June 24, 2025 • 53 mins
A picture is worth a thousand words - and sometimes, it's the first clue in solving a DNA mystery. In this week’s episode, Kelly shares how a surprising detail in an old photograph of her parents sparked questions about her paternity.
Nearly four decades later, Kelly learned the truth about her paternity and her ethnicity. She shares what happened after she made her discovery, how her surprise has affected her relationship with her mother and how she’s navigating her next steps. She also reveals yet another DNA surprise uncovered through her newfound connections.
Thank you for sharing your story, Kelly.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
You don't understand the depth of what it's like to find out at
63 years old that you have an entire generations of people
from an entirely different part of the world than you thought
you came from. That you have no stories of your
(00:20):
grandparents, that you have no stories from other than what you
can glean through ancestry and newspapers.
You have no anecdotes, you have no personal knowledge.
And you'll never be able to get those things unless someone is
willing to say, oh, hey, I can help you with that.
(00:44):
Obviously it can't be healed. Obviously it can't be fixed.
But those little things that yougrow up with that I know about
my birth certificate, dad's family, right?
Those anecdotes about grandma and grandpa and uncle so and so,
like I don't have those for my biological family.
And that's what I'm missing. That's what I, I guess I'm
(01:05):
longing for. I'm longing for someone in that
family to kind of say and look at me and go, wow, you really do
look like us. We don't have to have dinner.
I don't care. I have a family, I'm content,
I've got 4 kids, I've got 7 grandkids, I'm busy, you know,
(01:27):
tons of friends, tons of connections in this world and
don't want a connection with someone who doesn't want one
with me. Anyone.
Welcome to DNA Surprises, a podcast that delves into the
world of unexpected DNA discoveries.
I'm your host, Alexis Oursalt. In July 2021, my life took a
(01:50):
surprising turn when I found outthat I'm an N P/E, 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
stories of NP, ES, adoptees and donor conceived people and their
(02:10):
families. Get ready to unravel the
astonishing journeys that begin with a simple DNA test.
This is DNA surprises. A picture is worth 1000 words,
and sometimes it's the first clue in solving adna mystery.
In this week's episode, Kelly shares how a surprising detail
(02:34):
and an old photograph of her parents sparked questions about
her paternity. Nearly 4 decades later, she
learned the truth about her paternity and her ethnicity.
Kelly shares what happened aftershe made her discovery and how
her surprise has affected her relationship with her mother.
She also discusses how she's navigating her best next steps.
(02:58):
Thank you for sharing your story, Kelly.
My name is Kelly and I am 63 andI am from New York.
My DNA surprise story is something that I confirmed in
May of 2024 when I was probably in my mid 20s.
(03:26):
I was looking at some photo albums and I happened to notice
a photo of my mom and who my birth certificate dad is and I
looked at the photo for the first time.
After seeing it many times I said well I think my mom is
pregnant in this photo. The photo says on the site 19 61
(03:53):
and I always thought that they were married in 60 and I was
born the year after. So I got a little curious about
that and I confronted her. I said it looks like you're
pregnant in this photo. She got kind of defensive and
she said, well, I am well. And I said, OK, well, not a big
(04:19):
deal. You know, that's fine.
And I said, but so is dad, my dad.
And she gave me a very curt yes,just like that.
And I didn't push it after that.I just kind of let that sit.
(04:39):
But it was a haunting yes. And I let it go and I had one
child at the time. And then life went forward and
I'm raising kids and go back to college.
And so Fast forward to May of this year, somewhere in the
beginning of this year, I started to have that real
hankering to ask her again. And it was very, it was like
(05:03):
really sitting on my heart deeply.
And she had some knee surgery done, and we were joking around
with her roommate, who I think was Jewish.
He was celebrating Passover, andEaster was around the corner.
And we were talking about ethnicity.
And I was feeling really kind oflike, pissy and arrogant.
(05:25):
And I was like, yeah, well, you know, we're German and we're
Irish and supposedly Native American.
And, you know, that is if I'm not the mailman's kid, and then,
you know, my mom is in the rehaband I'm feeling like really
annoyed. So I go home and I'm like, you
(05:46):
know what? I'm gonna go on Ancestry 'cause
I already had an account for doing research for a family
prior. I noticed a message in my
Ancestry account that I hadn't, that hadn't come through, I
hadn't noticed in my e-mail. And it was from this long lost
(06:07):
person that I knew. I, I knew his parents and my
parents were friends with his parents.
And he said, hey, I don't know if you Remember Me, but it turns
out that for some reason I'm connected to your family, to my
dad's side of the family, my birth certificate, father's side
(06:28):
of the family said, oh, interesting.
So he said, oh, do you know anything about this or that?
I said, of course I remember you.
I wrote him back and I said, I'll look into it.
I called my mom and I said, hey,so and so got in touch with me
and says that he's related to dad's family and his dad was
(06:50):
adopted. And she said, oh, well, it was
the swing in 60s. So, you know, And I was like,
oh, OK, well, I don't know what that has anything to do with
that. I'm asking about his dad.
Long story short, it really caused me to do a lot of
research on my birth certificate, father's family
side. And I got a whole bunch of
(07:10):
information and I spent the entire day when I was supposed
to be working, researching on ancestry, my birth certificate,
father's family. And I was kind of reporting back
and forth to her. I had brought her home from the
rehab that day. We had a long conversation about
her upbringing and her trauma. She had been abandoned when she
was 3 by her both of her parents, her dad had left and
(07:37):
then her mom abandoned the kids.So it was there was a history of
neglect and abandonment for her and her two siblings.
So we went all through that. We repeated the story about her
finding out that the person thatwas her dad was being billed as
her uncle and talked about that lie.
(07:57):
And this is me not knowing anything.
I go back, I do research, and later in the day I said, well,
this is what I found out about dad's family, OK?
I found this, this, this and this.
And I said, and that's all basedon if he's really my dad, if I
really am a last name omitted. Yeah.
(08:24):
I said so am I. I said, 'cause I said I haven't
asked you this in a long time. And I said you told me in my 20s
when I asked you that he was. So am I.
There was quietness, and she said, well, you're Italian.
(08:46):
In that moment, it was like thisveil came off and I can only
describe it as like the ground kind of shifting underneath me.
And I had assured her, I said, you know, I would.
Of course I'll always love Dad. There's no, there's no
(09:09):
judgement. But that truth on that day was,
like, groundbreaking. First of all, I'm so sorry
because that's a long time to sit with that suspicion and have
it dismissed and then get this confirmation later.
Was the suspicion something thatreally bothered you for many
(09:32):
years? Was it troubling at the time?
Or, you know, what was your kindof point of view on this idea
that maybe your dad wasn't your biological father?
So it was more of, at first it was kind of like a funny
question. It's like, Gee, I wonder, right?
And then it was a just a curiosity thing.
(09:53):
And then I had been told, and I've listened to so many
podcasts and, and this is so very common with children who
are dark eyed with parents who have blue eyes.
And I had been told these stories about we had an Indian
Princess in our family and therewas a picture of her in front of
(10:17):
a teepee. And, you know, there was a
native tribe here on Long Island.
And, you know, I had this vast like, association with this
history. And so a lot of people would
say, wow, you look Italian. I'd be like, no, I'm, I'm Irish
and I'm German and I'm French and I'm English and I have a
(10:37):
little bit of Native American. So it's kind of like this funny
play thing, right? But it was a question.
And it became a. Deeper question after a
conversation with some friends where I had a 2 signs, a science
teacher friend and a math teacher friend.
And we were just kind of shooting the breeze and the one
(10:58):
guy said, wait, so your parents both have blue eyes?
And I was yeah. He's like, no, no freaking way.
There's no way that you have brown eyes and they have blue
eyes. I'll give you $100 to to get
some kind of DNA test. And at then I only thought they
were paternity tests. I didn't think about ancestry.
(11:21):
I didn't even have any association with it.
So I was like, yeah, yeah, ha, ha.
Maybe. I think that was around 2008.
OK. So that's kind of before the
proliferation of ancestry and those consumer DNA tests.
Absolutely. So Fast forward, you know, it's
a question, but I'm busy. I get divorced in the meantime.
(11:42):
So there's a lot of things goingon with that.
I'm resettling my life and my birth certificate.
Father passed away in 2017. He had a return of aggressive
prostate cancer. So he passed and there was kind
of like a little joke. I don't know if it was between
my daughter and me. It's kind of like, well, get a
(12:04):
hair sample, get something from grandpa, like get his clothes.
And I was like, I had no idea how much this costs.
