Jennifer’s DNA Surprise

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hope connection

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And

he'll

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And then as I met the rest, the family, this became more profound.

I felt like deeply deeply connected to him in some way that I did not understand.

Mmm, I was saying to my husband this morning because I have other photos now and there's a, some photos of him when he was in, like, around my age now, a little bit younger at a time when I would have been, you know, in my, I guess.

Teens or something.

And I am compelled to look at those pictures all the time.

And I was saying to my husband, like I don't, it doesn't make much sense to me, but I like want to look at those pictures of my dad when he was like in his 40s and he was like yeah that makes perfect sense.

Because

if somebody has a parent say that dies before they're born you're contending with in your assimilating with this idea of

somebody's absence.

For the end PE or like even and peas and adoptees, and all of us, donor can see.

People, we are not only contending with their absence, which is profound in one sense.

But we're what's even heavier is that you're contending with their

presence.

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 is not 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 About NP, he's adoptees and donor conceived people, and their families.

This is DNA surprises.

Welcome to the season two finale of DNA surprises.

Before we begin.

I want to thank everyone who told their story this season, Gretchen Kara, Charlotte Michael, Paul Kara, Mark Linda Dory, Annie Leila Kristen and Jennifer.

I also want to thank you listeners for all of your emails, DM's comments and listens.

I really appreciate your support.

If you haven't yet, please rate and review the podcast on Apple and Spotify, that helps us reach even more people, experiencing DNA surprises, Now, on to the show and this week's episode, Jennifer shares, her npe story, while she was never close to her birth certificate.

Father, she was blindsided, when she put the pieces together after taking a DNA test, Jennifer shares.

How her Discovery has made an impact on her relationships and how she's building a relationship with her biological father and his family.

Thanks for sharing your story.

Jennifer in my name is Jennifer.

I am 48 years old and I am from a small rural town in Northwestern Montana.

My Story begins, I guess if a little bit about growing up is that I as I say I lived in this very small town in Northwestern Montana it was largely a mining and logging town.

I was growing up.

It's a Tri-City area that they're not really cities their towns but a very sick.

Small populated area of three towns.

And then there are these like peripheral towns that are on the outside.

So I was from one of the towns in the valley, which is one of the bigger towns.

And then the person that turned out to be my biological dad is from a town that's about 80 miles north right on the Canadian border and this was a mining town.

My mom is adopted.

So that's really where my DNA Story begins, it's really hard for me to know because she thought growing up that she was adopted at around 3 months but since fine.

Out about my history.

I uncovered that at least as far as paperwork is concerned.

It looks like she was adopted when she was closer to, you know, eight or nine months

old.

Mmm.

And so she was always wanting to find her bio family on her birth.

Certificate is the name of both parents.

However, she thought that perhaps the name of her bio father was a pseudonym.

We had accidentally discovered her bio mom because we knew her last name from the birth certificate.

My stepdad worked with someone that had the same last name, which is not a very common name in the area that we're from.

And it turned out to be this person that work with my stepfather turned out to be the first cousin of my mom's bio mom.

So we met her bio mom.

Probably like 25 years ago.

And she had had one other daughter with a different father.

The only other child that she had and we met her as well.

My mom didn't maintain a relationship.

I'm not totally clear about what happened.

My stepdad was Ill when we were growing up.

You had something called alpha-1, antitrypsin deficiency.

It's just disorder of the liver that produces this enzyme antitrypsin and there's nothing to counteract that.

And so, the protein slowly eats away the lung tissue.

So he he ended up having a heart and double lung transplant when I was 15.

So, around this time that my mom was going through this, my stepdad was quite ill.

So there's a lot going on for the family and she She didn't, I think she just couldn't handle all of the emotional stress of all of those things combined a lot?

Yeah, it's a lot.

Yeah, and she had like two stepkids and then myself and my younger sister who's five years younger than I am.

So, and that who's the daughter of my step dad and my mom, so she didn't maintain a relationship with them but she always had this, you know, like deep desire to know who her bio dad was, and I was very close with my her adopted parents.

My maternal.

Grandmother and grandfather and my grandmother kept these really extensive family, like Heritage, the biggest family trees genealogy was something that like, her entire side of the family was very into her parents had been settlers in Montana and she had like 13 brothers and sisters.

Wow, yeah.

So they like, she like to trace the heritage of.

So when she passed away, I kept all of her records.

And I knew that this database through Ancestry.

This was like, sort of prior to the DNA, really taking off, but I knew that there were these extensive records.

So I was entering all of the data into this database in hopes of, you know, like just making connections with different members of my grandmother's family and in doing.

So I thought I might be able to locate my mom's bio-dad because we did have this name even though my mom thought it was a pseudonym.

You know, I thought at some point, maybe it would Would be able to trace that person.

I've been doing that for several years off, and on I was in graduate school so I didn't have a ton of time to dedicate to it and I had a small sun in the mid-2000s and my younger sister, who is the daughter of, as I said, my mom and stepfather.

She bought me a DNA test.

That was in 2016.

I took the DNA test in the hopes of finding my mom's father and I didn't look at the ethnicity.

I didn't look at the map, you know like the Geographical.

Yeah.

Really pay much attention to it.

It said that I was 57 or 60% Norwegian and my mom had always said and I'm not sure where she came up with this but that her at this point, I think was some kind of projection.

But she said that her biological father, which he had been told, is that he was a Norwegian skier, which is a weird story that you said he came to United States, its key and it was a bizarre story but so anyway, I looked at the ethnicity I was like oh you know whoa I'm sixty percent Norwegian surprised.

I wasn't very surprised and I just didn't pursue it.

And there was a woman that contacted me and said, you know I'm your second cousin.

