For several years after I found out I wasn’t my Dad’s biological daughter, I couldn’t even look at his tree anymore. It was literally a full stop. Seeing all the people I thought I came from genuinely hurt my heart. It was like breaking up with someone you love. I started doing genealogy when I…
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. When people hear my story, they all react differently. There is sympathy, most definitely. There is shock, especially if…
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…
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…
The other day, I listened to a podcast about *NPEs. The woman being interviewed said she started her own podcast to take away her mom’s shame. This hit hard for me. Since I’ve gone public with my story, I’ve had this underlying defensive feeling that I haven’t been able to put my finger on. What…
I knew that eventually, I had to tell our girls about my DNA discovery. This was about their DNA, too. I had made the decision not to tell my siblings until after my mother had passed away, but I felt the longer I waited to tell the girls, it would be no different than…