I don't know any of all of this.And I had always said, you know,
even though it was a question, Iwas like, well, I would never
tell him. If I found out, I would leave
it. I would not want him to have
(12:25):
that information. So in 2000, I guess in 2018, my
other daughter, I have four children.
I have three daughters and a son.
So my eldest did a 23 ME test and my ex had done an ancestry
(12:45):
test. So he's Italian.
He found out that he wasn't as Italian as he thought he was,
but just all from that area, right?
So you find out that you're not just Southern European, you have
Eastern European and you're Turkey and you have Armenia
mixed in. So he didn't know that.
But given that, given those facts, her 23andMe test came
(13:07):
back and her percentage of Italian was high for me having
the percentage of supposed Northern European that I'm
supposed to have, and I was like, huh, that's a little
strange. She's like 55%.
How can that be? So this is before you talk to
your mom. Yeah, this is 2018.
(13:30):
This is after my dad has passed and I said I can think.
I made it light hearted with her.
I was like, hey, you know, so and so did a test.
What percentage of Italian came back higher than it should be?
Do we have any Italian people onyour side?
She's like, I don't know. So again, move forward.
(13:53):
And in May it it all came to light.
OK. Did she apologize, offer any
information at that time? So since I had been doing all
that ancestry research that day,I was like, well, you know, who
is it? She's like, oh, I'm not going to
(14:14):
say, just do your research. I was like, no, actually, I'm
not going to do my research. You're going to give me a name.
And I can't do research without a name.
So it doesn't work that way. My mom, who is really not a
great speller, gives me the nameand spells it almost exactly
(14:37):
correctly, which is kind of odd for her 'cause she's really not
great with that. And I went on Ancestry that
night, looked it up, all these names with that last name came
up, and of course I'm trying to whittle it down.
And that's all she gave me. So the next morning I called her
(14:58):
and she's like, well, what's up?And I was like well I need a
little more information. Does person have any siblings?
So she told me the name of the sibling and then I knew I had
the right family. On the day that I asked her.
I said well how did that happen?Does dad know?
Did dad know? She's like, well not to my
knowledge. I said so how did this happen?
(15:24):
She said I was with this person and we had a little fun and I
got pregnant and then he wanted me to go to a clinic and have a
termination and I didn't know anything about that and I didn't
want to do that. And I said, so you just got with
dad. He said, Yep, she had known my
(15:48):
birth certificate dad since 3rd grade and they had been very
good friends. I I know that he was crushing on
her probably from the time he met her.
I later found out that he would set up dates for her during
junior high and high school. She would say to him I like so
(16:11):
and so and he would go and make it happen so.
She meets your biological father, they have some sort of
relationship. She gets pregnant.
He does not want her to carry the pregnancy to term.
She doesn't want to do that. So then she finds goes to her
(16:34):
very dear friend, yes your birthcertificate dad, and has him
raise you as his own. Now, did he know that she was
pregnant when they got together?So she says no, and she says
that if he did, he didn't say anything.
(16:55):
However, the story had been thatI was, how did she put it?
She said I came a month early. OK, so she just fudged the
numbers, you know, and so because I was a sizeable baby
(17:16):
for coming a month early, I was,you know, 6 lbs something oz
normal weight, no complications whatsoever.
So I didn't put that together until the very end.
Sure, sure. OK, so she says that your father
didn't know, correct. Do.
You. Do you feel upon reflection that
(17:37):
maybe he knew or did he treat you any differently or anything
growing up? So I kind of feel that he didn't
know. He did not treat me differently.
They did go on to have my brother two years later, and I
think my relationship with him was probably better than my
(17:59):
brothers with him. We did a lot of things together.
He took me to church. I don't think he treated me any
differently than what I would imagine any normal dad treats
their child like having been married.
He was a good, He was a good dad.
He was good to my mom. They were solid.
As far as like you know, they were married at 20.
(18:21):
They were both 20 years old, so young when he passed.
They had been married I think for 56 years.
So he was there and he was a good dad.
What are you thinking and feeling in this moment as your
mom finally tells you the truth and gives you some information
(18:46):
to go off of? I felt relief in a sense because
it answered so many questions about my looks in one moment and
I felt absolutely betrayed by her.
(19:09):
And that betrayal is so deep because I don't judge her or the
actions that she took as a youngwoman and don't hold that
against her. But on reflect on reflecting on
this, one of the things that shehad said to me in the
(19:31):
conversation, I said, well, wereyou going to tell me?
And she said I was going to takeit to my grave.
So you never going to tell me? I was going to leave you a note.
Oh, and that I think made it even worse.
It felt more, it felt like it was more of a betrayal.
My interactions with her since regarding this have been she's
(19:54):
been guarded. She's tried to answer questions,
but it's more in the terms of like, well, there's nothing I
can do about it. And I'm sorry, but you know, I'm
sorry, but it's that qualifier. Yeah.
So it has, Gee, the last, I would say seven months have been
(20:17):
really, really hard. I check in on her.
I do call, I do still keep my commitment that I made to my dad
on his deathbed, that I would take care of her.
But it is so hard. It is such a feeling of loss of
(20:39):
truth. So that has been prevalent in
terms of how I feel with her. It was ground shifting.
I don't think. I mean, every time I look in the
mirror still, it's still this really.
Like it's still mind boggling. So to move forward, of course, I
did what everyone tell us. I went on Facebook and I started
(21:04):
looking up the family. And also on that day I when I
had gone on ancestry without even knowing anything, I ordered
Adna test that morning before even speaking with her.
I was like, let me just do this.I had such a reluctance for so
many years. I don't want to spit in the
tube. I don't want to share my DNA,
all these, you know, things thateveryone kind of struggles with.
(21:26):
And I was like, Oh well, I'm a spit in the tube.
Yeah, and then lo and behold, she shares this information.
So did you end up sending off your DNA?
I not only sent off an ancestry test, but I ordered 23andMe as
well. So I ordered both.
I let them sit. I let the ancestry sit for about
(21:46):
3 weeks. I got the tube from 23andMe and
on the same day I spit in both tubes and sent them both off.
And so in the meantime, I started kind of building a tree
and researching on ancestry, finding all I could about my
family, MyHeritage. I did find my biological
(22:12):
father's profile. I found my half siblings
profiles on Facebook. They didn't want to contact them
through there because they felt like that's just so random, you
know? I didn't even know what I was
going to do. Is he still alive?
Yes, living 3 miles away from. Me.
Oh, wow, OK, That that has to behard.
(22:35):
I mean, you hear about the people that they're like, I just
want to drive past their house. And I have, because the Internet
is proliferate, it's with information.
You can literally find anything.So anyone who thinks they can't
be found, it's not even a creep factor anymore.
It's just like all you got to dowith any one of these search
(22:56):
engines and you get a phone number and an address.
So I mean, I'm not immune to it either.
So I did do a lot of research. I did find out about my
grandparents on my biological father's side.
I found out about my half siblings and I toyed with
whether I should try to connect with them.
(23:20):
I waited until I got the DNA results back, which confirmed.
In the meantime, I I had called my daughter and I said, wait.
While I'm waiting for this test,can you bring up the results of
your 23 me test? Sure, 'cause she would have
family matches. As well.
(23:40):
So she brought them up and sure enough, she came up as a match
to the people on my biological father's side.
Now he has not. He's not on either one.
But she matched to my half sibling and she matched to two
cousins on his side. When you were looking at them on
(24:01):
Facebook, what were you able to learn about them as people, and
did any of that make you want toreach out to them or not reach
out to them? Yeah.
And nothing made me not want to reach out.
There were no red flags. They seemed like, you know, kind
of like a normal family. So I got confirmed and I was
(24:22):
like, OK, well, what am I going to do?
Am I going to reach out? I found pictures of my
grandparents and my great unclesand all of these people.
And I'm like, OK. So I ended up sending a short
note in July to my half sibling and it was just really a hi, I
(24:44):
see that we are related because she was named on one of the
platforms. I see that we're related and I
have some information as to how that could be looking to see if
you're interested in communicating.
And I gave her my e-mail addressand my phone number and I didn't
(25:08):
expect to hear from her. So I was really, really stressed
out. Later on that day, I was talking
to my son and he's like, mom, why don't you take one of those
edibles that we got? So I was like, you know, you're
right. I think I'm going to do that.
It's 4:00 in the afternoon and I'm like, you know, I'm going to
(25:32):
go to bed early because I'm really stressed and I take this
and I think it had like THC in it, like a little bit of THC.
