He passed away. Now here's a kind of a weird
thing about that. I had said that I found out his
results on a Thursday and I talked to him on that Saturday
and that date was November 6th, 2016.
He died on November 8th of 2020, but the last time I spoke to him
was November 6th. So the first time I ever talked
to him and the last time I ever talked to him was on the same
day, four years. Apart 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.
Many people in the DNA Surprise community grew up with dads or
birth certificate fathers, BCFS as they're often called.
We are raised by these men and then one day, through adna test
or other means, we learn that they are not our biological
fathers. But what if you never really
felt like you had a dad? How does the DNA Surprise affect
you? In this week's episode, Alyssa
shares how her free spirited mother had her and her twin
brother on her own before marrying their stepfather.
Alyssa remembers asking questions.
Do we have a dad? And getting the same explanation
each time. He lived in another state.
He'd gone to prison. They tried to make it work but
did not. In her early 20s, Alyssa
attempted to build a relationship with who she
believed was her biological father Jim, even finding an
uncle dad through his brother Rick.
After taking Adna test, everything she thought she knew
was upended. Thank you for sharing your
story, Alyssa. My name is Alyssa and I'm 52.
I'll be 53 in August and I'm from Portland, ME.
I grew up with a single mom and a twin brother.
She grew up in Maine but when she was in her 20s she would go
down to Florida. She'd go in the winter time and
she'd work jobs in the winter time and she'd come back to
Maine and she did this for about 5 or 6 years.
Then she got pregnant and she came back to Maine for good to
have the baby unmarried. I don't really know the back
story, but I just know that her boyfriend, who she said was our
dad, was in prison when we were born and he was from Wisconsin.
So he was back in Wisconsin. So now she's back in Maine.
She gave birth to us. The twins was a surprise.
I think she knew just a couple months before she had us that
she was having twins. So she had boy and girl twins.
I, I remember my young childhood not having a dad around.
No big deal, you know, that's just what we knew.
But I remember I was always the one asking, do we have a dad?
Who's our dad? She always told us the same
thing. She would tell us his name, how
old he was, where he was from and a little bit about him and,
and that was always consistent, what she would say and never, I
never met him. She said that he had come to
Portland. They gave it a try after he was
released from prison and he came to Portland to see if they could
work it out and it didn't last long so he left.
Did you want to have a relationship with him or were
you curious to have like that relationship?
Yeah, I was always very curious growing up, but that was in the
80s, so I didn't know there was nothing we could do or that I
could do. And she had no information.
I knew his birthday and my brother, he, he couldn't care
less. He didn't ask anything.
He just had his opinion, his own opinion about the situation.
And I never remember him asking at all.
I was always the one asking about him.
She, she got married when we were seven.
So we did have a step dad, but not, you know, wasn't like we
thought he was our dad or anything.
He just was our stepdad. He did adopt us, although that's
another Side Story. He thought he adopted us, but
she kind of pulled the wool over his eyes and it wasn't legal so.
OK, so he thought he had legally adopted you and in reality your
birth certificate did not change.
I was not being official. No, no.
But he kind of thought it was. What it actually was was a just
a name change basically. But she told him, oh, I got the
papers and, you know, I went to court and they're yours now kind
of thing. And he is.
Oh, OK. So he thought he adopted us.
Wow, and what was your relationship like with him?
It was fine. It wasn't like, oh, this is my
dad. We called him Dad because we
didn't have a dad. So that was OK with that.
You know, that felt natural to us.
But he was a nice person and he provided.
And so Fast forward through like childhood, when I was 21, that
would have been in 1992, I, I had something happen to my
personal life that I had my heart broken and all this.
So I decided I was going to leave Maine.
So I myself ended up in Florida from 92 to 97.
But early on when I was there, once I was out of my mom's
house, I thought, I'm going to find, I want to find him.
I'd like to know who he is, see if I could find him.
I didn't expect much. I just wanted to see what he
looked like, things like that. So the place I was working at,
there was this guy that worked there that also worked at the
police station. I was talking to him about it.
He's so well, do you know his birthday?
I said yes. And gave him what little
information I had. He actually came back and said I
found him. So I wrote him a letter and I
left my phone number on the letter and I don't know a couple
weeks later he actually called me and he was really excited and
we corresponded and then we ended up meeting He at that time
he actually was living in Florida.
