April 28, 2026 • 29 mins
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What happens when a sperm donor from the 1990s suddenly discovers he has children decades later?
This is one of those stories that could only happen right now.
A decision made in the early ’90s, when anonymity was expected and protected, collides with modern DNA testing, where secrets don’t stay buried.
In Part 1 of this conversation around the documentary Dad Genes, we sit down with Aaron and Jess to unpack how their lives became connected in a way neither of them could have predicted.
Aaron donated sperm in 1994, thinking it was a closed chapter. Jess built her family years later, carefully choosing a donor based on what felt right at the time.
Neither of them expected that decades later, a simple DNA test would connect them, and open the door to a network of biological children, siblings, and relationships that were never supposed to exist.
This episode focuses on the moment everything changes. The discovery. The realization. The first steps into something completely unknown.
Why This Episode Matters
If you’ve taken a DNA test, are thinking about it, or are navigating a family discovery of your own, this episode will hit home.
Because this isn’t just about donor conception.
It’s about how technology is reshaping identity, how past decisions don’t stay in the past, and how people are left to figure it out in real time without a roadmap.
Stories like this are becoming more common, and the questions they raise don’t have easy answers.
What You’ll Take Away
A clear look at how donor conception worked before DNA testing changed everything
Insight into how families made decisions without knowing what the future would bring
A grounded, human perspective on what it feels like when identity and biology suddenly collide.
Listen now to hear how one decision in 1994 turned into a life-changing discovery decades later.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Corey (00:00):
Alright, before we jump in, I want to set this one up
for you because this story iswild in a very family twist kind
of way.
We're talking about thedocumentary Dad Jeans.
And joining us are Erin andJess, who are at the center of a
story that spans decades,multiple families, and a version
of the world that honestlydoesn't exist anymore.
This all starts back in theearly 90s.
(00:21):
Pre-internet, pre-DNA testing, atime when sperm donation was
built on the idea of anonymity.
You donate, you move on, andthat's that.
Except now we live in a worldwhere that's just not how it
works.
Aaron makes a decision in his20s that he thinks is firmly in
the past.
Jess makes intentional decisionsto build her family, choosing a
(00:44):
donor based on what feels rightat the time.
And then years later, DNAtesting shows up and connects
dots that we're never supposedto connect.
Kids finding biological parents.
Parents finding biological kids.
Half siblings appearing out ofnowhere.
And suddenly, everyone involvedis navigating something no one
really prepared them for.
(01:05):
This conversation hits on somany things we talk about on
this show (01:08):
identity, intention, secrecy, technology, and what
happens when all of thatcollides.
So let's get into it.
Kendall (01:20):
Welcome, Erin and Jess, to the Family Twist Podcast.
SPEAKER_01 (01:24):
Thank you for having us.
Kendall (01:26):
So before we dive into your story, what's the
relationship between you two?
SPEAKER_00 (01:33):
That's the story.
SPEAKER_01 (01:35):
We're a couple.
SPEAKER_00 (01:36):
Okay.
We are a couple.
We live together on VashonIsland, Washington.
SPEAKER_01 (01:42):
We've lived in this house for seven years since
COVID.
Kendall (01:48):
Oh wow.
SPEAKER_00 (01:49):
Okay.
Cool.
We live here with our threecats, 12 chickens, and daughter.
Sometimes our daughter Alice,who is in college.
Kendall (02:01):
That's very cool.
Anyway, so I know very littlepurposefully, and so I'm excited
to hear what the DNA surprise isin your story.
SPEAKER_00 (02:13):
Do you just want us to take the ball and run with
her?
Absolutely.
In 1994, I was between things inmy life.
Had been teaching English as aforeign language in Spain.
I came back to the United Statesand wasn't sure what was next.
(02:34):
I moved in with my mom.
I started driving a taxi.
And this was in a college town,State College, Pennsylvania.
And I saw one day I was readingthe student newspaper an ad
looking for sprung donors tohelp infertile couples.
(02:55):
It seemed like my entirethinking of the time was that
sounds like easy money.
I applied to do it.
I was accepted.
I donated about twice a week fora year.
Now this was 1994.
Pre-internet, pre-home DNAtesting.
(03:19):
I signed a confidentialityagreement.
The sperm bank signed aconfidentiality agreement.
There was no expectation andsupposedly no possibility of me
learning who bought my sperm orof them learning the people who
bought my sperm learning aboutme.
(03:40):
So I did that for a year.
SPEAKER_01 (03:52):
1994, I was graduating from high school, and
none of this was a blip on myradar at all.
But in 2004, I was with a womanand we were thinking about
conceiving our first child.
And we were, I was in gradschool at the time and was
(04:16):
getting ready to like do thepart of grad school called all
but dissertation.
You do nothing but sit home andwrite.
So it seemed like a great timefor me to be the first one to
get pregnant and to be able tohave that year to be pregnant,
have a baby be home with thebaby.
And so we looked to match theDNA of my partner at the time
(04:39):
who had brown wavy hair and wasin creative writing.
And there was a donor that hadbrown wavy hair and was an MFA
in creative writing.
And had what we thought at thetime, since she was obviously
right-brained, and I'm a socialscience PhD.
(05:01):
We really thought he had at thetime a profile that looked like
this could be any kid.
This kid could fit in ourfamily.
There are a lot of sperm donorsthat are med students because
it's right down the hall fromthem, presumably.
Right.
And so there are a lot of spermprofiles that are like, what are
your hobbies?
(05:21):
My hard hobbies are calculus andRubik's Cube and coding.
And you're like, oh my God, no,no offense to the good you do in
the world, but I can't raisethis kid.
I'm not going to be able to helpthis kid with homework, like
starting in sixth grade.
And this kid might like just bebored every weekend hanging out
in our family, right?
