Debra’s DNA Surprise

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Speaker 1

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Speaker 2

Because I was getting the response that well, you know, you can change your name.

I said it doesn't matter about my maiden name.

I married right?

It doesn't mind, making name doesn't matter.

The man that was my father should be listed as my father, on my birth certificate, that's a legal document, and my legal father should be on there.

And people that have not went through this, do not understand that, but the system is not set up for that.

Imagine spitting into a tube, sending off your DNA.

And unknowingly turning your life upside 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 too.

Oh, 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.

One of the things people in the DNA surprise Community often contend with is that, we'll never have all of the answers to our questions.

In this week's episode, Deborah shares, her story, she grew up with her mother and stepfather, and was largely estranged from the man.

She believed to be her father, after reconnecting and building a relationship.

She learned that the man on her birth certificate is not biologically related to her.

Deborah shares.

How she uncovered, the truth?

What she's learned so far, and how she's moving forward without being able to get all of the answers.

Thank you for sharing your story, Debra

Debra.

And I'm 63 and I am from North Carolina.

I'll start from when my birth certificate father met my my mother they met got married and and then decided to dissolve the marriage.

All in like one weekend, it was Memorial Memorial Day Weekend, 1958.

And I guess she was seeing some other guy and met my birth certificate, father at a party.

And they decided to run off and get married that weekend.

Wow, she decides after spending a few days together that she didn't want to continue the marriage and she To go home.

She is the oldest of five girls and kind of like the caretaker for them.

And so she decided to just go home and get an annulment fast.

Forward a few months and my birth certificate.

Father was notified.

Well actually, he wasn't notified.

He received his paycheck.

He was in the Air Force and he received his paycheck and it was short like, really.

A short.

And so he went to the payoff at sending ass, you know, what's going on with my pay.

Why, why is my page short?

And they said, well that's for your pregnant wife and he's like what?

So he takes, leave goes back to where my mom was at because they were in different cities.

And here she is pregnant and so he really didn't think anything of it.

He thought maybe that I might not be his, but then when I was, Learned, he didn't have any second thoughts about it.

He just kind of said, he fell in love with me and so he didn't think anything more of it.

They had a pretty rocky relationship on-again and off-again while they were together.

My mom gets pregnant with my sister, which is we're only 20 months apart while she was pregnant with her.

I guess they had like one of their final blows and had to call it

quits.

Wow.

So they meet, they get married right away, like

Whirlwind with them like 24 hours of meeting.

They got married.

And then decided that maybe it wasn't going to work out.

But by this point, allegedly your mom has gotten pregnant with you and he didn't learn about that until way later when his paycheck started getting docked,

so they split up and I guess the Last time that I had seen him was when I was probably about four years old, and when I was in my 20s, I had already started to have my family.

So I started questioning my mom about, you know, how do I get ahold of him?

Do you have any information on him and she just flat shut me down?

Nope, don't know where he's at.

Don't know anything.

And I'm like, okay,

so they had to, they had fine.

Finally separated while she was pregnant with your younger sister and yes, at around age four, he was gone for

good.

Yeah he just kind of disappeared was living his old life and their divorce still wasn't completely finalized.

They weren't together but something was holding up the the actual finalization of the divorce.

Okay, so are their divorce actually became final?

I In around 65.

And then she met my stepfather in 66 and they got married, and they're still married to this day.

Hmm.

So he was a father but I knew

okay so you were raised by your stepfather and mother so then when you're in your 20s, you start questioning your mom about your birth certificate father.

Yes And she didn't give me any information.

So I dropped it and decided around my 30th birthday.

I had had I had finished up at all of my kids and everything and I really wanted to know what was going on with my biological father.

You know where he was at.

He had a right to know his grandchildren.

So I called my mom and I asked her if she had any information and this phone conversation, I don't know why.

It was different.

But she says, oh yeah, your grandmother and gave me her name.

