fault at all.

But you are left to navigate it right you.

Are and which is tricky because I think there's certain things that, you know, parents had conversations that people have with their kids like that are unique and specific to a culture.

And there's just so there's a certain vocabulary or language or I don't know what the right word is, but like a way of navigating the world that's tied to a culture.

And they're just certain things that you intrinsically understand when you grow up in a culture and when you didn't, it's harder because people think you should know that language, but you don't.

Thank you for sharing that.

What advice do you have for parents who are hiding adna surprise from their child?

Stop.

Like don't do it because it's not your information, it's your child's information and your own personal fears and insecurities are not your child's issue.

I think especially in the donor conceived world, and I know this happens, I think in general, but I think at the time I was created, I can only really speak to that because that's what I've learned from my parents.

I think there was so much deep shame in it and this idea that nurture matters more than nature or you can kind of design a baby to your image, but that's not the way humans are.

And I didn't sign up for that.

Like I didn't agree to be created by a donor.

And just the fact that one of my biological parents is a donor doesn't mean that that genetic and identity is any less important than the genetic identity of the parent who raised me.

So I think parents should think about that, because even if you don't value it, your child does.

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

Maybe one similar to your own?

Still working through it but it's been 4 years.

I think maybe Grace, like your parents messed up and I think it's reasonable to be mad and it's reasonable to be angry.

But I think what helped me move forward in a lot of ways was trying to understand like what my parents mindset was at that time and why they acted the way they did.

Even if I think there are a million things they should have done differently and I would never have done, I like to think I would never have done what they did.

They were also operating within a certain culture.

They were told by their doctors that it was.

They didn't need to tell anyone.

They believed certain things about secrecy.

And there was a time when people didn't tell their kids they were adopted either.

And that was considered OK.

And it's wrong.

And we know that now.

And I think sometimes you have to be compassionate.

But at the same time, I think it's also fair to expect an apology and to expect them to learn.

And if they don't figure out a way to navigate it.

Ultimately it's up to you.

Like for me, I can't.

I'm not the type of person that could ever go no contact with my mom, even though she hasn't done what I would have liked her to do or responded the way I would have liked her to do.

I just know that's who she is.

And even though she didn't accept me in in the ways I would have hoped, I just decided, at least for me, that I can have a relationship with her on my terms because I value that and she knows I'm still hurt.

But that doesn't make it OK.

Just don't feel that there's one particular way to handle it or one particular response you have to have.

It's perfectly OK for your parents to disappoint you and to also decide not to go no contact if that's what works for you.

But it's really individual how you want to handle your parents.

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

I know it resonated deeply for me, and I'm sure it's going to resonate deeply for others who are listening.

And I just wish you the best as you kind of figure all of this out.

Thanks.

So much thanks for having me.

Thanks again to Lori for sharing her story, and thank you to all of the guests who trusted me with your stories this season.

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

If you'd like to support the show, please rate and review the podcast on Apple and Spotify.

It really helps.

You can also join me over on Patreon for early ad free access to episodes.

We're taking a short break for the summer, but we'll be back soon with new DNA Surprise stories.

Thank you for listening.

Until next time.

This episode of DNA Surprises was hosted, produced and edited by me, Alexis Oursalt.

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