I think that through all of this, one of my biggest lessons
has been that we're, we're truly never alone on our paths.
And as hard as things are, as scary as they are, as shocking
as information can be, you're never alone.
There's always going to be somebody who has your back.
And that I, I believe that that can be in the physical world and
that can also be in the ancestors coming forward and
supporting you in ways that you might not even be aware of,
right. And so I think that the only way
through is through and going gently with yourself so that
you're able to process and heal and move forward and then share
as you can, right? Not everybody wants to share,
but I really feel like being able to talk to people like you
is so healing. And for people to hear about
people like us is so healing. And we live in a very unique
time where technology has allowed us to learn a lot about
our families that we would have never known before.
These secrets would have never come out before.
And so it's a lot it it can be very healing and it can be very
intense. And I honestly wouldn't have it
any other way. Welcome to DNA Surprises, a
podcast that delves into the world of unexpected DNA
discoveries. I'm your host, Alexis Oursalt.
In July 2021, my life took a surprising turn when I found out
that I'm an N P/E, a person who has experienced a non paternal
event. In other words, my biological
father isn't who I thought he was.
Join me as we explore the stories of NP, ES, adoptees and
donor conceived people and their families.
Get ready to unravel the astonishing journeys that begin
with a simple DNA test. This is DNA surprises.
When someone uncovers adna surprise, their family tree
changes. That sounds simple.
Swap out one name and lineage with another.
But the reality is that our roots, so many of the things
that make us us, come from generations before us.
In this week's episode, Melissa shares her profound journey
after discovering that the man who raised her is not her
biological father. From uncovering clues in her
late grandmother's writings to learning about her biological
father's tumultuous past and building new relationships with
half siblings, Melissa delves into the complex emotions and
revelations that emerged along the way.
Through her genealogical research, Melissa connects with
her ancestral roots, understanding more about her
family's history and the legacies that shape her
identity. Thank you for sharing your
story, Melissa. My name is Melissa.
I'm just turned 48 and I'm from Santa Fe, NM.
You know that there's a lot of people who said that they had
clues when they were little about, you know, their, their
dad not being their dad or, or whatever.
I had a couple of clues, but nothing came clear until I was
18. You know, when I was old enough
to start doing some math, I was like, wait a minute, my parents
anniversary is in July, but I was born in November.
So that doesn't quite add up, right?
And I had my mom's name when my mom's last name when I was first
born and chose to change it to my dad's last name.
So they went through the whole court paperwork to do that right
when I was in about fifth grade. So those two were little things
like the dates and the last name.
But my parents were never legally married, so them giving
me my mom's last name was not that big of a surprise, right?
Well, when I was 18, I was about 8 months pregnant with my
daughter. And the day after my 18th
birthday, my dad sat me down and said that he was not my
biological father. My dad said I'm not your
biological father. The timing just wasn't right,
but I chose to stay anyway. So the timing not being right
could have meant a lot of different things, right?
I later learned that he met her when she was pregnant with me
and he chose to stay. OK, OK.
So with that information, I was 18, I was pregnant, I was highly
emotional and didn't know what to do with that information.
So I I left the room where we were and my mom was like, what
you guys talk about. And I told her and she got very,
very angry and used lots of choice words and called him a
liar and said that that was absolutely not the truth.
And it was all very her reaction was even more traumatic than him
telling me in that moment. Did he indicate like why he
waited And he, it seems like he waited right until you were 18
and then was like, I got to tell you this.
Maybe it was that I was 18, maybe it was that I was grown
right, but I don't, I don't know beyond that.
I just there I was. I was, I was pregnant.
I was confused and scared and sad and I just kind of left it
alone because this was 1995. There was like nothing to be
done, right? There was no DNA test.
I didn't know who I could talk to.
If my mom was saying absolutely not and my dad was saying the
timing just wasn't right. Well, what am I going to do with
that, right? Two years later, my maternal
grandma passed away. And she was a writer.
She was an avid writer her entire life, and I was given a
lot of her writing when she passed away.
And I'm talking boxes and boxes of chaos.
And in that writing were a few pages of a very long letter that
she had written to one of my aunts shortly after my birth.
The entire letter was about 26 pages long, and there was only
like 6 pages in it. So for whatever reason, those 6
pages were handed off to me in that letter.
She's talking to my aunt and she says Melissa is an unmixed
blessing. Michael was a disaster, as
sometimes love can be. And then she says that my dad,
who raised me, that he is doing very well considering all the
weather and that he and my mom just might make it yet.
So there I have. OK, so I guess we're thinking
the bio dad might be a Michael. And that was it.
Again, I kind of folded that paper back up and tucked it back
away in the writing and just kept moving forward.
