I think at the time I was embarrassed by myself having
such a physical reaction to finding out this news and and
actually a little afraid to find out that it wasn't true, that
maybe the DNA sample had been mixed or something, because then
I would be so crushed because it was such a relief.
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. Who would I have become if I had
known the truth? How were the interactions I had
throughout my life colored by an unknown truth?
These are questions so many of us ask ourselves over and over
and over again. The reality is, we will never
know, no more than we'd know who we would have become if we'd
been born in another country. Part of the DNA Surprise
experience is coming to terms with this.
In this week's episode, I'm joined by Guy, who I first
interviewed back in season 3. When we first spoke, Guy had
just experienced his surprise, and he wasn't sure what he was
going to do next. One of the things that struck me
was how freeing Guy found the revelation to be.
Guy shares what's come up for him since we first spoke,
including the many ways he's been analyzing and re analyzing
his past. In the two years since we spoke,
Guy's come to the realization that the facts of his situation
don't matter much to him and that all he has is now.
PS If you think DNA surprises are all sad all of the time,
this episode is a good reminder that it's OK to laugh sometimes.
Thank you, Guy, for sharing your story today.
I am joined by Guy. He was on the podcast in
November of 2022. So that was season 3.
We're actually going to do a little bit of an update and see
what has happened with Guy and his DNA surprise since we last
spoke. So welcome, Guy.
Thank you, nice to be back. We left off with you were kind
of it. It was kind of new, your DNA
surprise and you, you weren't really sure where you were going
to go with it. You weren't even really sure how
you felt about the whole thing other than it made a lot of
things make sense for you as far as your role in the family.
Almost two years on, how are you doing today?
It's funny because I, I've thought a lot about this and
I've talked a little bit with friends about how, you know, my
family doesn't experience this because it doesn't change their
thoughts of me in any way or nor does it really shade any of
their memories. But it affects every single
memory I have of my not just my family.
I mean, also it makes me think, Oh well, I wonder, I wonder if I
had known. I mean, I, I'm not someone who
thinks I don't live in regret and I, I don't believe you can
go back and pull one string and not have the entire tapestry
fall apart. And so there's no point in
saying what if except from a purely an imagination sort of
point of view. And so I've done a lot of that.
I've done a lot of what if imagining.
I mean, ultimately there's no way to know whether something
would have been better or not. I didn't pursue finding out more
because there people in my family who's who feel very
pretty convinced of the identity of my birth father.
And that may well be true. I, I'm, I think, completely
ambivalent about the, the reality of it or the actual
facts of it in that I kind of enjoy being liberated from
fatherhood in that sense, because I didn't feel fathered
growing up. And, and so not having the
opportunity really to the person that many, many family members
think is the most likely to be the person and there's some very
tenuous DNA, you know, this would all be circumstantial
evidence in court. So that's what I keep saying
always whenever my family brings it up, I'm like, there's no
actual proof. And I'm not sure that we ever
could get proof because that person is dead.
And, and the most that even contacting his family could get
would be to confirm that I'm somehow related to that family
line, which I already have that confirmation.
But that doesn't necessarily bring me any kind of
enlightenment. And there's no opportunity for
that to bring me enlightenment because I, I won't get to know
this person. I won't get to the experience
being shaped by this person. I've already been shaped by the
experience of having my paternity in question in the
sense that there's been a lot of questioning in my mind.
Like, who knew? The The thing is, there's just
nobody around. There's they're all gone.
You know, we're old, you know, And so anybody that we might ask
is just is gone. And every now and then I have a
fantasy about going up to that town and walking through it and
thinking that somebody will spot my face and say, Oh my God, I
can't believe it. But you know, that's not going
to happen. Nobody knows me up there.
I was six months old when I left that town.
You know, Now I do look remarkably like my mother.
So it's entirely possible that some poor 80 year old man could
see me and be like, Oh no, but, but, but I don't know what good
would come of it. The mystery of who my father is
is almost irrelevant. Can you tell tell me more about
that? Because so many people that I
speak to that they want to know who it is and they want to know
as much information. And as I always say, everybody's
feelings about their experience are valid.
So your outlook is just as valid as the next person.
But I'm, I'm so curious about, you know, why you have that
perspective of it. It doesn't matter who he is.
It's more just how this whole thing has affected you.
