Bobbi’s DNA Surprise

This transcript was generated automatically. Its accuracy may vary.

Intro

When the DNA surprises happen or NPE, a lot of times the child is pretty angry with the mother for the lying and the sneaking around and keeping the secret.

And for me, I get that.

I, I understand that.

But I also would ask for grace because sometimes when those things happen, those decisions are made in the moment, in the survival mode moment, and you really are not thinking, okay, what's going to happen 20 years from now?

Is this child going to be asking questions?

Is there going to be such a thing as rapid DNA tests that everybody is going to be taking?

Those are things that never ever crossed my mind at the time.

I was just in full blown survival mode and like I said, going through a breakup of a volatile relationship and just really did not know what my future looked like.

But I knew at that time that I could not care for a.

Speaker 2

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

I'm your host Alexis, our salt.

In July 2021, my life took a surprising turn when I found out that I'm an NPE, 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, intergenerational trauma.

It's something we talk about a lot here.

The most common cycles.

We discuss our patterns around keeping secrets and patterns around shame.

In this week's episode, you will hear a story about a cycle of NP ES.

When Bobby became pregnant with her third child, she knew that she was not in a position to care for another baby.

She relinquished her child to a family member, but kept the specific circumstances around the birth a secret.

Most people thought she was a surrogate.

Just a couple of years later, Bobby was shocked when, long before consumer DNA testing, she learned that the man she'd believed was her biological father was not, and that both of her parents knew this secret her entire life.

And then there was one more years later when she took a consumer DNA test, Bobby uncovered that her mother is also an NPE, upending another long believed story.

I want to thank Bobby for being open about her experience, especially as a mother in this situation.

She shares a vulnerable, honest, and empathetic perspective for all of us to consider.

Thank you Bobby for sharing your story.

Speaker 1

My name is Bobby and I live around the San Antonio, TX area and I will be 57 this month.

Story 1

The first one in my family was that, and I'm going to be quite frank here, I got married when I was 18, very young and my ex-husband was an alcoholic and a serial cheater and I could blame my actions on that, but I feel like I've matured enough to where I can own it.

I sought the company companionship of a colleague and that year and a half relationship ended up with me being pregnant.

My ex-husband and I had broken up six times.

I've taken back five out of those six.

We were actually legally divorced when I turned to someone else, But we were living together, and so it was a difficult situation.

But he had already told me that he was going to leave again right before I found out that I was pregnant.

So I was going through a really messy breakup, one that I knew was permanent at that time.

But also, I had two children and I was trying to finish my college degree.

And I think it was just kind of the perfect storm that when I found out that I was pregnant, he was already packing his things to leave.

And so then I was thinking to myself, I'm pregnant, I'm going to school, I'm working, I have two kids, I'm breaking up with my partner.

What do I do?

What do I do now?

So a family member had approached me a couple of years prior and asked me if I would consider being a surrogate.

I told them no at the time because obviously I had a lot of things going on and it wasn't something that I had even would even consider.

When I found myself pregnant, I honestly had no idea what I was going to do because I could barely financially take care of the two kids that I had.

And I knew that I could not financially and probably emotionally care for another child, if I'm being honest.

And so I went back to the family member and I said, is it important that the child be biologically yours?

Because I'm pregnant and I don't know what I'm going to do.

And so they said they would take the child.

And so when the baby was born, I put her husband's name on the birth certificate as the child's father.

It was just something that we'd all agreed to and we thought it would make it easier down the road for the adoption to take place.

And it did it.

It made it much easier.

At that point, did you know who the father of the child was?

The decision to have a child

Did you know that it was not your ex-husband or was versus the person that you'd had a relationship with?

Well he had had a vasectomy.

Ex-husband had had a vasectomy 8 years prior.

So I was and still to this day probably 95 to 100% sure that it was the person that I had a relationship with.

OK, that it was that person's child.

Are your children that you already had?

How old were they?

11:00 and 8:00.

OK, so do they remember then you being pregnant and and what happened?

Yes, my daughter was 11, my son was 8.

And what they knew and what they were told was what we told everyone, that I was just being a surrogate for the family member.

And so that's what they grew up leaving.

I do have regrets.

I do have problems now with the way that we handled it back then, just simply because what you know in the future is not what you know in the past.

