May 21, 2025 • 46 mins
Hindsight is 20/20. After experiencing a DNA surprise, it’s easy to look back at moments throughout our childhoods and realize that the truth was there all along. Growing up in Indiana, Brittany always felt like an outsider. Her parents were divorced, and when she asked her dad if she could go live with him, he revealed that he wasn’t her biological father, which her mother denied.
Years later, Brittany took DNA test, which revealed that her lifelong father was not her biological father. In this episode, Brittany shares how the revelation rocked her sense of identity and her lifelong relationships. She also discusses how she’s connected with her newfound family and found a sense of belonging.
Thank you for sharing your story, Brittany.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
The mirror thing was the first thing I experienced for sure, So
much so I got a tattoo of a broken mirror because I I think
that when I first started going through this and I think that
therapy helped me get to this point, but I didn't realize how
much power I gave to those things either.
I needed to be more confident inmyself and who I am as a person
(00:24):
at that time. But because I was so broken down
by the lies and the betrayal andthe sadness and the hurt, I
allowed all of those other feelings to like creep in and
make me change how I felt about myself.
It's almost like relearning yourself.
Like I thought I knew who I was,but joke's on me, I didn't.
(00:46):
And now I need to relearn who I am and kind of like, teach
myself who I am because I feel like I have these tools now I
didn't have before that allow meto see things differently.
Welcome to DNA Surprises, a podcast that delves into the
world of unexpected DNA discoveries.
(01:07):
I'm your host, Alexis ourselves.In July 2021, my life took a
surprising turn when I found outthat I'm an NPE, a person who
has experienced a non paternal event.
In other words, my biological father isn't who I thought he
was. Join me as we explore the
(01:28):
stories of NP, ES, adoptees and donor conceived people and their
families. Get ready to unravel the
astonishing journeys that begin with a simple DNA test.
This is DNA surprises. Hindsight is 2020.
After experiencing ADNA surprise, it's easy to look back
(01:51):
at moments throughout our childhoods and realize that the
truth was there all along. Growing up in Indiana, Brittany
always felt like an outsider. Her parents were divorced, and
when she asked her father if shecould go live with him, he
revealed that he wasn't her biological father, which her
mother denied. Years later, Brittany took ADNA
(02:13):
test, which revealed that her lifelong father was not her
biological father. In this episode, Brittany shares
how the revelation rocked her sense of identity and her
lifelong relationships. She also discusses how she's
connected with her new found family and found a sense of
belonging. Thank you for sharing your
(02:34):
story, Brittany. My name is Brittany.
I am 30 years old and I'm from Central IN.
I grew up with my mom and my little brother.
It was mostly just like the three of us as like a core
family unit. I grew up with AI don't call him
my birth certificate. Father and I, I'll kind of get
into that, but I call him my lifelong father now.
(02:57):
I grew up with him. He was around so often.
I would see him on holidays as ateenager.
I kind of would see him more when I had friends in his
neighborhood I would hang out with, but it was really just me
and my mom and my brother most of the time.
She was a bartender, so she worked nights, weekends, really
all of the time that we weren't in school when she was working,
(03:18):
it was just me and my brother. He was born in 2000, so we have
like a six year age gap. So I kind of feel like I took on
more of like a mother role for him, not really a sister.
I think now that I know my DNA surprise, I think there are some
things that kind of stick out tome like as a kid that I kind of
should have seen as a red flag that maybe I just missed.
(03:40):
Or I think some of them, they kind of were explained away.
So I was just trusting in the fact that the things that the
people were telling me were true.
A couple of them were, we were on Medicaid growing up and you
had to present like you're supporting documents, your pay
stubs, your birth certificates, all of these things.
And I remember one time we went to the office and I noticed that
(04:02):
I had no father listed on my birth certificate.
It had my mom's name and then the.
Birth father was blank. And now I know it's like a silly
story, but then she told me thatmy dad had got into some trouble
and he wasn't there at the time of the signing.
So I kind of was like, OK, that makes sense.
And my dad was known for gettinginto trouble when I was in a
kid, so kind of made sense. There was a couple other things
(04:26):
where you'd go through like highschool and you would go through
biology class and they are talking about your different
traits and how they're passed down to you.
And I have a widow's peak, I call it this avatar arrow on my
forehead. It's very noticeable.
And when you're in that class, those are the kind of rare DNA
(04:47):
traits that you pass down that you try to backtrack where you
got it from. That was one thing that no one
in my family had. So that was kind of an
unexplained mystery. And then I think the last thing
that kind of piqued my interest and the possibility of taking
ADNA test when I was in high school, my dad, I was over at
(05:07):
his house and I didn't want to be living at my mom's house
anymore. I was going through that phase
where teenage girls just don't like their moms.
And I wanted to go live with my dad.
And it was always, no, you can'tlive here.
No, it's not possible. And I finally just asked him
like, why? Why can't I?
This is what I want to do. And at that age, I feel like
(05:29):
most of my friends that had divorced or separated parents,
they were able to choose where they wanted to live.
So I didn't really understand why I couldn't go live with my
dad. And one night he told me that
there was a possibility that he was not my dad.
That shocked me. I think I was 15 when I went
home that weekend to to my mom'shouse.
(05:49):
I asked her about it and her first reaction was anger.
She just was upset that I was even asking the question.
It was just so far fetched. She made it seem that like I was
being outlandish. It was kind of just something
that was dropped. I kind of just moved on and was
like whatever, I can't live withmy dad, it is what it is and
(06:11):
just kept on moving. When I was in high school, I met
my now husband. My life kind of changed then.
I wasn't necessarily in my brother's mom anymore.
I kind of had my own life, my own things I was doing.
I think I started focusing more on me.
Then I moved out of my mom's house very soon after I turned
18. I moved right in with my
(06:31):
boyfriend, now husband. I think it was just always this
like overwhelming feeling of being an outsider that kind of
really pushed me to take the test.
So when you took the test, yes, were you thinking my maybe my
dad is not my biological father?Was it just wanting to get some
answers about who you were and why you felt like an outsider?
(06:54):
Yeah, I think it was more so answers with my brother and my
brother's dad being in the picture.
I was kind of always this, the outsider within that family.
Once my brother and his dad entered the picture.
And then on the flip side, at mydad's house, he was then married
to a new lady and my dad then had stepchildren.
So I kind of then felt like a outsider there.
(07:16):
I think the goal of it was definitely to see if anything
popped up for my dad. I was working and my boss at the
time, she was telling me that she took the ancestry test and
that she had found a sister she didn't know existed.
And I think at that point, it kind of opened my eyes to, OK,
(07:37):
maybe I do have a different dad,but then also what if I have
other siblings I don't know about?
And I think that that was like the real push.
I had such a close relationship with my little brother, kind of
raising him as we were kids. And I couldn't imagine loving
another person as much as I lovehim sibling wise.
So I think that that possibilityalso piqued a lot of my interest
(07:59):
in taking it. But on the same note, I was
super nervous. There was a man that was in and
out of like me and my mom's lifeas a child, as a family friend
is what he would be referred to as, and I always thought I kind
of looked like him. I didn't see any similarities in
me and my dad or any of my dad'sfamily, so I think I was always
just curious. This specific family friend had
(08:23):
actually passed away a few yearsbefore I took my test, so I was
either expecting that nothing was going to come back at all,
it was just going to be empty results, or that it may possibly
pop up with this other guy who had passed away.
And so I was kind of preparing myself for those two
possibilities. I ordered the test on the
(08:44):
Father's Day sale, which I thinkis really weird now that I look
back at it. And so I ordered it.
I took the test immediately and sent it off.
And I think exactly 6 weeks to the day later, I got a
notification on my phone saying that my results were ready.
I was at my husband's grandparents house.
We were just hanging out. I think we were having dinner or
something. I remember being so speechless
(09:08):
and just frozen that I wasn't sure what to do.
So I kind of excused myself and went outside and I opened the
results. The person that popped up as
like my close family member and I'm, I'm sure a lot of people
experienced this when it first pops up, the kind of like
classification or category that they give you is very broad.
So like you have a close match, but it doesn't necessarily say
(09:31):
this is your brother, this is your nephew, this is your uncle.
With how the DNA works, I guess there's options for each one.
So at first I thought it was a cousin or something that I had
found. I had no idea who it was though,
the first or the last name. So I kind of immediately went to
Facebook to kind of Google and search.
(09:52):
Oddly enough, the person that I was linked to is my half
brother. And he goes by an abbreviation
of his name that was not listed on Ancestry.
So it was very difficult to locate who he was.
So we had to search through the names just by comparing the tiny
picture on Ancestry to the pictures on Facebook to try to
(10:12):
locate. Him.
My husband kind of took over that Facebook search after I'd
got my results. I instantly went straight to my
mom and I was, I need answers. Who is this person?
