Jen’s DNA Surprise

This transcript was generated automatically. Its accuracy may vary.

Speaker 1

And I feel safe having anger towards him because he's on the other side.

So in my belief system, he gets he gets it.

Like, I suppress my anger with my mom because she can't hold space for it.

But him

Speaker 2

being on the other side, I don't have to worry about his human reaction.

So when I'm mad, I'm like, oh fuck you, you know?

I just

like really give it to him.

Imagine spitting into a tube, sending off your DNA, and unknowingly turning your life upside down.

Down for me and thousands of others.

This is our reality.

I'm your host Alexis ourselves in July of 2021 I discovered that I am an NP e.

Someone who has experienced a non paternal event.

In other words my biological father isn't who I thought he was this podcast shares.

The journeys of people who were shocked by a DNA Discovery.

Mostly through Modern DNA testing.

We're telling the stories of NP.

He's adoptees and donor conceived people and their families.

This is DNA surprises.

Before we begin this episode, please note that there are references to suicide in this story.

If you are experiencing thoughts of self-harm, please contact an emergency or mental health professional if you're in the u.s. you can call or text 988.

Sometimes, DNA discoveries occur without the aid of a DNA test.

In this week's episode, Jen shares how her mother revealed the truth about her paternity.

After a near-death experience, after locating her Newfound family, she confirmed her biological father's identity through DNA.

Testing Jen shares.

A story of generational trauma, estrangement, and hope for the future.

She talks about how she finds connection to her.

Emily in this world and Beyond.

And why accountability is so important for our parents.

Thank you for sharing your story.

Jen, my name is Jen.

I'm 48 and I currently live in Tennessee.

My DNA surprise

story is a little different.

I think, than some of the other podcasts because I didn't actually find out through DNA, but I did confirm through DNA.

My story really starts in fourth grade.

When I was in

fourth grade, Raid, I came home from school and September 9 1982.

I came home from school, turned around the corner because back then we all walked to school

artist goes my little gang of neighborhood.

Friends,

coming home from school, I turn around the corner and I see an ambulance at my house.

So I run home and I run inside and my older sister who was 15 at the time was standing up and stop the top of the stairs telling me don't A don't come up, your don't come up here.

Obviously, I did not listen to her.

Because why would you listen to your 15 year old

sister

ran to the top of my stairs and saw paramedics in my mother's bedroom and what I know, now, that I didn't understand then is that she was having her stomach pumped because she took a massive amount of pills in a suicide attempt.

So, I came home from school, to find that my mother

had attempted suicide, not understanding at that time.

I'm what was really

going on, but my mother was taken

away in an ambulance and was gone for a month and back then in 1982.

He was

families were just a lot less managed

by government and Community agencies because me, and my four siblings

literally just were home alone for

a month.

While my mom was on patient in a psychiatric ward.

There's kind of two stories to my life.

Now, three, there was my life before that day, there was my life back.

After that day and now there's my life after my npv story.

Yeah.

So you were you were under the care of your 15 year old sister basically during that whole time, okay.

Wow.

Yeah, my my 15 year old sister took care of the family while my mom was hospitalized.

So I have three older siblings who are eight years, seven years and six years older than me.

So my mom would be age of 17 has three babies right in a row.

Boom boom!

Boom!

With my birth certificate.

Father.

Then six years later, I come along, and then four years.

After me, my little brother comes along, turns out, my little brother is

also an MP e.

We're from the same

father, okay?

So my biological dad and my

mother were both married lived in the same town.

And had this really long standing up there.

I found this out in January of 2020.

I was at that time just coming off of living doing van life for a year.

So

2017 and filed for divorce.

My divorce is finalized in Thousand eighteen and I have this like, kind of massive midlife crisis,

I quit my job, I give

away everything I own.

I divorce, my husband, I took a sabbatical and I gave up my apartment and I literally packed everything.

I owned into my Jeep and I just spent a year driving around the country,

like, hiking and sleeping and state parks and just embracing freedom.

I guess this is how is that the most amazing

time of my life?

The most

Sometimes I lie and really

healing.

I did like a lot of trauma healing work in that time because embracing the unknown is very therapeutic, right?

Really like helps you to develop earn up to me at least to develop

this sense of faith that everything will be okay.

And that

the Universe always has my back, and it

was also just cathartic to just spend so much time in nature, like nature.

Does not give a shit about you.

The mountain doesn't care how tired your legs are.

I want to get over the mountain, you have to keep Going and so spending a lot of

time in nature really helped me work out some of my shit.

And so that period of my life was coming to an end

and I was you know, feeling really like refreshed and renewed that I had sorted myself out in this year.

And I was dating a new

guy and he and I were trying to decide like what's next?

Where are we going to plant roots?

Where we going to settle down?

We both have adult children so his kids are in the east coast.

My kids were on the west coast in California.

For Nia.

So we kind of took two separate Corners.

We each wanted to go be with our children and do some accountability work like spend some time sitting with her kids apologizing.

For some of the mistakes we had made in our parenting really like trying to do be in the healing space with their kids

and so it's during that time that my guy and I are like I've separate coasts that I get a call from one of my sisters.

To tell me that my mother is in the hospital.

My mother was found by her

after I think it was like five days

of my little brother, who's a, caretaker

not being able to reach her

her building management.

Got a, hold of my brother and said, you know, we have your mom, she's incoherent.

