All her life she assumed that my grandmother's first husband was
her biological father. My grandmother remarried by this
time, so the person I knew is grandpa I knew was my
grandmother's second husband. But it's all an identity thing I
was afraid of. And I known that my mom's older
siblings have been keeping the secret from her right?
So I know if they're unwilling to tell her the truth, this was
going to be a big revelation. And I, I was afraid how my mom
was going to respond to the news, like emotionally,
everything. Welcome to DNA Surprises, a
podcast that delves into the world of unexpected DNA
discoveries. I'm your host, Alexis ourselves.
In July 2021, my life took a surprising turn when I found out
that I'm an NPE, a person who has experienced a non paternal
event. In other words, my biological
father isn't who I thought he was.
Join me as we explore the stories of NP, ES, adoptees and
donor conceived people and their families.
Get ready to unravel the astonishing journeys that begin
with a simple DNA test. This is DNA surprises.
At the end of every episode, I ask my guests 2 questions.
The first question is advice for parents who may be keeping adna
surprise from their children. Most of the time, like 99% of
the time, the advice is to tell. To tell because people have the
right to know because trust in your parents is important.
To tell because eventually, maybe generations down the line,
the truth will come out. In this week's episode, Oscar
shares his story of what happens when the child of an NPE
uncovers Adna surprise. He shares why he struggled with
telling his mom, what he learned about his family, and where
things stand today. Thank you for sharing your
story, Oscar. My name is Oscar.
I'm almost 50 and I live in Philadelphia.
My DNA surprise story was something I wasn't looking for.
I was having a conversation with my mom.
We were talking about my dad's family and her family, and she
had mentioned that she always thought that she came from just
these humble roots and there wasn't much to her story, to her
family story. And she was comparing herself to
my dad's family. My dad's family was very
different in the sense that they come from the city.
They're very educated. If you ever seen the movie Roma
that takes place in Mexico City, they're very much like that
where they had help. So anyway, my mom was, I don't
know if it's like a hint of jealousy maybe when she was
comparing our family on her side to my father's side.
And so I told her, well, you know, I'm into history.
That's my background. I have a degree in history.
So it's a very much of interest of mine.
So it's like, mom, there's got to be more to that side of our
family, to your side of our family.
I know that your grandfather, my great grandfather fought in the
Mexican Revolution. He was very active in
northeastern Mexico. There has to be something more
to our family, right? And the reason to didn't think
there was more to our family because her memory starts after
my grandmother's widowed and they're no longer on a family
farm. They're kind of displaced.
They're in Texas after my grandmother left Mexico.
And they're essentially migrant workers, like working for other
people. That's the story.
She knows, right? My mom never knew her father.
She never knew him because he the story was that he died
before she had memories. There's no memories of him.
There are also no pictures of him.
I spent a lot of time with my grandmother and she never talked
about him. He was kind of ghostly figure,
right? He knew the name, but there was
no evidence that he really existed.
Was it something that she was really interested in and curious
about, or did she kind of just accept?
100% yeah. She was curious and I was
curious too. Right, 'cause I spent lots of
time, my grandmother and I never had conversations about well,
what was my grandfather like or anything like never had any of
those conversations. And so I was like, well, there
has to be more to our family and I'm going to look into it.
I had no idea what I was going to discover, which was adna
surprise. That was never my intention.
If this could be pure genealogy researcher and family, seeing
where my grandparents were from, where my great grandparents were
from and etcetera, etcetera. So I started to put together a
family tree and I'm researching my family and I'm having a good
time finding these primary documents, these church records,
the civil records, death, birth, etcetera.
And by the time I'm researching, my grandmother had passed away.
So I'm happily finding all these documents that previously
mentioned and I find my mom's birth certificate, father's
death record. I was like, look, this is a
Grapevine. Now I'm going to know what he
died from because what I've been told is that he died from
cancer, and my mom thought it was lung cancer, but she didn't
know. So I was like, well, it was
great. Now I found his death record.
I can really know what he died from.
I'm reading the birth record and I'm looking at the year that he
died, and the year is several years before my mom's born.
