I hear a car pull up and I peek out and it wasn't like a nice
car, a Cadillac. And this man gets out and he
looks familiar. I had the same kind of thought,
but I didn't remember this as the man I'd see.
And I just thought, well, this is somebody who looks familiar.
And like I said, he's the the kindest, warmest, most wonderful
person. My mom introduces me to him and
he takes us out to this nice steakhouse.
If we go out to dinner, it's fast food.
If we sit down at Denny's, I don't know what to order.
You know, he orders prime rib for me.
He's like, do you like prime rib?
I have no idea. We would drink water.
He orders me a Shirley Temple. And then he's just keeps coming
around and he starts coming to my softball games, and he's just
this warm, kind presence in our lives.
And he's just present for all of us for years.
What was I then? 1415, maybe.
And so that was another thought I had there sitting in the car.
All this time, he has been enjoying being present in his
daughter's life. And I have seen him as another
in a long line of substitute deaths.
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. If you've had Adna surprise, how
many times have you been told that you should write a book?
This week's episode is a story that is truly stranger than
fiction. Tracy shares how, at 19, her
mother revealed the truth about her paternity.
This truth sent Tracy reeling, but her mother insisted that she
always knew it. Her mom went on to explain the
events that led them to that moment.
It's a story straight out of a true crime novel, and Tracy
didn't remember any of it. Tracy goes on to share what
happened after the revelation, including how she moved forward
with her parents, who married just a few years after her DNA
surprise. Thank you Tracy for sharing your
story. My name is Tracy, I'm 56 and I'm
from Seattle, WA. My DNA surprise story started
when I was almost 19, so just a couple weeks before I was 19
years old and there was so much excitement going on that time.
It was a couple of weeks before I was getting married and also
my brother was preparing for the trials to be on the World
Wrestling team, the World USA Wrestling team.
So there was a ton to be excited about in our family, which is
really relevant because it kind of masked that my mom was just a
little bit off and distracted, which is unlike her.
She she has always been so vested in everything all of us
were doing. So the wrestling trials were in
over Memorial Day weekend in the San Francisco Bay Area.
And so all of you, like my birthday on the wedding and
everything was the end of June. But my mom and I were taking a
road trip down to watch my brother in these wrestling
trials, which was very exciting. And I hadn't seen him in almost
a year, which I never went that long without seeing him, even
when he lived in Europe. We're just really, really close.
I just would show up at his house, wherever he lived all
over the world. And so I was super excited to
see him. And this road trip started off
and somewhere along the way, kind of right on the Oregon,
California border, my mom started up like really
intentionally started up this conversation about being really
remorseful that my dad wasn't going to be at the wedding.
And she, you know, was trying to reassure me this was going to be
OK, Which seemed really out of the blue because I hadn't had
any communication with my dad in over six or seven years at that
point. So there was 0 expectation on my
part that he would be at my wedding.
It was just not, not even on the radar at all.
So I'm like, why are you bringing this up?
That seems so bizarre. And how did he kind of leave
your life, you know, six to seven years earlier?
He left our lives when we were much younger.
It was probably when I was six or seven, he moved to Alaska and
he was remarried. So his wife and you know, we had
step siblings, but they lived in Alaska so we rarely saw him.
We meeting my two older siblings and I went to Alaska for the
whole month of July when I was 9 to visit them.
And then that was really the last contact we had with him.
That was a really awful trip. And then he came back one time.
I remember when I was 12, he would just show up out of but we
never had any idea that he was coming.
And then he came to my brother's wedding.
But bizarrely, we didn't know he was going to come.
He stood in the back. And, you know, you just only
remember things through your own lens.
But I remember he just awkwardly said hi to me.
Like, like, he kind of shook my hand as a 12 year old, just
like, OK, but I mean, that's, that's my dad.
But I hadn't seen him then in three years, and that was the
last time that I had had any communication with him at all.
OK, my sister, who's between my brother and me and age, had
moved to Alaska to live with him in the middle of high school.
And she only stayed in his home for like 6 weeks before he
kicked her out and and she went to live with someone else.
So he's he was just not a great dad ever.
So it was really bizarre for my mom to bring this up.
Like I was somehow heartbroken and had these secret dreams that
he would show up. It just wasn't a part of it at
all for me. And she'd said, you know, I, I
just don't want you to feel like there's this dark cloud over
your wedding because your dad's not going to be there.
And I'm like, there's just not like I just didn't have that
expectation. And she'd said that Marco is
going to be there now. Marco was just like a lifelong
family friend, someone we'd kind of known.
Like, I didn't even know why, but we'd just always known this
person. And then my mom started dating
him when I was 16, and we all just love him.
He's amazing. And so he was going to be there.
He was going to just kind of stand in.
And it was really fantastic. And so I'm like, yeah, I know
all of this. Like, this is so crazy.
Why are you forcing this conversation?
And I was like, yeah, I know. I appreciate that.
It's great. And she's she waited like, I was
going to add something to this conversation.
And she said, well, you need to know that my dad, the person I
believe is my dad, you need to know he's not your father.
Marco is. And I was, like, stunned.
I couldn't really, like, breathe.