She doesn't know who she is.

She doesn't know where she is.

She was like naked and wasn't like, toileting herself properly and everything was a mess.

And so she he ends up in the hospital and she's in intensive care

and my siblings put out the call to me and I've kind of been no contact with my siblings for a number of years.

We each have kind of taken

our own space to do our healing work, we all come we come from a trumpet ice world.

So obviously, we're all living in

our trauma.

We have kind of been in our separate

Corners.

I'm

mostly no contact with my mom,

so, like around the holidays we communicate and I would occasionally Center care packages from when I was living in California, but there's no like social connection,

the five of us siblings,

we kind of all go home to Elena B.

I grew up in Illinois.

My mother is in the Chicagoland area.

My little brother is in the Chicagoland area, we all got home, thinking our mom is going to die.

We're going to kind of say our final goodbyes,

my mother was in intensive care.

And having a medication induced psychosis and the doctors kept telling us this is some downers and she's

developing Alzheimer's but But my little brother had been her caretaker had said, absolutely not like she's

outside mind.

She's very coherent

and it's got to be something else.

And so my assumption was, it was medication induced turns out that was

right.

So because she's in a medication and do

psychosis, she's like, she thinks aliens are crawling through the

wall behind her, to kidnap her in the middle of the night.

Like, she's all kinds of interesting things are happening in my mom's

mind.

Intense.

And she's really paranoid and she's really

And she's attacking the nurses and

she's ripping out her

IVs.

And so the hospital staff said, someone has to stay with her through the night.

We're going to have to put her in

a psych unit.

I'm there alone, my kids are grown and they're in California.

My poor little brother who's been taking care of my

mom, so low for 20 years is tired and he has children and it just made sense that I would be the one to stay with my

mom.

And so, I'm spending the night with my mom,

trying to get comfortable sleeping in a hospital chair

and She comes.

She wakes up and she comes out of her psychosis

and she says, I have something to tell you and she says your dad is not your dad.

Your dad's name was John H and I thought, okay this is what

this, you know, this is just a part of the psychosis but she went on talking

and talking and talking and talking and the conversation ended up lasting five hours and she was completely lucid

and she told me horrific details that I did not need To hear about her.

And my father's love making like, all this like really inappropriate stuff and I can't escape the room because the hospital staff has said someone needs to be with her and I'm like, literally in shock the whole night.

Like I just I think I just said I totally disassociated right?

Like I had to compartmentalize to take it all in.

That's the first thing she says to you, when she wakes up is Boom.

She sees you and then comes out with this Secret.

Yeah, I have something to tell you said you'd Associated.

What are you

thinking?

I'm literally thinking, like, just get through the

night, she just get through this.

And like, I was telling myself, like, you can think about it and you can process it when the night is over.

And I'm just literally sitting there for five hours just taking stuff in.

What I

suspect was happening with.

My mom is that she I believe

she feel.

She had a near-death experience when she was going through all this

And she was born and raised

Catholic, like my family was hyper Catholic, three of her sisters are nuns.

One of her brothers is a priest was like really

dogmatic Catholic upbringing that she survived.

And so I I suspect that she felt like I need to get these secrets out before I die.

Or I'm gonna go to hell.

Okay.

And so it was really a confessional and I say that because she didn't she didn't seem sensitive to my feelings, right?

She seemed really

happy to You have an audience to tell her story to and I felt happy for her that she could have some catharsis you know in

retrospect.

But in that moment

I was just in shock.

And then later I was just angry, right?

That it was all about her and she didn't seem to have

any clue

as to the fact that she'd literally just like picked my life up and ship it.

And now I have to deal with all of these like pieces that that have just kind of been thrown up into the air.

Did she apologize or anything like that?

During the

conversation?

She did apologize.

But with a caveat she apologizes for like all the wrong things.

I mean not that

I don't want to dismiss any apology.

I'm glad that she's trying to take accountability to the capacity that she has.

She can take accountability but

her apology is always about the affair.

I'm so sorry I had an affair.

I shouldn't have

done that.

I literally have zero Which meant that at all.

I don't you were 25 years old.

You were in a miserable marriage.

You already have three kids

like you fell in love, I get it like that part.

I actually really get hmm, But she does not apologize for how it's affected me or for the 45

years of lying those things she won't apologize for.

We're in this weird place right now where she won't answer any

questions

like over the course of the last couple of months.

I keep reaching out to her to be like hey can

Can you answer

XYZ about?

Like I have questions about my birth

father.

And so now she's doing this thing.

Where she pretends like, she

doesn't recognize my number and she said, whose number is this?

I don't know.

This is interesting.

So when she gave you this name, John, did you recognize the name or anything?

It wasn't somebody remembered from childhood.

No.

Okay, so

my birth father,

John H, who's passed away.

He, this is how the childhood piece connects to the P story is that, when I found out

through my mom's telling the story is that the day she

committed suicide when I was in.

Fourth grade is the day my birth father died.

So she was so devastated by his passing away that she attempted suicide.

Her kids, her five children were at

school.

And when we were at school,

she attempted to commit suicide.

And one of my older sister got home from school.

She thought my mom and your birth certificate for Father, where they divorced by this point, or where was he?

They were divorced, they got divorced in 1981, okay?

I was in and then

my birth father died in 1982 when I was

eight, I suspect, although I can't get my mom to confirm or

deny this because she doesn't recognize my phone number

anymore.