So I'm like, is there a clerical mistake?
Like you never know. Is there a clerical mistake?
This year doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense.
How can my grandfather died for my mom's support, right?
So your first thought though is you're kind of assuming clerical
error maybe from the times it's just poor record keeping, kind
of, yeah. And it's cursive Spanish, so
maybe I just can't read that in a little bits of cursive.
Maybe it's actually the right year, but I can't read it
correctly. I read it several times just to
make sure that what I'm seeing is reality, right?
So I read it. So then I asked my mom.
I said, hey, mom, I, I found your dad's death record.
But this is the year he said he died, which is several years
before you were born. And right away she's like, that
has to be a mistake. Just she was thinking the same.
Oh, she had the same train of thought that I did, right?
She thought that that there was some kind of a stake in the
record. Also, as she's thinking about
it, she goes, well, maybe that's not really my grandfather.
This is funny. Maybe it's a son of an
illegitimate son of his. Like maybe I'm reading like I
have the name correctly, but it's not her father.
It's a half brother that she didn't know about.
OK. So saying that the record
actually was not for the person that you thought it was for,
maybe it was actually for. Someone else.
She thought it was in like. Well, our minds start going.
Yeah, our minds start going places to make things.
Which in my family would not have been a surprise, not at all
I could find knowing my family's history.
So I leave it alone. So I'm adding to my tree,
finding more records, whatever, but also decide, well, it might
be helpful if I take the DNA test to just kind of start
venturing into genetic genealogy so that maybe I'll find some
matches and they'll be helpful. And I remember telling your mom,
I'm going to do this, but I know we're probably not going to find
anything surprising. There aren't going to be any
surprises. I know who I'm all my aunts are.
I know who all my uncles are on your side.
I've met them all right? We all kind of lived in this
little cluster and this community where we all ended up
in the Midwest. It's pretty straightforward, but
it's going to help me maybe find some cousins that we've lost
track of the children of the aunts and uncles that I know.
So I take the test and then I get my results.
And then I look at them and I see my top matches.
And my top matches are with an uncle and someone else very
close with a last name that I absolutely do not recognize.
So I look at this last name. I know all my aunts and uncles,
I know a lot, I know lots of my extended family, I know their
last names, but I don't know this last name.
So I'm trying to figure it out. And this was an ancestry result.
So as you know, with Ancestry includes you into how you might
be related to these matches, to your top matches, right?
So it shows your Santa Morgans and shows you what level of
match you are. And it says uncle, right?
So my top match is an uncle as I I know, yes.
And at the time that you took it, did it say if it was through
your mother or your father or 'cause they updated it at some
point where they actually show which line the match is coming
from? But so at this point you didn't
have that, but you could see Uncle, which is a close.
That is a close. Match, yes, really close match.
So what happens is they're shared matches kind of thing.
They were kind of hinting and time and place, something like
that. I was able to quickly figure out
that it was definitely my mom's side of the family for some
reason. But like I said, it was a name
that I didn't recognize at all. So I started looking at some of
the other people that I didn't recognize.
Now it became a little complicated because my mom's bio
dad has some of the same last names as my grandma.
So both sides both sides of the family share last names right?
So. Right.
Because, yeah, there's common names in.
Yeah. So it would be not too
dissimilar from like, you know, a Smith or a Johnson or, you
know, something like that in the US.
Sure. And especially in northeastern
New Mexico where there's a lot of indagaby like we all see, we
all send from these same family groups.
So, so I'm looking at these last names and of course they look
familiar to me, but they actually weren't the family
groups I knew about growing up. All right.
But I was just some poking and I saw a cousin, another cousin's
like, I don't recognize that guy either, but his bio had contact
information. If you're interested in family
genealogy, you can reach out and contact me.
So I did some follow up to ask him the normal stuff.
Who are you? How are we related?
We had this conversation and he was like, well, this is my
family history. I think you're related to this
side of the family. And again, it was a person I did
not recognize that I didn't know, like these cousins
matches, like I said, didn't know.