(05:42):
There just seems to be such alaser-focused mindset on these
like little left-brained mathkids and cool on them.
But here was this profile thatwas like, my hobbies are games,
music, sports, and I have an MFAin creative writing.
And we were like, that's thegamut.
So genetically, like this kidcould be half us and half any,
(06:04):
like this kid could pick its ownpath.
And that was the freer versionof DNA for us at the time.
Like I think people don't gointo this with the wisdom of how
much this contributes to a kid.
We had just seen sperm banks.
There was one sperm bank thatshipped to your home, and it was
from the Pacific Northwest atthe time.
(06:26):
I call them kids because Ipresume they're college
students.
Every kid in that sperm bank waslike hobbies, hunting, fishing.
You know, and me and my lesbianwife are like, well, we don't
think that's genetic.
Not that's it's probably fine,but it really is you're reading
this like a dating profile.
(06:47):
You're like, okay, if it's allgenetic and we get this Mr.
Dominant DNA in our household,who's gonna fit here?
Who's gonna be happy here?
Who are we gonna be able toraise successfully to be
whatever they want to be?
Eeny meeny miny mo.
And at the end of the day, youdon't care so much.
(07:08):
Healthy, beautiful child.
Then in 2005, our daughter Alicecame and was perfect.
And we thought we'd clone herand use this DNA again on our
second daughter, which we did.
And they were both perfect, andDNA worked out great.
SPEAKER_00 (07:29):
The second daughter was carried by Jess's partner.
SPEAKER_01 (07:32):
Yes.
And at the time we thought thisis ideal.
We have this Mr.
Recessive here, like we have alittle me, we have a little her.
You can't really see when you'renot a part of the donor's life
what the these girls have a lotin common, but also very little
in common.
And you look at who's the donor?
(07:52):
We never even saw a picture.
We didn't have the voicerecordings and the astrological
chart and all the stuff that youget today, even wasn't a thing
in 2004.
So we also in 2004 thought therewas no way we were ever gonna
know who this person was.
(08:13):
And we picked an anonymous donorbeing very cool with that as a
gay family in 2004, in a worldin which like there were real
dangers to our family and ourchild from a known donor.
And so we were totally cool withokay, fine anonymous donor.
(08:34):
And there I think there was atthe time a known donor sperm
bank for people who did wantthat.
But there just was no conceptionthat one day, even if he wanted
to be anonymous, he couldn't be.
It just doesn't enter your mindif it doesn't exist in the world
at the time.
And 10 years later, after that,so 20 years after your initial
(09:00):
donation, it did become areality.
Kendall (09:03):
How did that come about?
SPEAKER_00 (09:05):
Okay, I guess I was the first one of us to take a
DNA test.
Somewhere 2015, maybe, I beganto see ads for home DNA testing.
Specifically the ones I rememberwere 23 and me.
And I thought, huh, maybe thiswould be a way to find the
(09:31):
children that were born using mysperm.
And the whole thing was new, andI don't know, I just kept seeing
the ads.
Like I I didn't do anythingabout it for about a year.
Eventually I was like, allright.
You know, I'm I'm curious, let'sdo this.
And so, you know, I I spit in atube, mailed it off, and got my
(09:54):
results back.
And of course, the first thingyou do, I think I did it even
before I looked to see what myancestry was.
I knew what my ancestry was, andI clicked on the DNA relatives
and boom, there was someonelisted as my son.
Just one person listed as myson, and my son's name was
(10:17):
Bryce.
And I I wasn't quite sure whatto do with this information.
I also didn't really know how23andMe works.
Like as soon as I was in theirsystem and opted into seeing my
DNA relatives, had Bryce beensent an email that said, Hey,
your dad's on the site.
(10:37):
And it is like that.
They don't send you somethingthat specific, but they say,
Hey, you have new DNA relatives.
Of course, I later learned youget one of those emails like
once a week, and pretty soonyou're just ignoring them
because you look and it's somemore fifth cousins.
But I had no idea.
So I'm sitting here thinking,like, has Bryce been notified
about this?
What's the etiquette in thissituation?
(10:59):
Am I kind of obligated to writeto him immediately?
I just wasn't quite sure howthis was gonna work.
But what I did instead, which Iguess most people would do, is I
Googled his name and I didn'tfind much, and I actually
enlisted the aid of a friend ofmine who's an NPRL of water.
(11:19):
She helped me uh search him outand found him.
Like he had altered his namesomehow.
I forget exactly what he did,but his name was slightly
different than what it reallyis, or what he goes by.
And but she found him and thething we found was he had a I
(11:43):
guess his college sponsored thisthing, but it wasn't Facebook,
but it was a thing like he had aprofile on his college's page
that showed like what his majorwas, what his hobbies were, what
were what campus groups he wasinvolved with, and it had some
pictures of him.
And when we saw the pictures, wewere like, oh, 100% that's my
(12:06):
kid.
Like he looked so much like me.
He was like half a foot tallerthan like really tall.
Well, but most of my familyother than me is is kind of
tall.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (12:19):
No, my very first and only question for Aaron is
like, you're the shrimp of yourfamily, aren't you?
Because your profile saidaverage, and yeah, none of this
is coming from me and mypartner.
SPEAKER_04 (12:31):
Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (12:32):
And so, you know, I looked at his profile and it
said he was in the Poet Society,said he was in a frat, said his
major was geography.
Geography, yeah.
And so I had that information,and then I was like, okay, I'll
just write to this guy.
So one evening, I remember itwas just kind of before I was
(12:53):
going to bed, I I wrote him aletter, it was just like a
couple of paragraphs through the23andMe messaging system that
said, Hi, I believe I am yourbiological father.
You know, here's 10 facts aboutme.
I'm interested in connecting ifif you're up for that.
(13:14):
So I I sent this message, I wentand like brushed my teeth, got
in bed, checked my email onelast time, and Bryce had already
written back.