The last that I know she lived up in Oregon and gave me the name of the town that she lived in and I knew my grandmother's name.

So, with that information, I hung up the phone from my mom, I called information because this is back in 79.

And so I called information and they gave me my grandmother's phone number.

So it's so far, it's taken two calls for me to find him my grandmother answers the phone and I said, you know, do you have a son named Richard?

And she said, yes and I said, well I think that I am your granddaughter Debbie and she started crying.

She said this Is a phone call.

I've been waiting for all my life.

And so, I said, well, do you know where my dad is at?

And she says, yes, he's working up in Alaska.

She goes, let me give him a call and give him your number, and he can call you.

So, I did that.

And I don't remember exactly how long it took for him to call me back, but it was wasn't more than a couple days.

And so, he works out travel arrangements to come and see me.

And the local newspaper, did a whole article on it, father and daughter re9 reunited after, you know, 30 years.

So then for the next 30 Years up until my 60s from 30 to 60, he was kind of in and out of my life.

There was a couple times that I kind of unloaded on him about him, not being in my life, he should have tried to find me and how it only took me.

Three phone calls to find him.

Yeah, because we lived with my grandmother on the same street in the same house that that my mom lived in when they met.

Okay.

So it wouldn't have been hard to find.

You

wouldn't have been hard to find at all, but he gave me all of these excuses.

Then when we would talk on the phone, his his wife, my stepmother always had to be on the other end on the other.

Extension and I was like, this is not right?

I don't know you and I'm trying to get to know you.

So how about if we just have phone conversations between the two of us?

Well then they kind of stop.

Mmm, you know and every once in a while there might be a call but it wasn't regular.

I didn't get birthday cards, I didn't get, you know, Merry Christmas or anything like that from and when I first found them, one of my When I was in my 30s, he was like, oh, you're the apple of my eye.

I'm never going to lose you again and just, you know, gave me this song and dance routine.

And my

sister on the other hand never wanted anything to do with him.

He just cheated, you know, here I was I was looking for him and she I practically had to twist her arm to get her to come and meet him, which is kind of ironic now because that's his natural daughter.

Right, right?

What was your relationship like with your mom and stepfather?

Growing

up, it was pretty normal.

I mean, I didn't miss having a dad because I had my stepfather was he took over the role of being a dad.

I was about 12 years old when I met his family here in North Carolina because we lived in California.

We came back to North Carolina when I was 12 to meet his family and, and his mother had I made a comment to my cousin's that they were her grandchildren and me and my sister weren't.

And when my step dad found out about it, he told her, you will accept these girls as my daughters or you won't see me again.

So, then from then on she, you could tell that she was just putting on an act for him.

He was 7 years younger than my mom.

So he was 19 when they got married, and my mom was 27. 26.

And he took on the role like a champ.

Wow, that's amazing.

So when I trying to find my birth certificate father, you know, I didn't want to hurt his feelings, but I just explained that, you know, there's enough love to share.

It doesn't mean that I love you any less, right?

It just means that I need to find that other part of me, you know.

So I was looking for something that I didn't really even know what I was looking for.

I was

looking for somebody.

He but it wasn't the right somebody.

So you have this, you have this decades-long on-again off-again sort of bond with your with your birth certificate father.

And then

and then his wife passed away.

He started calling me.

So, you know, I don't want to talk a little about someone that's passed, but it really looks to me like she kind of was a catalyst for him.

Not Not calling me more so she passes away.

He starts calling me and then comes out for a couple weeks visit and we really got to know each other.

Then.

I mean, I asked him every question that I could think of about his and my mom's relationship.

And he was pretty honest with me about it.

So, April of last year, my oldest son got married in the Virgin Islands and he went along with us.

He came he stayed a few days before we took off to go to the Virgin Islands and spent the week there in the Virgin Islands in a condo that we had.

Rented, he's 86 And he was keeping up with everybody.

I was amazed comes back and he spins the following week back here.