Do you know anyone they're related to?
And at the time, I wasn't like really speaking to my mom.
We were not on good terms. So it was kind of just an
(10:33):
awkward situation in general. Went to her house to talk to
her, she wasn't there. So I went home.
And when I got home, I remember kind of just collapsing.
I went to my guest bed and I remember screaming and crying
and drooling. Almost like I was so just out of
sorts that there was no calming me down.
(10:55):
What were you thinking at that point?
Like what was causing that reaction?
I think it was the unknown. At first I think I was just
upset of not knowing I had foundthe secret out.
I found something out obviously because it was someone I had
never heard of or didn't know that I was related to in any
way. And I think the first thing that
(11:16):
I felt was hurt at the same timethat my mom called me back, and
then that the same time my husband figured out who this
person was, it was kind of the same time.
So my mom calls and she's basically in denial.
She says that my test got mixed up in the mail, that it's
someone else's results, not mine, that the person that the
person I matched to, my half brother, their dad, there's no
(11:39):
possibility that he was my dad, is what she was saying.
Maybe he was my cousin and one of my mom's siblings had been
with someone in his family, but nothing that would have
confirmed this match to me. And I think that that was a big
hurdle to get over that this, the DNA, the spinning in the
(12:00):
tube and all of this can lead tothe results that it led to.
DNA doesn't lie. So we have the information.
Now let's take the information we have and figure something out
with it. At the same time, my husband
found my half brother on Facebook so we kind of pieced
together who it was, how it was and I would say for the first
(12:20):
two weeks it was me just kind ofbeing sad and just dealing with
it privately. At this point only my mom, my
husband, I want to say my best friend and maybe my brother,
they were the only ones that knew.
I kind of feel like everything that's happened since then is
like post DNA surprise day and then everything that happened
(12:42):
before that is pre DNA surprise day.
And I feel like I'm 2 completelydifferent people from that day
before the day. And then after the day, even
looking at pictures of myself prior to my DNA surprise, I just
look like a completely differentperson in my eyes.
I think this goes back to my childhood, but my my whole life
(13:04):
I've kind of felt like an inconvenience or a burden almost
with my mom. She had me as a a, she was a
teenager and then she had my brother.
And then I kind of felt like we were both inconveniences and
burdens to her. So I think that that mindset
plays a huge part. In the beginning of my surprise,
I didn't necessarily want to tell this other family that I
(13:25):
existed. At first, I kind of felt like I
was going to blow up someone's life or just make someone else's
happiness less happy. And I think that has a lot to do
with how I was feeling. I wasn't happy.
I didn't. I didn't understand how someone
who I thought I trusted so much and that person as my mom, we
were best friends. I think up until this DNA
(13:47):
surprise, it's kind of just mademe question like, how could you
look at me? How could we do all these things
together? And it never got brought up
once. So it kind of changed how I
viewed a lot of people. So I got my results in July of
2021. I kept it to myself from July to
October. Now with me keeping it to
myself, I also didn't turn off my matches on Ancestry.
(14:10):
I kind of felt like if it was meant to be for like them to see
me, that it was meant to be and I was just going to allow it.
So I kind of just was open to communication, but not
necessarily like reaching out for it.
In October, I got a message frommy half brother.
I matched with his sister and she had said, hey, my brother
(14:33):
had noticed that you matched last night on Ancestry and he
kind of wanted me to reach out and just see how we can all
support each other. My heart sunk.
I was like, Oh my gosh, they know about me.
And so far it's been OK. But my whole thing was the way
that I had to find out about it without nobody mentioned it,
(14:55):
that it was a possibility beyondmy dad saying at 15 that
something was going to come up on my test.
And then even when I told my momI took the test, she still
didn't say like, hey, you might come across this or any kind of
heads up. None of that was given.
So I didn't want my biological father to find out through like
(15:15):
a text message or I guess a roundabout way from my half
brother or his sister or anything like that.
I wanted it just to be direct and kind of like how I felt I
should have been told, but at the same time I didn't think
that I would be able to sit and listen or see his reaction like
his initial reaction to finding out.
(15:37):
So I had asked my mom to messagehim and she wanted to meet up in
person. So I think she messaged him that
Wednesday and I'm pretty sure the next day or maybe even that
Friday, they met up for breakfast.
I didn't attend. It was just my mom and my
biological father. They were actually friends
growing up. Throughout high school they had
(15:58):
the same friend group and my biological father's first wife
with my half brother and his sister was my mom's friend in
high school. So like they all know each
other. I just don't think that they
knew how the relationships were intertwined.
She went and met him and his initial reaction was shocked.
She said he was speechless, kindof just told her what he'd been
(16:21):
up to since high school and she told him how I was.
Right after they met. He added me on Facebook and
messaged me immediately. And we kind of had this awkward
introduction through like Facebook Messenger of, hi, I'm
Brittany, I'm your daughter. What was that like?
It was very overwhelming. I think I was happy.
It was huge for reaching out to him, talking to him the first
(16:44):
time I found out that I not onlyhad this half brother who I
think he's four years younger than me, maybe 6, but I also had
a little sister that I didn't know existed either.
She's currently 8. And I actually now have a new
little sister that was just bornin May.
But he kind of was telling me about him and his life and the
(17:06):
things that he's gone through and my little sister.
And he was open to meeting. I think at first he was more
open from the time that we virtually met, I guess on
Facebook, where we acknowledge each other's existence.
It was actually seven months. It was just like Facebook
Messenger communication you. I would check in and try to get
(17:29):
some information out of him like, hey, where are you guys
living? You know, can we meet up?
I don't think he was comfortablewith it at first.
I think it was a lot for him to take in.
In the last three years, I've kind of learned that he is a,
he's a closed off person just because he's been through a lot.
But I think he's open to meetingme and like kind of
understanding who I am, but it'sa very slow process.
(17:52):
So we met at my half brother's baby shower.
That was the first time that we had actually met in person.
That was probably the most like core shocking rocking day of the
entire event. I think when we first locked
eyes, me and my biological father, we look so much alike.
(18:13):
If I was bald and like 30-40 years older we would be twins.
So it was. How did it?
Yeah, How was it? I mean, that genetic mirroring
is such an important piece. How was it to see him?
It's so weird even to this day Ifind myself just staring at him
when I'm around him because it is so weird to go from.
(18:35):
My mom has a huge family. She had seven siblings and my
dad's side. I don't look like any of them.
And then at this baby shower that I was at where I first met
him, most of their family is there as well and I look like a
majority of them too. So it was a extremely
overwhelming day seeing all of these people looking at me and
(18:56):
be looking at them and knowing something was off that was, I
don't even have the words for itto be honest.
I didn't understand how there was some other people in the
world that existed that looked like me that I didn't know.
Like the math couldn't math in my head, if that makes sense.
So from the time of my mom telling my biological father I
(19:18):
existed to the baby shower, I kind of want to fill in that
little gap. I met my my half brother.
It was November 10th. That's our sibling anniversary
that we like to call it. We went out to eat me, my
husband, my half brother and hisnow wife.
It was just the four of us. He was the first person that I
(19:39):
met in person that we looked alike.
And so when he walked in, I was so anxious, so nervous.
And he walked in and he just looked at me and said, are we
going to hug or what? And I think that like every
ounce of nervousness that I had just kind of washed away.
We sat there and talked for probably a good two hours.
(20:01):
The conversation was flowing. It was not anything awkward.
It wasn't weird. It felt like I was at the right
place at the right time with theright people.
So I met my half brother, I met his daughter and then we kind of
me, my husband, my half brother and his now wife.
We just started hanging out all the time.
(20:22):
We would do game nights, we would do dinner.
It was great getting to know them and kind of just hanging
out. And I feel like something that I
have like a big regret about theDNA surprise is that I've kind
of missed out on so many years with these people.
And so it's kind of like making up for lost time almost.
And so spent time with them. We got really close.
(20:45):
I went to the baby shower. And so when I'm walking into
this baby shower, this is the first family event I'm
attending. I haven't met many family
members outside of my half brother and his wife and his
daughter. My half brother had said that
our biological father was comingto the shower and that wasn't
(21:05):
the plan originally. I wasn't anticipating meeting
him there. I wasn't prepared mentally at
all. He walked in and we kind of
locked eyes and we kind of just nodded at each other.
We didn't speak, we didn't hug, we didn't do anything like that.
It was just kind of overwhelming, speechless.
(21:25):
And then all of his family walksin, his siblings, their kids,
all a whole group of people. And I quickly realized that none
of them know who I am. At first I had kind of sat off
in the distance of the room not really intermingling with them
because when this baby shower planning started, my biological
(21:47):
father had reached out and said that he didn't think it would be
appropriate for me to introduce myself to his side of the family
at the shower unless we did adnatest together.