Yeah.
You get used to the electronicage, but sometimes things still
happen very fast, and you'relike, what and he wrote back,
and his message starts off dad.
(13:37):
Like, wow.
He says about how happy he isthat I wrote.
He was hoping to connect with methis way.
He told me a couple things abouthimself.
And I was a little taken abackby the use of dad, like I had no
idea what his expectations mightbe of our relationship.
And I view dad as kind of ancultural earned designation.
(14:04):
And but pretty quickly ourcorrespondence continued on, and
pretty quickly I just he wasjust sort of like having fun
with it.
We're all struggling with whatterminology to use in these kind
of relationships.
And whatever.
He wasn't expecting me to becomehis dad.
But he was curious about me.
Kendall (14:25):
So he had known that he was donor-conceived.
SPEAKER_00 (14:29):
He was born into a lesbian couple.
I I don't know if this is true.
Like at at Utor, I talked to afew people about this, and my
impression, just because it'sbeen the case with most of the
children I've discovered, is thevast majority of them came from
lesbian couples.
(14:51):
But someone at the conferencesaid they weren't sure if that
was really true, that maybe justlike my sperm bank had maybe
specialized in that more.
I don't know.
SPEAKER_01 (15:00):
We just Google I was given no lesbian-specific
advertising.
SPEAKER_00 (16:08):
Because the advertising I got to donate was
help infertile couples, andsure, lesbians fit into that.
Kendall (16:13):
All it takes is one successful marketing campaign,
and then suddenly you're thego-to.
SPEAKER_00 (16:20):
And very quickly, Bryce told me that he had used,
in addition to 23andMe, he hadused donor sibling registry,
which I had actually looked atlike about 10 years earlier, but
there had been no one listed forme, and I just forgot about it
after that.
But Bryce said that he had usedit and he was connected to five
(16:42):
other of my children.
So I immediately went from likeone to six.
And he told like Bryce was 20 atthe time.
And that that mapped out to likethe dates that I had donated
sperm, but he told me that someof the other children were quite
young, like a couple there waslike a pair of twins that were
(17:06):
seven.
And so one thing I learned islike I had no idea what the
shelf life of the sperm or likehow quickly they sold it.
I'd assumed it had all been usedback around 1994 when I donated.
Right.
But it turns out it'd been usedover the course of decade or
more.
Yes.
He contacted the other like theother donors through donor
(17:31):
sipping registry or their moms.
Because I told him it was okayto put me in contact with them.
So he was the intermediary forthat, which seemed like the
right way to go about that.
One of them was a 19-year-oldgirl named Maddie.
(17:51):
And she connected with me rightaway, and she, Bryce and I just
formed like a little Facebookchat group and began to have
chats and exchange informationabout ourselves.
And you know, there was a like aflurry of activity with that for
about a month.
I wrote them a very long historyof my life.
(18:12):
I mean, um I was 50 at the time,and it it was only like a page a
year, but but Jess likes to makefun of me for this.
SPEAKER_01 (18:25):
I do.
But I really liked the I makefun of him for that, but I
really liked later when we comeinto the story, like being
handed the 56-page life historywelcome packet.
Kendall (18:38):
I feel as if I've known my biological father now for
getting close to nine years, andI feel like I can still only
fill a couple of pages.
You know what I mean?
Like I'm having to get storiesfrom other family members about
he's suffering from dementia, sothat's part of it.
But the other part is that he'sjust not very communicative.
(19:01):
I can count on one hand thenumber of questions he'd asked
about my first 47 years of lifethat he missed out on.
It's he's just not inquisitiveat all.
If you pick a writer as yourdonor, yeah, do you make sure
that he assumes that he knows,but he knows nothing.
SPEAKER_01 (19:20):
I think that you want to see these this person
and you want to see their facemove when they talk too.
So you want to meet them.
SPEAKER_04 (19:27):
Yep.
SPEAKER_01 (19:27):
And then you're kind of at a loss because you weren't
there.
It didn't concern you.
It's probably not genetic.
It's is it a story history?
You're you have to put all ofthat together and actually just
want to get to know you as aperson and do that in a
different way than you've everdone with anyone else in your
life.
So even if he feels that, to beable to actuate that new
(19:51):
relationship is it's hard.
And if you're older and you'restarting dementia, it's even
harder.
Kendall (19:59):
So I quiz everyone else about him, and you know, like
his parents and you know, thingslike that.
So it's still wonderful, don'tget me wrong.
It's just I didn't imagine itwould be so difficult to extract
information, but that's okay.
SPEAKER_00 (20:14):
All right, I can continue on.
Yeah, you know, for about amonth and I Bryce, Maddie and I
had like kind of a lot ofcommunication, but you know,
they were in college and prettyquickly they just went back to
leading their college lives.
We're Facebook friends,sometimes we'd like each other's
posts or whatever, but you know,things tailed off a bit, and a
(20:37):
few months pass.
SPEAKER_01 (20:38):
So what's interesting is I think this
speaks to how like somethinglike 23 and me comes out and
it's new, and you're like,nobody's gonna be there, nobody
does it, but we're all doing itbasically at the same time.
Right.
And Alice for Christmas, my momhad done 23andMe, and I was
raised by my mom as a singlemom.
I have never known who my dadwas.
(21:00):
And Alice at 10 was like, nowhold up just a minute here
because good stories, but that's25% of what my ancestry looks
like.
SPEAKER_04 (21:13):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (21:13):
Grandma, give me that test.
And my mom was, of course, justyes, I would love to share this
genealogy hobby with you.
SPEAKER_04 (21:22):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (21:22):
And immediately for Christmas of that year, December
provided said test.
And like before Valentine's Day,we had the results back.
Kendall (21:32):
Wow.