It frustrates pretty much everybody in my in my life that
I have not pursued this or show much interest in the actual
facts of the of fatherhood. And that is, I think because I
don't want to say the damage is done because I don't view it
that way as much as what shaped me as a person was my experience
of feeling so like an outsider. And it's funny, it's hard when I
know some relatives have listened to the podcast and I
think some of them were a little hurt at the suggestion that
maybe they had excluded me. And I never met that to a large
degree, I probably would have been treated very similarly.
I was a weird Sissy kid and I'm sure other other Sissy boys had
similar experiences, even with their own actual birth father.
And that's the thing that I think I come down to is that it
almost, again, is irrelevant whether he knew or not, because
it doesn't change the relationship he shaped with me.
It doesn't change the coldness. It doesn't change the
indifference. And I certainly have known
enough gay men in my life to know that that's not an uncommon
experience. And whether that is a result of
fathers who feel alienated from a child who's not like them, I
don't know. And because I, I can't know that
because he never would have shared anything with me that
way. Now, I think I dismissed a lot
of his behavior toward me as a kind of sense of humor that I
didn't understand. And I will say this in light of
these new facts, it makes me feel that I didn't see the OR
didn't want to see the, the actual hostility that was there.
And and that's still hard to process.
And so I would rather be fatherless than have another
father that I can know nothing about, that I can't communicate
with, who can essentially give me nothing.
And to find out that my birth father may have been even less
affectionate or less willing to, to know who I was.
I, I don't think I want that. And it's almost just as bad to
find out, Oh no, we would have gotten along great and he would
have been a great father to me. And you know, So what do I have
to gain by that? What I gained most from this was
that liberation was that I don't have to feel guilty, which I had
felt felt for 50 something years about having the lack of
affection I had for my first certificate of father.
That I felt that that was on me, that I was never a good enough
child because I didn't inspire affection in him.
And that that was on me. Now, of course, you know, that's
ridiculous because I look at all the children in my life and
think, how could you expect that 2 year old, that 4 year old,
that 12 year old, that 18 year old to have that kind of
responsibility toward the adult in their life?
And, and, and I know that. And so in that sense, the truth
has helped me feel liberated from that burden.
There's nothing to put in its place though, and so that's
fine. I'd rather have an empty space
than something that I can't engage with.
Now. Look, if I had found this out 20
years ago, 15 years ago, I don't know because they would have
both been alive and he would have been alive.
And who can say if I had known as a child, how would that have
been different? I don't know, you know, I don't
know any more than you know, what if I had grown up in
California or you know, I mean, just things.
Like that, you know, and I, I totally respect and understand
that perspective of not wanting to spend a ton of time in the
what ifs because there are so many different paths that you
could have gone down like yours. What if you'd grown up in
California? What if?
Well, I bring that up because I was convinced as a child that
had I grown up in California, I would have been on the new
Mickey Mouse Club. Obviously, yeah.
It was only proximity that kept me from being a child star.
I used to always say that the greatest thing was that my
parents didn't get in my way and that they didn't put Roblox in
front of me. Of course, it's hard not to re
evaluate that now as indifference.
That's the nicest thing I can say about it.
I think it was hard again, probably to embrace me, not just
physically, which was true, but also just when I look at the
facts of how, you know, that we left that town, that bucolic
environment that my brother and sister loved growing up in and
was close to all of my father's family.
Not because of me, but I, I have no evidence of that.
But it was, you know, literally 6 months after I was born in a
very small town. Who knows what it would have
been like. I mean, I've always been so
grateful even before I knew this, that we left when we did
because we moved to Indianapolis and you know, that was the big
city as far as I was concerned. But now looking at it, I think,
wow, me coming into existence, it must have been a constant
reminder that I had not me, of course, but that my existence
was a bump in the road, was a now.
Whether that got smoothed over eventually, I don't know.
I don't know what their relationship would have been
like had I not been born, or whether they would have even
stayed together. Who knows?
These are things we can't be Privy to our parents inner
lives. And so young.
My mother was not even 27 when I was born.
So I think back to my God, those were the worst years of my life
in terms of decision making and emotional turmoil.
And I, I just can't imagine having that kind of burden and
having to make those kind of decisions of was it better to
stay in a relationship? Could she have left a
relationship with two kids but she couldn't leave one with
three? I don't know.
In the two years since we've spoken, how has your perception
of your mother changed? Or has it not because you really
had a very frank view of your mom?
I mean, I feel like you had a lot of empathy and compassion
for her situation, but you also kind of described her truly as
you saw her. And now that you have a little
more distance between your DNA surprise and some of the choices
that she made, how do you how do you land with her now I.