And having had some prior experience with that, which I, I
don't do on a regular basis, I remember that it has like this
(25:53):
effect on my brain, but I'm not thinking and I go to sleep at
8:30. I'm woken up out of this dead
sleep and there's a male voice and he says Kelly and I was
like, yeah, he's like, this is so and so, so and so's husband.
(26:18):
I was like, uh oh, hi. So he's like, yeah, we got your
message and we kind of want to know what this is about.
Like, you know, my wife can't even talk.
She's in shock. So now I'm really having a hard
(26:39):
time because I'm, first of all, I'm woken from a dead sleep.
Secondly, I took this thing and I'm like, OK, let me get my mind
together. I'm trying to tell him the
story. And it's all working well.
And he's like, well, she's just too shocked to speak.
And he's like, well, does my father-in-law know about you?
(27:01):
And I said, not to my knowledge.And I gave him the little story
that my mom gave me. And I said, you know, they told
me that I looked Native American.
And I'm just blurting out these pieces, random pieces of
information, knowing that this is not going well.
And he said, well, I don't know.He goes, I'm going to have to
(27:23):
talk to her about this and we'llsee what happens.
I said, well, I can send you an e-mail because I'm thinking, you
know, I can be a little bit morecoherent.
So if I send an e-mail with the information, she said no, no,
no, don't contact us. I said OK.
So I let it go. We hung up and I said, well, I'm
(27:46):
going to respect them. I'm not going to contact them
again. And I was devastated by that
phone call. I was devastated because I
couldn't communicate correctly. I was devastated because it was
so short. And I was devastated because he
said in the phone call, well, what are you hoping to get out
(28:09):
of this? I said, I don't want any money
and I don't want anything from you, inheritance or anything.
I want the history of my family and medical information if I let
it be and I dropped it and that was mid-july.
(28:29):
Let me tell you what I found outabout my biological dad.
That's really important to me and then I'll move forward from
social media. On my half siblings account, I
found out that my biological dadwas musical and I'm a musician.
(28:51):
I've been musical all my life. It's what my degree is in.
I'm in a band, I'm a music director, I'm a composer.
And I never knew where that camefrom because neither of my
parents that I grew up with havea lick of musical talent.
Like my mother Can't Sing for beans.
(29:12):
And my VCF was just not far behind in that.
And when I found out that he hadmusical talent, I was like, oh,
then I found out that my grandfather's brother was
training to be an opera singer and had stage fright and never
(29:38):
ended up being an opera singer. There's a story with him that I
can't repeat because it would give away, but he ended up
owning a famous animal and touring the world with this
animal. You're learning so much and
(29:59):
you're connecting these dots andit's making so much about you
make sense. What feelings are coming up at
that point? Because some people that I speak
to, you know, they have this what if, what could have been if
I'd been raised around that. Other people, it's more just
validating in terms of better understanding of themselves.
(30:19):
How do these revelations sort ofhit you?
A. Little bit of both.
There's a little bit of wonderment of I wonder what it
would have been like to even know my biological father, even
if they weren't together, but knowing that he was musical,
because I did find out that he sang in a musical group and that
(30:40):
he was a lead singer in a group.Local.
Nothing famous, nothing, you know, but kind of like what I
do, you know, I'm in a band and we're local.
So there's a little wonderment, like I wonder if we would have
sang together. I wonder if there would have
been more development of my skill than had happened.
(31:07):
And then there's this kind of just, oh, oh, that's where it
comes from. It's like this deep settling
acknowledgement of who I am as ahuman being.
It's this deep understanding of the real big differences that I
(31:27):
started noticing in my adult life between myself and my
brother and my parents. Like he's so much like them and
I'm so much not like I know I'veinherited by nurture things from
my birth certificate Dad, right?But I was, I'm so very
(31:48):
different. I'm so different culturally
speaking. I'm so different in terms of
just my body stature. Both my parents are big people.
I'm this tiny little thing. I'm dark, I tan, I have olive
complected skin that everyone tried to tell me about.
And I was like, no, no, it's my Native American heritage.
(32:11):
Yeah, yeah. So finding out has been, while I
feel so betrayed by my mom for holding it, we're taking years
away from me that I could have spent kind of figuring out how
to go about this. Like taking these years, like at
(32:31):
least have told me when my dad passed, Like I get you kept it a
secret. At least have told me somewhere
that's a deep hurt. And I don't know how to
reconcile what that hurt right now.
That's been a big issue. And it's still so new.
It's so. New.
It's so new and also you've beencontending with it in some way
(32:55):
for a really long time in the back of your mind, so that's a
lot. It's a long time.
I'm 63, so it's kind of like, wow, overall, the validation and
finding out who those people were, at least on the surface,
(33:15):
at least peripherally through Ancestry, through Facebook,
through one second Cousin's really oversharing of photos.
I was able to get so many photosof my biological father even
when he was like when he got married and like a few photos of
(33:36):
him in that era. I have nothing of him as a
child, so no photos of him as a kid.
Photos of aunts and uncles and great aunts and uncles and
cousins. Finding out that I grew up near
cousins of cousins and like around the corner from a cousin
of a cousin's family. So there's all these wildly
(34:00):
different feelings that happen. Finding out that my great aunts
were educated women. It's just this like core
validation of who I am. So that's been good.
The kind of emptiness and what I've been struggling with since
(34:25):
July since that phone call is. So I made another reach out in
September to a cousin. I said let me just not bother
the sibling. Let me see if I can gather some
information. I contacted someone who manages
a test on one of the one of the platforms and I said, hey, I'm
(34:49):
related. I see that I'm related to so and
so just looking for some information and she wrote back
to me really quickly. I can see that she's on every
day. She has a lot of research.
I also happen to know from looking at the DNA tree on one
of the platforms that she is my biological father's niece.
(35:17):
She gets back to me and she says, well, how old are you?
And you know, I said, I know that these are my grandparents
from ancestry. And she, you can tell she's
like, well, how old are you? And what else do you know what
you adopted? And I said, no, I I'm not
adopted. I can give you some information.
(35:37):
So she's clearly pulled in now and I told her my story in a
short form, you know, and then Isaid so to be forward.
I did contact so and so in July and I had a conversation and
(36:01):
there's been no contact since. So she said, well, I'm going to
get in touch with so and so and then I'll have to get back to
you because I can't, you know, overstep.
So this was on September 10th and on September 11th I got a
another note from my half sibling and it was so
(36:26):
devastating to me because hey I respected the no contact so I
didn't reach out to her. She writes to me.
I spoke with my husband and now my cousin and both revealed the
details you shared with them. Some things my husband told me
(36:46):
from your conversation with him didn't make sense to me.
No, no shit Sherlock, because didn't make sense to me either.
See, She goes on to say. I hoped my lack of contact would
have made it clear that we are not interested in connecting
with you. I'm not sure what you hope to
(37:09):
gain from this, and I don't wantto be mean or cruel, but having
you contact people in my family could ruin lives.
We've had so much devastation inour family and I don't think we
could handle anything else. News like this could cause
irreversible damage. It's much like why your mom most
likely didn't tell your dad for all the years they were married.
(37:33):
I pray you had a happy childhoodand were are surrounded by
people who love you and whom youlove deeply.
I also hope getting the information you needed to
validate what you felt for many years has given you closure.
On the other hand, I completed 23andMe many years ago because
it was given to me as a gift. I never intended or considered
attempting to reveal a connection such as ours.
(37:57):
Here's the here's the clincher for me.
This information has caused muchstress and anxiety in my life.
I need to protect my family and I hope you can respect my
request that you stop contactingany of us.
I hope confirming your thoughts brings you some peace.
I'm so sorry for any disappointment this may bring
you and I hope you understand mychallenging position.
(38:20):
You should know there is no history of any abnormal or
severe medical issues to be aware of.
I wish you nothing but happiness.
Best wishes. In other words, polite polite F
you. And I, I do just want to check
in, are you beating yourself up about the fact that you had been
(38:42):
asleep and on an edible for thatfirst conversation?
Like do you feel like that impacted their reaction to you
at all or? OK, OK, good 'cause I was.
Like I really don't excuse. I.
Really don't understand. You don't understand the depth
of what it's like to find out at63 years old that you have an
(39:08):
entire generations of people from an entirely different part
of the world than you thought you came from.
That you have no stories of yourgrandparents, that you have no
stories from other than what youcan glean through ancestry and
newspapers. You have no anecdotes, you have
(39:30):
no personal knowledge. And you'll never be able to get
those things unless someone is willing to say, oh, hey, I can
help you with that. Obviously it can't be healed.
