It's taken me a long time to really disconnect what I feel is
an unhealthy bond and start to see my mother in a different
light. And not necessarily a -1 but one
where I had to come to terms with what my mother sees as real
in fact, is in fact not real in fact.
And it's a hard thing to come to terms with that.
The reality that you've been told and someone genuinely
believes in is not real. And so I called her right away
and I told her, yeah, they're all stoked.
They've been waiting for me. This is not what I expected.
She was shocked, but it I had already started to put up the
guards. I I feel bad at how quickly I
didn't believe anything she said anymore but her shock to me
sounded fake. It may not have been but I don't
know. To me my trauma response was to
protect my own brain. At this point she's like how
could they have known? What do you mean how could they
have known? And retrospectively, this is the
moment I knew. Welcome to DNA Surprises, a
podcast that delves into the world of unexpected DNA
discoveries. I'm your host, Alexis, our salt.
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.
As we've heard earlier this season, many people within the
DNA surprise community saw their test results as mere
confirmation of something they'd long suspected.
But as heard in this week's episode, not everyone was able
to put their finger on just why they felt different.
Shaya never felt like she fit in with her family.
She found solace in music and the friendship she formed in the
metal scene during her rebellious teen years.
Then one day, during a heated exchange with her parents, her
mother revealed that the man she believed was her biological
father was not. She pursued a relationship with
the man her mom identified, only to then learn even more shocking
information about her paternity. Thank you for sharing your
story, Shaya. My name is Shaya, I am 42 and I
live in a small town between Vancouver and Whistler in
British Columbia, Canada. I'll just start like at the
beginning and just some background of my childhood and
my teen years. As a kid, I have siblings and I
was raised with my mom and dad and we lived in the same town
I'm in now. We live just down the street
from my grandparents, so they were a huge part of my life.
I was primarily raised by my dad's family.
We had no contact with my mother's family.
Actually, it's funny to retell it because to me this was like
normal. This is no big deal.
This is like not the big part of my experience, but a lot of
people are quite taken aback by it.
But we had no contact with my mother's family and that was my
parents choice. However, my mother's family did
routinely want contact with us and so they took unorthodox
approaches to that. My school was told that we could
be kidnapped off the school grounds.
There was an ad put out in the newspaper by my mother's family
looking for us. I believe my my maternal
grandmother took my parents to court to try to gain access.
And when I was in high school, letters were sent to the school
from the family looking for me. And so like, I would see my dad
walk into the high school and I was worried he would catch me
skipping class. And I'm like, oh, what are you
doing here? He's like just getting these
letters that were sent here. So I don't know.
I don't know what happened in the court proceedings.
I don't know what happened with those letters.
I just know that we had no contact with them and that was
just life. I had a fairly happy childhood.
We went on family Rd. trips and I was a weird kid.
Like I like to go out in the forest and make my own Ford.
I was much happier alone than with like my siblings.
I would turn the family car into a Fort all the time and I just
always felt a little bit off. But I think what's important to
know from this is I didn't know as a child that biologically I
was not my dad's daughter. I didn't know that the family,
the paternal family, which was the only family I knew, I didn't
know that they weren't my family.
But in retrospect, I exhibited a lot of the psychological habits
of someone who knew they were adopted.
I would Daydream a lot about a different family, and I would
Daydream a lot about like someone coming to take me and
save me. And there wasn't necessarily
something to be saved from. I just felt very out of place.
Did you feel like your dad treated you any different from
your siblings or anything like that?
It's a very subtle shift, so I don't want to say I felt like I
was treated different. I definitely, I felt different.
I felt like I didn't think the same way as them, like even as a
kid and my brother and sister are twins so I just took like oh
I'm different because I am not the twins.
You were able to kind of explain it away, yeah.
So you were just very different from from everyone else.
Yeah, I always had, like, these weird, like, fixations on, like
when I was a little kid, I loved Tom Cochran so much.
And then when I was a teenager, it was like the music was
Marilyn Manson and the comfort movie was Wayne's World.
And so I would watch SNL and Mike Myers would be on there and
I'd be like, oh, I just love him so much.