So essentially what I did, I messaged the uncle through
Ancestry and he says why don't you call me?
So I called him. What were you thinking when that
was the response? There's some hesitation because
even though I'm bilingual, I haven't spoke in Spanish in a
long time and I know a lot of my family members and like I'm
going to call this guy and hopefully the Spanish was going
to work some of that. So I called him and he did tell
me straight away, hey, I'm more comfortable in Spanish.
They go, OK, settle myself down. Let's do this.
I start the conversation in Spanish, but I'm like, I
hopefully I can find all the right words that right because
sometimes, especially if you haven't spoken in Spanish in
quite a while, the vocabulary doesn't come to you straight
away. So I was like, well, hopefully
everything comes to me straight away so that I can get the
information that I need from this man who's probably my
uncle. I wasn't all in thinking he was
my uncle. I was pretty sure he was my
uncle, but I don't know. It's that whole NP thing here.
Well for me it's like not grandparent expected type thing
so. Sure, sure.
Yeah, but but you but the DN you if you have that experience with
genealogy and kind of diving into the DNA, you kind of know
like it's not a lie. This is this is real.
But you don't know who he is. So what does he say?
So he. Started talking and he's like
well who's your mom, right? Who are your parents?
Where are your parents from? And I'm asking them the same
questions. My mom, she does have a younger
brother, too. And I tell him what my uncle's
name, my mom's younger brother, what his name is.
And he goes, that's my dad's name.
That's your dad's name. He's like, yeah, that's also my
middle name. And like, well, all the pieces,
all the puzzle pieces are falling into place, right?
And like, OK, you're my uncle for sure.
Like this name is not a common Spanish first name.
So your dad having that first name and my uncle having that
first name, he's obviously named after him.
And my uncle is also like my mom, the children of your dad,
which is what I tell him. Like we're related that way.
Wow. So you you instantly kind of put
the pieces together that both of them are from this man.
Like biological grandpa. Unexpected your biological
grandfather. Are you able to learn any more
about what happened? Maybe have you met your
grandmother So. Yes, kind of in a way, because
now I know that this secret exists and I'm not willing to
tell my mom straight away because this is something that's
been a secret for now over 70 years, right?
So I was like, well, I got to figure this out.
So it took me. So even though from the time I
took the ancestry test to contact the my uncle was a
pretty short period of time, it took me a whole year before I
told my mom. And the reason why is because I
wanted to have all my information straight.
I want to have all the records I needed to have.
I, I don't know. I want to like in my mind, have
this overwhelmingly amount of evidence to prove that this
person I found this man was my mom's brother and that the
person who she thought was her father really wasn't her father.
So I spent a year conversing with other cousin and newly
discovered cousins and finding documents and stuff like that
and trying to kind of figure out what might have happened before
I was willing to tell my mom or. And even then I was almost
unwilling to do it without my brother's permission because I'm
the youngest son and I was like, well I'm the youngest son.
I'm going to ask my older brother just because for some
reason I just felt like it. My brother needed to make the
decision as the older brother for some reason.
What were you worried about? With your identity, 100%
identity. All her life, she assumed that
my grandmother's first husband was her biological father.
My grandmother remarried by this time, so the person I knew as
grandpa I knew was my grandmother's second husband.
But it's all an identity thing I was afraid of.
And I known that my mom's older siblings have been keeping the
secret from her, right? So I know if they're unwilling
to tell her the truth, this was going to be a big revelation.
And I, I was afraid how my mom was going to respond to the
news, like emotionally, everything intellectually.
Yeah, it's a it's a massive people for sure.
So you talk to your brother. What does he say?
Of course, he says you need to do it.
So my grandmother was married pretty young in Mexico.
All right. And then based on the death
record, her husband, my mom's first secret father, contracted
tuberculosis. So he ended up dying pretty
young from tuberculosis. After he dies, my grandmother,
she couldn't manage the family farm, so she was in difficult
time of it. So eventually she gives up the
farm and to make ends meet, she moves to a city in Texas, right
across the border. And it's there that she meets my
grandfather. How did you learn this
information? Was it from your mom's older
siblings? Like I'm curious about how you
were able to gain insight into your grandmother and what she
was going. Through I'd always been very
interested, so I was really paid attention to my mom's stories.