Obviously it can't be fixed. But those little things that you
grow up with that I know about my birth certificate, dad's
(39:51):
family, right? Those anecdotes about grandma
and grandpa and uncle so and so,like I don't have those for my
biological family. And that's what I'm missing.
That's what I, I guess I'm longing for.
I'm longing for someone in that family to kind of say and look
at me and go, wow, you really dolook like us.
(40:14):
We don't have to have dinner. I don't care.
I have a family, I'm content, I've got 4 kids, I've got 7
grandkids, I'm busy, you know, tons of friends, tons of
connections in this world and don't want a connection with
someone who doesn't want one with me.
Anyone. Right, right.
(40:37):
Has there been any point where you considered going directly to
him? Yeah, yeah, I guess that's my
next big question for myself is what do I do because he's he's
83. Like, how many years are there
(40:59):
and how do I go about it? One of my real Italian friends
said just send him a note. Send him a note.
This is your daughter. Send him a Christmas card.
Yeah, but it's. So complicated.
It's it's not that easy and I'm not confrontational that way.
So it really is like, how do I go about that?
(41:21):
Do I go about it? What do I sit with?
How do I manage? And I've just let it sit and
there's not a day that one aspect or facet of this, mostly
the letter from her doesn't ringin my head in some way, shape or
(41:42):
form that clear. I don't want to understand.
You cause me stress. And I want to say, honey, you
don't understand what it's like to find out, but your, your dad
is not your dad. I love my dad.
I love my birth certificate father.
It doesn't take anything away from my relationship with him.
(42:07):
Nothing. But I, I don't have anyone to
say like, hey, I'm a musician too.
I don't know if I want to reach out.
And that's where I've been stucknow since September.
So that's kind of where I've been than sitting with this.
(42:29):
So I've taken up this distraction of listening to
online apocalyptic survival novels on Audible.
That's a good distraction. Really, to say something, it's
just like, OK, I don't want to think about it, you know?
I just don't want to. I don't want to delve in.
(42:51):
Sometimes I don't even listen tothe podcasts because I'll hear
something and the tears will well up and I'll be like, OK,
just let me get my grip and go on.
Sure. And it's, you know, only you can
know the next best step for yourself because everyone's
(43:12):
situations are so unique. I was going to ask you, while
you're kind of figuring out whatyou want to do next, what things
are helping you aside from your apocalyptic audiobooks?
I think time is helping somewhat.
(43:33):
In terms of my relationship withmy mother, nothing is really
helping except my own willingness to just forge
forward and do the right thing by her.
She's 83, my brother is not really involved in her care, and
I want to honor what I told my dad I would do.
(43:56):
So I do it and I buck up and I call her.
And she's always been kind of onmy nerves anyway, so it just
makes it that much harder. But I just pushed through.
We go to the same church where I'm a music director, and so I
have to kind of see her on that level in terms of dealing with
(44:21):
what to do. I'm on several Facebook groups.
I listen to the podcasts. I try to glean helpful hints.
There's another facet to the story which is not really mine
to tell, but the guy who contacted me, who ended up
contacting me, which kind of like pushed me over the research
(44:42):
edge. It turns out that he is related
to my dad and it turns out that he is my birth certificate dad's
son. That was a kind of a shock, the
circumstances of funky and weird.
(45:04):
He is younger than me, so this is a strange thing.
I've welcomed him. He's not related to me
whatsoever. So he's like my brother from
another mother, father now at this point, right?
But he is in his journey a little bit further ahead of me.
(45:28):
And so when he finally decided to tell me how he thought he was
related to me, I said, well, I have something I got to tell you
because I knew by that point. And we found out that we're not
actual siblings. But he's been so supportive and
I have been so supportive to him.
So this has been a really weird thing.
(45:51):
Anything that he's needed to know about my dad, my birth
certificate dad, I've given. We've met.
He came in with his wife to visit over the summer.
We we went to graveyards and I copied pictures and sent him
(46:11):
things. I have.
We're in constant contact and he's been a real help along the
way. That's amazing because you're on
both sides. Right.
And he's so interested in his history and had done his, all of
his research and found out, you know, oh, that's not true
either. And so he also met with my mom
(46:34):
because as I said, it was a family connection and it's a
funky situation. So she was willing to meet with
him and gave him all the information that she could give
him. Now you, through this discovery,
had a big ethnicity shift. Oh, my goodness.
It sounds like you've grown up around the Italian community.
(46:57):
You mentioned you have Italian friends.
Your biological father doesn't live too far from you, so you're
in New York. Like there's large Italian
communities there. Have you spent any time kind of
diving into that side? So I've done research on the
area that my family's from. I'm really interested in
(47:19):
history. So I'm interested where did
everyone come from? Like what part of Italy?
So done a lot of questioning of my Italian friends and I do have
a lot of Italian friends and my ex was Italian and everyone
thought I was Italian, right? Your.
Kids are Italian, yeah. I but, but I did not identify as
(47:40):
to quote a popular phrase. So it's strange.
I mean, I've been around it so much so I kind of know it.
And I have recipes from my mother-in-law, right?
We were married for 30 years. And so I have a whole history of
(48:00):
that culture, but I haven't delved in except to look into
possibly like what the chances were of me getting an Italian
passport, which now I understandyou kind of need to do like you
kind of have have like birth certificates, you need to have
acknowledge paternity. I can get a another kind of
(48:22):
passport and go to Italy. It's, but it would be lovely to
have. So for me, that's a sore point.
For me, it's something that I'm missing out on because I can't
make that connection. I can't just say, hey, can you
just sign this off? I really don't want anything
from you. But I'd love to have an Italian
passport based on the fact that my my grandparents are from
(48:43):
Italy. Yeah.
And I do want to travel there. What advice do you have for a
parent who is keeping adna surprise from their child?
I wholeheartedly, out of this experience, believe that that is
something that should be revealed to a child, especially
(49:05):
when they're an adult. I believe that information, even
if it's given in secret, even ifit's told quietly, it should be
told to the individual because once you're an adult, it really
ceases to be the parent's story.It's the child's story and it's
important to have that knowledge.
(49:30):
You can put disclaimers around the story.
You can say please don't go to or This is why I kept it from
you. Maybe there's abuse.
Maybe there's a real legitimate,like really serious reason why
it was kept a secret for safety purposes even.
But once you're beyond that point, at least tell the person
(49:55):
when their birth certificate parent passes.
I mean, find a time. It's not about you anymore once
you're an adult, it's about thatperson.
And it's so significant and it'sso important to have that
validation. And it would have been so
helpful to have even earlier than this time.
(50:18):
That's my advice. And what advice do you have for
someone who just uncovered Adna surprise?
I would say find all the supportthat you can possibly find.
Relate to all the people. Listen to all the stories of
(50:39):
people who have gone through this.
Cry, feel, be angry, write, journal.
Find a therapist. I haven't found one yet but
that's on my bucket list is to find some kind of a trauma
therapist to process this with as opposed to distracting myself
(51:02):
with maybe novels. But find support.
And I guess I would also say take what's good, take what is
helpful and run with it and treasure it.
(51:24):
And what's not helpful, talk about in therapy.
Find a way to work it out. There's really, there's no
undoing it. So it's really just find as as
much support as possible and be authentic and tell the story.
Tell the story. It's important I'm telling the
story. I mean, I've had second thoughts
(51:44):
about doing the interview several times because the story
hasn't progressed at all. I feel stuck and you're going to
feel stuck at times and reach out to other people maybe who
are stuck. Thank you for sharing that,
Kelly. And I also want to say that I
think it's important that we tell the stories for people that
(52:05):
are in all different places withtheir journey.
So there's going to be the people who are right at the
beginning. There's going to be people who
might have the quote UN quote happy ending, maybe not a happy
ending. And then there's going to be
people who are mid journey like you are and maybe not sure where
they're going to go next. So I'm really grateful to you
(52:25):
for sharing your story as it is right now, and I wish you so
much luck and just positivity. And I hope for you that you
figure out the next best step, whatever that is, as you move
through. This I so appreciate your
podcast. I so appreciate your questions
(52:46):
and I so appreciate the way you speak with people and how your
interview and how you help pull stories out of people.
And I so appreciate your deep empathy and compassion.
It comes through so clearly. So thank you for that.
(53:07):
Thank you. Appreciate that.
Thank you. Thanks, Alexis.
Thanks again to Kelly for sharing her story.
If you have Adna surprise that you'd like to share, please
submit your story at dnasurprises.com and for early
ad free access to episodes, joinme over on
patreon@patreon.com/DNA Surprises.