I suspect that my mother in my birth certificate father divorced and my

mom had some

hopeful fantasy

that her and my dad would want would run away into the sunset together.

Mmm, which was not the case.

Yeah, he was also married in an unhappy marriage and had two sons of that marriage.

My new half-brothers and he was like a ladies man.

So there were five Mistresses at his funeral.

My mom was not one of them.

There was a woman with him in his vehicle when he died, he died in a car accident.

There was one of his Mistresses was in the vehicle with him when he died.

So that woman Plus, My mom, plus the five at the funeral means there's at least seven Mistresses and a wife and a wife, right?

Hey, so so you kind of you learn this truth about what really happened.

So okay, so you're at the hospital, she reveals the truth.

What happens next?

So I get through the night and my oldest sister, the one who took care of us.

When my mom attempted suicide came in drove in Night before from Ohio and she was kind of coming in the morning to relieve me.

She was going to go on shift, I was going off shift, she was coming on to

so I welcome to the

hallway.

I see my sister and I mean, I just like everything came out of me.

It literally felt like I had fractured.

I just felt like I broke into a million pieces, like, whatever glue was holding me together.

Like Has melted completely out of my cellular structure and I

was so disappointed.

I don't even know that I felt

human.

Like, I just felt like a shell or a ghost or however you want to describe it.

felt like everything in my life is a lie.

I don't know what it's like for

other MP East, but for me, that's been the hardest part, right?

Is

like, how do I piece myself back together?

I have felt like all the

trauma that I had had.

And that I had spent so much energy working through to try and be a better human being despite my life

circumstances.

It just felt like all of it got reopened really like I had done so much work to heal the father

wound and then

boom, great.

Now there's another

dad who didn't want me, who abandoned me, and I was just like, I was a little pissed the Universe, I don't know what, you know what, your spiritual beliefs are what you call higher power, even if you believe in one,

but I say universe to.

Yeah, perfect.

So, I was a little pissed of the universe, like what the f, like, I'm done this work.

Like now I have to, like, redo all the FM work.

Like

yeah.

So you said you'd done all that work to heal the father wound so your relationship with your birth certificate.

Father wasn't a good one after the divorce?

No, okay.

Now so I'll give him

credit where credit's due.

He used to go and visit him every other weekend after the divorce.

But we were

always guests in his home.

We

Never he married a woman like

immediately after the divorce, he married a woman who had two children, my stepbrothers who my father's great

close to that was their home but

we were treated like guests in the home

and so he did pick us up every other weekend

from seven for

me until I was 12.

And when I was 12, my mother kicked me out of the

house.

This was my mother's way of disciplining us.

Kids was to kick us out of

the house and four out of

five of those of us kids in my Sibling Group, went through that now.

So I got kicked out at 12,

I stopped seeing my birth certificate.

Father, at that

time because I thought he'd like he didn't look for me

three months after I learned about this DNA Discovery.

I actually

drove from Illinois to Arkansas

to surprise visit my birth certificate father

and I ended up having this conversation with him.

Like why didn't you take me in?

Took it all the siblings.

Don't take me in that.

To

me felt like an indication, that maybe he knew.

He says he didn't and he just

couldn't take me in at the time because he

asked where I was, nobody knew where I

was.

And in his words

he was too busy doing crack and having fun.

Wow, to be a dad, he's not interested in being a father.

He never really has been.

He told me that when I went and saw him and April 20, 20, so that I've you know, I've just never really

not the dad type where did you go?

Where did you go when you were 12?

I bounced.

I did a lot of Couchsurfing, so I slept in

unlocked cars, I would kind of walk around, see, but I like cars, I had a handful of girlfriends, who would kind of sneak me into their bedroom windows?

That night, there was like, a group of friends I had, he would do that and I would kind of bounced around, you know, I would do three or four nights this person's house through points in another person's house, you know, until their parents caught on and then I remove

that this lasted for hours, out of my mom's home

from 12 to 6.

I went to Michigan with a girlfriends Aunt to kind of play nanny for her kids, but I was in Florida for a little bit with the same family, like another ant playing Nanny.

And then I stayed

for about a year and a

half with a friend who her parents were addicts and so they kind of didn't care what was going on in the house.

And so I spent a lot

of my time there

and then I lived with my

boyfriend's older sister for a

while and played Nanny for her.

And then at 17 I went

Back to my mother's home for about six months and then ended up moving out with my baby daddy.

I was a teenage mom, moving out with my day, baby, daddy, and getting my first apartment, my birth certificate father, I stopped seeing him when I was 12.

I've seen him twice since then, once when I was 26, I threw a birthday party for my older sister, and he came for that and it devolved Quickly and he said some very unsavory things.

And my husband said, I had my house, that was the last time I saw him until I was 46.

So, 20 years later, when I showed up at his house to tell him that he wasn't my father and he said, he had no

idea.

No, he had no idea.

He didn't even know who I was.

Actually, when I got there, he thought I was my sister.

He called me by my sister's name.

Kept calling me by my sister's name.

Actually recorded the three-hour conversation because cuz I thought like, again has spent so much time through this journey being disassociated.

That is like I can't hold onto stories or things or information.

It feels like it's just slip through my fingers all the time.

And so I recorded that entire conversation and listen to it like preparing for this.

And I also felt like it would help me with my Sibling Group, who are a little, I'm a therapist.