He was a truck driver, but he was actually living in Florida.
So my spouse at the time we made a plan and we went to meet him.
So we end up having a fairly good relationship for a couple
years. I had my first son in 1996 and
when in in 1997 I came back to Maine, he had already at that
time moved around. He was a truck driver and
married and they moved to another state, so my son was
one. But it's when I got to Maine, he
stopped really corresponding with me, which was weird.
What was your feeling like when you met him?
And I know hindsight's 2020, right?
But when you met him, did you feel like, this is my dad?
Did you feel connected with him? I did, I I really did.
I he was so nice. He was so handsome.
My mom had always said, oh, he he was gorgeous.
He was so good looking. He looked like Superman, like
Christopher Reeve and and he really did.
And I was like, OK, mom, I see, you know, I see what you and
yeah, so I really liked him and I thought everything was fine.
He had a not great relationship with his family, so I didn't
meet anybody else, except I did meet his mother once and then he
actually ended up meeting my brother.
My brother took a little bit to come around.
His name was Jim. Jim, the truck driver.
He actually met my brother before I met him.
So we both had a little bit of relationship with him.
But like I said, when I came to Maine to live, he just stopped
having a relationship with me. So I just let it go.
You know, I wasn't going to force anything.
So that would have been, like I said, 1997.
Fast forward many years, all these years go by and I never
really reconnected with him, but I actually connected with his
brother. His brother Rick was a totally
different person, kind of different personality.
He like scooped us up with open arms.
Oh, my niece and my nephew and this was Uncle Rick.
So we had this great relationship with Uncle Rick.
And this would have been in about 2013.
Somewhere along there I took the DNA test because I was really
big in genealogy. I had done my mom's genealogy.
I did Jim's genealogy. I had, I had everything.
I knew. I knew where the countries that
their ancestors were from and everything, pretty much.
I just was curious to see what the DNDNA test would show as far
as ethnicity, like how much German, how much Irish, you
know, and pretty much thinking it was going to be all English,
German, Irish, maybe Scottish. Well, the DNA test came back and
it showed that I was half Italian and that did not jive at
all with anything that I knew. I had a Co worker at the time
that also was very big in genealogy and DNA and so I
showed it to him. He's like, you're half Italian
like this, 'cause I thought, well, maybe, you know, the
migration of people and, you know, trying to rationalize how
it could show that I was Italian.
But the gymnastics, right? Every time we start going OK,
trying to make it make sense, right?
Yeah, Yep. Trying to make it make sense.
And it just was like, no, you, you are half Italian.
Like this pretty much says that one of your parents has to be
full Italian. And you know, your mom's not.
It's like, no, she's not. So I was confused and I told
Uncle Rick about this and I I even said to him, do you think
that Jim was adopted? He's like no, no, he's not
adopted. I'm like, OK, he goes, why don't
I take adna test and clear this up?
OK, so he submits adna test. I managed it him and I both
could look at it. So I was anxiously waiting and I
was at work and I opened it and I could not believe my eyes when
I saw that he was not matching me at all.
And I already, I was kind of just ignoring all the signs.
You know, I'd already seen that there was nobody in the match
list that had their last name or their grant, you know, any of
their family names. I didn't have anybody with those
names in my match list. He couldn't believe it.
But when he came back that he wasn't related, like we weren't
on each other's list. I we both were devastated that
we just it was, it hurt. It hurt my heart 'cause he was a
wonderful guy. Did you still think maybe Jim
was adopted or at that point did you accept the results for what
they were? I think I pretty much knew then
that it was that was not my family.
And it it was hard for both of us.
Rick was a very, he's a very sensitive, loving guy.
And he scooped us up. We even started calling him
Uncle Dad because we didn't have his brother in our life.
He wasn't into it. So he said to us one day, well,
if Jim doesn't want you, can I have you?
And we said, well, yeah. So it was really, it was really
hard when that came out. And he said, well, whatever, you
know, I'm still here. We're still family.
I still love you. We kind of just moved on.
We made sure our relationship didn't change and it didn't.
And it still to this day has not changed.
Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, he's a good guy.
But then I had this other problem of well, who the heck is
my dad? Did you talk to your mom at this
point? Yeah, I did, Mom.