(53:29):
Until next time. This episode of DNA Surprises
was hosted, produced and edited by me, Alexis Ourselt.
It was mixed and mastered by Josh Ourselt of Siren Recording
Studios.
You don't understand the depth of what it's like to find out at
63 years old that you have an entire generations of people
from an entirely different part of the world than you thought
you came from. That you have no stories of your
(00:20):
grandparents, that you have no stories from other than what you
can glean through ancestry and newspapers.
You have no anecdotes, you have no personal knowledge.
And you'll never be able to get those things unless someone is
willing to say, oh, hey, I can help you with that.
(00:44):
Obviously it can't be healed. Obviously it can't be fixed.
But those little things that yougrow up with that I know about
my birth certificate, dad's family, right?
Those anecdotes about grandma and grandpa and uncle so and so,
like I don't have those for my biological family.
And that's what I'm missing. That's what I, I guess I'm
(01:05):
longing for. I'm longing for someone in that
family to kind of say and look at me and go, wow, you really do
look like us. We don't have to have dinner.
I don't care. I have a family, I'm content,
I've got 4 kids, I've got 7 grandkids, I'm busy, you know,
(01:27):
tons of friends, tons of connections in this world and
don't want a connection with someone who doesn't want one
with me. Anyone.
Welcome to DNA Surprises, a podcast that delves into the
world of unexpected DNA discoveries.
I'm your host, Alexis Oursalt. In July 2021, my life took a
(01:50):
surprising turn when I found outthat I'm an N P/E, 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
stories of NP, ES, adoptees and donor conceived people and their
(02:10):
families. Get ready to unravel the
astonishing journeys that begin with a simple DNA test.
This is DNA surprises. A picture is worth 1000 words,
and sometimes it's the first clue in solving adna mystery.
In this week's episode, Kelly shares how a surprising detail
(02:34):
and an old photograph of her parents sparked questions about
her paternity. Nearly 4 decades later, she
learned the truth about her paternity and her ethnicity.
Kelly shares what happened aftershe made her discovery and how
her surprise has affected her relationship with her mother.
She also discusses how she's navigating her best next steps.
(02:58):
Thank you for sharing your story, Kelly.
My name is Kelly and I am 63 andI am from New York.
My DNA surprise story is something that I confirmed in
May of 2024 when I was probably in my mid 20s.
(03:26):
I was looking at some photo albums and I happened to notice
a photo of my mom and who my birth certificate dad is and I
looked at the photo for the first time.
After seeing it many times I said well I think my mom is
pregnant in this photo. The photo says on the site 19 61
(03:53):
and I always thought that they were married in 60 and I was
born the year after. So I got a little curious about
that and I confronted her. I said it looks like you're
pregnant in this photo. She got kind of defensive and
she said, well, I am well. And I said, OK, well, not a big
(04:19):
deal. You know, that's fine.
And I said, but so is dad, my dad.
And she gave me a very curt yes,just like that.
And I didn't push it after that.I just kind of let that sit.
(04:39):
But it was a haunting yes. And I let it go and I had one
child at the time. And then life went forward and
I'm raising kids and go back to college.
And so Fast forward to May of this year, somewhere in the
beginning of this year, I started to have that real
hankering to ask her again. And it was very, it was like
(05:03):
really sitting on my heart deeply.
And she had some knee surgery done, and we were joking around
with her roommate, who I think was Jewish.
He was celebrating Passover, andEaster was around the corner.
And we were talking about ethnicity.
And I was feeling really kind oflike, pissy and arrogant.
(05:25):
And I was like, yeah, well, you know, we're German and we're
Irish and supposedly Native American.
And, you know, that is if I'm not the mailman's kid, and then,
you know, my mom is in the rehaband I'm feeling like really
annoyed. So I go home and I'm like, you
(05:46):
know what? I'm gonna go on Ancestry 'cause
I already had an account for doing research for a family
prior. I noticed a message in my
Ancestry account that I hadn't, that hadn't come through, I
hadn't noticed in my e-mail. And it was from this long lost
(06:07):
person that I knew. I, I knew his parents and my
parents were friends with his parents.
And he said, hey, I don't know if you Remember Me, but it turns
out that for some reason I'm connected to your family, to my
dad's side of the family, my birth certificate, father's side
(06:28):
of the family said, oh, interesting.
So he said, oh, do you know anything about this or that?
I said, of course I remember you.
I wrote him back and I said, I'll look into it.
I called my mom and I said, hey,so and so got in touch with me
and says that he's related to dad's family and his dad was
(06:50):
adopted. And she said, oh, well, it was
the swing in 60s. So, you know, And I was like,
oh, OK, well, I don't know what that has anything to do with
that. I'm asking about his dad.
Long story short, it really caused me to do a lot of
research on my birth certificate, father's family
side. And I got a whole bunch of
(07:10):
information and I spent the entire day when I was supposed
to be working, researching on ancestry, my birth certificate,
father's family. And I was kind of reporting back
and forth to her. I had brought her home from the
rehab that day. We had a long conversation about
her upbringing and her trauma. She had been abandoned when she
was 3 by her both of her parents, her dad had left and
(07:37):
then her mom abandoned the kids.So it was there was a history of
neglect and abandonment for her and her two siblings.
So we went all through that. We repeated the story about her
finding out that the person thatwas her dad was being billed as
her uncle and talked about that lie.
(07:57):
And this is me not knowing anything.
I go back, I do research, and later in the day I said, well,
this is what I found out about dad's family, OK?
I found this, this, this and this.
And I said, and that's all basedon if he's really my dad, if I
really am a last name omitted. Yeah.
(08:24):
I said so am I. I said, 'cause I said I haven't
asked you this in a long time. And I said you told me in my 20s
when I asked you that he was. So am I.
There was quietness, and she said, well, you're Italian.
(08:46):
In that moment, it was like thisveil came off and I can only
describe it as like the ground kind of shifting underneath me.
And I had assured her, I said, you know, I would.
Of course I'll always love Dad. There's no, there's no
(09:09):
judgement. But that truth on that day was,
like, groundbreaking. First of all, I'm so sorry
because that's a long time to sit with that suspicion and have
it dismissed and then get this confirmation later.
Was the suspicion something thatreally bothered you for many
(09:32):
years? Was it troubling at the time?
Or, you know, what was your kindof point of view on this idea
that maybe your dad wasn't your biological father?
So it was more of, at first it was kind of like a funny
question. It's like, Gee, I wonder, right?
And then it was a just a curiosity thing.
(09:53):
And then I had been told, and I've listened to so many
podcasts and, and this is so very common with children who
are dark eyed with parents who have blue eyes.
And I had been told these stories about we had an Indian
Princess in our family and therewas a picture of her in front of
(10:17):
a teepee. And, you know, there was a
native tribe here on Long Island.
And, you know, I had this vast like, association with this
history. And so a lot of people would
say, wow, you look Italian. I'd be like, no, I'm, I'm Irish
and I'm German and I'm French and I'm English and I have a
(10:37):
little bit of Native American. So it's kind of like this funny
play thing, right? But it was a question.
And it became a. Deeper question after a
conversation with some friends where I had a 2 signs, a science
teacher friend and a math teacher friend.
And we were just kind of shooting the breeze and the one
(10:58):
guy said, wait, so your parents both have blue eyes?
And I was yeah. He's like, no, no freaking way.
There's no way that you have brown eyes and they have blue
eyes. I'll give you $100 to to get
some kind of DNA test. And at then I only thought they
were paternity tests. I didn't think about ancestry.
(11:21):
I didn't even have any association with it.
So I was like, yeah, yeah, ha, ha.
Maybe. I think that was around 2008.
OK. So that's kind of before the
proliferation of ancestry and those consumer DNA tests.
Absolutely. So Fast forward, you know, it's
a question, but I'm busy. I get divorced in the meantime.
(11:42):
So there's a lot of things goingon with that.
I'm resettling my life and my birth certificate.
Father passed away in 2017. He had a return of aggressive
prostate cancer. So he passed and there was kind
of like a little joke. I don't know if it was between
my daughter and me. It's kind of like, well, get a
(12:04):
hair sample, get something from grandpa, like get his clothes.
And I was like, I had no idea how much this costs.
I don't know any of all of this.And I had always said, you know,
even though it was a question, Iwas like, well, I would never
tell him. If I found out, I would leave
it. I would not want him to have
(12:25):
that information. So in 2000, I guess in 2018, my
other daughter, I have four children.