I couldn't, like, hear her anymore.
It was just almost like, like on, you know, Charlie Brown.
Like, there was this voice continuing to talk, but I was
just not able to even take in what she was saying.
And I was having a hard time breathing or just staring out
the windshield just like, what? What did she just say to me?
This was a total surprise. Had you ever suspected or even
wished that Marco was your biological father?
Never. I mean, I had no idea.
This was the most far fetched thing that I could have ever.
It just never crossed my mind. And she was looking at me like,
why are you behaving so bizarrely, like you knew this.
I did not know this. I don't know what?
Why do you think I absolutely do not know this?
She, she was just like, oh, come on, you're being so dramatic.
And then I like that kind of snapped me back into the
conversation that I became so angry that she was just like,
oh, please, like, I do not know this.
I have never known this. Why do you think I know this?
She's like, you knew this until you were five.
You knew this every day of your life until you were five.
We just thought you didn't want to talk about it.
I'm like, if that's true, you let A5 year old decide that she
just didn't want to talk about it.
For the last 13 years, you let a child make that decision.
I was just utterly beside myself.
I couldn't even come up with the questions.
They were coming to my mind so fast I couldn't get them out of
my mouth. How did I come to believe that?
You know, my brother and sister's dad is my dad.
I've seen my birth certificate, his name is on my birth
certificate. So what's the story like?
What happened? You need to start from absolute
beginning because I don't know any of this.
So she starts from the beginning that she was married and had my
brother and sister and then she and her husband separated and
she went to work for my dad who was married and had two kids.
And then eventually they started a relationship.
She became pregnant with me, which ended her marriage to my
brother and sister dad because they were separated.
But when she became pregnant with me, it became clear that
this this marriage is officially and and formally and finally
over. But my dad didn't leave his
family, he stayed married and had his two kids and she
continued working for him and they had me and I just started
going to work with her every day.
So my dad owned 2 Taverns and she was his bookkeeper and she
brought me to work there during the day when they weren't open
because way back then Taverns weren't open during the day.
And I just grew up, you know, from emphasize to childhood
until I was 5, seeing him every day and knowing him as my dad.
During that early time when my mom was working for him and I
was little, he was working with a very good friend of his who
was the chief of police in the town who was trying to catch
some corrupt police officers who were involved in the drug ring.
And he thought, you know, maybe this might be going on in your
establishment. They won't realize that you're
watching for me. If you could just keep your eye
out. And sure enough, my dad saw this
going on and told his friend at the Police Department.
And those four officers were arrested and stood trial and
were convicted. And they knew that was my dad,
who was the source of that information.
So even from prison, they were watching and waiting for some
opportunity to retaliate. And so when I was 5, my mom kind
of got tired of waiting around for for him to leave his wife
and leave his family and all the things that that, you know, she
was being told those empty promises.
Did his wife and family know about their relationship and
you? It's unclear to me if his wife
knew. I have an inkling that she
probably had some idea. I know that his brother knew
because he was a part of their business, but the rest of his
family had no idea. To this day, some of his family
don't know that I exist. OK.
When I was 5, my mom ended that relationship.
She quit working for him. She got a different job and in
the same window of time, maybe in the same month's time, his
mother passed away. His mother, who he was maybe too
close to and extremely protective of.
So in the same month he'd lost my mom, he'd lost contact with
me, and he'd lost his mother. And he had what then?
They would have called like a nervous breakdown.
And so these officers from prison had had people watching
for an opportunity to retaliate. And they said, now's the time.
Now that he's just not really very stable.
My mom had met someone new at her new job who would later
become my stepdad and they hired someone to go to my dad and say
this new man in their lives is abusing your daughter.
And this man offered to kill him.
They said it, I will kill him for you.
And my dad, not in his right mind, said yes, I will hire you
to do that. So he provided a gun and he
provided the money, but what he did is he got $1000 and he tore
each of the bills in half. And it's like, here's half and
you can have the other half when it's carried out.
So because behind all of this were police officers, they were
able to tip off the police through all these back channels
that my dad had hired a hit man to kill my stepdad.
So the police came to us. They informed my parents that
this was happening. And this I remember, they took
us into police custody. They hit us away for several
days. I don't remember because now I'm
5, right? So maybe three, maybe four days,
we had to stay in this really, really lousy hotel.
We couldn't even open the curtains.
And then my father was arrested and he was held in jail where he
was beaten. And mercifully, he told me
later, because the police again were exacting revenge and he
didn't have money for bail. So he had to stay in jail for
months and months until his trial where he was tried for
attempted murder. But he was found innocent by
reason of entrapment because the crime was conceived of in the
mind of the police. But that is when all contact
with me and with my mom was severed.
Because you can imagine, my stepdad did not want him coming
around. He underwent a lot of
psychological care. He was not well.
As I spent a lot of time processing and looking back over
I, I knew this thinking through. Should I have ever figured that
out? There were times because we
still lived in the same town. He lived about 20 minutes away
from us. There were two times that we
accidentally ran into him just out and about.
One time in particular, when I was 8 and I had fallen down ice
skating and I had cut my chin open and I needed stitches.