Just for that extra confirmation.
That's what he explained it as. This was something I had offered
several times. I was like, let's go do ADNA
(22:10):
test. Like I said, a big hurdle I had
was these older generation people around me trying to get
them to understand the DNA test and how it works so that me and
my half brother matching on Ancestry wasn't proof enough
somehow that he needed that additional confirmation and the
(22:30):
paternal DNA test. I think at first I was a little
upset because I was like, OK, well we've been talking for
months and now this is getting brought up, but I also kind of
want to just get it over with because then it puts everyone's
mind at rest. So I went the very next day and
paid for the DNA test and did myportion.
That was February 26th of 2022. And then the baby shower rolls
(22:54):
around and when you do a DNA test outside of Ancestry or
23andMe, they swab your mouth and then they put your swab in
this little box and then they wait for the other person to
come in to then match them. They said I would get an e-mail
when he came in and did his part.
Well, I never received an e-mail.
And then April rolls around and the baby showers here.
(23:17):
For me, something that I really had to put in place throughout
this was that if something so important to me, I needed to do
it without thinking of everyone else's feelings over my own
feelings. And it took a long time to get
to that point. But I think the baby shower was
the first step in the right direction, where even though he
(23:39):
had asked me not to go and not to introduce myself without the
paternity test being done, I made the decision that since he
didn't do it, I was going to go ahead and go to the baby shower.
I feel like I did my part of theask, and so since he didn't want
to do his part, I felt like the ask was no longer relevant.
(24:02):
So I went to the baby shower andI quickly realized that nobody
else knew who I was, but they were kind of looking at me
weird. So probably about halfway
through the baby shower my half brother sister came up to me and
asked me if I wanted to be introduced to the rest of the
family and I said no. I knew that me being there was
(24:25):
satisfying my want to be a part of their big day, but I didn't
want to cross a hard boundary that he had set, so I had said
no to meeting the rest of the family.
At the same time, my biological father had left and my half
brother's sister decided that I was going to be introduced to
(24:46):
them regardless of how I felt orhow my biological father felt.
I saw her walk into this hallwayand she had a couple of my
biological father's sisters and cousins and nieces, and I think
this is when they found out because they all kind of backed
(25:06):
out of the hallway and just werestaring straight at me.
I got really anxious at this point.
I think when you're telling people the information, like the
newly found information, it is so stressful because you don't
know if they're going to have a good reaction or a bad reaction
or no reaction at all. Is also kind of hard to
(25:27):
understand, but just the staringstraight at me made me very
nervous. My biological father, sister, my
aunt, she came up to me and gaveme a hug and she wanted me to
meet the rest of family that wasthere.
And so I said, OK, sure, let's do this.
And how did it feel to be so welcomed and, and have her say,
(25:48):
I, I want you to meet the rest of the family?
Like, was it surprising? What kind of reaction were you
really anticipating from all of these people?
I think it was surprising, especially I think I was basing
like my expectations of their feelings and their reactions off
(26:09):
of my biological fathers who hadhe had shown interest where he
was like responding to messages,but we hadn't really met up
until that point. We he hadn't really put in any
effort into getting to know me at that point.
So I was almost expecting that same kind of reaction when she
hugged me. I think I cried.
I was very emotionally overwhelmed.
(26:30):
It's so weird to have instant connections.
And I think that's something that I haven't really
experienced prior to this. Having this person that says I
want to give you a hug and then 5 minutes later they're leaving
and saying like, I love you, I'mglad to meet you.
It's, it's a surreal feeling andsomething I've never experienced
before. It felt supportive.
(26:51):
It felt like, OK, this whole thing might be OK.
Something else I was experiencing, not on the
biological father side, but my maternal side and my lifelong
father side, was a lot of anger and a lot of disappointment.
Maybe my mom knew, along with the rest of my family, my mom,
(27:12):
my dad, both of all their siblings, my grandparents.
Apparently they all knew that mylifelong father was not my
father, they just didn't know who was.
But for me, I didn't know for sure that he was not my lifelong
father. I had no clue.
So once I started going to, you know, baby showers and all of
(27:35):
these things where kind of like the cat was out of the bag
almost, I then had to tell the opposite sides of the family
that, hey, I did this test and this is what I found out.
My original viewpoint was that not much will change, it will
just be enhanced. Like I'll just get additional
people to love, but not much will change.
(27:57):
Like on the people that I knew my whole life, I started telling
other people like my grandma andmy dad's brother and his wife
and my cousins, even people on my mom's side of the family
that, hey, I found out this information.
And I know that my lifelong dad is not actually my dad and that
(28:18):
I have this other biological father out here and I'm meeting
all of these people. What I wasn't expecting was the
anger that came from it. On my lifelong father's side, I
got a lot of, well, why do you need a new family?
We're not good enough or you don't love us anymore.
Just very absurd things to get to from the information I was
(28:43):
providing. So I think when my biological
father's sister gave me a hug atthe baby shower, it was almost
like a relief that like, it's going to be OK even if all these
other people don't think it's OK.
And that's definitely been a huge theme of my journey.
Something I've learned along theway is that you can't make
(29:06):
everyone happy and that it's impossible to make most of the
people happy when you're trying to make yourself happy.
So after the baby shower, I kindof cut off contact with a lot of
my family that was just being nasty and rude and had a lot of
negative things to say about thewhole thing and focused on just
(29:27):
the people that were supportive.I've, I actually started therapy
then too. That's been a huge part of my
journey, kind of rewiring how I think, what I'm thinking and who
I'm thinking about. So that's been big.
Did you get into therapy immediately after?
Had you been in therapy before? No, I'd never done therapy
(29:47):
before. I definitely should have if I'm
being honest. Prior to this, July 2021 is when
I got my results. I started therapy in November
2022. So the baby shower had happened.
My nephew was born, my half brother had their baby.
Things were going great with those people that I was
connecting with and talking with, and I think in November
(30:10):
2022, I hit this wall of sadnessthat I couldn't get out of where
I think that the positive connections I was making, they
were still going great. But I think the overall negative
reactions from all the other people, they started out
weighing the positive reactions and I found it just really
(30:31):
difficult to get through each day.
And that's when I decided to find a therapist.
Something I experienced as well was I, I couldn't look at
mirrors for a very, very long time.
I got my results in July. I don't think I looked in the
mirror all of that following summer until probably that late
fall like October or November ish.
(30:53):
Can you talk a little bit more about that because this is an
experience that we hear about all the time.
Oh yeah. How did you feel when you looked
in the mirror? Yeah, I think the best way that
I can explain it is that you know that the FedEx truck, how
if you look at it, there's like a arrow in the FedEx word of the
(31:15):
logo. And once you see that, you don't
Unsee it. And I think that that's how I
kind of looked at myself. Where once I saw myself and saw
these other people that I lookedlike and my biological father,
we look so much alike. And it was confusion at 1st and
then it was kind of just my facetransformed.
(31:40):
Like once I saw my biological father, my face didn't look like
it looked before. I don't know how to like make
that make sense, but it just looked different.
My nose, my eyes, my chin, all of these features that I had
never really I guess paid attention to.
Maybe I was paying extra attention to because I was like,
oh OK, we have the same nose, wehave the same chin, we have the
(32:04):
same eyes, even our fingers are the same.
For the 1st 26 years of my life I feel like I was looking at
myself maybe not as deep as I should have been or like I
couldn't see it. And then once I did see it I
couldn't Unsee it. It just played tricks with my
mind of like even in pictures orvideos of anything it was like
(32:26):
OK but the way you even talk is weird.
The way your nose is moving is different and maybe it just made
me hyper analyze it even more because I was noticing all the
differences. But I think it was just a
sadness of I don't recognize this person.
I don't recognize the way she looks.
I've obviously sat with it for three years now, and I've looked
(32:47):
at myself in the mirror a lot since then.
And I know my face didn't physically change, like I didn't
morph into something else. But my viewpoint of myself and
my viewpoint of my life changed so dramatically that I, I think
that it was just me seeing a whole different person that I
(33:08):
didn't know existed because I didn't know that like my origin
and who I was was not the truth.The mirror thing was the first
thing I experienced for sure. So much so I got a tattoo of a
broken mirror because I, I thinkthat when I first started going
through this, and I think that therapy helped me get to this
(33:31):
point, but I didn't realize how much power I gave to those
things either. I needed to be more confident in
myself and who I am as a person at that time.
But because I was so broken downby the lies and the betrayal and
the sadness and the hurt, I allowed all of those other
feelings to like creep in and make me change how I felt about
(33:54):
myself. It's almost like relearning
yourself. Like I thought I knew who I was,
but joke's on me, I didn't. And now I need to relearn who I
am and kind of like teach myselfwho I am because I feel like I
have these tools now I didn't have before that allow me to see
things differently. When I first in my therapy
(34:17):
session, I was very skeptical. I was nervous to talk.