I started doing a little bit of genealogy, but in the late 90s,
genealogy looked very different. You know, you were writing
letters to historical societies or to libraries or state places
and trying to get the right birth certificate for the right
person. And you had to have all the
right information. So it was very tedious and
expensive and just challenging. So I kind of stopped doing that
pretty quickly, right? I was in my early 20s going
nobody has time for this. Like, what am I doing?
And at this point? Are are you able to talk to your
mom about it at all or is that just a closed door based on her
reaction? It was a closed door based on
her reaction. My mom struggled with mental
health challenges all of my life and when she reacted that way, I
just was like Oh my gosh, OK well this just can't be a
conversation right now. And my grandma had been ill for
a long time and I thought she was stressed out by that.
And what I learned later in talking to my dad is that she
had already begun using again. She struggled with addiction a
lot and and had ebbs and flows of it my whole life and I didn't
know. I didn't know that that was what
was happening in her, in her right, which later explains the
emotions. But it was just a closed door.
I was out of the house. And as she continued slipping, I
started just putting up more and more boundaries.
And by the time I was 2324, it was almost a full no contact
situation because I was doing my best to protect myself and my
daughter. I was not going to put her
through some of the things that I remembered when I was young,
right? My mom passed away in 2006.
And she just, she took all of those stories with her when she
went and she had about six years before her death where she was
just completely sideways. And I never knew when she was
going to be lucid or not. So that it was not an
opportunity for talking to her at all.
So we have this information that I just kind of carried with me
for decades and I internalized it.
I really internalized it thinking that I was the secret,
not that this was a secret, but that I was the secret.
And I also internalized the idea that it was my job to protect my
family members from any pain that this secret might cause.
I didn't want to talk to my dad about it because I felt like
that would be painful for him to relive that.
And he's also, you know, he's a younger boomer, so he's pretty
stoic and like, he doesn't want to dig into the past too much.
And I didn't want to hurt my brother.
I thought my brother would be devastated.
And I didn't want to hurt my oldest daughter.
She idolizes her grandpa. And I just really didn't want to
do damage. I thought I would do damage to
other people by talking about this, so I didn't.
So in 2019, 2019, I decided that the only option to find anything
out might be to take ADNA test. And so I did.
And I kind of did it rather flippantly.
Like looking back on it, I just, I, I couldn't even wrap my head
around the fact that I would discover all of the things that
I discovered. I was just like, well, maybe I
might get a clue as to like who Michael is.
And boy, did I get a clue. It it wasn't like you forgot
about it and you're like, Oh no, I'm just going to take this.
You. You had it in the back of your
mind, but you didn't realize all that you might uncover.
I think because it had never been my reality, you know, I, I
just didn't think like, oh, there might be siblings or aunts
or cousins or grandparents or like, you know, an entire family
that would exist on, on this Michael's side that that didn't,
you know, ever. He was just a stranger in my
mind. He wasn't a real human, right?
Which is so interesting, those disconnects.
And I guess it was just my subconscious trying to protect
me also. So I took the test, kind of
forgot about it, like, oh, I'll get the e-mail when it's ready.
And I got the e-mail one night and it was ready and I opened it
up and I had two very close matches.
I didn't know what that meant, but two very close matches, two
women and I'm looking at that and I'm like, OK, who are these
people? I don't understand.
I start clicking through onto their trees and not recognizing
names or anything, right. But on one of the trees she had
listed and because he had passed his full name and his birth and
death date showed up and she had her dad listed as Michael.
And at that point I just kind of like closed my eyes and handed
my phone to my wife. Like, I, I don't know what any
of this is, but I yeah. And so she kept clicking around
as I just kind of sat there, like, wow.
OK. And then immediately I started
getting direct messages from another sister's best friend who
was managing her account. And that sister was adopted.
She was put up for adoption at birth.
And so she's been searching for both of her parents for a lot of
years. And so her best friend was
helping her with that. And so that those e-mail
exchanges, I, I didn't know anything.
And, and her best friend was all well-intentioned, but she's
like, do you know about this? Do you know about this?
Do you know this name? Do you know?
And like rapid fire questions. And I literally wrote her back.
I know nothing like, at all. Yeah.
Like. I'm just trying to figure this
out. Were you just overwhelmed with?
Completely overwhelmed. Yeah, completely overwhelmed.
So it quickly became clear based on our high match that she was a
half sister, that we shared the same biological father.
The friend had nailed it down to three brothers, but she wasn't
sure which of those three brothers could be the biological
father. So me testing was kind of the
triangulation that she needed. So then she started asking about
the other sister. Have you had communication with
her? We've been trying to reach out
to her. And I obviously hadn't, I had
just opened the e-mail. It was a couple of days later
that I got on the phone with this half sister and and we just
kind of talked. It was like who you know, who
are you? What is this?
What is your story? How are you?
How are you here in this database?
What's going on? And she was lovely and totally
wonderful to talk to. She was adopted at birth and
grew up knowing that she was adopted.
