Taking DNA tests has gained popularity to help trace generations of family trees but they can sometimes reveal long-buried family secrets. Photo / Getty Images
The story of one woman’s frantic search for the truth
In my late 40s, I discovered I had a half-brother, Matt*. He’d been adopted as a baby and had been looking for his birth mother. Matt had uploaded his DNA details to Ancestry.com and got a close match with my uncle. With the help of my uncle, he figured out who his father was. It was my dad, Ben*.
Dad had no idea that Matt, now in his early 50s, existed. Dad and his then-girlfriend, Clara*, had been teenagers – she was only 15, Dad 17. And once she was pregnant, Clara was banned from ever seeing Dad. She never contacted him again. And Matt still hasn’t found Clara.
When I met Matt, I marvelled at the similarities to our dad – his jawline, the same diminutive height, his introverted nature. It felt so easy to be in his company.
I decided to buy an Ancestry DNA kit so Matt could see our shared paternity line. I knew how to trace six or seven generations from Dad’s family, and thought it would be nice for him to see our shared lineage.
I’d taken a 23andMe test some years before for the health and traits information for my husband, who’s adopted. Knowing my lineage, I thought I would be able to flag any discrepancies in the genealogy and heritage results. It had showed up as 50% South East Asian and 50% Northern European for me, as I’d anticipated, and only matched with some distant cousins (with unfamiliar names).
My Ancestry results took almost two months to hit my inbox. When I logged in, I was immediately confused – there was no match with Matt, or my uncle. I emailed “customer solutions” to ask if there had been a lag with their database and endured a two-day wait, only to be told that matching is immediate.
From starting off in utter denial at the situation, I could feel a visceral wave of panic rising. How could I not be a match with Matt or my uncle? Did this mean Ben wasn’t my dad?
I could see that I had matched with more than 8000 people, with more than a dozen of them being termed “close relatives”. So I began messaging my new first and second cousins, frantically looking for answers.
At this point, it still seemed implausible to me that Ben wasn’t my biological father: my kids have his blue eyes. We all have the same athletic body shape. It didn’t feel true. And in the words of virtually every other person who’s discovered their parent is not their biological parent, the truth is that a rug’s been suddenly pulled out from under you.
At the age of 50, I discovered that I was a cliché – along with 1 in 25 people who take a DNA test, I became an NPE: Not Parent Expected.
It was overwhelming news. Seismic. The feeling of grief was all-consuming. The crying came regularly and wouldn’t stop. I felt rudderless – not least because my (adopted) husband’s attitude was, “Your dad’s still your dad, what’s the big deal?” Adoptees and donor-conceived people who know this information have often had years to process and come to terms with it.
One of my new cousins that my search had found – and whose profile picture showed a young woman with my daughter’s nose and my chin – was super responsive. I told her I was looking for any male relative she had who was born in the 1940s. She thought the best candidate was the uncle of her mother, a bit outside my date range but a “ladies man” who ran a pub and had left his wife for a much younger woman. This seemed to fit the bill… until it transpired my biological father was actually this publican’s son, who had been a teenager when I was conceived.
Within two days of finding out my dad wasn’t my biological father, I had the name of the man who was. And moments after typing his name into Facebook, I was looking at photos of him.
I was gobsmacked to see we’d both worked in radio for the same company. I reconnected with a mutual colleague from the 1980s to do a little digging – I couldn’t take the word of his relatives, who had encouraged contact, because there was a chance we may not get along (What if he’s racist? Homophobic? A bully?). I needed to know if this was a person worth contacting.
The feedback from the former colleague was positive, so I decided I would make contact with this man, Ron*, now a retired broadcaster.
But how best to drop such a bombshell to someone who has gone about his life and knows nothing of his adult child (and grandchildren)?