I kind of felt like me talking about the scenario was betraying
the other people in the scenarioat first.
Once I got comfortable with my therapist and just realized that
she was there to talk to me about my problems and not
everyone else, I opened up more.She had me write down everything
(34:40):
that had happened, even my childhood up until now, to where
at this point I had found out myresults.
And at the end of it, she held up the paper and she said, does
this look like a lot? And I was like, yeah, it is.
And she was like, OK, it feels like a lot because it is a lot.
And I think that was the first time that someone had, like,
(35:02):
actually acknowledged that, like, hey, this is a lot.
You're not crazy for feeling sador overwhelmed.
It's not your fault. And that was the first time that
I think that someone had said that to me.
And I think that's when it all started changing.
I felt like I could open up to her.
I felt like even the things I wasn't sure about in the
(35:24):
situation, I could talk to her about it and we could like work
through it. I still see her now.
What is next for you as you lookahead?
So the relationships have kind of all, like I would say, evened
out to where I think that they're probably going to stay.
My biological father, we talk, he responds, I see him every so
(35:46):
often. We do birthdays, holidays and
things together. That's been huge.
I have two little sisters now. I've never had sisters prior to
this, so that was really changing.
My half brother, we're pretty close.
He has a daughter and a son, my first niece and nephew.
Biologically, I'm actually my nephew's godmother.
(36:08):
That was huge for me. So things are going great.
I would say my biological fatherhas never finished his part of
the DNA test. For a while.
It was something that bothered me.
It was something I pushed for and asked about, but I think
we've kind of just come to the understanding that he knows that
I'm his daughter and I know thathe is my biological father.
(36:28):
Now. Do I wish that he would take
that test? Probably, because I think that
would just like provide closure to both of us.
With my other family, I've kind of met them where they meet me.
Some of them, they don't want totalk about it.
I don't bring it up. Some of them do ask me questions
and we talk about it regularly. I just turned 30 this year in
September and I had a birthday party and it was the first event
(36:52):
that all sides of the families have been together.
My biological father couldn't make it.
He was out of town, but a lot ofhis family did show up and it
was the most, I guess, complete I felt in a while with other
people being in the same room. I've had a lot of regrets
throughout this process of should I have done this?
(37:15):
Should I have just let it stay where it was?
And I think overall I'm glad I did it because I found a lot of
people that are great people that should have been in my life
the whole time. But I also think that it showed
me the other people that maybe they weren't in my corner like I
thought they were. And so it's opened my eyes up to
(37:35):
that for sure. How are you feeling overall
about your mom now? Where do you think stand today?
That's a bit of a tough one. There's two parts to it.
So my first part of frustration is that she didn't tell me that
she didn't give me the heads up.She didn't say, hey, there's a
(37:55):
possibility, nothing. I think that that betrayal
knowing, knowing that I was going to be hurt and not doing
anything proactively about it. I think that it's something that
I'm always going to have a problem with, something I'm
always going to struggle with. She was in denial at first.
She was very much, this isn't true.
(38:18):
I don't know why you did this. It's it doesn't need to be
talked about kind of thing. And I think that she's very much
still in the place of I did something wrong.
I'm sorry I did something wrong.Where I'm at now is that I
understand that it was wrong andI want to figure out a way to
kind of move forward and for us to be on the same page.
(38:40):
And I don't think that she's there yet.
I think that she's still stuck on the decision she made when I
was born. I think if she could move past
that and kind of acknowledge, hey, I did make this decision,
but now you've know the truth and now you can make
relationships with these people and be supportive of that, I
think that we could make progress.
(39:01):
But I think I just have a lot ofanger.
I have a lot of hurt. I have a lot of frustration,
especially because it wasn't just my mom that knew that my
lifelong dad wasn't my dad. It my lifelong dad also knew and
my whole family knew. And so I have a resentment that
I, that I, I still have for her.And I think it's, I've talked
(39:24):
about it with my therapist that it's weird.
I don't resent my lifelong dad the same way I resent my mom,
but I think that a lot of that goes to how she's treated me
after the fact, after I got my results.
Going forward, I just want to behappy and keep discovering
myself. I feel like I still have so much
(39:44):
more to learn about myself, so much more to learn about my
biological family. I'm just going to let time keep
doing its thing and hopefully itheals the other people that are
involved in the situation to where they can be a part of my
life again and support me. And I hope it continues to heal
me. And I'm just hoping that I can
(40:04):
continue making relationships with the people that have opened
up their arms with me. What advice do you have for a
parent who is keeping adna surprise from their child?
I've thought about this a lot. I don't think that there's like
a magic number where you hit this age and your parents should
tell you all of their dirty secrets.
(40:25):
I think it's going to be different for every person, but
for me, I think that it would have been easier to digest had I
known prior to becoming an adultand trying to figure out who I
was as a person. Maybe as a high schooler, I
might not have been as mature asI was at 26 to kind of take the
information in the way I did. But I feel like that kind of
(40:48):
backtracking who you are as an adult is really hard.
There are certain things that you do as an adult.
I don't have children, but I have been, I've been married.
So like my wedding is a huge daythat I will never get back.
And I think having my biologicalfamily, all of them there, it's
a big regret I have now because it's something that I can't do
(41:11):
again. But like, if I had kids, I would
want all of my family to be a part of that.
Or just any big thing. You look back and you have
regrets that they weren't able to be a part of that day when
they should have been. So I think that whenever your
child is mature enough to take in something that's like that, I
(41:35):
think that they definitely need to know.
This isn't just like, oh, this is my dad.
This is half of who I am. And I think that for other
people to know a secret about mytruth and no one tell me, I
think it caused way more hurt. Than it should have parents that
are making decisions. I understand that you're you're
(41:59):
doing it because you think it's the best decision at the time.
I've also heard that a lot of people never anticipated that
DNA tests were going to become such easily accessible things.
But I think that something that I try to do is that whenever I
make a decision, I have to know why I made the decision, and I
have to be able to adjust if thethings I decided on change.
(42:23):
I just think that everyone deserves to know who their
family is, who their biological parents are, their siblings,
their connections and chemistry,and just things that you don't
even think of that that you deserve to have.
Honesty is the best policy and just let them know as soon as
(42:47):
they're mature enough to know. And what advice do you have for
someone who just uncovered Adna surprise?
If you just uncovered your DNA surprise, I would say first of
all be very patient with yourself.
Something I always tried to get to was my normal.
I try to get back to normal and I think that you have to 1st
(43:08):
understand that your normal is no longer there.
You have to find your new normaland it takes a while to get
there. I would also say definitely look
into therapy. I never could see myself as
someone going into therapy priorto this.
I think everyone could probably benefit from therapy to be
honest. I started outgoing weekly.
I then switched to bi weekly andnow I'm at monthly.
(43:31):
So it's not something that you're tied to forever, it's
just there when you need it. And it's just helpful to have an
unbiased person giving you theiradvice and their opinion on
situations. And then my last piece of advice
would definitely be to put yourself first.
I spent a long, long time tryingto walk on egg shells to make
(43:55):
sure I wasn't offending anyone or making sure I wasn't hurting
anyone's feelings or stepping ontoes.
And the sad truth of it is that I don't feel like the people
that had my secret, that didn't tell me until I found out, I
don't think that they were worried about my feelings in
those moments. The people that have said the
(44:15):
nasty comments and the nasty remarks, when I tell them my
story, I don't feel like they'recaring about my feelings in that
moment. So I need to make sure that I'm
thinking about myself. And as long as I'm being true to
myself and honoring how I feel, then the people that truly
support me will be there for me and will understand how I feel
(44:35):
every single time I get sad, every single time I feel
anything about this. There are so many people out
there that have experienced thisthat you need to be around those
people. Even listening to this podcast,
I've listened to probably every episode.
There are support groups on Facebook.
There's so many different tools out there and resources that
(44:58):
will make you feel not alone because it is probably the most
lonely experience to go through.It will always be a bit lonely.
I'm always going to be the outsider on all sides of the
family. I'm always going to be like the
person that wasn't there the whole time and that is just
popping in now. But as long as you can put your
(45:22):
feelings 1st and know that if this is what I feel to do, this
is what I need to do, then in the end it will most likely come
out the way you want it. To.
Brittany, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and
sharing your journey. I know that people who are
listening who've been through similar experiences will be
helped by you being vulnerable and sharing.
(45:44):
I hope that the future looks bright for you, whatever that
looks like, whether it's building or repairing a
relationship with your mom or continuing to build a
relationship with your new foundfamily.
I just wish you the best and thanks again for being here.
Absolutely. Thank you.
Thanks again to Brittany for sharing her story.