And my mom's stories came from my grandmother, so I knew the
story of losing the farm, her moving to Texas, having a
difficult time there. But the story was everyone's
born. Everyone was, yeah, everyone was
already born at that point. There was there was a gap there
where she met someone. Else yes, OK, so.
And so she had your mom and your mom's little brother, is that
correct? And my mom has three older
siblings now. This is interesting.
So there's a 10 year gap between my mom and her next older
sibling. And as I've learned from your
podcast, like a lot of times, that's a sign that something
something's interesting happened, right?
That there's. This big, huge age gap.
It was always explained away by the fact that my grandfather got
sick and after he got better than my grandmother had more
children. So the gap was explained by his
illness. They had cancer.
Well, the story was that he had cancer.
They didn't even know that he died from tuberculosis.
It's like the oral history was he died from cancer.
So my grandmother meets my biological grandfather after she
after she loses everything and she moves to Texas to make ends
meet. She's having a hard time of it.
She meets my grandfather, She has my mom, and then my
grandmother also has my uncle. And then my grandmother's older
sister. And this is where I don't know
the rest of the story. This is where it's lost, right?
And everyone who knows is is dead.
So they're still having a hard time of it.
So when my mom is about two years old and my uncle's a baby,
they leave Brownsville, TX where they were or where they were
because my grandma's sister knows that my grandma's having a
hard time. So she comes down, scoops them
up, and takes them up to a ranch a little further north.
So now they're separated from my biological grandfather.
So something happened within the relationship.
Was he married? At the time, yeah.
He was not married, so it wasn't something about that, but you
don't know what happened. But for whatever reason, they
end up separated. Your mom or your grandmother
moves away with your mom and your uncle and then the older
three. Yes.
And is that the end of their relationship as far as you know?
Yeah, that's the end. There's that separate.
My mom has no memories and he was around, had to be around for
the first two years of her life because they had my uncle and
there's a two year age camp there.
Yeah. She doesn't.
Remember. OK.
Yeah. And then they move further away.
They move to the Midwest afterwards just because that's a
place where they could have a better life economically.
And then at what point does your grandmother meet her second
husband? My grandpa was a migrant worker.
They met in South Texas and my grandpa told my older uncle that
hey, there's some job opportunities up in the Midwest,
my brother has a family up there you could find a good job.
And this is before my grandpa became my grandpa because
they're working in the same ranch.
Same. Farm right, They're working.
Yeah, and so my uncle goes away, and then my grandma decides that
she just can't leave her oldest son alone by himself way up in
Midwest. So she packs up the family and
she surprises my uncle and they all show up.
They all show up in the Midwest, and then my uncle has to find a
place for everyone. But that's a whole different
story. OK, and and so then she ends up
falling in love with your grandpa, and then he and he
ostensibly adopts the two younger ones and raises as a
stepfather. 'Cause he's a widow, he's a
widower at this when he my grandma and him, me, she's a
widow, he's a widower. Those are the times where is
people found it more the gender roles were more like more thing,
right. He needs someone to help around
the house and she needed someone to help support her.
So it's definitely a relationship that was convenient
for both of them at that point, their lives, yeah.
OK. All right.
So, so this is the story that you've been able to piece
together and you sit on it for a year while you're compiling all
of this information and putting the pieces together.
Take me to your conversation with your mom.
What? Happens So, like I said, my
brother, like you need to tell mom.
She still lives in the Midwest and I live out out east.
So I'm I call my mom so I can't even do a face to face right.
That's probably the most ideal thing, but I call her and I go
mom, I have something to tell you and she's like what?
And I just tell her, the person who you thought was your dad,
it's not your dad. I've made this discovery.
It's this man. And she stops.
She starts reflecting on it and she's like, that makes sense.
It's starting to make sense because I'm starting to remember
conversations I had with my mom, with my grandma.
She starts to remember things like, you know what?