So it makes a big difference in the decision section.

Absolutely.

And I want to say first of all, that I really respect and appreciate your bravery with coming forward to talk about this because there is a lot of shame and stigma and anger towards towards mothers often in this situation.

And I know when you reached out to me, that's part of of why you wanted to share your perspective.

So I really just want to thank you for your vulnerability with this.

At the time that you made your decision, were you thinking about what the child might feel like about, you know, not knowing who their biological mother was or what stories, I guess, were you telling yourself about maybe how the child would feel?

I was not thinking about that.

I'll be honest.

I was not thinking about what is this child going to think 15 or 20 or 30 years down the road?

Are there going to be questions?

Who's going to answer those questions?

It really was in the very back of my mind.

I will say this, I did tell the person that I was having a baby and that the baby was his.

And he said he didn't want anything to do with it.

And I said, OK, I'm going to give this baby up for adoption basically.

And he said, OK, fine, just don't ever contact me again.

And, and I didn't.

So that person is aware that they have a child out out there in the world.

What they do or or how they feel about it now, I don't know because I haven't spoken to them in 25 years.

OK, so you, you were really in a situation where you are not supported from either your ex-husband or the person that you'd have the relationship with and like you said, really in that survival mode when you made your choice.

Yes.

OK, So what happens next?

Giving the baby to a family member

You have the baby and you give the baby to your family member.

My family member who actually lives in my same town.

And so a lot of people that I worked with, there were people that came up to me and suspected that it wasn't the way we were telling it.

And so I had a lot of, you know, there were rumor mills.

Everything's going around, you know, and I protected the identity of the person that I was with.

And in some ways I look back on that and I'm like, why did I do that?

Why did I take it all on, you know, when it takes two, really.

But that's just the way that it, it happened.

We're in the same town with a family member.

I see the family member a lot.

I see the child a lot.

And it's painful.

It's painful to see that decision that you made and just wonder, OK, did I make the right decision?

Should I have changed it?

You know what, what should I have done?

And then about 2 1/2 years later, I finally finished college.

I've bought a home for me and my two children.

I feel like things are kind of looking up, like finally I've gotten out of the dark clouds.

Not that I've forgotten about my decision because it's always in the back of my mind, but I felt like I could live with it a little bit better it I guess.

I told myself, look, it's done.

What's done is done and there's nothing you can do now.

You can't change it.

You can just live with it.

Even though I will tell you that 20 something years of guilt was there, it was there for a long, long time.

How often would you say that you thought about it?

I'm not going to say daily.

I think that's overkill because again, I was still and back then we didn't have online classes.

So I'm going to work all day.

I'm going to school two or three nights a week.

I'm trying to take care of my kids.

I'm doing a lot of things.

I'm trying to stay busy.

But I will say this, I did see a therapist and the therapist told me that what I was doing, going to work, going to school, running around, a lot of that was just so that I wouldn't face who I was, my identity, the decisions that I made, things that had happened to me.

And I look, I, I was kind of angry about that at first because I was like, no, I'm going to school so I can better myself and get a better job for my kids and, you know, all these things.

But I think there was a probably a grain of truth in that, that I tried to stay busy so that I wouldn't think about what I had done honestly.

Did you see the child often?

You said you were kind of in the same town.

You were in the same town.

And yes, I did.

And I wouldn't say often, but every couple of months I did.

So it was difficult during those times.

Like I said, about 2 1/2 years later, I graduated from college on a Saturday morning, super excited that I was done with that and ready to embark on, you know, a new chapter with my children and finally gotten my ex out of my system and we're ready to move on with our new lives.

Graduating from college

And Tuesday evening comes and I get a phone call from my ex mother-in-law and she lived up in Illinois at the time I lived in Oklahoma.

And she was adamantly apologizing to me.

I said what what happened?

And she said I accidentally opened her mail.

I'm thinking who would send me a letter to my mother-in-law up in Illinois?

You know, it just seemed odd to me.

I said, what do you mean?

And she said, well, it was rainy, and the ink had smeared on the envelope.

And so the mail people put it in a plastic bag, and all I could read was the last name.

And of course, we had the same last name at the time.

And she said, I thought it was my letter, so I opened it.