(46:04):
If you have Adna Surprise that you'd like to share, please
submit your story at dnasurprises.com.
And if you'd like early add freeaccess to episodes, join me over
on patreon@patreon.com/DNA Surprises.
Until next time. This episode of DNA Surprises
was hosted, produced and edited by me Alexis Ourselt.
(46:29):
It was mixed and mastered by Josh Ourselt of Siren Recording
Studios.
The mirror thing was the first thing I experienced for sure, So
much so I got a tattoo of a broken mirror because I I think
that when I first started going through this and I think that
therapy helped me get to this point, but I didn't realize how
much power I gave to those things either.
I needed to be more confident inmyself and who I am as a person
(00:24):
at that time. But because I was so broken down
by the lies and the betrayal andthe sadness and the hurt, I
allowed all of those other feelings to like creep in and
make me change how I felt about myself.
It's almost like relearning yourself.
Like I thought I knew who I was,but joke's on me, I didn't.
(00:46):
And now I need to relearn who I am and kind of like, teach
myself who I am because I feel like I have these tools now I
didn't have before that allow meto see things differently.
Welcome to DNA Surprises, a podcast that delves into the
world of unexpected DNA discoveries.
(01:07):
I'm your host, Alexis ourselves.In July 2021, my life took a
surprising turn when I found outthat I'm an NPE, a person who
has experienced a non paternal event.
In other words, my biological father isn't who I thought he
was. Join me as we explore the
(01:28):
stories of NP, ES, adoptees and donor conceived people and their
families. Get ready to unravel the
astonishing journeys that begin with a simple DNA test.
This is DNA surprises. Hindsight is 2020.
After experiencing ADNA surprise, it's easy to look back
(01:51):
at moments throughout our childhoods and realize that the
truth was there all along. Growing up in Indiana, Brittany
always felt like an outsider. Her parents were divorced, and
when she asked her father if shecould go live with him, he
revealed that he wasn't her biological father, which her
mother denied. Years later, Brittany took ADNA
(02:13):
test, which revealed that her lifelong father was not her
biological father. In this episode, Brittany shares
how the revelation rocked her sense of identity and her
lifelong relationships. She also discusses how she's
connected with her new found family and found a sense of
belonging. Thank you for sharing your
(02:34):
story, Brittany. My name is Brittany.
I am 30 years old and I'm from Central IN.
I grew up with my mom and my little brother.
It was mostly just like the three of us as like a core
family unit. I grew up with AI don't call him
my birth certificate. Father and I, I'll kind of get
into that, but I call him my lifelong father now.
(02:57):
I grew up with him. He was around so often.
I would see him on holidays as ateenager.
I kind of would see him more when I had friends in his
neighborhood I would hang out with, but it was really just me
and my mom and my brother most of the time.
She was a bartender, so she worked nights, weekends, really
all of the time that we weren't in school when she was working,
(03:18):
it was just me and my brother. He was born in 2000, so we have
like a six year age gap. So I kind of feel like I took on
more of like a mother role for him, not really a sister.
I think now that I know my DNA surprise, I think there are some
things that kind of stick out tome like as a kid that I kind of
should have seen as a red flag that maybe I just missed.
(03:40):
Or I think some of them, they kind of were explained away.
So I was just trusting in the fact that the things that the
people were telling me were true.
A couple of them were, we were on Medicaid growing up and you
had to present like you're supporting documents, your pay
stubs, your birth certificates, all of these things.
And I remember one time we went to the office and I noticed that
(04:02):
I had no father listed on my birth certificate.
It had my mom's name and then the.
Birth father was blank. And now I know it's like a silly
story, but then she told me thatmy dad had got into some trouble
and he wasn't there at the time of the signing.
So I kind of was like, OK, that makes sense.
And my dad was known for gettinginto trouble when I was in a
kid, so kind of made sense. There was a couple other things
(04:26):
where you'd go through like highschool and you would go through
biology class and they are talking about your different
traits and how they're passed down to you.
And I have a widow's peak, I call it this avatar arrow on my
forehead. It's very noticeable.
And when you're in that class, those are the kind of rare DNA
(04:47):
traits that you pass down that you try to backtrack where you
got it from. That was one thing that no one
in my family had. So that was kind of an
unexplained mystery. And then I think the last thing
that kind of piqued my interest and the possibility of taking
ADNA test when I was in high school, my dad, I was over at
(05:07):
his house and I didn't want to be living at my mom's house
anymore. I was going through that phase
where teenage girls just don't like their moms.
And I wanted to go live with my dad.
And it was always, no, you can'tlive here.
No, it's not possible. And I finally just asked him
like, why? Why can't I?
This is what I want to do. And at that age, I feel like
(05:29):
most of my friends that had divorced or separated parents,
they were able to choose where they wanted to live.
So I didn't really understand why I couldn't go live with my
dad. And one night he told me that
there was a possibility that he was not my dad.
That shocked me. I think I was 15 when I went
home that weekend to to my mom'shouse.
(05:49):
I asked her about it and her first reaction was anger.
She just was upset that I was even asking the question.
It was just so far fetched. She made it seem that like I was
being outlandish. It was kind of just something
that was dropped. I kind of just moved on and was
like whatever, I can't live withmy dad, it is what it is and
(06:11):
just kept on moving. When I was in high school, I met
my now husband. My life kind of changed then.
I wasn't necessarily in my brother's mom anymore.
I kind of had my own life, my own things I was doing.
I think I started focusing more on me.
Then I moved out of my mom's house very soon after I turned
18. I moved right in with my
(06:31):
boyfriend, now husband. I think it was just always this
like overwhelming feeling of being an outsider that kind of
really pushed me to take the test.
So when you took the test, yes, were you thinking my maybe my
dad is not my biological father?Was it just wanting to get some
answers about who you were and why you felt like an outsider?
(06:54):
Yeah, I think it was more so answers with my brother and my
brother's dad being in the picture.
I was kind of always this, the outsider within that family.
Once my brother and his dad entered the picture.
And then on the flip side, at mydad's house, he was then married
to a new lady and my dad then had stepchildren.
So I kind of then felt like a outsider there.
(07:16):
I think the goal of it was definitely to see if anything
popped up for my dad. I was working and my boss at the
time, she was telling me that she took the ancestry test and
that she had found a sister she didn't know existed.
And I think at that point, it kind of opened my eyes to, OK,
(07:37):
maybe I do have a different dad,but then also what if I have
other siblings I don't know about?
And I think that that was like the real push.
I had such a close relationship with my little brother, kind of
raising him as we were kids. And I couldn't imagine loving
another person as much as I lovehim sibling wise.
So I think that that possibilityalso piqued a lot of my interest
(07:59):
in taking it. But on the same note, I was
super nervous. There was a man that was in and
out of like me and my mom's lifeas a child, as a family friend
is what he would be referred to as, and I always thought I kind
of looked like him. I didn't see any similarities in
me and my dad or any of my dad'sfamily, so I think I was always
just curious. This specific family friend had
(08:23):
actually passed away a few yearsbefore I took my test, so I was
either expecting that nothing was going to come back at all,
it was just going to be empty results, or that it may possibly
pop up with this other guy who had passed away.
And so I was kind of preparing myself for those two
possibilities. I ordered the test on the
(08:44):
Father's Day sale, which I thinkis really weird now that I look
back at it. And so I ordered it.
I took the test immediately and sent it off.
And I think exactly 6 weeks to the day later, I got a
notification on my phone saying that my results were ready.
I was at my husband's grandparents house.
We were just hanging out. I think we were having dinner or
something. I remember being so speechless
(09:08):
and just frozen that I wasn't sure what to do.
So I kind of excused myself and went outside and I opened the
results. The person that popped up as
like my close family member and I'm, I'm sure a lot of people
experienced this when it first pops up, the kind of like
classification or category that they give you is very broad.
So like you have a close match, but it doesn't necessarily say
(09:31):
this is your brother, this is your nephew, this is your uncle.
With how the DNA works, I guess there's options for each one.
So at first I thought it was a cousin or something that I had
found. I had no idea who it was though,
the first or the last name. So I kind of immediately went to
Facebook to kind of Google and search.
(09:52):
Oddly enough, the person that I was linked to is my half
brother. And he goes by an abbreviation
of his name that was not listed on Ancestry.
So it was very difficult to locate who he was.
So we had to search through the names just by comparing the tiny
picture on Ancestry to the pictures on Facebook to try to
(10:12):
locate. Him.
My husband kind of took over that Facebook search after I'd
got my results. I instantly went straight to my
mom and I was, I need answers. Who is this person?
Do you know anyone they're related to?
And at the time, I wasn't like really speaking to my mom.
We were not on good terms. So it was kind of just an
(10:33):
awkward situation in general. Went to her house to talk to
her, she wasn't there. So I went home.