And so emotions and feelings are My currency and, you know, I'm very comfortable in the space of emotional processing, but my siblings are not as comfortable in that space.

And so, there's a little more avoidance for my perspective.

I've always been a little gas slit by my Sibling Group, like, oh, it's not that bad.

Oh, cut it out.

Oh, you're being dramatic.

And so I thought.

Okay, I'm just going to have this crazy conversation recorded so that if they ever guess like me.

Yeah I've got right up how horrible our dad is So did you tell your did you tell your little brother?

Okay, so my little brother has known since high

school, never told me

her, eighth grade.

I think my biological father lived in

the same town as we did

him and his family and my half Brothers lived like across town in a small town, like, small, rural USA.

We went to school with a bunch of her cousins.

My older

siblings, went to school with my two older half-brothers through my

dad.

Me and my oldest brother and one of my

sister's actually dated for like, you know, like a 6th grade one week relationship.

You know, my

mom used to babysit my

half-brothers just so many levels of weirdness but my one of my cousin's is like, right next to me and my eighth grade yearbook photo.

Never had any idea when your cousins All of this like family weirdness.

But my little brother apparently him was in school with one of our cousins.

I think it was eighth grade.

The story goes, he had a crush on her and she was like we're cousins and he was like what are you talking about?

We're not cousins and she brought some pictures of our birth father and showed them to him and said, this is your dad.

He's like that is not my dad and so apparently he

Home

in front of my mother and my mother, I guess admitted it to him.

he's he's 42

now.

So he's known since he was like 15 years now for 30 years basically,

I never knew nobody ever told

me.

Did he say why he didn't share that

with you.

He told me that he did.

Share that with me.

Hmm,

maybe he did, I don't know like we're talking 30 years ago, maybe it was something.

He said and I just guess what him and was like oh God whatever you know you liked it in

and you had such a traumatic Eric childhood and Adolescence did was going back.

You know, like you said, slipping through your fingers, I think that's such a good way to describe these traumatic events that happened to us like our brains just kind of break.

And they

don't hold any information in.

Yeah, so,

okay, so he knew about it so this was not a surprise to him.

No, not a surprise to him at

all.

He knew about him and I guess my birth father, and his whole family knew

about my

Like, when we were kids like, every few months, there would be these, like,

packages on our front porch.

These Anonymous packages of little boy, clothes, and little boy toys.

And what I found out now is that, that was my grandmother and one of my biological ants on my dad's side who were leaving gifts, for my little brother who they knew was my biological

dad's.

So, I'm under the impression that they didn't know about me, where they suspected, but there was no confirmation.

I'm not sure I've gotten conflicting stories.

My mom says she told my dad when she was pregnant, this is your baby.

But, you know, I've asked

her, like, did he show any interest in me?

Did he come downstairs to?

Like, look at me when I was sleeping because my Nursery

was in the basement and my parents bedroom was

upstairs, and the affair

happened because my birth certificate father, worked Midnight's and so my biological dad would come and you know, mmm-hmm

he wouldn't have sleepovers.

Which went on all

during the pregnancy and my little brother is four years younger than me.

So that I mean we're talking years that he's in my house under my roof, while I'm there and he has like no interest or desire to see or know or take any ownership of me as his daughter.

You know, I asked my mom.

Like how in the world are you just sleeping with this

guy?

When he's impregnating, you and

just leaving you high and dry eyes?

He doesn't want to know his kids, he doesn't care if another A man raises his kids and she's like so love struck by him and

my mother country really, really traumatized childhood herself.

I mean she's deeply deeply wounded.

She has not done her work.

She's you know, she's a baby boomer Boomer and

collectively speaking Boomers, don't really like to do their work.

And I apologize to, you know, anyone who's

listening to my generation who is doing the work.

I'm like grateful that some people in that generation

dude.

But

electively like they just Put on your big-girl panties.

So she, she

just has no good excuses.

She just like I was in love.

That's all I can tell you is.

I was in love and I didn't care about anything but

having him all to myself when we were together.

So you learned the truth.

Your

brother is not surprised by this

was your sister surprised when you told her.

Yes.

So my oldest

sister, when I tell her in the hallway she immediately does this thing that in my perspective, she's been doing to me all my life Oh, you know, she rolls her eyes and oh, come on Jennifer.

You know, it's, it's the medication or it's Alzheimer's, or whatever.

Her opinion was.

And I just said to her, like, if you can't be supportive to me right now, please just don't say anything, you

know?

And so to her credit,

she she did the best she could, I think to get the space to provide some kind of emotional support to me.

But again, emotional Use psychology is just not really, the language of my family, they're real comfortable.

Talking about politics.

Mmm.

And we're very like, divided family over that because everything that grasses into politics, when I went to see my birth certificate, mother had to keep redirecting him to the purpose of the conversation, because he just kept wanting to go on and on about politics.

I gave me perspective on why my Sibling Group is like that.

It's really just what we were raised

with.

Yeah, so you find

this information, you tell your sister you tell.

Tell your birth certificate father in that time.

Are you trying to figure

out who or learn more about?

Who

your biological father is?

So my mom tells me who he is obviously and she says, your Uncle, Mike is really your uncle, so my

godfather, his name is Beck, and I always called him Uncle Beck, because he was my godfather and because he was him and his wife, my Aunt, Carol and my to quote, unquote cousins,

Spent a lot of time like at our home and I was going to their home when we were little

like my cousin Mark was like my buddy and I adored my uncle, but he wasn't, really my uncle.