I have three daughters and a son.
So my eldest did a 23 ME test and my ex had done an ancestry
(12:45):
test. So he's Italian.
He found out that he wasn't as Italian as he thought he was,
but just all from that area, right?
So you find out that you're not just Southern European, you have
Eastern European and you're Turkey and you have Armenia
mixed in. So he didn't know that.
But given that, given those facts, her 23andMe test came
(13:07):
back and her percentage of Italian was high for me having
the percentage of supposed Northern European that I'm
supposed to have, and I was like, huh, that's a little
strange. She's like 55%.
How can that be? So this is before you talk to
your mom. Yeah, this is 2018.
(13:30):
This is after my dad has passed and I said I can think.
I made it light hearted with her.
I was like, hey, you know, so and so did a test.
What percentage of Italian came back higher than it should be?
Do we have any Italian people onyour side?
She's like, I don't know. So again, move forward.
(13:53):
And in May it it all came to light.
OK. Did she apologize, offer any
information at that time? So since I had been doing all
that ancestry research that day,I was like, well, you know, who
is it? She's like, oh, I'm not going to
(14:14):
say, just do your research. I was like, no, actually, I'm
not going to do my research. You're going to give me a name.
And I can't do research without a name.
So it doesn't work that way. My mom, who is really not a
great speller, gives me the nameand spells it almost exactly
(14:37):
correctly, which is kind of odd for her 'cause she's really not
great with that. And I went on Ancestry that
night, looked it up, all these names with that last name came
up, and of course I'm trying to whittle it down.
And that's all she gave me. So the next morning I called her
(14:58):
and she's like, well, what's up?And I was like well I need a
little more information. Does person have any siblings?
So she told me the name of the sibling and then I knew I had
the right family. On the day that I asked her.
I said well how did that happen?Does dad know?
Did dad know? She's like, well not to my
knowledge. I said so how did this happen?
(15:24):
She said I was with this person and we had a little fun and I
got pregnant and then he wanted me to go to a clinic and have a
termination and I didn't know anything about that and I didn't
want to do that. And I said, so you just got with
dad. He said, Yep, she had known my
(15:48):
birth certificate dad since 3rd grade and they had been very
good friends. I I know that he was crushing on
her probably from the time he met her.
I later found out that he would set up dates for her during
junior high and high school. She would say to him I like so
(16:11):
and so and he would go and make it happen so.
She meets your biological father, they have some sort of
relationship. She gets pregnant.
He does not want her to carry the pregnancy to term.
She doesn't want to do that. So then she finds goes to her
(16:34):
very dear friend, yes your birthcertificate dad, and has him
raise you as his own. Now, did he know that she was
pregnant when they got together?So she says no, and she says
that if he did, he didn't say anything.
(16:55):
However, the story had been thatI was, how did she put it?
She said I came a month early. OK, so she just fudged the
numbers, you know, and so because I was a sizeable baby
(17:16):
for coming a month early, I was,you know, 6 lbs something oz
normal weight, no complications whatsoever.
So I didn't put that together until the very end.
Sure, sure. OK, so she says that your father
didn't know, correct. Do.
You. Do you feel upon reflection that
(17:37):
maybe he knew or did he treat you any differently or anything
growing up? So I kind of feel that he didn't
know. He did not treat me differently.
They did go on to have my brother two years later, and I
think my relationship with him was probably better than my
(17:59):
brothers with him. We did a lot of things together.
He took me to church. I don't think he treated me any
differently than what I would imagine any normal dad treats
their child like having been married.
He was a good, He was a good dad.
He was good to my mom. They were solid.
As far as like you know, they were married at 20.
(18:21):
They were both 20 years old, so young when he passed.
They had been married I think for 56 years.
So he was there and he was a good dad.
What are you thinking and feeling in this moment as your
mom finally tells you the truth and gives you some information
(18:46):
to go off of? I felt relief in a sense because
it answered so many questions about my looks in one moment and
I felt absolutely betrayed by her.
(19:09):
And that betrayal is so deep because I don't judge her or the
actions that she took as a youngwoman and don't hold that
against her. But on reflect on reflecting on
this, one of the things that shehad said to me in the
(19:31):
conversation, I said, well, wereyou going to tell me?
And she said I was going to takeit to my grave.
So you never going to tell me? I was going to leave you a note.
Oh, and that I think made it even worse.
It felt more, it felt like it was more of a betrayal.
My interactions with her since regarding this have been she's
(19:54):
been guarded. She's tried to answer questions,
but it's more in the terms of like, well, there's nothing I
can do about it. And I'm sorry, but you know, I'm
sorry, but it's that qualifier. Yeah.
So it has, Gee, the last, I would say seven months have been
(20:17):
really, really hard. I check in on her.
I do call, I do still keep my commitment that I made to my dad
on his deathbed, that I would take care of her.
But it is so hard. It is such a feeling of loss of
(20:39):
truth. So that has been prevalent in
terms of how I feel with her. It was ground shifting.
I don't think. I mean, every time I look in the
mirror still, it's still this really.
Like it's still mind boggling. So to move forward, of course, I
did what everyone tell us. I went on Facebook and I started
(21:04):
looking up the family. And also on that day I when I
had gone on ancestry without even knowing anything, I ordered
Adna test that morning before even speaking with her.
I was like, let me just do this.I had such a reluctance for so
many years. I don't want to spit in the
tube. I don't want to share my DNA,
all these, you know, things thateveryone kind of struggles with.
(21:26):
And I was like, Oh well, I'm a spit in the tube.
Yeah, and then lo and behold, she shares this information.
So did you end up sending off your DNA?
I not only sent off an ancestry test, but I ordered 23andMe as
well. So I ordered both.
I let them sit. I let the ancestry sit for about
(21:46):
3 weeks. I got the tube from 23andMe and
on the same day I spit in both tubes and sent them both off.
And so in the meantime, I started kind of building a tree
and researching on ancestry, finding all I could about my
family, MyHeritage. I did find my biological
(22:12):
father's profile. I found my half siblings
profiles on Facebook. They didn't want to contact them
through there because they felt like that's just so random, you
know? I didn't even know what I was
going to do. Is he still alive?
Yes, living 3 miles away from. Me.
Oh, wow, OK, That that has to behard.
(22:35):
I mean, you hear about the people that they're like, I just
want to drive past their house. And I have, because the Internet
is proliferate, it's with information.
You can literally find anything.So anyone who thinks they can't
be found, it's not even a creep factor anymore.
It's just like all you got to dowith any one of these search
(22:56):
engines and you get a phone number and an address.
So I mean, I'm not immune to it either.
So I did do a lot of research. I did find out about my
grandparents on my biological father's side.
I found out about my half siblings and I toyed with
whether I should try to connect with them.
(23:20):
I waited until I got the DNA results back, which confirmed.
In the meantime, I I had called my daughter and I said, wait.
While I'm waiting for this test,can you bring up the results of
your 23 me test? Sure, 'cause she would have
family matches. As well.
(23:40):
So she brought them up and sure enough, she came up as a match
to the people on my biological father's side.
Now he has not. He's not on either one.
But she matched to my half sibling and she matched to two
cousins on his side. When you were looking at them on
(24:01):
Facebook, what were you able to learn about them as people, and
did any of that make you want toreach out to them or not reach
out to them? Yeah.
And nothing made me not want to reach out.
There were no red flags. They seemed like, you know, kind
of like a normal family. So I got confirmed and I was
(24:22):
like, OK, well, what am I going to do?
Am I going to reach out? I found pictures of my
grandparents and my great unclesand all of these people.
And I'm like, OK. So I ended up sending a short
note in July to my half sibling and it was just really a hi, I
(24:44):
see that we are related because she was named on one of the
platforms. I see that we're related and I
have some information as to how that could be looking to see if
you're interested in communicating.
And I gave her my e-mail addressand my phone number and I didn't
(25:08):
expect to hear from her. So I was really, really stressed
out. Later on that day, I was talking
to my son and he's like, mom, why don't you take one of those
edibles that we got? So I was like, you know, you're
right. I think I'm going to do that.
It's 4:00 in the afternoon and I'm like, you know, I'm going to
(25:32):
go to bed early because I'm really stressed and I take this
and I think it had like THC in it, like a little bit of THC.
And having had some prior experience with that, which I, I
don't do on a regular basis, I remember that it has like this
(25:53):
effect on my brain, but I'm not thinking and I go to sleep at
8:30. I'm woken up out of this dead
sleep and there's a male voice and he says Kelly and I was
like, yeah, he's like, this is so and so, so and so's husband.
