My New Biological Siblings

I’m asked, “What has actually changed since my DNA discovery?” Do you mean besides the whole “losing my entire identity” thing?

Well, here’s one at the top of my list. I have no full siblings anymore. It’s profound, and it’s sad for me. It’s a feeling of loss that I can’t put into words. I try not to dwell on it too much, but sometimes, it just sneaks up on me. Sometimes, I feel I don’t fully belong to any family. This is what being an NPE* feels like.

If I grew up knowing I had half-siblings, maybe it wouldn’t affect me like it does. Lots of people have half-siblings. But I grew up thinking I was the youngest of five kids, and we all came from the same parents. Fifty years later, I’m suddenly the youngest of eight children, and I don’t have the same two parents as any of them. I’m different. I have one foot in each family, but I’m not even a part of one family, and they don’t seem to want me.

Above: Me with my brothers and sister. It was the Spring or Summer of 1966 when I was about 15 months old. We are on the front steps of our house.

I still, and always will, call the siblings I grew up with my brothers and sisters. They love me, and I love them. Nothing has changed with that, thankfully. I refer to Joe’s** kids as my half-siblings. It’s not a dig at them. I just don’t have a relationship with them, so I would feel weird calling them something so familiar. I have to keep this distinction to cope with all of this.

I met all three of my half-siblings in 2017. They did not know I was their half-sister at the time, but I had just figured out the truth. I decided early on to never disrupt their life by telling them. I didn’t anticipate what an emotional burden it would become for me, though. It got so heavy to carry. It was always hanging over my head that I had to keep it secret. People don’t realize that when you are an NPE, you are forced to carry the emotional weight of a decision you had nothing to do with. It affects every part of your life and is exhausting.

On July 4, 2022, I wrote a letter to my half-sister telling her what I had discovered. I kept it short and one page long. If they wanted to hear the long version of how I discovered it all, I would love to get together to talk. They all live close to me, and one is even in the same town.

“Please know that I’m not looking for anything from any of you. If you are willing to share, I would be grateful to know any health history that you think I should know so that I can pass that information to my girls. I welcome a chance to talk with all of you about this, but I’ll leave the decision to you if you decide you would like to contact me or have a relationship. I had the most wonderful Dad who loved me and who I loved very much. I have a very close family and a very good life. I just want to live my truth openly, and to do that, I needed to share this with you. I’m so sorry if this feels like a burden on you and causes you pain. As I said, I hope that you won’t hold me accountable for something I had no control over.”

It’s crazy that NPEs feel the need to explain early on that we don’t want the family fortune. We also feel the need to apologize for intruding. So not only do we want to share our truth with them, we have to defend and explain ourselves in the same breath.

A year and a half has passed since I wrote the letter, and none of them have responded or reached out to me.

In the meantime, I’m left with this other half of me that feels unsettled. I’m a part of them but have no connection with them. Are they mad at me? Are they embarrassed I exist? Are they protecting the memory of their mother that Joe cheated on?

I feel sad that they don’t want to know me. But I have to learn to be ok with that and realize that they may never reach out. The fallout of my being an NPE trickles down to them, too.

 

*NPE is an acronym for “Not Parent Expected.” It has also morphed into a “Non-paternal event.”
**pseudonym

---

This is my NPE story of discovering in 2015 that my Dad was not my biological Dad. If you’d like to follow along, I encourage you to start at my first post of the series HERE.