Mean that was hard won with my mother, but she's been gone now
for, oh, 15 years. And so I've had a lot of time to
think about her and and see her as a character in her story more
than as a character in my story. So when I make her the main
character of all of this, and I did that young because I didn't
understand a lot of times, she was not a typical mother in the
way that we saw mothers on television.
And not just on television, but, you know, my friends, when I
became aware of that in grade school, I kind of liked it.
You know, I mean, I still do. I still do.
Or it's irrelevant to say whether I like it or not.
It is the mother I had. Yeah, you keep kind of going
back to that. It's almost like extreme radical
acceptance of like it. It doesn't, you know, it doesn't
matter. It's just how she was.
So anyway, I'm sorry I interrupted you, but I just
keep. Hearing that, I believe that
you, you know, you feel what you feel and that's real.
But I also think sometimes you have to say, OK, I'm never going
to understand this and that doesn't mean I'm going to let go
of it. That means I may Mull over this
my entire life and that is hard won realization of my part.
I, I have spent my adult life thinking if I review this
enough, I will understand this and that will allow me not to
think about it ever again. I'm not sure if it's acceptance
as much as just this is just you just are this way that my brain
is not interested in being at rest.
It is interested in constantly raking over everything of my
life. I always say that I I admire
people so much who can compartmentalize because I'm not
like that Everything like is out in my brain all at once.
And I live all of my life all at once and it's neither good nor
bad. It's just the way I experience
it. And so with my mom, new things
help me understand her a little bit better and help me see her
dilemmas. But again, that's me
extrapolating. So I don't know.
I mean, she's still fascinating to me.
But even before all this, I used to say that everyone, every
single person who had a relationship with a mother of
any kind could write about their mother and nothing else for the
rest of their lives and and still have material because it
is such a, it's such a fascinating connection.
I don't know. I mean, yeah, she remains, if
anything, more a mystery to me. I asked lots of questions, like
why wouldn't she tell me? And why would she go to her
grave literally keeping this from me?
It wasn't as if she didn't know. I mean, that's just a that's a
ridiculous. And I tried to convince myself
of all the ways that she could have just not known.
It's not realistic. And knowing her, it might very
well have been on purpose. I remember when I reached out to
people about giving updates on their stories and, and one of
the things that you had said to me since we last spoke was just
that a lot has come up for you since we initially spoke because
you hadn't necessarily dived real deep into your feelings
around the DNA surprise. So can you talk a little bit
about what has come up for you specifically around the DNA
surprise? I mean, when I found out I was
55. And so by that point in my life,
again, because I am a constant muser and reviewer, you know,
I've done a lot of work examining my complicated
relationships with my parents and or the lack thereof and
finding ways to make it make sense to me.
And so I felt that at that point, though I was not
satisfied with the results, I was resolved to them that even
in his last few years, the two years after my mother died, when
my father was really at at sea and made somewhat drunken
attempts to connect. And in my head, I thought, well,
I'm sorry, I've done already. You know, this is this is too
late. In my head, of course, I never
would have said these things to him.
I can't meet you where you're finally willing to come.
Because I left this behind because it was the only way for
me to live and to survive is to to make my peace with this.
It would never be satisfying, but it would be done.
I'm not going to keep working on this and I'm not going to reopen
this case. And so this threw a whole big
monkey wrench into that kind of resignation in that it just made
me be like, oh God damn. There's a whole bunch of stuff I
did not factor into this. And and I did have a lot of
rage, although rage so dramatic and so violent.
It was just more of like a I was pissed off again.
None of this was surprising. It all made sense and it all
made everything kind of fall into place.
I was pissed mostly because I was like, I was done with this.
This was a case that was resolved and now there's this
new DNA evidence and we have to open the investigation all over
again. And so, you know, it continues
to evade me, the resolution that I thought I had come to because
now, unfortunately, there's just no way.
That's so funny. I, I remember Oprah talking
about how the universe just teaches the same thing over and
again, over again. And it waits till you get real
cocky about lessons that you think you've learned.
And then it gives you that same damn lesson and on new guys.
And you're like, can't believe I fell for this again.
And and that's sort of how this feels.
I feel sort of hoodwinked in that, no, I did all this work.
I don't know and I'm not, I'm not, you know what we're not
paying. We're not going to, we're going
to put this piece of evidence that's come in a little envelope
and we're going to drop it, you know, in a mailbox somewhere.
