Finding the Other Half of My Story

There are some things you grow up believing are simply facts. Your birthday. Where you came from. Who your family is. Who your father is. You don't question them because why would you?

As you all know, in the last 5 months I’ve learned that a few of those facts aren’t what I had always believed it to be, and as time goes on during this journey of finding and getting to know my biological dad, I’m reflecting back on what was. There just isn’t any instruction manual for something like this. There is no neat little guide for what you're supposed to feel when you realize that people you loved knew a truth about your life that you didn't.

There isn't a specific emotion assigned to finding out that a piece of your identity had been sitting somewhere outside of your reach for more than three decades. I’ve been feeling all of them. Anger. Confusion. Grief. Curiosity. Excitement. Sadness. Relief. Sometimes all in the same day.

For a while, initially, there were so many questions. How long had people known? Why didn't anyone tell me? Would I have ever found out if I hadn't started looking for answers myself?

And then there was the biggest question of all:

Who is he?

That question eventually became a name. Then the conversations. Then, finally, a person standing in front of me.

I met my biological father. Even writing those words still feels a little surreal. I’ve been explaining it as feeling like I’m in a movie.

After 33 years of living an entire life without knowing this person existed as part of my story, suddenly I was sitting with him. Talking. Learning little things about each other. Finding similarities I didn't know I was looking for, and somehow, something that could have felt completely foreign didn't.

I'm learning that finding someone doesn't mean you instantly make up for 33 years. You can't cram decades into a few conversations or visits. You don't suddenly know everything about one another just because DNA says you're connected. You start where you are. So that's what we're doing. We're spending time together. We're talking. We're learning.

I have also met my siblings who, are just as my dad is, kind, open-minded, and honest. That's another strange and beautiful thing to process… realizing there are people walking around in this world who share pieces of you, while neither of you knew the other was there.

There is excitement in that, but also anxiety, and all of the other emotions I’ve already mentioned that everyone else involved is enduring as well. The big picture in of itself might be easy to observe, but it’s everybody’s perspectives, processing that make this entire situation so much more. I can’t speak for them, I can only give the time and respect it takes to process something like this.

But I'd be lying if I said there wasn't grief mixed into it, too. I can be grateful for what I'm finding now while still grieving the years I didn't have it. I can be excited about getting to know my biological father while being disappointed, hurt, confused, and flat out angry with the father who raised me. I can appreciate the relationships forming now while still being hurt that the truth was kept from me.

I used to think finding the truth would make everything clearer. Instead, it gave me more feelings to hold: grief and gratitude, hurt and hope, questions and answers. Maybe healing isn’t about sorting them into right and wrong. Maybe it’s about accepting that they all belong to the same story.

It isn't about erasing the life I've already lived or rewriting the people who were there for it, it's about discovering that my story was bigger than I knew, and that I deserved different.

There were pages missing. People missing. Answers missing. And now, little by little, I'm getting the chance to fill some of those spaces, not with the childhood I could have had or some imaginary version of what life might have looked like, but with what exists right now.

A chance to know each other. A chance to build something from here. A chance to see where this new part of my story goes.

I've spent a lot of time over the past few years reflecting on who I am, where I came from, and how the things that happened to me shaped the person I've become. I just never expected one of those reflections to literally change what I knew about where I came from. Maybe that's the strangest lesson in all of this.

Sometimes healing isn't about finally understanding the past.

Sometimes it's about discovering there was more to the story all along.

And for the first time, I get to turn those pages for myself.