He's so funny. And my mom, like, obviously
looking back, it's in horrible taste because she knew what I
didn't. But my mom made the joke of, oh,
you love him so much because Mike Myers is your real dad now.
He's not just so clear. I hit my teen years and any
frustrations I had as a child exploded when I became a
teenager and I didn't know why. I still thought there was
something wrong with me. I was angry.
Like I didn't even know why. What are you angry about?
Why do you have the attitude? I didn't even know.
I was just so angry and frustrated all the time.
I tried to run away and I would steal cigarettes from my parents
and just rebelled, rebelled, rebelled.
I found kind of solace in like dark heavy music and the heavy
metal community. And like this band of misfits I
created as my friend group, my bonds with my friends grew
stronger, stronger, stronger and I spent less time with my
family, which frustrated my family.
I heard blood is thicker than water far too many times in my
life. I didn't understand why I was so
angry. I thought there was like I had
an issue. I asked to go to counseling, but
this is in the 90s. You just want your outcast
daughter to fit in the mold, right?
So I asked to go to counseling and they asked me why and I
couldn't tell them why because I didn't know.
And so they said, well, if you can't tell us why you want
counseling, then we're not doing it.
So I never did that. I just felt very lost.
But then I found very fond with my friends.
I met my husband when I was 15 and I just bonded much easier
with outsiders and I did with my family.
And so that just like, fed the what's wrong with me?
When I was 18, this was the year I graduated high school, but I
hadn't quite graduated yet. My family and I had a big
blowout about some poor choices that I had made at the end of
this blowout. Like, it's funny, the moments
that like, stay in your mind. I'll forever remember where my
mother was sitting, where my dad was sitting with the lighting of
the room, like everything. And my mom stood across to me
and said, well, we can't expect you to be honest with us because
I had been lying about what I had been doing and the choices
I've been making, you know, just teenagers lying to their parents
and being rebellious. She said, I can't expect you to
be honest with us if we're not honest with you.
And I literally had no idea what was coming next.
And that was when she told me that my dad wasn't my
biological. Father wow, so it was already
kind of like in a heightened emotional.
This was the argument to end arguments.
I feel that they felt that they were really losing me as a
child. And so I, I, I don't know what
they were thinking with this being the right time to do it.
But it was in the most vulnerable and scared like
heightened emotional moment that the bombshell was kind of
dropped. And I literally had no idea.
My mom looked at me and said you, you really had no idea.
And I said I absolutely not. And then immediately everything
started like laying at lightning speed through my brain.
Like my dad's family is the only family I know.
I asked her who my father was and she told me a name that I
had never heard. His name was Dave.
I never heard it. My mom asked me how I was doing
and then my dad answered and he said she's fine.
So kind of there I picked up that we're not talking about it,
we're fine. And then you just kind of bury
that down, right? So you kind of just pushed it
down. Was there any part of you that
was like, I want to find this person?
All of me. Every part of me immediately
wanted had 1,000,000 questions, wanted to know all of it.
I asked my mom privately, do you have a picture?
Do you have anything? She had a couple keepsakes from
his parents. She said that he didn't want to
be a parent. They did go to court.
He had had to pay some sort of small child support for 12
months and then he signed off his parental rates.
This is all what I'm told, right?
So I don't know any of this. My mom cried a lot when she
talked about it. My dad clearly was like, let's
move on. I love you like you're my own.
This changes nothing. And so I went through a lot of
other things that year and then like as soon as I graduated, I
moved out, continued burying everything.
Also, the fire to that flame is I now had freedom too.
So it was a lot of drinking, a lot of experimenting with drugs,
a lot of partying. And then I snapped out of it for
a little bit. And then I was 19 and pregnant
and I moved back home. My parents were split up now.
I moved in with my dad because my mom didn't have the space for
us. I stayed there until after I had
my son, and then we moved out on our own and started building our
lives. And it was after I had my son
that I started to have questions because they would ask about
family history. And I didn't have any history on
my mom. And it was a sensitive subject.
She didn't talk about her family.
And I just kind of tried to respect that by not asking any
questions. And then they'd ask about my
father's family, and I didn't know.