So none of this was a surprise. She was just trying to figure
out, you know, who her ancestors are, where her DNA comes from.
About that time I reached out to the other sister and just said,
I'm just trying to figure this out.
I, I think that we might be half sisters based on cinema organs.
And you know, I'm happy to chat. I know this is kind of all, a
lot for me. I'm sure it is for you too,
because she had only recently tested as well, and I didn't
hear anything from her. So a couple months later I sent
her another one. That the Ancestry DNA direct
messaging system can sometimes be a little glitchy.
At least it was five years ago. Where, Yeah, where you don't
know if it was actually delivered or if they actually
read it. And I just was like, OK, I'll,
I'll send her a follow up and just be like, hey, I'm not
trying to put pressure on you. I just don't know if this is
working right. Still didn't hear anything from
her. And I was like, OK, so I just
let it go, 'cause I was like, you know, who am I to ask this
woman anything? I'm a stranger just trying to
figure this out. So from there, I just started
researching. I just started Googling names
and going on Facebook and finding obituaries and then
figuring out who the people were that were named in the
obituaries. And it turns out that that my
direct paternal line, they were one of the first colonizing
families of Quebec and Canada. So they're very well documented,
which was great. It was a lot of information all
at once, but I was like, wow, there's 10 generations right
there. OK.
And then just trying to pull it back to like, but who were these
people that are my kin? A couple of people had had DNA
tested and there was a cousin of Michael's.
So my first cousin once removed, I think is what that is, right?
And and he had tested and his mom had tested and a couple of
people in his circle had tested. So I reached out to him because
he had a really thorough tree and just said, Hey, this is who
I think I am. How you doing?
And he was so kind and so giving and like, here's a picture of
grandma and grandpa and here's news articles and have you heard
about this? And very sweet, very protective
over family, right? He didn't share everything all
at once. And he really likes snail mail
so if I would e-mail him he would send me a letter in the
mail. And so I just learned to just
write him back mail as well. But.
It's so incredible how these cousins, it's, it's always the
cousins that just it's. Always the cousins.
They're just, I think they're far enough removed from the
emotional impact of a discovery like this to be like, wow,
another cousin. OK cool, what can we share?
So I started off with him and he was very lovely.
Through another platform, I found another cousin who was
even more forthcoming with information and not as hesitant
to talk about the harder aspects of the family and about
Michael's upbringing and some of his traumas.
And that was super helpful for me.
As painful as it was to hear some of those stories, it was
very helpful for me to kind of tie up some of the loose ends
that had been floating around in my head about like, who is this
guy and how did he make 4 kids with four different moms all
across the country And like nobody knows him.
Like what happened, right? And but in that, both of those
cousins also spoke very highly of him.
Like, you know, multiple opposing truths can be in
existence at the same time. And so, yes, he had struggles.
Yes, he may have made some poor choices.
And also, they loved him. They adored him.
So there's something to be said for that, right?
It's not like he was a bad guy. He just had a rough life through
all of that. Googling I found another half
aunt who Michael and her share a father and she was also very
kind and excited and very giving.
Then 1/2 brother as well, who is also very kind.
And also I don't mean to be stereotypical, but like not
super commutative, right? He's just kind of like, hey, how
you doing? Cool, happy birthday.
Great, nice to see you happy, happy siblings day like things
like that. But like, we haven't like
continued on in that communication and I and I do
think it's 'cause he's just like cool, another sibling, whatever.
So that's so you're at 4/4. There's four of us that we know
of, yeah, 4 total. And we span from 1965 until the
early 80s. So there's quite an expansion
there. And I, I was born in 76, so I'm
right in the middle. I learned all of this.
My oldest daughter decides she wants to take adna test because
she wants to learn more about her indigenous roots.
She's half Mexican and she really wanted to dive into what
does that really mean, right. And so I was like, I guess I
have to tell her because if she tests, then she's going to know
all of the things. And I don't want her to find out
that way. We were in the middle of COVID,
and we met at a park, and we sat down, and I told her.
And she was devastated. And she was also angry at me.
Rightfully so. Like, OK, so you're mad at them
for keeping the secrets, but you just kept that secret from me my
whole life. Like, what the heck?
And so that was hard. But it was also, like, deserved,
you know? Yeah.
Be mad at me. OK.
I get it. Yep.
Let's process this together. Yeah.
How did you kind of process, Did you just kind of accept it and
own it right away? Or yeah, yeah, there's nothing
else for it. Just yeah, I, I messed up and I
thought I needed to protect you and this sucks and you're going
to have to deal with this and kind of go through some pain.
And I'm here if you have any questions, if you want to know
anything. And.
And she didn't really at first, right?
She was just like, oh, so I'm not genetically his
granddaughter. And I'm like, no, but he's your
grandpa. Like, he loves you
unconditionally. He loves me.
He chose to stay for all of us, right?