But, you know, just a, a minor surface cut on your chin bleeds
like crazy. So my shirt and my jeans were
covered in blood. My mom had taken me to the
emergency room and I had stitches, but I had a bandage
from eyebrow under my chin up to eyebrow, and I'm covered in
blood. And I talked her into taking me
to Dairy Queen to get some ice cream because I had undergone
this traumatic event of getting stitches.
And he was in that Dairy Queen with his older two children on
this Friday night. And we walk in, and he hasn't
seen me now in three years. And I'm show up with this huge
bandage covered in blood. And I have this distinct memory
of this man just, like, clearing the way, pushing people out of
the way to get to us. Like, what happened to her?
Is she OK? And I thought it was so cool
that I had this big bench and I'm covered in blood and I
wanted to go in and make sure everybody saw me for all the
attention. Get attention, Yeah.
And my, and I made my mom promise like, we can get ice
cream and we can go in and we can eat it there, right?
And she's like, yes, yes, yes, Oh my gosh, this is ridiculous.
But when he saw us and came across the restroom, instantly
we had to go. We couldn't get ice cream.
We couldn't stay. It's too late and we left and I
was miffed, you know, 8 year old me, he's like what the heck, you
promised like what? See you said we could get ice
cream, but only in looking back at it like I was like, oh, that
makes sense. But at the time I just thought,
well, he looks familiar and why do we have to go?
But it it just didn't register. I didn't recognize him other
than he looks familiar. My mind, I think just protected
me from from all of that. At some point he re enters your
life. And how does like This is
stranger than fiction? So.
He goes from spending time in jail for attempted murder
against your stepfather. All this time from, you know,
one to five. You know that he's your
biological father, according to your mother.
Obviously that is a very traumatic series of events that
happens to you and at some point you forget that he's your
biological father. Yeah.
And then 1413, fourteen years later, he's brought up again.
He's going to be at your wedding.
He's back. Yeah, he's back.
My mom and stepdad divorced when I was about 13.
And then shortly thereafter, my sister had moved to Alaska.
My brother graduated and went off to college and then joined
the Army. And it was just me and my mom at
home. And, you know, we were just
having a great time, just the two of us.
And then I remember coming home from softball practice and my
mom said, you have to, you have to get dressed quickly.
We're leaving, leaving. We just got home.
She's like, well, we're a friend of mine is coming to take us out
to dinner. Like, my mom didn't date.
She wasn't a dater. She was dedicated to us.
And like, really, And now she was dedicated to me, really.
She was just at everything I did.
When she wasn't working, she was there.
And it it was the most unusual thing in the world.
Like what? And we didn't go out either.
I mean, my mom was a single mom working really hard, but she
worked in a grocery store. So we didn't have a lot of
extra. We had everything we needed, but
not a lot extra. And so we didn't go out to eat.
And so I hear, I'm in my room trying to get dressed.
I hear a car pull up and I peek out.
And it wasn't like a nice car, a Cadillac.
And this man gets out. And I think, let's eat with a
man Like what? And he looks familiar.
I had the same kind of thought, but I didn't remember this as
the man I'd see. And I just thought, well, this
is somebody who looks familiar. And like I said, he's the the
kindest, warmest, most wonderful person.
My mom introduces me to him, and he takes us out to this nice
steakhouse. If we go out to dinner, it's
fast food. If we sit down at Denny's.
I don't know what to order. You know, he orders prime rib
for me. He's like, do you like prime
rib? I have no idea.
We would drink water. He orders me a Shirley Temple.
And then he's just keeps coming around and he starts coming to
my softball games and he's just this warm, kind presence in our
lives. And he's just present for all of
us for years. What was I then?
1415, maybe? And so that was another thought
I had there sitting in the car. All this time, he has been
enjoying being present in his daughter's life.
And I have seen him as another in a long line of substitute
deaths. For example, when I was a senior
in high school, I was elected to be homecoming queen, which is a
great honor that I did not want because I was the only person of
all of the freshmen and the sophomores and the juniors and
the people in my class on the guys and the girls who didn't
have their parent there with them.
I was the only one with a substitute death and just
standing there in the line. I was just embarrassed, you
know, and I was just like, I always have a substitute dad.
Was he there? Was he was.
There with me. He was there with me to escort
me and he knew that he was there to escort his daughter.
But I was embarrassed and I wish I had wished that my friend had
won because it was kind of between the two of us.
And I was like, I just wish that this was her because her dad had
often been my substitute dad. Her dad like taught me how to
drive a stick shift and had had done so many things that dads do
for their kids. I had kind of confessed that to
another friend. She's like, you don't even seem
excited about this. I'm like, to be honest, I wish
this was you or one of the other people because you don't know
how bad it feels because you have your dad.
Just like, are you kidding? You have you have Marco.
I'm like, he's fantastic, but it's not the same.
I would just rather cheer for you.
So those kinds of things were just hurtful looking back on.
Do you think that your mom believed that you knew this, or
do you think that she believed that you didn't know that Marco
was your dad? I mean, I know once kind of
confronted, she's like, of course you knew, but do you
think she knew? I really think she thought
somewhere inside of me, I did, because she would never
willingly hurt me. She just wouldn't.