She's she's tough. She's a tough one.
If you think about what she did back in the late 60s, going back
and forth to Maine by herself, working, she just, she was kind
of like a little bit of a rebel. She always told me, oh, I used
to date everybody. I date everybody.
It didn't matter their age, their race.
And she raised my brother and I to be very open and treat
everybody the same. And so she was always open about
her past. I did approach her and it was
difficult because she's, she's just a hard person to talk to
about stuff like that. Anything that's like more
personal to her, she that generation, they like to keep
everything inside. So I told her that Jim was not
our our father. And her eyes got real big and
she's like, what? And I said no, he, you know, I
then I explained the, the test to her and she had actually
taken a test as well. So I did, I was able to separate
all my matches and everything. And I knew the ethnicity, you
know, what was hers and what wasn't.
So she had taken the test. So I tried to ease the the blow.
And can you think of somebody that you might have dated back
then? That would be our dad.
She said, well, there's only one other person it could be.
And his his name was. And she gave this name.
And when I heard the name, I thought, well, he's not Italian.
And yeah, I said, yeah, I said, was he Italian?
And she said, no, he was Irish. He was like full Irish.
I said then he's not our dad. By then she was done with the
conversation. She's like, well, well then you
don't need to know. I was, I don't need to know.
I said, well that sucks. And she's like, what sucks?
I said that I'm 45 years old and I don't know who my father is.
And she says, Oh, well, she was done.
She was not talking about it anymore.
I was on my own. And my brother, again, he kind
of kept to himself with it. He didn't have any interest in
finding out. He even said, well, Jim's my
father. I don't know who your father is,
but he's my father. I said it so.
He he was thinking it might have been one of those rare twins
from different. Fathers.
Yeah, I said as much of A cool thing it would be to be a
medical anomaly, I just don't think that's the case.
So he didn't want to admit it. And he was in law enforcement
and had no interest in helping me do anything.
I was on my own. He he didn't want to rock the
boat with mom anymore. And all right, I guess I'm doing
this myself. So back to the DNA test.
I, I had a high match, a close, close ish match that was an
Italian name. And it, that person had a very
small tree and I could see like up to his grandparents or
something. Everybody's Italian in this, in
that family. So I reached out to that person
because what I figured out with that person, let's say his name
was John, That person, my match named John, I knew based on the
centum organs that whoever my father was, was a first cousin
to him. So I reached out 'cause I wanted
to talk to him about who Who are your male first cousins?
I'm trying to find my biological father.
And he didn't really want to help.
He just had done the test to help someone else in his family.
So he really wasn't too helpful. So I took his small tree and I
just started researching it and for some reason his mother's
parents, kind of, I was drawn to them.
And even more so when I looked at one of the death records and
the family had been like buried in West Palm Beach, FL, which is
where I always knew I was conceived.
So I thought I might be on the right track and I'm thinking I'm
going to keep looking into this family.
So started doing that and I came and kept coming across this one
woman that had family trees on all different sites.
I contacted her and I started explaining the situation and she
turned out to be a cousin of John as well.
So she would have been in that same generation of that family.
And I said, can you help me with your male cousins or do you have
any brothers? We started discussing all this
and she said, well, I do have two brothers.
One she kind of explained that this one of her brothers was had
never even had a girlfriend. He had lived with his mother his
whole life. And she says it's probably not
him. But I do have this other
brother. His name is Billy.
And he would have been about the same age as my mom and their
family all lived in that same city that my mom had gone back
and forth to for six years. Her relationship with Billy
wasn't great, but she was intrigued.
And she's like, I want to help you figure this out.
And so she's asked me to send her some pictures of my brother
and I and my mom. And she took all this
information and I believe she sent her husband over to talk to
Billy. She didn't get along with her
brother, took all this information over to Billy.
And Billy was OK, I have kids. And he saw the pictures and he
was willing to do adna. Test How long did it take from
when your mom said you're on your own to you have potentially
identified Billy as your biological father?
It wasn't too long, it was a couple of months.
How are you feeling? Like you're so close to getting
that confirmation? How are you feeling at that
point? Well, it turns out that Billy
was kind of like a local celebrity in that area.
I was able to find all kinds of stuff online, YouTube.
He was a musician. He sang.