And so I reached out to my mother and said, I think I want
to contact them. She was ready.
She she was supportive, she encouraged.
She had the contact information ready to go.
Were you surprised by that? I was just so happy that it
wouldn't hurt her feelings. It wasn't what I expected.
She was very supportive. She's like, you know what?
I have his parents mailing address.
I have their phone number for you.
I was like, oh great. So we kind of like walked that
together. I shared, I showed her the
letter I was going to write and I sent it to his mother and I
didn't receive anything back. And then I said, you know what?
Maybe the lawyer didn't go to the right place.
I tried phoning his mother. She abruptly hung up on me.
And then my mother said, how do you feel about me writing a
letter to them asking them to please contact you?
I said I was shocked. I was like, absolutely, I would
love the support. She showed me the letter before
she sent it. She sent it off.
And then I did receive a letter back from his mother and we did
have a phone call. And essentially in that letter
and phone call, she made it clear that David didn't think
that I was his, that she was quite estranged from her son.
And she was. She apologized for how she had
hung up on me and answered all of my questions, which were all
medical, which were all history, and which are quite faded from
my mind now given everything that's happened in between.
But I made the phone call from my mother's house.
I made it on speakerphone. She hung on every word of that
phone call. It was so great to see me
connecting with his family. She wished he would want to be a
part of my life. She spoke of him in high regard.
His mother and I exchanged a few letters.
It just kind of fizzled out. I spent the rest of my life
until say two years ago, like if I was in a crowd I still didn't
know what this man looked like other than I was told he had
blonde haired blue eyes and was 6 feet tall.
And I would scan crowds just like do any of these people look
like me? When I worked with customers and
they had to pay with credit card, I read that name on that
credit card because I at least knew his name.
I wanted to know is there any chance someone here is related
to me? And I don't know it's just a
constant scan. And then when Facebook came
along, I think the first name I put into Facebook was his name
and he did not come up. He was very elusive, very
private, very estranged, very kept to himself.
I did find someone that was his niece.
I sent a very point blank message to her explaining my
situation. And she was either like, too
estranged from him to care about causing any drama or was very
heartfelt, like, family is family, it doesn't matter what
he says. And so her and I communicated a
little bit. She saw him at Christmas and
took a couple pictures of him and sent them to me and told him
that I was out there asking about him.
And he maintained he's like, well, that is not my daughter.
So I just kind of like looked at the pictures and like, yeah,
that's a dude. I didn't, I didn't resonate with
it at all. I'm like, I don't know, I guess
this is who I'm related to. I sent the picture to my mom.
She was thrilled to see them. At this point, were you all in
like you had accepted this as my father, or was there any part of
you that was like, maybe he's not?
Retrospectively, obviously I'm like, yeah, obviously I knew
because I was like, Oh well, guess this sucks, move on.
But it clearly bugged me because throughout the years it came in
waves, right? Where I'm like, I don't care,
I've got this great life, why do I care?
And then something would get stirred up and I would be hell
bent. So it came in waves of like, I
want to contact, I don't want to contact, blah blah, blah, blah,
blah. Until in 2017, my mother texted
me and she said, were you going to tell me that he died?
And I, I didn't even know who she was talking about.
I'm like, who died just like David?
I said, I haven't heard anything.
I haven't heard anything from the niece.
I haven't heard anything I didn't know.
So then I messaged the niece. I was like, where are you going
to update me? And she's like, what are you
talking about? Like the family didn't even know
he had passed away. That's how removed from his
family he was. So then the niece went forward
and was like 1, Dave died and then everyone's like how did you
find out? And she's having to tell the
family she's like 2 from someone that claims to be his daughter.
And the extended family had no idea.
Like I, my name was never uttered once.
Wow. How did you feel kind of
processing that? I mean, obviously you didn't
have a close relationship or anything, but you believe that
that was your father. I'm like, I'm really sorry I'm
the one to have to tell you guys this and that this is how you're
finding out about me. But here I am.
And I'm speculating. But to have a family go from
like they don't know I exist and they don't even have contact
with him to Oh my gosh, this is his daughter.
And then they came on really strong.
They had a lot of questions. They wanted to know where I
lived. They wanted to see pictures.