That's not who she is. That's not the mom she's ever
been. And I think she thought she was
always doing what was best for me, she said.
I just never found a time that seemed right, that wouldn't be
so disruptive to an adolescent's life.
I always thought maybe now why don't she's doing so well.
I don't want to disrupt her life.
I don't want to cause her any trouble.
So she didn't want to like check in and and say you, you know
this, right? You do know this when you had
this conversation in the car, She just told you everything
about the whole Hitman jail story.
That is so much to take in. Which of course as a 5 year old
I I didn't know about. I think, well they sorted
everything out and then we just went on with our lives.
There was a lot that happened in our lives that of course, having
this person who I thought was my dad, who was not a great dad,
who was always absent and always away.
He's an alcoholic. So that was developed in me and
my siblings. A lot of coping mechanisms that
children of Alcoholics developed, you know, of trying
to please and trying to be very good, trying to do everything
you can to make sure that you're the one who's keeping the peace.
And all of those coping mechanisms were still very much
intact because my stepfather was also an alcoholic and living in
the home with him really reinforced all of those coping
mechanisms. And I would be remiss if I
didn't say that at that same time, right around 5 years old
is when I went to church with my neighbors and I came to my own
Christian faith that that was such an anchor to me throughout
this because I, you know, I just found a way to always like take
a bus. There was this church had a bus
to Sunday school. And when that stopped, there was
a bus to Awana. And without that faith, I really
don't know how I would have survived all of that turmoil
because it was such an anchor to be able to tell myself I am
loved no matter what with who I thought was my dad in Alaska
being so particularly mean to me.
Like that trip to Alaska because he knew I wasn't his.
And for some reason he went along with this charade.
He agreed to having my name put on his birth certificate.
My mom said, in fact, it was his idea because one day when he was
picking up and dropping off my older brother and sister, he's
like, what are you going to do with this third child?
I mean, clearly you're on your own.
And she said, I don't know. And he said, you know, what you
should do is you should just give that child my name.
You have three kids. They're all the same.
So 1 isn't being raised differently.
And she thought, you know what, you're right.
And so she did that. That's where the idea came from
to put his name on my birth certificate.
And he went along with it. I don't know how I came to
believe he was my dad. I mean, just one time he came to
pick up my brother and sister. I was like, can I go?
Can I come along? And they're all like, sure,
what's one more, you know, and. I mean, you were so young, you
were so young, and memory is just weird anyway, when you're
that age and and then you believe what you want to
believe, and you do. If nobody tells you any
different, it's easy to kind of make up a story and stick with
it. Wow.
And I asked my mom, like, why would you send me to Alaska for
a month to be with people who are not my parents?
And she said it was never my intention that you would go.
You were so young. I thought we would get there.
We would get to the airport and you'd be like, no, I don't want
to go. And I would say, OK, you don't
have to. And I'd bring you back home with
me again. You left this to a child, such a
happenstance. But when we got to the airport,
you were so excited. You jumped on that plane.
And I thought, well, she always loves to go.
Like I never really let her know until really until recently when
I wrote about all of this, she didn't really know what I
endured there, which isn't entirely fair to her because
like I said, she would never intentionally hurt me.
So my our birthdays, my brother's birthday is 8 days
before mine and my sister's birthday is 10 days after mine.
So it's like this little festival of birthdays.
And we arrived there on my birthday.
And when we got to their tiny little home, there was a
birthday party set up. There were decorations.
There was a cake. And I being 9, I assumed, like,
this is my birthday party. And it was for my brother.
I mean, only his name was on the cake, and there was only a gift
for him. And then naively, I was like,
hey, it's my birthday today. And they made it very clear,
like, we know and we don't care. You don't get a birthday, which
was devastating. And then ten days later, the
same thing for my sister, a huge birthday party and they got her
ears pierced for her. And, and then my stepmom, who is
particularly cruelly sighted, we're going to tell the stories
of when everyone was born. My dad, or, you know, then who I
thought was my dad, started with the story of my brother's birth,
which was very dramatic. He was almost 11 lbs and my mom
was in intensive care. And it was, you know, just very
dramatic story. And then my sister, like, well,
tell me about me when I was born.
He's like, well, I got to go in the delivery room by then.
And I got to see you be born. And it was amazing to see you
come like, right when you're born and the first breath of
life and all these details. And then he was done telling the
stories. And I said, well, wait, what
about when I was born? Tell me about when I was born.
And he looked at me. He said, I didn't know you were
born for three weeks. And I didn't care, just
devastated 'cause I thought that was my dad.
I'm. So sorry.
So you go 10 years from that point.
I mean, he was already not really involved in your life
anyway, but you go 10 years from that moment to learning that he
wasn't your father. And so 10 years of feeling
really rejected and wow. That night, I mean I was like
you cannot let him see you cry. You cannot let him know.
But that night I crawled and Brett in bed with my brother and
I was just like I I don't understand.
I'm trying to be so good but I can't I can't be good enough.
And I had changed the words to Jesus loves me in my mind.
I was like Jesus loves me this I know and why you hate me I don't
know. But Jesus loves me this I know
and I just that that bedrock knowledge that I was still loved
just sustained me, but we still had three weeks before could go
back home. It was it was tough.