So I'm really getting to know him and I'm really having true feelings for him you know as my dad him and my stepfather meet for the first time.

How is that?

He walks up to my stepfather and he just gives him a big hug.

I was just like in shock and they said there and they visited and you know, it was, it was fine, as I was growing up my stepdad, even if my mom would have knew where my birth certificate father was at, he didn't want her to have anything to do with him, you know?

There's kind of a little bit of a jealousy thing I think.

Yeah.

Or I don't know.

Maybe he was scared of what might happen because they had such an on-again-off-again, you know, Fire and Ice relationship.

But him and my, my mom had been married for so long.

He had nothing to worry about, you know, right.

That was April and my son had took a DNA test probably about five years ago.

My oldest son and his DNA test came back.

And we always thought that his paternal.

Grandparents, were his grandmother side was polish, not 1% polish showed up in his DNA, mmm.

And their last name was a very polish last name, so I don't know what happened there, but it showed that he was 20% Portuguese and I'm like, okay, well, maybe your brand Mother is Portuguese, you know, so, maybe maybe that's where it came from.

I mean, I didn't think anything of it.

Didn't think it was tied to you at all.

You thought it was from his father's side, those dad's side,

and then my sister gets to 23andMe test from her daughter-in-law for her and her husband to take the test, you know, as a Mother's Day gift or something like that.

And so my sister takes it.

Everything shows up with Irish and European background and so I'm thinking.

Okay, well, she took it, I don't have to take it, you know, by some took it, she took it.

Why should I take it?

You know?

Yeah, well her husband didn't want to take it.

He didn't use his so she sent it to me.

I received it in July of last year.

Sent it off.

Did not think anything of it.

I just thought, okay, well this is going to be neat.

You know, I'll be able to trace my roots back to maybe Ireland.

I get my results on August 6th and I open up my email and the first thing I see is my sister is registering as a half sister.

Well, I've got some other woman that showing up as a A half-sister to.

And so I take a screenshot of it and I sent it to my sister and I say, you know what's going on?

Then I call her and we're like trying to put our heads together and figure out what in the world is going on.

Mmm-hmm could one of us be adopted know everybody in the family talks about our Burks, both of our births, you know, so we could not figure out what was going on.

So my It makes a suggestion that I contact this other half sister so I send her a message a few days passed and she responds back.

We start putting our heads together and we figure out that her father is my father and I have two half-brothers.

Wow,

what were you thinking at this

point my mind who was, it was like, it was going through the blender.

It was all scrambled.

I didn't know what to believe, because here within a matter of a few days, I had lost a full-blooded sister gained two half-sisters gained two half-brothers and lost two half-brothers because my birth certificate, father had two sons from another marriage, okay, I didn't know what to think.

I think I was in shock

and you didn't take the test because you had suspicions.

You took it because it Just a freebie from your sister just an extra one.

So yeah, I can't

imagine.

So it really hit me from Left Field.

I mean I was just it was like somebody had cold-cocked me.

Hmm, my new half-sister gives me some information and I find out that my biological father had passed away in 2005.

He was one of three siblings, a brother and a sister and And one of his brothers is still alive, and his sister had died from breast cancer.

So now I'm thinking, oh no, now I've got to change my medical records, right?

Because I was telling everybody know breast cancer doesn't run in my family and now I find out that it does hmm.

I contacted my primary care physician and I said, does this mean that I need to have a bracket test and he says, it's on your paternal?

I'd so no, you don't need to have it unless you've been having some abnormal mammograms and I'm like, oh okay, he goes, we look for it.

On the mother side, not coming from the father's side and I'm like, okay that's one relief out of this whole thing but that's such an interesting

point that you bring up is you know, not only were you contending with this initial shock of just your the paternity and additional family.

You then were Gently having to consider your medical history as

well.

So every time that I would turn around something else would hit me and it was like how much more of this can I take?

When I met my, I met one of my half-brothers.