He was just my godfather but they are like family turns

out.

He really is my uncle because he's my biological dance brother.

And

so she says your uncle Vic actually is your uncle.

Here's his

number.

You can reach out to him and, you know, give it ever information.

We need like the morning of leaving the hospital, seeing my sister.

I go home.

I had come in from

out of town so I was staying in a girlfriend's house with my with my man friend Michael who's been an amazing support through this whole thing.

So I'm kind of telling my boyfriend, everything that happened at my girlfriend's house and he's supporting me through it.

Now, I now that I'm reading the literature, I know, maybe I should have waited, but I felt I was so thirsty for information and I felt like, oh my God, like I'm old, I'm 46.

What if I don't?

Find everything out

immediately.

Like what

if I have siblings and then they died, and I miss my opportunity.

So I felt

like this intense sense of urgency.

So, reach out to my uncle.

And I'm

like, is your brother, my father?

And my uncle Vic says, yes, I believe.

So, I've always suspected this and I suspect, that's why, you know, you and I were always so close when you were little because I mean, I adored like, I just

adored, I just loved him

so much and he was like, I think that's because we are like, bye.

Logically linked.

And that's probably why we had that connection.

So he tells me you've

got two brothers

and I say, can you reach out to them?

It's okay if they don't want any part of this but I would really like to do DNA so I can confirm and so one of my brother's response to my uncle and says, oh my gosh, of course, I would love to meet her.

Please give her my number and so that I reach out

to my brother and

we start having an exchange and like three days later.

This all happens like really quickly like within five days.

I go from learning to having pizza and beer with my new brother and swabbing his cheek for DNA.

Yeah, we didn't do a spit test.

We did like an actual like sibling tasks.

It was like a cheek swab

and it took about three weeks to get the confirmation.

In the meantime, I start digging around my

daughter's ancestry profiles

because I had gotten my

daughter's ancestry kits a number of years ago to get their Raw.

Take data tip for health reasons.

Yeah,

yeah, I never really looked at it.

Like, I just didn't I just don't look at the family stuff.

I'd never occurred to me.

It was, I wanted to help data and I start seeing in their profiles.

Like,

there's the girl who my little brother who made the disclosure to my little brother.

You know, like, oh, I know that name is a unique name and it's becoming clear to me that this is real.

And so three weeks later, we got the confirmation my brother and I are 99.98% half-siblings.

What was it like To meet him in that capacity to meet him as your brother.

It was amazing because for me, a huge part of my trauma

story is the story of my Sibling Group and not being connected to my Sibling Group, that's a

big.

I think this is another piece of trauma that doesn't get spoken about very much in the healing world.

We all talk about our mother ruined.

Our father

won't, we don't talk about what it's like to feel disconnected, from your siblings and That is a great sadness for me to have such horrendous disconnection for my siblings.

I get it, we're all traumatized and so we all cope the best way we can and we've hurt each other in that process.

But it's a big it's a big hole in my heart to have a disconnected Sibling Group.

So just sit across from my brother and he was just pure

joy like he was warm and open and welcoming and like I'm so excited.

I've always wanted a sister, I mean and it was there was genetic mirroring that

process of looking in and being like, Oh my gosh, there's my nose.

Yeah, there's my chin in.

This is why I look different from my other siblings.

Like, I've always felt that sense of my three older siblings seem very, they're just bonded.

I mean, they were all like boom boom boom.

So they really grew up together and they were all really bonded and I always just felt kind of on the outskirts of

that and then my little brother.

ER is so much younger and

then I was kind of kicked out of the home so young and so my have a huge heart for my little brother but he probably doesn't recognize that or would tell you that I'm lying because we've been so disconnected.

But I've always felt like this really special place in my heart for Him and I'm guessing now because he's the only person I'm like fully related to.

Yeah but my new Elder half-brother has been amazing.

My other half brother doesn't want anything to do with any of this.

I And once I'm in his wife and he

seemed really open.

He was like, literally went like this.

It was like, my sister Adams is so

great.

Then it then.

After that, it was nothing.

He doesn't respond.

When I reach out and I tried reaching out to his children and my niece responded.

I don't find him to do this.

Please don't contact me anymore, and so I'm going to respect that.

She's an adult.

I'm going to respect that, but it hurts hurts my heart because it makes me think like, what kind of Rolla have, they

received

that, you know, they don't even feel open to the possibility of like a new aunt who could come into their life and love them, it just really hurts my heart for

them.

But my other brother

ji will come G is interacts with the G.

He's been wonderfully open and welcoming and he has to really great kids who have also been very open who are super sweet.

And I adore them.

They're grown to my nephew just graduated high school and my niece of in college.

So getting to know them has been

wonderful.

I moved back to Illinois.

Like, remember my guy and I are on

opposite coasts.

we're like, where we going to live and so I decided to move back to Allen.

Oi

four-year temporarily to help ensure that my mom get put in a decent.

Like we knew, we had to put her in

Assisted Living.

Can you know, my brother's, my little brother who's been her, caretaker has a

full plate, he's got a wife.

He's got a daughter with autism, and he works full-time.

And And, you know, he's just his plate

has fallen.

He's overwhelmed.