We're not going to deal with it because it screws up a very tidy
ending. But of course, that's not how
life is. So it, it will continue.
I admire people who have found a way to integrate it into their
lives. And again. 20 years ago, that
may well have been useful to me, but I'm not.
I don't see how it can now. It's all speculation.
It will always be me thinking, oh, yeah, Remember that time
that dot, dot, dot. Yeah.
Is that different because of this?
Well, yeah. Because even if it wasn't really
different, even if it would have been the same result, I now have
that doubt. I now have that, well, maybe
this is because I wasn't his kid.
Maybe this is because I was a pregnancy that she five years
later wouldn't have kept. And I'm, you know, I mean,
again, I have thought about this a lot, of course, in light of
recent developments with Women's Health and women's productive
reproductive rights is that I grew up from a very young age as
a staunch feminist and a staunch supporter of women's choice
because my mother was. And that doesn't change with the
thought that, oh, had she had the ability to do that, she
would have made that choice. I don't know that for sure, but
at least she would have had that choice.
And what difference would it make to me?
I wouldn't be here. I wouldn't know the difference.
So. It's so complex because, yeah,
you there's, there is so much room for speculation because
maybe she wouldn't have, but then maybe she did it on
purpose. And it seems like it's almost a
universal experience across people that have had DNA
surprises of looking back at moments and almost looking at
them in a different light. And and to your point, maybe
there's nothing different about that moment, but we'll never
know because we didn't know. That's a really interesting
insight, though, to to kind of ponder.
I'm curious about your relationship with your sister
because I know last time we spoke, it was like, hey, nothing
changes. You're very close, I think.
Are you neighbors? Is that correct?
Yes, we are neighbors. I'm I can hear her out yelling
at her chickens right now. So which I could not be more
grateful for. I mean, just really, I just I'm
so grateful just in general to have her in my life.
But also, you know, I mean, I'm feel very fortunate to have her
next door. There's not a change.
I feel bad sometimes because I think it causes her distress to
to hear me talk about it. She was six years old when I was
born. But because she's the oldest,
she has this thought of like, she should have done something.
She should have prevented these things that, you know, caused me
pain. Well, of course, you know when I
say this, if you were over and over again, you were a child,
that is not your responsibility. You did not have that kind of
power. But I think she feels guilty
that she even got the tests, you know, And I feel bad sometimes
because I think that my musing has caused her to re evaluate a
lot of moments in her own life or moments within our family
that she sees differently. And, and even our parents, you
know, all siblings have different parents.
You know, I, I knew that from before any of this, that your
relationship is always going to be specific, specific to the
time you were born, specific to how old your parents were, all
of that. That's something you cannot
change. I, I cannot, nor did I ever have
the opportunity to not be the youngest.
And so that shapes my entire relationship in the family.
And that's not a, that's not a good or bad.
That's just a, this is it. And so you might as well make
some sense of it. So sometimes I feel bad about
that. I don't want her to feel bad
about this for me, but I can't pretend that it's not
monumental. I think she feels guilty that
she had a very different relationship with my parent.
But that would have happened regardless.
And I don't resent that. I hope not.
Because my existence was such a completely different existence
than hers. So there's no way I could have
ever been treated like she was treated.
Yeah, she's a sweeter person. I'm just not that nice.
I say that with humor, but it's really true.
I know, I know. She's the nicest person that I
know. I am not.
And so consequently, our lives would always be different and
our relationship with our parents would have been
different. I was not an easy kid to raise.
Again, with no knowledge of any of this.
I was a pain in the ass. But then it goes back to were
you like that because you weren't different, right?
It's like so circular. It is so circular.
Because I mean, there's so many things that yes, I'm just, I
always felt that I was just fundamentally not the same as
the rest of the family. Have you learned much more about
the family without contacting them?
Not really. You know, I've looked up on
Facebook, they're not very active on Facebook.
And again, he has passed. And last time I looked at it,
his wife was still alive, which again was a big factor in me not
wanting to pursue this. Now, it's very unlikely that
this 83 year old woman doesn't have some sense, although I
suppose it's possible. The picture I've got a little
bit of this suspect suggests that she might not be that
surprised. But to what end?
What could I bring to her about this?
I just don't think that there's much to to gain from it.
Now. Again, confirmation bias, but
all my friends and family have seen pictures.
Just, you know, nowadays you can find people's old yearbooks and
all that sort of stuff if you're the kind of sleuth who will look
for it. And so they're of course
convinced because there is a similarity.