I still have not the other half brother.

I've called the first time that I called us phone number, he answered.

And I said, you know, I think I think that were half siblings.

Your father is As my father.

And I've been in contact with Regine and Greg.

He was like, well, I can't talk right now.

I'm at work and you call me tomorrow at 5:00.

And so I'm like, sure.

So I'm like watching the clock the next day, excited to contact him because I had already talked to my other two siblings, you know.

So 5:00 rolls around I call and it goes to voicemail.

So I leave a voicemail and And he never returns my voicemail.

So I guess he just isn't interested and from talking to my other two siblings that's kind of how he is with them to.

Okay, I will probably never meet him, okay?

But I meet the other, the other half brother and have a picture of him and me together.

So I decide to post it on Facebook and tell my story because up to this time I hadn't said anything.

So I found In August of last year.

And this is now April of this year.

Okay?

And so you you haven't met your half-sister at this point, she's the one that's made the connection.

Yeah, we've just talked on the phone.

And then you got to meet your half-brother.

So I make this post and that ticked off my other sister, my sister that I grew up with, hmm, only I didn't know about it until May when I was contacting her.

Her to find out, you know, when would be a good time to come and visit her in June, you know, that we had dates planned, and we wanted to know if it was, if it was good for her and her responses, through text messages and messenger was weird, it was not like her normal messages to me and I thought something's up so I sent her a message that said, you know, it looks like this is a bad time.

We'll just decide to do something else for her.

Caishen, she says, Let me give you a call.

So something was up.

So she calls me and she tells me that she's upset about this post on Facebook, that she didn't know how to approach me about it or what to say because she didn't want to yell at me and caused friction between us.

So she just kind of kept her distance.

I said, okay, she she then said that I had thrown my mother.

And my biological father under the bus and that neither one of them could defend themselves.

My mother is alive, but she's done late stages of Alzheimer's.

So I can't get any information from her, any answers or anything from her, because she's not at the state where she can communicate anymore, okay?

They asked my sister.

I said, so does this mean that you don't want me to come out for a visit?

And she said, I think it it'd be best if you didn't.

Wow, I need to process this more.

That threw me for a loop, you know, I never thought about how this was affecting other people.

How it was affecting her as losing a full sibling.

And now I'm a half sibling to her and all the implications of

everything.

Do you have any regret about posting your

story?

No, I'm a pretty open and honest person.

And I felt like I feel like keeping things to yourself is a form of lying because my sister didn't want me to tell my stepdad, because she didn't want him to look bad on my mom.

You know, have a different thought of her that he had because of her being in the state that she is.

And I did keep the secret from him for a few weeks and then it was like this is just one more secret.

I can't keep, you know, it has nothing to do with him.

He still my he's Still my dad.

So I went ahead and told him and I asked him if you know my mom had ever said anything to him, you know in the beginning of their marriage if she had any idea and she said he said no that she never said anything.

So I was grasping at straws trying to figure out who might have some information for me.

What did you learn from your half-sister when you connected with her, your newfound half

The start that my biological father had passed away.

And I asked her some questions about what kind of man he was, and, you know, whether or not I would have, did I miss out on anything from not meeting him.

And she said that he was a good father and that he would have wanted to know.

He would have wanted to be in my life.

Because when he married his second wife and had the two boys, when he went through the divorce with her, she took off with the boys and he couldn't find them until All the oldest one was like 12 years old.

Mmm and so she knows what he went through with not having them in his life.

So he would have been upset about not having me and his wife also

and was she is she older than you or younger than you younger.

So not necessarily an affair or anything like

that.

No.

So what we figure is my mom and my bio and my birth certificate father, Matt Got married had a few days honeymoon decided to call it off.

She went back home and he went back to the base when I got my DNA test, I put in because I wanted to try to figure out dates, so I went on the computer and and found where I could calculate my conception date.

My conception date is a couple weeks after that weekend.