But now I realize it was for you.

Do you want me to mail it to you?

And I said, no, you can just read it to me.

It's OK.

So she read me a letter from a girl named Tina.

Tina said that she was my sister and that we shared a biological father.

Now, this is May of 2000, and we kind of went back and forth for probably over an hour with me arguing with her that there's no way that we're sisters, there's no way that we share a father, that, you know, my dad's on my birth certificate and he's been my dad my whole life.

I got pictures of me as a baby.

He's holding me as a baby.

So you're wrong.

You're absolutely wrong.

And she proceeds to tell me the name of my mother, my grandparents, where they lived, my birthday, a lot of things about me that just a stranger from somewhere else would not know.

She faxed me some pictures of a man that's in a military uniform, he's about 21 in the picture, and then some pictures of me as a baby that some of them I had never even seen but I knew they were me.

I asked her where she got them and she said that she got them from our father.

I asked my mother if there was any chance at all that my dad was not my dad and she denied it.

She said no, that's absolutely untrue.

Who told you that?

Who started that rumor?

It was a big long thing with her.

And so the next day when I had got those pictures in the fax, I drove over to her office.

Her office was literally like 3 buildings from my office at the time and I asked her to come out to my car with me and she did.

And I think she knew what I was going to ask her because I had called her the night before in in my mind it was just ludicrous.

There's just no way that this girl is right.

And so I wish that I would have driven to my mother's house and actually looked her in the face when I asked her the question.

She came out to the car with me and I had his picture face down on my dashboard and I showed it to her and I just said I have one question.

Is this man my father?

And she just burst out in tears.

You don't understand.

It's too hard to come to explain.

It's complicated.

You just don't get it.

He left me.

He left us.

He left.

I mean, she just kept saying that over and over.

And so then I said, I get it.

He left you.

He left me, he left us.

I get that part.

But what I don't get is why I never knew about him until right now.

How I never knew this man even existed.

How is that possible?

And you are about 32 years old at this time. 32, yes, 32.

And this is just a couple of years after the baby.

OK.

What are you thinking at this time?

I mean, this is wild to process.

You've had so many things happen just in the last few years.

The Descended Deception

How are you feeling?

Devastated.

I actually wrote a book about it.

It's called Descended Deception and I changed names and places and all of that.

But in the book I really describe how I go to the fax machine and get the pictures and once I see his face, I know immediately that he's my biological father.

And I go into the ladies room and I just vomit.

I mean, I just, I'm physically, I'll the reason why it's not because the man who raised me was such a horrible person because he wasn't never let on the entire time that that he raised me, that he was not my dad.

His mother was a horrible, horrible person.

She knew that I was not his biological child and she treated me as such growing up.

And so to go through all that torment growing up, it was it was a horrible, it was a horrible thing.

And I was angry with my mother for making me go through that when I had a real grandmother that could have been different.

Those were the things that were going through my mind.

I went home sick from work and it was just devastating at the time.

I can't even tell you the whirlwind.

I mean, unless you've been through it yourself, it's just hard to describe how it feels to know that you are not who you thought you were.

Yeah.

All the family research that you've done on a family that's not yours, all the cousins and the aunts and uncles and relatives that you have grown up with your entire life are not yours.

They're not yours to claim.

And I had two younger sisters.

My, my sister that's closest to me.

We're only 22 months apart because what had happened was my mom got married at 17.

I was born on her 18th birthday.

And then when I was two months old, he left.

He went back to Tennessee, where he was from, because he was in the Army, and my mother married the man I called Dad when I was eight months old, who was within six months.

She got remarried.

She was married to him until I was 28 years old.

They got divorced and then she got remarried.

So when I found out, she had already been divorced from him.

Obviously he already knew.

Did he want to raise you as his own?

Was that something they agreed upon together?

I don't know because neither one of them would talk to me about it after the fact.

I went to my dad and I, I told him.

I said, hey, I just want to let you know that I have found out the truth.

I know that you're not my biological father.

And you know what he said to me?

Oh, wow.

And I said dad.

I said dad, I know it's the truth.

You don't have to lie anymore.

And then he just didn't want to talk about it anymore.

No, no.

Wow.

So you find this out way before you know, the consumer DNA testing.

