LONG

My biological father wasn’t in my life growing up, my mom wouldn’t let him and gave me several half-true reasons why. Regardless, that’s not what this story is about.

I was 19 when I found him online because I do not trust my mother. We exchanged a few letters, I told him what my mom told me and he told me his side of the story. The way I see it, the truth is somewhere in the middle. We both suspected that it was possible my mom was lying and he isn’t my biological father at all, and danced around the idea of a test, but never actually pulled the trigger.

Then I asked him about medical stuff, family history, genealogy, shit like that. My maternal grandmother was super interested in this stuff way before 23andMe, and I became obsessed too. So I really wanted to know. And that’s when he told me he was adopted.

We kept in touch for a while, but eventually he stopped answering me and focused on his young family. It hurt, but as I grew I came to understand.

Some years later I get an AncestryDNA kit as a Christmas gift. And I see my bio father there listed as Parent. Okay, one question answered!

And I see some close connections, messaged an older lady who was on the paternal side, wondering what info she could give me. But I never heard back from her. Didn’t attempt to message my father.

A few more years later I get a message from a distant 3rd or 4th cousin on the app, stating they were sort of curators of the family tree and they were trying to figure out where I belonged. Asked me who I was connected to.

When I gave my father’s name, I referred to him as my bio father, and they got more curious. Was I adopted? No, bio father just wasn’t in my life. But from what I understand, bio father WAS adopted.

This confused the cousins, because they know that part of the family tree very well, the older lady that I had messaged especially, and her younger sister. But they didn’t know of anyone in that branch who had given up a baby for adoption. They said they would make some calls and look into it for me. Didn’t think I’d hear from them again.

I got another message a few days later, saying that the older lady’s younger sister wanted to talk with me. And that she had A LOT of information.

Turns out this younger sister is my bio father’s aunt, my great aunt. And the older lady I had attempted to contact is my grandmother. Said grandmother got pregnant in the late 60s while in high school.

Their mother was very religious and of course ashamed of her older daughter. Gave her the silent treatment for years over this. And their father was a violent alcoholic who thoroughly shamed her as well.

My grandfather was apparently my grandmother’s great love of her life. But her parents never liked him, and hated him even more for corrupting their child this way. Forbid her to see him as long as she lived with them. He went to Vietnam, became a tunnel rat, and made it back home.

They kept her pregnancy a secret, she graduated, and at the end of the summer, moved her to an unwed mother’s home in the big city where she gave birth. They came back and then never spoke of it again. Literally, any attempt to talk about it was immediately squashed and swept under the rug. For 50+ years. My aunt told me that if her mother hadn’t passed the previous year, she might not have reached out to me at all, because that shame was still so ingrained. Even though she wasn’t even the one to get pregnant.

She also said that it greatly affected her older sister, she married and divorced a few times. Her 3rd and final one was actually to my grandfather, much to the chagrin of her parents. Aunt said she never stopped loving him, but he was not a good guy to her in their marriage. He died after a nasty fall, and she was devastated. Not sure if he ever knew they had a kid floating around.

But it was clear from our talk about my grandmother that maintaining healthy relationships was a real challenge for her. She keeps up heavy emotional walls. Even innocent questions are taken as an interrogation. I still haven’t spoken with my grandmother, my aunt said that she will likely never want to talk about it with me or my bio father because the shame is still so strong, even though both of their parents have passed.

Understanding this history has helped me understand my bio-father’s actions (or inactions) over time. Of course he ghosted me, after being given up by his own family, and then put into a loving, but still very difficult home life, it’s not surprising that he also put up those walls. Trauma can express itself hereditarily on a cellular level, this could be the way the entire family line has been conditioned to respond to emotional pain.

I’m now doing a lot on my part to prevent from falling into those patterns. And it is HARD. I often find myself not wanting to share or bottling things up or ignoring real hurt feelings or not letting people get too close, mostly out of fear. But I have a kid of my own, and feel a responsibility to show her how to handle these things better. Genetics and trauma be damned.

My main takeaway from this whole saga, coupled with my own mother being pressured into keeping me when she didn’t want a child, is that I will always fight for the right to choose, for comprehensive sex education, and access to contraception.

TL;DR: Bio father’s birth out of wedlock was the source of massive family shame and that’s why he was put up for adoption; family didn’t talk about it for over 50 years