Telling my Brothers and Sisters

After my mother died, I didn’t have to keep my DNA discovery secret from my brothers and sisters any longer. The thought of telling them they were Dad’s biological kids, but I wasn’t, made me so scared that it made me physically sick. Scared was a new feeling in this discovery.

I also cried a lot during this phase. I’m not a crier by nature. And when I say cried, I mean the kind of ugly crying that leaves you exhausted and drained afterward. I woke up with headaches and stomach aches that lasted all day.  I took naps when I got home from work and went to bed by 7:30 pm. I just didn’t want to deal with anything.

My mother’s death had triggered something. I suddenly felt very vulnerable and alone in my identity. She had been the only living person I was fully related to besides my children, and now she was gone. Everything going forward was about “half” now. Half brothers and sisters, half aunts and uncles. My Dad was dead. My biological father was dead. I was grieving over all of them collectively all at once and, at the same time, feeling my own mortality in a way I had never felt before. I felt orphaned.

With the realization that I had to tell my siblings, I started worrying about inconsequential things, like how I really wasn’t entitled to have any of the family knick-knacks and things from Dad’s side anymore. I wasn’t really a Horner. These things were rightfully theirs. Would they want it all now? Dumb stuff like that.

Questions were running in my head non-stop. How would they think of me after I told them? How would it change the dynamic of our relationship when they find out Dad wasn’t really my father? I was so stressed out about it and afraid of how everything would change after I told them. Because it definitely would change.

On top of that, leading up to telling them, I felt embarrassed and ashamed for the first and only time in this journey.  I was conceived by the act of Mom cheating on Dad with another man. My brothers and sisters were not. It felt confusing to me why I felt I needed to defend Mom, but I also wanted to commiserate and agree with them that Dad didn’t deserve what she did to him. But I wouldn’t be here otherwise. Do I apologize for what she did? I didn’t do anything wrong. I knew that. But it didn’t feel that way when it was time to tell them. It was a lot for me to process.

*Going forward, I will give my siblings pseudonyms to help keep things clear.

I couldn’t put it off any longer. In November of 2018, I called the three of them over to review some things with Mom’s estate. I was the Executor. I would tell them after that. My youngest brother, *Ron, lived in Oregon and would have to hear by telephone later.

My voice was shaking, but after we finished talking about estate stuff, I just dove in and blurted it out.
“I have something to tell you that’s hard to say. I discovered that Dad isn’t my biological father.”

They all looked shocked. It took a minute to sink in and process what I had just said.

My youngest sister, *Rose, was visibly crushed. She was ten years old when I was born. She wasn’t having any of this. She kept saying, “No, I don’t believe any of that DNA stuff. You look just like Grammy.” She was growing fidgety as the conversation continued, and she took big breaths in and out.

My oldest brother, *Chris, was silent. He was a man of few words, so that didn’t surprise me. But then my oldest sister, *Lisa, said something surprising. “Well, you know,” she said, “There was always a suspicion.”

What??

When Lisa was twelve years old, she asked our mother, “Who is Jenny’s Daddy?” I had just been born.  Lisa said Mom just laughed it off. That was crazy for me to hear.  What made her think that? Lisa didn’t really know, but I just didn’t look like any of them, and her question was really based on being naive and not understanding that we should all have the same Daddy. But she thinks it was always a thought in the back of her mind.

I felt afraid to say *Joe’s name out loud for some reason, so I asked them if they had any guesses about who my biological father was.

“*Joe Callaghan,” Lisa answered. It wasn’t even a question. She stated it like it was a fact.

She said she didn’t know for sure until now, but Lisa remembered the flirtation between them and always thought Mom and Joe were in love.  Lisa thought it was weird that Joe kept coming over to visit Mom in the evenings for so many years. She thought Joe had a reputation as a “philanderer.” Whether she picked up some sort of vibe when she went into Joe’s market with Mom, she couldn’t remember, but she felt housewives vied for Joe’s attention, and there was jealousy amongst them. Rose said she did remember Mom having a falling out with a woman who worked there. Was that fall out over me? Or over the attention he gave Mom?

Chris finally spoke. “Yeah, I guess I’m not overly surprised.” Pressing him further, he just shrugged his shoulders and said he also remembered Joe coming over to the house, and it all made sense now that it was said out loud.

They had a lot of questions about how I found out, how I figured out it was Joe, and what the conversation with Mom was like. They understood why I didn’t tell them until after she had died. There was some good-natured teasing and some tears. They tried to downplay it as if it wasn’t any big deal to them. I know they mostly did that so that I wouldn’t feel uncomfortable. But I could also tell they felt sad for me. Sorry for what I had been going through, yes, but also sad that I would have to find a way to live with it all.  The fact was, I was different from them now, and we all felt it that night on some level.  Later, I called my brother, Ron, in Oregon and told him. He responded with a joke about the milkman and some awkward but loving words. That was his way, and that was honestly ok with me. I didn’t want to get deep into it again. I was so mentally exhausted after it was over that I could only crawl into bed and sleep.

That Christmas, my sisters each gave me a card. Rose signed hers, “From your REAL family.” She was still struggling. Lisa wrote, “Nothing has changed in my mind. You are still my sister, and you are an amazing woman.”

People don’t understand that the NPE experience doesn’t just affect the NPE. It’s a ripple effect that spreads out to anyone in your life who loves you.

*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.