You find out kind of through this really abrupt way that implies that a lot of people knew something about you before you knew this about yourself.

And I have to wonder in light of the child that you relinquished for adoption, were you thinking about them through any of this and and kind of how maybe it was a similar experience to your own?

Yes, I was, because that experience that I had kept me from being so angry at my mother.

I will tell you that we never really sat down and had a discussion about it.

In fact, she was pretty angry with me when she found out that I drove all the way up to Missouri in 2018 to meet my biological father because in her mind, that chapter's closed.

So we're done with that.

We've moved on.

So there was a lot of anger towards her for that, but I had to keep reminding myself, you know, hey, you did it, too.

It's not like you can be really mad about this, you know?

So my mom and I are in a pretty good place now.

But again, she doesn't really like to talk about it.

She doesn't like to go to the past.

So you said in 2018 you decided to meet your biological father.

Meeting the Father

That's how many years between when you find out to when you meet him.

It's 1818.

18 years, What are you doing during that time?

So what had happened was I decided to meet my sister.

We met halfway in Tunica, Mississippi and we spent a four day weekend.

It's Presidents Day weekend and actually to this day we will meet in different cities on Presidents Day weekend.

I love that and vacation together just because that's where we first met.

It's just something that we do because we live so far away from each other.

We don't see each other on a daily basis.

We text, we talk, we message, we send each other gifts.

We are getting closer.

In the past 24 years we've gotten closer.

But during that 18 year time frame, I asked her to give me his phone number so that I could call him and we talked 2 times and both times he was drunk.

I mean he was like very inebriated and so I told him I would like to have a relationship with you but only if you're sober you know?

Keep in mind this is the exact same time that my ex-husband is calling me drunk telling me you're the only person I've ever loved.

I still have your picture in my wallet.

I want us to have a relationship.

Then I'm getting calls from bio dad saying almost the exact same things.

I've always loved you.

I never forgot about you.

So it was, it was kind of traumatic for me, but in a sense I wanted to stand my ground and be like, OK, I don't mind having a relationship with you, but we're going to be sober.

You're not going to call me drunk.

You're not going to be disrespectful.

And because his whole thing was, oh, your grandmother ran me off.

I would have been, I would have came back, but she ran me off.

She said she didn't want me around and this and that.

And I'm like, OK, well, dispense with the excuses because I I have them too.

I can make every excuse in the book for any decision or action I've taken, but just stop with all the nonsense and call me when you're sober.

And he never called me again in that 18 years.

In fact, he'd had a stroke.

And his sister was constantly calling me.

She was leaving me messages telling me that she was going to give me power of attorney over him, I needed to come and get him out of the nursing home, those kinds of things.

And I'm thinking to myself, you've got a lot of nerve.

Like, I've never even met this man, and now I'm going to take care of him.

I don't think so.

So his version of events is that he left but then wanted to come back, but your grandmother ran him off.

And your mom's version of events, well, you think you aren't 100% sure 'cause she won't really talk about it.

But what you've pieced together is that he left and abandoned your mom and you, and therefore she went and married somebody else who raised you as his own.

Do you have any sort of sense of where the truth might be in all of that?

I think it's pieces of each of it.

I really honestly believe that when he got out of the Army, he did intend to go to Tennessee and get a job and send for us.

What he had said was he had sent letters, and my mother claims she never received any letters from him and maybe they were intercepted by my grandmother.

I don't know.

But what I do know is that if you know that you have a child out there and you truly want to be in that child's life, then you could have made an effort.

We still lived in the same town until I was nine years old.

We never moved from that same town until I was 9.

So I think, I think that there could have been maybe another way to reach out.

In fact, because it was 2000, before social media, before the, you know, DNA test, before all these things were going on, the way that my sister found me was a private investigator.

She hired a private investigator to find me.

So it could have been done.

I think it could have been done.

Yeah, yeah.

And if you were in the same place, that makes sense.

Meeting the Man

Do you end up?

Meeting him, yes.

So it just so happened that my husband had, we have a Hot Wheels Camaro 2013 version and it was the pace car at the Indianapolis 501 year.

And so in the summer of 2018, they had invited all of the owners of Hot Wheels Camaros to come out there and run the track.