SPEAKER_01 (21:33):
And perhaps very stupidly, like I hadn't thought
anyone was going to be under DNArelatives at all.
Like that was just going to be athrowaway section with fourth
cousins with last names wedidn't know.
And it also didn't occur to methat like I could just
physically on my own make thefamily trees of all those fourth
cousins and come to a conclusionlike this because it was 2016.
SPEAKER_04 (21:57):
Yep.
SPEAKER_01 (21:57):
So quite dumbly, I also opened up the test results
and clicked through thecountries and the ancestry
report and clicked on DNArelatives.
And the first thing there for my10-year-old was 50% father.
SPEAKER_04 (22:13):
Wow.
SPEAKER_01 (22:14):
And you're like, oh okay.
So didn't at all expect that.
Start you start Googling.
It's a common enough name thatyou have to wade through some
stuff and you have to do alittle bit of research to find
the right Aaron Long.
They had once out of sevenmonths of trying to conceive
sent a vial that said September9th, 1994.
(22:40):
Mistake on their part because Ilearned that somebody had a
master's by 94, but was stillyoung enough to donate sperm.
That gave me a window of hisages, and I have his full name.
And I know he has interactedwith Fairfax Cryobank, which,
silly me, I thought was inFairfax.
(23:00):
Fairfax, Virginia.
Turns out Spermbanks havefranchises.
But luckily, there was an AaronLong of the exact right age who
is a writer for his job onLinkedIn.
And he's a musician because he'splaying a trombone in his
LinkedIn picture.
He didn't know how to useLinkedIn.
SPEAKER_00 (23:20):
Say I was not trying to use I was not trying to use
LinkedIn for the first time.
Any kind of gross sleep.
SPEAKER_01 (23:26):
And he had attended Johns Hopkins.
Oh wow.
So he's really close to the DCarea, which is Fairfax,
Virginia.
And I was like, okay, so likemaybe after school he comes back
to DC because he went to collegethere.
And so I found that Aaron Long,and that Aaron Long was living
in Seattle, Washington.
(23:47):
And so I went to Facebook and Iwhittled away the Aaron Longs
there.
And there was an Aaron Long whohad just recently, unbeknownst
to me, connected with thesesperm doney children.
And so he had put on Facebookreally recently all of his K to
12 school pictures.
And that was my like just dropdead 100%.
(24:11):
Of course, this is correctmoment because 50-year-old man
does not resemble your 10 and9-year-old daughters.
But you know what?
First grade Aaron Long is mydaughters with 60s boy David
Cassidy bold cut.
Which was not the best look formy daughters, but it was just
instant recognition that you'relike, yeah, right guy.
(24:34):
Wow.
On the nose, correct.
This is who it is.
And like Aaron, I was like, ohmy God, he's gotten a note that
we're here.
Time is ticking.
SPEAKER_04 (24:45):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (24:45):
I better write back because I have the profile of a
minor.
This is it's on me to reach outto him.
And so I did.
And I said, I'm I think I reallymessed up that letter because I
was in such a rush because I wasbecause it's coming from her
account.
SPEAKER_04 (25:03):
Right.
SPEAKER_01 (25:03):
And I'm typing it, and I'm like, I've got another
daughter.
You want to see her?
Write me back.
But we figured it out.
And he told me he had justconnected with Bryce and Maddie
and said, Here's a little bitabout me.
Here's the life history I wrotefor them.
And so I had Alice write him herlife history.
(25:27):
And just sort of mitigated thatrelationship as best I can
because I never expected itwould happen, number one.
And number two, I never expectedto be a part of it.
Because at the time, the onlymodels for that were like adult
adoptees.
And so you're picturing that.
You're picturing someday my kidswill be 21 and maybe they'll go
do this, and I won't be theredoing it for them.
(25:50):
And so I wasn't really sure howto go about that, but it felt
nice exchanging documents.
It was a little bit of a stepremoved when you have a little
kid.
And that that it was just thebest we could do.
So I joined the Facebook groupchat and we all started talking
about how maybe on the summerwhen those the kids weren't in
college anymore, they wanted tocome and meet Aaron, and we
(26:13):
would maybe come when they came,and that would be an easier way
for my little kiddo to meet himtoo.
Kendall (26:20):
Yes.
But did you tell Alice rightaway that that was?
Good.
SPEAKER_01 (26:25):
In part because I couldn't possibly keep it a
secret.
And number two, that's gonnacome unraveled, and I it's gonna
be worse.
SPEAKER_04 (26:31):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (26:32):
I did, and she knew she grew up in a lesbian
household.
She knew she had a donor.
We had actually looked at donorsibling registry at some point
when the kids were of thatelementary school age, that was
interesting to them.
And kind it was almost justhere's the donor number, kids,
because right now that onlylives in my head.
So if I die, there's yourinformation, this is all we
(26:56):
know.
SPEAKER_04 (26:57):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (26:58):
So we had that conversation that if you want
this, you need to remember thisnumber.
SPEAKER_04 (27:05):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (27:06):
Let's look at it.
How interesting.
Isn't that cool?
But mommy and mommy love youvery much.
SPEAKER_04 (27:12):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (27:12):
And this is why we did this.
And look, he likes music justlike you, and we whatever.
You can't you keep it lightbecause if it's not a big deal,
I believe that we don't act likeit is a big deal.
If you want your kids to thinkthat this is it's normal, it's
cool, you're awesome.
SPEAKER_04 (27:34):
Yep.
SPEAKER_01 (27:35):
Like it's not it to make things this huge secret, it
makes a lot of things worse.
Corey (27:40):
Completely agree.
Yeah.
This is one of thoseconversations where you can feel
how quickly everything shifts.
What started as something thatfelt anonymous and contained
back in the 90s turns intosomething completely different
once DNA testing enters thepicture.
And what stands out to me is howthoughtful Aaron and Jess are in
(28:00):
the way that they're processingthis.