I was like oh great you know she lived in a neighboring town, I was like great, this is a cousin, probably a first cousin of my mom so I communicated back and forth with her trying to put the pieces together of how she was related to my mom's father and to try to find names, you know, the name that we knew, I tried to see if there was a similar name and nothing but that Was my presumption was that they were in some way related on my mom's paternal side.

She also had many many cousins like between second and third, you know, cousins like 50 60 cousins that were on Ancestry.

And to know, come to realize later.

I was related all these people as well, but, you know, it just didn't occur to me.

She was the only person I was in contact with about three years later.

My mom took a DNA test.

Also that my sister bought her as a gift and I also didn't look at her results, very I did not compare our results whatsoever and then in December so we sit still no leads on her.

Father at that point come December of 2020.

My younger sister took a test.

I didn't know that she was taking it but then she said, oh, you know, I have my results on Ancestry and this was around December 20th or something 2020.

So I was like, great, you know, let's go on.

Let's compare this is, this will be a great lead, you know, because maybe We can track down, Mom's Dad and so we go and we compare our results and I was like, oh, this is weird.

You know, our ethnicities, even though we're half sisters were really Divergent, they were very, very different.

Hmm.

She's heavily, determine, which makes sense because her father was German both of his parents and then she had like a quite a bit of Irish Scottish and so I was like, you know, and then some like English British So I said, well, let's compare with long, so I got the three, we've got the three together, we're on the phone, you know, looking looking at all of this and my mind is, like, still not going there as most people's probably that's

not she

and my mom were very close we matched on that missing person.

And then I noticed that I had like no Irish and Scottish background.

The reason that that's complicated is because my birth certificate dad is a first-generation Irish Scottish

Okay, on both of his parents.

Actually, your younger sister.

You knew already, she was your half-sister so you were expecting.

Did I do exalts but not so different.

Correct.

Okay, we compared all three are ethnicities were not similar at all.

My mom was not in on this, by the way, she didn't, you know, she wasn't, it was emotional for her, right?

Because she was looking for her father.

And so my sister and I were doing all the comparisons and then suddenly it occurred to me that the woman that had contacted me from the other neighboring town.

All of her cousins were not really on either profile of my mom or my sister,

and then

the light bulb sort of went off and I was like, oh now things are starting to make sense that whole npe experience of oh you know I felt like an outsider growing up and you know how, why didn't I fit into the family?

And why did I have this, like sort of tortured relationship with my mother?

And, you know, just all of the different things things that I presume.

Zoom had to do with the fact that I was a stepchild.

And all of the other children in the house were children of my stepdad.

I thought that's why I felt like an outsider and then things really started to come together.

My sister and I started trying to figure out like what was going on.

She started to make a tree, you know like a lineage tree to see if she could track down the different names are very common like Scandinavian names and so she was trying to see if she could find something that was like aberrant, you know that would Would clue Us in to who to who my, you know, what might be going on.

And she was making excuses like well, maybe your bio dad, who lives, 2,000 miles away, who was born and has always lived, 2,000 miles away, maybe he was adopted from Montana, you know?

And so you should say, she really was.

She

was she was like and she was like seeking.

Seeking any sort of reason would make sense.

Right.

Like easier Avenues, just planting.

And I should say, you know, she's very she and my mom were very, very close.

She's very protective of my mom.

My mom.

And I have always had a very contentious relationship and my sister, you know, being the youngest and being just having the personality that she has, you know, which is very like low-key and accommodating.

His always tried to make our relationship work.

The relationship is between my mom myself.

So, I think she was continue to do that,

really?

Okay, at that point, Did your mom start to kind of pick up what was happening or was she still kind of clueless about what you

discovered.

We weren't really talking to her about that part.

She was really excited to know.

We were fined.

If we were going to find her biological father and we did find his family at that time.

So we were all these this Confluence of things happening.

Like, we found her biological sister on her dad's side and you know, he had recently passed away like literally, like two months before and it turned out Out.

My mom had like a sister and three brothers, but so she was sort of thinking about that but she didn't, we did not talk to her about this other issue, until that very moment, when my sister started to make the lineage tree and I texted my mom, you know I felt like I was so discombobulated I was so confused.

I sent her a message and I said, you know, this name keeps coming up on my profile on Ancestry these few names do you know as cousins who are related to me but they're not related to you and there.

Related to my sister, you know, do you have any explanation for that, do these names sound familiar and she was like no you know those names are ringing a bell even though they're like the most calming Cabinetry things you can think of and I was like well do you have any explanation of why you know my you know ethnic background would be different than yours and my sisters are why it's different than my bio dad and she was like, no no no.

I was like, okay so this is super protracted.

This is happening over the course of like three days because the day that we actually really figured it out, was the eve of Christmas Eve on December 23rd.

My sister finished making the tree.

In a name appeared on the lineage map that she made that was familiar to her.

And that was not such a common name and it was familiar to her because it was a close friend of her dad, my stepdad, when we were growing up my sister called my mom and I said, you know, this is coming up on Jen's as a relative, possibly know based on a family tree that I created.

And my mom was just like dead silent according to my sister and then she said well, that really complicates

things.

Wow.

So, who, who did you believe was your biological?

Father growing up.

And what was your relationship like with him?

My mom graduated from high school and She moved downtown to this little town.

And she moved in with a group of friends, right?

And they, you know, so that they could, you know, party and do whatever young girls to write that up.

They had a party one night.

This is the, this will explain more about who my birth certificate that is stay at a party one night and the guy that turned out to be my bio dad, you know, came to the party and he was like an athlete, a Collegiate athlete and he was in town and he had this sports car and he came to the party and you know, she got in the car with him and drove to the neighboring town of He was from and you know one thing led to another hmm I was conceived but she fell and I don't know.