And when I got home, I remember kind of just collapsing.
I went to my guest bed and I remember screaming and crying
and drooling. Almost like I was so just out of
sorts that there was no calming me down.
(10:55):
What were you thinking at that point?
Like what was causing that reaction?
I think it was the unknown. At first I think I was just
upset of not knowing I had foundthe secret out.
I found something out obviously because it was someone I had
never heard of or didn't know that I was related to in any
way. And I think the first thing that
(11:16):
I felt was hurt at the same timethat my mom called me back, and
then that the same time my husband figured out who this
person was, it was kind of the same time.
So my mom calls and she's basically in denial.
She says that my test got mixed up in the mail, that it's
someone else's results, not mine, that the person that the
person I matched to, my half brother, their dad, there's no
(11:39):
possibility that he was my dad, is what she was saying.
Maybe he was my cousin and one of my mom's siblings had been
with someone in his family, but nothing that would have
confirmed this match to me. And I think that that was a big
hurdle to get over that this, the DNA, the spinning in the
(12:00):
tube and all of this can lead tothe results that it led to.
DNA doesn't lie. So we have the information.
Now let's take the information we have and figure something out
with it. At the same time, my husband
found my half brother on Facebook so we kind of pieced
together who it was, how it was and I would say for the first
(12:20):
two weeks it was me just kind ofbeing sad and just dealing with
it privately. At this point only my mom, my
husband, I want to say my best friend and maybe my brother,
they were the only ones that knew.
I kind of feel like everything that's happened since then is
like post DNA surprise day and then everything that happened
(12:42):
before that is pre DNA surprise day.
And I feel like I'm 2 completelydifferent people from that day
before the day. And then after the day, even
looking at pictures of myself prior to my DNA surprise, I just
look like a completely differentperson in my eyes.
I think this goes back to my childhood, but my my whole life
(13:04):
I've kind of felt like an inconvenience or a burden almost
with my mom. She had me as a a, she was a
teenager and then she had my brother.
And then I kind of felt like we were both inconveniences and
burdens to her. So I think that that mindset
plays a huge part. In the beginning of my surprise,
I didn't necessarily want to tell this other family that I
(13:25):
existed. At first, I kind of felt like I
was going to blow up someone's life or just make someone else's
happiness less happy. And I think that has a lot to do
with how I was feeling. I wasn't happy.
I didn't. I didn't understand how someone
who I thought I trusted so much and that person as my mom, we
were best friends. I think up until this DNA
(13:47):
surprise, it's kind of just mademe question like, how could you
look at me? How could we do all these things
together? And it never got brought up
once. So it kind of changed how I
viewed a lot of people. So I got my results in July of
2021. I kept it to myself from July to
October. Now with me keeping it to
myself, I also didn't turn off my matches on Ancestry.
(14:10):
I kind of felt like if it was meant to be for like them to see
me, that it was meant to be and I was just going to allow it.
So I kind of just was open to communication, but not
necessarily like reaching out for it.
In October, I got a message frommy half brother.
I matched with his sister and she had said, hey, my brother
(14:33):
had noticed that you matched last night on Ancestry and he
kind of wanted me to reach out and just see how we can all
support each other. My heart sunk.
I was like, Oh my gosh, they know about me.
And so far it's been OK. But my whole thing was the way
that I had to find out about it without nobody mentioned it,
(14:55):
that it was a possibility beyondmy dad saying at 15 that
something was going to come up on my test.
And then even when I told my momI took the test, she still
didn't say like, hey, you might come across this or any kind of
heads up. None of that was given.
So I didn't want my biological father to find out through like
(15:15):
a text message or I guess a roundabout way from my half
brother or his sister or anything like that.
I wanted it just to be direct and kind of like how I felt I
should have been told, but at the same time I didn't think
that I would be able to sit and listen or see his reaction like
his initial reaction to finding out.
(15:37):
So I had asked my mom to messagehim and she wanted to meet up in
person. So I think she messaged him that
Wednesday and I'm pretty sure the next day or maybe even that
Friday, they met up for breakfast.
I didn't attend. It was just my mom and my
biological father. They were actually friends
growing up. Throughout high school they had
(15:58):
the same friend group and my biological father's first wife
with my half brother and his sister was my mom's friend in
high school. So like they all know each
other. I just don't think that they
knew how the relationships were intertwined.
She went and met him and his initial reaction was shocked.
She said he was speechless, kindof just told her what he'd been
(16:21):
up to since high school and she told him how I was.
Right after they met. He added me on Facebook and
messaged me immediately. And we kind of had this awkward
introduction through like Facebook Messenger of, hi, I'm
Brittany, I'm your daughter. What was that like?
It was very overwhelming. I think I was happy.
It was huge for reaching out to him, talking to him the first
(16:44):
time I found out that I not onlyhad this half brother who I
think he's four years younger than me, maybe 6, but I also had
a little sister that I didn't know existed either.
She's currently 8. And I actually now have a new
little sister that was just bornin May.
But he kind of was telling me about him and his life and the
(17:06):
things that he's gone through and my little sister.
And he was open to meeting. I think at first he was more
open from the time that we virtually met, I guess on
Facebook, where we acknowledge each other's existence.
It was actually seven months. It was just like Facebook
Messenger communication you. I would check in and try to get
(17:29):
some information out of him like, hey, where are you guys
living? You know, can we meet up?
I don't think he was comfortablewith it at first.
I think it was a lot for him to take in.
In the last three years, I've kind of learned that he is a,
he's a closed off person just because he's been through a lot.
But I think he's open to meetingme and like kind of
understanding who I am, but it'sa very slow process.
(17:52):
So we met at my half brother's baby shower.
That was the first time that we had actually met in person.
That was probably the most like core shocking rocking day of the
entire event. I think when we first locked
eyes, me and my biological father, we look so much alike.
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If I was bald and like 30-40 years older we would be twins.
So it was. How did it?
Yeah, How was it? I mean, that genetic mirroring
is such an important piece. How was it to see him?
It's so weird even to this day Ifind myself just staring at him
when I'm around him because it is so weird to go from.
(18:35):
My mom has a huge family. She had seven siblings and my
dad's side. I don't look like any of them.
And then at this baby shower that I was at where I first met
him, most of their family is there as well and I look like a
majority of them too. So it was a extremely
overwhelming day seeing all of these people looking at me and
(18:56):
be looking at them and knowing something was off that was, I
don't even have the words for itto be honest.
I didn't understand how there was some other people in the
world that existed that looked like me that I didn't know.
Like the math couldn't math in my head, if that makes sense.
So from the time of my mom telling my biological father I
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existed to the baby shower, I kind of want to fill in that
little gap. I met my my half brother.
It was November 10th. That's our sibling anniversary
that we like to call it. We went out to eat me, my
husband, my half brother and hisnow wife.
It was just the four of us. He was the first person that I
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met in person that we looked alike.
And so when he walked in, I was so anxious, so nervous.
And he walked in and he just looked at me and said, are we
going to hug or what? And I think that like every
ounce of nervousness that I had just kind of washed away.
We sat there and talked for probably a good two hours.
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The conversation was flowing. It was not anything awkward.
It wasn't weird. It felt like I was at the right
place at the right time with theright people.
So I met my half brother, I met his daughter and then we kind of
me, my husband, my half brother and his now wife.
We just started hanging out all the time.
(20:22):
We would do game nights, we would do dinner.
It was great getting to know them and kind of just hanging
out. And I feel like something that I
have like a big regret about theDNA surprise is that I've kind
of missed out on so many years with these people.
And so it's kind of like making up for lost time almost.
And so spent time with them. We got really close.
(20:45):
I went to the baby shower. And so when I'm walking into
this baby shower, this is the first family event I'm
attending. I haven't met many family
members outside of my half brother and his wife and his
daughter. My half brother had said that
our biological father was comingto the shower and that wasn't
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the plan originally. I wasn't anticipating meeting
him there. I wasn't prepared mentally at
all. He walked in and we kind of
locked eyes and we kind of just nodded at each other.
We didn't speak, we didn't hug, we didn't do anything like that.
It was just kind of overwhelming, speechless.
(21:25):
And then all of his family walksin, his siblings, their kids,
all a whole group of people. And I quickly realized that none
of them know who I am. At first I had kind of sat off
in the distance of the room not really intermingling with them
because when this baby shower planning started, my biological
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father had reached out and said that he didn't think it would be
appropriate for me to introduce myself to his side of the family
at the shower unless we did adnatest together.
Just for that extra confirmation.
That's what he explained it as. This was something I had offered
several times. I was like, let's go do ADNA
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test. Like I said, a big hurdle I had
was these older generation people around me trying to get
them to understand the DNA test and how it works so that me and
my half brother matching on Ancestry wasn't proof enough
somehow that he needed that additional confirmation and the
(22:30):
paternal DNA test. I think at first I was a little
upset because I was like, OK, well we've been talking for
months and now this is getting brought up, but I also kind of
want to just get it over with because then it puts everyone's
mind at rest. So I went the very next day and
paid for the DNA test and did myportion.
