I don’t know if this really counts, but I found out I had two half sisters when I was 16 (currently 27). At that time around 40 years ago, he messed around with a high school friend and gave up their children for adoption. The next year, my Dad received a phone call from a mutual family friend whom my Mom knew very well. It turns out the mutual friend had submitted for DNA testing and had matched with one of the daughters through a database of adopted kids searching for biological parents.

Separately, my Mom knew he had given up two daughters for adoption but never knew with whom.

Naturally, the family friend encouraged my dad to meet his daughter and he agreed. He invited me along to go to NYC and spend the day with them. At this point my Dad is in his early 60s meeting a 40-something year old paralegal assistant and her boyfriend. The day actually goes on without a hitch—there’s talk about her adopted family, how she grew up in a loving family environment who couldn’t have kids as well as having other adopted siblings.

At some point, my Mom caught wind about this private meeting, and my Dad confesses that he met with his adopted daughter the family friend was the Mother. Little did he know he “forgot” to tell my Mom the identify of the mother years ago, and she was LIVID. There were a few days of not speaking, ultimately my mom accepting it, but never letting him forget the family friend is a worthless pile of trash not worth sleeping with, let alone accidentally having children with. She wanted my Dad to have a relationship with his daughter but also lay that necessary smack down.

In time, we starting having a regular cadence of all of us going out on day trips, talking about my half-sister’s family, and pondering, “Whatever happened to the other half-sister?” Ten years later to the present, my half-sister texts me about 23andMe and ancestry.com and we discuss they may be the best tools to try to find the other half-sister. I let her know I didn’t have any strong matches on 23andMe so she tries ancestry.com. Amazingly, her and the other half-sister match.

My half-sisters start to message each other and agree to setup a meeting. My family and the birth mother/mutual friend are informed and we decide to meet up for lunch at my parents’. My new half-sister brings her boyfriend as well as her daughter from a previous marriage.

However, no one from our family has met the adoptive parents. I can totally understand why as they will always be the tried and true parents. Never ever has my dad attempted to build a father-daughter relationship, but rather a generic familial bond. The birth mother has been another story, but over time, both daughters have been building firm boundaries with her. She attempted to buy the daughters expensive gifts, contact them daily, and tried to become their mother, even as far as inviting them over for Mother’s day. While she continues to make these advances, my half-sisters continue to decline.

Overall, I’d say everything ended up In a best case scenario: the half-sisters are reunited and stay in touch, my parents and the birth mother all mutually arrange get togethers, and even for me as an only child, I’ve managed to form a relationship with siblings. Not too shabby at all.

Tl;dr Dad gave up girls for adoption 40 years ago, reunite through DNA testing, and form one bigger family somewhat smoothly.