We're thinking that my mom because she was young, she was like, 19 that she decided to go out and have a good time, probably with her cousins or friends or both and met my biological.

Father, probably had a one-night stand or maybe they went out on a few dates and she didn't put two and two together of, who was my father?

She probably thought she got pregnant during Memorial Day weekend during that week, you know, and this is back in 1958.

So there's not pregnancy test that women can go down and take and I mean she just do it was probably just easier for her to not follow through with getting an annulment and then file, he was in the military so file, you know, for benefits.

And that's what we figure happened.

So he never knew that.

I existed.

Hmm,

so I feel really bad about the way that I told my birth certificate.

Father, he lives in Arizona and I called him off.

It was after I talk to my new half-sister and got a lot of information that I called him because I knew that he would have questions.

So I called him and And just boarded out.

Well, I took a DNA test and you're not my

father.

Wow, what was his reaction?

It's a wonder.

They didn't have a heart attack.

He's in his 80s, but he's pretty healthy for his 80s and he just kind of said.

Well, it doesn't matter to me.

That was the first words out of his mouth.

Hmm, it doesn't matter to me.

You're still my daughter and so I, you know, start a question.

And we'll, did you have any suspicions?

And that's that's where I got the information that, you know, she was dating Blond haired guy, but then I was born with dark hair and so he figured that that wasn't that guy.

So it had to be his because he didn't, he didn't think there was anybody after him.

So a funny story after I found out, after I got my DNA test, my mom is in a facility about two hours away from me.

So, every week, I would go visit her two-hour Drive their visit with her and then a two-hour drive back.

And so, when I first found out, I would mention my biological father's name to her to see if I could get any reaction out of her because long-term memories are still there, right?

And you know nothing you know and I tried showing his picture because I had some pictures of him when he was right about the time that they had met and then I had an older picture of him and so I was showing her the younger picture hoping that that would trigger something and I got no reaction out of her.

And so I did this for a few weeks.

I'd go and I sit there and you know, I go through my usual visit with her and then I shoot some questions at her and show her some pictures and wait for a response.

Look you know is there some kind of response back there?

And so this one day I'm visiting with her and I'm just like, well, Mom, it looks like you were a little wild in your younger days.

Hmm and she gets this big smile on her face and goes haha.

And starts like laughing

oh my God, I'm

like okay well that got a response and

wow have you been able to connect with anyone who might be able to answer questions about what happened?

The only person that might have some answers would be his his brother that's still alive and a couple weeks ago I got his Phone number but I haven't called him yet.

Mmm.

And the reason why I haven't called him is because regime kind of acted like he wasn't enthused about me even popping up.

So I don't know what kind of response I'm going to get and the response from my sister about the Facebook post.

Like I said, it threw me for a loop.

Yeah, so I'm not Not sure right now because because after that, I started talking to a therapist.

So I think I need more therapists guidance before I call him.

Hmm, I need to be in the right frame of mind and hopefully, he doesn't die before.

What are your feelings?

Now toward your mother,

my mom, I backed off from going and seeing her every week because every week, it was bringing up the same feelings over.

Over again, you know, I was having such mixed feelings.

You know, one time I have the thought was, she didn't know and she would be just as surprised about this as I was.

And then I think well, what is?

She didn't know.

And she, you know, kept it from me.

She could have came clean when I was 20.

She could have came clean when I was 30.

You know, by this time, I had my own kids and I told her the reason why I wanted to find him as so that my kids could know.

All of their grandparents.

So I go back and forth between being angry with her and sympathizing with her.

Yeah

and that she was just a young girl and and who doesn't make mistakes at 18 19 20 years old you know,

right?

Right.

How are you reconciling the fact that you might not ever get an answer to?

What exactly happened and how you were

conceived?

Well, I'm kind of coming to grips with the fact that I I'll never get the answer because the two people that were there are incapable of giving it to me.