She hasn't been clear if they maintained a relationship or what exactly was going on at that time, but she was dating my birth certificate dad around that same time.

It sounds like she may have met him like a month later.

He was a manager at the place that she worked and she started dating him and she said she didn't really like the partying lifestyle and so she dated him for life.

Like two weeks from what I can figure out at this point.

I never made these calculations while I was growing up.

None of this cross my way, she did it in for a couple weeks.

They got married and she moved to Ohio, which is 2,000 miles away.

And while they were living in Ohio, she said, she discovered, you know, she was feeling ill.

She discovered, she was pregnant and like, six months later.

I was born and she said, it never even crossed her mind that.

It could have been my bio Dad.

So we lived with my birth certificate.

Dad in Ohio, where I was born and raised and where his extended family is from.

And then, you know, clearly things started to fall apart.

And so she, when I was three months, old packed me up.

Took me back to Montana.

We lived with my grandparents, her parents until they got divorced.

And then she literally married my stepdad probably well I was like between 18 months and like two years old when they got married.

So I always believed that the man in Ohio was my birth certificate.

Dad was my bio dad and he Would he never lived in Montana in the Summers?

He would pack up his family.

He had a step, son and two daughters and they would drive this.

You thousand miles from Ohio to Montana and spend like 10 to 14 days in my hometown.

And I would get in the van with them when they showed up and we would go and stay and like, motels around my hometown.

I wouldn't see my family, my nuclear family during that time at all.

I wouldn't see my friends or anything.

Just stay in this motel with these people.

So it was kind of like he was sort of like a, you know, and Uncle.

I mean obviously I called him dad and I considered him my dad, but he was very far away.

Okay.

So, so he wasn't a huge part of your life.

But you did see him yearly and you did believe he was your bio Dad, okay?

Until yeah.

And, you know, in my mind as a kid, it was always very confusing because I have this step family and I had a stepdad who Who was there from the time that I was too, but we didn't have a very close relationship and you know, like he didn't come to my basketball games and he didn't take me to dance class and he didn't, you know, he was not present in that way.

Part of that was because he was Ill, but part of it was because we just didn't have that kind of relationship and he had these three of their children.

So I did kind of cling to the fact that I had this Dad somewhere.

Even though, like, I felt like, you know, I fought Let's child basically like I didn't it was very confusing as a kid growing up because I felt like an outsider.

I was very, very emotional kid.

Like I cried at the drop of a

hat and a

lot of it was probably just like the instability of all of that.

I mean, it's very confusing.

So you're saying your mom had no idea.

She she believed that your birth certificate.

Father was your bio dad, so kind of going.

Back to when you when your sister confronted her and she said this complicates things what happens next,

my sister then tells me, so that's another complicated.

Part of the story in that my mom didn't call and tell me herself, she didn't call and say, oh, you know this person, I don't remember being around, but, like, peripherally.

I remember his name and his family and everything.

She did a call and told me that this is your father, my sister called and told The conversation that you had with my mom.

So I am totally bereft at this point.

I am so I am well as, you know, you would like, you feel like you're splitting in two.

It's a, is such a visceral and I don't even know.

I mean, I don't have to explain it to you, but for other people, you know, it's just when you find out like that everything has been a lie, right?

You realize there's a man out there that you presumed was Your father or that you had no father.

That there is a sadness that is so profound that.

I feel like you're unable to breathe.

Do you know what I mean?

Like this.

You can't.

It's just like your these two parts of yourself have totally split off, right?

Whether that happened when you were born or whether that happens at that very moment when you find out.

Yeah, it's so discombobulating.

So I'm texting my mom, saying I need to talk to you.

Now, I think we need to have a conversation and she was like, oh yeah, give me a call, you know, in five minutes and I was like, oh okay, you know, so yeah, he puts the onus on me to call her so then I call her and she doesn't answer the phone and he's I'm sitting there talking with my husband like sobbing my porked, you know, five-year-old is there, you know, trying to figure out what's going on and I'm like, I'm totally incapable of managing all the emotion of it.

And so, then my Mom calls back in second how sorry I was busy doing the dishes and I was like, okay, well yeah, you know, it's calling but the as the case may be, is there something that you need to tell me.

And so she tells me the whole story, she tells me the story of the him coming to the party and them driving in his car to his house and this town, you know, far Northern Montana.

So, she tells me this whole story, she tells me it in sort of like, way too much detail, you know, there was Yeah, there's too much, too much information for me to cope with at that point,

you know.

And she says that no,

after that, that point it never occurred to her.

She said I went to Ohio and I felt ill, you know, at some point I was very sick and she said your grandmother, which would be my birth certificate.

Dad's mother said, well, do you think you might be pregnant?

She said, in his wife took a pregnancy test and I was pregnant and we had you and never cross your mind.

Which is impossible to understand, as a woman who, you know, has had right Partners in.

All right, you have intimate Partners is not like you, I mean, maybe you block it out.

Maybe people block it out, I don't know.

Maybe it was too much for her to handle.

I try to be understanding about it because she is adopted.

So, I feel like she has this, like, disconnection in a lot of ways.

I'm trying to learn more about it because I to be perfectly honest with you, I have a lot.

I haven't Not been very understanding with her about it, so I'm trying to understand her position as an adoptee, right?

As you know what was happening for her, her whole life going up and not knowing her own parents and specifically that she was looking for her father that perhaps she just in her experience, not knowing who your father was is not is just the way things work in life, you know.

I don't, I really don't

know.

Yeah, I And it is hard.

I think for anyone, especially who's had a child or, I mean, heck, even a pregnancy scare you think.

Okay, who, who could it be right?

Like, you would think that would be the question.

But, you know,

especially when you see the baby.

So, when I asked her about it to this day, like a little little bits and pieces come to the surface sort of, she still says that it never crossed her mind at the time.