And so slowly and but surely, she has has asked more questions
and I've been able to show her pictures and tell her stories
about our genetic line. So she's gotten more and more
curious, which is nice. I thought that I wanted to talk
to one of my mom's siblings and I, I waited too long.
She got really sick and she passed away before I could
actually talk to her. And that was hard.
And then about 18 months after I tested, I decided to reach out
to the sister that had been no communication on Facebook
because you can see if something's read on Facebook.
And so I just wrote and said, hey, I'm not trying to stalk
you. I promise.
I don't know how reliable this other system is.
If you don't ever want to hear from me again, cool.
And she responded immediately. And she was like, Oh my gosh,
I'm so glad you reached out. I just needed some time and
space. But I really want to talk to
you. Like, I feel like it's time and
I'm ready. And I was like, yay, OK, who is
this other person? And she has been absolutely
lovely of the other two siblings.
Or I guess there's three of us. So of the three siblings, her
and I resonate the best. We have a lot of things in
common. We have a lot of our morals are
aligned in a lot of ways. We're able to connect around
having younger children. And so that's been really
interesting. We're only a couple of years
apart. So there was there was some time
where we're like, wait, when, when did your mom live in Santa
Fe? And wait, when did, when did you
guys move to? Was there overlap there?
And there was not. There was none of that, but her
mom and and Michael were married.
They they did get married and they started their family with
the sister and then he passed away.
He passed away in 1983. And so she was raised by a
single mom until she was 11 and her mom remarried.
So she basically knew nothing as well.
Her mom wouldn't really talk about Michael, and she never
really understood why, but it was kind of a closed door every
time she would try to open it. So we've all just been learning
together and trying to put the puzzle pieces together.
And as my grandma's granddaughter, I am a writer
too. I am have always been very
curious about our family history.
And my grandma wrote our family history in a memoir of sorts.
And so I kind of saw it as my job to like continue this on
right and take off where she left off and be like, OK, I can
fill in the gaps, but there's so much history here, not just my
story, but all of our stories that deserve to be told in one
way or another. And so I've used this
opportunity to really dig into both Michael's side of the
family and their, you know, personality traits and
characteristics and jobs and all of those things that you can
discover through black and white on the Internet and my maternal
side and kind of piece those together.
And it's been very interesting to see how similar a lot of the
likes and paths that people have taken.
And like there's a, there's a thread of love for music and
gardening and horses and things like that.
And you see how that all trickles down into my generation
and below, right? And so that's been super
interesting. I guess the the last part that
was more aha moments was my mom had three siblings and she was
the first to pass. And then my two aunts passed
away and my uncle was the last one living and we had been
estranged for decades. Just because right, you just
they move away. Life gets complicated.
My mom had her struggles, just we just hadn't been in touch.
And I found one of his daughters, my cousin on
Instagram and was like, hey, stranger, it's been like 25
years. How you doing?
And I told her what I was up to with the family history.
And she was like, well, do you want me to like connect you with
my dad? And I was like, I actually
really do. And she's like, OK, so she
connected us. She gave me his phone number,
told him. And it took me a couple of weeks
to call him. I was so nervous to call him
just to even like, start that communication.
And I called and he was so excited to hear from me and so
excited to just chat about anything.
And I told him about me going into the family history and
asked him if he had any documents or anything from my
grandma when she passed away. And he did.
And he said he'd be willing to share anything that he could
find he could dig up. So it took a few months, but I
finally made the opportunity to drive down to him.
He lives about six hours away and I took my brother with me
because I needed a buffer. Absolutely, and I also hadn't
had this conversation with my brother yet.
Did you just grew up with one brother?
One brother. Yeah.
And he's 11 years younger than me.
So there was a big gap between the two of us.
Same, same dad. The dad who raised me as his
biological father. So we drove down and I'm like,
hey, so I need to talk to you about something.
And he's like, OK, what? And I told him that that I have
another biological father. And he was like, Oh, yeah, I
know. I was like, what do you mean?
You know? And he's like, Mom told me what?
What do you mean? Mom told you?
She wouldn't talk to me about it, but she told you he was
like, yeah, that that's cool. I'm cool.
Everything's fine. So that was fun.
Like Oh my gosh. So did he know any other
information or did? He no, not really just, yeah,
just that I was like, man, I didn't have to.
I didn't have to keep this secret from anybody.
Like everybody knew but me, right?
So we go down, we see my uncle and my cousins.
I made it a very short trip on purpose because I didn't want it
to be like long and drawn out and emotional.
I just wanted to go down, reconnect, see what he had and
then tap out. And so so we did.
We had a lovely dinner. The next morning, my brother and
I went to his house and he had pulled out several boxes of
various writings and photos and stuff and popped up a card table
in his kitchen and then just went in the other room and let
me have at it. And at one point, my brother and
my cousin left to go get lunch. And he came in.