Because nobody did anythingwrong here.
They made decisions based on theinformation, the culture, and
the expectations of the time.
But now, years later, thosedecisions are intersecting with
the technology that's rewritingthe rules in real time.
And at the center of it are thereal people trying to figure out
what connection looks like, whatfamily looks like, what role
(28:23):
they want to play in eachother's lives.
And that's where this storyreally starts to go deeper.
So, next week we're gonna pickthis up in part two because
there's a lot more to unpackhere once these connections move
from discovery into actualrelationships.
And remember, family secrets arethe ultimate plot twist.
The Family Twist Podcast ispresented by Sabwa Fair
(28:47):
Marketing Communications andproduced by Mosaic Multimedia.
Alright, before we jump in, I want to set this one up
for you because this story iswild in a very family twist kind
of way.
We're talking about thedocumentary Dad Jeans.
And joining us are Erin andJess, who are at the center of a
story that spans decades,multiple families, and a version
of the world that honestlydoesn't exist anymore.
This all starts back in theearly 90s.
(00:21):
Pre-internet, pre-DNA testing, atime when sperm donation was
built on the idea of anonymity.
You donate, you move on, andthat's that.
Except now we live in a worldwhere that's just not how it
works.
Aaron makes a decision in his20s that he thinks is firmly in
the past.
Jess makes intentional decisionsto build her family, choosing a
(00:44):
donor based on what feels rightat the time.
And then years later, DNAtesting shows up and connects
dots that we're never supposedto connect.
Kids finding biological parents.
Parents finding biological kids.
Half siblings appearing out ofnowhere.
And suddenly, everyone involvedis navigating something no one
really prepared them for.
(01:05):
This conversation hits on somany things we talk about on
this show (01:08):
identity, intention, secrecy, technology, and what
happens when all of thatcollides.
So let's get into it.
Kendall (01:20):
Welcome, Erin and Jess, to the Family Twist Podcast.
SPEAKER_01 (01:24):
Thank you for having us.
Kendall (01:26):
So before we dive into your story, what's the
relationship between you two?
SPEAKER_00 (01:33):
That's the story.
SPEAKER_01 (01:35):
We're a couple.
SPEAKER_00 (01:36):
Okay.
We are a couple.
We live together on VashonIsland, Washington.
SPEAKER_01 (01:42):
We've lived in this house for seven years since
COVID.
Kendall (01:48):
Oh wow.
SPEAKER_00 (01:49):
Okay.
Cool.
We live here with our threecats, 12 chickens, and daughter.
Sometimes our daughter Alice,who is in college.
Kendall (02:01):
That's very cool.
Anyway, so I know very littlepurposefully, and so I'm excited
to hear what the DNA surprise isin your story.
SPEAKER_00 (02:13):
Do you just want us to take the ball and run with
her?
Absolutely.
In 1994, I was between things inmy life.
Had been teaching English as aforeign language in Spain.
I came back to the United Statesand wasn't sure what was next.
(02:34):
I moved in with my mom.
I started driving a taxi.
And this was in a college town,State College, Pennsylvania.
And I saw one day I was readingthe student newspaper an ad
looking for sprung donors tohelp infertile couples.
(02:55):
It seemed like my entirethinking of the time was that
sounds like easy money.
I applied to do it.
I was accepted.
I donated about twice a week fora year.
Now this was 1994.
Pre-internet, pre-home DNAtesting.
(03:19):
I signed a confidentialityagreement.
The sperm bank signed aconfidentiality agreement.
There was no expectation andsupposedly no possibility of me
learning who bought my sperm orof them learning the people who
bought my sperm learning aboutme.
(03:40):
So I did that for a year.
SPEAKER_01 (03:52):
1994, I was graduating from high school, and
none of this was a blip on myradar at all.
But in 2004, I was with a womanand we were thinking about
conceiving our first child.
And we were, I was in gradschool at the time and was
(04:16):
getting ready to like do thepart of grad school called all
but dissertation.
You do nothing but sit home andwrite.
So it seemed like a great timefor me to be the first one to
get pregnant and to be able tohave that year to be pregnant,
have a baby be home with thebaby.
And so we looked to match theDNA of my partner at the time
(04:39):
who had brown wavy hair and wasin creative writing.
And there was a donor that hadbrown wavy hair and was an MFA
in creative writing.
And had what we thought at thetime, since she was obviously
right-brained, and I'm a socialscience PhD.
(05:01):
We really thought he had at thetime a profile that looked like
this could be any kid.
This kid could fit in ourfamily.
There are a lot of sperm donorsthat are med students because
it's right down the hall fromthem, presumably.
Right.
And so there are a lot of spermprofiles that are like, what are
your hobbies?
(05:21):
My hard hobbies are calculus andRubik's Cube and coding.
And you're like, oh my God, no,no offense to the good you do in
the world, but I can't raisethis kid.
I'm not going to be able to helpthis kid with homework, like
starting in sixth grade.
And this kid might like just bebored every weekend hanging out
in our family, right?
(05:42):
There just seems to be such alaser-focused mindset on these
like little left-brained mathkids and cool on them.
But here was this profile thatwas like, my hobbies are games,
music, sports, and I have an MFAin creative writing.
And we were like, that's thegamut.
So genetically, like this kidcould be half us and half any,
(06:04):
like this kid could pick its ownpath.
And that was the freer versionof DNA for us at the time.
Like I think people don't gointo this with the wisdom of how
much this contributes to a kid.
We had just seen sperm banks.
There was one sperm bank thatshipped to your home, and it was
from the Pacific Northwest atthe time.
(06:26):
I call them kids because Ipresume they're college
students.
Every kid in that sperm bank waslike hobbies, hunting, fishing.
You know, and me and my lesbianwife are like, well, we don't
think that's genetic.