He he had been in some movies. He had multiple bands over the
years and, and I had access to newspapers.com at one point.
I found so much stuff. I saw pictures of him and his
brother. And I have to tell you, when I
saw a picture of his brother, it was like a profile picture.
And I don't know if you can see I have like this little like
line on my nose, but I saw this newspaper clipping of his
brother. It was just a random thing.
He was getting a haircut. He was a hippie.
And he they just did this little article on him getting his
haircut. And it was like this profile
shot. And he had my nose.
I thought, Oh my gosh, that's my nose.
But I thought maybe I'm just trying to see it.
And he had my hair. I have really dark hair.
His hair was about this long and it was dark, curly.
And he had this little dimple in his nose.
And I thought, wow. Nobody in my family has that.
And my brother's nose is slightly different.
So it was kind of funny. I was like, hmm.
And then I just kept looking at pictures of Billy going, is he
my dad, you know, and younger pictures of him.
I was like, whoa. And again, I'm thinking, I'm
just trying to see it. I'm trying to see that there's
similarities. So I tried not to get my hopes
up and I had asked the his sister if this comes back that
he's not, will you help me try to figure out?
She says, Oh yeah, you know, we've got all.
She had a big family and we got cousin so and so and cousin so
and so. Oh, it might be him.
He was a ladies man and she was going to help me figure out who
to approach next. A couple weeks later, I was
getting ready to go to work and I checked my e-mail.
It said the results were in. I'm looking at it on my phone
and it said Billy or William is your father.
And it just like said that. And I was blown away that I
actually found him that quickly, like I found him on my own.
And the fact that that family name, I would just for some
reason, when I had seen that first tree, it was a very small
tree. It only went up to like maybe
grandparents or great grandparents.
And I just gravitated towards that family.
And then finding the sister, she was all over the Internet with
different trees and contacting her and her actually responding
to me. It just was crazy that it just
boom, boom, boom, it came back and he was, he was the person.
Wow, I mean, it's incredible, right?
Because it, it really, and I say this all the time, but it really
is some parts hard work and and being a great detective and then
also a little bit of luck, like you didn't go down the wrong
path at first. You you picked the right one.
Yes. So what happens next?
So she claimed that she couldn't hear very well.
So all we did was communicate through e-mail.
And I said, can I please call you?
I got the results, can I call you?
And she said no, no, I would just e-mail me.
And I, so I emailed her, said well, say hello to your new
niece. She was like, Oh my gosh.
She asked me again, you know, send me all this information so
that I can show him that you're his daughter.
So I sent it to her. She and her husband went to talk
to him and she came back and told me that he was shocked and
would welcome a phone call from me.
She was given the OK to give me his phone number and this was
like on a Friday that she came back and said I got the results
on a Thursday, She talked to him on a Friday.
I waited till Saturday morning and I called him.
That was crazy. Yeah, take me through that.
Like you waited a little bit, but how was the conversation?
So I got up the nerve to call him.
He picked up and the first thing I noticed was his voice was so
like cool. He just sounded like a cool guy.
He's like, well, I guess you're my daughter.
What do you want to know? He was, he was so nice.
He's just started telling me about his life, about his
career. I asked him, like, are you
married? Do you have other kids?
He was a lifelong bachelor. He actually had no kids that he
knew of. And he was married for a very
short time to a woman that's actually like three years older
than me. And that was it.
He other other than that, he he was a lifelong bachelor,
musician, entertainer. He was big into Dixieland jazz.
He played in New Orleans for many years.
He was pretty successful at that.
He made a a good career out of out of it and people knew his
name and he enjoyed his life. And he even said I would have
made a terrible dad. I was always traveling and you
know, and I'm like, I don't think so.
I think you can't really say how good of a dad you would have
been since you didn't know. And who knows?
You would have, you know, you would have made it work.
But that's neither here nor there.
Did he remember your mother? So that was difficult because I
think he was a lot like she was in that they were just la, la,
la, just dating everybody. And, you know, he's, he saw her
picture and he was just kind of like maybe.
And I told him, you know, she would have been either a maid at
some hotel or a waitress. Those are the things that she
did as jobs. And that kind of ring rang a
bell for him. He's like, well, I do remember
dating a waitress and I, you know, I was a security guard at
the time and he's like, I think that's when I knew her.