He said, I just want to check on how you're doing, see if you
have any questions. And I was like, I actually do
have a couple of questions for you if you're willing to chat.
And he goes, yeah, OK. Yeah.
So I, I had two other questions to ask him.
I wanted to know if he had a oatmeal Raisin cookie recipe
that was my great grandpa's that I had heard about my whole life,
but nobody could ever track down the recipe.
And he did, and he knew exactly where to find it and brought it
to me immediately. I had a question about something
my grandma had written about in her kind of journal notes.
It wasn't in her memoir, but in her journal notes about a a
really rough time that my grandpa had had at one point.
And I was like, it didn't make any sense to me.
So he clarified that for me, which then made everything else
make sense. Right.
And then I brought up the subject of Michael was like,
hey, do you know that my dad is not my biological father?
Do you know anything about this Michael?
And he took a deep breath and he goes, yeah, I just didn't want
to put nails in your head, Melissa.
And I was like nails in my head. I know I've never heard.
I even Googled it to see if it was like a thing.
It's it's not a thing. It was just a thing for him.
He said I just didn't want to cause any more pain that was
then was necessary in your life. And I was like, OK, well, what
can you tell me? And basically what he told me is
that my mom and Michael were together.
I don't know how long it was, but it was an established
relationship and it ended violently.
And it ended violently before she knew she was pregnant with
me. So it ended.
He was told to go away and then she found out she was pregnant
with me. And at that point, the dad who
raised me kind of stepped in and and they were together through
her pregnancy. That was a lot for me to
process, right? That was that was I didn't.
Again, I couldn't imagine that that would have been the answer.
Like they were together. It ended violently, and I won't
go into details here, but he gave me details and it made so
much make sense in terms of my mom's reaction, right?
Like she had held this secret and she had protected me from
this information. And she probably believed in her
heart of hearts that my dad would never tell me that he
wasn't my biological father, right?
And so me saying that to her, I'm sure cracked open a whole
other universe for her, right? And it was easier for her to
just deny it than to even go into what any of that might
mean. I'm curious, like how you were
feeling when you got that information, because like you're
saying there, there's the duality, right?
Doesn't mean you weren't thinking that he was like a bad
person or anything like that. Then you hear this information
that's heavy. How do you process that?
How do you feel? You know, I wish I could say
that everything's all tied up in a nice little bow.
Therapy helps, right? But immediately after that
conversation with my uncle, I just was like, it was another
piece of information that I just kind of took in.
And I got to the bed and breakfast that night and I wrote
down in my journal, you know, the answers to the three
questions I had asked him. And it took me a little while to
just kind of process that and to really think about my mom was 23
when she got pregnant with me. She was young and he was about
10 years older than her. So she was young.
I'm sure she was terrified about the whole situation.
And then to find out that she was pregnant, right?
And it, it brought a sense of compassion and a sense of
understanding for me towards my mom and her keeping the secret
also on like a epigenetic level. I don't know if you've gotten
into epigenetics, but but the idea that traumas that our our
ancestors experience can be passed down through our genes
into US, right? And so I had this period of time
where I was really reflecting on, I was being carried inside
my mom when she experienced this violent experience, right?
And just kind of processing that and moving through that.
Right, it's a lot to process. It's a lot to process.
And I think one of the biggest challenges with being an NPE is
people who haven't experienced something like this really don't
know. And, and I know that people say
silly things like, well, but he's still your dad or, you
know, it's not that big of a deal or whatever.
And that's all well intended because they don't know what
else to say. Doesn't mean that they should
say it, but they don't know what else to say, right.
And so being able to talk to other people, being able to be
really honest with the one sister that I'm in contact with
and kind of process things through with her.
I've got a really great therapist who has experience
with NP, ES and adoption and addiction, all the, all of the
key points that I could hit. She really gets it and that's
been hugely helpful. And I would I would say don't
take ADNA test unless you have a therapist already because wow.
Because. You just never know.
You never know what's going to come up.
And I did not have a therapist at the time and I should have
gotten one sooner because it was just so much to process, so much
to process. It's really just been about
taking all of these pieces and, and putting them together into
this huge mosaic and really trying to gain understanding
about who Michael was, who his parents were, what his
experiences were growing up. He was in Vietnam.
So he came back with some trauma there.
Like, you know, I, I feel like really based on what all of his
cousins have said and based on everything else that I've
learned, it seems to me he was a very tender hearted person who
had a lot of hard things that he went through and he just
couldn't stay put, right? He just couldn't stay put.
And that that manifested for at least the three of us in one
way. And then when he passed away
very suddenly shortly after my youngest half sister's birth, it
just kind of boggles the mind. It boggles the mind.
He was 40 years old and he just couldn't stick around.
And so I think a lot of that is just compassion and knowing that
him and my mom were in a relationship that I would like
to think was a good relationship at least part of the time.