They wanted to know where my children went to school and
their names and everything. And I pumped the brakes.
My husband even commented, he's like, it was so sad.
And how quickly you shut it all down considering it was
something you chased your whole life.
But I essentially within a couple days messaged them and
said, listen, I'm really sorry that you're having to process
this. But I actually, I would prefer
to go back to no contact right now.
I'm very happy with my life. The person I wanted to talk to
is deceased and so I'm going to have to heal on my own.
My mom asked me not to do it and I essentially told her I had
already done it. I made a decision and left her
out of it. You know what I mean?
And so I think it may have been hurtful to her for me to make it
such a drastic decision and then not consult her on it.
My mother and I had like a tumultuous on and off again
relationship throughout the years where we'd have times
where we were best friends and then times where we weren't
speaking. And so between 2017 and see,
this is the part that'll start to get really emotional for me.
Between 2017 and 2022 when I decided to do Ancestry, we were
on a downswing. So our relationship was kind of
on the rocks. When I decided to do Ancestry,
like I said, I was really at peace with everything.
And then I was working on, sorry, one second, take your
time. I was working on a quilt of all
things because this is the moment, like, I made a decision
that actually changed many lives, right.
So, like, reflecting on it, I'm like, man, I had no idea what I
was about to do. Yeah, But I was working on this
quilt that I had been collecting pieces for years for.
It was these antique handkerchiefs that I've been
collecting, some dating back over 100 years old.
I had thrifted all of them. I was mounting them on.
Also thrifted antique quilt squares that were already made
but not put into a quilt. So as I'm working with all these
really, really antique pieces that at some point someone spent
so much time making and stitching and then gifting to
family members. And just as a creator, like you
put a part of yourself and everything you make.
And so as I'm working with all these different pieces from all
over the place, I, I'm just thinking, I wonder what their
creators would think about them now.
I wonder what their families would think about me doing this
with them. Just trying to do justice to the
original creators and respectfully.
And as I do that, the thought just kicks up in my head.
Am I related to any of these people that have made these
pieces? Now I'm touching them and
working with them and I have no idea.
And those ancestors have no idea.
It just really kicked out something in me as I was
completing the quilt, like putting the binding on.
And I always joke and like when you put the binding on a quilt,
that's when you say like either a prayer or a curse or a wish or
something. When you're doing the binding,
that's the best time. And as I was binding the quilt,
it just came to me. I'm like, obviously I'm not done
here. I'm not OK with it.
And I need some sort of answer. So how do I find those to
satiate this call in me? I'm, I messaged my husband 1st
and I said, hey, I need to find some peace with this.
How about I do ancestry and then that will give me ethnicity,
that will give me villages, that will give me a map of where my
blood hails from. And then together we can travel
to these places and I'll find some peace in this chaos.
Have a lot of tattoos. And I was like, I'm going to get
lost. Soul tattooed on my knuckles.
I'm just going to own it. I'm going to and this is what I
think will bring me peace. I think it's the only way I can
find it. 100% supportive. He loved the idea.
He stood behind me the entire way.
I'm not a very patient person. Like before I finished binding
the quilt I ordered the Ancestry kit.
The minute you order the kit it's like oh while you wait for
your kit just build the tree with the information you have.
It was shockingly easy to build the tree with just a couple
names and get a tree going back hundreds of years.
I just reveled in it. I was like, part of me was like,
I'm going to find my peace. And then another part of me was
like a big fuck you because you took your answers to the grave
and I'm going to dig them up. And I felt like I had a right to
know these answers despite what everyone else thought.
And then because my mother was so supportive with anything that
had to do with reaching out to Dave or getting information, I
sent her an e-mail hoping that maybe this would be the way to
like, spur our relationship into an upswing again.
And I said, I know you're sensitive about your family, but
I'm just looking for historical. I'm not looking for people that
are alive. I've said that I don't want
contact. I'm looking for ancient stuff.
I'm looking for peace in ancestors and knowledge and I
asked her if she would help me with a couple names from hers so
that I could build the tree and she was thrilled to help.
She answered any questions, she gave information I asked for if
I had a question about Dave's history.