So we were driving up to Indianapolis that summer.

Anyway, that was already in the plans.

And so when she called me and told me that he had had a stroke and he was in the nursing home and you know, dire straits, something's going to happen.

I called my husband and I said, hey, is there any way that we could just do a jog over to Missouri on our way to Indianapolis?

And he was like, what?

And I said, well, I got a call that my bio dad and we called him Ron.

We didn't, I didn't call him dad or father or whatever.

You know, it was either bio dad or Ron.

That was what we called him and I said I got a call that he's in the nursing home and I don't know his condition, but I kind of feel like if I don't go, I'll regret it.

And honestly, the whole time that we were married, which we got married in 2002, he was telling me the same thing.

He's like, I don't want to push you, but I do feel like if you don't make some kind of effort to at least meet him, that's you're going to regret it one day.

And so we kind of squeezed in the trip to the nursing home in the middle of Missouri in our vacation plans.

And so we did.

We went to the nursing home and I don't know how to describe the meeting.

It was surreal in a lot of ways because I'm looking at this little old man and I'm like, I think you got a ton of regrets.

I really do think he did.

I brought a photo album with me and he was looking through the pictures.

I have a granddaughter that has red hair like I do.

And he he would point to it and he would point to me because he couldn't speak.

And I said, yes, I've been told she looks like me.

He had tears running down his face.

And I'm going to tell you that I really believe that this man had so many regrets because, like I said, we make decisions that we make, and we don't think about the future.

We don't think about what's going to happen 20 or 30 or 50 years from now.

We just don't.

So I'm thankful that I got 20 minutes.

I saw him.

I don't know him.

I don't know if the drinking was something that started after he left my mom or if it was something he was always going to be doing or I really don't know.

But I will say this, my sister didn't know him either because once he left my mom, he got married to my sister's mom and when my sister's mother said she was pregnant, he left.

So my sister's mother remarried and I had the baby and her husband's name was on her birth certificate also.

So we were both raised believing that our dads was somebody different.

Wow, that is so much to navigate, not only from your own personal experience, but then that happening to you and then happening to your sister.

The Importance of Forgiving

Did that time that you spend with him resolve anything for you?

I think it did.

I think that for me, it didn't really show me who he was or why he did what he did, but it allowed me the chance to tell him that I forgave him.

Wow, thank you for sharing that.

I started writing my book in 2018 and we started doing DNA testing through Ancestry and my book.

I put it on Amazon in 2020, hired a writing coach from Houston, and what I would do is during my lunch period, I'd bring my lunch, my sandwich or whatever, and then I'd go out to my car and I would call her and she would record some of our sessions and she became my therapist.

I'm not kidding.

She it was not a job that she signed up for at all, but going through it and using her as my writing coach and writing about my experience actually was so good for me.

It really was.

I wrote under a pseudonym.

All the names are changed to protect all of us guilty ones.

But it was so good to get it out because I had kept it in for so long.

My mom didn't really like to talk about it.

I couldn't really talk about it, you know, with my kids.

I mean, I don't really have anybody that I could just vent to or whatever.

In 2021, I set my daughter down and told her about what happened, about what really happened.

I gave her a copy of the book.

I said, you don't have to read it, but I hope that you do because I think it will give you a better idea of what happened, what really happened.

And she read it.

We sat down and talked about it, and then I talked to my son about it.

I really felt like this was a secret that I'd kept for years and years and that at some point, some way, somehow, it was going to come out and I would really rather them hear it from me than someone else.

And as it turned out, that's what happened.

What was their reaction My.

My daughter was really upset with me at first.

She was like, mom, how can you give up a kid?

How could you do that?

Because she has, she had two children at the time and they have since fostered and adopted a baby.

And I just told her.

I said, well, you are in a loving relationship with your husband.

They dated for four years.

They've been together for 20 years now.

I said you don't know what that's like to be in a relationship like I was with your father.

Their father passed away 20 years ago from his drinking and so he will forever be the the hero in their eyes.

And there's nothing I could say or would say to change their minds.

However, they do know that he had a drinking issue and that's, I mean, he passed away when he was 39 years old.

So they know that.

And so I told her, I said, your husband doesn't even drink, doesn't go to bars.