And she sang like looking back.

Now, it does.

And I'm thinking, well, first of all, this man was around and you cannot look at him and look at me, and she knew his entire family.

Let me put that out there.

It's a very small area.

Like the fan, you know, that the people that live in that geographic area.

It's a very small group of people and they're a distinct looking group of people and my mom is like short and my dad, my birthday bash work.

I'm like almost 5, 10, and slender and My my birth certificate dad, their whole families built totally differently than I am.

When I asked her if she knew had any idea about this?

No.

But she tells me the story about when they were together and I say well were you a couple or, you know, were you dating or worry?

Was it a one-night stand?

And she was like, we weren't dating, but we hung out a lot and I was like, okay that's vague and I said so was it a one-night stand or did it happen?

More than once.

She was like, she sort of said, the same thing.

Like we were spending a lot of time together, okay?

Which leads me to believe it wasn't a one-time thing, right?

The possibly, she had the I was seeing two people at one time, is my, my guess about that.

But when I'm talking to her about this during the first telephone conversation, she says, oh, you know, I'm very understanding of this time.

This is before I start to get like, really angry with her.

She says, I have these photos.

Let me take pictures.

Them with my phone and send them to you.

So she takes these photographs of the, of some party in the 70s and, you know, going back a calculate and I was like, oh, I must have been about, you know, five or six when these photos were taken.

And it's my stepdad and my now, I know bio dad and a bunch of their friends that I remember from growing up because they all, you know, like, party a lot.

And they're like playing Horseshoes and drinking beer and smoking cigarettes.

No, and there's a picture of this guy.

This like Tall Blond tan guy and no shirt on, and, like, cut off shorts, and no shoes.

And and so, she has photographed and sent it to me like all blurry on my phone and she was like, this is your father.

Do you recognize him?

And I was like, you know, no I don't recognize him whatsoever and you know, like I realized I've seen these photos before.

It's not clear to me why she has them because there's like, 10 pictures of this one guy, right?

But there's a particular photo where he's standing at a profile and I looked at it and I was like it was like looking at my own profile when I was that age know he would have been like 20 28, I guess at the 8th at that time, and, you know, I showed it to my husband and I showed it to like, the, to my, to really close friends that were like, trying to help me process all of this, and they're like, oh, it's like you, like even, it's like, even your legs, you know, so know it's like there's so many

things that don't make sense about it,

right?

How did you feel when you saw those photos,

you know what, such a long process of the time from when I started had to figure out that this was a possibility to when I got two photos, it was not that long like literally was like 48 hours, right?

But it felt like so like such an excruciatingly long period of time, but it felt like oh, you know, it was like such a realization that for one thing.

I had all of this super weird dysmorphia when I was growing up really uncomfortable with my body and the way my face looked and all these things that I thought were wrong, you know, I didn't but seeing myself Anybody right?

There was nobody.

That was like I was like it was like mirror in myself back at me and so I was like, aha.

You know?

That was my first feeling was like whoa.

Like there is there's my person.

You know what I mean?

And the second way I felt was that oh my gosh, this is my father and he Not only was he there like around when I was growing up like he lived like Early in the grand scheme of Montana, which is a huge sparsely populated state.

He just live down the road and so I felt like really, like a lot had been taken away from me because I didn't have that experience of having a father.

Did he have any clue about you?

Well that is a good question.

I as soon as I found out I have this like, feeling in my life that I don't want there to be untruth, like in the world, you know what I mean?

So, as soon as I found this out and like my mom doesn't see it as an untruth, she doesn't see it as a lie.

She kind kind of talks about now like an Omission, which to me is like, not really that different.

But I was very important to me when she finally came clean about it.

I was like you need to call him and you call him right now and tell him they say remained friends.

And as an aside when she was living downtown and that with those in the party house, when she first moved out of high school, when all this went down, one of the women.

That she was living with in that house is his now wife and so they married when I would have been like 10 years old, okay?

So they have all really remained friends and you know how your parents have friends that you don't know very well and everything but she had run into them in a bar and a couple of Summers back was pre covid and they had invited her to go camping with them or something crazy.

So you know, she had maintained, you know, some kind of relationship with them so I was like you need to call and And tell him and she was like yeah you know, it's Christmas, don't let him get through the holiday.

So I'll call him after the new year.

And I was like, whoa, you know that is a really long time.

I feel like it's been a lie or an Omission, whatever going to call it long enough, you need to call him now and she really couldn't bring herself to and I also said she needed to tell my birth certificate.

Dad.

Yeah, which you never did.

She left that to me?

But since I knew she wasn't going to contact my bio dad.

I wrote him a letter.

Letter explaining the history, including the photo of yourself as a child and as an adult.

And then I included, one of each of my children and I just sent him a typed letter to his home address, you know, hoping that I didn't ruin his life, you know, and he got the letter.

Well now I know his wife checks, the mail, she opened the letter and read it and then she quickly went to him and said, oh, I We shouldn't have opened this, you know, this letter is for you.

Yeah,

but my mom did call him and tell him the situation.

And at that point he had already gotten my letter.

And then her telling the story, this is he had written back to me already.

I had not yet gotten a letter.

So when my mom relayed, this story to me, of calling him and his response, I hadn't received a letter from him.

So I was still sort of, in the dark.

So she calls him tells me that she spoke to him and I said, you know, what did he say?

Today.

And she tells me that he said, shit happens.

So that was very upsetting.

Yeah, that's kind of not the right.

Yeah, you might expect,

I guess.

But the next day I got a letter from him and it was very open.

It was like a handwritten letter and he was like I'm the timing is right.

You know I'm very happy to meet you.

I really hope that we can, you know, establish a relationship.

I know where this is going to take us.

He explained what their life had been like, you know what, about his family?