She had some answers but it wasn't anything in depth with
Dave. I was just like trying to
remember about how old he was and stuff like that.
And we communicated by e-mail a few times about the ancestry
thing and then I just kind of went quiet about it all.
I stopped emailing with my mother.
We were dealing with someone in the family that was quite I'll
that we were having to focus on and we just waited.
This all started in May and then in June I got an e-mail from my
mom and it was just two lines. And to anyone else it would just
seem like a really sweet check it mom checking in.
But to me, the alarm bells rang and it just said I haven't heard
from you in a while. How are your roots growing
referring to ancestry? I was sitting on one side of the
couch and my husband was on the other and I just chuckled my
phone. I bet I'm about to find out that
Dave wasn't my father. He just knew.
Know what made me say it? But I was just like, that's
what's about to happen here from that two line e-mail.
And so the results hit on a Saturday.
Got up, poured a cup of coffee, opened the computer, took 6
minutes looking at this, closed my computer and said I knew it.
In 6 minutes I knew. And then it all spiralled.
Yeah, what happened? It went completely off the rails
from that moment. See I cry when I talk about what
the choice I made to start this and the events that brought me
there. But then the rest of it is so
out there that like all I can do now looking back on is just
laugh at how scared I was and naive and just unsure.
Someone phoned me shortly after and I completely lost my mind.
I completely lost my mind. They were like, hey, how's it
going? And I hadn't even spoken of my
husband yet. And I was like, oh, you know,
just great. Just found out my mother's been
lying this whole time. I immediately was angry.
And that anger was ferocious. I emailed my mom immediately and
said essentially that I shared no genetic matches with anyone
in that tree for David and BE. It's because I had built the
tree and I saw all my DNA matches that not one of their
names fell on that tree that I knew.
And I did not hear back from my mother at first.
So I just kind of was left to my own accord to completely spiral
while my husband tried desperately to keep me together.
I was in close contact with a few of my friends and a friend
that I had had since I was very young, and they all kind of kept
me together with my husband. And while we waited, my mom got
back to me the next day, essentially saying she had no
answers for me. She had no idea.
She asked if there was a chance I was switched to the hospital
or that Dave had been adopted. So here is the child trying
desperately to not see her parent as someone capable of
this. And so I was like, maybe.
And here I am reaching out to Dave's family again five years
after his death and just be like, is there a chance he was
adopted? And they're like, absolutely
not. And I'm like, OK, thanks.
Bye. And I for sure wasn't switched
in the hospital because I shared DNA with her family tree.
So she asked to see my results. I very selectively showed a few
of my DNA matches. I told her to not contact them.
As far as I know she is not and I didn't hear much.
She said she had gone over her memory.
She couldn't think of anyone else I could even possibly be my
father. And so we waited.
There was no answers. I did fire off some messages to
some DNA matches but didn't hear anything back yet.
I decided by the Monday that I wasn't going to pursue it
anymore. I I messaged my mom that I had
to be done. I couldn't spend my life
continually doing this, that we don't have answers.
We'll never have answers. Dave took his answers to the
grave. I'm going to go back to my
original plan of it gives you an ancestral name, right?
I'm going to track that name down, find grave sites, go visit
them. Go go travel with my husband,
find my piece, make it my own. And she emailed me back that she
would like a phone call. I said, OK.
I expressed to my husband that I was very wary of taking a phone
call with her. And he said just just take it.
I got on the phone with her and she told me how she came to the
realization that Dave was not my father.
It was through a dream she had had and then some quick Googling
of herself that night before. And she told me my father's name
and his siblings names and then asked me what I was going to do
with that information. I said well I don't know my
exact words were I don't know if I have it in me to ruin all
these lives because I had asked her does he know about me and
she said no he was a one night thing.
She had never even thought of him again, never even seen him
again never even spoken to him again and so he probably
wouldn't even remember her. And so I asked for details of
their friendship and that and things so that when I, if I did
decide to reach out to the family, I had some sort of
information that showed I wasn't like a wackadoodle.
I wasn't just like, I'm a random person.
I've names of friends and locations.