And, and then at one point he even said, I think I had coffee
with her and I noticed she was pregnant.
And I remember thinking, is that my kid?
And we didn't talk about it. We just kind of had coffee
together. But she had been dating all
these different people, and apparently he had been too.
So it wasn't necessarily like a boyfriend, girlfriend kind of
relationship. So it was easy to dismiss.
Kind of like a fling. Yeah.
Yeah, he just called it an affair.
You know, a fling. So once you found him, did you
go back to your mom and brother and tell them?
So I'll start with mom. I decided not to tell her right
away because she had made it very clear she was not
interested in talking about it. And at one point I think I asked
her, well, if I ever find him, do you want me to let you know?
No. OK, I can't imagine not knowing
who fathered my children, but that's just how she was.
And I've heard that on some of the other stories that you've
had that the mother's just kind of like, I'm, I'm glad.
They just kind of check out they they push it down.
I mean, I think that denial and doesn't sound like your mom was
ashamed of her past, but I think sometimes that factors in.
It I think it does too, and we even talked about that and she
talked about how much fun she had She and she's like, I have
no regrets and I even tried to tell her I don't I have no
judgement whatsoever. Whatever you did it, I don't
care. You know, I just I want to know
who my dad is. She's like, well, good, I'm glad
you don't judge me because I don't regret anything.
You know, she's have like this attitude.
I'm like, OK, but sure wish you'd give me a little more to
go on to. But she's just got mad at me and
it was awful. So I did not tell her.
Now, my brother, he was still like, I don't care what you find
out. Whatever doesn't concern me, I
have no interest. But obviously when I found out
who our father was, I said I found him.
He's like, really? Yeah.
Do you want to know anything about him?
I don't know. Not really.
OK, so he's kind of a macho guy. If he was interested, he wasn't
about to let me know that. So Billy gathered up a bunch of
pictures and things and he sent me a little package and it was
kind of cute. He had double S of everything.
He had two of everything. And I started looking at these
photos, and there was one, one or two that when he was younger
that I thought, Oh, my gosh, my brother looks so much like him,
it's crazy. I didn't really look like him a
lot. I had his brother's nose, and I
had dark, curly Italian hair. I remember texting my brother
and I said, can I send you a couple pictures?
Meaning I was going to take a picture with my phone and text
it to him. Can I send you some?
He's like, yeah, I guess. So I sent it to him and he did
not respond except for I think he might have said, oh, wow.
It's like, yeah, oh, wow. And he really did not comment
further. Well, later on that day or the
next day, he said, do you have a picture of Jim when he was in
high school? So Jim, the one we thought was
our dad, I said I think so. So I dug around and I found a
young picture of picture of young Jim, and I sent it to him.
I had no idea what he was doing with it.
Well a couple days later he called me or texted me and he
said so I took a picture of Jim and Billy to work and I asked
all my Co workers who do I look like?
Which one? They all said Billy.
And he was like I don't know if I can swear on here but he said
oh you know the F word? And I just kind of laughed.
I'm like well you look a lot like him.
He said, OK, I guess he's my father too.
And then I don't know how much later it was a couple weeks, he
said, I I want to do a DNADNA test as well.
OK, so we got that going and I was upset thinking, well, what
if he comes back and he's just my half brother?
You know, that would be crazy. And I was I, I remember thinking
how upset I was going to be if that actually did happen, but it
didn't came back. Billy's your father.
And so I told him that, and he's like, wow.
OK, So he started learning a little bit about him.
Billy and I talked all the time. The first conversation I had
with him that Saturday morning was about 45 minutes.
And I hung up the phone, and I thought, wow, he's really cool.
And I love his voice. And he was so nice to talk to.
He was just easy to talk to. And he was just like, oh, OK,
this happened. Oh, I guess I have kids.
You know, he didn't bother him at all.
Yeah. And his brother was like, I have
a niece and a nephew. Yay.
So you're talking all the time. Do you make plans to meet in
person? Definitely.
So I was, you know, in Maine, he's in Florida.
He'd already said he doesn't have a lot of money.
He can't really travel. I said that's all right, I'll
figure something out. But right about that time, he
was getting set up to have some pretty serious heart surgery.
So we had to wait till that happened.
