Most of us take it for granted, it’s one of the first things that many of us know. She is my mother and he is my father. Before we know the language of DNA and genes, we know that I am from them – I get my eyes from momma or my laugh sounds like my daddy’s. The parental bond is the first and also the most important bond most of us experience until adulthood. Helpless at birth, we rely on our parents to keep us safe, to nourish us, and to help us grow. Our initial world view is created through them and is the basis to which we build our sense of ourselves and the world. As teenagers and young adults, we often rebel against that view, but it is the starting point for everything. So what happens when we find out that the basis for our entire understanding of the world and who we are is a lie? Is everything built on top faulty? I’ve been slowly patching my battered sense of self and have been slowly turning my gaze from the rearview mirror. Like Japanese kintsugi, I am emerging stronger. The chips and cracks are being filled with gold, and I am rebuilding.
A couple of weeks after my 41st birthday, my world as I knew it changed forever. Not just my present, but the lens with which I viewed my past had irrevocably shifted. It caused me to question each and every event, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant.
I had submitted a DNA sample to 23andme many years ago, when they were a start-up focused on health based on DNA profiles. The company later moved on to focus primarily on ancestry profiles, and I hadn’t paid much attention to that functionality until my husband started looking at his DNA ancestry profile. I pulled mine up, and we got a good laugh – we joked that he was the purebread (99.8% Ashkenazi Jew) and I was the mutt (British, German, French, a little bit of everything). But when I clicked on the DNA relative tab, there was a man, WD, who was genetically a first cousin/great uncle that I had never met or heard of. I asked my parents about him, they denied knowing him and said his last name didn’t sound familiar. I initially thought he might be related somehow through an uncle who maybe had a child he didn’t know about. I exchanged messages with him but when I told him who my parents were and tried to figure out the relation, I never heard back from him. During this time, my siblings were interested in the results, they both submitted kits. That must have been what pushed my parents to tell me. I got a call from my mom, and she told me that the man that I thought was my dad was not my biological father. She said that she didn’t know who my biological father was, that he could be her ex boyfriend…or someone else. She then told me about going to a party when my dad was away in basic training and having too much to drink. She said she blacked out and had some memories of having sex with “someone.” She said she never told anyone about that, including my dad. My dad was aware that I may be the biological daughter of her ex-boyfriend, but they both decided it wasn’t the case, as he was “dark” and I was a fair child. In 40 years, she had never told my dad about the party or the potential that I was someone else’s biological daughter (other than her ex-boyfriend’s). I had so many questions – who was this guy? How could they keep it from me for so long? Who knew? But my mom had no answers for me. She either couldn’t or wouldn’t tell me any more details.
On the one hand, I felt shattered. I had been lied to my entire life. And it was a lie about something so core to everything I thought I knew about who I was. I had over 40 years of history as me, but now I felt like I wasn’t who I thought I was. Everyone says that DNA doesn’t make you who you are, but if the very basis of your self image is a lie, what does that mean for self identity?
But on the other hand, this confirmed something I always knew. Growing up, I never felt like I fit in my family. I had fine, straight light hair, with fair skin. My siblings and parents all had thick, wavy, dark hair with olive skin. I was an academic who could spend hours curled up with a book, loved math and problem solving, and had a plan for college from the time I was a freshman in high school. Neither of my parents had gone to college and and neither of them nor my siblings had much interest in academics. I always felt a place apart, as if I didn’t belong there. I constantly questioned it this difference. When I was in junior high and learned about the details of human gestation, I asked my mom how it was possible that I was born 2 weeks late and only weighed a little over 6 pounds. When I learned about blood types in 9th grade, I checked both parents blood types to see if it was possible they weren’t my parents (we were all O+). Their life in denial continued.