So going back through all of those kinds of things and
realizing everyone else knew this.
My older siblings knew this. That's.
What I was going to ask is, did your siblings know?
You know, they were still kids themselves, but as they got
older, they knew and they were aware that they should keep the
secret. And as they came to realize that
my cousins knew, they would hear a conversation.
They would pick up on something that adults were saying because
I wasn't there. And they were made known.
Like, you cannot tell. Obviously, my aunts and uncles
knew. My grandparents knew it.
It dawned on me the more I processed this.
Most everyone knows this and has kept this secret.
And that sense of betrayal just continued to gut me.
The more I realized, the more I came across.
It's like. Wow, you, you have this
conversation with your mom, She tells you this, you find out
everything. Do you talk to Marco after this
conversation? I really kind of sat in stunned
silence after the I mean, that was a long conversation where.
And Hustler was so mad. I'm like, you trapped me in this
car. I need to get away.
Like I feel so trapped. And my brother competed in this
competition. To be honest, I have no idea if
he won or lost. And it wasn't until after he was
done that I was able to talk to him and and he's always been a
safe harbor for me. And he was like, listen, I, I
know this is really, really hard, but living our entire
lives all day, every day, like sleeping in the backyard,
teaching you where's the Big Dipper and where's the Little
Dipper and teaching how to juggle a soccer ball.
All of those things are what make you my sister.
And nothing can ever change that.
And I was like, I know that's true, but this is this is going
to take me a minute. Like I am knocked on my butt
right now. But The thing is all of those
shove it down, put on a smile please.
Everyone else coping skills kicked in and when I came home
my fiance was waiting in the driveway because we had to get
off to this like pre marriage thing you had to do at the
church. And we had only a few weeks left
everything to do. And he had all these ideas.
I thought about this, what this is and I was just like, I don't
I cannot get married. We got to cancel this whole
thing. I don't know who I am.
I got to rethink my whole life. This is this is no way to start.
And he was just like as stunned as I was like you.
This is what my mom just told me.
And he was like, like, what? But but no time out.
You can't cancel the wedding. I'm like, really, this is this
is nonsense. Just to try to start off a
marriage like this. I mean, I am absolutely upside
down and he is like, no, I'm not.
I'm not going to let you do it. I understand like, but like, no,
it's I'm sorry. This and I had finals.
I was in college, I had finals to face.
Went back to school. He came and found me the next
day. I just was sitting watch, you
know, I went to the University of Washington.
I was sitting on the Mott light cut where the yachts go by and
just sitting there early, early in the morning.
And I was just like praying, like I'm so lost.
I don't know what to do. I mean, I don't feel like asking
like why I hate those kinds of questions.
Like it's why not? I mean, lots of terrible things
happen in this world. I've experienced a lot of them.
But I don't know what to do and how much time went by.
But my then fiance, now husband walks up and sits down beside
me. He's like, do you know how many
places I've looked? I've looked all the places.
This was the last one. Like I don't know where she is.
And he just sat there and he's like, we, we can call this off.
Like I understand, like you must be beside yourself.
So I'm not going to try to talk you out of that.
Or we can just still get married and figure this out together.
It's not really going to change that.
I'm still going to help you figure this out.
And he was just like in tears. And I thought, now I'm just
hurting more people. I don't want to do that.
So I don't know if that was a wise decision because there was
so much fallout that he bore the rent of.
Because what I did to my family is what I always did.
Just put on a smile. I'll be the compliant one who
doesn't ever cause any trouble. And it was really, really
awkward the first time I saw Marco.
When I saw my dad, I could tell he was really, he was so
relieved and just so happy. And I just felt awful.
But I was trying to make him feel better about it.
We got married, we went away at our honeymoon, we came back and
it was just like, well, that's behind us.
And I just kind of kept pushing down all those terrible feelings
until my doctor thought I had an ulcer.
Like my stomach hurt so bad. Within a year, I went there
putting like a scope down my throat to look and see what's
going on with the the inside of your stomach lining.
And I finally had to like, start writing about this and
processing it, but just for myself and never really
addressed it with my parents because I finally had parents
and I didn't want to disrupt that in any way.
And then a few years later, my parents married each other and I
really had parents. I had family.
Were you happy? Were you?
How did you feel I. Was because it was just like I
could talk to anyone and I could say Oh well, my parents are
going to come over and they were my parents.
I was still processing so much and I would I would shock myself
sometimes by the things that would kind of explode out of me.
I was like, who was that? Because there was a lot shoved
down in and my husband helped a lot, or he saw what was seeping
out. What was coming up?
Was it feelings around the betrayal, the the lie, the not
knowing what was bringing up kind of negative quote UN quote
emotions for you? Mostly I just, I would get
really angry and I'm just not an angry person.
And I thought, what, what is that?
What's going on with me? Because that's just not me.
I would say I did a really good job of shoving this all down and
putting a big smile on my face and marching forward and being
so happy to have parents who are married to each other.