So that was over the course of like two or three months.
He almost actually died during the surgery.
I remember his sister was keeping me in for his sister and
brother, like letting me know, like he's not doing good.
You better call him in the hospital.
And and I remember thinking, God, do not do that to me.
Like I haven't even met him yet. I just found him, you know,
please don't die. And he made it through.
We had some recovery and then I planned a trip down there and
yeah, I was super excited. He was so cute.
He's like, I made a list of all the things that we can do and
all the places I want to show you.
And sure enough, I fly down there.
He meets me at the baggage claim and it was just really cool.
He gave me a big hug. He he said, you want to go to
lunch? He takes me to lunch and I
remember taking our first selfie together and I was amazing to me
to finally have like, this is my biological father and he's so
cool and we had a nice visit. I didn't stay with him.
I stayed in a hotel and he picked me up every day and we
went and did all his things he wanted to do.
And I met a ton of his friends. I got to hear him play.
He plays the trumpet. I got to hear him play and it
was just really fun. He was at the time, he was in
his late 70s. And I thought, this guy is still
going. He'd call me up and say, I
wanted to call you now because I'm getting, I'm going out with
my friends and I'll be out late and I'm like, wow, he's got like
a more social life than I do. And yeah, it was pretty neat.
So I met him and he, he totally looked like the, you know,
Italian guy with the shirt unbuttoned and the jewelry and
the nice shoes and, and flirting with everybody.
Yeah, it was, he was pretty cool.
It was fun. We connected really well right
out, right out the gate. He would sometimes ask, you
know, about my brother, does he know about me?
Do you think he wants to meet me?
And I just, I didn't want to hurt his feelings.
But I would say he's getting there.
You know, he's warming up to the idea.
You know, he had to come to that on his own time and he finally
did. My brother end up going down
there. They met.
I have one picture of the the two of them together and I ended
up going down like a second time.
I brought my two sons with me so they get to meet their
grandfather. That was really nice.
That was really fun. My brother has one child and I
have two, so he has three grandchildren.
He never did meet my brother's daughter, so yeah, we had a
relationship for a few years and he passed away in 2020.
So it's about four years, yeah. And how did you navigate that?
I went from being so grateful for what I did have and what we
were able to form between us. I went from that to being, you
know, this really bites. I didn't meet him until he was
an old man and I didn't have enough time.
I went back and forth with those.
I didn't want to be ungrateful for what I had because I'd seen
so many DNA stories, you know, the rejection and everything.
And I did not have the rejection.
So I was so thankful for what I had and that I had met him and
his siblings and some cousins and and I still have contact
with a lot of his family. His sister won't talk to me.
I don't know why she just kind of got weird about the whole
thing. But I will add the sister, she
also had a set of twins, she had twin daughters and they were
born like 8 months before we were.
So that was kind of. Neat.
And I met one of them and we looked a lot of like, a lot of
like. So it's fun to see family that
that you look like because I only knew half of my family.
Well, first of all, I just want to say I'm so glad that you did
find him before he passed, because I'm sure you hear a lot
of those stories too of. Yeah, I always feel so bad.
Yeah. But but I think it's important
to acknowledge, like, both things, right?
Like it's OK to be disappointed and however you feel about the
lost time. Have you found a way to make
peace with that? I do think about him a lot and I
have so many wonderful pictures of him.
I have two movies that he was in that was kind of fun to watch
that when he was younger. And I actually have contact with
his best friend. So every now and then his best
friend and I will talk. His brother had passed away like
two months before he did, so I don't have anybody in that
family anymore because his sister won't talk to me and her
daughters. They just got really weird about
my reasons for finding the family, and I don't know.
So I just had to kind of let that go, you know?
Were they concerned that you were after money or something
like that? Or I think so money, property.
And it's like he didn't have hardly anything and I don't
care. I, that wasn't it at all.
And I wasn't going to try to defend myself constantly.
It's like, OK, think what you want to think, but I got what I
need out of it and met him. I I know his whole family line.
His sister was an amazing genealogist.
She'd actually gone to Italy and gone to all the places she'd
gotten Italian records translated and things.
So she had a really, really good family tree already.
And I'm thankful for that. I have a lot of the family
history. There's so many interesting
families. You know, like my father's
cousin was an inventor. His grandparents were inventors.