And that it, you know, there's a lot of different ways that we
come into being. And then to just recognize that
the dad who raised me knew all of the things and he chose to
stay. And he chose to stay every day
after that. He didn't have to stick around.
Things were not always easy with my mom, but he did.
And he's still here and he's still like, super supportive.
And even if he won't share all the gory details with me, he's
like, you know, what do you need?
Is this going to help you in the future?
And I'm like, yes, it will. And he's like, OK, cool, let's
let's talk about it then, even if it's just kind of at a
surface level. I'm curious about a little bit
more about how this revelation about your conception and kind
of what happened before your mom realized that she was pregnant,
how that maybe changed your view of your mother, given that, like
you mentioned, this was obviously a traumatic experience
that she had. Michael had also been through
traumatic experiences, what she may or may not have known about.
How did it change your perception of your mother to
learn this? Oh, I have.
I have so much more compassion for her.
You know, I spent a long time being mad at my mom, not because
of the MPE situation necessarily, but because of her
struggles with addiction. And what I have learned just in
the last 18 years since she passed has given me a very broad
perspective on, on addiction and how people become addicted and
why they become addicted and a lack of coping skills.
And there's, there's so many components there.
And I was just mad at her for a lot of years because I was like,
why can't you just get your stuff together?
Like, what is your problem? You're grown, right?
And, and then I've got some experience and a broader
perspective of, oh, you, you can't adjust.
Nobody can just get their stuff together, right?
There's so many different aspects to our being and our
experience and if we're willing to accept help or not.
And for so many people, self medication is the only option
that they know. And if they're not willing to
look at other options. And that's all you have, right?
So all of that coming together and knowing the traumas that my
mom grew up with and knowing the things that my grandma went
through, I've, I've really been able to dive deep into the
generations and part of the big learning for me as I, I always
had this assumption that trauma is 1 experience.
There was one bad thing that happened and that's almost never
the case. There's so many little stones
that get added to the hill that become the mountain, right?
Some of them are conscious of, some of them are not conscious
of some of our traumas are things that happened and some of
our traumas are things that didn't happen, right?
Maybe your mom was not able to mother you or you know, And so
looking at that on my mom's side, because my grandma was
such a prolific writer and, and I know some of the traumas that
my mom experienced and my grandma experienced and her mom
experienced and her mom experienced.
And just looking at all those little pieces of the puzzle and
the different decades that they grew up in and how that has all
trickled down to our generation and how our parents parented or
did not parent us, right, based on their own abilities and
their, how they were parented. And so then looking at Michael's
side, and there's a lot of similar traumas that happened,
right? It wasn't, he didn't just have
one trauma, it was multiple traumas and, and the same with
his mom and, you know, back and back.
So that compassion and that awareness that nobody wants to
hurt the people that they love, right?
And I do believe that most people keep secrets because they
think that they're protecting whoever else they're protecting.
Sometimes it's yourself, sometimes you think you're
protecting other people. I did the same thing, which is
why my daughter was mad at me. And that's fine because I did
the same thing. And so thinking about that and
thinking about my mom really like Mama bear fiercely trying
to protect me from whatever it was she thought she was
protecting me from, whether it was him, whether it was the
truth of their relationship, what, you know, whatever it was,
I really do believe that she was just trying to protect me.
And it just came out garbled because that's how it came out,
right? I don't know.
I, I wish that we could have talked about it, right?
She passed in 2006. So there will never be those
conversations. Maybe it's better.
I don't know. I don't know if it's better that
I can't talk to her or not. You know, I, I have said to
myself multiple times it it is better that he's gone because it
was like there, there wasn't going to be a triangulation
there between him and my dad. There was no competition there.
When I told my dad that I had tested and he was like, OK.
And I said, and I learned that Michael died in 1983.
And he goes, he did. And I said, yeah.
And he goes, huh, I've thought all these years that he was just
a going to come back and steal my family away from me.
Oh, wow. I was like, well, you didn't
have to worry about that, dad. And he goes, I guess I didn't.
So I don't mean that to sound like unkind.
I'm not glad that he died so young, but also for my existence
and, and this process that I've gone through, it has just taken
that layer away of I, I didn't have to think about it.
I appreciate you taking the time, though, to speak about how
your view of your mom changed, because I think that that's an
important perspective to offer. And also just everything you
said about why people keep secrets and that, yeah, there's
that protective element for sure, whether they're protecting
themselves or if they're protecting their children or
someone else. It's very important.
Yeah. So I follow you on Instagram and
I see all of the genealogical work that you do and you just
post these beautifully written posts.
You got your grandmothers snack. Her writing?
I think. Oh, yeah.
Thank you. What are you working on now and
what are you hoping for in terms of your relationships with your
raised family or your newfound siblings?
