Seeing the other side of things
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I saw my new biological sister, Donna*, at the Post Office a few months ago. I saw her again a few weeks ago at a program held in the same building where I work. The reality is, she and I live in the same small community. And we will continue to see each other, I’m sure.
And because I am a glutton for punishment and an eternal optimist, both times I saw her out in the wild, I tried to make eye contact with her to see if there was even the slightest invitation to engage. But there never is. She pretends she doesn’t see me.
The morning I woke up three years ago and decided it was time to send a letter to Donna, my new biological half-sister, I also decided that I was tired of hiding. No matter how she and my bio brothers reacted, I felt I just had to get it out there in the universe and let it be whatever it was going to be so that I could start to come to some peace with it all. Neither she nor my half-brothers have ever responded to my letter.
Since then, I’ve learned a few things about Donna’s reaction to my letter and about Donna herself. It got me thinking a lot about how I would feel if I were in her place and how we share some similar character traits.
My new 2nd cousin, Claire*, stays in touch with Donna and my new biological brothers. Claire has been so welcoming and loving to me, sharing family stories I would never have heard otherwise. At age 88 and not in the greatest of health, I don’t know how much more time I will have with her. It was Claire who Donna reached out to in disbelief and shock when she received my letter.
A year after my letter to Donna, Claire and I met in person for the first time. You can read more about how I first connected with Claire in my blog post HERE.
“Well, let’s talk about the elephant in the room,” Claire said as she welcomed me into her living room. “Donna was absolutely floored when she got your letter. And, she does not believe any of it is true.”
For the next hour, she and I talked. I expected she would be Team Donna all the way, but that turned out not to be true. Claire tried hard to be neutral, but as she heard my story more and more, she closed her eyes and put her hands over her heart.
“I can’t even imagine what finding out something like this does to you,” she said, “And I know that Joe* and your mother made the best decision they felt they could at the time.”
I was ready to defend my mother because I assumed she would be defending Joe and his family. But I later discovered that as much as Claire loved Joe, she didn’t seem entirely surprised about the whole thing.
Since our talk in her living room, Claire and I have kept in touch by email and phone and gone to lunch several times. She sends me Christmas cards. We check in. She tells me family stories. And most importantly, she is honest with me. The family dynamics and personalities in my new bio family are a little complicated, she says. I took away from our conversation that Donna may be a bit of a control freak and doesn’t like that I knew a secret that she didn’t. I get that, actually. I’m a big control freak myself, and I guess it would bother me if some stranger showed up and told me something about my parents that I didn’t know.
In a nutshell, Claire says that Donna feels I have been misinformed and that there is no way Joe could be my biological father. Donna told Claire that she thinks my Mom’s mind must have been riddled with medication, and that caused her to tell me that. And maybe she just had a crush on Joe. I explained to Claire that once the DNA proved my connection to Joe, I had to literally pull it out of Mom, and her first words to me when I told her what I had discovered were, “I wasn’t ever going to tell you.”
Donna was apparently mortified at the thought that I was going to tell some of the same people she and I both knew in our small town. She was slightly panicked, in fact. Her comment to Claire about me was, “If she contacts you, don’t tell her anything.” In some weird way, I can relate to that. My immediate reaction when I found out was panic, and not to tell anyone.
Luckily, Claire, being in her late 80s and not really giving two figs, has a mind of her own. She has told me plenty. She knew Joe very well and praised him to the moon while acknowledging his flaws. Her description of him was “flirtatious.” But Claire adored him. And she patted my hand and said, “He really was a good and kind man.”
I can’t force my new bio-sibs to want to have a relationship with me. I have to remember that this disrupted their lives, too. On one hand, I feel guilty for bringing this all to light and causing this turmoil inside them. On the other hand, this is my story. I don’t need permission to talk about it. Maybe someday they will understand that.
*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.
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It has to be very difficult living in the same town as your newly found family, but not having much connection with them. I hope it will improve for you in the future and that Donna and your brothers will eventually be able to reach out.
You continue to be brave and honest and considerate. If Donna would at least listen to the scientific evidence, it would help her understand the situation as it really is, not as she wishes it to be. Meanwhile, enjoy your relationship with Claire and have a healthy and merry Christmas with your family.