His kids, his wife is everything, you know.

And it was like ended with you know the invitation to have a you know have an exchange of letters for the time being and it was very different than what my mom said.

So now that I've gotten to know him he's kind of a ride guy and he he's very shy and quite Right.

Nervously says things like shit happens a lot.

I mean, and my mother is one of those people.

I don't know.

You know, those people that you want to try to their personality is such that you try to like protect them in some way or I don't know it's very hard to explain.

She's a difficult person

okay

and I think a lot of us say things to try to like make things easier for her.

Hmm that and then she's also kind of cruel and so since the time that I found About that.

She said, a number of things that have been totally inappropriate his response as I've asked him over time.

Like, did you have any idea the first couple of times?

He said, no, he didn't know.

And then this last time, I have spent time with him.

I spending time with him and he said, I do remember seeing you as a child, you know, like he's processing it.

Yeah and thinking, he's very emotional about it.

Let me put that out there first there.

There's a lot of emotion, when we talk about it, he and his wife, both I think feel like they lost out on a lot.

But, you know, like, I feel.

But my impression is that he didn't know at the time, unless he like subconsciously.

When I saw me was like, yeah, yeah, it's sort of, like, with us to, you know, even when you're surprised sometimes I think you look back and you go, oh, wait, you know, you have these little fit flashes of things that opal does.

Notice that, like, obviously that was what happened.

So, maybe that's what's happening with him.

I mean, I don't know, but did not have any children him and his wife.

So they, yeah.

He and his wife have two children.

Their two boys, they're like, 10 years and 12 years younger than I am.

After I wrote the first letter, he continued to write letters back and forth to me for like a year.

It's about six months in his wife was like whoa, this is a lot.

He had had some health scares during the year and she felt like there was a lot going on.

On for them and then he was he apparently was was like, very excited every time.

He got he'd get a letter and you know it was felt like threatening in some ways.

She's been very honest with me about all of it you know.

And so he needed to step back for a while and then eventually so that was a very painful time because it was a couple month period where I wasn't communicating with him at all when I thought we were establishing like a pen pal relationship, you know and then one night I was leaving work, I work this way.

Shift at the hospital.

And I got this email and it was from their last name, you know, and I opened it quickly as I was walking to my car and it was his wife just explaining everything to me.

And then at the very end, she said, you know, I'm sorry that this happened.

I'm sorry.

I cut you off, you know, and none of it was your fault.

You were just an innocent baby and we lost so much over all these years and now we have the future to look forward to.

So, you know, let's make things happen.

It's wonderful.

Yeah, yeah.

Very, very she's a very old.

Open and loving.

And like I just don't know many people that would be able to do that.

Particularly since she has a relationship with my mom, you know.

So I went to visit them for my birthday this year, which was exactly a year after after I found out about him being my father, I was there for three days over my birthday.

The the plan was for us all to me and it was like I was going to go and meet them at a bar and it was going to be him and his wife and his best friend who is his wife's brother and his wife.

Even my brother one of my brothers and his wife.

And I was like, well, like that's a lot for me to do and I was like, staying in a hotel and, you know, my hometown and because I just couldn't deal with my family, my mom and family at that time.

And so, I took my best friend from high school and I was like, look, you're going with me.

And so we went and we met them and they were just super gracious and open.

And like, right away started saying, like, this is my daughter, this is my, you know, sister and then The next day, I went back to my hotel after the night.

After meeting them, we took photos and everything and they sent me a message.

It was like, happy birthday, we're going to be staying at Grandma's house.

His mother who's 93 years old, would you like to come and stay at Grandma's?

And so I packed up my stuff and drove into town and spent the night at my grandmother's house.

So would you say that that relationship is is going?

Well, what are your hopes?

That relationship.

It's

going really well.

I went back a second time which was just a month ago and I stayed the little town that they live in is as I said like about 90 miles north of where where I grew up, it's a much smaller town.

So I flew into my hometown would wear that airport is and then we drove to you know I look at it now is like the place that would have been my home.

Hmm I drove with them there and I saw Thought a lot about this and I like written about it a little bit, but that idea like how poignant that is.

You go to this place.

He was like a place that you've never been but you have like a deep visceral connection to yeah, you know, like a rooted there, you're totally a rooted there.

He he grew up there and his father and mother were there.

So, we drove to their Hometown and I stayed with them for seven days.

And on our way into town, we stopped gambling is legal in Montana, so we stopped at the casino.

And we Gamble, and we drank beers and literally everybody.

In this little small town was at the casino and went out to dinner after that.

And every time somebody would come up, they would either say I've heard so much about you were so excited to meet you.

You know, he's always wanted a daughter or if it was somebody that hadn't didn't know the story.

Yet he would say I'd like you to meet my daughter and I would say, I didn't know you had a daughter and he would say, well neither did

I.

That's one.

I'm so glad that it's going so well

yeah I mean I understand that I'm that it's a rare case I feel extremely extremely fortunate.

I mean, at the time that it's happening you know I think back a lot to the time when I was having like the discovery was happening but I got, you know, how you have such a it's like an embodied.

Memory of that

moment.

I can remember sitting on my bed actually and trying to keep my kids at Bay a little bit because as I was processing it I was having that I know everybody calls him an identity identity crisis, but it was such a, it was such a crisis of person, like and such a loss for understanding like thinking back about your childhood and growing up and all these things that are coming together.

But then at the same time, like, seeing yourself and feeling like, I remember if your remember very well looking in the mirror because I was like, crying crying, crying, my partner and washing my face with Water, and just looking in the mirror and be like,

what

like, who

is this person?

Yeah, is so confusing.

I feel like, that's an experience.

So many of us have, just that weirdness when you look at your reflection

and it persists.

And there are so many things, I mean.