Not that's it's probably fine,but it really is you're reading
this like a dating profile.
(06:47):
You're like, okay, if it's allgenetic and we get this Mr.
Dominant DNA in our household,who's gonna fit here?
Who's gonna be happy here?
Who are we gonna be able toraise successfully to be
whatever they want to be?
Eeny meeny miny mo.
And at the end of the day, youdon't care so much.
(07:08):
Healthy, beautiful child.
Then in 2005, our daughter Alicecame and was perfect.
And we thought we'd clone herand use this DNA again on our
second daughter, which we did.
And they were both perfect, andDNA worked out great.
SPEAKER_00 (07:29):
The second daughter was carried by Jess's partner.
SPEAKER_01 (07:32):
Yes.
And at the time we thought thisis ideal.
We have this Mr.
Recessive here, like we have alittle me, we have a little her.
You can't really see when you'renot a part of the donor's life
what the these girls have a lotin common, but also very little
in common.
And you look at who's the donor?
(07:52):
We never even saw a picture.
We didn't have the voicerecordings and the astrological
chart and all the stuff that youget today, even wasn't a thing
in 2004.
So we also in 2004 thought therewas no way we were ever gonna
know who this person was.
(08:13):
And we picked an anonymous donorbeing very cool with that as a
gay family in 2004, in a worldin which like there were real
dangers to our family and ourchild from a known donor.
And so we were totally cool withokay, fine anonymous donor.
(08:34):
And there I think there was atthe time a known donor sperm
bank for people who did wantthat.
But there just was no conceptionthat one day, even if he wanted
to be anonymous, he couldn't be.
It just doesn't enter your mindif it doesn't exist in the world
at the time.
And 10 years later, after that,so 20 years after your initial
(09:00):
donation, it did become areality.
Kendall (09:03):
How did that come about?
SPEAKER_00 (09:05):
Okay, I guess I was the first one of us to take a
DNA test.
Somewhere 2015, maybe, I beganto see ads for home DNA testing.
Specifically the ones I rememberwere 23 and me.
And I thought, huh, maybe thiswould be a way to find the
(09:31):
children that were born using mysperm.
And the whole thing was new, andI don't know, I just kept seeing
the ads.
Like I I didn't do anythingabout it for about a year.
Eventually I was like, allright.
You know, I'm I'm curious, let'sdo this.
And so, you know, I I spit in atube, mailed it off, and got my
(09:54):
results back.
And of course, the first thingyou do, I think I did it even
before I looked to see what myancestry was.
I knew what my ancestry was, andI clicked on the DNA relatives
and boom, there was someonelisted as my son.
Just one person listed as myson, and my son's name was
(10:17):
Bryce.
And I I wasn't quite sure whatto do with this information.
I also didn't really know how23andMe works.
Like as soon as I was in theirsystem and opted into seeing my
DNA relatives, had Bryce beensent an email that said, Hey,
your dad's on the site.
(10:37):
And it is like that.
They don't send you somethingthat specific, but they say,
Hey, you have new DNA relatives.
Of course, I later learned youget one of those emails like
once a week, and pretty soonyou're just ignoring them
because you look and it's somemore fifth cousins.
But I had no idea.
So I'm sitting here thinking,like, has Bryce been notified
about this?
What's the etiquette in thissituation?
(10:59):
Am I kind of obligated to writeto him immediately?
I just wasn't quite sure howthis was gonna work.
But what I did instead, which Iguess most people would do, is I
Googled his name and I didn'tfind much, and I actually
enlisted the aid of a friend ofmine who's an NPRL of water.
(11:19):
She helped me uh search him outand found him.
Like he had altered his namesomehow.
I forget exactly what he did,but his name was slightly
different than what it reallyis, or what he goes by.
And but she found him and thething we found was he had a I
(11:43):
guess his college sponsored thisthing, but it wasn't Facebook,
but it was a thing like he had aprofile on his college's page
that showed like what his majorwas, what his hobbies were, what
were what campus groups he wasinvolved with, and it had some
pictures of him.
And when we saw the pictures, wewere like, oh, 100% that's my
(12:06):
kid.
Like he looked so much like me.
He was like half a foot tallerthan like really tall.
Well, but most of my familyother than me is is kind of
tall.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (12:19):
No, my very first and only question for Aaron is
like, you're the shrimp of yourfamily, aren't you?
Because your profile saidaverage, and yeah, none of this
is coming from me and mypartner.
SPEAKER_04 (12:31):
Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (12:32):
And so, you know, I looked at his profile and it
said he was in the Poet Society,said he was in a frat, said his
major was geography.
Geography, yeah.
And so I had that information,and then I was like, okay, I'll
just write to this guy.
So one evening, I remember itwas just kind of before I was
(12:53):
going to bed, I I wrote him aletter, it was just like a
couple of paragraphs through the23andMe messaging system that
said, Hi, I believe I am yourbiological father.
You know, here's 10 facts aboutme.
I'm interested in connecting ifif you're up for that.
(13:14):
So I I sent this message, I wentand like brushed my teeth, got
in bed, checked my email onelast time, and Bryce had already
written back.
Yeah.
You get used to the electronicage, but sometimes things still
happen very fast, and you'relike, what and he wrote back,
and his message starts off dad.
(13:37):
Like, wow.
He says about how happy he isthat I wrote.
He was hoping to connect with methis way.
He told me a couple things abouthimself.
And I was a little taken abackby the use of dad, like I had no
idea what his expectations mightbe of our relationship.
And I view dad as kind of ancultural earned designation.
(14:04):
And but pretty quickly ourcorrespondence continued on, and
pretty quickly I just he wasjust sort of like having fun
with it.
We're all struggling with whatterminology to use in these kind
of relationships.
And whatever.
He wasn't expecting me to becomehis dad.
But he was curious about me.