You, you know where he is every night he comes home to you and the kids.

That's not how it was for me.

And again, not an excuse, but just painting a picture of what it was like at that time in my life.

Yeah, they came to understand that, you know, you make decisions.

Like I said, you make decisions in their your survival mode.

You do what you think you is best with the information you have at the time.

And I live with that guilt for 20 years.

That child will be 25 in November.

And they know that I'm their biological mother now.

And it's all out in the open.

Everything's out.

And how did they come to find out?

So the family member got divorced and then got remarried and shared that with their new husband.

And the new husband told everybody in the family, he said, that he thought everyone already knew and that really was not the case.

And in fact, my two sisters did not know.

My one sister took it upon herself to call my children to tell my children about that, which like I said, thankfully I had already told them so they knew.

And how did your child receive that information?

The one who was raised by another family member.

I think that that child was already going through some identity issues and had some questions and unbeknownst to me because when I got remarried, I married a military member and we moved to Texas.

So when I moved away, that child was like three, 3 1/2 years old.

And so I was not around anymore.

And it for me, it was out of sight, out of mind.

The guilt was always there.

The the emotion for me was always there.

But I didn't have to see that child every day and I didn't see that child grow up.

So it was to me in my mind, better for me to not even be in that town anymore.

But from what I understand, the pieces fell into place for that person also the way they did for me when I found out.

And we've actually had conversations.

They don't, you know, obviously don't refer to me as mom or mother or whatever, but they are aware that I am their biological mother.

And we've had conversations.

And I've also said I'm not going to be like my mother was.

I'm going to be open and honest about what happened.

So if you ever have questions or you want to know anything, I'm here and I'm going to be open about it.

And they asked me the name of their biological father and I gave that to them.

As far as I know, they've not reached out to try to find that person.

And like I said, they haven't really asked me a lot of questions.

I think it was just a matter of there was they had questions growing up about how things were and kind of suspected that the people that raised them were not their biological parents.

And then when the truth came out, I guess the pieces felt into place and it made more sense to them.

So I don't feel anger from that person.

I don't feel like they're upset with me.

In fact, not really asked a lot of questions, but it's only been about a year, year and a half since they found out.

So I'm going to assume that once they process the information, they may have questions later on.

And that's OK.

I'm open to them and I'm going to be 100% honest.

Well, it's, it's unfortunate, you know, that they found out the way that they did, but very fortunate that they have someone to talk to who can answer questions for them.

During that time we were taking DNA tests and we were.

It was a fun thing because to me most of the secrets were already out, so nobody had anything to hide.

It was, it was just to see how much Irish we really had or how much Scottish we really had or you know, those kinds of things.

My son-in-law is Italian and so how much of my granddaughter's got Italian or, or my Irish or Scottish, you know, because one of them has brown hair and one of them has red hair.

And it was just kind of a fun thing we were doing.

And even my grandmother said she wanted to do it, so she did it.

So my daughter, my mother and my grandmother and I, we were going through all these DNA matches and really it was kind of like a hot, it was a hobby because I'm still working.

And we were just kind of doing it on the side and just here and there we were finding out matches.

And my mother has a sister and her sister's daughter, which is my first cousin, She and I matched in, in ancestry.

And I called her and I said, Hey, I see that you're an ancestry.

You were matched da, da, da.

You know, it was, it was fun.

And then I started matching with people that I had no idea who they were.

I was like, who are these people?

And I matched with a person who had more DNA than I did with my first cousin.

I'm like, how is that possible?

And so I started researching that and trying to figure out who these people were.

And I will tell you this, my grandmother passed away in May of 2021.

We called her nanny.

She was, she was the matriarch of her family.

And then in June of 2021, I got a phone call from that match's mother.

And we pieced it together that my mother's biological father was not who we thought it was.

So for the past three years I've been researching to find out who he really was.

And what have you found?

I found out that my grandmother was a waitress in Louisiana in 1948.

How she got there, I have no idea, but it was a little place called the City Cafe.

It was a diner, and it was right across from the railroad.

And so when the soldiers were called up for the draft for World War 2, they would come and sit on the bench waiting for the train, and the owner of the diner would send her out with plates of food to feed them because he knew that a lot of them didn't have any money.