I did try to go down the Avenue of looking up at ways to change my birth certificate, and I think I'm coming up against a brick wall because my biological father has passed away.

My mom can't attest to it and the only, One that I have that could give the court system, any information would be my birth certificate, dad, vouching, and having a DNA test to prove that he's not my father and he taken off on my birth certificate that way, but it would probably cost thousands of dollars to get an attorney to fight to have my actual biological father's name put on there.

And I actually talked to one attorney and she she was so fly.

Been about it.

It was like, well, why do you want to do that?

Why is it so important to you?

You know, it's not like, you're like, you're the parent and you're fighting for child support, or visit, or child, visitation, or anything like that.

And I said, because I feel like it's the only thing that I can control about this whole narrative.

Hmm, I want my paperwork to be correct.

I don't want future generations to be checking and pretty soon in the future.

I see that DNA is going to be a normal thing.

Everyone's DNA at one point is going to be in some database, some place.

I don't want my my future generations to be looking at a family tree and doing research on Ancestry or one of these other companies and come across my birth certificate and it lists the wrong man on there,

Thank you for explaining a bit about why changing your birth certificate is important to you.

Because I hear that and I see that a lot in the npe community and I think a lot of people do have that response.

Will, why does it matter?

I think there's going to have to be some changes in and legislation for for us to have an Avenue to get our biological fathers put on our birth.

Tickets.

Yes, whether they're alive or whether they're dead.

What are your relationships like with your stepfather and your birth certificate father?

Today

My relationship with my stepfather hasn't changed.

He's, you know, when I told him he says, oh it doesn't, it doesn't matter.

It's not going to change the way that I look at your mom, you know, that was before she met me, which surprised me his yeah.

Yeah, because he never wanted to meet my birth certificate, father, you know, because and that was before him so it hasn't changed with him.

And with my birth certificate father, I'm like, going out of my way to be more involved with him.

Because when I went through all of this, I also went through, I went through a grieving process.

You know, this means I have no full siblings.

So I was reading that and then on top of that, I had to grieve a man that I never even met.

Yeah, I have his genes but I've never been able to meet him because he passed away. 2005.

Have you found any ways to feel connected with him?

You mentioned some

photos.

I did make a Christmas ornament.

Like a memorial Christmas ornament for him with the two pictures that I have.

And so I put you know his birth date and date of death on there and that gave me some kind of connection to him.

When I make a visit out to California, he's buried in California.

So I will probably go see his gravestone.

I have a picture of it but I think probably probably visiting and in person will be some kind of closure, you know.

I listen to the podcast and I listen how difficult difficult.

Some people are having with connecting with her biological father, you know, that they're not met with open arms.

I don't think that that would have been my case, from what I understand of him, as a, as a father.

Hmm, I think he would have been happy to for this discovery have

You reconnected with your raised sister has she reached out to you since asking you not to visit her with, we

texted back and forth a couple times and she's due to come out in about three weeks to visit with my mom.

So I'll see her then and we'll have one night when my husband, my stepfather and my brother-in-law are going to erase.

So she's going to stay in business.

It with me.

So, I'll have some one-on-one time with her, well, where I'll be able to talk this out base to face with her.

That's good.

How would you say that this experience finding out that you're an NP e in your 60s?

How has that affected you?

Well, I found out that my that I meant in PE and that I'm half 52% Portuguese.

Yes, you had a bath next

shift.

Yes.

And that has been, I think the one of the most not disturbing facts to find out about, but all of the, what is I grew up in central, California Central California, the valley, there is full of Portuguese.

It's where they settled.

I could have very well been going to school with Cousins, you know, every year I would go to the Portuguese Festival.

That was held at the Catholic church and there was probably relatives right there.

And I knew nothing about them and that is kind of hard to digest.

Yeah, you know, I didn't even know that I was, I mean, I have I have this curly hair that nobody in the family, could explain where it came from now, I know.

It's funny.

The things that we don't question, right?

Like we, we don't consider.

