When Your World Shatters Post-DNA Test

I never expected the basic facts of my life to change.

My family has always been weird. It was something I grew comfortable with early on, that my family arrangement wasn't typical.

By the time I was eight, my mom had married three times. As an adult, I was adopted by my first step-dad. I thought I knew the details of my own life, even if my situation was complicated.

I thought my future family might include a new husband or wife, nieces and nephews, and in-laws. I never thought I would suddenly have a new father or a new sibling.

Just a few days after my 29th birthday, my grandma asked if she could talk to me via video call. Initially, I thought somebody died. My mind went wild trying to figure out who was gone. Instead, she told me that somebody was claiming to be my biological father.

It all went back to an Ancestry DNA test I'd taken years earlier. I barely even remembered taking it. Spitting in a tube started as a novelty but ultimately changed so many things I thought I knew about my life.

When I'd taken the test, I thought it was strange that I didn't see many people from my father's side in the results. I sort of just figured that nobody closely related on that side had taken a DNA test, or maybe even that my father was wrong abut who his own father was.

When I learned my biological father was a person I'd never heard of before, everything made complete sense.

But also, it didn't.

How do you deal with unexpected results? There's no real answer. I've since met several others who have learned similar information. A lot of the time the information is presented with a sheepish smile, maybe to cover all the other emotions. Anger. Shock. Confusion. Frustration. Happiness. Excitement. Fear. It all comes up at some point.

I've been able to joke about the situation, but the undercurrent of those jokes always maintains some level of hurt. It is beyond frustrating to learn that you were missing something about yourself, that you were lied to. That something was kept from you by a parent or the universe.

There's the loss of identity. Nobody close to me has experienced the same situation, and I feel like a lot of them don't understand the complexity of the emotions involved. The pain and the curiosity. The pit that grew larger and larger inside of me. The questions that came up. Should I change my name? Who should I tell? Is this a secret? Is it okay to be mad? Why do I feel like a human betrayal?

There's a feeling of loss. A whole childhood I didn't get to have. People I never got to meet and never will because they've passed away. An entire relationship with a parent that would look much different today had we known. I think often about the life I didn't have.

And yet, there's the life I did have. The people I did get to meet. The father I did know for the majority of my life. Those things are just as important, just as shaping of my life.

A lot has changed since I got those results. I don't like secrets anymore. I feel less certain about where I come from, but I feel more certain about who I am now. I understand the complexity of family in a way I didn't before.

It's been over two years since I got the news. I accept that life worked out the way it did. My DNA is just one of many facts about me.