I can see it if you want to see it.
They would be laughing at me right now to hear me say this
because it's fairly obvious. The siblings, these people are,
seem like nice people who would never imagine that their father,
you know, had an affair. And so why bring that to them
about a father who's been dead, you know, over 10 years?
Of course, I don't know them. I don't know what their
relationship was with, with him. So I don't think there's
anything for me to gain from it. They may be very nice people,
and in fact I I'm sure they are, but I don't think that there's
anything that would enrich their lives to have that knowledge.
Yeah, no, that's, I think that's a very valid point.
And it's nice that you're thoughtful about it, you know,
and that you have considered and and weighed the pros and cons
and of course you can always change your mind.
But I think the the idea that you are being considerate of how
it may affect them and then also what you really want out of it.
I mean, it may be my way of disguising that I'm a chicken
shit and don't have the guts to. I'm very good at that.
You know, I don't have the guts to take that chance.
You know, I mean, that's characteristic of me that I
don't have, you know, to to adopt A stance of nonchalant
indifference because I don't want to risk the rejection.
That's valid. Yeah.
I mean, I won't. I won't argue against that
possibility. To be clear, you argued it
against yourself just now. I didn't say that.
I didn't call you that. Well, you know, do I contradict
myself? All right, I contradict myself.
Have a little moment of what it's like to live in my head all
the time, but. You can, but yes, I mean you can
see all sides and we can spend so much time with the what ifs
and the whys and you can spend spend a lot of time there.
I'm glad to know. Yeah.
You know, I have no regret about that.
That's really good. That's important that you know
that. So you mentioned feeling angry,
having some some anger, feeling kind of pissed off about the
revelation and and why didn't you know?
What other emotions have come up for you in the past couple of
years around your DNA surprise? There is a certain remorse.
There's a remorse of what might have been had had things been
different. I feel that remorse, regret for
a relationship that could have been.
But then I again I see the the reality of well, that fact isn't
really what made our relationship.
It may well have colored every interaction.
The grown-ups, the parents had with me as well as my
grandmother, my mother's mother. I would not be surprised to find
out that she knew if she didn't know, if it was an actual fact
to her, she always suspected because she was savvy about that
sort of stuff. She was such a boon to my spirit
in that she seemed to relish everything about me that I was
constantly being told was wrong with me and praised it and
uplifted it. And that was invaluable.
That's what made a fairly unhappy childhood possible for
me to get through. And if there's anything good in
my spirit, it's because I'm faking being like her.
But would she have done that anyway?
You just can't know that. But if if she did know, it does
make it all make sense. The thing I always say to
people, I probably said this before, is I'll never forget
sitting next to her at the sewing machine.
And I was 11 or something, and I don't remember what we were even
talking about. And she said, well, son, there
are no illegitimate children, only illegitimate parents.
And over the years, I thought it was just something pithy that
she had said. But of course, it does make me
think that's interesting. That is, I love the way that you
talk about your relationship with your grandmother.
It just sounds very special. I don't know how I would have
survived without her because she gave me and again, I I don't
make it as a joke that anything good about me is because of her.
And me thinking what would she tell me to do in this situation?
And how very, very often I fail to be able to live up to that,
even with the full knowledge that she was also somebody who
worked her whole life in terms of who she was trying to be and
how she was trying to be better. I used to, I'm sure I've told
you this story before, that when above her sewing machine, where
I spent a lot of time, there was a little newspaper clipping that
said the heaviest burden to carry is a grudge.
And I remember thinking as a child, God, you know, she's so
good. I don't think I can ever be that
good. It's such a such a great wisdom.
And I don't think I'll ever be that good to be able to let go
of grudges. And it was only after she died,
I was telling somebody about this and I was like, wait a
minute, Somebody who can let go of stuff real easy doesn't need
to be reminded to do that every single day, right?
She worked at it. It didn't.
It wasn't that it came naturally to her.
She, from everything she told me, was a also a difficult child
and a pistol and an arguer. And she worked very hard to to
come to that kind of peace, understanding, whatever it was.
And I think she's still was working on it her whole life.
For sure. And that's reassuring, you know.
Yeah, it's a practice. Yes, that's a great yes, process
over product. Yes, exactly, exactly so you're
not spending or trying not to spend a ton of time on the past
the wise what could have beens, but looking ahead, do you have
anything that you hope will be around your DNA surprise the.
Whole process has made me challenge my own thoughts about
when I start to say, well, what if?
I asked myself, OK, well yeah, what if?
