Bonus: Listener Stories, Episode 21

for a safe and supportive space to unburden themselves. To that end, we've created a number for listeners to call in to record stories to share here in this space. This week, I'd like to share a few of those stories from our community. Thanks for listening. In May of two thousand nineteen, I got my d n A results back from ancestry dot com and I saw that I was Irish. Well, I couldn't understand how that could be, because my father was dark skinned, dark hair, and had

kind of a mysterious background, deeply even serious. But nobody knew really what his his genetic background was, and he was the reason I wanted to get my d n A in the first place, to find out where he actually came from. We thought maybe he was Jewish, we weren't sure so when I saw Irish, I was completely shocked, and I looked at my husband and said, I went

on Earth, how can this be? And I looked back through some of my relatives that I had never heard of, of course, you know the old story, and one of them had the same last name as my father's mentor in the fifties. I was sixty four at the time.

I'm the youngest of four. I contacted some of these people after the shock war off and told them this, and I was told that there was a journal entry by the wife of my biological father that I found now that her biggest regret in her life was when she rented the upstairs or which she let her husband turn the upstairs into an apartment and rented it to that young woman, her husband and three children while I was number four, and so my father's mentor as my

biological father, he was fifty to my mother's thirty at the time, and so he's long gone. My mother was nine before when she died in two thousand eighteen, so she was dead by the time I found out this information. My birth certificate father lived to seventy nine, had no heart problems, had cancer, and lived a very good life, and I had a wonderful relationship with him and my mom.

I don't think he ever knew. But my biological father dropped dead of a massive heart attack of the age of sixty one when I was seven years old, and I did know him. We called him Papa. He came to the house and he hung around. He always brought me presents as a little kid. And we moved from that state to another state when I was five years old, and I never saw him again, and I just knew him as a family friend. Hi, Danny, I first just

wanted to thank you. I owe you a great debt of gratitude, not only for inheritance, but for this community that you've created through family secrets. It's occurred to me often over this past year that the only thing worse than having to go through something like this and being isolated and traumatized is doing it alone. So I just wanted to thank you for giving voice and space to

all of us. I found out last June, after thirty five years, that a father that raised me, my dad, whom I adore, was not my biological father, through a three in the test. My sister had taken one a year prior to me, and when the results came back, it identified us as half sisters, similar to how you expressed in Inheritance. I was very confident that there has been some sort of mistake, but of course there wasn't.

I texted a screenshot of the ancestry that was broken down into European countries to my dad and he responded by saying, whose DNA is that, um, which sort of stemmed this crazy twenty four hour period. I've always had a really strained, tenuous relationship with my mom, and despite not having contact with her at the time, I called her and asked flat out if there was a possibility

that this could be true. In her usual manner, she responded by asking how dare I accuse her of such a thing and how she could have possibly raised such an ungrateful child. As the months went on, I became more and more fixated on finding out who my biological father was UM, sort of getting to the bottom of that despite my mom not sharing the information with me. So my husband was kind enough to offer to hire a private investigator to try and find out who that

man was. I have three kids, and one day at the pediatrician's office, building out for hims. I realized that all of their life and all of my life, I had been giving an inaccurate biological history for all of us. Though that sort of stemmed my interest in finding out who the person was. One night, when my husband and I went out for a date night, people are in the car and our neighborhood and told me that the

private investigator had found my biological father. He started by telling me that the man was deceased, which devastated me. I was just totally distraught, knowing that I was never going to get to see his face. But then my husband asked if I remember telling him about the lake I used to go to as a young child, and I instantly knew the name that was about to come

out of my husband's mouth before he said it. It turned out that it was the name I thought, and my biological father was what my mom always told us was a family friend. I spent time with him until I was about seven years old and we moved to a different state. So the memories I have of him are very murky, which saddened me because I knew him. But I can't pull up the memories that I have of him. I do remember by the way that he smells, and I also remember as a child loving him, so

I do find some comfort in that. About a month or two ago, my sister gave me a huge box that she had taken from my mom's garage. Going through it slowly and meticulously, in my basement, I found a bunch of old slides, and as I held a couple of strips up to the light coming through the window, I thought that it might be photographs of my biological father, at least what I thought I remembered him to look like.

I know it is starting to sound crazy and like some sort of movie, but I live with the fact every day that this saga is actually my real life. I took the slides to a local photo store, and because of the pandemic, they told me that it was going to be a while. They were very backed up. So for about a month, I opened my email every morning anxious about what I might find. Until one afternoon I opened up my email and the photos were there. I and I found myself looking into the eyes of

my biological father. So in the same flies that I had digitized and found the pictures of my biological father, there was a photograph of my five year old six year old self sitting on the lap of a teenage girl and standing next to us with another teenage girl whose profile I recognized instantly because it looked so much like my own. Since then, I've found the contact information for one of my half sisters. It turns out I have three other half siblings other than the two that

I've grown up with. I've written her an email over and over and over again, and I'm sitting on it. Mostly I think out of fear because I feel like sixteen and seventeen and eighteen. When I look back into those photos, I just feel like teenagers have an awareness about their parents behavior that a toddler or an elementary school child wouldn't have, and I'm nervous and afraid about what I might find out when I contact them. Um fourteen months into this, I'm keenly aware that I just

have only begun this journey. It breaks my heart every day when I look at my kids and I know that my dad is not biologically carried in them. But I am hopeful that some good will come out of this. And I just thank you again for giving me a community and the place to voice my story. If you'd like to share your story, call one eight eight eight Secret zero and record your story. We won't be able to run all the stories, but we do want to

shine a light on as many as we can. The number again is one eight eight Secret and then the numeral zero. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.