His mother actually held the patent for inline skates for 25
years. She invented those.
Yeah, she had the patent for that, but she could never get
anybody to build them. So eventually the patent ran out
and someone else got credit for it.
So it was a little tidbit about her that was kind of neat.
She had a couple of sisters that were Rockettes.
They were models. They were all just beautiful
women and had interest. There's a lot of interesting
family stories. One of my father's cousins was a
beauty queen in Connecticut. His father was a championship
boxer. Just a lot of neat stuff to find
out and the pitchers are great and so I am very thankful for
what I got. I got to meet him.
I I know I'm very lucky in that sense and I don't know what else
I could ask for really at this point.
Have you gotten in touch with any of the Italian side?
Like culturally, a lot of people will start cooking recipes or
they go and visit Oh. My gosh.
Well, well, guess who latched on to that?
My brother. He the resistant 1.
He, yes, he is now fluent in Italian.
He is actually in Italy right now.
He's been to Italy multiple times.
I had contact with a distant cousin.
We're still not sure exactly where our lines meet, but she's
on like a couple of different DNA sites and she matches me.
And her name is Lena and she lives in the town that a lot of
our family was from. And so my brother had asked,
hey, do you do you have contact with anybody that's in Italy?
I said, yeah, as a matter of fact, I do.
So they connected. He went over there.
She he met her family like her husband and two sons.
And while he was doing that, he sent me a picture of They took a
selfie of him and the family, and for a minute I couldn't
figure out which one was him. Her two sons and my brother look
so much alike that it took me a minute or two to go.
Which one is my brother? Wow.
Oh that is so funny that he is the one that's like oh.
Yeah, yeah, he's all about it now.
And he always look, he always had people asking him if he was
Italian or Greek. He's very Italian looking and he
hated when people ask him that. And now he makes his own pasta,
he makes his own sauce, he has an Italian tutor, and Oh yeah,
he's embraced it. Oh, that's so awesome.
Yeah. Is your mother still alive?
My mother's still alive. I was in the car with her one
day taking her to her sister's memorial.
And it was just the two of us. And I said, so I did end up
finding out who our father was. And before I even got it out of
my mouth, she said, I'm not interested.
She didn't want to know. OK, we'll shut that conversation
down. So she knows that Jim is not our
father and that it is someone else.
But when she talks to people, she will talk about Jim being
our dad. She'll say, my brother looks so
much like Jim and I don't know why you're not as tall as he
was. Jim was like 6 four and my
brother was like 5-9 and and my mom would say, I don't know why
you're not as tall as he is. You got the jeans.
And this is way after we knew that that's not our dad and that
she was told that he was not our dad.
I think that she was in love with Jim and that was like the
love of her life and the fact that she had his kids was like
the only thing she had of him. And when I crushed that dream it
she just couldn't handle it. It just not something she wanted
to believe and it was like taking that last thing away from
her that she had of him because she did have a relationship with
them. They had a long, longish
relationship, but she just figured her her her dates wrong.
I think she really did think that he was our father and that
she just, you know, messed up the dates or something.
She always said we were born early.
Oh, you were, you were due in October, but we were born in
August. Like the reason for that?
Yeah, as I'm talking to you now, you really seem like you are OK
with it or that you're at peace with it.
And if I'm wrong, you can tell me I'm wrong.
How did you get to this place? Honestly, that short period of
time that I didn't know who my father was was scary to me and
very uncomfortable. So just being able to figure out
who it was, it settled that part of me and I just said whatever I
get out of it will be a bonus. And I got way more than I ever
really thought or expected. And that's, that's sort of why
I'm, I'm OK with it. I actually got like a little, I
got a little, it's his signature with a little trumpet on the
bottom. I can't get it to now it's
upside down, but but his his signature.
And then there's a little trumpet that he used to draw on
the end of it, and I got that. Alyssa has a yeah, she has a
tattoo with his signature and a trumpet.
Yeah. And that's my little dedication
to him. Yeah, because we, what we did
have for four, four years, almost to the day was really
special to me. And I'm really glad I got to
meet him. I'm bummed that he passed away
in my eyes too soon. But you know, I, I still have a
lot of memories. I have pictures, I have all
kinds of stuff. I got all his, almost all his
belongings. I have his ashes.