But what's preventing you from living your life as if that had
been true? Partly what keeps me as a deep
seated cynicism. So that's what I fight against
all the time. But I don't know what the answer
is. What is that?
What is to keep me from deciding that yes, this is what all made
me, but I don't have to live in that anymore.
And I think that has been the last two years of yes, I'd feel
proud of myself. I was feeling proud of myself
because I had made my peace with this before this, with the with
the challenging upbringing that I'd had and the complicated
relationships and just how it affected all my other
relationships in my life. And I was very settled with
that. But this has made me go.
But why can't you just get rid of that?
I mean, yeah, that's true. Yeah, you did grow up in
Indiana. But that doesn't mean anything
anymore. It doesn't have to mean
anything. I love Indiana.
That's not digging against Indiana.
It's purely a metaphor. But that the, you know, the
facts of my life don't have to mean anything in the sense that
that those things don't have to prevent me if I am willing to do
the work from the things that I, I blame them for.
You know, they're really, it's really easy to say, oh, well,
that's why I'm not good, you know, doing this.
That's why I am uncomfortable in certain social situations.
That's why I'm bad at relationships.
Well, OK, but you don't have to let that continue.
You know, whether I have any success in changing that, I
don't know. But but but maybe that is what
the last few years have given me is that, yeah, you thought
things were this way and they weren't the whole time.
And so the reality is that only right now, that's all there is,
is right now, and you can make a choice not to have that be what
colours everything from the future, you know, going on now.
That's an optimism that I believe strongly in.
Whether I can adhere to. It is often times the hard part.
I was like, I'm sure I said before, I like to think of
myself as a lapsed optimist because that is my nature that
fights constantly with my pragmatic yeah.
Well, just like your grandmother, it's a with her
grudges like it that is, that is a practice.
Last time we spoke, I asked you for advice for somebody who had
had adna surprise and for parents who were keeping adna
surprise from their child. Today I would like to ask what
advice do you have for guy of two years ago?
Golly that's hard. I'm always thinking about great
things to tell my 17 year old self.
Which is pointless because he wouldn't listen to anything but
the 55 year old guy. I don't know except to say in
that first moment, as much as this all makes sense to you, you
will not understand this and do not let the way that all of
these cards seem to fall into place fool you into believing
that you have figured this out because this will never be done.
But it will also perhaps be the first time that you are able to
compartmentalize and not in a negative way, because I think
there's a way to have positive compartmentalization in that or
as I like to joke about being, you know, beneficial
disassociation, you know, and that I don't, I forget about it
because it doesn't change who I've become and it doesn't
change so much. This will be with you and
surprise, surprise you. There will be no easy answer to
this, but also maybe the thing I would want me to know is that
immediate lifting of shame and guilt will be permanent and that
I did not understand at the time.
And the relief. You don't feel it all the time
because it is like having a hip replacement from what I'm told,
or a knee replacement is that it immediately stops hurting and
you forget about it because that pain is gone and that is
permanent. And so perhaps that's what I
would tell myself, that regardless of all the Sturm and
drain that this will bring up and the avalanche of things that
will happen again, not necessarily because of it, but
in line with it, that feeling will go away.
I mean that you won't think about it anymore.
That's a small piece of a heavy burden of feeling unworthy that
you can let go of, and that's a great gift.
And the rest of it means you have to do that work now that I
would not want to hear because I don't like to do stuff I'm not
good at right away. Same same Oh guy.
Thank you so much for coming on and giving me an update on your
dirty. I'm so happy to hear that that
pain and and shame and embarrassment has been a
permanent relief for you that you aren't faced with that
anymore. And wherever you land, like you
said it, it never fully goes away.
This experience, it's something that we we'll always think
about, but I hope that it continues to get lighter for you
well. Thank you.
I love talking to you because actually, I don't think I've
ever vocalized that before to myself, just that, Oh yeah, it
is important to remember that pain was with you so long that
you didn't even know that it was pain anymore because it was the
way to be. And having that lifted is a
miracle. So everything else has been so
worth it. Yeah, it's amazing.
Thanks again to Guy for joining me.
If you have Adna SURPRISE you'd like to share, submit your story
at dnasurprises.com and be sure to join me next week for our
Season 9 finale. You won't want to miss it.
Until next time. This episode of DNA SURPRISES
was hosted, produced and edited by me, Alexis Oursalt.
It was mixed and mastered by Josh Ourselt of Siren Recording
Studios.