When I talked to your grandma, she never referred to my
birthday father as your dad. She never told me your dad did
this or your dad did that. When she talked about him to me,
she just always said his name. She would say first name did
this right, first name did that. And I'm like, well, that's
really weird. No one does that.
What that tells me is my grandma never really wanted to lie lie.
She she withheld stuff, but she never through my mom's whole
life, referred to her first husband as my mom's father.
Oh, interesting. But because there was no one
else talked about, maybe the connection was made that that
must have been your mom. 'S dad.
There was no reason to think otherwise.
Yeah. How so?
It sounds like she took it pretty well.
I mean, was it hard for her? Was she emotional?
She. Took it very well after that
first conversation, but then she went through what most MPs go
through. She started to really question
her identity. She did the same thing where she
looks in the mirror and just says who am I?
All that kind of stuff. Thinking about my grandma and
the conversations that he had, wondering why my grandma
withheld that information from her.
All the classic things, right? She went through and she would
have happy moments knowing that she knew the truth.
And then she'd be really sad because she never had the
opportunity to meet her biological father, right?
And. Yeah.
How long did he? Live.
That's a great question because he only died about four years
ago and he lived into his hundreds.
Wow, they just missed each other.
Oh, I really feel for your mom on that.
Yeah, that's hard. And how would you say that this
has affected you? You're one generation removed
from it, but you had all of these stories that you'd
incorporated into your identity as well.
How did the surprise affect you? You know, a little differently
because like I said, I never had pictures of who I thought was my
biological grandfather. I never had pictures.
My grandma never talked about him.
I just had a name. So for me, he was always kind of
like a ghost, right? And it was never very real.
I knew my grandpa, I knew my grandma.
So I think if I had known him, it would affect me a lot
differently. All right.
Now, one thing that our conversation has kind of
reminded me of is the fact that DNA discoveries, DNA surprises,
NP, ES, whatever you want to call them are not only uncovered
by the NPE themselves, right? It's generations down the line
that can uncover this information.
How was it for you to kind of bear the burden of revealing
this to your mom? I know you weren't even sure if
you should tell her. You know, take me through kind
of how that affect is. To some members of my family,
it's still secret. It's a little bit of a burden
because I, I want to tell everybody, Right.
But my mom didn't want me to like, yeah, OK, see.
And there's reasons. There's good reasons for it.
Well, she could justify it. I'm not gonna say good.
Sure. They're her reasons.
Has she connected with any of
her siblings, like the uncle that you connected with through
DNA? No.
That's all been me and the reason being because she feels
that because she discovered this so late in life, she doesn't
want it. She feels like she would be
intruding, so she doesn't want her to inject herself into these
people's lives. The siblings that didn't know
she existed. Because my biological
grandfather did get married and ultimately he had four more
children. This happened five years ago,
the original kind of discovery. And then four years ago you told
your mom. How is she doing today?
In order to help her better navigate her emotional response
to this and everything. That's when I started to listen
to your podcasts and other podcasts like yours, because I
wanted to understand because being a generation removed from
it, I can look at my mom and I cook at my dad and I know who I
am. I, I see how they behave.
I see saw how my my mom's manners, my dad's manners, I
know who I pattern myself after. So it's a little different.
There's no mystery, but my mom, there's that.
I think the trauma every MP experiences, like just be
actually, because leading up while I was doing my research,
she'd always said, you know what?
My siblings, my sisters are different from me.
They're very different from me. And I don't understand why
they're different from me. It's like and well this is the
reason why. It's like it was.
Always there. She's actually in a really good
place. And now she's thanked me.
She goes. I'm glad you discovered the
truth. For me, this is something I
really needed to know. And I found a lot of pictures
for her, my great grandmother, picture of her father.
She has that picture on her, her Bureau now.
It's filled in a lot of things for her, all this information
that I'm able to find. So she feels really happy that
even though she was really sad and going through that whole
crisis that everyone goes through for a while, she's very
happy now that she knows the truth and she knows where she
comes from. She knows our family history and
that side, her paternal side. And so she is in a really good
place right now. Yeah.