Kendall (14:25):
So he had known that he was donor-conceived.
SPEAKER_00 (14:29):
He was born into a lesbian couple.
I I don't know if this is true.
Like at at Utor, I talked to afew people about this, and my
impression, just because it'sbeen the case with most of the
children I've discovered, is thevast majority of them came from
lesbian couples.
(14:51):
But someone at the conferencesaid they weren't sure if that
was really true, that maybe justlike my sperm bank had maybe
specialized in that more.
I don't know.
SPEAKER_01 (15:00):
We just Google I was given no lesbian-specific
advertising.
SPEAKER_00 (16:08):
Because the advertising I got to donate was
help infertile couples, andsure, lesbians fit into that.
Kendall (16:13):
All it takes is one successful marketing campaign,
and then suddenly you're thego-to.
SPEAKER_00 (16:20):
And very quickly, Bryce told me that he had used,
in addition to 23andMe, he hadused donor sibling registry,
which I had actually looked atlike about 10 years earlier, but
there had been no one listed forme, and I just forgot about it
after that.
But Bryce said that he had usedit and he was connected to five
(16:42):
other of my children.
So I immediately went from likeone to six.
And he told like Bryce was 20 atthe time.
And that that mapped out to likethe dates that I had donated
sperm, but he told me that someof the other children were quite
young, like a couple there waslike a pair of twins that were
(17:06):
seven.
And so one thing I learned islike I had no idea what the
shelf life of the sperm or likehow quickly they sold it.
I'd assumed it had all been usedback around 1994 when I donated.
Right.
But it turns out it'd been usedover the course of decade or
more.
Yes.
He contacted the other like theother donors through donor
(17:31):
sipping registry or their moms.
Because I told him it was okayto put me in contact with them.
So he was the intermediary forthat, which seemed like the
right way to go about that.
One of them was a 19-year-oldgirl named Maddie.
(17:51):
And she connected with me rightaway, and she, Bryce and I just
formed like a little Facebookchat group and began to have
chats and exchange informationabout ourselves.
And you know, there was a like aflurry of activity with that for
about a month.
I wrote them a very long historyof my life.
(18:12):
I mean, um I was 50 at the time,and it it was only like a page a
year, but but Jess likes to makefun of me for this.
SPEAKER_01 (18:25):
I do.
But I really liked the I makefun of him for that, but I
really liked later when we comeinto the story, like being
handed the 56-page life historywelcome packet.
Kendall (18:38):
I feel as if I've known my biological father now for
getting close to nine years, andI feel like I can still only
fill a couple of pages.
You know what I mean?
Like I'm having to get storiesfrom other family members about
he's suffering from dementia, sothat's part of it.
But the other part is that he'sjust not very communicative.
(19:01):
I can count on one hand thenumber of questions he'd asked
about my first 47 years of lifethat he missed out on.
It's he's just not inquisitiveat all.
If you pick a writer as yourdonor, yeah, do you make sure
that he assumes that he knows,but he knows nothing.
SPEAKER_01 (19:20):
I think that you want to see these this person
and you want to see their facemove when they talk too.
So you want to meet them.
SPEAKER_04 (19:27):
Yep.
SPEAKER_01 (19:27):
And then you're kind of at a loss because you weren't
there.
It didn't concern you.
It's probably not genetic.
It's is it a story history?
You're you have to put all ofthat together and actually just
want to get to know you as aperson and do that in a
different way than you've everdone with anyone else in your
life.
So even if he feels that, to beable to actuate that new
(19:51):
relationship is it's hard.
And if you're older and you'restarting dementia, it's even
harder.
Kendall (19:59):
So I quiz everyone else about him, and you know, like
his parents and you know, thingslike that.
So it's still wonderful, don'tget me wrong.
It's just I didn't imagine itwould be so difficult to extract
information, but that's okay.
SPEAKER_00 (20:14):
All right, I can continue on.
Yeah, you know, for about amonth and I Bryce, Maddie and I
had like kind of a lot ofcommunication, but you know,
they were in college and prettyquickly they just went back to
leading their college lives.
We're Facebook friends,sometimes we'd like each other's
posts or whatever, but you know,things tailed off a bit, and a
(20:37):
few months pass.
SPEAKER_01 (20:38):
So what's interesting is I think this
speaks to how like somethinglike 23 and me comes out and
it's new, and you're like,nobody's gonna be there, nobody
does it, but we're all doing itbasically at the same time.
Right.
And Alice for Christmas, my momhad done 23andMe, and I was
raised by my mom as a singlemom.
I have never known who my dadwas.
(21:00):
And Alice at 10 was like, nowhold up just a minute here
because good stories, but that's25% of what my ancestry looks
like.
SPEAKER_04 (21:13):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (21:13):
Grandma, give me that test.
And my mom was, of course, justyes, I would love to share this
genealogy hobby with you.
SPEAKER_04 (21:22):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (21:22):
And immediately for Christmas of that year, December
provided said test.
And like before Valentine's Day,we had the results back.
Kendall (21:32):
Wow.
SPEAKER_01 (21:33):
And perhaps very stupidly, like I hadn't thought
anyone was going to be under DNArelatives at all.
Like that was just going to be athrowaway section with fourth
cousins with last names wedidn't know.
And it also didn't occur to methat like I could just
physically on my own make thefamily trees of all those fourth
cousins and come to a conclusionlike this because it was 2016.
SPEAKER_04 (21:57):
Yep.
SPEAKER_01 (21:57):
So quite dumbly, I also opened up the test results
and clicked through thecountries and the ancestry
report and clicked on DNArelatives.
And the first thing there for my10-year-old was 50% father.
SPEAKER_04 (22:13):
Wow.
SPEAKER_01 (22:14):
And you're like, oh okay.
So didn't at all expect that.
Start you start Googling.