And then she warned me. She said when you look them up
on social media, the resemblance is going to be shocking.
And she just wanted to prepare me for that.
And I, I didn't know what to even do with that information.
I grew up with no genetic mirroring other than her and my
siblings look very much like their father.
So I hung up the phone. I gave names to my husband and a
couple of my friends and told them help me find them all,
which they all did immediately. I then took a moment to look
them up on Facebook and I remember the first time I saw
his picture I was alone in the house but I still said there you
are, I found you. My brain didn't even know how to
compute at all. They we look so much alike it's
uncanny. And how anyone could think that
I was anyone else's kid is beyond me.
He was impossible to find or contact on social media.
He quite prides himself in being impossible to find on social
media or to contact or anything. So I reached out to Linda who
was my strongest genetic match who is also his sister.
She was quite distant from the family.
So when I reached out to her like bless her soul, I was a
mess. Within the 1st 5 seconds of
hearing her voice, I was a wreck.
I don't even think I got my name out.
I started crying and she's just the most patient person.
I I kind of choked out very quickly that I was sorry that I
was calling her, but that's she was my strongest DNA match.
I said I didn't want to name names, but I was looking for her
brother. I was trying to be so private
because I was told this man had no idea existed.
So here's this man walking around.
I'm about to ruin his life. I'm 40 years old, right?
He has no idea he has a kid and grandchildren.
And so Linda was just yeah, I see on ancestry were related.
So I'm going to deduct because you're on a paternity search and
you're looking for my brother, that you are led to believe he's
your father. And I just answered yes or no
through sobbing tears. I know for a fact she's related
to me. I know for a fact she is on my
paternal side. This is my very first contact
and I'm just a disaster. She explained that she was
distant from her siblings, but she told me it didn't matter
what anyone thought or if anyone wanted to, if anyone was ready
for my arrival, that no matter what anyone said, I was family.
I told her I just felt lost and I'd been like I'd been lost for
a long time. And she said, well, you're found
now, and so no matter what happens, you have me.
How did that? Feel I can't even like, put it
into words. It was the most shocking thing
that anyone had ever said to me. She said what she thought would
be the best plan of action would be to speak with her sister,
who's also his sister obviously, and together take their
information to Greg. My father and I said sure,
whatever. I, I have no idea what the best
plan of action is here and I probably shouldn't be making any
like life decision. I took about a week for them to
make contact. I was not sleeping.
I was very on edge. It was a very tumultuous time
within me. It's hard to even remember.
I was just so drained. And I hadn't heard anything from
my Aunt Linda. So my brain immediately assumed
that this family was like scared and pieced out.
And so my husband has like bought me a bunch of bath
products, candles in the bathroom.
He's like, you are going to just go have a bath and decompress
and just let go. And it's been a long week and
like, this is the only way I can help you right now because
you're crazy. He's running the bath.
I'm like crying. I'm like stripping off my
clothes, but I'm also muttering. I'm like, I was fine without
them Anyway. I was it's, it's fine.
I've been fine on my own. It's OK.
I I'll be fine. And then my phone lights up and
it says Linda and I just like immediately I would turn the
water off. I can't hear anything.
Oh my God, the poor man's been yelled at so much.
And Linda says to me, I just got off the phone with my sister.
She's like, are you alone right now?
And I said, no, I have my husband.
He's right here with me. She's like, are you sitting
down? And I was like, no, she's like,
maybe. So here I am.
It's kind of poetic that I am completely naked as the day I
was born, essentially prepared for a rebirth.
I sit down and she's like, so I called my sister Nadine, but
didn't go the way I thought it would.
And I said OK, because, well, when I called her and started
telling her this story, she cut me off and said what's her name?
And when I told her your name, Nadine just said I have to go.
I have to call Greg. But we know we know about her.
We've looked for her. We have been waiting for her to
find us. But I have to go.
I have to call Greg. But just tell her that we know
we love her already. We cannot wait to see her.
This is our whole life. We've been waiting for this.
I immediately start apologizing. I'm like Oh my God I am so
sorry. This family thinks it's found
some long lost daughter but it's not me.
He must have a different daughter because no one knows I
exist. He doesn't know I exist.