That was February 26th of 2022. And then the baby shower rolls
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around and when you do a DNA test outside of Ancestry or
23andMe, they swab your mouth and then they put your swab in
this little box and then they wait for the other person to
come in to then match them. They said I would get an e-mail
when he came in and did his part.
Well, I never received an e-mail.
And then April rolls around and the baby showers here.
(23:17):
For me, something that I really had to put in place throughout
this was that if something so important to me, I needed to do
it without thinking of everyone else's feelings over my own
feelings. And it took a long time to get
to that point. But I think the baby shower was
the first step in the right direction, where even though he
(23:39):
had asked me not to go and not to introduce myself without the
paternity test being done, I made the decision that since he
didn't do it, I was going to go ahead and go to the baby shower.
I feel like I did my part of theask, and so since he didn't want
to do his part, I felt like the ask was no longer relevant.
(24:02):
So I went to the baby shower andI quickly realized that nobody
else knew who I was, but they were kind of looking at me
weird. So probably about halfway
through the baby shower my half brother sister came up to me and
asked me if I wanted to be introduced to the rest of the
family and I said no. I knew that me being there was
(24:25):
satisfying my want to be a part of their big day, but I didn't
want to cross a hard boundary that he had set, so I had said
no to meeting the rest of the family.
At the same time, my biological father had left and my half
brother's sister decided that I was going to be introduced to
(24:46):
them regardless of how I felt orhow my biological father felt.
I saw her walk into this hallwayand she had a couple of my
biological father's sisters and cousins and nieces, and I think
this is when they found out because they all kind of backed
(25:06):
out of the hallway and just werestaring straight at me.
I got really anxious at this point.
I think when you're telling people the information, like the
newly found information, it is so stressful because you don't
know if they're going to have a good reaction or a bad reaction
or no reaction at all. Is also kind of hard to
(25:27):
understand, but just the staringstraight at me made me very
nervous. My biological father, sister, my
aunt, she came up to me and gaveme a hug and she wanted me to
meet the rest of family that wasthere.
And so I said, OK, sure, let's do this.
And how did it feel to be so welcomed and, and have her say,
(25:48):
I, I want you to meet the rest of the family?
Like, was it surprising? What kind of reaction were you
really anticipating from all of these people?
I think it was surprising, especially I think I was basing
like my expectations of their feelings and their reactions off
(26:09):
of my biological fathers who hadhe had shown interest where he
was like responding to messages,but we hadn't really met up
until that point. We he hadn't really put in any
effort into getting to know me at that point.
So I was almost expecting that same kind of reaction when she
hugged me. I think I cried.
I was very emotionally overwhelmed.
(26:30):
It's so weird to have instant connections.
And I think that's something that I haven't really
experienced prior to this. Having this person that says I
want to give you a hug and then 5 minutes later they're leaving
and saying like, I love you, I'mglad to meet you.
It's, it's a surreal feeling andsomething I've never experienced
before. It felt supportive.
(26:51):
It felt like, OK, this whole thing might be OK.
Something else I was experiencing, not on the
biological father side, but my maternal side and my lifelong
father side, was a lot of anger and a lot of disappointment.
Maybe my mom knew, along with the rest of my family, my mom,
(27:12):
my dad, both of all their siblings, my grandparents.
Apparently they all knew that mylifelong father was not my
father, they just didn't know who was.
But for me, I didn't know for sure that he was not my lifelong
father. I had no clue.
So once I started going to, you know, baby showers and all of
(27:35):
these things where kind of like the cat was out of the bag
almost, I then had to tell the opposite sides of the family
that, hey, I did this test and this is what I found out.
My original viewpoint was that not much will change, it will
just be enhanced. Like I'll just get additional
people to love, but not much will change.
(27:57):
Like on the people that I knew my whole life, I started telling
other people like my grandma andmy dad's brother and his wife
and my cousins, even people on my mom's side of the family
that, hey, I found out this information.
And I know that my lifelong dad is not actually my dad and that
(28:18):
I have this other biological father out here and I'm meeting
all of these people. What I wasn't expecting was the
anger that came from it. On my lifelong father's side, I
got a lot of, well, why do you need a new family?
We're not good enough or you don't love us anymore.
Just very absurd things to get to from the information I was
(28:43):
providing. So I think when my biological
father's sister gave me a hug atthe baby shower, it was almost
like a relief that like, it's going to be OK even if all these
other people don't think it's OK.
And that's definitely been a huge theme of my journey.
Something I've learned along theway is that you can't make
(29:06):
everyone happy and that it's impossible to make most of the
people happy when you're trying to make yourself happy.
So after the baby shower, I kindof cut off contact with a lot of
my family that was just being nasty and rude and had a lot of
negative things to say about thewhole thing and focused on just
(29:27):
the people that were supportive.I've, I actually started therapy
then too. That's been a huge part of my
journey, kind of rewiring how I think, what I'm thinking and who
I'm thinking about. So that's been big.
Did you get into therapy immediately after?
Had you been in therapy before? No, I'd never done therapy
(29:47):
before. I definitely should have if I'm
being honest. Prior to this, July 2021 is when
I got my results. I started therapy in November
2022. So the baby shower had happened.
My nephew was born, my half brother had their baby.
Things were going great with those people that I was
connecting with and talking with, and I think in November
(30:10):
2022, I hit this wall of sadnessthat I couldn't get out of where
I think that the positive connections I was making, they
were still going great. But I think the overall negative
reactions from all the other people, they started out
weighing the positive reactions and I found it just really
(30:31):
difficult to get through each day.
And that's when I decided to find a therapist.
Something I experienced as well was I, I couldn't look at
mirrors for a very, very long time.
I got my results in July. I don't think I looked in the
mirror all of that following summer until probably that late
fall like October or November ish.
(30:53):
Can you talk a little bit more about that because this is an
experience that we hear about all the time.
Oh yeah. How did you feel when you looked
in the mirror? Yeah, I think the best way that
I can explain it is that you know that the FedEx truck, how
if you look at it, there's like a arrow in the FedEx word of the
(31:15):
logo. And once you see that, you don't
Unsee it. And I think that that's how I
kind of looked at myself. Where once I saw myself and saw
these other people that I lookedlike and my biological father,
we look so much alike. And it was confusion at 1st and
then it was kind of just my facetransformed.
(31:40):
Like once I saw my biological father, my face didn't look like
it looked before. I don't know how to like make
that make sense, but it just looked different.
My nose, my eyes, my chin, all of these features that I had
never really I guess paid attention to.
Maybe I was paying extra attention to because I was like,
oh OK, we have the same nose, wehave the same chin, we have the
(32:04):
same eyes, even our fingers are the same.
For the 1st 26 years of my life I feel like I was looking at
myself maybe not as deep as I should have been or like I
couldn't see it. And then once I did see it I
couldn't Unsee it. It just played tricks with my
mind of like even in pictures orvideos of anything it was like
(32:26):
OK but the way you even talk is weird.
The way your nose is moving is different and maybe it just made
me hyper analyze it even more because I was noticing all the
differences. But I think it was just a
sadness of I don't recognize this person.
I don't recognize the way she looks.
I've obviously sat with it for three years now, and I've looked
(32:47):
at myself in the mirror a lot since then.
And I know my face didn't physically change, like I didn't
morph into something else. But my viewpoint of myself and
my viewpoint of my life changed so dramatically that I, I think
that it was just me seeing a whole different person that I
(33:08):
didn't know existed because I didn't know that like my origin
and who I was was not the truth.The mirror thing was the first
thing I experienced for sure. So much so I got a tattoo of a
broken mirror because I, I thinkthat when I first started going
through this, and I think that therapy helped me get to this
(33:31):
point, but I didn't realize how much power I gave to those
things either. I needed to be more confident in
myself and who I am as a person at that time.
But because I was so broken downby the lies and the betrayal and
the sadness and the hurt, I allowed all of those other
feelings to like creep in and make me change how I felt about
(33:54):
myself. It's almost like relearning
yourself. Like I thought I knew who I was,
but joke's on me, I didn't. And now I need to relearn who I
am and kind of like teach myselfwho I am because I feel like I
have these tools now I didn't have before that allow me to see
things differently. When I first in my therapy
(34:17):
session, I was very skeptical. I was nervous to talk.
I kind of felt like me talking about the scenario was betraying
the other people in the scenarioat first.
Once I got comfortable with my therapist and just realized that
she was there to talk to me about my problems and not
everyone else, I opened up more.She had me write down everything
(34:40):
that had happened, even my childhood up until now, to where
at this point I had found out myresults.