It's a common enough name thatyou have to wade through some
stuff and you have to do alittle bit of research to find
the right Aaron Long.
They had once out of sevenmonths of trying to conceive
sent a vial that said September9th, 1994.
(22:40):
Mistake on their part because Ilearned that somebody had a
master's by 94, but was stillyoung enough to donate sperm.
That gave me a window of hisages, and I have his full name.
And I know he has interactedwith Fairfax Cryobank, which,
silly me, I thought was inFairfax.
(23:00):
Fairfax, Virginia.
Turns out Spermbanks havefranchises.
But luckily, there was an AaronLong of the exact right age who
is a writer for his job onLinkedIn.
And he's a musician because he'splaying a trombone in his
LinkedIn picture.
He didn't know how to useLinkedIn.
SPEAKER_00 (23:20):
Say I was not trying to use I was not trying to use
LinkedIn for the first time.
Any kind of gross sleep.
SPEAKER_01 (23:26):
And he had attended Johns Hopkins.
Oh wow.
So he's really close to the DCarea, which is Fairfax,
Virginia.
And I was like, okay, so likemaybe after school he comes back
to DC because he went to collegethere.
And so I found that Aaron Long,and that Aaron Long was living
in Seattle, Washington.
(23:47):
And so I went to Facebook and Iwhittled away the Aaron Longs
there.
And there was an Aaron Long whohad just recently, unbeknownst
to me, connected with thesesperm doney children.
And so he had put on Facebookreally recently all of his K to
12 school pictures.
And that was my like just dropdead 100%.
(24:11):
Of course, this is correctmoment because 50-year-old man
does not resemble your 10 and9-year-old daughters.
But you know what?
First grade Aaron Long is mydaughters with 60s boy David
Cassidy bold cut.
Which was not the best look formy daughters, but it was just
instant recognition that you'relike, yeah, right guy.
(24:34):
Wow.
On the nose, correct.
This is who it is.
And like Aaron, I was like, ohmy God, he's gotten a note that
we're here.
Time is ticking.
SPEAKER_04 (24:45):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (24:45):
I better write back because I have the profile of a
minor.
This is it's on me to reach outto him.
And so I did.
And I said, I'm I think I reallymessed up that letter because I
was in such a rush because I wasbecause it's coming from her
account.
SPEAKER_04 (25:03):
Right.
SPEAKER_01 (25:03):
And I'm typing it, and I'm like, I've got another
daughter.
You want to see her?
Write me back.
But we figured it out.
And he told me he had justconnected with Bryce and Maddie
and said, Here's a little bitabout me.
Here's the life history I wrotefor them.
And so I had Alice write him herlife history.
(25:27):
And just sort of mitigated thatrelationship as best I can
because I never expected itwould happen, number one.
And number two, I never expectedto be a part of it.
Because at the time, the onlymodels for that were like adult
adoptees.
And so you're picturing that.
You're picturing someday my kidswill be 21 and maybe they'll go
do this, and I won't be theredoing it for them.
(25:50):
And so I wasn't really sure howto go about that, but it felt
nice exchanging documents.
It was a little bit of a stepremoved when you have a little
kid.
And that that it was just thebest we could do.
So I joined the Facebook groupchat and we all started talking
about how maybe on the summerwhen those the kids weren't in
college anymore, they wanted tocome and meet Aaron, and we
(26:13):
would maybe come when they came,and that would be an easier way
for my little kiddo to meet himtoo.
Kendall (26:20):
Yes.
But did you tell Alice rightaway that that was?
Good.
SPEAKER_01 (26:25):
In part because I couldn't possibly keep it a
secret.
And number two, that's gonnacome unraveled, and I it's gonna
be worse.
SPEAKER_04 (26:31):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (26:32):
I did, and she knew she grew up in a lesbian
household.
She knew she had a donor.
We had actually looked at donorsibling registry at some point
when the kids were of thatelementary school age, that was
interesting to them.
And kind it was almost justhere's the donor number, kids,
because right now that onlylives in my head.
So if I die, there's yourinformation, this is all we
(26:56):
know.
SPEAKER_04 (26:57):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (26:58):
So we had that conversation that if you want
this, you need to remember thisnumber.
SPEAKER_04 (27:05):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (27:06):
Let's look at it.
How interesting.
Isn't that cool?
But mommy and mommy love youvery much.
SPEAKER_04 (27:12):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (27:12):
And this is why we did this.
And look, he likes music justlike you, and we whatever.
You can't you keep it lightbecause if it's not a big deal,
I believe that we don't act likeit is a big deal.
If you want your kids to thinkthat this is it's normal, it's
cool, you're awesome.
SPEAKER_04 (27:34):
Yep.
SPEAKER_01 (27:35):
Like it's not it to make things this huge secret, it
makes a lot of things worse.
Corey (27:40):
Completely agree.
Yeah.
This is one of thoseconversations where you can feel
how quickly everything shifts.
What started as something thatfelt anonymous and contained
back in the 90s turns intosomething completely different
once DNA testing enters thepicture.
And what stands out to me is howthoughtful Aaron and Jess are in
(28:00):
the way that they're processingthis.
Because nobody did anythingwrong here.
They made decisions based on theinformation, the culture, and
the expectations of the time.
But now, years later, thosedecisions are intersecting with
the technology that's rewritingthe rules in real time.
And at the center of it are thereal people trying to figure out
what connection looks like, whatfamily looks like, what role
(28:23):
they want to play in eachother's lives.
And that's where this storyreally starts to go deeper.
So, next week we're gonna pickthis up in part two because
there's a lot more to unpackhere once these connections move
from discovery into actualrelationships.
And remember, family secrets arethe ultimate plot twist.
The Family Twist Podcast ispresented by Sabwa Fair
(28:47):
Marketing Communications andproduced by Mosaic Multimedia.
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