OK, what am I working on now? I'm working on scanning in all
of my grandma's writing. That's been like a big project,
and it's honestly something I should have done a long time
ago. And I just had a block around
it, right? So I have all these originals
and they need to be scanned in to preserve them.
And I also want to be able to just share them in their
original digital form with any cousins that are interested.
They're not all interested. Some of them are like no, I
couldn't care less, but some of them are.
So I'm working on that, working on pulling apart oral history
versus documentation. And our minds are beautiful
things, but we all remember things in different ways, and
sometimes those different ways are completely incorrect.
Sometimes they're woven together with other memories.
And so I have so much of my grandma's writing that is, and,
and she was very honest about it.
And the. The little preface to her memoir
is like, I did no research. This is just my memories.
So like, don't come at me basically like that.
Yeah. Yeah.
And so really like looking at what she wrote and then having
the amazing ability to look things up in real time on the
Internet. And so I can find birth orders
and I can find obituaries and really just pulling together our
family history with both her writing and her accounts and
then the actual documentation, which has been a lot of fun and
a lot of her memories are spot on.
But there's been birth orders that are wrong or little things
here and there that maybe in the grand scheme aren't a really big
deal. But I think it's important to
find the truth in those stories as well, right?
If they were important enough for her to write down, let's
make sure that we have the, the facts correct for anybody else
who's interested in the future. So I'm focusing heavily on that.
And I have started a, I'm calling it a heritage journal
and basically creative journaling, A2 page spread for
each of my direct ancestors. And I started this as a way to
integrate the two sides of my biology, you know, as an NPE,
you learn about like genetic mirroring and all of these terms
that I had no clue existed before.
And there's still a disconnect between these people who are my
kin. And so many of them are already
gone, so I can't even have a conversation with them and, and
who I am and what passed down from generation to generation.
And I thought, OK, well, if I sit down with the black and
white information, I can get off the Internet.
If I sit down with some of these oral histories that these
cousins have shared with me so gratefully and just look at both
sides. I started with my mom and then I
went to Michael. And then I went to her mom and
her dad. And next is Michael's mom and
dad. And then my intention is to go
back through the generations as far as the Internet will allow
me to. And obviously the further I go
back, the less information I'll have.
It'll be more general, right time periods and you know, what
women were allowed to do and what not.
But even just these few, first few generations have been really
profound and just thinking about who each of these people were,
what their experiences were, what they liked, what they
didn't like, how they dressed, you know, all those things.
And, and that has been really healing for me in a lot of ways
that I didn't anticipate. I thought it was something that
I would like kind of whip through at 1st and it
immediately became clear like this is this is the long game.
This is the long game as I look at each individual person with
my mom's page, it was very cathartic.
And again, with the opposing emotions and facts being true at
the same time. Like really, how do you put
together A2 page spread for your mom and all of the things that
you know about her, the good and the bad, right?
So that was really interesting. And then moving on to Michael
and one of the greatest gifts that I've been given by my
little sister, Her mom kept some of his journaling pages a little
while after we connected. She was like, can you tell me
like years and like what your mom was and mom's name was and
whatnot. And she found pages that he had
written specifically like to my mom while she was pregnant with
me, after I was born, things like that.
And so she originally shared the scanned copies with me and then
she sent me the originals. And that was super intense for
me. This is his handwriting on the
paper that he touched. Wow.
And but it was also really insightful where he was
psychologically at the time, right?
What his handwriting look like, how big his handwriting was or
how small it got or things like that.
And so for his spread, I included, I, I copied and shrunk
down some of those pages and I included that in, in both the
hard things that he wrote. I'm trying to balance the
research and documentation, the black and white of it all, with
also the very real emotions that come with all of this.
And really doing my best to honor myself and honor whatever
feelings come up in that. Whether it's sadness or anger or
confusion or, you know, whatever it is.
And just allow those to flow 'cause this whole process is not
linear. It ebbs and flows all the time
depending on what's going on and I have been very lucky to have
so many people on Michael's side of the family be so giving with
information and photos. There has not been a single one
that has been like, Nope, not going to talk to you.
And that's just been amazing. As an adult, making
relationships with other adults is hard.
I mean, you hear it all the time on the Internet of people being
like, how do you make friends as a grown up?
It's really hard. And so it's so hard.
And so inserting yourself as a new family member into an
established family is hard as a grown up.
You don't have those same shared foundational experiences of kids
playing together or going to grandma's house for holiday
meals or anything like that. You're just two adults trying to
figure out if you even like each other and if you even want to
talk to each other. Like genetics aside, right?
I have my website where I write blog posts.
I have Instagram where I share things.
And that's also been really cathartic just to put things out
there and, and have that as an outlet for all of the things
family related, but also NPE and just to hear other people's
stories and see other people's reactions.
And the family history community is pretty small, right?
But they're pretty fierce. Like, people are super
supportive when you start talking about family history and
you start talking about these family surprises, whether
they're direct to people or it was their grandpa or, you know,
someone else in their family that had a surprise.