And at the end of it, she held up the paper and she said, does
this look like a lot? And I was like, yeah, it is.
And she was like, OK, it feels like a lot because it is a lot.
And I think that was the first time that someone had, like,
(35:02):
actually acknowledged that, like, hey, this is a lot.
You're not crazy for feeling sador overwhelmed.
It's not your fault. And that was the first time that
I think that someone had said that to me.
And I think that's when it all started changing.
I felt like I could open up to her.
I felt like even the things I wasn't sure about in the
(35:24):
situation, I could talk to her about it and we could like work
through it. I still see her now.
What is next for you as you lookahead?
So the relationships have kind of all, like I would say, evened
out to where I think that they're probably going to stay.
My biological father, we talk, he responds, I see him every so
(35:46):
often. We do birthdays, holidays and
things together. That's been huge.
I have two little sisters now. I've never had sisters prior to
this, so that was really changing.
My half brother, we're pretty close.
He has a daughter and a son, my first niece and nephew.
Biologically, I'm actually my nephew's godmother.
(36:08):
That was huge for me. So things are going great.
I would say my biological fatherhas never finished his part of
the DNA test. For a while.
It was something that bothered me.
It was something I pushed for and asked about, but I think
we've kind of just come to the understanding that he knows that
I'm his daughter and I know thathe is my biological father.
(36:28):
Now. Do I wish that he would take
that test? Probably, because I think that
would just like provide closure to both of us.
With my other family, I've kind of met them where they meet me.
Some of them, they don't want totalk about it.
I don't bring it up. Some of them do ask me questions
and we talk about it regularly. I just turned 30 this year in
September and I had a birthday party and it was the first event
(36:52):
that all sides of the families have been together.
My biological father couldn't make it.
He was out of town, but a lot ofhis family did show up and it
was the most, I guess, complete I felt in a while with other
people being in the same room. I've had a lot of regrets
throughout this process of should I have done this?
(37:15):
Should I have just let it stay where it was?
And I think overall I'm glad I did it because I found a lot of
people that are great people that should have been in my life
the whole time. But I also think that it showed
me the other people that maybe they weren't in my corner like I
thought they were. And so it's opened my eyes up to
(37:35):
that for sure. How are you feeling overall
about your mom now? Where do you think stand today?
That's a bit of a tough one. There's two parts to it.
So my first part of frustration is that she didn't tell me that
she didn't give me the heads up.She didn't say, hey, there's a
(37:55):
possibility, nothing. I think that that betrayal
knowing, knowing that I was going to be hurt and not doing
anything proactively about it. I think that it's something that
I'm always going to have a problem with, something I'm
always going to struggle with. She was in denial at first.
She was very much, this isn't true.
(38:18):
I don't know why you did this. It's it doesn't need to be
talked about kind of thing. And I think that she's very much
still in the place of I did something wrong.
I'm sorry I did something wrong.Where I'm at now is that I
understand that it was wrong andI want to figure out a way to
kind of move forward and for us to be on the same page.
(38:40):
And I don't think that she's there yet.
I think that she's still stuck on the decision she made when I
was born. I think if she could move past
that and kind of acknowledge, hey, I did make this decision,
but now you've know the truth and now you can make
relationships with these people and be supportive of that, I
think that we could make progress.
(39:01):
But I think I just have a lot ofanger.
I have a lot of hurt. I have a lot of frustration,
especially because it wasn't just my mom that knew that my
lifelong dad wasn't my dad. It my lifelong dad also knew and
my whole family knew. And so I have a resentment that
I, that I, I still have for her.And I think it's, I've talked
(39:24):
about it with my therapist that it's weird.
I don't resent my lifelong dad the same way I resent my mom,
but I think that a lot of that goes to how she's treated me
after the fact, after I got my results.
Going forward, I just want to behappy and keep discovering
myself. I feel like I still have so much
(39:44):
more to learn about myself, so much more to learn about my
biological family. I'm just going to let time keep
doing its thing and hopefully itheals the other people that are
involved in the situation to where they can be a part of my
life again and support me. And I hope it continues to heal
me. And I'm just hoping that I can
(40:04):
continue making relationships with the people that have opened
up their arms with me. What advice do you have for a
parent who is keeping adna surprise from their child?
I've thought about this a lot. I don't think that there's like
a magic number where you hit this age and your parents should
tell you all of their dirty secrets.
(40:25):
I think it's going to be different for every person, but
for me, I think that it would have been easier to digest had I
known prior to becoming an adultand trying to figure out who I
was as a person. Maybe as a high schooler, I
might not have been as mature asI was at 26 to kind of take the
information in the way I did. But I feel like that kind of
(40:48):
backtracking who you are as an adult is really hard.
There are certain things that you do as an adult.
I don't have children, but I have been, I've been married.
So like my wedding is a huge daythat I will never get back.
And I think having my biologicalfamily, all of them there, it's
a big regret I have now because it's something that I can't do
(41:11):
again. But like, if I had kids, I would
want all of my family to be a part of that.
Or just any big thing. You look back and you have
regrets that they weren't able to be a part of that day when
they should have been. So I think that whenever your
child is mature enough to take in something that's like that, I
(41:35):
think that they definitely need to know.
This isn't just like, oh, this is my dad.
This is half of who I am. And I think that for other
people to know a secret about mytruth and no one tell me, I
think it caused way more hurt. Than it should have parents that
are making decisions. I understand that you're you're
(41:59):
doing it because you think it's the best decision at the time.
I've also heard that a lot of people never anticipated that
DNA tests were going to become such easily accessible things.
But I think that something that I try to do is that whenever I
make a decision, I have to know why I made the decision, and I
have to be able to adjust if thethings I decided on change.
(42:23):
I just think that everyone deserves to know who their
family is, who their biological parents are, their siblings,
their connections and chemistry,and just things that you don't
even think of that that you deserve to have.
Honesty is the best policy and just let them know as soon as
(42:47):
they're mature enough to know. And what advice do you have for
someone who just uncovered Adna surprise?
If you just uncovered your DNA surprise, I would say first of
all be very patient with yourself.
Something I always tried to get to was my normal.
I try to get back to normal and I think that you have to 1st
(43:08):
understand that your normal is no longer there.
You have to find your new normaland it takes a while to get
there. I would also say definitely look
into therapy. I never could see myself as
someone going into therapy priorto this.
I think everyone could probably benefit from therapy to be
honest. I started outgoing weekly.
I then switched to bi weekly andnow I'm at monthly.
(43:31):
So it's not something that you're tied to forever, it's
just there when you need it. And it's just helpful to have an
unbiased person giving you theiradvice and their opinion on
situations. And then my last piece of advice
would definitely be to put yourself first.
I spent a long, long time tryingto walk on egg shells to make
(43:55):
sure I wasn't offending anyone or making sure I wasn't hurting
anyone's feelings or stepping ontoes.
And the sad truth of it is that I don't feel like the people
that had my secret, that didn't tell me until I found out, I
don't think that they were worried about my feelings in
those moments. The people that have said the
(44:15):
nasty comments and the nasty remarks, when I tell them my
story, I don't feel like they'recaring about my feelings in that
moment. So I need to make sure that I'm
thinking about myself. And as long as I'm being true to
myself and honoring how I feel, then the people that truly
support me will be there for me and will understand how I feel
(44:35):
every single time I get sad, every single time I feel
anything about this. There are so many people out
there that have experienced thisthat you need to be around those
people. Even listening to this podcast,
I've listened to probably every episode.
There are support groups on Facebook.
There's so many different tools out there and resources that
(44:58):
will make you feel not alone because it is probably the most
lonely experience to go through.It will always be a bit lonely.
I'm always going to be the outsider on all sides of the
family. I'm always going to be like the
person that wasn't there the whole time and that is just
popping in now. But as long as you can put your
(45:22):
feelings 1st and know that if this is what I feel to do, this
is what I need to do, then in the end it will most likely come
out the way you want it. To.
Brittany, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and
sharing your journey. I know that people who are
listening who've been through similar experiences will be
helped by you being vulnerable and sharing.
(45:44):
I hope that the future looks bright for you, whatever that
looks like, whether it's building or repairing a
relationship with your mom or continuing to build a
relationship with your new foundfamily.
I just wish you the best and thanks again for being here.
Absolutely. Thank you.
Thanks again to Brittany for sharing her story.
(46:04):
If you have Adna Surprise that you'd like to share, please
submit your story at dnasurprises.com.
And if you'd like early add freeaccess to episodes, join me over
on patreon@patreon.com/DNA Surprises.
Until next time. This episode of DNA Surprises
was hosted, produced and edited by me Alexis Ourselt.
(46:29):
It was mixed and mastered by Josh Ourselt of Siren Recording
Studios.
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