And so, I just thought I can

get the shit done, so I decided to move home to make sure that we found a home for my mom and got to put home.

And so that I could have you here to just kind of take care of her and then, covid heads.

And so my mom's in a home but it's locked down and there's no seeing her anyway.

But I spent that whole year, has been altering Crimea, spent all of covid.

Getting to know, my older brother, like

having game nights at his

place and playing board games with my niece and nephew and Eating my brother's delicious food.

He's like this incredible cook, is their mother still

alive.

Their mother is still alive,

but they are disconnected from her.

They've been no contact with her.

I think for 20 years, okay, I was curious

if any of it had to do with our protection of her but it sounds like no because there are no contact with her.

Yeah, I honestly

my poor brother is like so traumatized by my dad and his mom that he's like

FM.

I've Her at all of them.

My dad died from what.

I understand.

He died a millionaire.

So I grew up really poor

like really working through poverty.

Trauma is like a big part of the work that I've had to do there.

Were there any concerns from either of them that you know, of that you were going to try to stake a claim in the money.

Because I hear that a lot that people are families, are worried that the npe will come And and say, oh, I'm entitled or that kind of thing where you ever up against any of that.

Now

know if, if any of them had that thought

they never told me they don't have anything.

my brother is self.

My brother, the one

I'm connected to Jean.

He's self-employed they never got a me that money their mom kept it from them and then as far as I know, squandered it away, I don't really know

but I don't have

anything either.

Like we're all just working class.

I'm also self employed and have very entrepreneurial spirit and so I feel like I get that from my dad, that has rolled downhill to me and my brother

went ended up happening with your mom.

Have you talked to her?

I mean, you said now she doesn't really like to talk about it.

Did she ever tell you anything

more after that five, our confession in

the year?

That I lived there?

Whenever I would see her, which was not often because of covid.

So her Assisted Living place like

had them on lockdown, they were not a lot out.

So I wasn't really getting to see her much.

I would go to the

grocery store for her and, you know, I'd have to leave everything in the lobby.

So I didn't get a ton of time with her, but

towards the end of my year there, we did spend a day where I drove her

around to all over Chicago and to all the cemeteries where everyone was buried.

she did answer

questions for me in that day.

She

told me a lot more about my grandmother.

I'm a little stuck on that right now with my mom

because I was kicked out.

So, So young, and I just spent my childhood like, basically being homeless because my mother's answered to, you know, having difficult, rebellious children was to kick them on their

ass.

I have a fair

amount of resentment because my grandmother lived in the town where I was, but I didn't know she was my grandma

and all of the cousins, I've met through my dad's side and for the most part, my cousin's have been very welcoming.

Oh my gosh, it's exciting.

Welcome to the family,

I'll tell these really amazing stories of my grandmother and how loving she was.

She's the best grandma ever.

And she would pick them up from school and she would bake cookies and my brother tells that story too.

And so, I'm really kind of mad at my mom that she not only did she kick me out, but that she kept me from having any kind of support.

You know, I'm pretty sure if my grandmother would have

known, I was her granddaughter.

I

would had a roof over my head during my childhood.

So that's kind of like a sticky point for me with my mom,

but she was available to

answer questions while I was faced Face with her.

But once I moved everything just like, went totally silent.

I reach out

to her.

She pretends like she doesn't see it.

Now she's got this new narrative going.

Where she's like,

I don't recognize this number.

Who is this?

Okay, Mom.

Wow, I said to like roll my eyes and

laugh because it's just so typical of

I'm just going to blatantly, like, avoid.

So, how have you been processing?

All of this

information And I know that you're a

therapist but I imagine you probably need

external

support for yourself to get through this.

So what have you been doing?

Nothing.

I wish I had a better answer.

I tried I went

through three therapists because I'm a therapist, and I'm a trauma specialist.

So I'm, you know, I

have a very critical eye for therapists.

If it doesn't feel like a good fit or I can

tell that something's

off, I'm like yeah.

You're fired.

So, I went through

three therapists, the one therapist she literally couldn't get it, she just couldn't get it.

And she was

saying all of the stupid shit that people say like well your dad is still your dad and I'm like, my dad gave up on me at age 12.

Like that's not a good consolation prize he's a piece of shit, you know?

So I was really frustrated with her like saying that kind of shit so I let her go and then I had another one.

A gentleman who

He was a semantic therapist, and I'm also submit a therapist, but everything was about semantics.

I was like, okay, I just I need to tell my story to and so, I fired him.

I'm sorry.

See a pattern.

Maybe I need to work this out.

And then I

had a third one who, really just wanted to talk a lot about covid in my stance on masking and like couldn't take my redirecting back to my story, I guess it was in the hi

Dakota.

Yeah, people are in their own headspace about what's going on in the world and

that therapist couldn't get out of their own way.

So I hadn't done anything and I literally just compartmentalised, I was going through so much, all of this should

happen with my mom.

I had gotten

divorced started, dating a new guy, we traveled all over the country were on separate coasts, moved back to Illinois and then we would just gonna write because we're like, okay, where we gonna live?

Let's go limited on.

So then we move across the

country and then a year later, we're moving across country again

in when I moved back to Illinois, I started my own company like my life is just so chaotic, but I Kind of put everything on the shelf.

And then I find out

in July, I hear the term nde because I put a post up with a photo of my brother, and one of my friends on Facebook says,

oh my gosh, I'm an mpeg-2.