He probably doesn't remember my mother.
I'm supposed to have to plead my case here.
I said how did they know about me?
I was told and and I completely believe this to be true.
She brought me to him and told him that I was his daughter, but
that she had someone else that was going to be her father and
adopt me and that she wanted him to stay away and that he was not
to be involved in my life. And then she left, which is
quite different from the retelling that my mom gave me.
What are you talking about? Like, I'm so sorry.
I have given this family false hope.
And Linda just, I think she didn't quite know how to walk me
through it because she's like, Nope, it's you.
So I think your father's wrapping up some things, but
he's going to be contacting you and he's been waiting to contact
you this whole time. And everyone's really excited.
So just thought I'd tell you. Like, it was very casual and I
was like, OK, OK. I'm still don't think this is
true. I just like OK.
And then I got off the phone with her and she was like, we
love you. We love you so much and Nadine
loves you so much. Can't wait to hear hear like see
you. And I got off the phone and
looked at my husband. I could see equal parts just
complete fury and just like validation.
How are you reconciling this against what your mom has told
you? Because she's like, I don't
remember. And now you're hearing from this
family. We've been waiting for you.
What's going through your mind? It was a lot.
It's taken me a long time to really disconnect what I feel is
an unhealthy bond and start to see my mother in a different
light. And not necessarily a -1 but one
where I had to come to terms with what my mother sees as real
in fact, is in fact not real in fact.
And it's a hard thing to come to terms with that the reality that
you've been told and someone genuinely believes in is not
real. And so I called her right away
and I told her, yeah, they're all stoked.
They've been waiting for me. This is not what I expected.
She was shocked, but it I had already started to put up the
guards. I I feel bad at how quickly I
didn't believe anything she said anymore but her shock to me
sounded fake. It may not have been but I don't
know. To me my trauma response was to
protect my own brain. At this point she's like how
could they have known? What do you mean how could they
have known? And retrospectively this is the
moment I knew. I have a deep seated weird
connection in my brain with my mom and I don't know how to fix
that. And I knowing the truth in that
moment, right after I got the truth, I gave her a lifeline.
I gave her a lie that she might be able to use to get out
because I so desperately wanted her to not be the bad guy here.
And I said to her, I'm like, I don't know, maybe one of your
friends told him. I've been told that just moments
before that they knew I was their family member and his
daughter because my mother told him and I saw her struggle when
I said they know about me. And so I said maybe one of your
friends told him. And then my husband blew into
the room and he was like, you're done on the phone.
You have to get off the phone. I didn't understand.
I was frustrated with him. Like I am in the middle of the
phone call and you are interrupting.
He was just like, get off the phone, and he explained to me as
gently as he could that there was something unnatural about
the way I assisted her when I knew what the truth was and I
wanted to bring her out of it. You know what I mean?
Like give her an out so that she wouldn't struggle.
With it, yeah, you're caretaking her.
You always want your mom to be someone who looks out for you
and someone that cares for you and puts your needs above their
own and things like that, and to be in a good light.
And I could see her struggle and I I knew it wasn't true that no,
none of her friends told him about me.
It was just a moment of realization for me that
something is not right here with our connection.
And I really needed to sort that out in my own brain.
Then I received an e-mail from my dad like the next day,
essentially reiterating the same thing.
He didn't know about me because my mom brought me to him.
He had a birth announcement and a picture of me that he still
had to this day. He kept it.
He would love to in whatever way I was comfortable.
He would like to meet me, he would like to see me, He would
like to talk to me. He would like to know about my
life on my schedule, wherever I want to, whatever I'm
comfortable with. Like, it was all very cordial.
And I emailed back that I was, Yep, willing to talk, willing to
meet. I looked forward to hearing his
story. Let's start this whole process
very slow. I knew this man's name for only
a week. I don't know who this guy is,
and I don't know what's going on right now.
These stories are very different.
And I feel very, very lost right now.
And also that guilt, like if you ever call your parents out, it's
like you feel that guilt right away.
You're like, oh, I should not be doing this.
They're my parents. They're my elders.
They're everything. But at the same time, I have a
right to know the story of my existence and my creation and
where I come from. That is my blood as my genetics.
