Father: Unknown
Every year around Father’s Day, I see articles from DNA companies highlighting a customer who has found their birth father as a result of taking one of their tests. The stories they share are incredible - stories of fathers who couldn’t wait to meet their children, who accepted them with open arms and with whom they forged loving relationships in spite of what they’d lost.
I discovered my own birth father via a DNA test in early 2021. I’m still processing my experience and how it changed me. In some ways, what follows is in response to those stories - because not every reunion is a happy one - and there’s nothing to prepare you for a life-changing discovery that doesn’t go the way you’d hoped. It’s heartbreaking - and that grief stays with you. But mostly, it’s just my way of processing the grief that I’m feeling, in this moment.
Every year, around Father’s day, DNA testing sites share stories about father and daughter reunions that are so sticky-sweet it makes my stomach hurt.
Because they don’t warn you that discovering the identity of your birth father will feel incredible - until it doesn’t.
They don’t warn you that finding this person will come with a grief so heavy that it colors your vision for months (years, lifetimes). That it will reopen old wounds and become a scalpel, carving new pathways into your heart.
They don’t warn you that your inner 8-year-old will do anything to get him to like her. That she will try her best to dance to his rhythm and sing his tune. That she will forever sing off-key. That it’s impossible to learn the dance when the steps are always changing.
They don’t warn you that opening an energetic connection to someone you’ve always longed for will leave you feeling like an empty husk.
They leave out the part where the heartache you feel in the end is somehow more painful than what you felt in the beginning.
They really should tell you these things.
They should remind you that, even though it somehow feels like you’ve known this person for your whole life, they are, in essence, a stranger to you.
You must remember to take care of yourself. To maintain healthy boundaries.
You must remember who you are.
You must pay attention to actions, and not lose yourself in the sea of beautiful words. Because yes, words have power. But without actions, they are meaningless.
You must prioritize your heart, and tend to it like you would a grieving child.
A warning/painful reminder:
You can’t force someone to make space for you in their life. Sometimes, their lives are too full and you will be an afterthought.
They should prepare you for that.