Foundations

 

The theme for week one of the #52ancestors project is ‘Foundations’. There are many ways to interpret this prompt and I have decided to tell my personal story.

The year I turned fifty the very foundation of who I am changed forever. In this modern era of DNA testing and matches being shared on Ancestry I was absolutely astonished to discover my biggest ‘skeleton in the closet’ yet. And I’d been doing research on my family tree for about 20 years at that time, so when I say big, I mean BIG.

Years ago, I decided to participate in the Ancestry DNA program. There weren’t many of my family interested in doing this so matches to known family weren’t plenty. Many of the matches I had did not have any common ancestor names, so I didn’t think about them any further. Honestly, I started to think the DNA test was a bit of a lark and wasn’t really a practical scientific tool.

Fast forward a few years to when someone contacted me because she was surprised at how closely related the DNA results for her husband claimed me to be. She had taken the same steps as I had with others:  reviewed my tree searching for common names and found none. We wrote a couple of messages to each other before we discovered the only ‘common denominator’ between us. It was the city where I was born and still live and where her mother-in-law had lived for a time when she was growing up.

At this point the questions and vague information being sent in the emails started to unsettle me. They started to ask things like what month and year I was born and where my mother worked. (It’s unfortunate, but there are crooks out there taking advantage of this type of information and I got skeptical). Her mother-in-law wanted to know if my mom worked in a kitchen at our local hospital. I thought I remembered talk of working there and I recalled that a couple of my mom’s good friends had worked there while I was growing up. Things started to ring bells and I began to wonder. Then came the showstopper email of all emails. Here is a transcript:

“I do not wish to shock you or alarm you, however, after talking with my mother-in-law, Brenda, we have discovered that her father had an affair with another woman sometime before you were born. Apparently, the woman worked at the hospital. It is possible that Brenda’s father might be your biological father, thus making you a half sibling of hers and an aunt to Ryan. Brenda is open to discussing this with you if you want to. Or you can go through me and I can tell you what she knows. If you don’t that is fine as well.” 

She then gave me Brenda’s personal email address and asked, “Could it be possible?”

Could it be possible? What a loaded question. What I knew at the time was that my parents were married until the time of their deaths. They had been married very young when my mom was pregnant with my eldest sister. Then came my older brother and sister and not until 8-years later did I come along. I knew that I had always favoured my mother’s side and had no resemblance to my father. My siblings (3 older, 1 younger) look so much like him. I had always felt a disconnect from my father. I’m sure he loved me, but he seemed much closer to my siblings. I knew that whenever I spoke of family history my mother ‘glazed over’ especially after I did the DNA test. I began to doubt, and my foundation started cracking.

Without going into all the details, I did uncover the truth and discovered that my dad was in fact not my biological father. I was crushed. I was angry. I was in shock. I was ashamed. I no longer knew who I was. I felt displaced in a way that I can’t really explain. The foundation of who I thought I was crumbled.

I am fortunate to have a very good friend who helped me come to grips with everything. When I told my story to this silly, loveable soul she looked at me with a twinkle in her eye and a mischievous smile and said, “Look at it this way, if you ever need a kidney, you have 6 more people you can ask!”  I finally laughed after days of sadness.

I have come to grips with my new reality. I have had the good fortune to meet Brenda, the sister I never knew I had (that’s a story for another time). I am hopeful that I may eventually meet the other 5 siblings who would like to know me. I feel a special connection to Ryan and his wife who first reached out and hope to be able to meet them in person one day as well.

And from a genealogy point of view, I now have another whole family line to learn about!

My mom and I in 2014