It is my right to know how I came to be.
So it's a weird place to be in. And you go back and forth and
it's a lot of highs and lows and a lot of I can't believe I did
this on myself. And then the next day you're
like, oh, I can't believe I did this.
The day we met, he brought the birth announcement and my
picture that my mom gave him. It's undisputable.
It is my mother's writing. It is for sure a picture of me
on the birth announcement. A different person is listed as
my father that I'd never even heard before.
And he was just so thrilled that I would meet with him, would
speak with him. We shared our life stories.
The day we met, it was a lot. I insisted on a paternity test
still because there was always this part of me that's like, I
don't know, maybe I'm still wrong.
And here I've thrown my mother under this bus and maybe I'm
still wrong. Maybe you're not my father.
Maybe I'm ruining lives. We did the paternity test that
obviously came back positive. He was confident the whole time.
I'm like, if the paternity tests come back negative, I'm real
sorry. And he's just said when they
come back positive, I'm really going to enjoy telling you that
I was right. The paternity test was positive.
He met his grandchildren, he met my husband.
I met my Aunt Nadine, who is like my double ganger.
We look like identical. I am very embraced, very loved
by this family. So are my children, so are my
husband. So I have a fierce group of
friends that will protect me and my family and my peace at any
cost. It has really changed our lives
and I think for the better. Like obviously some
relationships have fizzled and been really strained, but I am
surrounded by the strengths of the people around me and to know
that in searching out who I am, where I come from, I did know
wrong in that because that is something everyone has a right
to know. What are things like with your
mom now? It's been 2 1/2 years since
Ancestry and so in that 2 1/2 years there have been sometimes
of communication. There's been times of no
communication after that phone call where I had that
realization that something happens within me when I hear my
mom struggling with something in that I then will OfferUp and
out. I have not had any unsupervised
phone calls or emails or texts with her.
We have had communication, but it is all supervised because I
just don't trust myself completely yet.
I'm still trying to find that confidence in being able to find
grace with people and not be affected by their emotions or
their experience of my ancestry journey.
We have talked in depth where I gave her space to tell her story
again. The story did shift quite a bit.
Whereas my father's story, the first time he tells it to, the
100th time he tells it, it's the exact same.
He held me in his arms, he knows the spot, he held me in his
arms. The words he uses to reiterate
the conversation are the same every time.
So with my mom right now that we aren't talking right now, it's
just there's nothing constructive that can be said.
I'm just trying to live so peacefully and happily.
And so a lot of people have asked, so why now retell it
again in a podcast and bring it all up again?
And I think by putting it out into the world, it's just
another part of me that like lets it go a little bit by
putting it out into the world, it just kind of normalizes it.
And if other people hear it and then think twice about when
they're going to tell their children about their own
genetics and it prevents like one person from having to have
this reality torn multiple times in their life, then that's why I
would want to put it out there. Not to hurt anyone, just sharing
my story to hopefully learn from it.
What advice do you have for a parent who may be keeping adna
surprise from their child? Oh, those children know.
They don't know in a way that they can articulate it, but they
know. And it's either going to come
from you in a time of honesty and love, or they will dig that
up themselves. Another thing I've really
learned is that if someone goes to all the trouble to dig that
hole to bury some secrets, they're not burying just one.
There's more. They toss a whole bunch in there
and it's either going to be you bring that to light yourself in
a timely manner so that that child spends less time wondering
what's wrong with them, or that child will dig it all up
themselves and you won't really have a say in what they dig up.
What advice do you have for someone who just uncovered a DNA
surprise? Give yourself some grace.
Surround yourself by people who are going to give you grace to
completely fall apart. And whoever helps you pick up
those pieces and put you back together, those are your people.
And healing is not linear. You're going to have highs.
I still have highs and lows. Shaya, thank you so much for
coming on the podcast and sharing your story.
You have been through so much, but you have told your story so
well, and I know that other people who have been through
similar experiences will really benefit from this.
I hope that your relationship with your father just continues
to grow and that you find peace in the journey that you're on.
That's the goal here. Thanks again to Shaya 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 ad 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.