Oh, I have curly hair because I have a different father or anything like that.

We just think.

Oh, I just came from somewhere.

Yeah, I never

thought of it, as you know, I might have a different father.

I thought that back way back that somebody was messing around in the woodpile.

And so, Finding out that I was 52%.

Portuguese means that I am third generation US citizen over here because it was my great grandparents came over here, had my grandparents and then they had my dad and then me so that was weird.

Do you you mention that growing up?

You went to a Portuguese Festival.

Do you feel connected?

Add to that part of your identity even though you've didn't know about it for your whole life when I stop.

And I think about

it, I do.

I never really felt 100% white.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, hmm.

I never really felt like I fit in, like I like I said, I thought that there was somebody in the woodpile, you know, Generations back.

So I never thought that I was completely white, the whole thing just does a It's like, you take your brain out and you stick it in the washing machine and everything is just gets scrambled.

Because nothing makes sense to me anymore.

I've got all of these.

What is what if I would have known my Portuguese side of the family, you know, would I have been brought up Catholic instead of Baptist mmm-hmm?

How would it have changed me to spend weekends with my other siblings?

And with my biological father, you know.

Yeah, I know over the years, I made a lot of mistakes with men thinking that my birth certificate father had abandoned me.

So I had a lot of issues with men over that, you know, just being very insecure and making bad choices.

And if I had my biological father in my life, I probably wouldn't have.

Have made those choices.

Hmm, even though I had a great stepdad, yeah, there are still that feeling that I was abandoned by my dad.

You know right I don't know how I would have handled it.

If I would have done a DNA test in my 20s, you know, or in my 30s, when this was going on, you know, when I, when I found my birth certificate, father, you know, they say that things happen, when you're ready for them, but, I don't think anybody can ever be ready for this.

That's so, well, said, so well said,

what advice would you offer a parent?

Who knows that?

They're keeping a DNA surprise from their

child.

Oh, I've thought about this so much from listening to your podcast, every time you ask it at the end of one of your podcast.

I think about it.

And I would I'd say as soon as your child is old enough, tell them if that means that they're old enough to understand it when they're a teen tell the woman routine, if when they're an adult, tell them when they're an adult.

But you know you know your child and you know what they're capable of handling and just be honest because this is just the domino effect.

You from Keeping a Secret.

If you know about it, if you don't have any idea like my mom that didn't, I don't think that she had an idea.

I thought she did what she thought was right at the time.

There's not really an advice that you can give to a person that doesn't know.

And can't go back and change what has happened, right?

Just be honest.

When you do find out about it.

If your son or daughter comes to you and says that they took a DNA test and questions you about it, be honest.

And the time for Secrets is done, it's over with it doesn't matter.

You know what the rules are going to be.

From it, from you telling the truth, because it's a lot less damaging than your child having to find out on their own.

And what advice would you offer?

Someone who just discovered that they are in NP

e?

Take a deep breath and let it sink in before you break it to other people before.

You tell your birth certificate father that he is not your

Yeah,

that's my one regret from this whole thing is a That I handled that and when I saw him this last April, you know I told him that I said I really have to apologize.

I'm so sorry that I broke it to you that way.

His should could have been handled a lot differently and he said, it's okay.

You weren't shocked.

I'm a big boy, I can handle it, so he was, he's been great about it.

He's been real supportive, he's called and he's asked me, you know how I'm doing?

Doing if I'm doing.

So he's been great,

that's good.

And I'm glad that he offered you some compassion because I was going to say, you should be compassionate for yourself because you were going through it.

You weren't shocked and I think sometimes it's hard to take that beat before acting so.

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

All of the, our stories have so much in common.

Then but they are all so unique, so I really appreciate you sharing your

perspective.

Thank you.

It was my pleasure.

Thanks again to Deborah for sharing her story.

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

And if you haven't yet, please rate review And subscribe to the podcast on Apple podcast Spotify.

Until next time,