Now it's so amazing because if I look at my Elder son and he's an adult son.

At this point I look at him and he is identical to my Bio dad's father.

So there are all these connections that you make.

But the, I mean, there's so many things that are hard about it every time, the first time I visited them, I remember them driving you to the airport and I remember sitting in the back of the car, Montana's very beautiful mountains in this Valley, and they, you know, they called Big Sky country for a reason, I guess, you know.

But there are these giant blue skies, and it's winter.

So there's snow everywhere and I cried from the time we left.

My grandmother's house until I arrived in San Francisco because I was, you know, you just, you've lost so much and you feel like moving away from that going away from it, this short period of time, you have, you know, these people are, are older.

You don't know how much time you have been.

So much has been lost.

Yeah, yes.

There's a story that my step mom told me on the first day we met, which is part of What is made it really hard for me?

And her I think, which is that when I came back with my mom from Ohio, when I was three months old.

Apparently there was a baby shower and my stepmom obviously knew my bio dad, you know, they were all in the same group of friends and she said, she looked at me as a three-month-old baby and she looked at my long and she's a very Frank woman.

She's very direct and she's very honest.

And she said, is this, you know, so and so's baby.

Because she has his

eyes,

and my mom said, no, she has my eyes.

And that was the end of a conversation, so it's not as if so, when my mom says she didn't know, it's not as, if it's not as if there wasn't an opportunity for her to think about it, even

if okay, yeah, you know what I mean, you're learning more bits of information that, you know, that at least came across her mind, at some point, how are things with your mother

Not great.

And my sister, I feel really sad because my younger sister Bears, a lot of the brunt of a lot on with the Bronte is the word for she works.

She she carries a lot of the burden of my mom and I having it contentious relationship.

And she always has, and we sort of had this conversation, because when I visited this time, I spent an evening with them and my sister and her partner, and my older stepbrother and like me.

So, a lot of us were there and Playing games and stuff.

And my mom.

She says, insensitive things.

I think I've said I think I said that already.

Yeah, but she'll say them out of the blue in front of other.

People are suddenly be like, we need to talk about this right now and I will be like, well we haven't talked about in a year.

Why is it that we need to talk about it in front of every member of

the family?

Mmm,

I don't want to say anything too harsh but there are some personality issues that are difficult to reconcile.

Some Times with her being my mother.

So in this is what I was explaining to my sister.

She said, she always felt even growing up like she had to try to mend the relationship between my mom and myself, or try to bring those to bring us together.

And I tried to explain to her and we explained to her was

this, she is a mother that she was the

mother, and I was a child just as I am now, but you're talking about a time she meant, you know, she reference when she was like, 5 years old or something.

So that would have made me 10 years old.

And I said to her, do you understand You're talking about expecting me to have a relationship with this adult woman when I'm a child that is on the same plane and that doesn't make any sense.

So in a lot of ways I understand it was because she was a young mother and she had a lot of traumas from her own adoption.

But she also related to me in a way that was not like a child.

That was much more like a contemporary and like an

adversary.

My and my sister Maybe.

Because she had a father figure and I was like maybe because her father was there and she had a relationship with him in that in some way, balanced it out.

I'm not sure or maybe because my mother looked at me who in my mind, what I imagine is that she looks at me when I have a baby and she doesn't know who my father is.

And she says, well, you know, I also don't know who my father is you know, not consciously, really sick, right subconsciously and And so projects this fatherlessness onto me and not because she necessarily thinks that how that's how it should be in the world but because she just can't carry it anymore for herself.

And orful that's heavy.

That's sort of how it feels and I know.

well the other thing I was going to say is there's the conundrum of my birth certificate dad who she never called to tell?

That was my next question was about your your birth certificate.

Dad how are things with him?

Well when everything happened went down, I called my middle sister, his his eldest daughter and said, you know, I he's old his sister recently died.

He moved from Ohio to South Carolina, to live with my sister and her family, and his youngest daughter also went.

And so I called her and said, how do you think he would handle this news?

I have any definitive answer.

Nobody else ever took a DNA test, like I asked my bio dad.

You want to take a birth certificate test and he said I don't need to take a birth certificate test.

I can tell by looking at you that you're my daughter.

So I asked my birth certificate sister, if she would take ancestry test and she's like, sure, no problem, she's like, I do.

Leave this, there's this is just not possible, you know.

Yeah, and her ancestry test, whatever happened.

I don't know like three times the test failed, which is because I don't think she really wanted to take it, but I did ask her to speak with my younger sister and said, you know, do you think he can handle this news?

He's an old man not in good health.

You have all these losses.

They came back to me the next day and said, you know, no, we don't think that you should tell him that my mom said you shouldn't tell him and I sat with that for a while and I was like, you know, I cannot have this lie out there in the world.

I just can't, you know, and I've said this before, but like what if he dies and then that just goes with him, you know, that lie, like you know, it just feels like it's all he's the sole a little bit, you know.

And you don't want to be fine if you want to do that to your own soul.

But I didn't want to do it but somebody else's right.

But called him a nice day the day after and he didn't answer and I was on my way it was kind of a commute and He called if I pulled over when I answer the phone, I just started crying.

You know if he was like what's wrong?

And I said, you know, I took this DNA test looking for Mom's father and told him and he was just really silent.

And he said the thing that I hear many, many parents say in this situation, which is that, you know, you know, I'll always you'll always be my daughter, you know?

And in retrospect like he didn't say, I'll always be your father.

which is the different thing that you'll always be mine.

Daughter.

And the reason I say that now like it seems like like I'm parsing words there, but I don't think that is the case because after that he's, you know, he's very upset with my mother and she is never spoken to him about it.

I haven't spoken to him since that day

since Christmas of 2020.