And I was like, what is that?

What she's like?

And then she tells me and I'm immediately, like, find all the things fight, all the groups.

Join other groups

order me on Hayes book,

like, start digging around all the websites like, just

trying to figure out.

What's what Who's Who?

And one of the group's I'm in was so helpful.

They're all helpful, right?

But I think we each gravitate to our different kind of no sir.

Hurry up has been really, really helpful for me.

You know, I have done a few of their resumes.

It's really helpful to like hear other people's stories and because a part of my trauma is not telling my story because I'm kind of used to being invalidated by my Sibling Group.

Like I stuck everything.

And I would go to those groups that I would just stopping and Aaron would

be lie to you.

Want to tell any part of your story?

And I'd be like, no.

She's okay.

She's just like so gentle with me.

You know, she never pushed, just

let me have my timeline and then I went last weekend I was at her Ayah 33.

And that was the first time that I told any of my story

and those put the poor facilitator.

Such like I was in like I'm a therapist.

East.

And I'm totally just regulating random like, literally, like coming out of my body.

I'm just dysregulated.

I can't keep it in.

I'm like, I'm gonna vomit all the emotion all over the place.

I break down in session

and the facilitator handled it so beautifully.

In there was another therapist in my group and they were just very supportive.

And there, there was this older woman who has really like Mom energy and she literally just

like pulled me away right here, don't.

But some butts, Other even, it

was the first time that I told any of the story and it was so healing to just finally, let it out and talk about it and then have everybody there just beyond the holding space.

Uh-huh, just be a knowledge-based.

So is really like just last week that I started doing any of the work.

Hmm, that's so nice to hear.

So where where would you say you are now in

terms of your relationships with your mom, your Beings and everyone involved in your journey.

It's the same as it was before.

My mom she

doesn't recognize my number know who I am right now.

So we're exactly in the place we were before.

All this started.

I don't have any ill will towards my mom.

I have a lot of

compassion for her.

I understand that she's doing the best.

She can given her unhealed trauma but I honestly don't want to hang out with her.

I don't when I have the holidays with her I you know, she's never made an effort to be a grandma so she doesn't get those.

Since of me, she hasn't learned those pieces of my life.

So I don't go out of my way for

her, but, you know, she ends up back in the hospital.

I'm sure I'll go back home.

Yeah, my birth certificate.

Father, he's so vile when I drove there in April, I really was in April 20.

20 to tell him.

And I really have a lot of mixed feelings.

Like, I felt like I've hated him my whole life and then I was like, but what?

If he knew what he

knew that I wasn't his daughter and he raised me.

A way that is something that a loving person would do.

Perhaps he doesn't deserve my hate, you know,

there's all these issues around

child support and yeah, you know, like

things that I was mad about and I had a renegotiate, all of those things for myself.

Like so I went down because I wanted to see and talk to him

as an adult in like find out what his side of the story was and he was horrible.

Vile disgusting just racist misogynist.

Rubble.

He was his response to

me telling him.

He's not my dad as well.

I'm not surprised.

Your mother was always a whore.

Oh wow.

Like this is just how he talks.

It's and I'm just, like, so insensitive kept calling me by my sister's name didn't want.

I never asked me anything about my life, or how

any of this is going for me.

At one

point.

He says, how many kids do you have any word, on how many kids

are young?

And, you know, I tell him three kids and

I'm saying my daughter's name Ames and

he like interrupts me and just starts talking about soap.

Again like the level of like

narcissism that he's operating with is just

that, that was kind of that visit

was confirmation for me that I don't need him

in my life and when I left, he didn't make any effort, he wasn't like, should we exchange numbers?

It was nice to see you.

He was just like by, okay, and I sent him an email like a week later and said, I know I came on

announce you didn't need to let me in, I really appreciate you.

Letting me in.

Thank you so much for your time.

You know, I hope you and his wife have a nice life and he never even responded.

So, that's over my

siblings, my siblings, and I kind of kept up a relationship for a few months after everything happened.

But then everything fell apart over politics

and I had kind of said to my siblings.

Can we keep politics out of the family chat?

Because it's hurtful for me because I'm different than all of them politically.

And so they say things that are like ridiculously insensitive but because they're in the

majority, right?

Because they all think alike.

They're in the majority.

So they don't have any concept that we could be offensive to anybody.

And I was like, this is this is really offensive.

It hurts my feelings, can we just leave politics out of the family chat and that didn't go over so well?

And so I just kind of exited the family chat and this happens a lot of my family and people people have wondered relationships over ticks and my family, it's just a bit.

What are your feelings about your biological father?

I know that he died.

For you had a chance to get to know him but based on what you've learned and the circumstances of how you were born and everything,

where you at with that, I have

compassion for him too.

But I have a lot of anger towards him.

I think he was a womanizer, he was young, he was only 36 when he died.

drafted into Vietnam and 17 so I know

I'm guessing he had trauma and

he was

discharged from the military with a purple heart because he was wounded in an act of saving his brothers.

So I think there's probably pieces of Integrity to

his character, but

he was very handsome.

I see pictures of

him and I'm like, oh, this makes sense.

Hmm, he was tall.

He was handsome.

He gave my mother who's a very Meek passive insecure, traumatized woman.

He gave her attention.

I'm sure she just fell Hook Line and Sinker for that.

So I don't think he loved her, although, she

Believes he did.