They were hungry, and some of them weren't going to come home.

I don't know how she met the man who is my mother's father, but that's how she met the man that I know is my Pawpaw.

He was stationed at Fort Bliss.

He went over there to get some of the soldiers, and he was also there to guard a plane crash because he was a military police at the time.

The next thing I know, she's taking a train over to El Paso.

My mother was born in El Paso.

She's married to him and they were married for a long time.

They were married, I don't know, 50 years.

So I'm not really sure.

I'm trying to piece together, you know, how she ended up in Louisiana and then how she ended up in El Paso.

But I have narrowed it down to three brothers and the older one was in the military and he was not in the town at the time, so we ruled him out.

The middle brother was in the town, but he was married and of course that doesn't mean anything.

But the younger brother was one year older than her, and he was a traveling drug salesman.

And at the time, the diners were also drug stores.

And so in my mind, I'm picturing this guy coming into the diner to sell drugs to the drugstore and meeting my grandmother, who was a waitress in there.

Why she didn't end up marrying him, why she ended up marrying the guy that was in the military, I don't know.

So it's a mystery that I'm still working on, but I'm pretty sure it's the youngest one that was my mom's father.

And does your mother know this?

And how does she feel about it?

Well, she wants to go with us to Louisiana next summer so we can meet some of her relatives.

Some of all of the brothers are deceased.

And the brother that I think it is, he had a son who is also deceased.

So the only way that we're going to really find out is if his two children, who are about my age, he has a son and a daughter, and if they would take the Ancestry DNA test.

I've reached out to them on Facebook, but I haven't got a response from either one of them.

But I'm hoping that at some point one of them reaches out to me so that we can get them to take a test to be 100% sure that their grandfather is my grandfather.

The Impact of Generational Trauma

I mean we talk a lot on this podcast about generational cycles, generational trauma, and in this case, in your story, we have like 3 very concrete examples.

What has been your sort of learning or like just overall observation and kind of seeing how in some ways history repeated itself over 3 generations in your family?

So what I've learned is that my grandmother got pregnant by someone.

My theory is that his family came from money.

They were politicians, they had mansions in Louisiana.

They were their name was really big over there.

I think that it's either he was told or he knew that he would not be able to marry a woman who was a waitress and basically an orphan at that time.

So she found a soldier to marry, and that soldier took care of her for decades.

And so when my mother got married, my grandmother signed off for her to get married to a soldier when she was 17.

And then when he left, he was gone.

Then she found another soldier for her to marry.

And in fact, my aunt also married several soldiers.

And when I was in high school, my mother pushed for me to marry a military man.

Ironically, I did eventually marry one, and both of my sisters are married to military.

That's so interesting.

I think that my grandmother viewed our Papa.

That's what we call him.

I think she viewed him as her savior.

Here she was 1948 pregnant, which was a huge no no back then.

This soldier said, I'll marry you.

I'll, I'll marry you.

And he he knew that she was pregnant with another man's baby and still married her and took care of her for decades.

And so in my nanny's mind, my daughters and my granddaughters need to marry the military because that's what'll take care of them.

And do you, do you feel like you share that in any way?

No, I'm too much of A feminist.

I will tell you that I no, not at all.

I have 5 granddaughters and I believe that I instill in all of them the necessity to take care of themselves.

I teach them all, you know, do not ever rely on a man, whether he's in the military or whether he's the president or wherever, whoever he is, do not rely on a man.

You get your own career, you make your own money, you take care of yourself.

That's just something that I've been instilling in them because my experience is I married a man that did not take care of me.

And in fact, when I got remarried, my husband, he said to me, well, get married to me and I'll take care of you.

And I said, no, no, no, that is not going to happen.

That's not how we roll.

He's been retired from the military for a long time.

In fact, he's had another career since then.

I will retire from being a federal civilian in the next three years.

I've been working my whole life and I plan to always be able to take care of myself.

Even though we've been married for 22 years.

I don't think he's going anywhere, but I just feel like I learned my lesson young that you just can't rely on people.

You just have to take care of yourself.

So I would never encourage my granddaughters to marry or marry the military or, you know, whatever.

I I would just encourage them to take care of themselves and be their own savior.

Well, good for you and good for you for being a cycle breaker on that.

