In 1996, I was a full-time stay-at-home Mom to our three young daughters, all under 6. I turned 31 years old that year. Fred and I were married in 1988, and we bought a house in the same town where we both grew up. We hadn’t planned it that way, but we just really loved…
It was September 15, 2016. Eighteen months since I discovered my Dad wasn’t my Dad. I still hadn’t told anyone my secret, not even my husband. I know that sounds crazy. I hadn’t confronted my mother with my discovery yet, either. Looking back, I know there’s a term for how I wasn’t dealing with it….
Surprisingly, I wasn’t anxious to find out who my biological father was because, with every passing day, I felt in my gut that I already knew who it was. I was bouncing all around through those stages of grief, and depression was a big one now. Long-forgotten memories started to slowly become conscious ones. When…
After discovering I was an NPE, I wanted to look at my mother’s life. I wanted to understand her more. My mother hated the name Martha Lee. She lived her life avoiding it whenever she could. I remember my grandmother sometimes calling her M.L. Mom felt M.L. was much better than the grating “Maaatha Lee”…
I was checking the 23andMe website three or four times a day. The first results that came in were for my oldest sister. She is twelve years older than me. I decided to wait for my other sister’s results to come in so that I could look at them together. Hers came just a few…
I think of those 18 months I kept this crushing secret entirely to myself as a period of complete denial fueled by panic. Besides being a world champion in compartmentalizing, I am also a master multi-tasker, so my life went on doing my routine tasks. You didn’t find me curled up in my bed, hiding…