And so it's been really nice to not only share things that are
well received, but to also learn from other people what their
experiences are and how they're doing things and how we're all
just trying to walk each other home, honestly.
I love following you and reading the things that you write
because there it's such a beautiful perspective on history
and lineage and the way that we carry things from our ancestors.
And I just, I love all of it. So if people wanted to find you,
where would they go? To your website or Instagram?
So Bolden queer.com. And then my handle is Bolden
Queer, and that name actually comes from my great grandma
Hannah, who was raised as a Quaker, but she was a little
more adventurous than her mother liked.
And this is all based on my grandma's writing.
So her mom would say, Hannah, thee is being bold and queer.
And that was those were not good things.
Being bold as independent and strong and willing to take risks
and queer at the time was not LGBTQ queer.
It was your strange and unusual and you're doing things you
shouldn't be doing right. And so I really wanted to honor
Hannah and just honor our lineage and pulling, you know,
present and past together. And I call it folding time.
And so I, I landed on bold and queer and it's a good
conversation starter. People are like what?
Oh, I love that. I didn't know the back story of
the name, but I love that. I love a double entendre so.
Yeah, right. Yeah, what advice do you have
for a parent who's keeping adna surprise from their child?
I would say to suck it up and just tell the truth.
I know that that takes a level of strength and self-awareness
that is incredibly challenging. And I also know as an N P/E I
wouldn't want it any other way knowing the truth.
Both for medical reasons as well As for really kinship I think is
very important. And truly knowing who we are and
where we come from. The nature versus nurture
paradigm, gosh, I've learned a lot about that in the last five
years. And to see myself reflected in
these strangers that are my family has been just really awe
inspiring. I may have thought that one
aspect of my personality or being came from just my mom's
side because I didn't have anything else to compare it to,
right? I just knew that my dad who
raised me, nobody on that side did any of those things.
So surely that came from my mom's side.
And then to see, oh, actually no.
And have cousins say you right, just like grandpa.
Oh my gosh, you take photos just like uncle.
Oh my gosh. Like what?
OK, so I think that it's it's important.
And I know that it's scary. And I say that without fully
knowing that it's scary. But I know that the conversation
with my daughter about her grandpa was was pretty
devastating. So I can imagine how hard that
would be. And I would still say just suck
it up and tell the truth, that everyone deserves the truth.
What advice do you have for someone who just uncovered a DNA
surprise? Take a deep breath, Take a very
deep breath and know that none of it is your fault and know
that nothing has to be done immediately.
This is on your time frame. And go gently and trust that
everything that you uncover is exactly what needs to be
uncovered and you are whole and loved and a wonderful human, no
matter what choices were made before you or maybe continue to
be made around you. I think that through all of
this, one of my biggest lessons has been that we're we're truly
never alone on our paths. And as hard as things are, as
scary as they are, as shocking as information can be, you're
never alone. There's always going to be
somebody who has your back. And that I, I believe that that
can be in the physical world and that can also be in the
ancestors coming forward and supporting you in ways that you
might not even be aware of, right?
And so I think that the only way through is through and going
gently with yourself so that you're able to process and heal
and move forward and then share as you can, right?
Not everybody wants to share, but I really feel like being
able to talk to people like you is so healing.
And for people to hear about people like us is so healing.
And we live in a very unique time where technology has
allowed us to learn a lot about our families that we would have
never known before. These secrets would have never
come out before. And so it's a lot it, it can be
very healing and it can be very intense.
And I honestly wouldn't have it any other way.
I, I really am glad that I know the truth.
I'm really glad that I've met all of the people that I've met.
And I'm really glad to have gained the perspective around my
conception and how my mom may have processed that throughout
her life, right? And I think that that's really
special as much as it is painful.
It's really special to to have that awareness and that
knowledge and to know that I'm standing in my truth and to know
that I'm not responsible for everybody else's feelings.
Yeah, that I can. I can walk forward in in
strength and in grace and know that everybody else is gonna be
OK too. That's important.
Oh, that was so well said. Melissa, thank you so much for
joining me and sharing your story.
The work that you're doing is so incredible.
Looking back across so many generations of your family and
then the way that you've processed your own NPE is just
really inspiring. I will be sure to link Melissa's
information in the show notes for anyone who's listening and
wants to find her. But thank you again and I just
wish you the best. Thank you.
Thank you so much. Thanks again to Melissa for
sharing her story. If you have Adna Surprise that
you'd like to share, please submit your story at
dnasurprises.com. And remember, for early access
to ad free episodes, join me over on patreon@patreon.com/DNA
Surprises. Until next time.
This episode of DNA Surprises was hosted, produced and edited
by me Alexis Ourselt. It was mixed and mastered by
Josh Ourselt of Siren Recording Studios.