And then when I was 25, my son was born and he he almost bled
to death from his circumcision because he has hemophilia, which
means his blood doesn't clot. And that runs in families or
there are certain percentage of people who it's just a brand new
spontaneous mutation is what they call it.
And so when they diagnosed him and they started to get him
stabilized and he had to spend an extra week in the hospital to
get him stabilized. And they started doing a lot of
genetic testing to find where this comes from because it is a
disease that only males have, but females carry it because
it's on the X chromosome. And so when all of that testing
came back, it took about 5 months, I think, for all of the
testing that came to come back. What they told me was this
mutation came from your dad. So the X you got 1X from your
mom, you got 1X from your dad. And the X that came from your
dad is healthy in him. He doesn't have hemophilia, but
at your conception, it mutated. And so you carry the disease.
And that is the X that you gave to your son.
And that was the most devastating news that I received
in this in in my entire life, I think not that he had it.
I mean, that was upsetting because, well, when he almost
died and learning about what that would mean for his life
when he's actually gone on to live a miraculously healthy
life. But learning that, you know, I
was conceived of in this illicit relationship that was covered
over with a lie. And it was almost like right
down to my DNA, there was something wrong about me.
There was something broken about me.
And it's it's all the way down to my very DNA.
And then it was passed on to my completely innocent child and
there was nothing I could do about it.
It was so dark for me to feel that way about myself.
And it was the most challenging time to work through that and to
press into my faith and to press into these are not things I have
control over and these are things I have to trust.
That there is a plan that will work out and seeing, you know,
like 31 years later that my son's health has been protected
so beautifully and that maybe this story encourages someone
else and that there is a purpose for for it.
And that I have been protected and cared for through the
struggle and through the suffering is really, really
comforting. But you can kind of only see
that in hindsight. Yeah, yeah.
Thank you for sharing that. I mean, we hear so many times on
the podcast about how important that medical history is.
And for a lot of us, it's around the unknown or kind of minor
medical concerns. But this was life or death, you
know, for your son and for you to be able to get those answers,
I'm sure was. Such a relief and to know where
it came from and, and everything.
So thank you for sharing that. That was one thing I was very
thankful for as we sat in the hospital and the doctor said
we're going to need to do genetic testing.
I thought, I'm so glad this is not when I'm finding this out.
That would have been way too much all at once.
Oh. Gosh yeah, with everyone knowing
too. My dad would talk to me about
his family, his brother, his sister.
You know, they're Greek, they're first generation Greek
immigrants. And their Greek community is
this very tight knit community. And I was starting to see his
older two kids, my half siblings, and I wasn't sure what
they thought of me, how they were going to treat me.
And my half sister has always been very kind and very warm.
And my half brother has always been polite but very aloof.
I don't know what he's thought. I think he was particularly
angry with our dad, but he felt very lied to as well.
But like I said, some of my dad's family still didn't know
that I existed, or if they did, they didn't want to acknowledge
my existence. Because if you're not 100%
Greek, you're not acceptable, especially coming from this
relationship, this illicit affair.
And so he would he would see his family, but I was never
introduced to them to the extent like they were married.
My dad passed away in May of 2022.
So they were married for over 30 years when my dad passed away.
And at the end of his life, when he was in a Hospice in a
hospital bed in their living room, my mom was caring for him
and he couldn't be left alone. And I went over to visit him and
I opened the door and just walked in like I always do.
And this man sitting on the couch stood up and I startled
him and I expected my mom there and and he said, oh, hello, I'm
Evan. I'm Marco's nephew.
And then I knew his name and I knew who he was because I'd
heard so much about him from my dad, but I'd not met him.
And I said, oh, I'm Tracy. I'm Marco's daughter, which is
so awkward because he's my first cousin.
And he was so embarrassed. He's like, I'm I'm so sorry.
He just started stuttering. And I was like, you know what?
I'm going to let you have your visit because I know you're
really close and I'll come back and I just left.
How did that sort of rejection from that side of the family and
your Greek heritage that that was sort of one of your ties to
that factor into your struggles with identity?
Well, interestingly, in 2019, two of my kids and I went.
My dad's family is from this very tiny island almost to
Turkey. It's called Laros.
And my dad would tell me about this island and his
grandparents, my great grandparents, because my great
grandfather was an Orthodox priest on the island.
And he would tell me of this critical role.
There was a really important World War 2 battle on this tiny
little island and and I was love history.
And I think because he was a priest, my great grandfather was
a priest and I'm a person of deep faith and he was a teacher.
And I think they were just safe people for my dad to tell me
about because I shouldn't have known them.
I shouldn't have had any access to them, whereas I should have
known his parents, but I didn't. And they never knew I even
existed. And I should have known a lot of
his family. But I don't know a lot of his
family, so he would tell me a lot about them.
And so I went there and it was, I was trying to learn more about
him and I, I didn't really learn a lot while I was there.
And I intended to go back, but then there was the pandemic.
So I just got back two weeks ago.
I intended to go for. I was like, I'm going there and
I'm going to stay for three weeks because I think it's going
to take that much time as I don't read Greek, I don't speak
Greek, and I just want to learn as much as I can about my great
grandfather and this amazing story that my dad told me.