Oh wow,

I mean it was always felt like kind of a responsibility of mine as a kid to maintain a relationship with him like I especially As I Grew Older.

My oldest

son is 23 years old and he's never met my

oldest son.

So okay,

it's tough because he did go out of his way every summer to come and see me and, you know, call once in a while, I really don't feel about it.

I mean, it's a huge loss and for him, I imagine maybe more profound than for me.

However, I just wonder he didn't know all along because I don't know as a parent, how you could just sever a relationship like that with that news also understanding that The other persons in a total

crisis, right?

I don't understand how

you could just like Severide would, you know, part of the onus is on me for not contacting him but I you know, I don't even know what to say.

Plus, I'm trying to establish this relationship with this other person who is, you know, actually my father.

So many pieces here

with my bio Dad.

I think about this a lot is that I have this Sick very embodied, emotional attachment to him and his family.

Like, I met his one of his sister's, his three sisters.

I never had any odds growing up.

He has two sons, never had any brothers growing up.

I was deaf brother,

but he's much older, but I have it's like I don't even know how to

explain it, maybe you'll understand.

Like it's this feeling in the that originates somewhere in the pit of my stomach or like below where my heart is.

That when I think about him or see him or he calls me on the telephone, a lot just out of the blue, which is so great.

And you get that feeling like when you I, at some point I said, it's like one year when you're have a crush on somebody or when you're falling in love with your teenager, but obviously not in a romantic way.

But like, you know, the feeling you have for your children when you are holding them, when they're babies.

Or the first time I have that feeling with my dad.

And Very disconcerting and discombobulating because I am almost 50 years

old,

it's really strange.

And so emotional, like if he get there was a period in time, which he doesn't really talk on the phone and amuse, his wife's cell phone and, you know, text or so complicated, and he doesn't do that.

If I, but if I didn't hear from him, I would be like, so bereft, you know, be fall into this big deep depression, which is so So strange because I feel like one of the luckiest people in this situation, because I have been allowed to, like, have the this man and his, whole family in my life and they are the most open and, you know, accepting people that I maybe ever

met.

That's so wonderful.

How has your immediate like your nuclear family?

Handled it, your husband and your children.

Well, my husband is a saint because I don't know if you haven't experienced but I talk about it all the time.

Like, it's sort of an everyday topic of conversation.

Still mean, it's been a year, you know?

So he has definitely been like the Rock and he has so many insights about all of it.

You know, he's able to help me process things when I have feelings about like feeling rejected or feeling about Things that have been lost like he's able to like reflect that back to me and say, yeah, that makes sense in.

This is the reason why rather than saying, like no, you shouldn't feel that way or Trying to minimize it.

He, he's very good at understanding like, how profound and be life changing.

It all is my little guy yesterday, received he 7.

He received a package in the mail from his grandma and grandpa know, said to, you know, from Love Grandma grandpa.

We can't wait to meet you in person and my older son is hilarious about it because he looks so much like the family.

He's a really big guy, he's like 63 and you know, ways like 220 pounds and and he was like, we'll finally, I know, you know, like where my size comes from and you know where my blond hair comes from and where, you know, he said why I make funny faces when I have photos taken,

because,

you know, he's sees that in the photos over.

Everybody else and he was in the military and they were in the military.

So, you know, there are all these, this Confluence of so many things, they've been all really positive, but people that have taken it hardest.

Obviously have been my mom and my little sister that found my dad.

For me, I have a lot of guilt about this.

Now hopefully, I can process, but I caught her off for about six months because that relationship that she has with my mom and the fact that she told me rather than my mom telling me And just like the whole triangulation of all of it, I just couldn't cope with it.

And my little sister has been my best friend, literally, since the day she was born.

But I, I just, for whatever reason.

I know one in the family, I couldn't comprehend, maybe having a new, like, trying to manage a new relationship or figuring out this other part of myself and then still holding on to this other part of myself that had been wrong that hadn't been, that hadn't actually been

me.

So I took the six month

period to try to like manage all of that.

And I am again very, very fortunate.

In the fact that my little sister was, like, soon as I came back and said, you know, I'm ready to talk.

She was like okay yeah, I'm here for you.

Whatever you need.

Well that's great.

That takes up a

person in light of your experience.

I don't know if you want to talk about this on the podcast but you are starting a podcast of your own, right.

Do you want to talk about that?

Well,

I started that Cast.

This is hilarious.

I started a podcast.

Literally in February of 2021.

It was like two months after.

Okay, I found out.

So, you know, when you first find out like you want to talk about it, you want to talk about the experience and you want to have you want to hear about the experience and the other podcasts that at the time.

The only two that were that I knew about where Everything's Relative and NP stories.

So I sort of like listen to every single one of them.

I have a very long commute to work, like an hour and a half.

So I would listen to every single one of those stories that period of time and I would read everything that I possibly could about it and I thought, you know, I want to hear other people's stories so I'm going to start a podcast and so I and I did it.

My history is before I became a nurse, I work for a reproductive endocrinologist, which I should say is, the reason why I never doubted the DNA results.

Like, I know a lot of people are like, oh, maybe it's wrong and we studied, you know, people who knew Stoner Cami So you can see if their children and whether or not they were going to disclose to their children.

This is literally like 25 years ago that I think is research.

Wow with.

And I was in medical anthropology.

So I was a medical Anthropologist we collected stories at that time and I wrote a big article, I mean, I wrote many articles about it but there was one that was that I was first author on.

That was very important to me and it was about kinship and about biological relatedness, sort of a nature trip versus nurture.

Kind of Thing and I went back and read that article in all this happened.

And I was like, well I

need to,

you know, I need to change my perspective on this and I need to put something out there.

I want to have hear people's stories now so that I can write something that sort of is counter to that.