I don't think he loved her the way she believed he did.

But I do believe he was probably kind to her when he was in her bed.

So I believe he was a womanizer.

I believe you abandoned me and my little brother and I think that's bullshit, but, you know, he's been dead since I'm eight.

So, what am I going to do?

I do communicate with him quite a bit in meditation, like I when I'm a meditator and so, when I'm in that space, I have words with him a lot,

his energy.

I feel like has shifted since all this happened.

I used to be

angry and And I'd like to see mediums at the beginning.

I had two mediums in the middle of session quit.

They were, like, I can't go on that.

This energy is too heavy, and then I've had some where it's like, it feels like his energy is getting lighter.

And people are like yeah, he's dark.

But, you know, it's manageable and then I had a session last week of Araya at The Retreat.

The, the woman kind of shared well, since you're doing the healing work and you're transmitting, the pain.

And to love, it's going to help your ancestral energies and so whatever.

We can't prove any of these things with science but it feels real good.

And my mind's eye so

so I have more

compassion for him not to and I do feel support from him from the other side and from my grandma like the energy of my grandma's Spirit has been very healing for me.

Like I'll kind of call her in when I need to feel some unconditional love, and I need to, I call her in.

When I know I'm in my own ego bullshit and I need someone to put me in check because her, I trust her energy.

Does it in a loving way and social call me out of my bullshit and still give me love.

So yeah, that's been really healing for me is to actually kind of harness, these relationships with the energy of my ancestors.

That's beautiful.

That's really beautiful.

What advice do you have for a parent?

Who is keeping a Surprise from their

child's being accountable.

Just be accountable and that that being

accountable takes a fair amount of Bravery.

So I would say be accountable, be accountable and be brave, be brave, and be accountable,

you know, if you can tell

the story of how you've been traumatized, if you can tell the story of how your parents, your spouse traumatized you, but you can't hold space for how you may have passed some of that onto your kids.

Then you are living in your blind spot.

So just be

accountable.

It's it's it's really hard work.

I know it's hard work because I'm trying to do with my own daughters.

I've hurt I spent a lot of their childhood operating out of my trauma and really fucking up the mountain gig.

You know, just really hurting my kids with my pain.

And it's it's it's hard to take ownership of that.

And it's tough to sit in the space of letting them share the pain that I've caused them with me, you know it's hard to look in your own mirror and so I get why people don't want to take accountability why they wanted to flapped and why they want to blame and why they want to guess like because it's really hard to sit in that space of I fucked.

Something up for crying out loud.

Just stop the fucking cycle.

Hold on to the bullshit.

The accountable to your kids.

Let them heal.

You know, just let your kids he'll take responsibility.

So I love that word.

I love that word accountability.

That that's really it.

What advice do you have for someone who just discovered that they are in NP E?

I would tell new

MP.

It's interesting.

I shared your, your medium piece yesterday on Facebook.

Thank you so much.

it was really well.

Written Alexis.

Thank you.

And one of my friends was like, I have a girlfriend going

through this and she opened a PM with all of us.

And this girl, this woman has known for two years or four years and never heard the term in the eat until I shared your your medium pace yesterday.

So gather, so many of us up there.

Yeah, but I would probably tell people manage your expectations and don'ts of abandon, you know, I think we.

So, Desperately want, the people who've heard has to be accountable to take responsibility, to give us what we need to heal, or what we think we need to heal, but let's face it right?

Like, we're dealing with traumatized people.

That's why they're

making these bad decisions, right?

Hurt people, hurt people

and our parents who like EFT everything up, did it because they're operating in their trauma, either own bullshit.

And so when we like go into these situations like do Demanding that they like

feet completely honest, don't Gaslight us,

we are asking where it's a totally unrealistic expectation.

These are messed up people.

They're going to continue to operate and messed up ways and is long as we're waiting for them to give us what we want from them.

We're abandoning ourselves.

We don't need them to heal.

I mean, I'm really happy for the people who do

have parents that take accountability and they get that peace and healing.

I'm so happy

Them.

But most of us are not going to get them and so that your work is that it's our own, it's our own Journey back to our self and, you know, you can sit in meditation and you can love your inner child and you can hug your inner child, and you can tell you're in a job that she's sorry.

And your nervous system doesn't know the difference between that and you actually getting it from your

You're still going to create a neuro

template for healing.

And so, when we make it

about, I mean p x,y,z for my mom.

My dad.

We're getting away or

Power.

Just totally Outsourcing our healing capacity.

It doesn't come from outside.

It comes from with them.

So don't abandon yourself, right?

Don't negate Your Story by Outsourcing.

Your healing needs to someone else.

Do the healing on your own and manage your expectations.

These people are not, they don't have capacity to give us what we need.

If they did, we wouldn't be in the situation that were in.

So you know, be realistic about what you're dealing with.

You're dealing with messed up people.

I love that that

was such good advice.

Ice.

It's almost like you're a therapist.

Almost.

Thank you so much for coming on the podcast and sharing your story.

It's so interesting.

How much overlap there is between all of our stories and yet, each journey is so unique.

So, thank you for telling years.

And I hope that things continue in a positive direction with your brother, really excited for you in that relationship.

Thank you Alexis.

appreciate you giving me a space to tell my story.

Thanks again to Jen for sharing her story.

If you have a DNA surprise story that you'd like to share, please email, DNA surprises at gmail.com until next time,