He told me that this this island was bombed for 52 straight days
by the German army. It's only 9 miles long and six
miles wide. So just complete devastation.
My dad told me that my great grandfather took all the Greek
civilians into these caves during the bombing and basically
saved them from the bombing. There were no civilian
casualties. And then the German army won the
battle, the ground battle eventually.
And when they saw that all these Greek civilians were alive, they
killed my great grandparents. They drugged them through the
streets behind tanks and they buried them alive in these caves
to die. So it's this really interesting,
amazing story. And when I went there, I was
trying, I learned so much about him.
I found these books and I talked to one person.
So you should go talk to that person, should go talk to that
person. But nobody knew about this story
then. And I found all kinds of stuff
about him. I was at the church
administration building and the library and, and a historian and
an artist and just every single step led me to another step.
It was an amazing adventure. And then finally, I was talking
to one woman who works for an architect and she said, you
know, we work with some civil engineers with that same last
name. It's a small place.
It's they've got to know. So she just called them and she
handed me the phone. It's like, Oh my goodness.
So I said, I'm here from Seattle, WA, and I'm looking for
information about my great grandfather.
His name was Papa, Marco's Papa. And he said, well, that's my
great grandfather's name. Why don't you come to our office
tonight at 8:00? And like, he's my second cousin.
But The thing is that story's not true.
So I asked them about this story and, and the bombing and the
caves and, and he turned to his father, who doesn't speak
English. And he said something in Greek.
And the look on his father's face, he just, he furrowed his
brow and he frowned and he shook his head no.
And he said something back in Greek.
And his son said to me that just didn't happen.
Your great grandparents, they, they died peacefully of old age
at home before the war even happened.
And I just had this sinking feeling in my stomach.
I thought, why did you lie to me again?
I felt so foolish. I think maybe that's the the
most common feeling that I've had throughout this is I just
thought, I feel like such a fool.
Why did I believe all these lies?
Why didn't I figure it out? As I look back, there were so
many clues. There were so many times when
someone slipped up, when something didn't align, when why
was I such a fool? She was not figuring it out.
And I thought, I have been here for three weeks and do you know
how many people I have told this story to who must be going?
That didn't happen. But mostly I my instant thought
was relief. I thought, I'm so glad they did
not have a violent end. And then I thought, look at me
just believing this again. These people on this island were
so wonderful. They instantly welcomed us our
last night there. My husband joined me for the
last 10 days because he wasn't up for three weeks of research
sitting in the library with Google Translate on books.
But oh, they, they all came everyone on the island.
So two young men who translated, both named after their
grandfather. This is a Greek tradition.
You name your kids after your parents.
And my great grandparents had seven kids and one of them has
four boys. And the three of them and their
wives and their kids all came to this dinner they had for us.
And they welcomed me with just warmth and open arms and
curiosity. It was so, so wonderful.
And I said to my husband here on this island, I have never felt
more at home. It was great.
The first time we went, my daughter and I were just at a
town square and we watched some people just Greek dancing.
And we stood there for so long watching.
And my daughter was like, you're seeing the culture you didn't
get to be a part of. We went to cooking classes and
all those things that make up, you know, a cultural identity.
I just, I met up with this woman who I'd met the first time there
and she's like, I'm sorry, I've got to go.
I'm going to grip my Greek dance lessons.
She goes, would you like to come?
I would love to come and I thought I was just going to
watch, but they included me in and I just did this whole Greek
dance class. They were.
It was amazing. That's amazing.
It was. It was such a gift.
I I just want to recognize that feeling that you said about
feeling foolish, because that's something that comes up a lot.
I think so many people have those moments of like, how could
I have felt so foolish is the perfect word.
I, I used to say I felt so stupid.
But foolish really is it because you just believed what was told
to you? But the person who told this to
you was your parents. And, and we should believe what
our parents tell us, right? That's that's what we are raised
to believe. Yeah.
Do you feel like he was honest with you about most things?
Did did he often tell little lies or.
I'm so baffled with why he told you that story.
Yeah, I, I have no idea. But, you know, as I was
preparing to go on this trip and trying to gather as much
information as I could before I went, I was asking my mom
questions. And she doesn't know a lot
because this family hasn't been really warm and welcoming to her
either. But this nephew has been
wonderful to her. And he and his wife are still
close to my mom. She, she said, you know, you
could, you could reach out to Evan and he would tell you
anything he knows. So I emailed him and he was, he
was really gracious to me. He sent me like, here's a whole
family tree. These are all the people who I
know. His mother was my dad's older
sister and she's no longer alive either.
She had the most contact with the relatives back in Greece.
So in this e-mail exchange, I said, I'm really curious about
this story about Papa Marcos and the war and, and, you know, the
way he died. And he said, I am so shocked.
I've never heard that story. I wonder if it was too painful
for my mom to tell me that story.
And I thought something's off there.
And the reason he hadn't heard it is because it wasn't true.
My parents were the most amazing grandparents to my kids you
could ever, ever wish for. And I just think I need
forgiveness all the time and I need grace all the time.
So how could I possibly withhold it?
You just have to be open handed there, even though it's very
difficult. But as I'm talking to my kids
about it, like, you know, this story that Papu's told me my
whole life and my oldest daughter said it, well, she
goes, Papu is a fantastic storyteller.