His best friend made a, took an old trumpet of his and put his
ashes in it and sealed it and sent it to me.
So I have his ashes. That's really.
Special Yeah. My mom had such a different
attitude about it. My brother had such a different
attitude about it, and I just had to come to terms with
everybody handles it differently and I just need to worry about
myself. I got my truth out of it, which
was the most important thing to me.
Like I said, that period of time that I didn't know was awful.
It's just awful. When I first met Billy, I said
I've never had a dad on my birth certificate.
Would you be willing to be put on that?
And he said, yeah, in a heartbeat.
What do I whatever I have to do, I'll do it.
Ancestry DNA or those website DNA is not like a legal DNA test
that could be used in court. I said, well, we need to do like
a legal DNA test so that we have that documented like that.
And so we all did it and got the results.
And of course it was, you know, 99.999, you know, probability.
And so I had what was considered basically the only DNA test that
would would be used in court. So now that I have that, I knew
that I could probably get my birth certificate fixed.
And it turned out to be a blessing that my stepdad was
never actually my adopted father, because had that been
the case then I probably would not have been able to change the
birth certificate, especially like getting him involved.
But it was never their birth certificate was never changed.
So there was nobody listed. And so after after he passed
away, I it was actually pretty easy.
I submitted the paperwork, there was some forms to fill out.
I had my brother do the same. We got them notarized, sent to
the courts and they sent us new birth certificates.
Both of us have him on our birth certificate now.
How incredible. With that little Side Story you
told at the beginning of your stepfather not legally adopting
you, it ended up working out like that's incredible.
It goes back to that hard work and a little bit of luck, right?
Exactly, Yeah. What advice do you have for a
parent who might be keeping adna surprise from their child?
I think that a parent that has adna surprise or secret should
share that with that child as soon as they think that child
could handle it and even possibly set up counseling
before they drop that. I have a friend that had a child
and she wasn't with the child's father, but she married soon
after that and they raised the child with her thinking that her
husband was the father. And I always told her right from
the beginning and she knew my whole story.
I always said to her, please don't keep that a secret.
Please tell her like before she's like a teenager and she
went to counseling for it about it, to talk to somebody about
when would be a good time to tell their daughter.
And they ended up telling her and it went really well.
It was upsetting, of course, in the beginning, but it went
really well. And I just remember saying to
her, you know, I'm really glad you did that because I know it
was hard, but she we need to know.
Like I was that kid once, like I didn't have a dad.
I didn't know him. Parents should really put their
child 1st and realized that they need to know the truth for so
many reasons. I shouldn't even have to list
that, although it's a hard conversation.
They just need to do it. The the child deserves to have
their truth known. What advice do you have for
someone who just uncovered Adna Surprise?
Well, I know that I couldn't breathe for a few minutes.
I say breathe and take it slow and and just as much as you can
handle. You know, you may have to put it
on the back burner for a little while until it sinks in or you
figure out your next move. But you deserve to know the
truth. So if that's what you seek, you
shouldn't let anybody else's feelings get in the way.
Because I know I felt really whole finally when I found out
everything. People deserve to know who their
biological parents are, whether you're adopted or whatever the
scenario is. It's a feeling you can't
describe. I remember asking a friend of
mine growing up, I'm like, you have your dad, try to imagine
not knowing him. Try to imagine it and she would
say, I can't. I can't imagine not knowing my
father so well. That's how I feel.
It's a weird feeling. It's it's not a hurtful feeling,
it's just an empty feeling. Alyssa, thank you so much for
coming on the podcast and sharing your story.
I loved hearing your outlook and your journey.
I hope that you make it over to Italy and I wish you the
absolute best. Oh, thank you.
There is a plan for my brother and I to go to Italy together in
two years. So yeah, we're planning to do
that, Sure. And I can't wait to see where my
family is from. Thanks again to Alyssa for
sharing her story. If you have Adna Surprise that
you'd like to share, please submit your story at
dnasurprises.com. And remember, for early access
to ad free episodes, join me over on patreon@patreon.com/DNA
Surprises. Until next time.
This episode of DNA Surprises was hosted, produced and edited
by me Alexis Ourselt. It was mixed and mastered by
Josh Ourselt of Siren Recording Studios.