As you look ahead, what are some of the things that you hope for, either for your own children or your grandchildren like you said, or for your own relationships with your mother or new found family members?

Well, I hope that I have been a stable person in my grandchildren's lives so that they ever find themselves in a situation where they don't know what to do, that they feel like they could come to me and talk to me and talk it out.

Maybe if I had, if I had someone that was the calm in the storm, maybe things would have been different.

Maybe the decision would have been different.

But I feel like I need to be that person for my children and my grandchildren.

And like you said, to break that cycle because I feel like somehow it started with my grandmother and I may never know the truth.

I've been, I've been digging, I've been trying to look up clues, but I may never know the truth of why she didn't marry that man and why she married the other man.

I, I may never know why.

But when I look back on the past and some of the things that were said and some of the things that I was around with my grandmother and my mother and my aunt, I see those puzzle pieces falling into place.

Like OK, I see now why this happened or those things were said.

I understand that now, whereas I did not understand it at all when I was younger.

And, and again, this is not a a Dick for my grandmother because I don't judge.

I am in no position to judge anyone for anything.

I just want to understand what happened.

My grandmother's mother passed away when she was 12 years old right in front of her, and then her father ran off.

So she was essentially an orphan at 12.

So my research right now is trying to figure out how does she get from Mississippi down to Louisiana?

There was a seven-year gap, but I don't know what happened to her.

And so I'm just trying to figure out that and try to understand that, but also with some grace because I cannot judge her for what decision she made in 1949 when my mother was born.

I just, I just can't.

And it's not about trying to figure out what she did wrong.

It's really not.

I just really want to understand my grandmother.

And.

What happened to her when she was younger?

Yeah, I think you have such a unique perspective being on both sides of it and also being, you know, kind of downstream from it.

And you have so much compassion and empathy for, for everyone involved.

And I I hope you have that for yourself, too.

I'm learning.

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

My advice would be to tell them.

And I say that because I wish my mother would have sat me down and told me what happened.

I wish she would have told me the truth.

It was shocking to find out from a stranger.

I just basically turned my life upside down.

And the reason I say sit down and tell it because we have so much advances in technology these days, DNA testing, all these things going on, that the likelihood of that secret coming out is pretty good.

It would be better coming from you, it really would.

What advice do you have for someone who just uncovered their own DNA surprise?

Advice for someone who just uncovered their own DNA surprise

Feel your feelings.

I am in a couple of groups on Facebook and I've seen people post things like I'm so mad, I'm so angry, but I can't express that.

Yes, you can.

Yes you can.

You can express that anger.

You can express being upset.

You can't express all of your feelings because you are entitled to them.

I know for me, I held back a little bit because I felt like, oh, I can't really be mad at my mom for something I did.

But the truth is I could be, I could be mad at her for a minute because she lied to me.

And you know, I felt like, well, I lied, so how could I be mad?

But those were two separate issues.

They really are.

I'm not mad at my mom.

I'm not mad at my grandmother.

I'm not mad at anybody right now.

But there was a time when I was mad, but I felt like I had to keep it in like I felt like I couldn't share that with anybody.

And I feel like when you do that, you're diminishing your own worth.

Your feelings are worthy.

So if you're mad or you're upset or you're PAD, you're having an identity crisis because trust me, you will feel it and feel it out loud.

Do that.

Do that for yourself because I think that everybody's entitled to their feelings.

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

It is such a journey that you've been on.

And again, I just, I really appreciate your vulnerability and coming on and sharing the mother's perspective as well as your own experience as you've navigated your DNA surprise.

And I wish you nothing but the best in the future and look forward to reading your book.

Thank you so much for having me on.

I appreciate you letting me have the opportunity to tell my story.

Thanks again to Bobby for sharing her story, and thanks again to all of the guests who joined me for Season 9, including past guests who joined me to share updates.

We're going to take a short break for the holidays, but I'll be back after the new year with brand new DNA Surprise stories.

And remember, join me over on Patreon for early access to ad, free episodes, bonus content, and more.

Until next time, This episode of DNA Surprises was hosted, produced, and edited by me, Alexis Ourselt.

It was mixed and mastered by Josh Ourselt, Siren Recording Studios.