Because at the time I was saying, you know, because I didn't want to be essentialist and I didn't want to have this idea.

You know, the idea of nature was sort of on the outs like it didn't matter in terms of

Chip

and relatedness in Academia that time, I totally have a totally, you know, done a 180 on that now.

And so, in hearing a, the reason that I wanted to establish a podcast if they wanted to hear other people's stories, not just people who had had a DNA Discovery but people who use reproductive Technologies or people who are adopted or family members and people like my sister who got cut off during the whole situation or me but like my dad that found out that they had a You know, a child.

And so that's when I started the podcast.

Well, it kind of went by the wayside because of covid because it was just, I was working constantly also in processing.

So I just really got that going again, a couple months ago and so my hope is that people tell me stories.

And then I use that information from all different areas to like re-examine that original, you know, thesis basically that I had back in million years ago.

Like 2011, or something?

And where can people find the podcast if they want to listen,

unfinished, ritsz.com, or you could look at any platform and just search unfinished, Roots podcast and it should come up.

Thanks for asking about that though.

Of course, of course, it just want to

encourage people to listen.

I think I know all of the npe DNA, surprise, stories, and podcasts.

All bring something different to the table.

And I definitely, Gently encourage people to listen to them.

I think you speak about it so eloquently and with a lot of thought and I definitely for one I'm going to listen.

So

thank you.

I'm sure some of it'll probably sound repetitive now you know when you start to tell your story and you're like oh my God those sounds the same.

Every time I tell

ya I feel like it really helps with the processing though.

It's hell.

The more you tell it the more it helps

and of also definitely evolved.

Yes.

What advice would you offer a parent?

Who is keeping a DNA surprise from their child?

Yeah, I would.

My advice is very simple.

I would say, don't do that.

I would say.

I know it sounds like a sort of one side and everything, but I would say, I mean the truth is really, really important if you as a parent as a child for one, but as a parent, I'm going to speak as a parent.

I can't see how keeping the truth from your child would ever have.

A positive outcome for either your child or for yourself.

And there's nothing more precious than your relationship with your children.

And loving a child means allowing them under any circumstances means allowing them to be who they are and there is no way that a child can be, who they are, if they don't know the other half of them self,

that's really well.

Said, Ed.

And I like that perspective, a lot of thinking about it as a parent knowing and I honestly, I think I kind of had done that before.

But really thinking, just now, about keeping something like that for my own children was heavy and I can't really imagine it.

So, yeah, thank you for that perspective because I have an old, I have an adult child, and I have a small child.

So I have this like Grand perspective on things.

I probably wouldn't have had.

Perspective.

My first one with.

I mean, I would obviously, the truth would have been born but I have like, I have retrospective parenting

also.

Yeah, no, thank you for that.

What advice do you have for other npes?

I would say just go really easy on yourself.

You need to take a lot a lot of time.

If I can go back and do it differently.

Obviously, I wouldn't expose my younger child to it.

I don't know how you would avoid that.

Exactly.

Take a lot of time, the things that I remember the most about the beginning

because it's like the grief is so intense.

Like, you know, you you have that feeling like something is broke broken inside of you that can never be repaired.

You know, when like you can never go back, you can never go back from that moment to the time to who you were before.

And so I say the things that I remember the most, or I had one friend that just who has a child the same age as my youngest child.

So we just took them out in the mountains and went walking, and that walking just like, literally in silence mean.

I think I was crying a lot of the time, but that was very helpful because you have someone with you but you don't have Talk about it.

But then the opposite is that I had another friend that when I needed to talk about it.

That was my person that I talk to, and I think it's totally fine to lean on the people around you, you know, to let them take on some of that grief just like you would with any other grief.

And the other thing I would say is have faith, you know because in the process working out in the end you know I spoke with someone the other day that you know, hadn't had a great response and initially you know, it was new for them for an MP from their bio family and I would say, you know, also be persistent we don't have to be like a pain but I think people come around and I also think that if you have the opportunity

to

speak to somebody like literally speak to them with your voice or to see them person, I think that there is some like this isn't like I said before, I want to sound of Essentialist or anything, but I feel it.

There is something about the biology, something about the connectedness of relationships of being related to someone by blood, that is very profound.

And so, if you could find even one person, you know, that's in your bio family, that's willing to, you know, meet with you have a conversation with you mean, I think it's important to do that.

I mean they're experiencing a grief to, right?

That's part of everything that they thought about their life.

Like I think about my stepmom and like everything she thought about her life is different and she's so sweet that she talks about it.

Like we lost the chance to be your parents but I think also you know those people are losing from this point forward.

Their entire life is totally altered so I think they just need time to process Process that it's overwhelming.

Like so overwhelming that if you have the ability to give yourself time to just sit with that information for some time.

Like I don't even know how long it least like a week.

Probably much longer than that.

I wish that I hadn't been going to work and taking care of other people and you know, doing this that and the other thing, I wish I had just sat with it for a while because you kind of need to sit back and figure out who you are before.

You can really Move on with your

life.

Well Jennifer.

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

I hope that your journey continues to move in a positive direction with your newfound family and that things improve, or at least that you find, peace with your mother and birth certificate father's.

well, thank you so much for the podcast going to promote it widely so that people outside of our community.

Unityconnect can hear all of your really important insights.

I think that this is super valuable platform for people, you know, to, like process and then for other people to learn.

So I'm really, really grateful.

Thank you.

Thanks again to Jennifer for sharing her story.

You can hear more from Jennifer on her podcast, unfinished truths, which is linked in the show notes.

I'm taking a short break between Seasons, two and three, but I'll be back with more DNA surprise stories and September.

Thank you again for listening until next time I'm taking a short break between Seasons, two and three, but I'll be back with more DNA surprise stories and September.

Thank you again for listening until next time