(26:18):
I was like, uh oh, hi. So he's like, yeah, we got your
message and we kind of want to know what this is about.
Like, you know, my wife can't even talk.
She's in shock. So now I'm really having a hard
(26:39):
time because I'm, first of all, I'm woken from a dead sleep.
Secondly, I took this thing and I'm like, OK, let me get my mind
together. I'm trying to tell him the
story. And it's all working well.
And he's like, well, she's just too shocked to speak.
And he's like, well, does my father-in-law know about you?
(27:01):
And I said, not to my knowledge.And I gave him the little story
that my mom gave me. And I said, you know, they told
me that I looked Native American.
And I'm just blurting out these pieces, random pieces of
information, knowing that this is not going well.
And he said, well, I don't know.He goes, I'm going to have to
(27:23):
talk to her about this and we'llsee what happens.
I said, well, I can send you an e-mail because I'm thinking, you
know, I can be a little bit morecoherent.
So if I send an e-mail with the information, she said no, no,
no, don't contact us. I said OK.
So I let it go. We hung up and I said, well, I'm
(27:46):
going to respect them. I'm not going to contact them
again. And I was devastated by that
phone call. I was devastated because I
couldn't communicate correctly. I was devastated because it was
so short. And I was devastated because he
said in the phone call, well, what are you hoping to get out
(28:09):
of this? I said, I don't want any money
and I don't want anything from you, inheritance or anything.
I want the history of my family and medical information if I let
it be and I dropped it and that was mid-july.
(28:29):
Let me tell you what I found outabout my biological dad.
That's really important to me and then I'll move forward from
social media. On my half siblings account, I
found out that my biological dadwas musical and I'm a musician.
(28:51):
I've been musical all my life. It's what my degree is in.
I'm in a band, I'm a music director, I'm a composer.
And I never knew where that camefrom because neither of my
parents that I grew up with havea lick of musical talent.
Like my mother Can't Sing for beans.
(29:12):
And my VCF was just not far behind in that.
And when I found out that he hadmusical talent, I was like, oh,
then I found out that my grandfather's brother was
training to be an opera singer and had stage fright and never
(29:38):
ended up being an opera singer. There's a story with him that I
can't repeat because it would give away, but he ended up
owning a famous animal and touring the world with this
animal. You're learning so much and
(29:59):
you're connecting these dots andit's making so much about you
make sense. What feelings are coming up at
that point? Because some people that I speak
to, you know, they have this what if, what could have been if
I'd been raised around that. Other people, it's more just
validating in terms of better understanding of themselves.
(30:19):
How do these revelations sort ofhit you?
A. Little bit of both.
There's a little bit of wonderment of I wonder what it
would have been like to even know my biological father, even
if they weren't together, but knowing that he was musical,
because I did find out that he sang in a musical group and that
(30:40):
he was a lead singer in a group.Local.
Nothing famous, nothing, you know, but kind of like what I
do, you know, I'm in a band and we're local.
So there's a little wonderment, like I wonder if we would have
sang together. I wonder if there would have
been more development of my skill than had happened.
(31:07):
And then there's this kind of just, oh, oh, that's where it
comes from. It's like this deep settling
acknowledgement of who I am as ahuman being.
It's this deep understanding of the real big differences that I
(31:27):
started noticing in my adult life between myself and my
brother and my parents. Like he's so much like them and
I'm so much not like I know I'veinherited by nurture things from
my birth certificate Dad, right?But I was, I'm so very
(31:48):
different. I'm so different culturally
speaking. I'm so different in terms of
just my body stature. Both my parents are big people.
I'm this tiny little thing. I'm dark, I tan, I have olive
complected skin that everyone tried to tell me about.
And I was like, no, no, it's my Native American heritage.
(32:11):
Yeah, yeah. So finding out has been, while I
feel so betrayed by my mom for holding it, we're taking years
away from me that I could have spent kind of figuring out how
to go about this. Like taking these years, like at
(32:31):
least have told me when my dad passed, Like I get you kept it a
secret. At least have told me somewhere
that's a deep hurt. And I don't know how to
reconcile what that hurt right now.
That's been a big issue. And it's still so new.
It's so. New.
It's so new and also you've beencontending with it in some way
(32:55):
for a really long time in the back of your mind, so that's a
lot. It's a long time.
I'm 63, so it's kind of like, wow, overall, the validation and
finding out who those people were, at least on the surface,
(33:15):
at least peripherally through Ancestry, through Facebook,
through one second Cousin's really oversharing of photos.
I was able to get so many photosof my biological father even
when he was like when he got married and like a few photos of
(33:36):
him in that era. I have nothing of him as a
child, so no photos of him as a kid.
Photos of aunts and uncles and great aunts and uncles and
cousins. Finding out that I grew up near
cousins of cousins and like around the corner from a cousin
of a cousin's family. So there's all these wildly
(34:00):
different feelings that happen. Finding out that my great aunts
were educated women. It's just this like core
validation of who I am. So that's been good.
The kind of emptiness and what I've been struggling with since
(34:25):
July since that phone call is. So I made another reach out in
September to a cousin. I said let me just not bother
the sibling. Let me see if I can gather some
information. I contacted someone who manages
a test on one of the one of the platforms and I said, hey, I'm
(34:49):
related. I see that I'm related to so and
so just looking for some information and she wrote back
to me really quickly. I can see that she's on every
day. She has a lot of research.
I also happen to know from looking at the DNA tree on one
of the platforms that she is my biological father's niece.
(35:17):
She gets back to me and she says, well, how old are you?
And you know, I said, I know that these are my grandparents
from ancestry. And she, you can tell she's
like, well, how old are you? And what else do you know what
you adopted? And I said, no, I I'm not
adopted. I can give you some information.
(35:37):
So she's clearly pulled in now and I told her my story in a
short form, you know, and then Isaid so to be forward.
I did contact so and so in July and I had a conversation and
(36:01):
there's been no contact since. So she said, well, I'm going to
get in touch with so and so and then I'll have to get back to
you because I can't, you know, overstep.
So this was on September 10th and on September 11th I got a
another note from my half sibling and it was so
(36:26):
devastating to me because hey I respected the no contact so I
didn't reach out to her. She writes to me.
I spoke with my husband and now my cousin and both revealed the
details you shared with them. Some things my husband told me
(36:46):
from your conversation with him didn't make sense to me.
No, no shit Sherlock, because didn't make sense to me either.
See, She goes on to say. I hoped my lack of contact would
have made it clear that we are not interested in connecting
with you. I'm not sure what you hope to
(37:09):
gain from this, and I don't wantto be mean or cruel, but having
you contact people in my family could ruin lives.
We've had so much devastation inour family and I don't think we
could handle anything else. News like this could cause
irreversible damage. It's much like why your mom most
likely didn't tell your dad for all the years they were married.
(37:33):
I pray you had a happy childhoodand were are surrounded by
people who love you and whom youlove deeply.
I also hope getting the information you needed to
validate what you felt for many years has given you closure.
On the other hand, I completed 23andMe many years ago because
it was given to me as a gift. I never intended or considered
attempting to reveal a connection such as ours.
(37:57):
Here's the here's the clincher for me.
This information has caused muchstress and anxiety in my life.
I need to protect my family and I hope you can respect my
request that you stop contactingany of us.
I hope confirming your thoughts brings you some peace.
I'm so sorry for any disappointment this may bring
you and I hope you understand mychallenging position.
(38:20):
You should know there is no history of any abnormal or
severe medical issues to be aware of.
I wish you nothing but happiness.
Best wishes. In other words, polite polite F
you. And I, I do just want to check
in, are you beating yourself up about the fact that you had been
(38:42):
asleep and on an edible for thatfirst conversation?
Like do you feel like that impacted their reaction to you
at all or? OK, OK, good 'cause I was.
Like I really don't excuse. I.
Really don't understand. You don't understand the depth
of what it's like to find out at63 years old that you have an
(39:08):
entire generations of people from an entirely different part
of the world than you thought you came from.
That you have no stories of yourgrandparents, that you have no
stories from other than what youcan glean through ancestry and
newspapers. You have no anecdotes, you have
(39:30):
no personal knowledge. And you'll never be able to get
those things unless someone is willing to say, oh, hey, I can
help you with that. Obviously it can't be healed.
Obviously it can't be fixed. But those little things that you
grow up with that I know about my birth certificate, dad's
(39:51):
family, right? Those anecdotes about grandma
and grandpa and uncle so and so,like I don't have those for my
biological family. And that's what I'm missing.