It was one of his gifts. And my son said, you know,
that's kind of on brand. I'm so sorry.
I understand. And like, I'm so embarrassed.
He goes, it would be natural to be embarrassed, mom, but that's
not a reflection of you. And I have, I have to tell
myself like, that's not a reflection of me, but.
Wise words from your son. Yeah, yeah.
How did you get to this place? I know faith is it has been a
big part of your journey. How did you get to this place of
forgiveness and allowing them to be in your life as your parents
from 19 on and grandparents to your kids?
How did you emotionally get there?
Yeah, I. Think I am a writer.
And so I started off just writing it in my journal and
processing it, writing it, writing it.
And like you said at the beginning, this is a really a
strange story where you people, whenever I've told someone the
whole story with all of the wrinkles to it, they always say,
Oh my goodness, you've got to write a book.
And so finally it started taking that shape and I really felt
like it was a great example of coming to a place of a process
of healing, because I think it's an ongoing process.
And writing that book that might become an example for somebody
else. And being able to lean into even
a hard story and sticking with it and not trying to run away
from it, not trying to numb it, not trying to shove it down
anymore. And I think it was very shocking
to my parents that I was processing all of it because
like I said, I'm always the one who's just putting on a smile
and looking like all's well. And it wouldn't be except for
probably my husband and my kids, who knew how much I was really
wrestling with. But the process of writing it
was very cathartic. And then I do a lot of research
for my job about just rumination and mental health as I advise
college students. And, and I came across a book
that talked about, and I do talk to myself out loud, but if you
use your own name and shifting into the third person and taking
a narrator's perspective is really, really helpful in
creating that distance to help you see things more clearly and
because and become less embroiled in them.
And I thought that is really what I was doing.
That writing process was so helpful.
And I made a decision with the book that I wrote to change all
of the names and also to fictionalize some pieces of it
purposefully so that if anybody in my family was upset by the
book, they could easily just say, well, it's fiction.
And some of it is. Some of it had to be fiction
because there's still gaps that I don't know.
And it also protects people. What is your book called?
It's called After the Rotting, and it came from a very poignant
conversation with my then toddler daughters because now
they're in their early 30s. We were walking through this
apricot orchard and my daughter at that point, she was like 2
1/2 and she saw a bunch of rotting apricots on the ground
that had fallen from the trees. And she was so upset by the
rotting nest. And she was hitting with a
stick. And she's like, this is a mess.
And I don't like it. And she was just disgusted by
it. And I have no idea if this is
accurate in terms of like how how trees grow.
And I'm not an arborist, but I was trying to encourage her.
I'm like, listen, you're right. This is a mess.
I mean, there's maggots and it was just gross.
I was like, but you see this hard part, you see the pit, all
of this has to rot away before a new tree can grow.
And I just felt like the truth said into me.
I just felt like God was saying, yes, this is a hard, ugly, messy
process. But you see these two little
girls and that little boy sleeping back at home.
All of this has to rot away before this new tree can grow.
And you can change this legacy, which has kind of been our
mission, my husband and mine, because his family is pretty
unstable and and very messy too. We are going to change this
legacy for these three if it's the only thing we do in this
life. And of course it's not perfect.
And you know, we haven't been perfect parents.
We didn't get a great toolbox, hand it to us.
But they're they are stable, wonderful adults.
And we're so proud of them that we have this intact close family
that's amazing and they don't have any surprises.
Coming at them, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
What advice do you have for a parent who's keeping a DNA
surprise from their child? I think there's no right time to
tell them. I think the right time to tell
them is today, because the longer the time goes by, the
harder it is for both of you, the deeper the sense of
betrayal. And there's no way to avoid that
sense of betrayal and that sense of bewilderment.
And so the time is as soon as possible.
I like that. The right time to tell us today.
What advice do you have for someone who just uncovered Adna
Surprise? I think that there has to be a
lot of time and grace and kindness extended first to
yourself, and then when you have given yourself the time to
process and to catch your breath and to get your feet under you,
to ask all of the questions that you have of each person.
And I would do it one at a time. I don't think a big group is
healthy because I think it would become incredibly overwhelming.
And to know that you have a right to ask those questions.
And I let a lot of time go by and there's still questions that
I didn't ask my father. And he's passed away now that I
wish I had. Make sure that you have let the
time for yourself go and to get the help that you need to be
able to write them down and to be able to ask them with
curiosity and with grace, because that's what's going to
allow you to forgive such that you live at peace.
Tracy, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and
sharing your story. Every story that I hear is so
unique. As I said, this one is
definitely stranger than fiction, and it's really
inspiring to see how you've moved through that and ended in
such a beautiful place with it. Although I know it's a journey
that never really ends and it's ongoing.
Just thank you and I wish you the best.
Yeah, thank you. Thank you for sharing these
stories. I think it's so helpful for each
person who's walking their own individual Rd.
Thanks again to Tracy for sharing her story.
If you have Adna surprise that you'd like to share, submit your
story at dnasurprises.com. And remember, you can join me
over on Patreon for early access to add free episodes.
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.