I decided to tread carefully: I knew Ron had no other children so I thought he wouldn’t outright reject the notion of someone popping up to make that claim at this stage in his life. Nonetheless, I didn’t want to be the instigator of a heart attack from such unexpected news. I got his email address from the old colleague and sent a photo of my mother from many years ago with a very vague message: “I’m writing with a question for you, I believe you know the woman in this photo? I have a bit of a mystery to solve, which you may be able to help with.” I’d removed my name so he couldn’t Google me, and waited.
Within 30 minutes of him receiving it, I had a reply with the most unexpected sentence: “Oh, my dear god, you are my daughter.”
My imagined scenarios (a fumbled one-night stand, an overlap in lovers, a sneaky affair) didn’t include the one when he actually knew of my existence. I certainly didn’t know about his. Why had he not at least tried to find out if I’m okay, that I didn’t end up in a gutter, even if from online and afar? But he didn’t know my name, and despite contacting my mother a couple of times, was unable to get any information out of her about me (My mother and I have been estranged for more than 30 years).
Within weeks, Ron and I had exchanged numerous emails, messages and photographs. Ron’s mother was still alive and his sister didn’t have children either, so I was her only grandchild – my kids the only great-grandchildren.
Ron had been 15 and still in school uniform when he met my 20-year-old mother, who was working in his father’s pub. They were an item for three years. When she became pregnant at 22, he’d wanted to marry her, but she said he was too young and took off to have me, planning to adopt me out. A while later, he’d heard she’d had a daughter and got married. He was told to stay away. So he did.
The big question for me, one that Ron didn’t know the answer to, was whether Ben knew. I imagined that my mother, being the person she is, had tricked Ben into thinking he was the father. How else could you explain why a 21-year-old sportsman (Ben was competing internationally that year) would marry someone he barely knew, then take jobs in factories to support the child, and ultimately move to a city with no family nearby, to raise a kid who was not his?
Ben is not a communicator: we don’t chat on the phone, we don’t write to each other, and we hadn’t Skyped in a while. Since the discovery of Matt – which, by now, was a couple of years ago – I hadn’t spoken to him directly. All our messaging is via my stepmum. Dad is great in person, but on any other channel, it’s a struggle.
The non-communicative relationship was at odds with the onslaught of messages I was getting from Ron – we’d ping each other updates several times a day. It was overwhelming and intense.
I had decided not to tell Ben – why break his heart now? He loves me, he loves his granddaughters, we’re good. I mulled it over for a few weeks. But as new relatives added me on social media, I became anxious that maybe something would come out. It was too big a secret.
I set up a video call with my stepmum. The call was half an hour long and for the first 20 minutes, Ben didn’t say much. I tried to find out how he felt about Matt. “I was bowled over,” he said. “You go through life and then 50-odd years later, you find something like that out…” His voice trailed off. I couldn’t stem the tears knowing what was about to come. “Well, on that note, I might have a bombshell for you, too… I took a DNA test. And I didn’t match with Matt.” There was a tiny pause, then he breathed out and said quietly, “Yeah.”
“You knew?” The one scenario that I wouldn’t have allowed myself to think was a possibility was, in fact, true. He’d met my mother just before she was about to give birth, and convinced her to not give up the baby. He adopted me, which is why he’s on my birth certificate, and that was that. His entire family knew.
I asked Ben if he was planning to tell me and he said, “No, I was never going to tell you, but I’m glad you found out before I died.” He said I was his dream child.
This story will continue to play out. But right now, my heart is broken for this lovely, sweet, easy-going man at the life he could have had in his 20s but didn’t, so that he could be the loving, normal parent in my life. I’m so grateful to him. I’m so relieved that he knew – that he chose to go into this willingly.
There’s a lot to unpack that’s painful. But there’s a lot of good – at least Ben and Ron are still alive and I can ask Ben questions and get to know Ron before it’s too late.
Ron and I both feel robbed of time, but I wonder whether I would have been so accepting of the situation had I found it all out when I was younger. Or would I just be full of rage, at everyone, for lying?
But I feel very modern – I’ve got no mother and two dads. And I will be fine. We’ll all be fine.
*All names have been changed
Unbound Vol 1 weaves together pictures and interviews with NZ surfers.