That's what I, I guess I'm longing for.
I'm longing for someone in that family to kind of say and look
at me and go, wow, you really dolook like us.
(40:14):
We don't have to have dinner. I don't care.
I have a family, I'm content, I've got 4 kids, I've got 7
grandkids, I'm busy, you know, tons of friends, tons of
connections in this world and don't want a connection with
someone who doesn't want one with me.
Anyone. Right, right.
(40:37):
Has there been any point where you considered going directly to
him? Yeah, yeah, I guess that's my
next big question for myself is what do I do because he's he's
83. Like, how many years are there
(40:59):
and how do I go about it? One of my real Italian friends
said just send him a note. Send him a note.
This is your daughter. Send him a Christmas card.
Yeah, but it's. So complicated.
It's it's not that easy and I'm not confrontational that way.
So it really is like, how do I go about that?
(41:21):
Do I go about it? What do I sit with?
How do I manage? And I've just let it sit and
there's not a day that one aspect or facet of this, mostly
the letter from her doesn't ringin my head in some way, shape or
(41:42):
form that clear. I don't want to understand.
You cause me stress. And I want to say, honey, you
don't understand what it's like to find out, but your, your dad
is not your dad. I love my dad.
I love my birth certificate father.
It doesn't take anything away from my relationship with him.
(42:07):
Nothing. But I, I don't have anyone to
say like, hey, I'm a musician too.
I don't know if I want to reach out.
And that's where I've been stucknow since September.
So that's kind of where I've been than sitting with this.
(42:29):
So I've taken up this distraction of listening to
online apocalyptic survival novels on Audible.
That's a good distraction. Really, to say something, it's
just like, OK, I don't want to think about it, you know?
I just don't want to. I don't want to delve in.
(42:51):
Sometimes I don't even listen tothe podcasts because I'll hear
something and the tears will well up and I'll be like, OK,
just let me get my grip and go on.
Sure. And it's, you know, only you can
know the next best step for yourself because everyone's
(43:12):
situations are so unique. I was going to ask you, while
you're kind of figuring out whatyou want to do next, what things
are helping you aside from your apocalyptic audiobooks?
I think time is helping somewhat.
(43:33):
In terms of my relationship withmy mother, nothing is really
helping except my own willingness to just forge
forward and do the right thing by her.
She's 83, my brother is not really involved in her care, and
I want to honor what I told my dad I would do.
(43:56):
So I do it and I buck up and I call her.
And she's always been kind of onmy nerves anyway, so it just
makes it that much harder. But I just pushed through.
We go to the same church where I'm a music director, and so I
have to kind of see her on that level in terms of dealing with
(44:21):
what to do. I'm on several Facebook groups.
I listen to the podcasts. I try to glean helpful hints.
There's another facet to the story which is not really mine
to tell, but the guy who contacted me, who ended up
contacting me, which kind of like pushed me over the research
(44:42):
edge. It turns out that he is related
to my dad and it turns out that he is my birth certificate dad's
son. That was a kind of a shock, the
circumstances of funky and weird.
(45:04):
He is younger than me, so this is a strange thing.
I've welcomed him. He's not related to me
whatsoever. So he's like my brother from
another mother, father now at this point, right?
But he is in his journey a little bit further ahead of me.
(45:28):
And so when he finally decided to tell me how he thought he was
related to me, I said, well, I have something I got to tell you
because I knew by that point. And we found out that we're not
actual siblings. But he's been so supportive and
I have been so supportive to him.
So this has been a really weird thing.
(45:51):
Anything that he's needed to know about my dad, my birth
certificate dad, I've given. We've met.
He came in with his wife to visit over the summer.
We we went to graveyards and I copied pictures and sent him
(46:11):
things. I have.
We're in constant contact and he's been a real help along the
way. That's amazing because you're on
both sides. Right.
And he's so interested in his history and had done his, all of
his research and found out, you know, oh, that's not true
either. And so he also met with my mom
(46:34):
because as I said, it was a family connection and it's a
funky situation. So she was willing to meet with
him and gave him all the information that she could give
him. Now you, through this discovery,
had a big ethnicity shift. Oh, my goodness.
It sounds like you've grown up around the Italian community.
(46:57):
You mentioned you have Italian friends.
Your biological father doesn't live too far from you, so you're
in New York. Like there's large Italian
communities there. Have you spent any time kind of
diving into that side? So I've done research on the
area that my family's from. I'm really interested in
(47:19):
history. So I'm interested where did
everyone come from? Like what part of Italy?
So done a lot of questioning of my Italian friends and I do have
a lot of Italian friends and my ex was Italian and everyone
thought I was Italian, right? Your.
Kids are Italian, yeah. I but, but I did not identify as
(47:40):
to quote a popular phrase. So it's strange.
I mean, I've been around it so much so I kind of know it.
And I have recipes from my mother-in-law, right?
We were married for 30 years. And so I have a whole history of
(48:00):
that culture, but I haven't delved in except to look into
possibly like what the chances were of me getting an Italian
passport, which now I understandyou kind of need to do like you
kind of have have like birth certificates, you need to have
acknowledge paternity. I can get a another kind of
(48:22):
passport and go to Italy. It's, but it would be lovely to
have. So for me, that's a sore point.
For me, it's something that I'm missing out on because I can't
make that connection. I can't just say, hey, can you
just sign this off? I really don't want anything
from you. But I'd love to have an Italian
passport based on the fact that my my grandparents are from
(48:43):
Italy. Yeah.
And I do want to travel there. What advice do you have for a
parent who is keeping adna surprise from their child?
I wholeheartedly, out of this experience, believe that that is
something that should be revealed to a child, especially
(49:05):
when they're an adult. I believe that information, even
if it's given in secret, even ifit's told quietly, it should be
told to the individual because once you're an adult, it really
ceases to be the parent's story.It's the child's story and it's
important to have that knowledge.
(49:30):
You can put disclaimers around the story.
You can say please don't go to or This is why I kept it from
you. Maybe there's abuse.
Maybe there's a real legitimate,like really serious reason why
it was kept a secret for safety purposes even.
But once you're beyond that point, at least tell the person
(49:55):
when their birth certificate parent passes.
I mean, find a time. It's not about you anymore once
you're an adult, it's about thatperson.
And it's so significant and it'sso important to have that
validation. And it would have been so
helpful to have even earlier than this time.
(50:18):
That's my advice. And what advice do you have for
someone who just uncovered Adna surprise?
I would say find all the supportthat you can possibly find.
Relate to all the people. Listen to all the stories of
(50:39):
people who have gone through this.
Cry, feel, be angry, write, journal.
Find a therapist. I haven't found one yet but
that's on my bucket list is to find some kind of a trauma
therapist to process this with as opposed to distracting myself
(51:02):
with maybe novels. But find support.
And I guess I would also say take what's good, take what is
helpful and run with it and treasure it.
(51:24):
And what's not helpful, talk about in therapy.
Find a way to work it out. There's really, there's no
undoing it. So it's really just find as as
much support as possible and be authentic and tell the story.
Tell the story. It's important I'm telling the
story. I mean, I've had second thoughts
(51:44):
about doing the interview several times because the story
hasn't progressed at all. I feel stuck and you're going to
feel stuck at times and reach out to other people maybe who
are stuck. Thank you for sharing that,
Kelly. And I also want to say that I
think it's important that we tell the stories for people that
(52:05):
are in all different places withtheir journey.
So there's going to be the people who are right at the
beginning. There's going to be people who
might have the quote UN quote happy ending, maybe not a happy
ending. And then there's going to be
people who are mid journey like you are and maybe not sure where
they're going to go next. So I'm really grateful to you
(52:25):
for sharing your story as it is right now, and I wish you so
much luck and just positivity. And I hope for you that you
figure out the next best step, whatever that is, as you move
through. This I so appreciate your
podcast. I so appreciate your questions
(52:46):
and I so appreciate the way you speak with people and how your
interview and how you help pull stories out of people.
And I so appreciate your deep empathy and compassion.
It comes through so clearly. So thank you for that.
(53:07):
Thank you. Appreciate that.
Thank you. Thanks, Alexis.
Thanks again to Kelly for sharing her story.
If you have Adna surprise that you'd like to share, please
submit your story at dnasurprises.com and for early
ad free access to episodes, joinme over on
patreon@patreon.com/DNA Surprises.
(53:29):
Until next time. This episode of DNA Surprises
was hosted, produced and edited by me, Alexis Ourselt.
It was mixed and mastered by Josh Ourselt of Siren Recording
Studios.
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