That's really good. Thank you for sharing that
because I think for people who uncover the secret and like you
said, it is kind of a burden if they may be on the fence about
what to do with that information.
I think it helps to hear different perspectives and that
your mom, even in her 70s, was glad to know the the truth about
who she is. Makes sense of.
Yeah. So you have connected with this
new found side of the family. Have you met any of them?
Like what's next in in your part of?
This journey I called and talked to them, to some of my family
members and some of them really extended, but still for me fun
'cause this is what I enjoy, like reconnecting with my family
and learning about all the different branches of my family.
I had a cousin who was traveling across America and our he was
trying to figure out where he wanted to settle down and he was
out this way and I got to meet him and his wife and it was
pretty cool. Talked to him and like on social
media, you know, I've connected with all these family members
and they all inter interact and have things to say and what I
post and, and whatnot. Just finding out more about
them. It's been really nice for me and
and I really like knowing precisely where I'm from.
So it's been really cool to find these people and know where they
lived and to know what part of Mexico we came from.
I had an idea, but now I really, really know.
I know all these little small towns.
I know exactly where my grandparents came from, My
great, great grandparents came from.
It was funny. My mom, it's like, well,
wouldn't it be really interesting if you find found
out where our first European ancestor came from?
I was like, I don't know. I mean, I think we've been in a
place for very several centuries.
I don't know how easy that is pretty.
Far back. Yeah, pretty far back.
But actually it was able to to do it with the with just net
cricket with other genealogists. I mean, you don't find everybody
because that'd be. Thousands of.
People, 10s of thousands of people, you know, at this point.
But I can go back. It's funny because I didn't
think I was going to do it. I was skeptical of my own
ability to do it. But I, I with, with some help,
with some other genealogists, I can go back to 14th generation.
15th generation, yeah. Wow, that's incredible.
I started my story with this. This whole thing started because
my mom felt that she just came from these helpful origins.
But I've kind of demonstrated to us there's like took for all of
us. There's this complexity.
It's it's there. Yeah, so true.
I. Found that for her SO and it's
made her happy. Put her in a good place.
Yeah, and you really, You gave her the gift of who she is.
That's pretty remarkable. Yeah, she's super grateful.
I, I don't feel like she needs to be as grateful as she is.
It's it's always surprised me, but this is very important and
I, I learned that from all the stories I've listened to this,
This is why it mean this is she never knew or she didn't even
know that this, that she was an MPE right, her whole life for 70
years. But then you discover it and
it's a very real, impactful and traumatic thing experience.
Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm glad she's she's come
out on the other side. What advice do you have for a
parent who may be keeping Adna surprise from their child?
You definitely have to tell them and you can't let the secret
persist. And I know first hand that you
let that person know because people need to know who they are
and it's important for everyone to know.
OK. Then for my second question,
I'll put a little bit of a spin on it.
What advice do you have for the children of NP ES, especially
maybe somebody who's uncovering a lot of that information and
learning a lot of information really quickly?
What advice do you have? Yeah, it can be overwhelming.
It was overwhelming to me to know all this information.
So you really have to take time to process it.
And I really hope that people can find others that have gone
through it as well. So maybe you can talk it through
some before maybe you have that conversation, right?
So that like you're in a calmer place, a calmer spot to, to have
that conversation with your dad or your mother because it's
actually, I find it, it was a little more difficult than
anticipated. Sure.
Yeah. Well, Oscar, thank you so much
for joining me and sharing your family's story on the podcast.
We're often saying the secrets don't say secrets.
We've got future generations who are going to take tests and do
digging, and you're an example of that.
And like I said earlier, you know, just what a gift that you
gave your mom where now she has a stronger sense who she is.
I'm really glad that it turned out positive for her in getting
some peace around that. And I wish you the best as you
continue learning more about your family and yourself.
Thank you. Thank you, Alexis.
Thanks again to Oscar for sharing his story.
If you have Adna Surprise that you'd like to share, please
submit your story at dnasurprises.com and join me
over on Patreon for early ad free access to
episodes@patreon.com/DNA Surprises.
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.